karmic_devil

XC2 is a good game with some interesting story beats, cool environments to explore, massive enemies to battle, and a combat system that can make you feel accomplished once you learn how it all works together. Many of the side quests are fun and it's satisfying to unlock new items in towns and eventually become partners with local merchants by investing in their stores. Sadly, some of the enjoyment of the game is undermined by the completely unnecessary sexism included. One of the primary characters has a scantily character model with obscenely large breasts and side interactions about how to better please her master, another has a multi-generational family tradition of building maid-costume-wearing-robots designed for combat, maid-duties, and literally shaking their ass in a bunny costume. I can hardly roll my eyes hard enough. If you can stomach this level of pervy pandering, there is also a good game in here. Bu it would be nice if the developers would recognize that their audience isn't all horny pre-teens who like the idea of big-booby-sword-girls who could destroy the world but instead choose to stay home and do the cooking.

What starts as a nice, satisfying dungeon crawl with some really cool systems eventually sours due to shallow storytelling and repetitious combat. Late game dungeons are a long and tedious time sink that aren't any more rewarding than earlier ones. Exploration becomes more annoying as labyrinths become harder to map and fights don't become any more interesting - rather you simply input the same repetitive commands time after time. The story is also deeply problematic. While the broad strokes about WHY Dronya and Luca are doing what they are doing are interesting, you don't get to understand them until the very end - which makes it hard to stay invested and is simply a very lazy way to structure the story. Along the way, the journey is full of shallow and unlikable characters and a hefty does of completely unnecessary anime horniness that will likely make anyone over the age of 12 uncomfortable and confused. In truth, while this game started as a 7 or 8 with me, the tedium eventually brought it down to a 5. Some good concepts. Some bad story telling. But it's worst sin is simply not respecting the time of the players.

Castle Morihisa is a fun, if uninspired, deck builder. Feels a lot like Slay the Spire with a bit more Japanese seasoning. I picked it up on sale and have certainly enjoyed my time with it and more than gotten my money's worth.

Looks and feels old. I like SRPGs but this one doesn't do enough to make it stand out from hundreds of others in the genre. Poor voice acting and a lackluster story make it very difficult to get into and the combat system is a little clunky and makes you dig through tutorial menus to learn it. Pass.

A simple game with a barely coherent story that relies on nostalgia for it's high ratings. If you are looking for a very simple turn-based game or if you have an affection for this game from a previous playthrough, I'm sure you'll enjoy it as the update looks really nice. If, however, you are not already a fan of this game and you are a fan of JRPGs generally, I suspect this is going to be a letdown for you.

Fun combat, decent story and characters, good overall voice acting. But the difficulty is so uneven as to make a frustrating experience. On the normal difficulty standard battles are a cakewalk and boss battles are tough as nails frequently sending you back to grind. If you're cool with that kind of pacing, you will probably enjoy this one okay.

Someone once told me that Final Fantasy XIII was a great game after the tutorial. When I looked up how long the tutorial lasts, I read it was about 25 hours. I'll never know if it's a good game because I'm not playing a tutorial for 25 hours. I've been playing Battle Chasers: Nightwar for 3 hours. I do not care about the incredibly shallow characters. The combat is repetitive and the breadcrumbs they have given of the story so far have done little to hook me into this world. Every review I could find for Battle Chasers Nightwar said it's a great game. But like Final Fantasy XIII, I'll never know. There are simply too many great games that don't ask me to wait for it to become fun. And I'd rather spend my time on one of those.

Nier Automata is a beautiful game with a beautiful score in a fascinating world that falls short of greatness by quickly becoming repetitive. In the beginning of the game as you figure out the combat and learn about the world it does a great job of capturing your interest but as it goes on the battles all feel the same and the questing devolves into simply heading to the illuminated point on the map - and worse sometimes the spot on the map is so vague that you can be right next to it and then spend 30 minutes wandering around to figure out how to actually get TO it. This game isn't terrible. On the contrary it's quite good. But at some point in your play the frustrating is likely to outweigh the fun. And that's a shame.

This game is...fine. It's got an incredibly shallow relationship system (aka dating sim) built it. The bonds you can form are stereotypical, boring, and frankly often just an excuse to show a camera angle perfectly framed on some anime girl's chest. The combat is fun for a while but eventually gets repetitive. The story moves very slowly. You spend a lot of time running errands. I didn't hate the time I spent with this game but I would certainly not do it again.

Pillars of Eternity does what it sets out to do. If feels like a slightly more modern Baldur's Gate but compared to most modern gaming experiences it is slow and oftentimes tedious. If you love Baldur's Gate and want a game with similar depth and mechanisms you may enjoy it but if you wa game that looks and feels like a modern strategic RPG you may want to look for something else.

A beautiful game with rare frustrations from the camera angle and conveying the right directions to your companion. The story is beautiful and melancholy with high highs and low lows. The ending leads to some real reflections on the relationships we form. For the gameplay alone it is worth taking this cinematic journey as a young boy who makes an unlikely friend. That is only enhanced if you are the sort who likes to think about your games after they are gone and feel all the the feels an emotional tale can leave you with. Very highly recommended!

Did you like Final Fantasy 13? If so, don't bother reading the est of this. You are likely to like this and should give it a shot. If you did not like FF13, or you haven't played it, read on and discover why it isn't any fun to play a game where the majority of the game is spent in the menu setting up conditional programming for the AI to play the game for you. The problem is: THE AI PLAYS THE GAME FOR YOU! FF12 has an very cool skill tree, a very cool system for giving people techniks and spells and allowing the to equip certain armor and all sorts of stuff. It's like FFX sphere grid on steroids. Sounds awesome, right? That's what I thought. The problem here is that that's the whole game. What made the FFX sphere frid system satisfying was that I could spend time customizing my characters and then I got to go out and use them. I got to be an active participant in the execution of those new abilities. In Zodiac Age, that simply isn't true. Gone is the turn based commbat of FFX. We've even gone past FFX-2s ATB to a system that looks like ATB but in fact is more like an MMO where I control my character and the rest of the party does whatever they are going to do - as though they were friends joining me on a raid in an MMO. BUT IT'S NOT AN AN MMO. It's just me. And three robots. The game encourages you to buy, and set up a series of "gambits" to program what you want the AI to do in various situations. Even for your main character. So it isn't long before you've programmed what you want your party to do and they just do it. So here's the rub, I buy the skills. I buy the spells. I buy the techniks. I walk around town. I walk around maps. And the computer does all the fighting! Holy **** They found a way to automate all the interesting stuff and leave me, the human player, with the tedious job of just walking around. Oh, and doing the shopping. Don't get me wrong - I like walking around. I like shopping. I like navigating the menus. As part of a larger whole. But this game has reduced the player to bookkeeper - a lonely bureaucrat setting the terms during which others will participate in the world. And then simply watching the action unfold. If that wasn't bad enough, you are forced to watch the action unfold through the worlds worst camera angles (also under your constant manual control). Pass.

Love the world. Love the story. Love the characters. Love the combat system. HATE the difficulty curve. Sadly this game is a cakewalk. Even on the nightmare setting. If you played the first game, yes you should play this one. It continues the story and introduces a couple new characters and that is very cool - the narrative elements are a huge reason why we play JRPGs after all. On the other hand, if you found that about halfway through the first game there was no more challenge in combat, you will get there even faster in this title and that is a real disappointment. Magic is very powerful in this game. We nicknamed Emma "the finisher" because she basically only needed 1 turn to wipe out any group (yes group!) of non-boss enemies. The boss battles were more satisfying but still often felt procedural after using spells/abilities that protect the entire party from a magic attack and a physical attack. At that point you are in something of a lather, rinse, repeat cycle for the next 30 minutes until you bring that big guy down. I shouldn't be so down on this game - honestly it is the best JRPG you are likely to get these days. It has a good story and likable characters and fortunately has stuck with a turn-based combat system instead of trying to convert it into an MMO (RIP Final Fantasy). The problem is just that with a little more effort it could have been so much more than it is. If this games combat had scaled to be appropriately difficult throughout the game it would be an easy 10. The fact that a lot of the game just made me feel like I was going through the motions, however, really brought the whole experience down.

Okami takes a long time to really get going. Feels like you are playing the tutorial for several hours. Even after that point, it doesn't provide much of a challenge or much satisfaction for what you have learned. People often compare this to Zelda and I get the comparison, action, puzzles, and a cuter style but despite the look (and it is gorgeous) it feels like a lesser version of the title to which it is most often compared. The game isn't bad, on the contrary it is certainly a fine Zelda-style game with a wonderful setting and style it just feels a little shallow and doesn't have the nostalgia factor of a Zelda universe to boost it's appeal.

Trails of Cold Steel is a very enjoyable JRPG with an interesting story and a fun combat system. Choosing which characters to improve your bonds with when you aren't on the field is fun and interesting and add a real "role playing" feel to the game. Unfortunately as is the case with many JRPGs, the difficulty curve is way off. The game may start of challenging but you very quickly become way to powerful in comparison to the normal enemies and end up just blasting through them feeling unsatisfied. I do recommend the game, but also recommend that seasoned gamers start on the hardest difficulty possible to keep the combat engaging. Even then you will eventually outpace it and find much of the game a cakewalk. A pretty and interesting cakewalk, though a cakewalk nonetheless.

Vikings: Wolves of Midgard is a failed experiment where the things that it does right are quickly overshadowed by an obnoxious UI, clunky controls, and generally frustrating experiences navigating the software that really detract from the game. The game itself, the parts where you are running around, killing enemies, casting spells, using abilities, hacking, slashing, and getting loot are enjoyable. It's the Diablo formula so it's pretty tried and true. The problems appear everywhere in between. Want to navigate around your inventory? Make sure you very ginergly push the control stick up and right and then return it in a straight line to center or the icon will bounce right of the item you are trying to select and go to you head or hands. Want to level up? Good luck. These trees don't even navigate in the cardinal directions (not to mention, if you want to specialize in 1 class, you have no choices anyhow. You will just spend all your points every turn in exactly the skills that you just unlocked.) Want to return to the village? Just open the menu and hit the x button. Oh nothing happened? Hit it again. Wait. Try holding it. Maybe both players need to do it simultaneously. Well maybe just tape it 30 or so times until it registers the command. Cool. Ready to stop playing? Just hit the save button and then log out. Oh, there is no save button? Well will it autosave when I leave? Nope. I'll just lose any of the item selling or crafting I did. Are there ways around these problems? Sure. Carefully pointing the control stick, jamming the button 100 times, and learning to always end the game by doing a God's trial so you get the benefit of a post trial autosave are all hoops you can jump through and will over time become second nature. But you shouldn't have to! So, should you get this game? If you are jonesing for a Diablo-style couch -co-op game and have exhausted all your other options...sure. But be prepared for the frustrations the game will bring you. Know what you are getting into and set your expectations low so that you can laugh at how terribly designed everything is and just enjoy hacking up trolls and rival clans. Ya **** fun.