New players need not apply. This game is utterly inaccessible to those who haven't played Pathfinder before. Right off the bat, it overwhelms you with unfamiliar terminology and is super confusing, especially in character creation, any kind of magic abilities, and their requirements. You don't need to take my word for it, either. Go look at reddit's Pathfinder board. New players are asking all kinds of (what should be basic) questions there because the game doesn't tell you diddly crap about how most things work. I have not had any bugs that other players are complaining about (I'm on PS4 Pro) just the extremely frustrating design. It's all very gatekept. If you don't know how something works, or what stats are required for ___ to work, what the terminology means, or what the mechanics even are, you're just screwed and helpless. I guess you could ask people on reddit for help explaining what should be an obvious thing every 5 minutes, but quite honestly, you shouldn't have to. I thought I was going to love this game, but instead, it's an overwhelming wall of frustration that I can't make any progress in due to terrible game design specifically for new players. They got my $60 this time, but I won't make this mistake again. Avoid this game at all costs unless you have prior knowledge of how Pathfinder works.
1) This game requires you to be online for virtually all of its single player content. There is ZERO reason for this. Unfortunately, unless people stop buying games that force this 'you must be connected at all times' model, it will keep happening. I bought a GAME, not an ongoing SERVICE. 2) During the review period right before the game's launch, there were no microtransactions in the game to report. As soon as all the reviews went live and the game released, suddenly after every race, you were reminded that you could buy credits for real money on the PSN store. Huh. I wonder why they didn't do that while all the major publications were reviewing it...that's one heck of a coincidence. 3) If you get a ticket as a reward for completing an objective, when you go to cash it in, you're presented with a roulette wheel with 5 prizes on it, and it starts spinning. You instinctively believe that you have a 20% chance to win any of the prizes. NOPE. You always win the lowest prize. The game is fixed. Look, if you're only going to give me 2000 credits, that's fine, but don't tease me into thinking that I might win a lot more. 4) Invitations. So, a random manufacturer will send you an invitation to buy a special vehicle for a limited time only. This is more pressure for you to spend real money on credits, otherwise you won't have time to grind out the money for this car before the invitation ends, because the race payouts are so low. 5) Exactly 14 days after the game's release, patch 1.08 cut just about every race's winnings in half. You read that **** HALF. This was already a grindy game with fairly low payouts before the patch, and now they're just slapping you in the face while yelling "GO BUY CREDITS WITH REAL MONEY AT THE STORE, DUM-DUM!" This is too much. No matter how quality the game is, you get the distinct impression that these people are trying to milk you of every cent possible, and have no respect for your time. Well, up yours, Polyphony Digital. If you don't fix this, I will never buy another one of your products. These issues were all self-inflicted. Don't be so incredibly greedy (and creepy...allow offline single player campaign, please.)
You must be kidding, guys. As far as I'm concerned, YDKJ has always been a party game (and a fun one at that.) A game which is only pulled out when you have a few people over and you all want to play something together. Well, this game says NOPE! There is NO LOCAL MULTIPLAYER. Epic fail. There is no point in playing a game like this alone, and I'm not paying $60 a year so I can play YDKJ online against strangers. I want to play with the people in my living room, and I'm absolutely sure that I'm not alone in wanting that from a party game. This series always had local multiplayer in the past. I pulled the game case off the shelf, because I was sure that there was some mistake, and NOPE. It says right on the back, 1 player offline or 1-10 players online. What a complete joke.
Puzzles. PUZZLES! Why does nearly every action/adventure game seem to think it needs them? The control of your character in this game feels nice and responsive after you get used to it. Unfortunately, I got stuck on a puzzle room immediately after leaving the tutorial area, and was never able to get past it, so puzzles completely ruined this game for me. I only need two things from action/adventure games: good combat and fun exploration. If I'm constantly getting stuck on puzzle rooms, and have to stop playing the game to go look up how to solve each puzzle to move forward, the game has stopped being fun, and I'd rather just not play it any more. Super frustrating, because I liked the combat in this one. Stop with the damn puzzles in this kind of game. That goes for every developer out there. If I wanted to play a puzzle game, I WOULD'VE BOUGHT ONE! Let action/adventure games be action/adventure games. UGH.
I very much like the idea of a new Golden Axe-style arcade game. However, this game probably isn't going to stay in my collection for long. Why? 1) The absolute worst flaw that this game has is that it's an overhead view, but the camera is zoomed in too close to your character, with no way to adjust it. This means that you'll be taking cheap hits regularly from offscreen enemies that you aren't given a fair chance to react to. You're almost bumping into them the first time they come on screen, and some of them shoot projectiles. Again, not hard...just unfair. 2) Infinitely respawning enemies. They are popping up around you every 2-3 seconds, no matter how many you kill. It gets rather annoying, and to be honest, it feels like they just want to slow your progress down to mask the fact that this game is only 4 levels, and those levels are on the short side. 3) You get 3 lives and NO continues. What? Even the hardest of arcade machines let you continue if you put another quarter in. Not this game. Just because you spent $40 on it (which is 160 quarters, by the way) doesn't mean you get to continue if you run out of lives. This should absolutely be a setting in the options. 4) The music is harsh and grating. Look, just because some old arcade games had music like this doesn't mean that you have to make the music downright nasty in your arcade-style game. I love retro gaming in general, and plenty of music from old games is really good. You will want to turn the music off within 5 minutes. Complete fail. I'll give it a few points for having an OK art style and decent animation. There is no online multiplayer, and I haven't tried local co-op. In its current state (where I have no desire to ever play it again) I can't go higher than 3/10. I will keep my copy for a little while, hoping that they fix some of this stuff via patch. My advice: Buy the Sega Genesis collection and play Golden Axe. You'll have a way better time with that game, and also get lots of other good games, and the entire package is cheaper than Battle Axe.
I'd give Brigandine an 8.7, which rounds up to a 9. I really enjoy this game a lot, because it lets you customize so many things and play it the way you want to. Adjust various gameplay settings that make things easier or harder. Start out as whichever ruler you want. Summon/capture and level up only the monsters that you want. Build teams of 3 commanders and configure their monsters exactly how you want. You can choose which class each commander becomes, and retain some of the skills from their previous class. Send people on quests for gear, or have them train to level up. Find new commanders in some areas via the quests. Equip gear on both commanders and monsters however you like. The only thing I wish they'd included is for you to decide what to do with the commanders on the other side once you destroy their empire (currently, they always join your side and you have no say in the matter.) The graphics could have been done on a PS2, but that's not the point of the game. Conversations between characters are done with still illustrations and (Japanese) voice-overs, which is fine, although an English option would have been nice, since this version is releasing in the USA. Music is pleasant but not anything amazing...I turn the music off, but leave the sound FX and voices on, and then play my own background music by jumping out of the game and using the PS4's media player, and then jumping back into the game. I ended up waiting too long to pick this game up, and the physical version for the USA region became rare. Paid $100 for it, and have no regrets. If you like SRPGs at all, you'll probably have a blast with this game. P.S: Get Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark while you're at it, another really good SRPG.
This game is unplayable. I'm guessing that if you played it on PC, you might have some idea of how to make *anything* happen, but as a new player jumping into the game, you'll experience nothing but an unclimbable wall of frustration. After an hour of play, I had sent my science ship to Alpha Centauri. IN AN ENTIRE HOUR, THAT WAS THE ONLY THING I COULD FIGURE OUT HOW TO DO. Let that sink in. I gave it a 1/10 instead of a 0/10 because it looks pretty. If you're in the market for a PS4 screensaver, I guess it's worth $2. Unfortunately, I paid $15 for a GAME. They got me. Good job, whoever decided to port this to consoles for some quick cash. You win.
Performance is excellent on the PS4 Pro...silky smooth. Looks great, runs great. Now that we've gotten the good out of the way, we'll get to the bad: everything else. This game seems to be designed to be as un-fun as humanly possible. Even on "Don't Hurt Me" difficulty, you will get your ass handed to you and die over and over after the first 15 minutes are done. They seem to want you to juggle several gameplay elements at once, rather than the tried-and-true "shoot the demons and don't die" that is the hallmark of Doom. They also really want you running out of ammo at every turn, and running out of gas for your chainsaw too, so that you have to take on an endlessly respawning room of demons with your fists (spoiler: you will not win.) Does that sound fun to you? It makes me want to punch a hole in the wall, frankly, and that's not why I play video games. They're supposed to relieve stress, not create it.
I think the people who gave this really bad reviews were expecting a reMAKE, which is a completely rebuilt game. This is a reMASTER, so you have to judge it on that standard. It's the original game running better on new hardware, with some quality of life tweaks added. Let's review what they've done with this game: -1440p 60 fps instead of 720p 30 fps -inventory space doubled -field of view slider added -camera distance slider added -zone level lock upon entry has been removed (was a major problem with the original game) -8 skill slots instead of 4 - loot tweaked so that you're more likely to get drops based on your spec (might/finesse/sorcery) -very hard mode added -expansion coming in 2021 They just released a patch 9 days after launch (9/17/20) version 1.05 which cleans up some bugs that people had been experiencing. To me, this is already a nearly perfect remaster **** game. It was only $33 on release day. Totally worth it.
Fun and beautiful arcade racer. Runs at 1440p/60 fps on the PS4 Pro, and 1080p/30fps on the PS4, so it's not as smooth or pretty on the base console. I wish it had the ability to upgrade your car's working parts instead of a million livery options, but it's good for a casual 'jump in and play' type of racer. You can set lots of different options, including the option for cosmetic damage only, or performance-impacting damage. Wish it had more cars (check out Driveclub as well for something similar with a lot more cars to unlock.) Well worth the $20 I paid for it.
Spring 2020: THEY FIXED IT! Finally, the game is in the shape that it should have been at release over 2 years ago. Now that 98% of the potential players have been driven away by constant bugs and crashes, they finally got around to (mostly) fixing the game. I still get a crash like every 20-30 hours, but that's much better than when it was happening every 20-30 minutes. I also bought the expansions, and I've had the PC version forever, and I can say that it's a good port. It's too bad that they waited until the game was marked down to $5.99 and got destroyed in the reviews before they fixed it. Better late than never I guess, but I'm sure they lost a huge amount of money by waiting over 2 years after release to get it in a playable state.
I came into this really wanting to like it. (I always loved the soundtrack, and it's still great.) While many games from the 80s and 90s stand the test of time remarkably well, I just can't say that is the case with this collection. The graphics are bad, but honestly, that's not something that bothers me very much as long as I'm having fun. The main problem here is that the UI is so primitive, and that playing requires so much menu diving and constant fiddling that I can't imagine that anyone but hardcore fans of the original PC games will tolerate it. If you like spending hours going from one menu screen to another, and doing very little actual combat and looting, this might be up your alley. If you have played any semi-modern action RPG, I would stay far away. None of the quality of life features that have become so prevalent that you don't even think about them any more are present in this game, and their absence smacks you in the face when you start playing. If you like this style of game, I would recommend Divinity: OS2 instead. It's much more accessible.
So, the game looks really bad graphically, but I'm the kind of person who will play anything as long as it's fun. NES, Intellivision, whatever, as long as it's fun. I came into Risk of Rain 2 really wanting to like it. I've now played for 4 hours, and unlocked 3 other characters, but I can't say that I'm having much fun. I don't like the fundamental design, which is based on a timer. I hate games based on timers, as it's just artificial difficulty that ruins your ability to play as you want to. Every second that goes by in this game, it's designed to get harder. You're frantically looking around the level for items and more importantly the teleporter, which is how you summon the boss and move on to the next stage. You have no idea where it is, so you just pick a direction and start running. If you're lucky, you'll find it within the first 3 minutes. If you're not... After 5 minutes, there are 20+ enemies fighting you at once, and the only strategy that seems to keep you alive is to jump around, spending 95% of your time in the air while strafing. Nothing else works, no matter what character you are or what items you've picked up. I'm not enjoying playing like this. The player shouldn't be pigeon-holed into playing the game only like a spastic kangaroo. The control of the character is pretty decent, so I'll give it a couple of points for that. Otherwise, this is a big failure to me. No fun to be found, only frustration.
What a great concept for a game! Go through Zelda-style dungeons, kill monsters, get loot, set up a shop and sell the loot you don't keep for yourself to customers, and then use that money to upgrade your gear, town, and shop. You figure out how to set prices based on customer reactions. It's a simple but satisfying gameplay loop that is addictive as hell. The only real weakness is that the game isn't longer/there isn't more stuff to upgrade in the town or on your gear. The music in this game deserves special mention. Moonlighter has my favorite OST since Mass Effect in 2007. I recently purchased the soundtrack for $6.99 on bandcamp which comes in a variety of file types including 320kbps mp3s and FLACs. David Fenn is now a name I will follow.
This game is something special. There are a million roguelike games with pixelated graphics out there, but this is the cream of the crop. The Diablo-like combat with different family members works beautifully, as they all play distinctly from each other, and you will gravitate to some more than others based on the roles you like. The little details you will notice in the house between dungeon runs are super charming and the narration is very strong. It gets a little grindy if you want to level up all family members to or past level 20 (which gives you extra bonuses in combat for all characters) but it's a grind that I enjoy.
The handling is terrible no matter what game settings you use, what car you use, or what driving style you employ. If the handling is bad on a racing game, then the whole game is for nothing and you might as well not even play it at all. I absolutely loved NFS Shift, but this is just awful.
One of my absolute favorite PS2 games. I've spent many hours playing this silly game with friends and family, and we still come back to it even all these years later. It's just a light-hearted golf game that doesn't require much skill, and is pretty hilarious much of the time. I do wish it looked a little prettier/ran more smoothly (as the GameCube version does, if you can find a copy) but it's perfectly playable on PS2. Grab a buddy and have fun frolfing!
-Racing games don't need a story, ever. It felt incredibly forced and made me cringe most of the time. The story should always be: race cars, get money for winning, get better parts and cars with the money. Hard to screw up, but they did. -Not every game has to be open world. It's not fun driving around a big empty city to get to the next race. It's just wasting my time for 5 minutes between every race. Let me open a map and pick which race to go to, or have a menu system. Hard to screw this up, but they did. -The car physics are just LOL, even for an arcade racer. -This title is PS4 Pro enhanced? Really? It looks worse than most of my PS3 racers, and Drive Club, which was an early title for the regular PS4. -Oh, some of the "music" that plays while you're racing (whether you want it to or not) sounds like a dude crapping into your eardrum. Maybe it sounds good to 10 year olds who don't understand anything about music? I can't think of anything I actually enjoyed about this game, but it did start up and not require me to be online for single player content, so that's something. EA seems so out of touch with what makes a fun arcade racer that I don't even know what to tell them other than "Go play Burnout 3 or Burnout Revenge or Need For Speed Shift for 10 minutes, and see what a fun game feels like."
I'll give Assetto Corsa two points for decent presentation. Otherwise, YIKES. Control is absolutely horrible no matter what config I choose. I have played all of the Gran Turismo games, GRID, NFS Shift, etc so it's not like I'm a total stranger to sim/sim-cade racers. (I enjoy arcade racers too, but I know that you cannot approach a sim with the same mindset you do with Burnout, etc.) Maybe it's better with a wheel, but for whatever reason I simply can't stay on the road, right from the **** a straightaway. It's like I'm driving on ice, even at 20 mph. Frustrating. As many problems as GT Sport had, it's a masterpiece next to this. At least in that game, I can control the cars and drive around the track, and if I wipe out, it was my fault. I wish I had never spent a penny on this, and will be selling it ASAP.
This is another game that stupidly requires you to be online to play single player. Well, consider this a lost sale. I am putting my foot down. If you require an internet connection to play single-player, not only are you not getting my money, I will trash the game at every opportunity because of this anti-consumer tactic. I hope there are millions of other people who feel the same way, and we can stamp out this nonsense in the long run.
This game, an arcade racer, requires you to be online at all times. Why? I have no idea. I live in a rural area where the best internet package that money can buy is about 60KB/sec. Let me just tell you, that ain't good enough. I will continue to trash every game that has this anti-consumer online requirement for single player content, because it is deserved. First, it was Polyphony Digital ruining GT Sport with it, and now it's EA and Need For Speed. Even if my connection was fast, I would feel that this is a scumbag move by EA and question it. I guess they don't want my money, which they could have had if they just made a normal game.
TM2 is still the king, and by a wide margin. They tried to reinvent the wheel with this game, and failed miserably. A cage that teleports all over the city and you take damage when you're not inside it? Who thought that mechanic would be fun? The terrible car controls/physics in this game need a ton of work. You just feel sluggish and can't do what you want to do. Also, one of the absolute worst things about this game is the AI. All 6 of them come after you, and only you. They do not attack each other. This is a big problem, and it's amazing that they released the game in this state. Even on normal difficulty, you will fail over and over again. Bottom line: Frustrating, not fun. Stick with TM1, TM2, Black, and Head-On.
So, I was really looking forward to this game. I love astronomy, so I figured it would be right up my alley. When I put the game in, the patch required was 21GB. Even though it took me about a month to download (I live in the boonies where the fastest internet is not much better than dialup) I was willing to wait, because after all, it's a game about space stuff, which I love. The patch finally finished downloading, I fired the game up, and went into the tutorial missions, which seemed like a good idea since I was a new player, and this might be a somewhat complex game if it's really a space sim. The first tutorial was about basic flight stuff, very easy. Then I went into the second tutorial (landing inside a space station) and...that's it. I was never able to land. As instructed, I put down my landing gear, I aligned my ship so that it was facing away from the entrance, I took the ship down onto the center of the landing pad and BOING! I bounced right off. That's weird. Maybe I missed doing something in the left console? No, there's nothing else in there. Is my landing gear down? Yes. Am I aligned the right way? Yes. Am I at the right landing pad? Yeah, it's pretty hard to miss with the big orange box around it. For another 20 minutes, I tried to land. Bounce, bounce, bounce. Then, I shut the game off. I value my time. Here's a free tip for any of you present or future game developers: If players are getting stuck in your tutorial, you're absolutely terrible at your job. I am not someone who needs much hand-holding in video games. I generally figure things out very quickly. If *I* can't get past the tutorial, then there are tons of other people who can't either. Either I was missing a crucial piece of information (bad design) or the tutorial was bugged (which would be even worse...incompetence.) I gave the game a 1 because it did boot up properly, and the flight tutorial worked fine. Otherwise, epic fail, guys.
I don't understand why the scores for this game are so low. It's super charming, fun to play, and packed with content. The graphics are not very impressive for a PS3 game...maybe that's why. If you like dungeon crawling, getting better equipment, leveling up, getting new skills, etc, you'll enjoy it. A breath of fresh air to ARPG fans.
This is one of my absolute favorite games of all time, going back to the late 1970s. I have purchased it 4 times: PS3, PS3 (Dark Arisen,) PC, and now on the PS4. The PC version is the best of them all, running at a silky smooth 60fps, but the PS4 version is still good. The original game ran like mud on the PS3, at 30 fps with some dips, and with black bars around the edges (I think the actual resolution was like 600p or something.) On the PS4, you get 1080p locked at 30 fps, which is very playable. The combat is damn good, regardless of which class you play. The pawn system really keeps the game feeling fresh and it's fun to see other player's creations. I really like the music as well. The Bitterblack Isle expansion is a huge interconnected dungeon that adds a lot of challenge after you finish the main game. The level cap is 200, so you can play this a really long time if you enjoy it, and make your character very powerful. I give this my highest recommendation if you want an ARPG to sink your teeth into.
Excellent game, with a few nit-picks: The environments look great, but because the characters were forced to be these weird 3D cartoon models, they look like they belong in a different game. They just don't mesh well with the environments. I wish they had done really nicely animated 2D sprites instead (something like Dragon's Crown.) The music is above average, but not anywhere near the brilliance of the soundtrack of SOTN or Super Castlevania 4. Combat is great, level design is decent, and there are enough RPG mechanics for it to be satisfying as you level up your character and get more powerful familiars, shards, weapons, and armor. I did lose 5 hours of progress because the 1.02 patch screwed up the treasure chests from all version 1.01 save files, so that wasn't great. It's a good thing that it's so much fun to play, as I went through all that again to get back where I was. This is my 3rd favorite Metroidvania behind SOTN and Aria of Sorrow. Well done, and worth the price.
