Trey82

This game is garbage. The graphics look nice. Until you get into a battle. The monster sprites are DS tier. The gameplay is terrible. And gets worse. Slow, ponderous, fmv-laden. The story is pure atlus. The story is terrible. Stop LYING good lord people are trying to find something GOOD to play and you atlus apologists are just lapping up everything they throw out there and the rest of us are scratching our heads and wondering why you think a game that is literally unplayable (play the game without savescumming or turning the difficulty down. No? THEN ITS UNPLAYABLE) I can hear the reddit subs collectively whine about it: "I played it on mega brutal difficulty and it was easy. Just buff and debuff and exploit weaknesses, duh. You should know FULL WELL that this demon that looks like a puddle is weak to electric and piercing. DUH!) If you are new to the series and like dying in the first 5 minutes, this is the game for you. If you grind until you dont die every battle, the bosses will tell you how much a waste of time this game is. Grinding 2 hours in normal, sane games: You get equal to, or OP to the normal mobs. Grinding 4 hours in SMT4: You still have to babysit your group. EVERY single battle. Normal attacks are a lie. You have to exploit weaknesses EVERY time. The AI is just awful. They pair you up with an AI basically set to 'whack on the enemy no matter what' The missions are terrible. The confirmation after everything is terrible. I cant fully tell you how much you need to avoid this game. I'm sure the audio portion is good, like most SMT/Persona types. But I dont play the 3ds loud enough to enjoy that part, or play longer than it takes to hit a game over. I refuse to save scum broken games.

GOOD LORD THIS IS TERRIBLE! Its even less redeeming than the first one. AND I HATE THAT ONE, TOO! Alright, first things first.. the difficulty is all over the place. It makes no sense. You truly cant change up your tactics at all. Every battle becomes a weakness exploit-fest. There are the usual.. and altogether FAR too usual SMT style enemies that 2-shot you once you reach the next floor, if you dont babysit your party. Even after leveling and gear up as well as you can, it becomes a 3 shot affair. There isnt much relaxation or room for different tactics, and its a shame. Story is just as one dimensional as the first one, although they feel a bit off, in this one. Like .. Q1 was stereotypical, and you didnt get to hear as much as the persona games, a'course. But the team, as nice as it is to see 'em again, doesnt feel 'like home'. You'll know if you play it. It isnt persona. It isnt persona! I cant.. stress how much I dont MIND grinding. Done properly, its mindless and feels like youre making your party overpowered. Then there are times when youre already **** the bottom of the barrel for xp and if you JUST had 5 more levels, your strategy would fall into place. Thats the boss tier fights, in q2. I know what it is, its the DLC microtransactions that atlus puts into everything, for the last few years. Slow the xp gain and charge another 2 bucks for the cheat dlc or an overpowered persona. *sigh* Its reasons like that .. that I cant recommend any of these last years of games from atlus. They're still fine, its just that they arent like the earlier games that felt balanced and natural. There are plenty of atlus games, in general.. that are still TOUGH but balanced. You grind it out for an hour and youre back to being on fair footing. Or OP at best. *sigh* Back to strange journey.. or maybe Etrian3. I love you, but I hate you Atlus.

Shifting world is a puzzle that you wont want to figure out. Part of a puzzle game is ease of use and logical outcomes. "Shifting" switches keyblocks, stop blocks, inverts the colors and rotates the world. In 3d. Visual strain sets in, and quickly. It isnt good, at all. The premise is easy but predicting where things will shift to becomes tedious with the 'overhyped' shifting mechanic. Just switch, dont do the roll and the flash and... ugh. There are better, smarter puzzlers out there that wont give you a headache. Skip this one, 2d AND 3d.

Dont listen to the 10s. Believe the negative and medium scores. EO4 is a masterpiece only in a few ways. Etrian is a series that was so difficult that somewhere along the way, someone said.. maybe we shouldnt be such jerkwads. I mean even our fans know they'll die in the first level. THey'll play for 1 battle, go back to town and heal. 2 battles, go back to town and heal.. and you just grind your way to mediocrity. Really, etrian is a grindfest with story and dont ever lie to someone who asks how great Etrian is. It isnt amazing, its just a game that imitates an MMO in that theres no story, hours to get to another level and you'll die a lot. The equips arent amazing, the drawing of the map is nice but you cant draw yourself into OP god tier. EO4 is an entrypoint into the series in that.. you actually stand half a chance to learn what the mechanics of the game are. Then you wander around and kill things. Half the time you can autobattle and its fine. The other half is super annoying. Enemies that evade. Enemies that only die by magic. Enemies that eat magic, but then while they're digesting.. you need to use an item, heal the 4th character and do a handstand to execute order 66. Then they'll drop a rare item. See, thats a joke. But it isnt, cuz you will have to jump thru hoops in the mid to late levels. And sometimes use ice or fire or what-have-you, while during night, on the second level of the seventeenth stratrum.. to get the claw of ravenfart. Why do you need this claw? Because a guy in a tavern told you what you need. So you get it. Then you can buy the next best weapon. But only after you sell the item. Yeah, the blacksmith doesnt gather any materials. You do. If that sounded like rambling, just wait till you have to read the game, beat the enemies, sell the item and buy the thing. A lot more clicking during THAT rambling. The game is good for wasting hours. Keyword wasting. It isnt good or bad, its just etrian.

This game is terrible! They take the best parts of other games.. (Persona and Etrian, of course) and make it the absolute worst game (SO FAR!) in the SMT universe! HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?! It starts off so innocently, it looks like it'll be some reminder of what p3/p4 was. It starts off with some nice banter between the old group, the new 2 people, the velvet room people and then you're off to the dungeon! Hell yeah, mapping out floors and grinding until you're an OP god! 20 hours from start, you'll be a fighter. 20 hours later, you'll be King Leonidas, 20 hours after that you'll be on new game+ and mop the floor with FOE's!! GUA HA ****, wait. How did they not figure out the formula? Alright, so here is the real summary: Story - no character development. Your favorie characters are now one-dimensional stereotypes that never, NEVER stop saying their stereotypical lines! Like.. there isnt even any conversation, just tropes. MEMEs. It gets obnoxious before you finish the first floor. Game: Grind all you want, buy all the best equipment, it doesnt matter. You never get stronger. As soon as you get some good equips, the enemies are impossible to hit. As soon as you raise the hit rate, they 'bind' the whole group. As soon as you become bound-resistant, they one shot you. You cant get thru any floor but the first with grinding and 'auto battle'. You literally have to babysit these guys EVERY fight. Which is fine, except you'll half the time not have a decent loadout of skills from your personas. Personas: You have your main and your sub and about a dozen skills possible between all that. You'll heal up a good bit inbetween battles by just walking and having some 'passive' heals. Which would be great if you didnt get one-shotted by eveyr other enemy. There is honestly no way to avoid the cheapness. Best equips? Grinding? Intelligent use of enemy weaknesses? Doesnt matter. So good news first: The old etrian style is here. Healing isnt free. You need to TP back to town to get anything more than the basics done. The item system is there, so USE IT. Unlike etrian, you will be making TONS of bank from harvesting spots. Too much, IF you compare to etrian where a dungeon run only nets you ONE item and a heal at the inn. Etrian is a grind, but at least you get stronger. Bad news: your equips dont matter. Items are too expensive. It gets super tedious to have to hit up the nurse's office/inn every 5 minutes because OMFG STOP ONE SHOTTING ME. If you like pressing A to heal, then A to harvest, then a to confirm choices, then a to choose 5 attacks x 5 confirms x 5 which enemy to hit.. its just so incredibly frustrating to babysit these losers. And its a shame cuz they were so much stronger in p3/p4. Bad: This game. INCREDIBLE GARBAGE. Not persona. Not etrian. It **** all over the persona story, too. Anyone rating this game positively is your enemy. If you've played hundreds of hours of etrian, this game is an abomination to you. If you played persona 3/4, this game will be an abomination to you. Consider it all. Consider the ratings. If you want a REAL crossover in this universe, you want strange journey. The old one on DS, not the new one. Good lord the new 3ds strange journey changed the gameplay to ENCOURAGE pay2win. You'll see. If you want a 'dungeon crawler lite' there is always mystery dungeon's crossovers. If you want a good etrian, just randomly choose one. No matter what etrian you choose, you might get some bad traits.. but you'll get to figure out what works, what is OP, and the story doesnt PRETEND TO EXIST like Persona Q.

This game is straight garbage. It started off perfectly fine. Early access by a trusted company. Double fine has made some great games, over the years. Then.. they released it, patched it a tiny bit, dropped it. Just dropped it, no reason for doing so, they just didnt care enough to finish it. AND YET THE GAME IS STILL UP ON STEAM IN 2020! Ahem, anywho.. the community has released unofficial patches that fix plenty of issues. Good on them. But over the years, that team has fallen apart and its kind of.. in limbo. I would say you should expect very little. Is the core game okay? Yes. But it doesnt take an expert to notice the issues inherent in the first 15 minutes. Skip this one, lads. Praise the community but dont ask them to solve this clusterfu~@.

If you go into this one expecting a good time on single player, you're going to have a bad time within.. 5 mnutes. Or first 3 battles. Depends on if youre playing puzzle or normal kombat. Really good conversion, but no difficulty slider. Skip this one unless you have a friend to play against.

A game designed for a select few, played by someone who isnt in that group. Characters: Beautiful artistic design, as usual. But for what purpose? Gameplay: Perfectly fine mechanics, but even those who enjoy MM games realize that you cant play these when you arent at 100%. Are you tired? Had a beer? Recovering from covid? Then you arent 100% and shouldnt play this. MM games are frustrating at best. MM games have been finely honed over the years.. to appeal to a select few. I dont see that audience growing, as opposed to other hardcore games like Dark Souls, Etrian Odyssey, etc. You simply cannot 'casually' play an MM game. There is no caution, no careful approach.. it forces you to play it on its level. And thats fine.. for a few. But lets face it. Mega Man ****.

I dont know how a game can be so good and bad at the same time. Story: Um, youre saving time. But you cant exactly pinpoint where the areas are that you'll need to go to, so you should just do everything you can. (EVERY.SINGLE.QUEST.) But that doesnt really solve the issue. Its like animal-crossing length. You'll tiptoe toward saving the Riv-earth. Combat: So good and so bad. It isnt that the game does anything spectacular, and in fact its really unbalanced in the same way Etrian Odyssey games dont have balance. If you wander into the next area youll get smacked down in a split second. The combinations make sense.. and it isnt that the game is doing anything AMAZING, its just that every other RPG seems to NOT do combinations well. Or at all. Combat is boring. But makes sense. Enemies are tough. But the RNG is on your side. Its really so good and so bad but so boring that.. it just kinda works. Sound and graphics are fine. No complaints. Gameplay: Hold alt to highlight items on the ground. Youre welcome. TAKE YOUR TIME in combat. You'll misclick enemies ALL the time and walk behind them instead of attack. Its insane how small of a 'window' you seem to have when picking up items or clicking enemies. Sometimes it works. Sometimes you gotta hunt for it. Hit B to go top-down and that helps. But only so much. The inventory management is tedious. But okay. The spells are.. present. The first hour you play should be there to show you what NOT to choose. Which is okay for any RPG, the classes and skills you thought would be useful are actually complete garbage. Ranged is OP. Spells are OP. Healing is a chore, but you dont have to worry about mana. So.. there's that. I chose this game to have free reign in a world where I could do anything I wanted. I ended up.. playing rock paper scissors and doing hit-n-run tactics in half the battles. I'm not disappointed, I'm just not finding this game to be anything special. It doesnt get anything wrong, it just .. isnt my cup of tea. Its like a moon pie. Yeah, it tastes okay. Yeah, its sugary and fluffy and .. okay, I guess. I just dont want one. I never want one. I'll try one.. but it isnt what I'm after. Its food, and I'll eat it.. but.. "eh". DOS:EE is my moon pie. I dont want one, but I'll eat it if I'm really hungry and thats all there is.

These latest games are absolute garbage. I cant tell you how disappointing they are, because there is a good game every 5 minutes that lets you play it for about 5 minutes.. before another cutscene, ten more quicktime events, and tacked-on mechanics and story that SIMPLY DO NOT MATCH. Thats the review. Here's the expanded version: Survival game? Awesome.. except you dont have to hunt, eat, heal any of the dozens of times you get life-ending injuries. Life threatening? Shrug it off. Life-ending? Maybe a cutscene where you have to remove a rusty metal whatever from whereever and never think twice about wading thru that water.. (You'll notice that in the first 5 minutes, and every hour after) Lara is new to this? She doesnt know how to kill or survive too well? Only for the first 5 minutes. 1 hour into the game you already took down a whole platoon of bad guys. EASILY. Action scenes? Good but overused. Die? Honestly just set the controller down and walk away. make some popcorn. Have a beer. The game will have killed you 20 times over in the meanwhile and restarted you. No button presses necessary. No consequences. No difficulty. NO GAME The quicktime events ruin this, because you cant even relax during the cutscenes. They spam the buttons until you get used to it. THen they switch it. The first hour? Press Y/Triangle. Next hour? X-Boks button. Good lord this game ****, squeenix ruins everything it touched in the early 2010s.

It should be noted that, YES, the game is actually fun to play. The story is more approachable than typical weeaboo nonsense. BUT. I suggest, that as a STERN warning.. if you find the control setup lacklustre and the first training match or two difficult, then you will NOT complete this game NOR enjoy it. The game is such that the first matches, and often ANY match is challenging to the point of making the rest of the game horrible. ITs a shame, too. Because none of it ADDS UP! Are you good at FIFA? Excellent. Are you good at JRPGs? Excellent. Do you think it'd make a cool crossover idea? IT DOES! ... but then you play the game, and it becomes very clear that standard tactics dont work. You will end up spamming the special moves. And that just isnt fun at all. Especially when you reach matches where its so incredibly unfair that no matter how many specials you spam, you still lost. The game is cheap. A waste of money. BUT. They get some of the sequels right! Either cheat past those matches to enjoy the story or move elsewhere. You'll thank me.

When a game holds your hand as much as this, You might as well be as insulted as I am. Playing on normal mode was the WORST pacing I've ever seen in a game. Do we REALLY need to slow down at every other junction and go over 'clues' and interview every.last.person.about.every.last.detail IN EXCRUCIATING NON DETAIL?! The entire game: *chase something* *reach a certain point* WAIT, HOLD UP.. we dont know where to go, from here! "We just saw them go that way. We KNOW they're going to the.. wait are you serious? You really want me to check for clues? They went to the right." HOLD UP THERE KID, dont go blindly charging off to the right. We dont know if thats the way. "Actually we totally do." In spect that wall, I'm going to ask the Rattata if they saw anything. "So we're going to stop chasing, AGAIN? To ask questions. And then drag icons over to where we saw them IRL? Dude, even L.A. Noire didnt waste this much time on interrogations and clues." *Detective says the exact same thing over and over until you collect the last unnecessary clue and then stare at it for another 5 years* They went off to the right, kid! "O rly? I would not have guessed this, detective genius" Well, thats why I'm your ***. Being bad detectives runs in the ***ily. Even when youre allowed to play, youre pretty much halfway thru the game and the clues get obnoxious. "Youre just like my ***." And then the game is over and although you know who is who, there are unanswered questions. As a first detective kinda game, this is terrible for kids and adults of any age. It doesnt even let you play the game, and intentionally slows the story down for quick time events EVERY chance it gets. It could've been a few hours of cutscenes, but NO you gotta mash A every so often. Just let me get to the end of teh story. PLEEEAAAASSSEE

Xenogears. THis game reminds me of xenogears. Because it starts off exceptionally ~ the intro isnt awful, the characters seem okay. Gameplay isnt bad. The scenery and towns look **** LOOKS like this is going to be a great journey. An hour in: Alright the combat is getting old. Its free to sleep in the first Inn, so this feels like a pokemon game ~ just keep going back to town after a good grind. Repeat. Repeat. The story gets so much worse. How did we get that airship? Whats with the terrible stereotypes? He wont stop talking about womanizing.. but in a non-charming way. She wont stop trying to get rid of us. The fairy always chimes in with 'BUT YOU **** SO INCREDIBLY BAD AT NAVIGATING! You got lost on a path that literally has no wrong way to go.' Grinding. Grinding. The job system is kinda.. not good at all. FFT and Disgaea really spoil someone for other games. I beat xeno gears once. If I knew then what I knew after beating it.. I would have never started the second disk/second half of the game. Knowing that, I quit after the final boss. You. and I. Have better. Things to do. Than believe. There is. A true. Ending.

A game that doesnt reward 'normal' rpg work that you put in. In previous pokemon mystery dungeon games, it was about strategy. You grind. You save the right items for the right time. You spend a little more time grinding now, so you dont get wiped, later. PSMD dropped that idea and now spams you to death with items. As where before an item was to be used at the right moment, now .. ugh, this game ****. While exploring one floor, you can pick up a dozen staves, a few foods, a lot of berries and cure3-seeds. And to get through this game, you are expected to basically use those items IMMEDIATELY. It isnt about your level, or who you brought with you, the strategy you chose... its about items. Which would be fine if it wasnt so obnoxious to ALWAYS be using something from the item menu. It doesnt feel like anything is orderly, youre just picking up random items and using them ASAP. Before you click that downvote button, answer me this: Does the game require anything other than filling your inventory with revive seeds and spamming the enemy to death? No, not really. That doesnt make the game easy, it makes it unbalanced and awful. Play any previous games to have better strategy. (as far as a pokemon game has, at least. So .. like usual, the bar is pretty low.)

If you'll notice the review dates for all those 10s and 9s, its Feb 21 or 22, 2012. The game was released on February 21, so take all those 'good' reviews, and notice the bad reviews all magically have '0 out of 13 users found this helpful'. What a toxic, denial-ridden fanbase you guys were, in 2012. THIS IS NOT A GOOD VERSION! All the 3d and portability in the world cant make this a good game. The framerate is crap, the c-stick nub control is GARBAGE, the alternative of using the face buttons to look around works. It works BADLY! This is a game based on quick reflexes, and without the right joystick, and taking into account the framerate dips during boss fights.. (Those first-day reviewers OBVIOUSLY didnt make it to THE FEAR boss fight before they threw out those glowing 10/10 reviews) Now all those issues aside, YES the core game is still there. But there is little enjoyment to be had during boss fights or when the alarm goes off. Sneaking is still good, but we cant just hand out a sympathy award for being a game on a tiny screen. The game is playable, but barely. The 3d is good, but this is a tech demo ~ NOT representative of the actual game on PS2.

OMFG This game is TERRIBLE! WHO are these people rating it so HIGH? And you read their reviews and they are rating it without mentioning multiplayer! You seriously think the solo game is THAT good? I can understand if you are a res evil fan and just wanted some MORE of that old fashioned mercenaries mode. But the tutorial lasts forever, (OMG move the text out of THE WAY, Stop TALKing.) the gameplay is repetitive by choice.. which would be great if it emulated the ganados, B.O.W.'s and such exactly like the actual versions did. But the AI is wonky and they basically jump over a fence, stare at you for 5 seconds, then follow a path to you. Not a direct line, but you can see exactly where the devs plotted the paths. No deviation until theyre right next to you, then they do a 5 second stare, wind up slowly, and whap you. Which is fine if you like bad AI. But this is star wars battlefront 2 levels of grinding. Seriously, I can sweep a stage and pour on some decent combos, set up some barrel multikills and youre just getting chump change towards your perks. Progression is.. lacklustre. The game is fine for what it is, a reasonably detailed repeater game that shines in multiplayer. But be reasonable ~ if you want to play resident evil with a friend, you WONT be doing the game or your friends justice by playing it on this handheld version. Go home and play the real version. The 3d is nice but it isnt worth the price of admission.

Such disappoint. Feels like Jak and Daxter meets secret of mana. Plus town building straight out of breath of fire 3. (The one with the fairy town) The combat feels smooth and polished. The enemies are unique enough to not be groanworthy, cookie cutter style baddies. The music/sfx is perfectly fine. It just fails in the execution of it all. Build a town? Easy. Build a shop and level up the shop by restocking it? Nice. Except super grindy. Find new characters to accompany you? Nice. Find that you have to constantly switch one you are with? Ugh. The story and idea of an oasis as a spring of life, and the bond between you and your water fairy.. is great. It just never amounts to anything. The town doesnt ever geto the point where it can make you OP if you spent enough time, there. The restocking and various tasks get tedious, quickly. (Proper tedium = rune factory style) The story and characters are very simple. It would be nice to hear more from any of them, but its kind of a one shot deal and some smalltalk, after the fact. (Like Chrono Cross' cast, save for the main 3) The skills on your villagers are.. ehh. It really doesnt matter. One guy can use a staff in a contrived way to hit switches. Another can dig. So on and so forth, like breath of fire's cast abilities, but without the ease of switching easily. The 3d is good, but that goes without saying. The character customization is lacking. The feeling of exploration is 50/50 ~ its nice to reach a new place, but the enemies, treasure and skill requirement (dig, staff, etc) halt the pace and slow it waaay down. I love secret of mana, evermore and Seiken3. I love Ratchet/Clank and Jak/Daxter. This game is like gas station coffee. "Dont pick a fight with that coffee, its too weak to fight back!"

Good lord this game is TERRIBLE. It isnt that the idea is bad, but just how they got about it is.. wow. Tower defense? Cool. Resource management in a reasonably sized arena with little side areas? Cool. You got this sonic the hedgehog rolling around thing, and the music/sfx are spot-on for this kinda game? Cool. It feels kinda like any other cartoony series of games, like Crash, Sly Cooper, Sonic and so forth? Cool! But using the bottom screen for this rolling feature is tedious. The mixing of game styles doesnt ever start to feel 'right'. The contrived time limit is obnoxious. The 'tutorial' is unneccesary. The gameplay doesnt evolve as you play through, oddly.. you are just grinding your way over and over. The 3d is good, though. The story/presentation is good. (I mean, for what it is.) Its just that.. well, its like taking the whole spyro game, making travel around the map tedious, putting in what SHOULD be cool features like tower defense, but then those towers dont even. They literally cant even. Why put those towers in, why eVEN HINT at a strategy part, when the game then forces you to manage your time in a rushed fashion and just go kill the enemies, yourself?! Here is a comparison: You are a military general. Oversee the action from above. But also trek around in your boots and engage the enemy, yourself. And you need to do 20 minutes of work in 18. Chop chop, private! Like.. do I call up tech support and the guy on the other end MADE the computer, TROUBLESHOOTS the compute over the phone AND is the guy at the computer doing the hands-on stuff? No. Because that would be stupid. Like this game. Let me do one or the other, roll around or tower defense. You made both into an exercise in frustration.

Its a great shooter. Terrible RPG. Immersive story. That it doesnt let you play. (GENERAL WE HAVE A SETTLEMENT THAT NEEDS HELP) Funny, dramatic, nice, mean, great. Barely. The social options are severely lacking. Things you choose do not translate well to what actually gets said. NOR does it have the intended effect, if you've been in that conversation and picked .. ya know what, this game has already been reviewed a million times so instead of an objective review I'll just be honest. This game isnt fallout. The social aspects dont matter at all, the companions are fluff and garbage, for the most part, the enemies look great, shoot great but are craptastic ~ too easy or too hard, cant make up its mind. Music is ripped from older games, sound effects belong in call of duty. Visuals are nice, but now its no longer an RPG with half a$$ed action elements, its action with half a$$ed RPG elements. The game doesnt let you play it and when you get hyped for any.. ANY part of it, you get **** on. The settlement building is useless, they wont defend themselves, and whether you actively try to 'break' the game by overgrowing cash crops... crisscrossing the wasteland with your unkillable transports to act as random infantry backups.. or just want extra places to store your gear, it makes it insanely easy. At least on the upper half of the map. You FINALLY get some decent difficulty once you get downtown, but by then you've spent SO much time up north and doing sidequests that it honestly makes the story pretty stupid. You jumped out of your cryochamber in the future to find your son but you got sidetracked for days.. WEEKS at a time doing go-fer fetch-me-everything-AND-KILL-THOSE-GUYS quests for people not worth your time. Even if you get over the fact that settlements dont dfend themselves, and you have all the DLC.. you'll find the settlement size limit to be pretty obnoxious, and the game breaking/ IMMERSION breaking bugs are EVERYDANGITWHERE.

Not bad for the first entry into 3ds, but the worst pokemon game, 'adjusted for inflation'. I mean if you take the quality-of-life features out of it, by inflation. The 'friend' group that you have is awful compared to all the others. (Not a high bar to reach, but there ya go.) The amount of pokemon included with the game is great. But why? Every, EVERY time they add another 150ish pokemon to a game, they nerf and rebalance the game. While this is understandable, it really shines in some games, more than others. PokemonXY has some great newer generation pokemon, and the rest is now hundreds, HUNDREDS of mediocre pokemon that lost THAT much more reason to use 'em. The story is awful, and the writing is worse. Did they try to create more of a bad guy? Yes. Which means a harder fail. It makes for pretty good memes about awful speeches, though. The french aspect to the game means plenty of bourgeoise nonsense, which is fine... until you play some of the better regions. Ulola (Hawaiian) region is AMAZING, compared to XY. I'm partial to New York / Unova, but whatevs. Now all of this is fine, but what really gets me is the pacing of XY. Pokemon games are notoriously bad at pacing, you might reach and get the first lvl20 badge while your party has level 25s... but then find yourself getting the lvl40 badge and you dont even have any lvl 30s in your party. HOW DOES THIS WORK?! Ahem, but anyway.. the story and the diffiulty progression arent just OFF, they are 'off' as in.. there are long stretches of road with few trainers or any story.. no great pokemon to catch.. just filler areas. There are story areas that slow the game to a halt while you go watch a fireworks show or investigate what team undeveloped is doing over in Paristown or Fleur De Lisville. And MEGA EVOLUTIONS OMFG they ****. Absolute garbage temporary evolutions that, at worst.. arent sufficiently explained via the story, and at worst turn great pokemon into barely powered-up versions of themselves that still dont address their typematching and weaknesses. I didnt like Z-power, either.. but at least it didnt try to replace proper evolution! Powering up a move type is far better. Weak region, weak story, weak balancing, 3d effect barely used on 3d systems, framerate issues, weak pacing, no post-endgame stuff. Whatever you guys enjoy this game will be replaced by the next game you play. Try Sun/moon and sword/shield.. you'll never go back to XY, again. (Hell, even ORAS or BW12 is more streamlined and accessible, outside of water regions or confusing cities)

This two is there because it shows someone what potential this game had, if only it wasnt THIS game. Sounds like a good premise ~ buy or build? Upgrade or sit and collect rent? Focus on lower tier properties or build expensive? Long term or short term? Hire more workers or make do with less? None of that matters, because this game is waiting and clicking. Strategy is nonexistent. A similar game where your skills are ACTUALLY tested, but not too hard.. not too fast, and not super complex.. would be Hell's Kitchen. Throw together that dish as best you can, while managing the dining room and ingredients and.. so on and so forth. Barebones time management game where it is 80% waiting, 20% click maybe twice. If you are a programmer, look at this game like a promising start to what could've been. The supplies management is lacking, as is the employees, the blueprints, the waiting, the EVERYTHING. There are better games floating around on the net like old/ancient flash games on NewGrounds... and they didnt get paid anything to make those works of love! Try Hell's Kitchen or Diner Dash for a similiar, better experience. :)

An old game. Based on an older game. Based on a historical... Alright, as a strategy gamer, I can appreciate a simple game as much as a complex one. I like playing dominos, catan or risk, SURE! With that said.. the strategy base here is sound. Lay down a piece, set a 'settler' on that road. (No he wont build trains/magtubes, he is just a startpoint or endpoint) keep building. Sometimes you'll work on enclosing a castle space. (Think Rampart) Sometimes you'll just build roads. (Doesnt count for much unless you complete a loop. That would all be fine, but like a solitaire game.. you draw only one 'tile' at a time, and in a game of 50 or 100 turns.. you'll be utterly, boringly... disgustingly wasting a LOT of those tiles. Just building roads-to-nowhere. Fortresses you'll never complete. After a few games you'll see that it isnt just the bad tile draws, the strategy that is too simple, too based on luck.. But you'll obviously notice .. even worse.. that this game ****. Yes, everything could be overlooked ... if there was some enjoyment to be had. But this isnt poker or blackjack or monopoly.. where the roll of those dice count for plenty, but its up to you to balance risk/reward! There is only repeating random nonsense. Not a game to be found. I'm sure the game would be infinitely more fun as a drinking game amongst friends. But this is NOT IT. Carry on, sirs. :)

Carbon-copy the classic star wars battlefront gameply, then change blasters to melee weapons, change the over-the-shoulder to top-down camera, put generic levels (mostly) in and call them epic set pieces. And then, when that seems bad enough.. dumb it down further so that the system can play it and the battle becomes more of a squad-vs-squad game where there truly are not enough players to flesh out the stage. Disappointing, hard to play and fails to capture the magic **** battlefront-style session. Pass on this one, Mr Frodo, sir.

Summary: Controls: Even the 64 joystick didnt do this game justice. A 3d platformer on a 2d screen kinda ****. Sound/music: Fine. New features/characters/areas: Ehhh, they mix 'okay'. Seriously, it feels like symphony of the night when you play as richter or Maria ~ its different, its .. 'okay', but it isnt the way the game is/was supposed to be. Or playing thru modern DLC that just doesnt fit with the base game. Framerate is consistently bad. It isnt as bad as those dips in framerate like the 64 version, its just not very smooth. Smooth is playing 'Moon' on DS. That thing is SILKY. The touchscreen controls are responsive and useful, considering how inconvenient touchscreen controls are, anyway. If you have to get your mario 64 fix while on the go, this will do the job. But like so many DS ports of major titles, it ****.real.version.

The core game is amazing, but this is a review in 2020. After the QOL improvements in RF4, you really cant go back to 3 without serious frustration. As part of the series, as a whole, it has only tiptoed in progression. Playing harvest moon 1996 up until RFactory4, the series is pretty stale until the spinoffs and more recent games. Trio of towns, RF4, Innocent Life started to progress, though! In hindsight, all the (fake) people whose lives you'll touch, all the crops you'll (fake) grow, all the mobs you'll (fake) destroy.. its all really amazing. It just isnt, after playing the next versions... and Fantasy Life. As it stands, I would ADORE a remake with the new QOL and maybe some sidestory DLC (pretty standard, these days.) RF5 is right around the corner.

FINALLY! An actual game. From atlus. That doesnt ****. Thats really rare, and I blame all you guys that think your death count is a measure of how good a game is. (What is WRONG with you people?) The battle system feels like Persona, minus the demon influences. The exploration feels like free-form etrian and persona. The registration/party system is straight from etrian. (create someone, throw em in a party) The skill system is from Xenoblade (Too many choices, too few points to max out everything, focus on your preferred skills) The dragons are.. obnoxious. It isnt that they're overwhelming, per se. Or that you'd be hard-pressed to defeat them. The mobs level you up reasonably. (Again, you etrian players who have time to spam 2,000 battles for 20 experience points ruin it for the rest of us. Constantly asking the devs to make the game HARDER, MORE PUNISHING!) They're obnoxious because they are EVERYWHERE. And you have to grind a bit to get a leg-up on them, but if you take a turn or three too long, they'll invade your battle. Running away only gets you so far. (Like XATM92 from ff8, you cant run far.) Their placement is obnoxious. They are on standard patrol routes. For some reason. Like metal gear solid 1. Just... walking on really obvious routes. THERE IS A SAVEPOINT EVERY 2 MINUTES! If you think pokemon games spam free healing at pokemon centers too much, this game places healing points far more generously than pokemon. I've had the game crash 1 time out of every.. about 8? times when I flip the lid closed and set it aside. So I use save points every time. :( Dont get me wrong, all these things make it feel like a 'classic' game with a few modern features. Y button is shortcut to healz, more sound options than stereo/mono, quirky snes-era characters, a soundtrack that is actually memorable and catchy instead of 'barebones ~ it conveys a feeling while remaining nondescript' like some games. But it still has that 'atlus' feel to it. You know the feeling, they bring out a new RPG every 5 minutes. No matter how good their games are, they just arent.. polished. Arrested character development, or cookiecutter atlus battle systems, or just that 'feeling' that this is some amalgamation of 50 other games they've made. Square feels like square, atlus feels like atlus, capcom feels like a breath of fire. heh heh. Not a bad game, but not great. Play it when you have some free time. DONT FORGET TO SAVE! :)

You'll notice that a lot of good reviews are from nigh-20 years ago. For the time the graphics were good. The gameplay was interesting. The music is very good. But thats about all. There are only 3 characters, and no real story to speak of. Its like an Adventure time game: "Go to the next place because I DONT KNOW" mixed with a suikoden-level of characters to pick up, that do not fit with the story, or worse... if they are stronger than the main 3, you'll spend time using those and not hearing the little bit of chatter from the 3. The ending of chrono trigger is bashed into mass-effect levels of depressing: "We know they did something, long ago, but they're all dead, and they didnt get to do anything they set out to do." and there isnt a time travel aspect to send you back and fix any of that. There is some timeshifting, but it isnt memorable, considering the lack of story. The world is a mess to explore, the enemies are.. creative. The leveing system is creative. There just isnt much to praise about the game, when it presents a strong narrative that isnt strong. It took itself very seriously, and when it starts to loosen up, at times, thats when the game works. Good art direction and soundtrack dont make up for everything else. This is like a summer movie ~ you need to see it, but you shouldnt buy it.

Soundtrack - Eh. Appropriate for what little there is. Visuals - Artsy, appropriate, easy to identify.. but ultimately bland because you only have a tiny window of opportunity to see anything. (Your light goes out too soon, and while a good gameplay feature, its too short-lived and too limited by a lack of upgrades. Unless you are fond of 4 minute runs OVER AND OVER.Scientific fact, kids love repetition and simple things.) Gameplay pros and cons: combat: Useless and purely defensive, you wont be killing too many enemies and you wont enjoy it. Digging: Extremely easy, but very quickly turns into a 'omg I only went 50 more meters and now every rock takes 3 hits.. until I upgrade the pick. But you'll hit progression walls (so to speak) at every turn. Either progress the story (complete a 2 minute cave and read a paragraph of nonexistent backstory EVERY TIME) or spam ore/gem runs until you can get the next upgrades. Difficulty ramp: It isnt hard, its just cheap. Risk vs reward is nice and all, but every journey could have been INFINITELY better if you didnt force progression walls. I would rather run the gauntlet x100 times just to upgrade 100 more seconds on my torch than dig into the abyss another 20 meters, go into a story cave and find out I can now drink water or jump higher.) Open-ended, creative stat increases would make the game far more enjoyable. But its too late, now.

I'm not sure who actually reviews a DS game and gives it a ten despie it being less than half of its console counterparts. Videos are gone, music is scratch, sound effects are uber compressed. Graphics arent even all that hard to push to the screen, but they dumbed down what makes a lego game look like a lego game. If you really like moving lego people around and remembering what the console version experience was like... then sure, this is a good port. But no, it really isnt. Even if this game was an achievement in 2007, it wasnt half the game that the other consoles had. In 2020 its that much more unplayable, and worse yet.. all of these things just drag on you and make replayability impossible. And THAT.. is inexcusable for a lego game. These are supposed to be fun, lite little romps into a franchise. Not work.

Good 'dex. MUCH improved interactions with your pokemon. Less cliche than MANY previous games / parts of their stories, regardless of overall game quality. (Example: Good game ~ alpha sapphire! Bad half of the game ~ EVERY WATER SECTION OMFG, weak and underleveled creatures EVERYWHERE. Bring along a grass and an electric pokemon you got from the first few routes and poof, you're fine for the last leg of the game. Consistent framerate, consistent gameplay, DEFINITELY way too much one-shot-killfest. Seriously, these guys are AMPED. You really, REALLY dont need to get legendaries to be OP in this. In fact, the legendaries are actually pretty disappointing. Some Regi-'s, some iconic ones like Lugia, some Mew goodness... but all of them are kinda 7/10 just a few steps above normal bada$$es. One thing I hate: mega ultra super boring evolutions. This game doesnt require you to ever use them, because Z power works very well, like limit breaks. But with that type-matching element to it. Characters are so-so, but not absolute garbage like Lysandre (Pokemon Y) Lys: Unfotunately, there are those who show their strength by taking what is not theirs. THEY ARE FILTH. *A short time later* Lys: That's why I decided the only way to save the world was to take it all for myself! Pokemon Y was the WORST game in the series. 2 steps forward, 10 steps back. Skip and play ultra moon. Just know that you'll never enjoy any of the previous games the same way, ever again. Too many QOL improvements, too much fun. :)

Not a bad game. But it doesnt want you to play it. Exploration is fun, but there really isnt much to get into ~ because you'll revisit the same areas A LOT. The enemies arent... well, they really arent good. You have, basically.. a very short tutorial to teach you what you already know. Catch the ghost. But you'll have to chase him or look in every place to find him. Again. The game has a horrible habit of throwing really easy enemies at you in succession. If you dont get the guy trapped within a 'soft window' of so many seconds, the next one will float over to you and 'tap' you. You'll lose the ghost and have to get back into the flow / the timing / see what pattern they're using now that you took out two of 'em / good lord this game makes you HURRY UP AND WAIT. And JUST when youre actually enjoying yourself, Professor calls you up on your 3ds-within-a-3ds. This wouldnt be bad if: 1. He wasnt so annoying 2. You turned the sound up to hear the audio cues, but BOOM ringtone city when he calls 3. HE ****. 4. The game really doesnt understand that a jump scare ringtone totally ruins the atmosphere. I was walking down the hall, taking my time, watching my back... actually kinda spooked and then BAM THE GAME RUINS THE PACING! Professor **** loves to overexplain and make dad-joke-tier pun, and laugh at luigi. 5. You didnt put yourself in this situation, and the professor constantly laughs at you. If it wasnt for teh game stopping itself, the bad pacing and TONS of repetition.. this would actually be great. It would be like the first game: Just explore. Capture. Enjoy. As it stands, I really cant tell you how old it gets to retread the same areas with even more interruptions.

Need your zombie empire builder with huge shockwave/mobile game influence? Block by block, you will control this city. You can do it all ~ slowly. You can learn the game and do it all ~ faster the next time. Might be a tad tedious after a few hours, but set it aside and you'll be thinking about how to finish off this next quadrant, pretty soon. The gameplay mechanics reward you for trying any of the routes to your objective, and its quick to pick up and enjoy. Unless you crank the difficulty up one or two and find that, yes.. its tough. BUT MANAGEABLE! Even if you are fighting off the dead all the time, there is absolutely a solve to every issue. There are strategies you can use in all situations, and they arent brain-surgery to figure out. Enemies on all sides? Limit your sides. Z outside that wall? Take that tile out with everything you got. Or just wait. For a long while. Build around it? Force them to go through enemy territory? Bottleneck them into only coming across the bridges(, should that stage have them) if ya want. Easier on a touchscreen. Very reasonable graphics and performance. Occasionally funny. Decent soundtrack. Even when the game gets predictable, its 'minecraft' predictable ~ you know you have to 'keep digging' and it doesnt get old like so many games do. :)

Amazing. If you go in expecting another civilization, you'll be equipped to PLAY. If you play through the game with half the factions, you'll be equipped to WIN. If youve played hundreds of hours, understand the consequences of all your actions and feel like roleplaying, you'll have FUN. This is one of those games where there are a hundred different difficulty settings. And plenty are 'of your choosing'. Do you feel like easy/medium/hard? Go for it. Do you feel like land/sea/air? Choose one or all. Do you feel religious? Democratic? Warlike? Choose one. Do you feel like automating all your units? Just the scouts? Just the attackers? Just defenders? Feel like packing your cities closely together? Pushing your front lines? Yes, okay.. I know that sounds lame ~ you can do all that in plenty of games. But the difference is that you can have fun with this one. Civilization is nice and all, but it doesnt have the depth of customization that this thing does. Given enough time and resources, you could start off as tree huggers, and attack the world with your beasties.. or turn them into something they arent, violently pacifist atrocity-committing infiltrators who angered the world... Its hard to cover all the bases with this one, save to say that every aspect of the game 'works well'. Sending your f(o)rmers out to plow the land, designing new units, rolling out an upgrade plan for obsolete ones, stealth, line of sight, building a successful nation, or infrastructure, or research, or... I dunno, just playing to see what happens. I've found between myself and my friends who've played this, the only way to temporarily make this game unenjoyable but challenging is to make a worst enemy of the faction you usually choose and choosing the faction whose ideals you disagrew with IRL. There's nothing quite like fighting a mirror image of yourself that uses (somewhat) your own tactics while your units are lagging behind in research because of your ethical inflexibility in your faction. And then you might start with a government that doesnt lend itself to (whatever gameplay style) you prefer. Military might, but not an economist? Damn. Lotta money but you have to spend it all to keep ahead of the other guys? Well.. maybe frustrating. But if you set yourself into the scenario with the right mindset, then every scenario is the right one. Just use your common sense. Incite the drones, bomb the hologram theatre, use artillery on their roads.. Useless review, I know. Because you cant describe such beauty in words. ;) Would be 10/10 if the expansion didnt nerf some strategies and introduce two volatile factions that generally dont fit into ANYONE's agenda. Those two are like.. a blight spreading across the land for the first 2 hours.

To be fair, it isnt a bad game, its just terrible at nearly everything it tries to do. Lets start with a summary: Anime cliche, action rpg, english voices, 3d, vast overworld, unique navigation premise, solid battle foundation, high difficulty. And then the problems begin in expanding upon all that. Anime cliche - nothing surprising, the plot points are all common sense goodness. The reason you cant do this, is because of that. The reason your godblade doesnt do this, is because they are doing that. You can see the future, because this thing creates that, and if you've played it, you know the story tells an interesting tale, but still usual anime style. Which is, to say.. entertaining. Creative in ways. But standard. Story gets a pass, because 'consistent and yet nothing special' isnt good or bad. Satisfying. :) Action RPG ~ thats what the kids are playing, these days. They cant be bothered to go buy god of war and button mash if it doesnt have RPG elements. Superficial rpg elements. You'll never be pushed too hard to deepthink anything in this game. Equipment? Just map the whole area youre in, stay 2 levels above the bad guys and you'll be fine. Gems? Meh. Equipment? Just max out your defensive stats. Which special godblade power should you use in any situation? They'll show you the mechanic to be learned right before you need it. The game is on rails. Even the FF7 remake is a button masher. English voices ~ no, I mean english accented. Not just english. har! Pleasing to hear, excepting the endless battle chatter repetition. (And no option to turn off post-battle yapping, you'll get tired of that within the first 5 hours) 3d - not bad, good view distance. Great for what it is, but with hindsight at 20/20.. almost no other games impress to this extent on n3ds. Beautiful world, very scenic. Its just.. its just that it isnt very compelling. After filling out the whole map, exploring all the little hiddenish areas.. it plays like an offline MMO. You'll have some roaming mobs at your level, some overlord level 70ish types, some flyers, some whatevers.. at least the towns are populated reasonably well. And the conversations flow logically and smoothly. Consistent, not good or bad. Unique navigation. You are on one of two guys, making your way up and over to find the other guys, just to find that they arent all bad, but are they they? But it is. But its about the over-guys, and then it isnt about them. And its about the godblade. But then it isnt. But it is, again. And then you hit new game +. Thats a no-spoilers summary. And it weaves a kinda good tale, if a little underwhelming. Except when it isnt, but the pacing is so.. consistent. But not. Like, it really doesnt rush you to the next objective. You know where its at, and it doesnt 'push' you to get there any faster than you want to get there. And you shouldnt want to get there. Because you havent grinded until you are 5 levels higher than everybody else. Its really important that you grind. In most JRPGs you can just barely slide by if you just kill everything on your way. Xeno is that odd one out that isnt JUST about grinding for the sake of it, its about being very consistent ~ you will absolutely die if you even tiptoe to the next area without grinding up. Like dark souls levels of 'you arent ready so die'. Whch isnt to say that it is hard, it really isnt. So long as you grind. It isnt like etrian odyssey where even if you grind to death, you still have to micromanage every single round of every battle, on every stage, with EVERY character type having to fit within the 5 you chose. THAT.. is hard. Xeno is just boring. Consistently. Battle foundation.. what can I say about this? Think of it like disgaea. You get some cool skills. Then you get more. Then more. Before you know it there is all this crap you can pick to use! Except by 'can use' I mean 'must use'. Which doesnt make the battle system complex, just complicated. Complex is final fantasy tactics telling you that your attack should do 18 damage, but due to the day, the month, the gender of you two combatants, the faith in your religion, the braveness in your soul, the class you chose, the direction you attacked, PLUS the RNG random number generator... AHEM, yeah. As where xeno is just.. complicated. You got autoattack, except its useless. You got knife up, knife sideways, knife down, and one works if youre on the side, one from behind, one for hitting multiple enemies, so on and so forth. And its nice and all to have these special attacks, but they arent special. They are mandatory. And you have to eventually start using them in conjunction with everyone else, to beat the special enemies. And the more special enemies. And you cant do much damage to those guys, because.. well, they ate something funny. Add those consistencies, the deaths, the absolute tedium of EVERY single battle requiring your attention, and it ****. Badly paced, cuz youre the pace. Slow down!

It isnt so much that this is a bad toolset, it isnt that it doesnt do what it advertised, Its kinda like the settlement building in fallout4 ~ you can absolutely create anything your heart desires! So long as you desire only these few things, and work within arbitrary limits, and it wont function quite as advertised PLUS we limit what is, at its heart.. an already limited amount of tools. If you've used RPG maker, you know that you can easily create a world, populate it with 'portals' to cities, rooms, dungeons, etc. You can set events and triggers and equipment and the whole thing. Then you can, if you are so insane... customize every last little detail. Then quality-assurance your own creation over and over and see if it fits your dream-game. Then you can go online and find ideas in OTHER people's ideas, scripts, addons, etc. Not so much on this edition. This is truly a lite version, insofar as any handheld games.. regardless of system power/memory limitations/storage medium issues, ahem, everything.. everything could be 'more'. Because it already exists. RPG maker games have existed for decades. The path is already blazed! :) If this app could be summed up, optimistically, I would call it a tutorial. A drawing board. Whatever dreams you have can be put onto this, before you put it onto the final product on your PC. The stylus makes this version reasonable for many purposes. The sprites are varied enough to get your basic ideas down, so give it a go. Just expect little.

Ya know, it isnt that this is a bad game. Its just that it isnt a great game. For every thing that it gets really right, like the feeling of the sims management, and turning your vins (hah, The Vins 3: Vikings) into expert specialists over time, it hits a sour note with arbitrary debuffs and random problems. Keyword random. The random issues are the ones you should really avoid, but you cant. Because you have to explore. Because you have deadlines to meet. Because you have to keep bettering your group. Because you have wounds to heal, wood to gather, and... AND.. TINDER to barely find. Alright, why is tinder so dang hard to find? No I mean really, like single digits in a game where you could spend 50 hours just trying to keep your head above water. Which reminds me, if you are a normal human being who wants a challenge, you will STILL get it on the easy/casual difficulty. Random problems are fine, but its the 'story' events that it'll take you a few deaths to find a way around. Will you ragequit because of one or two wipes or starvings? No. That isnt to say there are definite reasons to ragequit, because being at the mercy of the randomness with no way to ensure success is really a problem. There are issues that require some odd skill expertise. There are not always indicators of what you are getting into. Will you get a few good items or a week of food BUT suffer a permanent scar or curse or... whatever the game throws at you? Yeah. You cant throw more people at the problem and solve it with common sense. You just have to 'roll the dice'. Which brings me to the 'minigames'. Watching meters, fighting bad guys, exploring the next square over, social settings, and trying out alternative methods of getting what you need.. (please, PLEASE dont go into the first few games expecting to live. Start a few projects and see how useful or useless each one is. Try the garden. ALWAYS keep someone scavenging. Dont be afraid to spam resources and WAIT to get that next character! Do you really want another mouth to feed?) It isnt bad, it isnt horribly challenging, but sometimes it is. And sometimes its bad. Better than 5 but not a 7. Sometimes a 4, sometimes an 8. This roller coaster has its low points, but dont let that keep you from dishing a few bucks for this.

Much like this version, I'm going to give you the slim version. Every other review reads like a complaint, AND RIGHTFULLY SO! But! Reasons need to be given. :) What is DOES have: The base game is functional. You can do everything your sim should be able to do. ...if this was Sims 1. The enhancements of the 2 games prior to this are here. Social interactions, needs and jobs all have better functionality. ... but the system is broken. I mean truly broken, as in there is a part in teh game that you can reach VERY quickly where there is actually no way to progress forward. Here is that cycle: Keep up on your needs, one might fall behind, go to SOLVE that issue... find that your mood is too low to clean up that puddle, that puddle is there because the NEEDS fall TOO FAST to maintain. I've played hundreds of hours of The Sims 1, 2 and 3 on PC. I am VERY familiar with needs and how to stay ahead of them. THIS version drains you too fast. Okay, that is forgivable. What is NOT forgivable is that every.. EVERY ITEM you use will break after only 1-3 uses. That toilet, that shower, etc. AND! If it doesnt break, it will get 'dirty' after 1-3 uses. All these things eat up your mood meter. If your mood is too low, you cant clean. If you cant clean, your mood meter stays low. If your mood is too low, you do badly at work. You get fired. You didnt need me to explain how the sims works, if you have ever... EVER played the sims. A child can do it. Anybody can stay ahead of the needs. Even if you set up your 'perks' to counteract a need or two.. for example the 'loner' perk, you ARE STILL HIGHLY IN NEED OF SOCIAL INTERACTION! HOW TF DOES THAT WORK?! This version is broken. And sims 3 pets is no different, so set aside any hope for that version. Play your favorite version on PC. And mod the game to your liking. :)

OH MY GAWT WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?! So alright, I read the reviews. I played the original and adored it. Frustratingly adored it. I have this idea of perfection that no games can get close to, but they have snippets of brilliance that would work AMAZINGLY well in the right circumstances. Etrian Odyssey was great. Until it wasnt. And then it was. And then SMT took the engine and turned it into the opposite ~ non map based, with an emphasis on story over gameplay. Which would be horrible, except that the Persona gameplay is jarringly good... it flawed. Years of playtesting via all those other games, and a testing ground of people who have played pokemon... make this game PERFECTLY balanced. (Not this 3ds garbage, the older DS version) perfectly balanced in that it strikes the JRPG chord of grinding, the paper rock scissors variations of weaknesses and strengths, fusions and guided evolution, and knowing that, unlike etrian odyssey, with just 15 more minutes of grinding your characters, and 2 hours of fuse/evolve magic... you could breeze through the next 3 floors on autopilot/autofight. This game, though.. has none of that. Which isnt to say that a newcomer would see that, necessarily.. because for every UI improvement, higher definition video or monster avatar.. there is something far more broken. I would like to call Al Pacino from devil's advocate, except I'm going to edit it for this game. Excuse my version of it, but I believe.. like John Cusack from High Fidelity said, you are using someone else's poetry to express how you feel. It is a subtle art. Ahem, anyway: "Atlus likes to watch. He's a prankster. Think about it. He gives PC/player's character... instincts. He gives you this extraordinary gift, and then what does He do? I swear, for his own amusement... ...his own private, **** reel... ...He sets the rules in opposition. It's the goof of all time. Make it easier to visualize the story with actual NPC models, but edit the dialogue and their location badly. (This encounter used to be OVER THERE... in that room. That ROOM now has no purpose. What did you save me, 15 seconds of exploration?! Were people getting lost?) Talk to those characters or those demons, but now the conversations arent unique or endearing. Improve the UI to get to the Dia healing faster, but now you'll have to heal every 2 battles because the combat isnt as previously balanced! Condense the information on the bottom screen so you can get to it with the press of a button. But now it isnt as intuitive as scrolling with L + R. Go through the game expecting demon placement to make sense, as it used to? HAH NO! The rare encounters are now common! The next evolution of THOSE demons are now uncommon encounters! You are fighting the basic 2 demons WHILE their fusion isnt even necessary, because the next version ... YOU WILL BE FIGHTING AFTER A FEW BATTLES! I mean, why should I pick up basic demon A and basic demon B, when I can just hire their output?! You changed the voices to match their modern versions. Okay, not bad. Not good, either. But for a 'redux', that is to be expected. Music and SFX.. ehhh, nothing special. Feels more or less forgettable. Going back to my DS version .. or rather, playing etrian odyssey 5 ~ which has the modern or FM music option, I'm actually partial to the unique sounds of the older versions. (Hey, warcraft 3 reforged is getting the same flak right now, too! :) Items of a consumable nature are dropped more frequently, and forma seem to be dropped in a less compelling way. Farming mats is always a chore, but the remix they did and the emphasis on UI improvements or hunting mats is.. well, if you've played other Atlus games, you'll know. Its just that feeling you get when you play certain manufacturer's games... and in the specific time period.. like you know how rare a potion drop is in old squaresoft games, or how often you'll be overloaded with healing herbs in modern Atlus (COOKIE CUTTER RPG) games.. They all feel the same, and yet not. Stella Glow, Radiant Historia perfect chronology and Rune Factory 4 all generally hand out their items in a certain fashion. Modern atlus feels like modern atlus. Anyway, older DS atlus games were tougher but consistent. This one loses the consistency for no reason. And that reason becomes highly apparent if you install the DLC. Or to explain it to anyone who will never buy/install the DLC... it feels like those smartphone freemium games where you are artificially.. ARBITRARILY... forced to grind for hours upon hours for no reason. But yeah, the game is rebalanced around those experience and macca drop DLC items. Even after installing and playing with those, the new balance is way off. More mis The game is now unbalanced. And while you're jumping from one demon to the next, what is Atlus doing? He's laughing his ass off.

Bair and switch. A game that constantly teases you. Like playing an MMO offline.. the moment you ask for more and turn off creative mode, you are reminded that there isnt.. in fact.. a game to play. Just a creative mode that turns off creativity with its very existence. Creative mode - excellent, you have already spent hours upon hours building your masterpieces. Even the worst dig you ever did was amazing. You can enjoy every cave. Every formation, every landscape can be turned into something it isnt. Or something more. Or less. Dont like that mountain? Get rid of it. Mountain not high enough? Build it to the sky. Survival mode : ... there isnt any survival to speak of. Hunger meter in a game where there is no varied food items, but you can cook cow and pig all day long and.. it is too simple. Combat: atrocious. Your enemies have infinite ammo and no reason to hunt you. Animals attack suicidally. Skeleton archers pursue you to hell and back because... nothing. Creepers spawn when you sit still and improve your home. Or dig and make a tunnel safe and well lit. Believabiliy: None. There is no motif to the enemies. Just a hodgepodge of garbage. Unique biomes are nice, but never expanded upon with unique enemies or unique formations.. You have had YEARS TO ACTUALLY FIND A MOTIF TO BUILD UPON! So all in all, Minecraft is a zero. The mod community made the game, not the developers. Mods make a game, and this one is like a cult classic.. the movie **** but the audience can collectively point fingers at your steaming pile of crap and laugh as a group.. so much like being sent away to an awful place, it isnt the destination but the people you go with that are the 10/10. Go die, Mojang. Lets Play'ers on youtube made you.

Skip buying or downloading the remaster ~ this thing crashes CONSTANTLY. If you turn graphic options off or lowered, you might get a few more minutes of play out of that session, but the game is near unplayable on two of my systems. Get the original!

Story? Generic but inspired. (Fanfic with a budget) Art and voice: Reasonable, and snarky. Gameplay: .... it exists, it just ****. Until you 'fix' it. As someone who has beaten FFT, ogre battle, Shin Megami Tensei devil summoner, Ni no kuni 2, eiyu senki, blah blah.. you get the point. I went into this expecting normal to be disappointing and I would raise the difficulty after getting a feel for the game. I was given 2 characters against a few 'normal' rats and a super rat for the first battle. I missed twice. I died before turn 10. on normal difficulty. On normal. First battle. SO! Alright, if I'm at the mercy of the RNG and I cant actually use 'tactics' to win the very first battle in the game.. because 2 guys versus twice as many enemies and one 'boss'? Well, your tactical game ****, sir. You 'brute forced' me. On normal. And I really ONLY play strategy games, so... your tactical game ****, sir. However! I understand your position on this, and after reading the steam boards.. you actually patched the game a few times because your audience told you the truth ~ your tactical game ****, sir. So you can go to the options menu and set the sliders to 'actually normal difficulty' with a bit of experimentation. At that point, you can win a few battles and start rebuilding the kingdom. BUT! After doing some social stuff, some dungeon stuff and moving the story along.. you start getting OP buffs/perks! The game gets too easy or rather, HIGHLY unbalanced rather quick, if you happen to rebuild or work on the right things. So is it a good game? No. But do yourself a favor and give yourself a hand via the difficulty sliders. There is no 'difficulty' to speak of, seeing as how you cant heal. You cant 'position' yourself, tactically. You CAN spam shields and fight the weakest enemies first. Fix your mistakes, pixelated milk.

Hard 5. Because this thing is TRULY middle-of-the-line. Didja like tenchu's original games? You go into the first mission as a reboot/remake/remastered/holy hell I'm going to kill ECHIGOYA AGAIN?! COOL! ... then you actually play it. The worst mission in the game is the first one. No, really. The camera isnt designed to pivot in close quarters, and you are going to be inside.. CONSTANTLY guessing where the guys are.. behind which wall? And then you have the civilians. The cats. The sleeping guards that you only HIT and didnt KILL. Thats the first mission, and it makes this game absolute garbage. The reboot of Tenchu 1's first mission is what killed this series. No, really. You cant hide a good game behind a HORRIBLE first level that ALSO happens to pay homage to the first level of an impossibly great game ~ Tenchu 1. Once you get past the first stage, though... you are fine. But if you ever, EVER decide to play this, read a FAQ and memorize what you have to do, because exploration is NOT rewarded in stage 1 ~ you will reach the next area through a hidden passage, here and there.. and it makes no sense. You cant hop on every roof like you used to. So that forces more ground stealth. You cant do ground stealth as well because you have to fight the camera more than the bosses. The bosses **** because the combat system has totally channged and you now have to spam defense and hope to get an opening .... or ragequit and start using the CRAZY amount of items sitting around to get super cheap IN RETURN?! The combat system ****, in this one. There is no sugar coating it. The combos are useless because the enemy defending doesnt have a pattern, so your random meets their random and after you got your forward-facing combo off and the enemy sidestepped, now you have to point towards the enemy, spam block and FIGHT THE CAMERA. Now, this wouldnt be a problem if you werent forced into two things: Stealth kill camera crap and FORCED combat. For a game built on stealth, they ruin it by forcing more combat on you. First mission: Punish the evil merchant. Reality: His bodyguard has this super cheap juggling you in the air gunplay move. (Yeah. Anime crap? You killed the series with this kind of stuff.) Then you have to kill echigoya. Easy enough, he just has his gun.. like in the first game. ... but you have two more bodyguards spamming you to death with random attacks while he shoots you. Do yourself a favor and use a gameshark code or a pro-action-replay code to skip the first stage. Really. Once you play the rest, come back and try the first stage. The layout is garbage, and knowing there arent any tenchu games going to be made... ever.. you can blame 'wrath of heaven' and 'fatal shadows' for ruining perfectly amazing stealth games. Metal Gear and Splinter Cell had to pick up the pieces leftover from this series that stepped on its own explosive. *insert AVGN rant, here*

Coming off of T6 and T5 (I felt like a leisurely city building sim, and T5 truly disappoints with its lightning pace and endless MISSIONS. T4 gives you far more choice in accepting missions and doesnt push you to complete 10 months of work in a 12 month timeframe!), I miss certain things, sure. The interface in 5 is laid out better. The buildings are far more 'diverse' in their benefits, and you cant build an uber-starter economy in 5 minutes by throwing down 10 woodcutters, waiting for the environmentalists to complain and then solve it with garbage dumps in the next 5 minutes. :) With that said, I solidly endorse T4 as a 'leisurely' city builder. Yes, you have missions but you dont have to rush to them. Yes, the populace is never happy with what you are doing and you have to .. in essence, never satisfy everyone, because doing so would actually anger another faction. (Your sims want churches, so build them. Wait, you built too many, the middle east doesnt like it and the church now wants you to get rid of all that alcohol-based entertainment you just built!) Which leads us to two things: You kinda have to do your homework. Do you really need to? I mean, could I wing it? Sure. But if you realy want to enjoy the scenario you are about to enter, you should 'perk' up, accordingly. If you head into a mission where you'll need to build mines because export on everything else has a -30% debuff.. well what can we do? I like T4 because I really do have choice in how and when to tackle it! :) Do I just deal with the low prices and hit it with pure numbers? 400 citizens mining dirt-cheap commodities will keep the economy afloat, but you arent gonna hit a million bucks, anytime soon. Do we go food-heavy? A ton of farms and ranches, and then buff up those ranches by making it smoked beef and choosing 'food for the people' to increase happiness because the money isnt rolling in fast enough to build all the necessaries overnight... Do I just wing it and leave the immigration office on 'open door' and let the island turn into a runaway train? I can turn it back down to 'tropico first' and problem-solve during the next 10 rebel attacks, easy. At least I hope so. Anyway. The paths are there, and the learning curve makes it feel like youre repeating the exact same thing over and over until you learn what works. That is every strategy game ~ but the leeway you have in this one will make itself known within 2 hours. Give the first mission a couple tries. I only have 3 overxplained points of advice for you. Immigration office. First building you buy. Build it and change your immigration policy IMMEDIATELY when problems are solved or arise. (Problem: Not enough or too many workers. Check the almanac with F1 and see how many unemployed and how many job openings there are. Constantly.) Education requirements. This isnt simcity ~ you are shooting yourself in the foot by over-educating your citizens! who will work the basic jobs after you turn everyone into a needy, overpaid high school or college grad? Besides being super expensive to just throw down 4 buildings (basic school, HS and college) that'll solve a long term problem in 5 minutes... you can rush your society into overspecializing, and you'll notice it in your almanac ~ but it wont directly tell you that despite having 36 job openings, the college grads choose to be unemployed and homeless (no income, ergo no home, ergo the communists think you have insufficient housing, ergo the people are unhappy, yada yada)... so what do you do, now? You overeducated them and they now just sit on their ass and whine about it. Go back to the immigration office and turn it to 'love it or leave it' ~ the unhappy citizens will up and leave within that year. Sure you could just build some college-required buildings like clinics, dig for oil, armory, etc. But that is expensive and shows a lack of planning. MILITARY! While you are busy jumping from one problem to the next, barely giving much attention to the fact that maybe you have 3 rebels on the island.. (3? So what? Disorganized and whiny rebels dont pose a threat, yet! ~ That is what we think, 5 minutes before a rebel attack. Give or take. :) Build an army base. Create sentry boxes at your palace. The job satisfaction promises that you'll at least have a barebones defense. If your population is unhappy, you should throw up a second base... and maybe hunt down some rebels and put a bullet in 'em or arrest them. Youre just creating more problems, but at least youll get a chance to solve them, instead of watching the palace burn. *shrug* Good game. Not perfect. Not easy nor hard. But good for a few hours, a few salsa songs and a laugh. :)

Short sum: After playing 1-4, you either think yourself a hardcore tropican or a casual player who wants to see what 5 (or 6, now. Highly recommend you skip 5 and get into 6... but if you play 5, think of it as a tutorial for 6. Learn what not to do, but dont take 5 seriously ~ no, really. It plays out like a huge, hours-long tutorial where you have no freedom, but in a 'legal' way. That might not make sense, so think of the 'legal' way as a police officer serving a warrant or a summons. You dont actually HAVE to submit to your arrest, or show up in court. You have the option not to. But you dont. But you do. That is tropico 5. You can build a city. You can play it for fun. But if you arent playing STRICTLY within the missions, you wont even get another hour into it. You have objectives and they are.. EXTREMELY time sensitive. Example: So you arent making enough money to support your society. Cool, easy. Make some cheap farms/ranches, make a few trade deals, wait for the money to trickle in. Keyword trickle. Trickle is fine, trickle is comfortable. When I make a city.. in ANY GAME... I, you, ANYONE... shouldnt be in a rush. You are planning the entire thing. You are painting your picture (of society.) But if you arent doing what the game tells you, you will be punished sooner. Later. Unrecoverable punishment. In simcity, if you didnt plan out a district the way you liked it, well... it still functions. If you built it just to satisfy the 'trends' of RCI (residential, commercial, industrial), you are just filling space and then you gotta course-correct that, later. In Tropico 5, if you've played the previous versions, you already got your butt kicked and learned it in the previous games, so maybe you want a challenge and here it is! Tropico 5 isnt city building, it is mission mode where creativity and freedom is punished. If tropico 4 was too easy, you could just turn the difficulty up. In tropico 5, you leave it on 'normal', get your butt handed to you.. play another couple times, turn it down to 'very easy' and say WTF, am I really doing this? and unlike so many games where the real tutorial is finding out over 10 playthrou... wait I cant call it a playthrough, you didnt make it through. We'll call it a play attempt ~ you attempt the missions, make it thru a couple and find that the city building part now plays like a mobile game ~ HERE IS THE TUTORIAL PLAY IT THIS WAY AND RINSE REPEAT HAHA ISNT THIS VERSION GREAT! No. It isnt. Play T4 or T6, but in T6 expect the exact same empire issues, rebel issues and progress wipes. Happiness shouldnt equate directly to votes, the problems shouldnt be fixed overnight simply by throwing up 3 more houses, a tavern and a church right where the homeless shacks are. In a city builder, YOU FIX PROBLEMS OVER A LONG PERIOD OF TIME! THIS GAME RUINS TROPICO!