Just remember that one man made this game! Quite simply, this game is the definition of "Substance over Style". Under the hood, the physics of this game is the all time greatest. I have a long history with tennis games. I have played most of the Virtua Tennis (VT) games and I have played Topspin (TS) 2/3/4 which are considered the top two franchises. The VT series is the best arcade version for me and the TS series is the best simulation version. I've even grown up with Mario Power Tennis on the GameCube and the more recent Mario Tennis Aces, though I haven't got round to playing the most recent one. The most entertaining tennis games for me belong to Mario and friends. I have also endured EA's Grand Slam Tennis 2 series which was a decent attempt to find a balance between arcade and simulation but it still missed the mark. More recently, I've have the misfortune of supporting Tennis World Tour back in 2018 which in truth was just a quick cash grab with nothing but shallow gameplay. In terms of pure technical gameplay Tennis Elbow is the King. There is no two ways about it. Not a single game mentioned above can even challenge it in this regard. The tireless and lonesome genius behind Mana Games has refined the physics for over 10 years I believe. The ball and surface physics have an immense level of depth. The degree of top spin that can be applied has deep variation that is impacted by the attribute itself, the surface, and even if side spin is added to the spin. Furthermore, this depth is added to serves, where its not just the standard slice, topspin, and power serve, Tennis Elbow 4 also does Kick serves extremely well and is unique in this regard. The problem typically these days is that the casuals and younger crowd think graphics and presentation is everything. Where this game lacks, is of course in its polish. It took one man 10+ years to refine the physics, one can only imagine how much effort would be required to recreate/emulate the polish of Top Spin 4. Therefore, I think many people confuse or fail to appreciate the physics because it doesn't match up to the audio and visual polish that one may expect even though there is not a direct correlation. As an example, the game uses genuine motion graphics for movement and some folks complain it doesn't look realistic. It is simply lacking polish here. Additionally, the menus and music is not pretty and could use a facelift. Nonetheless, it doesn't bother me, nor does it objectively detract from the game. Thank you for a truly fantastic game that reigns supreme above its competitors. It deserves bundles more support and recognition.
This one is a solid seven out of ten! The gameplay itself is straightforward and simple. No upgrade shenanigans just raw skill and some swordplay (we'll get to that in a minute). How this game differs compared to like Sifu in that this game does not focus on parrying. Enemies will flood you with interrupting attacks ensuring that you cannot go on a parrying roll! I can see many will get frustrated here, I did too early on, but we shouldn't expect everygame to just mimic successful systems. En Garde! wants players to break the flow of combat by utilising the environment as your main methods of dealing with the bulk of the enemies. The environment inflicts stuns, damage, knockdowns, and KOs. Swordplay is reserved for isolating singular or a few enemies at a time if you have developed the skill. I grew to respect this game's system even though I do think it can make combat quite slow and protracted at times. There is also the odd duels during the story mode that does involve executing a chain of parries and dodges perfectly in order to whittle down the enemies guard and fatigue. I enjoyed the challenge here and did not find it to be too difficult. The game has a charming artsyle, has a good arena mode with modifiers, and honestlythe team has built a fantastic foundation. Shame it is a one off. Bravo!
This one is just not for me. I did not enjoy the gameplay loop at all. I found it to be cumbersome and unintuitive. Despite this I thought I would still persist to see whether I could find some enjoyment in the narrative. However, I also found this to be disappointing to a great degree especially because of how folks have talked it up (expectations never serve us well do they?!). After playing 4/5 cases of the first game I could not get along with the narrative beat and tone. I am struggling to find any charm in the characters, the writing, dialogue. The mysteries in each case is also just very underwhelming for me. I did not find them to be captivating nor genuinely interesting. This game really feels like a product of its time to me. I can appreciate that at the time it was definitely original in idea and execution. Therefore, it has built a dedicated audience. But sadly, I could not find anything that sways me. The story beats are slow, navigating the game is stodgy, the tone and comedy is cringe and slapstick at times, the characters are just not done very well despite there being some growth.
TL;DR: Beautiful style but not fun to play. Starting off with the excellent, that is without a doubt the Artistic Style: Visually, this is a uniquely crafted world that is brimming with beauty. The colour palette is fantastical and the character designs are heroicly charming and at times grotesquely creative. The soundtrack is also gorgeously epic and can stand tall independetly. The voice acting is the first section of the game that I felt was out of place. The main characters such as Lorelai and Akard have strong US accents (you can add Pip to that too) and they just sound so jarring in terms of the games overall theme and tone. The surrounding characters as whole sound great. Moving on to the good which is the card building and via extension the army composition and city building: The card building adds a unique flavour to this genre of gaming and overall it is implemented well. Card building is intertwined with basic city building, recruitment, army composition, and okay depth with regards to battle mechanics and Hero evolution. Then there is the decent aspects of the game which is the auto-battling and the lore and worldbuilding: The battles initially feel pretty good but soon they become quite shallow. Despite there being a range of unit cards and battle cards, combat itself with differing units still feel quite stale and similar to one another and I am not too sure as to why that is the case. I think it is because the battle cards are mostly generic and not specific to the type of unit that could help certain compositions feel distinctive. Furthermore, Heroes just feel very boring and lack impact within the battlefield. Even after upgrading them, not a single Hero felt spectacular. As for the worldbuilding, they have a great foundation. There are some really creative ideas that seem to have been borne out of Christianity and hymn singing. However, it has not been baked long enough. It needs more depth and the characters especially could benefit greatly from more development time and personality arcs. Finally, highlighting the bad, which to me makes the game really quite unpleasant to play is a combination of gameplay loop, poor battle mechanics (stealth, frequent retreats, trial and error), bad pacing, and frustrating mission structure: Firstly, gameplay loop and battle mechanics. The game involves a lot of moving with your army from point to point and it can feel quite sluggish at times when you want a quick session. This is made to feel worse due to some forced stealth! Mission 2 is so dumb that you have to stealth your army all the way through to finish the mission. It is not even hard, just frustrating to the point that it betrays common sense. It is so bad that it seems like they updated it to be able to skip this mission, thankfully.
Then in the penultimate mission 7 there is another forced stealth section! Hooray! Once again, the mechanics and rules of this mission just forego common sense. Your army will be in full stealth and the enemy will still be alerted due to specific mission structures and conditions that must be met by the player. They want to teach stealth because otherwise traversing the map feels like a Pokemon battle with a fight occuring every 10 steps. This leads to other particular battle mechanics/battle ideology that holds the same frustration as forced stealth in equivalence. This game involves a lot of trial and error, and that is not a bad thing in and of itself. As someone who plays Civ, CK, other strategy games, and roguelikes I am fine with trial and error. But Songs of Silence seems to have this concept of trial and error baked into the core philosophy of their gameplay loop.
For instance, retreating in combat is taught early on, and if you don't use it frequently then your units will be decimated. This will just prolong your completion of objectives as you will have to wait to heal your Hero and then spend resources to rebuild your army. I personally, find this to be a bit of a joykill and unintuitive. Additionally, this more often than not has to be done against bosses even if you have amassed a high level army and max level Heros, as you can initiate a battle with one Hero and then retreat and finish off the enemy with another Hero.
It just doesn't feel heroic to do it in such a way. It would have been far more meaningful if all our armies could combine together for a final fight in each mission. Lastly pacing and mission structures. Mission 2 and 7 have been mentioned already as frustrating but Mission 4 takes the cake and may even define this game. It is so frustrating and annoying that the devs themselves made a guide on Steam on how to beat it. It has horrible pacing as it introduces a new Hero, with new city building mechanics, new recruitment methods, on a tight map were enemy attacks are coming from all entry/exit points of your capital city. The only way to succeed is to follow a specific pattern as mentioned by the devs!
Atmosphere: Great
Lighting: Good
Maps: Great variety and pleasing aesthetic. Technical: Initially I was going to score it average but after some more playtime and research it is simply bad. The game has a built in stutter and judder especially when ADS. People with top of the line rigs have been complaining since release and it still has not been resolved! Also expect sporadic frame rate drops when just navigating. Gameplay: It is hardcore. If that is your thing, you will appreciate it. Far from polished though.
Great looking game with a combination of stellar music and use of lighting. Gameplay wise there just is not enough going on. The world is charming enough to explore and is the strongest part of the game alongside the score. However, exploration is uninspiring overall as the traversal isn't really that smooth despite being a nimble cat. You cannot truly explore the map and once you realise that your are essentially boxed in and handheld all the way through. Furthermore, 75% of the game is fetch quests with the rest being combat, stealth, and simple puzzles. I would have bumped up the score if they had invested in greater depth in terms of the narrative and wider narrative. Nevertheless, it is worth a go if you like laid back atmospheric games with a truly unique and stellar score.
TL;DR: Overall a frustrating experience. I didn't find it too difficult in terms of skill or strategy. It is moreso difficult in the sense that the RNG and the algorithms behind the system make combat inorganically difficult. Therefore, many a time you will not feel rewarded for pulling off a slick and/or tactical team manoeuvre because you will miss your shots (even when your probability of landing a hit is over 80%) because the RNG ultimately dictates the flow of combat. When XCOM2 flows well it is a silky smooth experience and feeling. But, when XCOM2 doesn't flow well then it feels like you are forcing yourself into your tightest skinny jeans, and the only thing you will find there is hardcore chafing. Narrative: Generic naff. Boring characters everywhere, cliched tropes and uninspiring story-telling. I really disliked many of the cut-scenes in this game. Luckily, they are short and mostly skippable, but they are just annoying (the voice acting adds to that) over the top US military blah blah. I have to mention the final cutscene (which is hilariously terrible and immersion breaking for me) where regular human resistance fighters are regaining control over Alien Advent checkpoints wielding nothing but wooden baseball bats and metal pipes! Only 30 seconds ago, we, had to utilise advanced Alien Advent weaponry to just about defeat them by the skin of our teeth!Music/Sounds: Shame Firaxis couldn't invest in a badass soundtrack that fits the theme (or doesn't). Again, it feels very uninspiring and generic. You know it, the military orchestral sound that we see in the films time and time again. They could have got funky here with some rock and some sci-fi space sounding stuff. Music aside the sounds are pretty neat early on but it gets annoying pretty fast especially when it comes to enemies because they have no variation. The same shrieks, commands and grunts over and over again. Furthermore, the former Commander, your right-hand man, will not shut his trap. Seriously, please listen to a podcast or some music when playing this game, you will miss nothing. Gameplay Loop: There are some structural flaws because if you go into the game blind like I did; it is possible to hinder your progress quite deep into the game. I had maxed out my Comms network link without knowing about the Avatar project. So within the first 15-20hrs of gameplay I was dealing with the Advent Avatar project on a constant timer (as mentioned before your Commander buddy will not shut up about this). Luckily, I persisted and managed to reverse this but I can see many folks being deterred by this as it adds another layer of frustration to the game. Furthermore, the way missions are fed and the way you navigate the globe there is a very stop-start and fractured rhythm to the gameplay loop. To make all of this worse lets talk about the actual gameplay and how it fits in with the overall loop. I am relatively new to turn-based team tactical shooters; some similar games I have played are BG3, Persona 5, The Banner Saga series, The Civ series, Divinity Original Sin series, Invisible Inc., and the Crusader Kings 2. One thing I can say for certain is that XCOM2 is the slowest of them all in terms of combat flow and this has a major impact on how one will recieve this game. Animations take forever, getting into battle can take too long sometimes, if there are too many pods activated it will literally take 5-10 mins just for the enemies to end their turns, and, in the end all of this adds up to long battles that don't feel very mentally stimulating because of RNG having a chokehold over the fundamental mechanics. Combat Engine: Feels unpolished. Overwatch system is implemented poorly (even when done as an 'ambush'), the aim penalty makes the execution hilariously goofy especially since it triggers a cinematic slow-mo. Characters will miss point blank shots, your sniper will miss a massive golf ball shaped enemy that is 20 yards in front, grenadiers will waste 50 rounds of ammo on an enemy running from cover to cover 10 yards away!UX/UI: Overall it is fine on PC. I do have two things that irked me. Firstly, when at the Command Centre (where you navigate the ship on the globe) all the animations are just too slow. Which is a common issue as I have also mentioned this in the previous section. Moving from point to point on the map is gratingly tedious and this is further exacerbated by the fact that you will be interrupted relentlessly by other mission notifications. Secondly, the bunker view of the ship is a little dodgy to navigate as the camera loses control. Bugs: Some crashing over my play time, a couple of VIP missions are busted because you cannot actually reach the specified destination (from what I understand via reddit - this is exclusive to the game being played on Epic Games), some missions where there is lots of smoke effects did create some FPS drops and stutters but it didn't happen often.
System Specs: Ryzen 6 3600, GTX 1080 and 16GB RAM. Overall Play time including both DLC: 35hrs MAJOR BUG/GLITCHES Base Game: Even after 3 years this is still present in the game as it happens in most playthrough on both PC and console. In the Caspian Desert you have to go to the lighthouse for a mission. However, the game black screens and you have to Ctrl-Alt-Del to restart. After some research on Reddit, the workaround, is to lower all your settings, look down to the floor in the game and proceed up the ramp toward the lighthouse. Expect hiccups along the way and save as you move forward whilst looking down. It took me 22 attempts and 1hr 10mins to get lucky. DLC1: Major glitch. After New Years speech cutscene the game black screens and cuts audio. The workaround I found was to drop quality to Med, Tex Fil to 4x, shading 1.0 and Vsync ON. Took 8 attempts 25min. INTRO I will not cover the narrative and will cover technical elements. I have played the previous two games and I thought they were both decent games for what they are. Having said that, I want to preface my review by mentioning that I think the games have suffered a little bit due to the hype it receives by its fans. But at the same time the series is far from being terrible as some have claimed and actually the series as a whole and this game is **** standard if you consider it for what it is. A post-apocalyptic FPS, containing survival horror elements, and with immersion as what I would say as its primary focus. Besides that, the game is brought down by its technical issues. GAMEPLAY Gunplay - Gunplay is solid on PC. Definitely an improvement from LL. The only issue I encountered was dodgy hitboxes as sometimes I would line up a perfect headshot and for whatever reason the bullet would just miss. Luckily, I did not encounter hitbox issues often and it mainly occurred in the first region of the game. Movement - Still frustrating like the old games. Artyom still struggles to hop on to platforms that are 2ft tall and if you attempt to jump around you can get stuck. Some have complained about the short sprinting time but I didn't see the issue. Perhaps after a few years there was a patch to adjust this. I think the main issue with movement is how animation heavy simple actions are. One has to 'press E' to open doors and climb ladders. This could be considered quite outdated as a game mechanic as it feels like autonomy is being taken away from the player. Stealth - Stealth has always been a key gameplay element to the Metro series and it remains so here. However, Metro Exodus suffers from poor stealth mechanics this time around. One glaring issue I experienced very early on in the first region was that enemies could spot me through walls. I was crouching around a settlement where all enemies where inside. All of a sudden, enemies were on alert, I quick loaded a few times to see where I had gone wrong but I hadn't. Thankfully, this wasn't a recurring issue and only happened 5-6 times in certain areas. But when it did happen it totally destroyed any and all feelings of immersion. Crafting - Crafting remains the same but two new features were introduced. Firstly, being able to switch weapon attachments on the fly which of course is brilliant. When the Moon is out you can now use NV scope and switch it out if you have been out till the sun comes up. Secondly, although not crafting, weapon maintenance is required as you have to clean your weapon at crafting tables using liquid resources. Weapons deteriorate in the field affecting stats or jamming the bullet mid fight but honestly the impact is hardly noticeable. Many dislike this feature, and I think it is a bit gimmicky as you are cleaning your weapon with the 'E' key and it can be argued that it doesn't really help with enhancing immersion at all. WORLD/EXPLORATION Semi-open world areas exist in Exodus and its not for the better. Volga the snow topped first area is just a pain to traverse. I had no fun in this opening area and I think it was a bad idea to open up with this map. I have read about many players dropping the game after the first 3-4 hours due to not having any fun in the first area. Volga, is part land and part water and getting about in a row boat is slow and annoying as you will be often attacked whilst rowing. The second area is the Caspian Desert and here you can use a car to travel. That sounds nice right? Until you get it stuck due to the bumpy terrain. Save often because this will most certainly happen. Besides traversal issues, my main gripe is with the uninteresting world. These semi-open worlds are boring, its just a cycle of visit here and clear area. Nothing special ever happens and there isn't nothing special to look at either despite the game being gorgeous itself in terms of graphics. The game's flow and exploration shines brightest during the more linear sections which proves bigger isn't always better.
Edit: After finishing the series, I will increase my rating from 6 to 7. I think it may be the strongest game in the franchise in terms of narrative and also atmosphere. This game is a little difficult to judge for me because I played it for the first time on PC 10 years after it got released. I read raving reviews about this game and franchise. So perhaps at the time of release this particular game was considered original and well performing. Gunplay/Stealth -Plays well on PC. No issues but nothing out of the ordinary. Standard. -AI is standard and the Nosalis are bland for me. -Stealth is the best way to play this game but it is a bit clunky. Exploration -Linear style but you can approach stealthily or guns blazing. Again very standard. -I read lots about the game's atmospheric quality. But honestly it didn't resonate with me that much. If the post-apocalyptic vibe is your thing then for sure you will appreciate the game's atmosphere. Graphically and in terms of the visual tone I found it very bland looking. The game's colour palette is very dark and grim and honestly kind of ugly. Obviously, I understand the look they were going for as it is set in a post-apocalyptic world but even then the environments lack flavour. Narrative -I don't think the story is bad per se, nor do I think it is told poorly. It is just very average in terms of story telling. I understand that it has been inspired by the books and borrows some elements from it however it doesn't tell the story in a special way or anything. I think the cast is hit or miss. -Artyom's character has no development and no depth. He is a mute really and you can learn more about him by picking up notes in the game world. There is little to no emotional connection built with him. No reason to care for and about him. -The supernatural elements just didn't fit this game. I felt it was very out of place. I found it really sill to be honest. Even the character model/designs were really silly and they remind me of those gooey alien baby toys. Conclusion Overall, I think this game is highly rated by those who are fans of the post-apocalyptic genre. Even though I do not think this is a bad game by any means I do not think it is worthy of the lofty praises. It is a slow paced FPS shooter set in a particular environment.
I must preface my review by saying that this was my first ever experience with a JRPG style game and also with the Yakuza series. Having now played up to Yakuza 4 I think Yakuza 0 is the best way to start of with the franchise. Yakuza 0 has some fantastically written characters with top notch character development. Playing this game will evoke a plethora of emotions which will surely be appreciated by all kinds of gamers. The Yakuza franchise's signature style is to have a gripping and emotional main campaign which is complemented by bizarre and hilarious side stories and world building. It really does work! I found the pacing of the main campaign to be perfect and the gameplay loop is more than satisfying.
