One of the most boring JRPGs I have played in a long time; The movement speed combined with the large, open areas really just drives home how much time is being wasted, a majority of random battles can just be won via the auto-battle option, boss battles drag on way too long as well, and not in a challenging way, but in a "we just wanted to make it last long" way. What praise I have for this game are all superficial; the visuals are pretty. the sprites are nice to look at, and the music does a good job at hitting that nostalgic JRPG feel. Navigating the menus feel laggy, even playing on PC, I dread to think what it's like on the Switch and PS4 versions. The game is riddled with baffling design choices - screen transitions for tiny areas containing a single treasure chest, the game being constantly interrupted by cutscenes where two characters say something, followed by a gameplay section where you walk two steps, then you get interrupted again by either a battle, or another worthless cutscene. The duel and war sections feel time-wasting and tedious, and they feel like they were put in not because they're fun or enjoyable, but because they were in Suikoden as well. The story is nothing to write home about either, events happen just for them to resolve off-screen immediately. The very first duel in the game was built up to be this inevitable, epic clash between two former friends, when in reality, these two wooden planks disguised as characters shared about 5 to 10 minutes of dialogue with each other. The scene was built on matchsticks, and was not earned whatsoever. Basic concepts in the world are either not explained, or barely touched upon at all. The recruitment of characters just feels like a chore, the characters themselves don't feel integrated into the main story, or part of the world naturally either - they could be crossover characters from other franchises for all that it matters. People who say that this is meant to be a love letter, a successor to the Suikoden series as a justification to all the flaws and issues; Is Suikoden supposed to be boring, tedious, frustrating to navigate and play at almost all times?
One of the best console experiences bought to a handheld with great enhancements and extras, Persona 4 is a fantastic JRPG that will last you at least 50 hours of quality gameplay. Many of annoyances from the PS2 version has been fixed, both minor and major, the additional content add tons of replayability too. A few minor gripes; Chie Satonaka's new voice actress doesn't sound nearly as good as her original voice actress, Tracey Rooney wasn't fantastic, but to me Erin Fitzgerald just doesn't sound right as Chie. Overall, Persona 4 Golden is a must have if you own a PS Vita and have even a slight interest in JRPGs or just Shin Megami Tensei fans in general. This game gets a 9 from me because I do not believe in perfect scores.
Let me say this right off the bat: Borderlands 2 is not a bad game. Borderlands 2 is NOT a bad game! On the surface, Borderlands 2 is a very good-looking, witty, polished shooter that seems like it would deliver everything the first game had to deliver, and some more. However, beneath that charming exterior lies an extreeeeeemely slow and repetitive shooter that makes anyone with a working gag reflex to put the game down and play with Microsoft Excel instead. I loved the first Borderlands, I would play and play before sleep (and then not go to sleep), I loved the gameplay; the RPG and the First Person Shooter combination was unlike anything I ever seen, I remember thinking that Borderlands was everything I wanted Fallout 3 to be. So, what went wrong with the sequel? First of all, do you recall the tutorial section of the first Borderlands where Claptrap escorts you around the bandit camp? That section took around 15 minutes and the game threw you into an open world, giving you a few quests to start yourself off. In Borderlands 2, someone thought it would be a marvelous idea to expand that 15 minutes of tutorial into a span of 2 hours, 2 mundane hours of you going through the same, boring, ice environment, listening to that poor excuse of a "funny little robot" called Claptrap yelling in your ear through the whole thing. I don't know about you, but I didn't find any gameplay in Borderlands 2 before reaching Sanctuary fun in any way shape or form. Gameplay remains the same as the first Borderlands: Shoot and loot, there are tons of different guns with different stats, you can swap them in and out at any time in your inventory, you can equip different shields and grenade mods too, for those who have played the first game, this will feel familiar to you. Speaking of shoot and loot, the shooting is the main course of the game, it begins to feel repetitive and boring killing the same type of enemy over and over and over, with the occasional "badass" enemy or miniboss thrown in to slow you down, looting remains the same; you go to anything that has a green light and mash the loot button to loot stuff, although, 99% of the time, you won't find anything that's better than what you currently have and you'll end up selling the loot instead, which begs the question of why not just have cash as loot instead in the first place if it's not going to be better items. My main complaint about Borderlands 2 is how slow the game feels, quests seems to drag on and on over long stretches of maps that feels longer than they should be, and to make maters worse, the quest rewards don't seem to be ever worth it; let me give you an example: I'm level 25 and I need 15k EXP to reach level 26, I look up some quests on the billboard that are around level 23 to level 25, and how much EXP do they give? 1000 EXP? Are you kidding me? That's not even 10% of what I need to reach the next level! The enemies barely give any EXP worth mentioning, so in the end, it's all just a huge waste of time. In the first game, you would be rewarded EXP for completing challenges, so maybe that's why this game feels so slow in the leveling compared to the first, I don't mind the "Badass Tokens" system they implemented in this one for completing challenges, but why can't we have EXP on top of that? My final gripe of this game is the so-called "humor". I'll be honest, I didn't find the humor in the first game funny, but the writing was tolerable, in Borderlands 2, the developers seemed so pleased with themselves that they decided to rub the humor in so hard that it will forever leave a shameful imprint of claptrap on your face. I watched a stream of someone playing the game for the first time and as soon as the "0 as a number" appeared in the intro, about 15 people in the chat went "Lol, that is so clever!" ... Not... really... It was kind of uncomfortable to witness and I was surprised my brain didn't slip out of my nostrils to escape further humiliation. In conclusion, I would say that Borderlands 2 is not worth £40 (I paid £60 for the Collector's Edition...), maybe pick it up at £15 if you really want to, but I say stick with the first game, if you haven't played the first one and you're really aching for a quirky, first person shooter with RPG elements, then I say definitely pick this up.
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is everything I wanted Oblivion to be: fun and addicting. Right away, I knew that Skyrim was a game that I'm willing to put many hours into. I personally disliked Oblivion and Fallout 3 because of the lack of appeal and the easy difficulty respectively. I have only put around 3 hours of gameplay time into Skyrim and not 1 minute of those 3 hours did I feel frustrated, bored or disappointed, Skyrim is one of those rare specimens that appear once every few years that grabs your attention and refuses to let go. In my experience, I have not yet encountered any bugs or glitches, just minor 2 second pauses when the world is loading, but it happens extremely infrequently. Overall, my gaming experience with Skyrim has been one of the best in a long time, the reason why it does not get a score of a 10 is because I think a "10" means a "perfect game" and to be honest, no such thing exists; do not expect to ever see me give a 10, even a 9 from me is rather rare but Skyrim deserves that much. If you're in the least curious about the game, do yourself a huge favour and go get it. If you like fantasy action RPGs, go get two copies and play them at the same time. Is the game worth £42? Yes. ~Cy
