ItsTamo

Waste of my money. Boring, tedious and directionless gameplay loop. I bought this game because I knew that this came from a Korean developer. I have a Korean background and wanted to see more Korean devs tackling the console market. But wow no. Other user reviews said don't listen to the critics, but please do listen to the critics. This game is not worth your money. This game released on mobile for less than $5 USD and is now selling for $40 with minor to no changes. I think $5 is lot closer to what this game is worth. This game was a mobile game and it shows that the devs did not put much thought into porting the game over. The character movement uses delayed inputs like any mobile rpgs based on touch mechanics, which the character reacts seconds after stick input is made, unlike the traditional button/stick control which is a lot more responsive. I prominently play console only and seeing the mobile, touch based inputs carry over to a console port was extremely annoying. UI is the stupidest I've seen in a video game. It just provides icons in the menu with no text explanations. Really? It took me some fumbling just to figure out which icon means which command. This is basic stuff that UIs must have. You are allowed to farm for permanent stat boost items as soon as the game begins, and this breaks the game. There's no level based systems, and you just have to roam around the world for collectables (mind you the UI popping up everytime you collect an item is insanely annoying) to become unbeatably strong without fighting a single monster. Wow this is a well thought out game. Also the combat is too slow and repetitive. Story progression does not unlock anything meaningful in the combat. The combat system becomes stale after 30 minutes. Characters have no personality and are quite bland. Same goes for the world. I really find no reason to continue playing in the midst of boring combat, finicky controls, non-existence level design, and boring world. Only thing that stands out is beautiful illustration. Everything else is meh to the level of slight frustration. Don't play this game. Go play any JRPGs by Atlus or Falcom during their sales. You can buy at least 2 of their much better games with the price of this.

Cons: - Frame drop issues (probably cuz it's base PS4, but still.) - Devs should stop forcing victims to "forgive" everything. That's just not how things work. The whole story revolves around the theme of forgiveness and coexistence and I found how they delivered the message very unsettling. If they are dealing with colonialism in stories, they should've been a lot more sensitive. - Very, very disappointing ending. I was literally laughing out loud during the cutscenes since the whole ending sequence seemed really ridiculous and rushed and made no sense. Alphen was trying to be serious but I buy none of that lol. - Characters are straight out flat. Alphen had great backstories but was one of the worst protagonist I've seen in a video game. He's so static and absurdly obsessed with being the 'Mr. Nice Guy'. Toward the end, the whole journey is lead by his obsession to save his love interest and this is done terribly. All the other characters except for Rinwell and maybe Dohalim were poorly written as well. They just lack in any interesting character arch. The character designs are so great but their arches are such missed potentials. - lack of monster variant. they mainly play with the colour palette change. - Microtransaction seems really bad. I didn't buy any of the DLCs but I could see where BN was going at. - Soundtracks were bland. The most memorable ones were actually the returning tracks, like the field boss themes. - Character inflation in battles is seriously off. Kisara and Law ended up being mostly useless throughout the whole campaign. Alphen's the main character, Shionne's a must since she's the healer, Rinwell is a magic-user who can beat monsters of 20+ levels all by herself, and Dohalim is a secondary healer and necessary since Alphen can't heal himself and Shionne and Rinwell are very fragile. - Field monster health was unnecessarily high and I just don't quite get why... The Devs just don't bother to add any interesting skills or patterns in higher variants of the monsters, but instead just add a tonne of health. - UI/UX was oddly uncomfortable. You can't access the map from the menu and you can't access the quest menu from the map. I was consistently irritated by this toward the end. Pros: - Art Direction is gorgeous!!! The environment and the character graphics were so pretty. Honestly this is one of the most gorgeous art I've seen in a video game. - Combat is very cool. Fast-paced and engaging, and the cutscenes for the skills were also cool. - Battle camera was very, very, good. I've played Vesperia, Symphonia and Zestria and none of those had good cameras, it seems like I made some good improvements over the years. - I wasn't too in for the chain battle system at first, but quickly got very fun. It compliments the fast-paced combats very well. - Fishing is weirdly fun... - I loved the references to the previous Tales games. Rinwell and Shionne's casts were straight out from Vesperia and that was a really cool touch. - First half of the game was very engaging and interesting. I have more cons than pros but this game was fun enough. The first half of the game was seriously great. It got dragged down by its terrible writing and rushed and non-sensical story toward the end. I'd give it 9.2 if it wasn't for the story but story really brought the score down for me. The ending was really mediocre and I didn't feel anything as I took out the disc from my console... Overall fun experience. I wouldn't greatly recommend but still recommend regardless.

This game seriously has some ethical issues to talk about.... Verdant Moon Story: That guy just randomly massacred people for fun but that's totally okay since he's traumatized! We'll help him since we are his friends! And he is totally redeemable! Crimson Flower Story: That gal just randomly committed genocide against religion and committed human experiments and attacked a neutral alliance but that's okay since she is traumatized and thinks she is the justice! She has no idea how she'll build her next government (yeah like she literally starts to figure that out in the support dialogues. Which means that she had no plans about what her ideal government structure should be when she started attacking the church) but decides to overthrow the current government that has been doing decent for the past thousands of years! But that's okay since she hates them and "thinks" they are the bad ones! (Slither whatever guys were the actual bad ones but she never figures it out since she's just dumb) She'll selectively choose who can be killed and who doesn't have to be depending on her mood but that's 100% okay since she's forging her own path! Oh Jesus... I hate how this game constantly tries to justify the genocides of civilians. The story tries to tell me that it's all for the good cause, but no. All the stories and war crimes the characters are committing are wrapped with pretty words and packed with great character design. The game was fun enough. I was infuriated when I played it at launch (2019), and I still rant about how bad the story is even to this day (2021). I hated both Dimitri and Edelgard due to how poorly written their stories were. On top of that, I hate how the game portrays visual/racial minorities. I'm really uncomfortable with Petra and Dedue's characters. Residential schools and missionizations of first native people is a real thing, and the Devs don't even bother to portray that properly. I'm an immigrant myself and I well know that kids start to forget their mother tongue only after an year or so. The game tries to wrap itself so that it seems like the story is criticizing imperialism and racism, but in truth it's not. It's only embracing those false ideals. How they talk about the issues is overly shallow and insensitive. Must admit, I loved the game play, but this is the most disgusting story I've seen in a video game. I still can't sleep at night when start thinking about it. I thought FE Fates had a pretty bad story, but that was just a bad story and nothing else. FE3H's story is not only bad but also very immoral. I hate it to death.

I'm a newcomer to the series and have not played the predecessor. I felt alienated by the story due to the abundance of references to the previous game. I think I get the gist of it and it doesn't impede me from understanding the story, but it highly, highly ruins my enjoyment. I didn't even know Minamimoto was an antagonist from the previous game until I heard about it in a review. The characters magically know each other and talk about things I had no idea of. I didn't connect to it. The battle system is quite fun at first, but it gets stale toward the second half of the game. While there are over 300 pins, the attack types are quite limited and battle becomes repetitive. I liked using skill combinations to chain them and increase the groove. The all-out attack at 300% groove is very cool, loved it. Pet peeve, (since I'm very bad at battles) is that you can easily get a game over at your 14th battle out of 15 chains because some monsters can kill you in 4-6 hits in hard modes. I wish they had an option or items to allow you to restart the last battle. I hated losing 10+min of battle with a few mismoves. 70% of this game is fetch-quests, and I hated it. Throughout the in-game day, I run around to do some meaningless quests to make near-zero story progression. These quests are repetitive. Mostly chain battles or walking over across the map multiple times to get some dialogues. The fact that the environment is static throughout the game and that the map only has a handful of new areas doesn't help too much. By the end of week 2, I got so tired of the game and just wanted to burn through on easy difficulty. I liked how they added some replay values to the game by having exclusive collectibles or harder difficulty, etc, but I think some QoL features could have been implemented to make the process faster. I did enjoy the characters. Their scripts are well-written. However the character dialogues pop up when not necessary. Persay, they start talking whenever you pass by a restaurant and the stomach is empty. I have to endure through the party members' 274th time talking about the 'dining establishment' before entering one, loool. Just let me in. Similar situation when I select the wrong answer for a quiz or dating sim portion. The game forces you to view all the dialogues again and repeat the process. It was super tiring and I just looked up the guides. The art style is great, but I did wish there were more cutscenes and full-screen illustrations. Majority of the story progression was text and it felt more like a book but a lot weaker. The story itself wasn't too bad but the time travel mechanic was somewhat poorly executed and cumbersome. Music's okay. Some were nice and exciting, but overall mediocre. I can see how they give off a certain stylish ambiance which I thought was okay. I tend to enjoy J-pop and J-rock but I think they could've done better in sound/music design to strengthen the story elements. Those colourful soundtracks just randomly play at the background and don't do anything to contribute to the story or the emotions of the characters. I had a couple of songs that I did not enjoy and thought were downright irritating and wished I had an option to turn them off. UI needs some polishing. It's a pain to go through the pins to find the right one to equip the character with. Scroll speed on the menu is way too slow, and scrolling does not let me loop to the top. I can't see my character's stats before feeding them food. I can't change the order of my party. These little things stack up quite quickly. While enjoyable at first, the game has some pacing issues and is alienating to the newcomers. The battle system is fun, but some elements rely way too much on nostalgia. I originally gave it a 7, but I think it's closer to 8, like 7.5 something.

I was genuinely surprised by this game! It was the most wholesome experience I had in a while. I have an Asian background and the rice shenanigans just felt so relevant and funny to me. The art style was downright gorgeous. The 3D graphics during the farming sequence were lovely. Cats and dogs are so cute. Sakuna herself and the other cast were cute and enjoyable. I liked all of their backstories and liked how they were told so casually at supper times. Farming was refreshing and was so much fun to experiment. I looked up real-time references for rice growth stages and this was just fun. Does get repetitive, but I think it should be expected from a farming-sim. Feeding my characters was fun, and gathering ingredients was enjoyable. Making compost and managing/planning the season was fun. The battle never got old. Skill combinations were fun, and the action effects during the battle made them quite enjoyable. I'm terrible at metroidvanias and platforming (like, unable to finish Super Mario Bros world 1 bad) but I was able to make it through this one just fine. The game is not overly demanding and it suited its ambiance. Some complaints, - Some QoL and upgrades are only introduced toward to end of the story and are barely used. I wished that I got cow plowing and hulling tools earlier. - It's difficult for the player to balance between farming and exploration. I ended up farming way too much compared to the story progression. - I wished that there were some difficulty adjustment settings, like how Xenoblade DE does. Rice farming levels Sakuna up by way too much. I enjoyed farming and wanted to grow the best rice possible. After few attempts, my Sakuna was way too powerful and I eased through the final boss. The boss was only dealing 1 damage per hit... I enjoy easy games since I'm admittedly bad at many of them, but it was bit disappointing even for me. I can see that some people will not like this. If there was a stat/level cap system that stops the player from leveling up beyond certain point while storing the exp, it would have been much more enjoyable. - The monster types were too limited. The story isn't too heavy and light-hearted. However, the credit roll was so wholesome and made me look back at my journey through the game. My 50 hr journey with Sakuna was a bliss.

I'm not a hater nor a lover of this game. I don't mind motion controls. I'm somewhere in the middle and I like it for what it is and dislike it for what it is not. I played through the original game about 5 times (I played OoT like 30 times, so yeah.) so I guess I'm more toward the lover side. I played all mainline Zeldas and I think I'm quite objective in my opinions, lol. I was quite a bit disappointed that there was no additional content to this remaster. The Hyrule Encyclopedia states that the devs were originally planning a 'Second quest' for Zelda and Impa, but had to cut it, only to include the cutscene in credits. I thought the Second Quest would feel perfect for the HD remaster but did not happen. I can't stop comparing this remaster to the Xenoblade Chronicles DE and Super Mario 3D World, since both of the remasters had 5+ hrs of all-new contents included. I don't understand why the Zelda devs didn't bother to put that much effort into this remaster. Aside from the Additional contents complaint, Pros: - Fabulous story and strong characters. Groose has one of the strongest character arches in any Zelda game. - Strong dungeon design. The Ancient Cistern is almost like a storybook and has its own story. Most of them requires you to understand the 3D layout and are not overly linear. The Sandship initially forces the player to the deepest part of the dungeon, while showing all the doors and branches that you can access later on. This is just a great dungeon design. I think SS is the second strongest game in terms of dungeon designs, next to MM. - Geographic design is great. Utilizing each of the provinces in a new way every time the player re-visits them. I really don't mind the tedtones. It's fascinating to see how the familiar maps change for the Silent realm sequences. - Addition of the button control was great, especially for some minigames that require precise controls. I played the HD version on motion because of muscle memories, but I thought buttons were great. - Halleluja, Phi's dialogues are gone. The game felt a lot speedier and more fluid than the original. Overall cut in diologues and tutorials were nice. I think this would be the biggest reason for the players to choose the HD over the original. Cons: - The hub world is really tedious, the worst in all Zelda games. They should've added a new quest to give the Loftwing some extra speed boost, just like how they did in WW HD. They should've added extra islands with more collectibles to give the players incentives for exploring. They didn't add anything. The Sky is a blatant ripoff of the Great Sea, but the Great Sea is actually fun and this is not. - The collectibles are the worst in the entire Zelda series. I hate the medal and pouch system and hoped the remaster fixed it. They didn't. They have 2 heart medals in place of 8 heart pieces. This game only has 24 heart pieces. OoT had 36. The game starts you off with 6 hearts instead of the usual 3. That's just lazy game design. You can get two of the same medals like the rupee medals, and this is because the devs did not want to develop new items. No permanent upgrade to the consumable items. Gratitude crystals are way too easy to gather and the quest itself is fairly short. I'm surprised that they fixed none of this. Someone should tell the devs that the collectibles in this game are downright terrible. - Some parts of the original game felt rushed and incomplete, like the empty caverns in Eldin province that serve no purpose, or the absence of any roles of the Eldin dragon. These have not been fixed in the rerelease. - The motion controls were okay, but they drift quite badly. They are a lot more responsive than the Wii counterpart but far less accurate. Not joycon drifts but gyro drifts. Any battle that required you to use the Skyward attack was quite painful, far more than the original. - The graphics were not as impressive as when I first played the first and haven't aged well. Very blocky. Soft, glittering aesthetics of the original release is not as prominent in the HD release. - Amiibo functionality is stupid. They should be criticized heavily on this. They should've let us scan all zelda amiibo and let us gain a ladybug or amber or something. - Why no warp??? They should've at least made warp from bird statue-to-bird statue within the same province possible. This is the only 3D Zelda with no warp system. If I land on a wrong bird statue, I need to fly back up and make a huge turn and see the cut scene again. That's annoying. I enjoyed it, it's a good game. Took 30 hrs to 100% the HD version. The complaints I have are all from the original game design. I do think Skyward Sword HD is a better game than Skyward Sword and the devs listened, but it feels like they missed some opportunities to fix the problems the original had. The original game had a lot of problems even excluding the motion control finesse.

I'm a big fan of Pokemon Mystery Dungeon and Etrian Odyssey, and playing EMD was a treat. I loved the concept of the game and it was very grabbing. It's THE type of game I love and would love to dive into. The dungeon crawling aspect is fun, and how they utilized the guild system was quite brilliant. But I'd say what brings my review score down are terrible UI, party AI and some system commands. EO series in general doesn't have that great of UI, and EMD perfectly incorporates and worsens it. Too many skills, too many items and limited number of buttons forces the player to constantly study and spend time on the menu option. Party AI is the worst I've seen in a game. After 30+ hours of gameplay, I still don't know when the game prompts the leader (or the player) to input commands of the party members. The members use up the items that I don't want them to waste. They use their skills pointlessly (and waste MP) even if I click 'cancel' on the battle command that's occasionally prompted to the player. This really broke my immersion and raised the overall difficulties. The part that I enjoyed the most was DOE battles, which I usually use the 'command all' skill to command all of my party members. The battle becomes a lot more enjoyable if I don't have to suffer the party AI. The Fortress system was fun. I liked using the guild members (and jobs) that I left dormant for some time. Most of the fortress defence members I set were different from my main party so the fort battles were refreshing. Job system is broken. There are 10 classes, and Runemaster, Medic, and Landsknecht are almost mandatory in an exploration party. It's difficult to make much notable progression without any of them. The other 7 classes are supporters or long-ranged fighters, and I really didn't get much use out of them. I think this type of job system was ok in the base EO games, since there are 5 party members and you could put at least 2 supporters, but in EMD, you can only put 1 supporter and the other classes go to waste. I tried to utilize the support classes as much as I could in the fortress battles but still didn't get much use out of them. I loved the gameplay, but can't stop thinking that the overall game was a missed opportunity. Some parts seem rushed and I believe they needed some extra time in the oven (which I understand that this was not the type of game that would be granted with that much of a budget). Heck, I'm seeing frame drops on New 3DS XL. There were so many improvements they could've implemented. It's not a bad game by no means and I greatly enjoyed it. However, from an objective perspective, it's not a well-constructed game. And I'm disappointed to say that.

It's was an enjoyable game for what it is. The character sprites and animations are fabulous. I loved them. The characters felt lively. The voiceover was great and it made the repeated dialogues a lot less frustrating. I'm bit mixed on the story progression method and the UI. I understand that it's a remake of an old game and they wanted to keep the (quote on quote) gameplay aspect. I had to click the same dialogue option to find one menu command that would let me proceed in the story and it was oftentimes frustrating. I do think that they could have done a lot better if they decided to stray away from that old gameplay. It's really a dilemma in any remakes. I've had this question on 'what makes a good remake' ever since Link's Awakening came out, and I'm having the same question with this game too. Still, in my opinion, the gameplay has aged quite badly, but the devs tried to improve on it as best as they could without changing too much of it, and I was able to see that during my playthrough. There's no auto skip/advance on the dialogues, and I don't know why they chose not to include it. It's a norm to include auto-progression in any games with long dialogues, including RPGs, and it was a bit tiresome to click the A buttons way too many times while I just wanted to read the scripts. I don't quite get why they didn't program the use of touch screens for investigations. I liked clicking random things with my stylus on Professor Layton or Pheonix Wright. It was a bit disappointing that I couldn't do that in this game. The story was well fleshed out, while it was somewhat predictable. However given that the game is from the 1980s, I can understand that the trope the story uses became kind of old. Still, it's quite a murder mystery and has stood its age relatively well, better than I expected it to. I personally can't stop thinking that the ios or android version would have been more suited for this game. I normally hate mobile ports of console games (like, square enix should stop doing their terrible mobile ports), but VN is just one genre that I think is better suited on mobile than home consoles since I can lie down on my bed and just read through the story, requiring minimal player input. Even the length would be perfect for a mobile port since the game lasts less than 10 hours to complete. The mobile version may simplify the animations and the sceneries, but I really don't think this would hurt my experience. It's a real nice remake. I liked it. But the problem is that it WAS a remake. I can see that the devs were constrained by its original release. Be ready to pull out of walkthroughs from progression blocks. But otherwise, enjoyable experience and a nice murder mystery.

Really lovely game. From the quality of the port, I can see how much love and care the devs put into this. Enhanced music is great, the battle system is fascinating, and some of the QoL features are lifesavers (just like Reyn). I would've preferred if they hid more secrets in the overworld, but this complaint is trivial. I don't know what much else to say. It's great.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

I had quite a bit of hope going into this game. Mana series developer with some Zelda experience on the sleeves. Why not? But I was genuinely disappointed. The level design of this game, especially the dungeons is very unsatisfying. Let's say you found a location within a dungeon that's locked out at the moment, requiring certain item to access. I come back later on in the game with that item, expecting to unlock a quest or item or a new part of the map. Nope. Wrong. Right away you are met with another blockage that stops you from proceeding due to some story element. I think the game wants the players to explore and experiment, but never rewards you enough for doing so. The currency is broken. I initially really liked rebuilding the town, earning money, etc. But there's no incentive in upgrading the stores or earning money, because I can't spend all my money on anything else. The cash is overflowing and I can't buy anything because there is nothing to purchase. There's no satisfaction in managing the town and making money. The economy balance is the worst I've seen in a management sim, let alone a video game. The pacing of the game is slightly dragged. It wasn't my cup of tea but I can see people not minding it too much. The party and quest system is really terrible. It locks you with only 1 quest at a time. Sometimes that quest requires you to drag around some low-leveled villagers, requiring you to beat certain parts of the dungeon or some high-leveled monsters. This means that you'll have to go back-and-forth to change out that single-allowable party slot to have the party members required to finish the segments of the dungeon, and force the low-leveled villager (who gave you the quest) to fight in an impossible battle. I really don't get this. Why not let you use the money to level up the low-leveled villagers? Why design the quest so that you'd have to travel back and forth for a certain item just to proceed in a dungeon for a single quest? The degree of freedom in the game is overall disappointing, for both the dungeons and the towns. I'm really sad to see my high expectations crumble. I was very excited to play this game at first. I still see some good things in the game. It was cute and the idea itself was quite great. I would love to see a new game in the franchise, but it will need quite a bit of polishing. The game was perfectly playable and enjoyable for first 25 hours, but I never bothered to see the ending.