SomeName

I very much like the art-style and story of CrossCode. Unfortunately, it is a very grindy game and I was often finding myself in the dilemma of wanting to finish the story, but not wanting to the slog through the repetitive combat and far too many puzzles. The developers probably see this is "lore-appropriate" as the game is set in an MMORPG and the character dialogue often jokes about the tedium of the gameplay. To be honest I find this kind of "haha look bad it is" self-awareness really off-putting. If you know it's bad, you shouldn't leave it in the game. In any case, I pushed through till the end and still have mixed feelings about this really was time well spent.

It does not really do that much to distinguish itself to the prequel (Yakuza 7). It is mostly the same characters, same mechanics and accordingly, the same experience. It just feels less fresh the second time around. Some details. -Story - the typical soap opera full of plotholes, but generally much weaker than 7. Not surprising, as I feel like the writers have to contrive more this time around. +Graphics/cutscenes - very good, no complaints here. +Substories - generally above average, although not as many. -Combat - same mechanics, 50% new classes, 50% old. Not much new here, so it grows dull quickly. +Minigames - the core minigame is a great addition, although I feel like many others were neglected. Also some obvious candidates missing given the location. --DLC practices - having 19 DLCs at launch is a new low for the series. As these trends tend to get worse, it does not show promise for future games.

Overall Bannerlord is an improvement on the original Mount & Blade (including Warband). That said I feel that for a 10-year gap between games, the list of improvements is shorter than I would expect it to be and the list of questionable Taleworld design choices is still longer. What has improved: ++Sieges are a fleshed out experience with equipment and many possible strategies. This was the most enjoyable part of the game for me. +Combat graphics feel nice +Fairly sophisticated command system What needs improvement: -Character models and animations are in the uncanny valley and graphics-wise make the game feel like it came out in 2005. -The economy is poorly balanced. Owning the maximum number of workshops or trading makes maybe 2-3k gold a day, which won't even support a mid-size party. The only real way to make money is to defeat another lord's party and get anything from 10-300k's worth of equipment which is more than any city can even buy (making it a chore to get rid of). There are also taxes from owning settlements, but maintaing a garrison will get rid of most of that. Also settlements can't even manage their own food and will often starve themselves. -The first-person perspective is fun in battles and **** in the overworld. You can't really control multiple parties, you can only converse with lords in person (has no one heard of messengers?) and cities can only be tasked to do new things in person as well. It makes the overworld map very tedious and micro-managey. -Dozens of other gameplay choices and minor bugs that make me wonder how much the game was actually playtested.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

It's an improvement over the FE: Fates, tries out some new ideas, but visibly lacks polish. I'd say its better to wait for DLCs and patches to add content before playing it. + Some new management/life simulator elements that allow for breaks between the battles. + They "somewhat" dialed down the waifuism in the games. Sure they still all look like anime, but they mostly look of legal age and you're not related to them. +Some of the support conversations were actually fun to read and also explained some of the lore of the universe. +/-The story lets you believe they actually hired writers this time, although they struggle with keeping up a good suspense. Every time the secrets of the protagonists are on the verge of being revealed, the game has to force in some disturbance so the story can keep going on. - The graphics... just look ugly. The character models have strange outlines and the lighting makes a lot of environments look very plain. The game also seems to drain more power than the Switch can charge which can lead to resolution bugs at 1% battery. - The game is too repetitive. To fully explore all paths you'd need to play it 3 times, but really only the 2nd half changes per playthrough. A lot of battle maps are recycled which also doesn't keep combat fresh either. The life simulator minigames can also turn into a real grind. Especially that fishing game. Why oh why did they include that? - The game hasn't really been balanced/tested too well. Some classes are significantly superior to others and mount penalties are meaningless. There is also no weapon triangle, so there's no incentive to master more than 1 weapon category.

It's basically Dark Souls 4, with slightly above average open-world mechanics. I enjoy it but would say that there is some obvious recycling from previous titles and even within the game itself. A smaller, more consciously designed world might have been better. Also, the PC release is just unapologetically bad in terms of bugs and performance. UPDATE: I finished the game and most of the bugs have been ironed out since then. My opinions on the world size and recycling of ideas definitely still stand though. It's a bit sad as From Software clearly put a lot of work into the game, but they bit off more than they can chew.

Overall I enjoyed Triangle Strategy. It's a strong implementation in the Fire Emblem/Final Fantasy Tactics game genre and makes a sizable number of improvements on it. Here are my thoughts: ++There's a demo of the game so you can try it out first. ++Excellent gameplay with solid combat mechanics which you get to play on a range of different maps and scenarios. +The difficulty is well-designed and it never really gets too easy or too hard. That said, I would not recommend playing on "hard" difficulty as I found that it forces you to play very defensively and you'll need to grind quite a bit. +Good visuals and sound effects. I wish I could see character portraits during dialogue as I think it would express the characters' personality better. +/- The game is very text and dalogue-heavy, which means your enjoyment will depend on this type of content. I personally found the style of writing to be too flowery and lengthy, which made every character sound like an 19th century count. -The delivery of the dialogue by the voice actors is pretty underwhelming in English. I ended up switching it off. +/- The game has about a dozen key choice moments, which lead to branching paths. In practice they are more like detours that inevitably return back to a shared plot point. I'm a bit mixed on this. On the one hand, I enjoy the player agency, but sometimes it also just contrives there to be a dilemma, when you could solve one problem and then the other. -The characters are a bit bland. One of the things I enjoy about Fire Emblem games is that it has a heterogeneous character cast. Usually there will be at least 1 character whose personality you like and least 1 character you find utterly insufferable. In Triangle Strategy, most characters come across as the moralistic, straight-laced type and the few comedic moments in the game usually do not land well for this reason. All that said I think this is a good strategy title, although the price tag is a bit high.

Yakuza 7 is in many ways, a new chapter in the series, using a new combat system and character cast to breathe some life into a franchise that had become rather formulaic. I'm glad the developers had the courage to go off the beaten path and try something a bit different. Anyways, here's my assessment after finishing it: ++The new turn-based combat engine allows playing as multiple characters and manages to keep a decent pace with action prompts as characters use abilities (basically heat actions). There is a great diversity of abilities and enemies, introducing new ones right up until the end of the game. -While I find that this new combat works really well for the random encounters on the street, it stagnates a bit during the "storm the castle" yakuza office gauntlets where you fight your way up to some boss. Due to limitations of the system you will only ever fight a maximum of 10 enemies and there is very little usage of furniture or other environments to really turn it into a fun chaotic brawl. Similarly, the boss fights are not really that challenging (barring 1-2 very good exceptions) or interesting. It's mostly a pattern of debuffing the boss, buffing your characters and then spamming every character's hardest-hitting moves. This is something the previous fighting-game style combat did better. +There's generally a decent number of new mini-games to play, some of which are very creative and enjoyable. I particularly like the one in the movie theatres, which comes with its own little subplots and dialogue. -The main money-making minigame (that you will have to play because there's no other way to make some real money), is a glorified spreadsheet business-management simulator. It's not very interactive and once you reach the end, there's basically no variety either. Yet you'll still come back because the endgame gear costs ~10 million yen a piece and this game spits out a lousy 3 million, making you pay 5 minutes of your life each time for doing the same thing over and over. +The new character cast is strong and really helps the main storyline become more interesting. Their personal investment in the events and antagonists really help the game stand above previous instalments, where it was mostly the plot dragging Kiryu back to save the Tojo clan again. That said I'm a little worried that the writers will make them star in so many sequels until they too, become very tired and disinterested in what the plot wants from them. +Very good sub-stories with multiple parts and recurring characters. They have cut out most of the "go there and have some angry men start a fight with you" missions and put them into a separate section where they can be largely ignored. -The game is lacking in this kind of side-content for the last 3rd of the playthrough. Even though it unlocks 2 areas to explore, there's not really much to do in them (especially if you've played previous titles) except grind for levels. +Good graphics, effects and soundtrack, consistent with the series.

This is probably the weakest entry of the 7 total war games I've played. My main gripes are mostly poor difficulty design, a lack of battle variety and just regular bugs. I was playing veteran/very hard difficulty and running 30 settlements with 2 armies at break-even cost. This in itself is not that bad, but the map is largely filled with water and accordingly, a lot of settlements are coastal and really easy for the AI to raid. Pair this with an economy where most buildings take >10 turns to return on their investment and you really spend most of your time fighting off pesky raiders in the same defensive battles in the same settlements. At some point it just got too repetitive for me to keep bothering. My only consolation is that EPIC is so greedy for a market share that they paid for this game instead of me.

Hades is a really fun game with a great combat loop, visuals and sound - the whole pizzazz. My one gripe with it is that there's just not enough variety in the content to justify grinding your way through the 10 successful runs required to get the actual ending. The first few runs are quite interesting until you've found your favourite weapons and abilities that allow you to wreck the bosses, but a lot of subsequent enhancements and additional challenges unlock so slowly that you'll never even get to them before finishing the grind. It would have been better to reduce the unlock requirements for pretty much everything to create a better sense of progression.

Was kind of looking forward to playing a remaster/remake of an old favourite RTS. Now it seems they screwed up both the old and the new.

Ashen is a decent game, but as a "soulslike" it feels very limited compared to Dark Souls. Now it's not really fair to expect the same length or depth as DS as the A44 has fewer resources available than From Software. However, even with that in mind, I would say it fails to deliver a satisfying experience (at $40). Here's a breakdown of my impressions after 1 playthrough: --Gameplay-- +Few bugs 1 month after release +Some fun platforming +Decent action & feels good to swing weapons +A stat system that does not require a wiki to understand +A decent selection of weapon move-sets -Weapons are entirely composed of axes, clubs and spears. As a result, they look really similar. -Weapons are really expensive to upgrade, which doesn't really encourage trying out many of them (I could maintain 4 without any extra grinding) -Enemy variety is low. You will encounter most enemy types (90% humanoid) in the first area and then just tougher versions as you progress. -Bosses generally don't have much depth to them. They have 3-4 attack patterns each, which take maybe 1-2 battles to encounter and learn to avoid. After that the fight is just patiently whittling down the health bar. --Controls & Interfaces-- +Has the same controls as Dark Souls (which I find are good enough) -Both the inventory and storage are too small to hold all of the items & gear the game throws at you. I'm not even sure why they did this, as you can collect roughly 80% of the gear before having to throw things away. So why not make it 100%? This doesn't make things harder, just tedious. --Environments & Level Design-- +A decent collection of areas -50% of them are in the dark with a torch that will illuminate maybe 8m in front of the player. Allows for a ridiculous number of ambushes that just get plain annoying to deal with. -The game's dungeons are incredibly long (~2hours to explore), but don't really feature enough variety in them. Just endless running through samey corridors with forgettable many enemies guarding them. -Encourages (and partially) enforces a very linear exploration (nothing like DS' interwoven level design). --Art-- +interesting unique style -not enough assets, resulting in varyingly blatant copying and pasting of structures, models, etc. throughout the game. --Soundtrack-- -underwhelming in almost every regard -actually deteriorates most boss battles --Multiplayer-- +An interesting approach to make co-op more dynamic. -You get an entirety of 2 gestures to communicate with. So it's hard to reach any understanding. -This model of multiplayer requires a sizeable number of players (which there aren't) to work well. -No PVP Overall my issue with this game can be summarised by two words: too tedious. The developers somehow managed to take the challenge out of "soulslike" formula and replaced it with an endless grind through uninteresting areas with uninteresting encounters. I think it would have been a better game if they had lopped of 10 hours of gameplay in favour of polishing what they already had.

A good challenge and fun to play as a strategy game. However, the setting, plot and characters leave much to be desired. +Maps now have diverse objectives and are generally well-designed. Reinforcements appear at sensible moments & locations and do not have the potential to completely screw you over like they did in FE: Awakening. +The class system still needs a guide to make sense of, but it does allow for more varied characters over different playthroughs. +There is a good range of difficulty and I found myself playing different styles throughout the chapters. +Some of the character support conversations are genuinely cute and pleasant -The setting of fighting for the seemingly darker empire that is Nohr is a good start. Unfortunately it becomes clear that only the King and his henchmen are evil and that all of your royal sibling are lovable goody-two-shoes, which is a lame cliche and results in no real character development (as nothing changes). -The chapters adopt a predictable pattern of "go defeat X for your evil king and complain about it", which grows really tired after the 10th time. -Not much is explained about the world. Entire nations pop into existence when the plot demands it and vanish into obscurity right after the respective mission is done. The world doesn't feel very alive as a result. Overall the game is fun to play, but the story segments are so weak that I just stopped reading them around half-way through.

This will make me sound like a wuss, but I can't stand the sound effects of the jump scares and enemies in general. Even when I can foresee a scare, having to listen to the banging in my headphones and being unable to reasonably dodge it just rubs me the wrong way.

A great game from one of my favourite series of all time. I thoroughly enjoyed the graphics, design and gameplay experience. That doesn't mean that it has no issues, but I found I got plenty for the money spent. I would also say that this type of game isn't for everyone. There is no clear guidance or hand-holding and the combat is challenging, although rarely to the point of being arbitrarily difficult. Pros: -Strong action & combat. -Good story (although it requires a bit of effort to piece together) -Quality graphics and effects, although there is the occasional drop in framerate (nothing that renders it unplayable though). -Worthwhile DLCs (particularly the Ringed City). -Some of the best (and memorable) level design in gaming. Cons: -The PC support is still sub-par. By no means as bad as Dark souls 1 or 2, but still not at a level where I would recommend playing it on anything but a controller. -Some recycled material from the previous games. -Bugs, hackers and various kinds of **** in the online play, but try finding online multiplayer without that. In general I would say this is was a good series. Different from most of the RPG hack-and-slashers in the genre. Try it if you want something new (if you find the story interesting, I recommend playing DS1 & DS2 first though).

If you love the Tales series and its style, then this game is for you. If you were hoping that they would one day bring the experience to a modern gaming standard, look elsewhere. Apart from the protagonist being /kind of/ a villain, it is pretty much Tales of Zestiria again. Personally, I just got bored of the game because the gameplay is way too flat for the length of the game. They also needlessly pad out the gameplay with some of the most pointless repetitions of "go to place X. Now go to place Y. Now go back to place X" that it just becomes plain unenjoyable. Now the game isn't all bad. I did like the fact that they chose a female heroine who was out for less noble goals (although once again, they had to contrive it so that she inadvertently saves the world in the process). But the gameplay is just... unforgivably bland. Here are some examples: -The level design of the game is pretty room-corridor-room-corridor-etc for every dungeon and big empty spaces for fields. Even worse is that these areas typically have at MOST 5 different kinds of mobs that you will have to slaughter endlessly (dropping mostly lots of garbage loot that you then get to clear out of your inventory), which in the later game, are just reskins of previous mobs. Even MMORPGs try harder! -The combat is so utterly boring. You can button-mash your way through almost all of it (even on harder difficulties), making every of the (far too many) fights the same experience. Even actually using the skills you should is hardly more efficient or a particularly different experience. -The world is largely non-interactive. You can talk, pick up things, fight and (only when the game expressly permits it), do something else. Some people may say this feels "classic", but I would say it's a technological limitation from 3 console generations ago, that at this point just gives me even fewer things to vary up my experience. -Overly linear gameplay. There is no decision-making in this game and that includes exploration. Many areas will just arbitrarily be sealed off until the game tells you to go there. Even worse is that this is often abused to make you go through the same area multiple times with no added experience. Some other things: -The graphics belong onto a PS2/Gamecube and there is really no excuse for that. -Your allies and enemies have an AI that is just dumb (they will keep doing the same thing, even if it clearly doesn't work...) And with those limitations in place, you're now supposed to spend 50+ hours, going from cut scene to cut scene with the samey fights in areas with the samey designs. I cannot imagine how that is supposed be to be entertaining.

The game brings some nice new additions to the series, but in return neglects many of the fundamentals that made it great in the first place. For me personally, they turned the game into too much **** as it went along. +More in-depth character support system with many options and possibilities. +Many more character interactions, of which some are funny. +Good design and visuals. +More options to configure play. -Character interactions rarely tie into the main plot. -Weak main plot that is predictable and lacks any significant depth. -Lazy map design and little mission variety.

It starts with a great early game, continues with an uneventful midgame and an ends with one of the grindiest numbercrunchers in gaming history. Would I recommend this game? Maybe after many many content enhancements (played version 1,4.1). EARLY GAME +You get to design and configure your own space race with a good range of appearances, names, traits and ethics. +You start on a single planet with an initial mission and are free to explore/expand as you choose. +The early expansion is a balancing of resources and risks to achieve good growth, making for fun play. -The developers thought it was great to /always/ spawn you with multiple AI opponents around you, to force interactions (which are pretty boring, but more on that later). MID-GAME (you met most of the other AI players and have a dozen planets under control) -Very few new quests, with the exception of leviathans (where most of these are just a really powerful mob). -Your interactions with the AI are limited to trades, insults and forming alliances. They don't really do anything other than grow. (100+ hours and it has never once declared war on me, even if they /really/ hated me). -The game tries to avoid micromanagement by forcing you to make sectors (which are AI-controlled areas in your empire). Not only does this rob of you of things to do, these are also impossible to manage truly efficiently. LATE GAME -Your victory conditions require either the endless colonising of planets in the system (which is neither efficient, nor enjoyable) or to defeat all other players. The problem with defeating them is that combat is flat and dull, with the only way being to win is literally to have the stronger army and nothing else. -You can only become stronger by constantly researching repeatable technologies that add minute stat bonuses to your production and fleets. There is literally no point in doing anything else. MISC -There is no "strategy" in combat. While you can design and customise ships in your space fleet, you have no control over them in combat. They engage with an enemy fleet, fire lasers and the likes and all you can do is watch their number and yours shrink. Also having a better fleet pretty much just requires having more combat power. -Due to the above, the success of expanding and conquering is pretty much dictated by the above: is your military stronger or weaker. Strategy or tactics play no role. CONCLUSION The game just has too simplistic mechanics to stay enjoyable. While there is the initial breadcrumb trail of scripted quests, it eventually becomes obvious that diplomacy, combat and empire management are far too simplistic to provide entertainment for any prolonged period. I don't even understand why they made some of these design decisions as they clearly do nothing for the player.

I enjoyed Tales of Zestiria, but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone else. Why? Because I haven't played a JRPG in almost 10 years and could find even this cliche game to be interesting. For anyone with a bit of experience/recency, this game is in many aspects too generic to be fun for the time it takes to complete. -Plot & Characters: The plot is literally the #1 most commonly chosen idea in all of game development: save the world. It doesn't get any deeper than that. The characters can be endearing and likeable at times, but tend not to develop much from their archetypes. There are also some serious plot holes/non-nonsensical decisions made by the characters that given the simplicity of the story, are very hard to forgive. Overall, this is one of the blandest plots I've seen in a game. -Gameplay The gameplay alternates from combat between overworld. The combat is enjoyable and ranks somewhere inbetween an MMORPG and a proper fighting/adventure game (such as Dark Souls). However, it takes little to no skill, mostly as there are too many fighting units, resulting in spell/skill cliusterf*** that allows you to win battles just by mashing buttons. Even the toughest bosses can go down without landing a hit, just because you can stagger/stun spam them to death. Then there is also the fact that there are too many battles vs. anything else. Most of the overworld is just empty space with a few mobs for you to grind on and not much else. You can of course do quests, but they fall into the "find this" or "kill this" model a bit too often. There are maybe 4 types of puzzles in the whole game, so not much there. Generally, this part feels very MMO-like where the ideas ran out a lot earlier than the content so the developers just made everything bigger and re-skinned the monsters a few times. -Art/Music This is just about the only moment the game redeems itself. The art is nice and colourful and many segments are animated, but not animated to the point of being an eternal cutscene game. My favourite though, is the music and hearing it is probably the only thing that kept me playing until the end. -Other --The game does have good loading times (on my PC, at least). --The combat framerate is low, but consistent most of the time. --The gear system was designed by mad people and just about nobody will ever bother trying to use it optimally. In summary the game has some strengths, but its main gameplay is just too generic. It's combat is better than than that of some JRPGs, but the grindy nature ruins that. I also have no idea why they bothered with an NG+, because the linear/0-decision aspect of the game gives it little replayability.

Fallout 4 is not a terrible game, but it has some glaring issues, partially because of the design choices the developers made and partially because of their renowned sloppiness when it comes to quality. I personally find parts of the game enjoyable and others dull to the point of me preferring chores. --The Good-- -Decent graphics. No big wows in terms of the view, but acceptable to the scenario. -Combat is fun and never so easy, as that one can get completely reckless. -The plot is all right and some of the characters can be quite fun. -Crafting system works and there is finally a purpose for all those junk items. --The Bad-- -The voicing of the protagonist: --Strongly limits dialogue options (there are at most 4 and they are very similar in every situations). Also low intelligence no longer lets you say stupid things. --If you don't play as Fallout's default character, the voice and body do not match at all and it at times is quite immersion breaking. -The absence of humour. Fallout 3 & New Vegas both had some very funny moments, but Fallout 4 has rarely made me chuckle or laugh. -Bethesda's usual facial animations leave much to be desired. -The game has extremely advanced robots/systems, but no everyone travels on foot? I have not seen any bicycles, cars or anything. My guess this is Bethesda's laziness with adding an actually interesting/useful mechanic. -The settlement management is just awful. First, one has to liberate a dump and then nanny all the settlers to get a trickling of resources and money over time. It is neither interesting, nor worth it. --The Ugly-- -There is just not enough inventory space, especially when you want to carry more than just a few peashooters. -The game has too many bugs, even after being patched. Some of these have forced me to reload older saves or try really obscure things. In the end I just find it offending to pay money where I can tell that the game's creators really didn't try too hard in making it good/playable.