Exavier

Here's a game where you can re-live the nostalgic active turn-based combat system with your favorite FF characters. The whole gacha system can be **** sometimes, but that's their prerogative, I suppose. I won't lie, I spent a chunk of change trying to get a couple weapons, only to find that later on I'd get something even better for free; it's a gamble. So, fair warning, you needn't spend any money to enjoy this game. Use the mythril you get on refreshing your stamina and grinding through instances. Another pro tip: if you're losing a battle, there's a little trick the community calls "S/L" (or "save/load"), where you force-close the app and re-load. This resets the battle starting from scratch, very useful if you just made a stupid mis-tap that could cost you the fight. Why give it such a high score though? Well, it delivers what it promises. Sure, at the end of the day, this is merely an ATB simulator with FF characters. You can spend money on it if you want, but it's hardly necessary for progression. You can make a dream-team of all white mages, all black mages, all beasts, all villains, all heroes, all from a certain series, anything you wanna do! Another reason I score this so highly is the sheer amount of content. I've been playing this game since release (global version) and I'm not even halfway through the main quests. The weekly events are enough to keep you busy, and since the early ones cost very little stamina and give you mythril in return (along with characters, growth eggs, memory crystals, etc.), you'll want to be spending a lot more time in the events. Be careful though, they ramp up in difficulty pretty quick. If you have any questions, the good folks in kongbakpao's chatango are friendly and helpful. ****/

It's fun, character development is fairly deep, and it has *something* of a story. The game's RNG seems fairly generous, and pretty much every enemy will drop an item (outside of arena). I find it hard to rate it higher than a 7, though, because it always seems to leave me wanting more. Energy replenishment is pricey compared to how much "Lapis" (in-game currency) you'll gain, and you'll probably want to save up either to try for characters or get a bundle of metal cactuars to juice up your favorite character's level. At rank 20 (your overall level which determines your energy and gives you 100 Lapis/level-up), and having beat all the content currently in the game, I'm left with some mild disappointment. Compared to Final Fantasy Record Keeper, this game is in a nascent state, and I fear the content updates will be too few and far between. I'd recommend FFRK over this--much more content, the game lets you *do* more before you run out of energy, and of course, way more characters. But I enjoyed playing this all the same, and you can't diss a free game. (Protip: don't spend any cash on this. If you get crappy starting characters, there's a way to reroll.)

This is a must-play for roguelike veterans and noobs alike. While it may be frustrating at times, sometimes for the wrong reasons, remember, that's what it's there to do. The biggest issue, if it can be called such, that I have with it is the experience saving/item depositing every 5 floors. Why? Because it's easy enough to just farm a bunch of experience and dump it onto one character and start on a floor with basically whatever you want. Kinda kills the whole thing for me, so I don't use it--then I hate myself when I find an item I want to use on another character so I deposit it anyway in case I decide to change my mind. I'uno. Torn on that bit. This game did steal my heart, though. And my time. Easily over a hundred hours. That's some potent value for the price.

Having read reviews prior to purchasing, I was skeptical as to whether or not I'd find my money well-spent. I'm a fan of the show and a fan of the previous games, in particular Tenkaichi 3. I wasn't expecting this to be quite as good, but with that in mind, I wasn't disappointed. I'm giving it a solid 8/10 because I think the game is worth $40, not $50, for the content and the quality. PROS: - The story, as it progresses and weaves your character in, is quite cool, especially if you're keen on the series. There have been a couple of "whoa, WHAT!?" moments for me so far. - Parallel Quests are a bit ****, but I put this as a positive because they manage to keep them interesting. You can play them either online or offline, and in both cases you can select what character you play as from your currently unlocked roster. This was unclear to me before buying, as I thought you could only run with your created character. Being able to jump in as one of the Z-fighters from the get-go is great fun, and there's plenty of dialog between characters when they're fighting each other or on the same team (although this can get a bit repetitive). - Combat is generally enjoyable, though a bit lacking in depth. It's the same ol' formula from the previous games, but lacks the enjoyable beam clashes. Also, there's no traditional "counter" move, though there are some abilities that act as counters. - And speaking of, great selection of abilities. CONS: - Somewhat repetitive, although this is largely counteracted by the enjoyable animation, graphics and overall gold-coiny feel to the game. - Acquiring the Dragon Balls themselves is basically just a grind of the same PQ over and over and Retrying until you get one from the time patroller that spawns most of the time. Doesn't particularly feel exciting. - AI is kinda weak. I haven't noticed much difference between any of the NPCs AI-wise. I expected that. And they usually fall prey to the same tactics. I sort of expected that too. What I didn't expect was for them to implement a stage with enemies that respawn in the center of the ship, which is another room in itself with only one entrance, and to watch my allies try to fly *through* the wall to get to them (and vice versa). Indefinitely. Lookin' at you, Frieza's Ship. - Doubly worse about the AI is how NPCs you're supposed to protect or keep alive have no regard for their own safety. - Manual item collection in the world is tedious. I don't want to look for them first-person, for a start. Take it a step farther and let's just add that loot to the end without me having to pick it up. I find this part very un-fun. - The on-disc DLC is an obvious cash grab. No one likes that **** Stop it. I don't blame them for trying to make more money, but honestly, at $50, I already feel slightly ripped off. I *might* buy the Return of F DLC, that'll be it. - You will grow to hate the theme song in the town. And to make matters worse, when you're shopping, it adds another "layer" to the track to make it unique (like another set of drums). For me it just makes it more annoying. Maybe it's just me. - Unclear tooltips for pretty much everything, especially equipment. Wouldn't be a HUGE issue were it not for the lack of a training mode. Would still be a pretty big issue without. All we get are a number of arrows showing... something...? At least we know if it's positive or negative. OPINIONS: - People complain about Super Saiyan Ki-spam. Granted, the only offset is that their Ki is being drained and it's easy enough to charge it back up, but... y'know... just don't let them charge back up and dodge 'em. I rolled a Saiyan on my first because I wanted Super Saiyan for PvE, and granted, being able to spam supers on some parts is GREAT. It offsets some of the difficulty surprises. Overall I feel it's balanced, though, and frankly this wouldn't feel like DBZ if there weren't some walls you had to bang your head on, y'know? - I feel there's plenty of customization in character creation, y'all crazy. The only thing that bugged me a little bit is, and this is just an example, that for saiyan hairstyles, #2 and #12 (total shot in the dark on the numbers there but just an example), they're the same hairstyle reversed. Why could we not simply have a reversed option for each hairstyle? Why are the two so far apart on the list? Why do no other hairstyles get a reverse? This tells me they were just putting in a filler option, and not even being subtle about it. CLOSING STATEMENTS: I do agree that this is a must for any DBZ fan. An enjoyable button-masher with some fun, if a bit grindy, collecting elements. For what it is, the game is enjoyable, but I don't feel it's worth the pricetag for anyone that *isn't* already a DBZ fan, and even then it's a stretch. I don't regret adding this to my library in the slightest, though.

I can understand the reason for low scores on this game, though I think they're a little biased towards the whole luck factor. It's a card game. Of course there's a luck factor. And yes, you have to earn your cards; sometimes you get lucky in packs, sometimes you don't. At least there's the disenchanting option. There are plenty of guides online to crafting a decent deck with starter and common cards. Overall, the game is well designed. There are a handful of flaws and inconveniences here and there, but for what it is, I'll happily crank out at least my dailies once a day. The Tavern Brawl mode is an excellent addition and basically guarantees a free card pack every few days, since the Brawl rules are often based on a preset deck for the chosen hero rather than selecting your own cards (and when they are, they're easy to cheese). There are, however, some serious balance issues that have me shaking my head. But having run some of these rather unfair card combos and lost, and conversely facing them and beating them on other occasions, it's hit or miss. As far as balance goes, though, my biggest demerit has to be the utterly ridiculous Grim Patron, a 5-cost 3/3 minion that spawns another of itself if it survives damage. I don't knock the idea of the card--a minor tweak would make it infinitely less ridiculous. But someone at Blizzard approved this to go out the door, and they have yet to tweak it as of this writing. An utterly ridiculous card that can change the game more than most legendaries. I shake my head at anyone who uses it. I think a lot of the negative reviews simply come from poor deck making decisions. Overall, the game's fun, whether or not you have amazing cards. Sure, it's gonna pair you up against some people with better cards and more experience than you sometimes (hell, more often than not). Roll with the punches and you'll realize this is a nice little gem Blizzard's got here.

For a free(ish) game, HotS has some weight to it. Taking it at face value, you have a MOBA with recognizable Blizzard characters; when I heard of this my hype was at an 11. Unfortunately this falls flat of my expectations. ++ Has a wide roster with some interesting character playstyles. Even without purchasing any characters and only using free rotation, you shouldn't be bored with the selection. -- That being said, characters are expensive to purchase with in-game currency, and the cost with real money is downright absurd. At a rate of $0.99 per 1,000 gold, with 1/3 of the champions costing 10,000 gold, you're looking at $10 per decent character. So effectively, just a small handful of characters once you've depleted your "early" bonuses (aka playing for an entire day or two straight). -- Which, unfortunately, is dull after a while. Each map gives you different objectives, but they generally all feel the same. Go here, kill this, go here, your team gets an advantage for a little while. Every map feels very similar. ++ To their credit, however, the maps are pretty. So that's something. ++ And to the character selection's credit (and cost), at the very least they give you the option to test a character before you buy it, in a reasonable single-player practice environment with a single lane, minions, an enemy Arthas, and an ally Malfurion to back you up, as well as control over level and lanes. -- There is an unfortunate lack of complexity in character leveling, but enough to make one character using the same hero at least *slightly* different from the next. ++ And on the plus side, at least it's easy to unlock the masteries for a given character. 2-3 matches seems to be enough. There's not a whole lot else to say about the game. It's briefly fun, but gets stale fast--maybe I'm jaded. But I think this is where I have the biggest issue, coming more from a fan of these series than an unbiased gamer. It just doesn't feel like they've been done justice. I get the idea behind making everyone level at the same time, but it doesn't solve the problem of "if one person on your team ****, your whole team ****." In fact it makes it worse. With individual leveling, a good carry can compensate a poor player. Now that poor player drags the whole team down. Not to mention, when I'm doing really well individually, I want it to be known, and I want to tear that battlefield up. When I heard this was going to be a possibility, I imagined strolling in with Kerrigan, rocking a lane, shutting someone down and FORTHESWARM-ing all over the place, cackling maniacally while blasting muh gaming tunes at max volume. Now I'm held back because someone else on my team is feeding but I'm nailing every skillshot? Not a fan of that. In reality the homogenized experience pool makes individual players doing bad even worse. "Homogenized" is probably the best word I can use to describe it overall. But it's not bad, for what it is. I may pick it up when I'm bored or a neat new hero comes out I wanna look at, but this just doesn't have revive that spark that had me playing LoL for so long. In fact, as someone who hasn't played LoL for a couple years, this game actually made me want to play LoL again.