Fudgeberry

While it markets itself as a story-based game, there is little actual story until well over the halfway point of the game. Since the game is largely devoid of a discernible narrative, the dialogue and character interactions should pick up the slack. If one is going to meander through a story, at least make it entertaining meandering, right? Unfortunately this isn't the case in Night in the Woods. The dialogue is as meandering as any story and is more often than not unbearable trite. It can only be described as fruitless padding written by a person who has not once interacted with another human being. When the dialogue isn't busy being dull and monotonous, it takes itself to the opposite extreme and is unbearably obnoxious with its constant failed, out of place and out of character attempts at wit. Visuals are just about the sole bright spot on an otherwise embarrassingly horrid game.

Gameplay is, without a doubt, the best the series, with gameplay more akin to DMC. Story's presentation is fine. Graphics are a mixed bag, looking great in some areas and laughable in others. Optimization is poor. It's what the franchise needed.

Extremely satisfying combat system with more complexity than you could shake a stick at. The novelty never wears thin as the game continues to one-up itself at every turn. A few questionable design decisions rear their heads during certain, specific one-off gameplay segments. Certain characters unfortunately wear thin and are less than adequately developed, but others make up for it with their fantastic charm.

Gunplay and general combat is fantastic and satisfying. Level design is great barring one or two areas that lose their novelty after the first time playing them. The story works great on a surface level, but blemishes appear after looking any deeper.

The combat is an unintuitive bore. The writing is, in all areas, terrible at worst and merely bad at best. Quests and dungeon design are unimaginative and stale. RPG aspects are entirely hamfisted.

Gameplay is the pinnacle of basic. The quality of the movesets varies from boring to alright. The game's strong point is a strong presentation of the story and characters. There still exists bland, one note characters, but other members of the cast are given fantastic treatment . Conquest mode offers little by means of gameplay variation, but presents hypothetical situations, joke stages, and side-stories. While a grind to play through all the stages, most of these stages offers something unique.

The gameplay is little more than a refined Dynasty Warriors 7. The gameplay improvements are ultimately negligible beyond the addition of less than a handful of new movesets. Some of these movesets are unbearable and terrible too, such as Zhuge Dan's baton or Zhang Bao's weapon. Stages ultimately drag on for far too long, often making you run back and forth across the map. The Ambition Mode is a sluggish series of five stages that you have to grind for hours on end. The second stage of this mode is a ill conceived attempt at adding a layer of strategy, but ultimately pigeonholes you into playing each map the exact same as to minimize how many times you'll be forced to replay a stage. The presentation of a story is at best bland, at worst tripe. The hypotheticals are uninspired and unrewarding.

At its core, the game offers a painfully vapid series of generic skirmishes and little else. Add that on top of Dynasty Warriors 8's already tired combat, and you've got the makings of an insipid title parading as as a Dynasty Warriors themed kingdom simulator.