Starlightzz85

As someone that has defended Gamefreak in the past, like with Scarlet and Violent, I absolutely cannot defend what is easily one of the most lazily made Pokemon games ever made. I actually wish I could get my money back. It's an insult to me as a buyer and pokemon fan. It's not even worth $30, but they charge you $70. And to add insult to injury, they reveal $30 dlc before the game even came out that was available to buy before the game launched. I was actually excited that the game was going to take place entirely within Lumiose city since there's so much you can do with that idea. This means they could really flesh out the city with a variety of outdoor and indoor locations, such as a haunted mansion you could explore for ghost type pokemon, or a power plant for electric types, etc. They have some things like a cemetary, but no indoor exploration, and places that could of been explorable like the substation (power plant) are not. You can't even entire the majority of the buildings. Most of the places you can buy stuff at have an noc standing in front of the door to a place you can't enter. Extremely lazy game design. Most of the game uses the same copy and pasted textures for roofs, windows, and buildings in general that look like they're from older gen consoles. This city is way too small in scale to stay interesting, but only because they did not flesh it out with a variety of explorable interior locations. There's also no new pokemon or regional variants. No voice acting is not a big issue to me, though I know it is for others. The game also gives you bizarre dialogue options in many cases, like having a choice between 2 responses that are virtually the same, or a few responses to an opponent you're about to battle where all of the dialogue options make you sound like a stuck up bully. The only good thing in this entire game is the real time action battle system. Instead of moves having a PP limit for number of times you can use them, they have a cooldown time. It feels very much like an MMO in that regard. What the moves do have also changed in some cases so they fit the new battle system. All in all this game is a travesty. There is no excuse for a game this terrible in quality coming out of one of the biggest money making franchises in the world. This is low budget slop priced like it's a premium AAA game, treating pokemon fans like they're stupid.

This is a really well made rhythm game with a lot of depth to it. I'm a rhythm gamer first, and only mildly enjoy the KH series. World Tour is mediocre at best and contains a recap of the series events leading up to some new scenes exclusive to MoM. It is there mostly to unlock songs for Track Selection, which is MoM's free play mode, but the World Tour, much the same as any rhythm game's story or missions, is not where you'll be spending the bulk of your time unless you choose to. Track Selection is the heart of the game, much like any rhythm game's free play. The VS/COM battles, where you can play against other players or AI opponents is really enjoyable due to the trick system. A gauge fills up as you hit notes, and the better your note judgement is the more it fills. Once full you will throw a random trick at your opponent that lasts a limited amount of time. It's random, so you don't choose the tricks, but it keeps things interesting. There's also tons of unlockables, from songs, new teams (only 4 teams total, which each level up separately), to profile cards used in vs, to collection cards that permanently boost various things like EXP earned, item drop rate, defense increases, etc. You can also synthesize some of these through moogle synthesis, as well as usable items. There are also lots of in-game feats, some of which unlock trophies. So even beyond trophies there's a lot more achievements. I highly recommend this game to anyone that enjoys rhythm games. If you're not a rhythm gamer, but only a KH fan, I'm not sure I could recommend it since you can probably look up the exclusive ending scenes on Youtube and listen to the music elsewhere, but that doesn't mean you won't like this. You might.

This could be one of the best games in the series to date. I will start out by addressing possible cons, first with time limit concerns, which is more personal preference than an actual con. Players that prefer the time limit that most Atelier games use to have, including the first 3 games of the Arland quadrilogy, will be disappointed as there are no time limits in Lulua. For those of us that dislike the time limit, rejoice! You can relax and enjoy the game at your leisure. The only other possible issue that could be a con for some, is that there are no English voice-overs. All the text and dialogue is English though. This can be awkward hearing familiar characters from earlier games in the quadrilogy suddenly talking with a different voice. It's awkward, but I personally am not lowering the score over it, mainly because the developers lack funds as it is. They needed to cut somewhere due to budget. I was actually surprised they had the funding to add English voice-overs all the way up until Lydie & Suelle. The series is very niche. It doesn't sell a boatload of copies. Maybe as the series gains more popularity, they'll be able to add English voice-overs again. This is why it saddens me when some people say they won't buy the latest Atelier games because the voices are in Japanese, as it only hurts the series success outside of Japan even more. If I had to choose between not having these localized at all, or localized without English voice-overs, I would choose localized without English voice-overs any day. Now aside from possible cons, everything else about the game is flawless. The alchemy system returns to a more traditional form, ditching the grid-based system the Mysterious trilogy had. The battle system has new features, such as the fact that there is a formation grid with front row and back row hexagon spaces connected in a zig-zag pattern. Characters in the back row will not fight directly, but will use their support skills when the trigger condition for the skill is met. They tend to support the front row characters in hexagons adjacent to their own. In example, if a support skill is an attack that is triggered when a physical attack skill is used, and let's say you have a character in both of the adjacent front row hexagons, this means any time you use a physical attack skill with any of those 2 front row characters it will trigger the support skill of the connecting back row support character causing them to use their support attack. This is just 1 example. Every character has support skills used to support front row characters. This is one of the best new differences with this Atelier. You can set up some nice combos and chains with this system. There are also quality of life changes which I'm not going to go into. The music is great. Visually, the game is stunning. The art style is beautiful as always and the characters are highly detailed, though environmental textures are terrible in comparison the same as any Atelier game. It's like PS4 characters inhabiting a PS3 world with some grass and flowers looking PS2. Luckily the nicer looking stuff drowns out the worst looking textures, making them less noticeable. There are other things I haven't touched upon in this review, such as other battle additions, discovering new recipes, locations, and more by solving alchemy riddles, etc. All in all, it's hard to understand why this Atelier seems so much better than past titles. I think it is simply the fact that it takes the best features of past Atelier games, combined with the new additions and pieces it all together in a way that works and is very refined. This makes it a great game not only for vets of the series, but also as an entry point for newcomers.

I have been playing MMORPGs since the Everquest 1 days and have probably played every major MMO under the sun. I have experienced a lot of expansions, but Heavensward is in an entirely different league. I can honestly say it is the best expansion in the history of MMOs. It is the largest expansion ever released, and also very high quality. The amount of improvements over A Realm Reborn is staggering. The story writing is even better than before. The zones are huge and some of the most beautifully designed zones to ever grace an MMO. The music is amazing. They added a lot more voice acting in this one to please all the players that wanted more voice acting, and plenty of the voiced narratives is high quality stuff. The flying is handled perfectly, unlike the way WoW originally added flying, SE got it right. Being able to fly right out of the gate can break an MMO that was not designed with flying in mind, such as it did in WoW which is why they removed it originally. In HW you must unlock all of the aether currents in each zone to fly in that zone. Most of them you find through exploration, while a smaller portion comes from quests in the zone. By doing this SE not only answered players craving for more exploration, but also makes it where players can't just instantly skip over everything, and once you unlock flying there are plenty of quests and other locations that open up. SE plans to continue making full use of flying through future updates. They also made mobs in the open world more challenging as many complained that the mobs in ARR were too easy, but they did not make them so hard that casual players would hate the game. It's the perfect balance. The amount of details and love that went into this expansion is apparent. The cohesiveness and polish of it all blows other traditional style MMOs out of the water.