kuehnau

When Luigi's Mansion first appeared on the Gamecube there was a certain gritty atmosphere to the game that made it almost feel like a survival horror game. It had a spooky atmosphere and fantastic music score that could often make the game feel tense. Luigi's Mansion 3 really doesn't do anything like that. Honestly it feels like a cheap theme park haunted house ride. It's pretty much what you'd expect from a Luigi's Mansion game, just done worse. The Gooigi game mechanic doesn't make the game any better. The game is very linear. There are occasional branches, but they generally just loop back around.

Technically and visually amazing, even on medium settings on my aging rig, the visuals are outstanding. Some of the scenes looked like it was right out of a movie with real actors. There is a high amount of polish to the game. What they have done here, they have done (mostly) well. Some of the quests are far too similar to N64 collect-a-thon era style gameplay than I care for. I doubt I am going to go and find all of those fricking gobstones for example. Many of the quests are mundane and boring. While advertised as an "open-world" action RPG, it doesn't "feel" open world. I can't just wander off on my own or sequence break anything like you'd expect from a game from Fallout. There doesn't appear to be any sort of alignment system at play, I was really hoping to be able to play the game as a jerk-ass Slytherin. There doesn't appear to be any sort of like bonding or friendship system in the game for NPCs, this means that relationships don't feel like they really exist. Putting in a emotion system like Fable, where you could learn different means of interaction would have been a very welcome game mechanic. I want to be able to flip-off my fellow students. Dialog choices largely feel superficial and have no meaningful effect on the game at large.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

The original Final Fantasy 7 was the whole reason why I even bought a Sony Playstation to begin with. I worked a paper route at the time and I was making about $75.00 a month. Maybe it was the fact I had to work so hard to even buy the game that it holds such fond memories? So, Final Fantasy 7 Remake, where do I begin..? Well, it's not what I expected. A lot of the dialog feels weird or off. Characters will say things that seem incredibly awkward or misplaced. Barrett seems like they changed him in to a full blown psychopath Greenpeace terrorist. And I get it, Avalanche were basically terrorists at the time, but Barret just seems so over the top it isn't funny. Then I remember that this first installment of the game only goes up until the point you actually leave Midgar. The developers said they wanted to tell a bigger, wider story. I don't know if I feel inclined to believe that. The slums in Midgar are just terrible mazes of hallways with little pockets of open spaces, all of the environments in this area all look the same and it gets to the point traveling without the mini map is actually almost impossible. Adding to that is the fact there are areas you just can't go to. They are either literally locked off, or the game will simply force you to turn around and tell you to get bent. There's a ton of optional quests that are either fetch quests or combat quests. And they are placed so far apart they have you running to opposite fringes of the slums to complete them. The developers must have realized that their design of the slums were awful, because they added options to automatically go back to a quest giver after you complete your tasks. So far none of these quests feel meaningful in any capacity. Go kill some rats, go find my cats, go talk to this NPC. These quests and the characters that are involved with them are almost instantly forgotten by me. This doesn't feel like it's expanding the story or the world in a thoughtful way. This feels like padding tacked on as an excuse not to present the whole story in a single installment. I sometimes wonder if it's because Final Fantasy 7 came on so many disks that the developers felt inclined to drag the entire story out or if it was sheer greed motivating them, stretching the series out as far as they could to milk it as long as possible. I feel inclined to believe it's the later. People need to remember Final Fantasy 7 wasn't actually all that long, the extra disks that came with the original game were there mostly to hold all the CGI elements, not the major contents of the game itself. T he combat system is what it is. It feels clunky and oddly paced to me. They included a optional mode called classic mode that makes an attempt at emulating the classic combat feeling of the original game while still using their own combat system, almost as if the developers realized people weren't going to like their new combat system. Bottom line is this, the game feels badly paced, a lot of the additional story telling feels forgettable, the dialog is weird and the combat is clunky. After waiting so long for a remake of Final Fantasy, this isn't what I was expecting and it's not really what I wanted. I am probably not going to buy any of the other games, I am unsure if I am going to even keep buying Square Enix games, they've really went down hill.

The most frustrating part about this entire thing is that hidden under all of the predatory business practices is a really decent mobile game. The irony here is that if they had just made it a normal game I'd have paid a reasonable fee for it, now they'll get nothing. We need to push to ban loot crates and other similar gambling games in our country. It's time developers start earning their money the old fashioned way, by making competent games.

Terrible writing torpedoes what would have been an otherwise acceptable co-operate game. The parents are so awful they make me want to call CPS.

Every enemy in the game has an unfair advantage against you. I decided to test this theory out and used cheat engine to give myself a huge advantage. Game doesn't get easier. It's almost enough to make me wonder if all the role playing aspects of the game are just there to trick you in to believing you're progressing at all. Sorry, but this isn't fun. This just feels like playing D&D with a Dungeon Master dead set on having you killed, one that doesn't care if you're enjoying yourself or not.

The latest installment of FNAF's is something I've wanted since the 4th game, with that being said, I feel like there were some missed opportunities here, while also kind of a degrade in the fear factor. I don't care for how articulate the animations are now, but if you HAD to do that, why didn't you add creative interactions with the other animatronics when you were playing as Freddy? They just kind of wander around and mumble. While I enjoy the IDEA of what they were trying to do here, it just doesn't feel right. I have always personally felt like Five Nights at Freddy's was first and foremost about horror, that and the story and lore. I don't know if I can actually call this a survival horror game, because I don't personally feel it's all that scary or horrifying. There's something different about it where most of the time, nothing in this game feels intimidating. Did a few jump scares "get" me once or twice? Sure, that happens when stuff jumps up in your face and screams, but after the first few times, that's it, it's just annoying. Honestly, this feels like 90% walking simulator. They do some stuff to try and liven it up, they give you a gun you can shoot some of the enemies to stun them, you can walk around safe inside Freddy, whatever. I can appreciate that, but it isn't enough. I mean honestly, having to constantly upgrade security badges? Boss fights involving you walking around in a maze in the dark? Really? Another thing is, why are most of the fights just mazes? Really? Come on. This is all padding because the reality is, the game itself is very, very short. I saw a YouTuber complete the game in a little over two hours. But most importantly, it left me feeling completely unsatisfied. SteelWool had the chance here to really flesh out the story and the series given what they were working with and I personally feel like they didn't do enough. I think part of the issue for me was, they have this huge building for your to explore, but it feels like there isn't much to do, the game is mostly empty and barren. That isn't even discussing the technical problems people have been having. There's been plenty of reports of people being unable to simply play the game, other folks are having issues with terrible frame rates, lost saves, all sorts of stuff. I personally haven't had problems with that, what I have had problems with is enemies being able to see and grab me behind walls and other objects. Some people have said they are considering DLC. Unless there're some promises here to do some awesome stuff, I'm not buying anymore. I really, really hope this product isn't an indicator of what we can expect from the movie if it ever comes out, if so, maybe this cash cow has finally run out of milk.

I'm a big fan of simulation games, grew up with classics like Sim City and Sim Ant. I also really enjyed the Roller Coaster Tycoon series. I saw some people playing this on YouTube and decided to give it a go. When I first tried playing it, in less than an hour I was asking for a refund because of how bad the controls are. If you have never played a [Planet] game before, you'd have no idea going in what you are in store for. And none of the videos I saw actually said anything about how bad the interface is. As I was waiting for my refund, I decided to watch some other videos on Planet Zoo. I stumbled upon a video **** making buildings and he was explaining how the building works and using examples, he was showing how to line stuff up and use the gride system. I ended up going back to Planet Zoo and after a lot of work, I started to get the hang of it. And while I am now managing to play the game (somewhat), my opinion is that even after taking hours to learn what Planet Zoo expects from me, the controls are still terrible. Even after taking the time to learn how the game controls and how building works, I feel like the game is constantly working against me every step of the way. I cannot tell you how many zoos I started as I tried to figure out what the hell was going on. A good example is how someone gave me a tip on using walls early on to square off my property so that it'll be easier later on to have a zoo that is aligned up with a grid (more or less). I spend all this time messing around with the game's terrible mapping and building system, finally start to get a halfway decent zoo going on, and then when I go to create a path moving past the side of a animal habitat, it refuses to allow me to place the path down that way. There's nothing in the way, there's plenty of room between the habitat and the path, the ground is nice and even, I cannot find ANYTHING wrong with where I want to to place my path and yet this game refuses to do it. Yes, the ground level option is off. Planet Zoo is a fantastic game that is completely crippled by their overly complicated, user aggressive controls and building system. New players are warned there is a huge learning curve to the game.

Just another way for companies to re-sell you a game you already bought. Yeah, it adds some extra content here and there, but it's not like this is an entirely new experience. This really should have been DLC, not released as a new game. At least they charge a reasonable price for admission.

Jump Force is an intresting game to say the least, it's pretty much a blatant Xenoverse clone, I would even guess that it uses the same engine based on how the world is set up and the game mechanics they introduce to the player. With that being said, there's also a lot missing from this game, for example, while you can change your outfit, none of them give you bonuses, you cannot buy healing items to take in to combat, the leveling system doesn't allow you to distribute skill points and there's no character sheet to see what your stats are like, because of that, I am seriously questioning if leveling up even does anything. I like the concept of the game, I like how it looks more realistic in comparison to some of their other games. The game world on high looks genuinely beautiful. At the end of the day though, the entire time I was playing Jump Force, I was finding myself wishing it was more like Xenoverse. I want to be able to collect equipment that matters, I want to be able to see my character's stats and have a say in how they grow over time. Jump Force feels like an incomplete product.

Battletoads felt like they were supposed to be kind of like the edgey counterparts to Ninja Turtles. The arcade cabinet had a bunch of blood and guts, the Queen always dressed like a hooker, the graphics were never nearly as bright and shiney as it was presented here. The graphics looks like modern day flash animation. And I get it, I am sure that people are probably tired of hearing folks talk about this, but jeez louise, the first thing I thought of was like phineas and ferb or my little pony. It just looks and feels like they made it as non offensive as possible. And I suppose I get that from a marketing standpoint, they'll be able to pull in a much wider demographic because of that. Unfortunately in the process, Rare has managed to basically completely alienate the original fans of the series from the franchise. Great job on neutering the Battletoads.

It's Animal Crossing. It's always been Animal Crossing. And while they add some quality of life improvements to the game and some more polish, it's still pretty much the same game you've played since the DS era. And the game still suffers from it's biggest drawback. Animal Crossing is a game that has no direction, it's about you personally finding stuff to do. And unfortunately, everything there is to do is the same mundane schlock you've come to expect from every other previous iteration of the game. The "mystery islands" could have been a nice touch, but they are a quarter of the size of the normal island. Islands are picks from a small selection of pre-made islands instead of being procedurally generated. So instead of constantly finding new islands, after a weeks worth of playing the game, you'll begin to constantly see the same island types over and over again. The developers made an attempt to give you more to do, but it ends up boiling down to being rewarded for doing the same stuff you have always done instead, while locking rewards behind "Nook Miles", a secondary form of currency in the game. The end result is, they've managed to already take a core mechanic from the game and turn it in to even more **** than it was before. Animal Crossing's popularity isn't surprising; it was simply a coincidence, it managed to be released around the same time a massive pandemic was taking place. If it weren't for that, I doubt it would be getting such high accolades from people, because at the end of the day, this version is just as mediocre as any of the other releases. For whatever insane reason, Nintendo has also decided to put in a bunch of really weird restrictions to the game that are ultimately unhelpful, frustrating and counterproductive to what a game should be. Animal Crossing needs to be BETTER, not the same.

I bought in to this crap when other game reviewers were talking about the game. I think it was like, within a week after Wollay started selling the game that he basically shut down for months at a time, not saying anything to anyone. He released like one, maybe two public updates the entire time and then went completely dark again. And he did it for years. Once in awhile he would release a screen shot on his social media account and that was it. I didn't even know Wollay even "finished" the game because I had completely forgot about this game and just assumed I had my money stolen, since I bought a copy for myself and another friend. I managed to get them to send me a STEAM key and now I am now seeing how terrible this product is from what it used to be. Further, there are people on Reddit who are pirating the Alpha version of the game that you can no longer download because it was actually better than this. If Wollay ever updates this game ever again, or even responds to all of the pleas people have been sending him, I'll be very surprised. Everyone should take note of this entire disaster and never support this developer ever again.

Adventure Time: Pirates of the Enchiridion is a bare bones, turn based RPG based on the Adventure Time franchise. Combat feels really slow paced. And the rewards from combat aren't nearly enough, so you'll find yourself CONSTANTLY grinding for experience and money. Unfortunately, when you level up, you don't actually get any rewards right away, you need to spend money training up your stats and that cost will continue to go up as you spend more money. I really feel like this system was put in to place to artificially increase the amount of game time, since leveling up is a two fold system. The Land of Ooo is flooded, you travel the game via foot and ship. You can't just get off your ship any time you want either, so there's not nearly as much exploring as one would hope you'd find in a Adventure Time game. I feel like this was a design choice for the game in order to have to work less on the actual world or enviroment. There's almost no equipment system to speak of, which really ****, because it would have been cool to find all sorts of neat treasure and loot and see how the characters look in new gear. It's not like they don't even change their equipment, since several episodes show they do. I am really torn here, because Adventure Time: Pirates of the Enchiridion may possibly be the best game they made for the franchise so far, but it's still really half arsed. They could have done amazing things with this franchise and no one seems interested in doing a quality, triple 'A', open world RPG.

I have been a big fan of the Dragon Ball series, ever since it started airing on a local station in my town in the early 90's. We have seen a lot of games come and go with this series. Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot may have been one of their more loftier goals. You can tell they put a lot of effort in to the game, but that doesn't mean there isn't room for improvement. The game has been touted as a semi-open world enviroment. And while it's true you can jump between area to area and fly around and stuff, there just isn't that much to actually do. The larger world is a mostly empty one, with nothing more than sweeping trails of "z-orbs" littering the landscape, waiting for you to pick them up. I am serious here, the amount of crap they want you to collect makes games like Mario 64 and Banjo Kazooie look tame. It's a waste of time and frustrating. Sure, you can go hunting and fishing and stuff, but it boils down to little more than a mini game, where even you worst efforts will likely be rewarded in some shape or form. Dinosaurs walk around, but you just blast them to pieces with energy attacks. There are monsters to fight, but based on what part of the series you are in, all of the enemies look the same. There's such a wide selection of characters to choose from and they end up just reusing the same crummy robot and solider sprites. There's supposed to be side quests you can do, but they are few and far between and almost all of them involves really shallow fetch quests. Most of these quests are not fun in any capacity. The controls aren't as bad as people say they are. I don't know why this was even a issue to begin with. People are just whiners. One of the biggest sins Kakarot has though would be the amount of censorship in the game. All the classic, violent, visceral moments of Dragon Ball Z have been either cut out completely or done so poorly you'd never be able to gues what's going on unless you had context from the anime. The bloody hole in Goku's chest? A burn mark. Guldo's head being cut off? Never happens. Frieza ripping that Namek's arm off? Nope. Frieza being cut to pieces? Both times it's done so poorly you couldn't tell that was being conveyed. Dr. Gero punching Yamcha through the chest? A black spot on his shirt. As far as stories go, Kakarot is likely to be the shortest, most censored of the story you'll ever get. Not to mention all the classic filler that people have come to love just being missing. Garlic Jr? Who the hell is that?

Pokemon Sword and Shield has been here for a bit now and after playing the game, I ask myself how much of a sequel to the legendary franchise are they? People are already well too aware that the National Pokedex has been slashed and a number of people's favorite and iconic Pokemon are now missing. This is a even larger slap to the face once news broke that the reasons GameFreak gave weren't truthful. Not only are the in models based off of the 3DS version and the battle animations are lack luster, but hackers are quickly proving that it takes little effort putting back in the Pokemon that have been cut. The game feels sluggish in places with framerates sometimes dipping as low as mid 20s. Which is incredibly obvious when the game is locked in at 30FPS. I don't have any specific issues with games that do this as they still manage to look perfectly fine, in my personal opinion. The larger issue for me is, locking a game in at 30FPS shouldn't also include slow downs as if this were a video game from the early 1990s when this was all too common. The world in Pokemon Sword and Shield feels mostly empty and while some would like to argue the newest games are "open world", it's painfully apparent that the game is a mostly on rails experience, with small spots here and there where the developers finally allow a bit of free roaming, but once you pass that area, it's right back to the on rails experience. Not only that, but some of the games cities are just completely wasted. While each town could have offered unique clothing options and styles there like three cities that offer anything. Making it even more frustrating, some of the towns are literally nothing more than a direct line to a gym. Hop is really annoying, I think he makes my game experience worse with how he shoe horns players in to situations and makes all sorts of demands they have no right in making. The game is worse because of Hop. I hope future games will allow players to completely forego "rivals" if they so chose so. I get that having a rival is a trope in Anime and Video Game culture, but at the very least provide a better one than Hop if GameFreak is going to press the issue. There is now a hard cap on what level pokemon you can capture. And while previous games simply had Pokemon that misbehaved in battle, now the game simply refuses to allow the option to even consider trying to catch them. This is incredibly frustrating to me. I was surprised to see they removed global trading, like really? Wonder Trade is still in, but it's disappointing that they haven't put in any sort of better measurements in place to ensure jerks aren't screwing over other players with low level junk. Add to the fact you need to be subscribed to Nintendo's garbage paid online membership program and it's almost completely worthless in my opinion. This may be a incredibly biased complaint but I am also very unhappy with a number of the new Pokemon designs. On top of that, while some of them I absolutely love (Like Yamper), their evolved forms are hot garbage, forcing me to choose between either evolving my Pokemon and then dealing with the vile evolution forms, or keeping their better first forms, but putting my Pokemon at a slight disadvantage. Gigantamax as a feature isn't worthwhile in any capacity. I'll be very surprised if they continue to use this with any future games. I would have much more preferred that they had just dumped that feature and spent more time on polishing all of the other problems this game has. Even Mega Evolutions would have been better than Gigantamax. Team Yell is just some of the worst antagonists in the game. They look and act stupid. At least Team Rocket was run by what was essentially a Mafia boss. I don't know what GameFreak was thinking with Team Yell, but they are some of the dumbest enemies I have ever seen. The character customization options just plain ****. There's a small handful of hair styles that do not change from city to city. Some cities have clothes shops where the styles change, but not nearly enough to be acceptable. Further, why is GameFreak forcing only skinny pants in the game? There's so many character models and designs of clothing. How hard would it have been to add in varying clothing options? As it is your character always looks like some dang hipster because all of their pants options are almost skin tight. I want baggy pants, just let me have that! Jesus.. At this point if you are still even reading this review, I am sure you have realized I have a lot of complaints about Sword and Shield. But the fact of the matter is, they are still enjoyable games, it just feels rushed and crapped out instead of taking the time, focus and consideration that this franchise deserves. It's important for fans of these games to let GameFreak and Nintendo know that a lot of mistakes were made with this latest release, but I also wouldn't discourage anyone from trying the games.

While Man of Medan looks impressive, that's the only thing it has going for it. Man of Medan is essentially nothing more than a better looking Telltale Game's Walking **** game has multiple paths and endings, which they also help you keep track of, but I don't really feel like it's a genuine experience due to the fact, there is a narration here and the writers for this game does not allow you to work outside of that narration. I feel like every time a choice is presented, it should effectively fracture off in to it's own path. Yeah, I get it, that'd be a lot of extra work, but as it is right now, there's plenty of decisions to make that don't effect the story in any sort of meaningful manner and it feels like a cheat. TLDR: Nice looking point & click adventure game dressed up to look like a better game.

A fairly abstract action-adventure game, Yuppie Psycho begins to slow down and wear out it's welcome by the middle of the game. The writing, while creative, does not always make much sense.

I have been a Elder Scrolls fan since the very first game and I have been playing them since my introduction as a teen, into my middle age. These games have always been a wonderful distraction from my rather mediocre life. What Bethesda Softworks have done with this game is nothing less than criminal. They have a very devoted group of fans who will pretty much thow money at anything Bethesda Softworks has ever published and with good reason, they have been considered a legendary game developer. It saddens me that I have lived long enough to see this, to see them destroy a franchise like Fallout and then twist one of their most beloved franchises into the horror show that is Elder Scrolls: Blades. As far as I am concearned, Bethesda's behavior is criminal. They took the good will and trust of their fans and attempt to twist something near and dear to them into a laughing stock of some of the worst example of gaming known on the planet. I don't know if I could ever trust them again.

I got Cultist Simulator with last months 'Humble Bundle Monthly' and decided to give it a go. The game has very little options and as soon as you start a game, it just throws you in to the deep end without actually explaining anything. It appears to be a single player card game of some sort, based around the hp lovecraft mythos. You build a story based around actions you perform, all of which are done via cards. That is about as much as I could come to understand. The fact of the matter is, the game has almost virtually no kind of in-game guide or tutorial for new players, leading me to simply picking up and dropping cards until I find one that fits. The game's tooltips and UI are incredibly unhelpful and clunky to the point of being worthless. I've been given the impression that a large majority of the players who enjoy the game had to rely heavily on the wiki and 3rd party guides and walk throughs to be able to make any sort of headway. A waste of time and money, they should have put significantly more effort in to making this game more approachable for new players without having to rely on outside help to play what is supposed to be something as simple as a single player card game. Don't bother.

Fans of the franchise have been waiting almost two decades for Kingdom Hearts 3, so now that it's finally here, how well does it stand up against it's memory with an aging fan base? For all intents and purposes it's a Kingdom Hearts game through and through. It still has the same spirit and soul that the previous entires in the game have. The combat mechanics have been refined fairly well, without straying too far from the path. The game looks about as good as it ever did. With that being said, there are some flaws in this diamond. To begin with, there is a technical aspect to the game that can sometimes be borderline disappointing. When the Xbox One and Playstation 4 Pro made their debuts, both companies made a point to hammer in the fact that all games would work across all consoles, games wouldn't suffer on the older hardware, but instead, users could expect a better, more premium experience with the newer, updated models of hardware. Unfortunately, that doesn't appear to be the case with Kingdom Hearts 3. Playing on the original PS4 or the Slimline models, players are going to be faced with slightly muddier colors, jagged textures and a frames issue that can bounce anywhere from 60FPS, to 30FPS and in some cases, down into the low twenties. It's 2019, this game has been in development for 15 years, this kind of technical performance and occasional slow down isn't accetable anymore and I am surprised Square thought htis would be okay. While the graphics look great on the Playstation 4, many of the character models have a tendency to lack emotions in their faces. A lot of the times, they look like pieces of clay that are talking. This tends to lead to a lot of weird, uncanny valley moments where the dialog being spoken isn't being properly displayed on faces. The dialog and writing is another aspect really aren't up to standard. A lot of the English voice acting sounds off, not a lot, but enough for people to question what's going on. How characters talk and the inflection of their voices aren't always great and a lot of the dialog can come off as overly cheesy. One of the most early surprises in the game for many people familiar with the franchise is a complete lack of dialog from Phil. A character that is usually overly chatty and sarcastic is completely silent in the game, giving them an almost errie feeling. This was a terrible decision from Square and it's one of the most obvious glairing flaws early on in the game. Finally, for a game franchise that started off with quite a bit of darker undertones, more often than not, the game feels way too overly cheery and feels like Disney had a much larger impact on the development of the game, going as far as having special movies, skills and spells that actually mimic some of their well known attraction park rides. The game, writing and dialog feels overly optimistic to the point that it negatively impacts the game. At the end of the day, it's a great game with some flaws that I feel like, personally, could have been buffed out if Square simply had paid a bit closer attention to details.

I got Yakuza 0 in this month's Humble Bundle. I was really looking forward to playing this game since I had been eyeing it this game on STEAM for awhile. Honestly, I'm glad I never pulled the trigger on this title. When I first saw it on STEAM, the store page game me the idea it would have been kind of like Grand Theft auto, only with Yakuza. And it's not really the case at all. For me, Yakuza 0 really feels like a visual novels with some sparse moments inbetween where you can walk around, get in fights, that sort of thing, but the game was never deep enough or interactive enough to be able to really capture my attention all that much. It feels more like a Grand Theft Auto Super Lite. The city map isn't all that big and the things you have access to are few and far between, there are very few times that you are really given the chance to actually make any sort of decisions and when you do, it never feels like it has any real sort of impact. The game boasts that it is "open world", but I disagree completely with that sentiment. The game likes to give you the illusion of an open world, but you are actually railroaded into a very specific story with a very specific plot. There isn't much variation in it and even if you do somehow manage to stray a bit away from the beaten path, they still manage to drag you back in to what they invisioned. Another aspect that I found fairly annoying is that this game is rated "M" for mature for Blood, Intense Violence, Sexual Content, Strong Language, Use of Alcohol. It's pretty ironic that Yakuza 0 managed to get a "M" rating and actually fail to deliver on almost any of these aspects. If you are going to be a "M" rated game, then you should own it. Yakuza 0 actually goes out of it's way to constantly avoid showing any sort of graphic violence. The blood shown in the game is fairly tame by almost all standards, the "intense violence" is PG-13 at best, use of alcohol is some dudes drinking beers and as far as sexual content goes? If you consider lingerie that literally covers everything then you are a pearl pearl clutching prude. Sure, they say the "Eff" word, but so does everone at my job. Long story short, Yakuza 0 fails to deliver on almost every aspect advertised.

What starts off appearing to be a delightful, Earthbound inspired meta RPG quickly devolves into unpolished schlock almost as soon as you are given control over the main protagonist. The main character's constant inner monologues get tiresome even befor the half hour mark simply because they feel a overwhelming desire to constantly repeat what was either already said or shown just seconds before hand. It isn't endearing in any sort of aspect. The graphical assets of the game are wonderful, but is almost always constantly marred by ugly artwork in contrast. Good examples are paintings hung on walls that look like they were ripped stright from Google Images, basketballs that are photorealistic that don't even roll when kicked, ect. Character animation is another one that looks janky and ugly. The models themselves look great, but their movement is stilted and jarring as if they are missing a number of frames from them, but then other animations, such as water moving or trees swaying move just fine on their own. I think the worst aspect of the game and one that happens to effect the game the most is combat. Every single action, from attacking, to dodging and even running away are made into these stupid little mini games. The first time you fight, it's okay, but now try playing a RPG that has hours worth of content having to play the same mini games over and over and over again. It's simply terrible and out of all of the issues I have with the game, this one is the worst, this is the one that caused me to HATE this game. There's a lot to like about YIIK, but unfortunately there's so much to dislike about the game it's impossible to actually enjoy, which is a massive shame.

There has been plenty of Batman games ever since the franchise first took off, many of those games fell into either an action adventure or a side scrolling beat-em-up arcade game. When Arkham Asylum first came on to the scene, it changed a lot of what we expect for Batman games. Unfortunately the design and game mechanics were so popular at the time of release that it simply encouraged game developers to continue to copy the play mechanics for every iteration going forward. While this is an enjoyable game, that doesn't mean there aren't glairing issues with the product. The biggest being that it's simply a mimic of it's predecessors. You really aren't going to find anything new or unique with the game if you've played the previous installments. "Detective Mode" can be a frustrating experience. It often involves you just wandering around a crime scene, scanning objects until you meet a certain percent of the current investigation and then using Batman's seemingly magical technology to reconstruct the crime scene, to the point you can even reward and fastforward it. It's tedious and boring. It would have been better if they had just changed these into cutscenes or something. As it is right now, the only thing I can see this mechanic as, is filler to pad out the length of the game. Combat can be satisfying at times, but relies on a lot of context senestive situations and as a result, players are often going to just find themselves mashing buttons instead of engaging in any sort of meaningful combat. This problem is often compounded by the fact most boss fights in this game are really nothing more than a series of quick time events. It's not a bad game by any means, but it features many repetitive mechanics in the game that can make it long winded and tedious. If you are a fan of the other games, it's likely you'll enjoy this one too, but I recommend you wait to buy this game until it's on sale.

Final Fantasy for the PSP is a remake of the classic RPG that first appeared on the Nintendo Entertainment System. It features updated graphics that look wonderful, a slightly lower difficulty, a bestiary and more. It all sounds wonderful, doesn't it? Well, that's before you start to notice the downgrades in the game that for whatever reason the developer decided to put in. To begin with, the game normally feels easier than the tough as nails NES game, but there's theres weird spikes in difficulty that doesn't really seem to make sense. You'll still spend a lot of time grinding in the game and dying. Another issue I have is they still haven't fixed the encounter rates, they are still really frustrating and I'm unsure why they didn't do anything about that. Yet another issue is, there's been item changes, name changes, dialog changes, some stores don't sell what they used to, some spells no longer work with some classes, that sort of thing. You won't be able to use any other guide besides the PSP one, because none of the other guides are going to be accurate. I honestly don't know why they did it to be honest. Maybe they thought they were balacing out the game, but in reality they may have actually made it more difficult in some sections than it should have been by screwing with these things. Another small complaint I have is that, for whatever reason they made it so you had to press O + Select to bring up the world map. With the NES this was understandable, they only have a couple of buttons. With the PSP they had more than enough control realestate to just assign a standard button, or even have the option in the game's menu, but now, they kept with the hidden world map thing. Stupid. Honestly, at the end of the day, there ARE better versions of this game out there. This isn't a bad game by any means, but there was some uneeded changes forced on the game and it's annoying.

Mega Man Powered Up is a PSP game that takes the first Mega Man game and remasters it with 3D graphics on a 2.5D plane. Along with the newer graphics, the game also offers two new robot bosses, a saving system, a new difficulty setting, a option to build your own stages and the ability to unlock extra characters you can play as an alternative to Mega Man. While this all sounds fabulous, there are issues. To begin with, the character models are kind of squished up, giving it a chibi looking style of art. Also, the game screen is super zoomed in to the point sometimes you'll jump and bump your head on unseen platforms or obstacles. Further, the game has employed sort of a story based explanation to the game, along with voice acting and cut scenes, but the game largely ignores source material and some of the story telling choices make no sense. Finally, the game suffers from lag or slow down a lot of the time. When too many enemies are on the screen, the game can slow to a crawl and when you consider the fact most Mega Man games rely on quick reflexs to get past some enemies and obstacles, it becomes a huge issue. Considering the fact this is on the PSP and there are much more graphically intensive games on the platform, it's pretty obvious it is due to poor programming and that is absolutely unacceptable. A decent little game, if you can overlook it's flaws or are a huge fan of the Mega Man franchise as a whole, you'll most likely enjoy it.

Vampyre is kind of a hybred of a adventure/horror/rpg/mystery game in which you play as a Doctor who has managed to come down with a bad case of vampirism. While struggling with his own demons, he also finds himself in the middle of a horrible epidemic of spanish flu. Your role in the game is to discover why you were turn into a vampire while still trying to hold on your humanity and save as many people as possible, all while groups of hunters and monsters attempt to tear you to ribbions. The entire concept is actually really good, but it has been implemented poorly as there is a complete lack of polish to the game. There have been times that dialog spoken and subtitles do not match, as if the voice actors couldn't properly remember what they were supposed to say. Sometimes, there can be multiple vocal dialogs going on at the same time, making it hard to understand who is saying what or what is going on. Characters have what appears to be almost completely static faces, It's almost impossible to be able to tell how they feel or what they are thinking based on looking at their faces. There are cases in which characters may be talking but their mouths don't even move. Most of the game enviroments feel like they are nothing more than cattle paths, pushing you to a specific location or place. A bigger issue arises when locations are built maze like and you are never quite sure where you are supposed to go. Add to the fact the quest tracker for the game is complete garbage and it can be a overall frustrating experience trying to get a job done. For a game that likes to tout that your decisions and choices matter, a lot of times it feels like the developers (or in this case the writers) often try to shoehorn you into many decisions to meet whatever criteria they have for the writing of the story. As RPGs go, I never really felt immersed in the game, because I couldn't put myself in the role of the main character and the game refused to allow me to make choices that I would want, instead simply forcing the character's opinions on me. What makes this even more frustrating is the game never really gives you any clear ideas on what your choices will do or how they will change the landscape, comebine that with a completely unforgiving save system that refuses to allow you to back track. Combat is the worst part of the game by far, especially with the stamina system they have in place. Playing as a vampire you should feel powerful, but often everyone else around you is more powerful than you in almost all aspects. What kind of vampire gets tired after swinging an axe two or three times? I mean honestly! Enemies are often at much higher levels than you, putting you at a constant disadvantage. Expect to die. A lot. You'll constantly encounter quests that are 5 or 6 times out of your level range, the only way you'll know they don't expect you to be there yet is by going in to an area and dying. When I bought this game, I wasn't under the impression this was some sort of Dark Souls knock off. It really is a beautiful game under all of this rust, but I would never be able to recommend this game to anyone at it's full retail price. If you can get it at a discount (like I did), go for it. Otherwise I'd suggest you wait.

Yooka-Laylee is inspired by retro platforms like Banjo Kazooie, Super Mario 64 or Gex. It's another run of the mill collect-a-thon games that require you to run, jump and swim through worlds, collecting random odds and ends in order to unlock newer worlds, events and skills. It's a beautiful looking game and when you turn the settings up to max, it really outshines even some of the more modern releases of games in the same genre. With that out of the way, I have nothing nicer to say about Yooka-Laylee. The game worlds are huge, often too large, if you ask me. Much of the space is completely empty, leaving you wandering around while you look for the bits and pieces you need to collect to progress in the game. Even enemies are amazingly sparse in the game. If the developers would have made the worlds smaller and more populated I feel as if the game would have been significantly more enjoyable. As it is, the game feels like it's 90% mini games and 10% action and adventure. Some of the worst aspects of the game are all of the racing trials the game puts you through. They aren't handled well and are amazingly frustrating, combine that with super poor hit detection and slippery as ice controls and you are gonna be in for a bad time. On the surface, this game looks like it would be great for children, on the contrary, the game can be so so frustrating that I can see younger players throwing controllers and melting down in frustration over the game. I myself ended up doing the first racing challange about a dozen times before I was able to beat it and by the time I was done, I was already sick of the game. Frankly, I don't know if I can even bring myself to complete this game. Yes, it's a throwback to an earlier games from yesteryear, but even those games knew how to package it and present it to the players. Yooka-Laylee does it all completely wrong and brings out the worst aspects in this genre of games.

Code of Princess is a mobile game that was ported over to various other platforms, including the PC. As for what it is, it is your standard beat-em-up game that mixes in some light RPG like elements and a equipment system. If you are a fan of games like Streets of Rage, this game might be for you. If not, well it's rather grindy and is going to require you to take time to actually level up character in order to be able to actually finish the game. The games not bad, but it uses the leveling and equipment system to increase the length of the game. Without it, I doubt this game would be more than an hour or so worth of play. As it stands, I wasn't a huge fan of it.

Fallout 76 is as much of a Fallout game as that awful Brotherhood of Steel game was.

I ended up seeing this on STEAM and noticed that it was now advertised as uncensored. Far be it from me to judge anyone on what they are playing, but for me personally, if I am going to indulge myself in some H-JRPGs, then I expect them to be uncensored. The game is uncensored and the art is surprising very good. Accompanied with the h-scenes are also audio tracks to help immerse the player in the "action". The only thing they could have done to make the X-Rated content better was if they had actual animated scenes. More intresting is the fact that the game has different ways to play and even encourages the players to try to beat the game without succumbing to primal desires. I give them credit for that. As a JRPG, it's pretty good. Like many other JRPGs the game is largely a huge grind, but thankfully the developers added in a system that allows for players to easily grind out what they need to, having constantly respawing monsters and resources for you to collect. The combat system is basic, but it isn't shallow. As you play the game, you'll find different kinds of outfits for Meltys, they all offer different kinds of stats or buffs, but more importantly, they work as the game's class system, once you master a type of clothing, it'll also unlock a new skill or ability you can use. As for the outfits themselves, they change your appearance and are even sometimes required to complete specific quests. It was a nice little touch that the developers didn't HAVE to do, but did it anyways and it really makes the game shine. There are a few problems with the game and while they aren't killers, they are still annoying. The dialog is long, tedious and boring. The developers clearly realized this because they added a TON of speed options for dialog, but that doesn't change the fact I often find myself speeding through windows full of text I just can't bring myself to care about. The second problem is that the game will just randomly freeze from time to time, for no reason. I have a rig that cost almost $2,000.00, there's no way Meltys Quest is going to bog it down, but there has been a handful of times now that I have had to force restart the game because it just freezes up and won't respond. At the end of the day, this game is still pretty much a basic JRPG, but that doesn't make it bad. It's a very well polished and thought out JRPG. Granted it is very pornographic in nature, but I honestly feel like that just makes it more appealing in the long run.

Lobotomy Corporation touts itself as a mix between a buisness/monster simulation and a roguelike game. This description is incredibly misleading. When you think of a "simulation", one would assume that there would be different aspects you control in the game, but those mechanics are completely shallow. And the "roguelike" aspect only comes from the selection of artifacts or monsters you choose from when given the opportunity to do so. As far as the whole simulation aspect is concerned, there's very little of it. You can "hire" employees, change their equipment and decide what they do, based on the department they work in. That's it. There's really no management of resources, or selections of departments or tools or anything like that. As far as the game goes, it's very simple, each successful day completed you choose from a new "abnormality" (which is labeled under a serial number). Then you spend the day trying to understand it by studying it while maintaining and containing all of your other abnormalities. Studying a abnormality is completely a game of guess work and can completely ruin a game until you know what's going on with it. Unless you've watched play throughs and understand what they do and what they need, all you can do is blindly click. After you complete research of a abnormality, it's just a matter of grinding energy and packages from them. That's it. The first couple of day(s) can be fun, but the longer you play, the longer you realize that's there's actually very little gameplay holding this game together. And it gets boring very quickly. For almost $25.00 for a "indie" game, I would have really expected a lot more based on what they actually advertise. In some instances I would actually argue their STEAM store page may be misleading and possibly false advertising. If you can get this game for $5.00 then fine, take a chance. But at full price this game is a full blown rip off.

When I think of the high seas, I think of games like Sid Meier's Pirates, Risen and Assassin's Creed Black Flag. Each one of those games offers interesting and fun game mechanics in a attempt to simulate the concept of piracy. So Imagine my surprise when I discovered Sea of Theives is nothing more than a shallow imitator of any of the above games. Simple fetch quests, bare bones mechanics in almost every aspect, a complete lack of polish, these are just a FEW of the problems Sea of Theives have as of the launch date. I have no idea how they managed to RUIN a game about sailing the high seas and comitting piracy, but they managed to do it in a way that is just completely awful.

Secret of Mana (2018) is a remake of a SNES classic from the 90's era of video game. It boasts updated graphics, new audio and even voice acting. For everything the remake of Secret of Mana is, there is a lot it isn't as well. While the game's graphics may have been updated to match a more modern look, the game still largely relies on outdated mechanics from a game that was released 25 years ago. The combat is clunky as ever. There will be spells and attacks that are completely unavoidable, giving some enemies an unfair advantage. When it comes to boss fights, the area you are given to move around is often times far too small, making it a huge pain in the arse. The player AI for your companions is just as terrible as they were when the game first launched. Nine out of ten times they are completely worthless and not worth reviving. As the game progresses, they'll unlock useful spells that can help in combat, but considering how clunky the companion mechanics are, it's almost worthless. The game itself has issues on the development side. I have a fairly powerful rig I built just this year to play most modern releases on ultra settings, I spent a pretty dime on the whole thing. Given the specs of my system and the quality of the game remake, you'd think it'd run perfectly, but that is far from the truth. From animations freezing up, to frame rates all over the place, the game lacks a lot of polish you'd expect from a game costing $40.00USD. It's not a bad game and I am enjoying it, but I really feel like they should have worked on updating some of the poor mechanics the original game had, worked on better companion AI and streamlined some of the otherwise cumbersome aspects of the game. And there's no excuse for the lack of polish on the development side as far as game performance goes.

The Mummy Demastered is a retro styleized "Metroidvania" that takes the idea of the Mummy movies into an action adventure game. The game looks great, the music sounds great. Everything about this game would be great if the developer hadn't made so many stupid mistakes. 1. Monster Spam - Way too many monsters. Every screen is just FULL of monsters, many of them re-spawn constantly and quickly so it's impossible to clear a room out. Trying to make a series of very complicated jumps? Well how about having 300 birds flying in your face when you are doing it? What makes this even worse is the monsters never seem to drop what you want or need at any given time. 2. The Monsters themselves - All of them are bullet sponges, flying ones can go through almost all walls and lets not forget to let the monsters shoot through walls and platforms while you can't. Completely unfair. 3. The game only has a very few ways to fill up on health. You either collect it when it drops or you pick up a health pack that increases your health and fills it up. Why don't save points restore your health? The ammo caches restore all your ammo. 4. Forcing players to only carry a few weapons at a time. This is a video game, not real life. I don't want to have to run to a ammo cache every time I want to use a different gun. Terrible design. 5. Player Death - This one just ****, you die, you drop everything and you have to go find the corpse of the last "agent" and kill them to get all your gear back. What in the WORLD were they thinking? You can't pull this kind of crap in a Metroidvania game. All you have to do is search online to see that there's TONS of complaints about this. 6. Bosses - Not only are the bosses super tough, most of the encounters won't give you the oppertunity to restock health, ammo or gernades during the fight. Many times I find myself running out of everything and being forced to use the crappy starter gun you begin with. If you somehow managed to defeat a boss, they never drop enough to fill everything up. Bad design after bad design took what should have been an amazing game and turned it into one giant dog turd.

Final Fantasy XII is out for PC now, with improved visuals, new mechnics, and other options to try and justify charging $40.00 for a 12 year old game that you can get brand-new for $15.00 on Amazon for the PS2. I never played this when it first came out. To be honest, I was starting to move away from Square by the end of the PS1 era of their RPGs. And their new ones on the PS2 never really grabbed my attention. I grew up with and loved some of their classic games, like Final Fantasy and Chrono Trigger, but as the years went on, Square seemed to move further and further away from the kind of game development that caused me to fall in love with them in the first place. After seeing some pretty good reviews for Final Fantasy XII online and the reviews on here, I decided to give it a chance and see how it held up. Visually it is a beautiful game and Sqaure did a good job remastering the graphics of the game. For all intents and purposes, their OST for the game is fine too. It's not going to blow anyone's mind, but the music is "good enough". That's about all the good stuff I have to say about this game, unfortunately. The writing feels half hearted, it's another basic story they have going on, that has been retold since they started doing RPGs in the late 80's and early 90's. Character behavior is weird, a lot of times someone will do something, without really ever being able to justify it. Vaan, one of the main characters is basically an orphan and lives off the streets, stealing from people and working odd jobs for friends. At some point he gets it into his head to break into the royal palace, bypass a ton of security and steal "something" from the palace. He doesn't even know what it is he's looking for, he's just looking for something, anything to steal. It makes no sense. Speaking of characters, none of them are likeable in any capacity. For me, they were all just kind of there. All of them have about as much character and depth as a puddle of rain water and show about as much. They are just talking heads, there to drive the narrative forward, unfortunately they fail to grab my attention in any sort of meaningful way. It's nice that Sqaure introduced a system to play the game, without having to worry much about the actual mechnics, they have a normal, easy and hardmode you can start off with. And easy mode, (new game plus) starts you off with characters all at level 90. This would actually be more impressive if Final Fantasy XII were a game you could enjoy just for the narrative, but it's not. Starting off in new game plus is just going to make the game that much more boring. XII has a basic concept of a leveling system in place, which has been a standard since Final Fantasy 1. The issue is they keep fouling it up by trying to get fancy or "unique" with how it's all handled. Their job system is like a poor mix of Final Fantasy V and Final Fantasy X and it's completely garbage. What's the point of even having a job system if you are going to lock players into one or two roles? The combat is just a mess. It's like a mix of the classic Final Fantasy, Final Fantasy 10 and Final Fantasy Online. All the fights are bascially "live", but still has a weird turned base feeling to it. Other party members will run around and do whatever based on their "gambit" system. You can also command each party member, but to be completely honest, the whole thing is such a mess, it's so chaotic, it's just easier and less frustrating to let the computer do what it wants to do. I'm pushing to play the game right now, just so I can justify the money spent on this title, but there's no way I could recommend it to anyone, especially at the current asking price.

Take a survival horror game (in the loosest terms), use nostalgia from a bygone era of animation and then charge around $6.00 a chapter (which runs roughly around twenty minutes long) and you have Bendy and the Ink Machine. The game relies on the same old tired horror tropes like so many other games, which is atmosphere and jump scares, none of which it does well enough to warrant spending a dime on this game. Tired, shallow, cliched gameplay is what you can expect from this game. Do anything besides spend money supporitng this title.

People comparing this game to "Xenoverse for the 3DS" are idiots. What could have been a fun little romp in the Dragon Ball universe ends up **** eggs due to a stupid combat system, lack luster controls and a dull story line. If you must get this game, get it on discount or used.

Take everything that made Persona 4 amazing and get rid of it. Then take the characters from Persona 3 and 4 and thoughtlessly use them in a outdated JRPG engine from a different game and you have Persona Q. All the elements of the life sim from Persona 4 are missing. Instead of a large world to explore, you are stuck at your local school. Add in a outdated rpg trope where you need to actually draw the maps of the dungeons you explore and you are in for a bad time. Was not impressed.

A fully funded game on Kickstarter with over $800K dollars, the game was pushed back and the digital price was raised because the developers were "adding content" to the game. Now released and advertised as the full game, it's still in a state that could be compared to a beta test. Missing promised additional content and the content that is available is fairly limited. Charging full price for a game that feels unfinished, promising to patch in features. This kind of behavior gives indy developers a bad name. What the hell did they do with the $800K dollars plus all of the pre-order money? Give me a break.

Persona 5 is here and it's almost as good as the previous games. If you are reading reviews based on Persona 5, then I am going to assume that you are aware of the other games and know the basic mechanics of the previous games, I am not going to go into detail on that aspect. The game still has aspects of a life simulator, as well as a dating simulator. You still capture personas and fuse them and everything like that. A new aspect of the persona system is that you can personas to power-up other personas, using them up in the process. This is a neat way to quickly level up a persona and sometimes get a new skill out of it. Back is the old system of capturing personas, you'll need to weaken them and then dialog options come up in which you'll have to convince the personas to join you. It's an alright system, but the reality is, the card based system was a easier one. A new aspect to the game are puzzles that almost every dungeon will have, you'll have to figure these out as you progress through a dungeon. While it adds something new to the series, as the game goes on, these dungeon puzzles start to get really accessive to the point it's more annoying or frustrating than fun. Besides that, it's more of the same you would come to expect of a Persona game. It's good, but it's a lot darker story wise than the fourth game and it's not nearly as light hearted either.

Cosmic Star Heroine is a JRPG from the makers of Cthulhu Saves the World and Breath of Death 7. Designed to resemble a 16bit SNES RPG, Cosmic Star Heroine is clearly inspired by other classic JRPGs such as Chrono Trigger. Just looking at it causes the nostalgia to drag me back into my childhood. With that being said, there are issues that bothered me as I played the game. One of the first things that really bugged me was interacting with NPCs. You can walk through (most) NPCs and for whatever reason you have to be in a perfect spot to trigger dialog, which can be really frustrating, I often found myself walking around in circles around a NPC until I could actually get the chance to open dialog with them. The combat, while it didn't really seem to be a big issue at first, ended up being one of the most frustrating factors of the game. I am sure the developers thought they were doing something "cool" or "unique", but all it really did was make fights longer and more annoying. Characters have skills, abilities, items and "programs", all of these things have like a cooldown on them, so while in the midst of combat you can't just spam one thing. The issue is, not all characters have a basic attack to rely on while in combat, so eventually you are going to find some of your party members have nothing else to offer besides waiting a few turns to recharge their skills or abilities. It's stupid and poorly thought out. Besides that, you can't really "grind" in this game, because from what I've seen, monsters are not recurring, they are scripted, so while you might encounter a monster in a area, you can't simply walk around to continue to fight it for more money or experience. And grinding is one of the biggest draws to RPGs, it's watching numbers go up. The writing is yawn inducing. With RPGs of this nature there should be a balance that you strive to achive as far as it comes to dialog, unfortunately I often found myself just autoscrolling through mounds of text because I really couldn't find the energy to care about their poorly written story. The map layouts are really forgettable, for the most part they take a fairly linear path, which may occasionally branch out for a few steps or walk back up upon itself, but it never really goes far enough to actually encourage exploration. The game is mostly fine, even with it's tedious combat, terrible writing and uninspired maps. I just feel like it was really overhyped and as a direct result, the end product just doesn't look as good.

Well the day is finally here for the Nintendo Switch and Breath of the Wild. After all the fanfare and hype, was it worth the wait? I'd like to start off by saying that all of the 0 out of 10 reviews don't seem fair. But I think that's sort of the price you pay for having such a well known brand and franchise, it brings out the worst in people. With that being said, those reviews aren't wrong, even if the scores appear to be. Going into Breath of the Wild, based on just the online reviews and videos alone, I was expecting one of the most epic Legend of Zelda games to date, unfortunately that really isn't the case and previous entries in the game series end up faring better in comparasion. I think one of the bigger issues stem from the fact that the developers lost sight of the core game when they started moving it into "open world" territory. The developers became more engrossed in that concept than what really makes a Zelda title a Zelda title to begin with. When compared to other games in the franchise, the selection of enemies is shallow compared to what we usually come to expect from the series. Generally these games tend to have a wide selection of enenmies that change based on the dungeon and region of the game. With Breath of the Wild, we are seeing a lot less unique enemies and instead a lot of re-colored or re-skinned enemies as a direct result. This wouldn't be horrible if it was expected, like with titles such as Dragon Quest. But in a Legend of Zelda game, it's a bit of a disappointment. The story isn't nearly as grand as it has been in the past. And while I haven't actually beat the game yet, I have found myself not nearly as invested or interested as I would have from previous titles in the series. A lot of times it feels as though the story element of the game was tacked on as an afterthought. The game play is also equally shallow when compared to other games in the franchise. Yes, there's a lot of weapons you can collect, but considering their frequency of appearance and the fact many of them will break over time, they are really underwhelming. None of them feel nearly as powerful or epic as you'd expect from a Zelda title. Remember all the neat tools you'd get in other Zelda titles? Nonexistent. Don't expect to find cool tools such as the hook-shot, it doesn't exist. I think this is one of the things that hurts the game the most. There are no heart pieces. Rupees are still in the game, but not in the same capacity as other Zelda titles. Instead you'll need to actually work to earn Rupees, you'll need to make and sell things in what appears to be an active economy and for whatever reason, it doesn't feel as if it fits properly with the overall theme of Legend of Zelda. There's a severe lack of music in the game. It's still there, but it doesn't feel as grand as it did in previous entries of the game. I see what they were trying to go for with the music, but it doesn't feel the same. As far as the technical specs go, the game looks good for what it is, there is no complaint there. But if people recall, there was some complaints about slow downs for the game, which apparently were reported to be fixed. But lo and behold people are still reporting slow downs on Breath of the Wild. This doesn't really surprise me as a release day title, but that doesn't make it any less disappointing. Folks are reporting that the switch can get pretty hot when played for extended peroids, so it makes me wonder if the game is suffering from the system physically slowing down due to the system becoming too warm, like how a tablet game will under perform on a Android tablet. So, what's the final verdict? It's a Legend of Zelda title in name only, it doesn't feel like a proper Legend of Zelda game at it's core.

The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth is a retro stylized, bullet hell shooter. It uses random elements to change enemies, maxes, power-ups and bosses. I can only assume that if you are reading this, you are already aware of the game and just need some opinions on the product. It looks and feels just like the PC version, with a few obvious problems that keep it from getting a perfect score. For starters, the controls can become wonky at times, even using the twin sticks, there has been a few times Isaac would shoot in a direction I didn't want him to, this can be alleviated using the Vita's buttons instead, but makes shooting overall harder. On the topic of controls, pills and some powerups require you to touch the screen, which distracts from the overall gameplay. Meanwhile, R1 is completely unused. The game also suffers from slow downs depending on how full the screen is. Although some players will see this as an advantage, not a hinderance. Overall, it's not the best port.

Pokemon Duel, what a terrible game. I don't understand the Pokemon Company, they have access to one of the most beloved IPs on the planet and it seems like they are constantly putting out crappy mobile games. While the name of the game and even the screen shots may lead many to believe this is actually a Pokemon arena style game, that's not even remotely true - It's a mobile port of their board game that involves collecting figures and spinning arrows. The mechanics to this game are incredibly shallow, from how the game itself plays, to how the pokemon are presented, to the fact you cannot even chose your own attacks, the entire premise of the game is using a spinner. The Pokemon Company would have spent better time on making a Pokemon Arena port than this pile of festing garbage. For what it's worth, the mini figure graphics are rendered beautifully, but that's about the only positive aspect of this game, it's like a half assed gacha game with zero actual gameplay.

I spent the last two weeks playing Persona 4 Golden and have finally reached end game, which makes me feel as though I can now give the game an honest review. Persona 4 Golden is kind of a monster collecting RPG that revolves around collecting cards after battles and then fusing those cards together to form stronger monsters, also known as "Personas". As you play the game, you'll meet friends who can also use Personas, but you are the only character who can change their persona. Persona 4 Golden is absolutely a standard JRPG. Even the "normal" difficulty is fairly hard. Thankfully they put in a easy mode that allows you to just enjoy the story and characters while almost effortlessly walking through battles, dungeons and boss encounters. Graphically the game looks great and runs well with no visual slow downs that I could see. It's a perfect port to the vita. A recurring problem with most JRPGs is present in the game and that is a lack of creative enemies, you are going to encounter a lot of re-colored enemies in this game, it really lacks diversity on that front. As a added bonus, the game is also kind of like a slice of life teenage high schooler sim. The game places a lot of focus on meeting people, forging long lasting relationships, romance and even working part time jobs and going to school. There's a lot going on and the game requires you to manage your time, you can't do everything at once and when you first start playing, you'll have to decide what things you want to focus on. The story is somewhat engaging and it's writing is good enough that Persona 4 Golden will have you caring about the characters and relating to them. Some of the overall themes are fairly cliche and there is a lot of cringy content that revolves around character's sexuality. As your character grows, they will often be given dialog choices that are effected by your personality, such as courage and empathy. One would think that these dialog choices would alter the story or paths your character will walk, but the reality is, the only large differance is slightly different dialog. This part of the game is pretty underwhelming and the reality that not all options can be used your first playthrough is slightly annoying. The game does feature a "new game plus" mode, but unlike a lot of traditional games that offer this as a feature, almost NOTHING carries over, completely ruining the concept of new game plus. After beating the game, if done correctly, you'll have access to your ultimate persona form, but unfortunately you still cannot use it until late in the end game and requires a lot of grinding in order to make even remotely useful. The biggest failure of the game is the ending. You'd think that the game would be close to ending after defeating the final boss and solving the "case", but that's not true. The game will continue to drag on for in-game months, leaving you with almost nothing to do besides chasing the ending to the game. There was no good reason for adding this in and really ruins the ending after glow you'd normally get. Persona 4 Golden also adds in a extra character and additional dungeon, but they are both so awful, I wouldn't recommend wasting your time pursuing them in any capacity unless you have extra time to burn.

This is a pretty decent port of a DBZ game that was also avaible on the Xbox 360 and PS3. The graphics are spot on, the controls are great and the loading times aren't terrible. It's a great game in general and if you are a fan of the franchise, it's a no brainer that you pick it up. Tip: The Vita is region free and the game had a physical release in the UK, so if you aren't a fan of digital downloads, order a import version, it's full english and everything.

I got into Corpse Party a few years ago and bought the PSP games. I enjoyed the first one, but didn't enjoy the second one at all, due to it's focused gameplay being a visual novel. When I saw the new Corpse Party: Blood Drive would be making it's way on to the Playstation Vita, I looked online to see how the game was supposed to play. It looked like that the game was a departure from the visual novel genre and went back to it's RPG/Adventure roots. How wrong I was. I am a horror fan, raised in the 80s some of the classics. What first attracted me to Corpse Party was not just it's creepy atmosphere and story, but it's often gory and gruesome visuals. This is one of the biggest things Blood Drive fails at. Sure there are spooky skeletons and ghosts, there's some spatters of blood here and there, but it's biggest draw and appeal, the graphic kill screens are no where to be seen. Instead, the screen often fades to black and then a text box describes how you died - TALK ABOUT LAME. The game gets a graphical overhall with 3D graphics and to be fair, they are perfectly appealing. Meanwhile the visual story elements are still wonderfully drawn. Unfortunately, it appears once again that the visual novel element takes center stage of Blood Drive. Be prepared to slog through nonstop dialog for the first few chapters. The game mechanics are pretty much the same, there are traps hidden within the game that you need to avoid or disable, such as razor trip wires. It's nothing enitrely unqiue, but added with battery management for your flash light, it's not terrible. The issue is, the game really is just another "hide and seek" simulator. You need to trigger special events to progress the plot and then once and awhile, a ghost will chase you. It's nothing too intense or hard. The voice acting is decent, but there's no option for for English (that I can see anyways). The story was already kind of weird and hard to follow to begin with, but now they had a ton of other muck to the story, messing it up even more. Secret societies, magic and curses are just a few of the themes you'll encounter in the game. At the end of the day, Corpse Party: Blood Drive is better than Book of Shadows, but not by much. It's a shame, because from the get go it never really felt as though the Corpse Party franchise was ever really given the attention or respect it deserved. It's really nothing more than weeb trash.

To make a long story short, World of Final Fantasy is a Pokemon inspired Final Fantasy game by SquareEnix. You capture and use "mirages" in battle. You capture them using "mirage cubes", which are situational based and only given to you as you progress the game. World of Final Fantasy is not a bad game by any means, but there's a lot of issues, or quirks with the game that bug me, never enough to stop playing, but enough to make me question the intent of the developers. Obviously, the developers felt inclined to put their own twist on the capture and battle genre. This wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for how they went about doing it. To begin with, the game is a mix of realistic and chibi style artwork and for me personally, it clashes with the game. They should have went with one art style and stuck with it. The combat system, while cute, is kind of stupid and annoying. While you collect monsters to help in battle, you don't really make up parties, instead you "stack" monsters either on top of you or under you. This stacking system increases your overall stats, while also exposing you to whatever weaknesses each monster has. The stacking system is a unique, although stupid concept, I really wish they would have went with just a standard party based combat system. It seems like the entire game is bogged down with a bunch of unnecessary things, from the sphere based ability system, to different monsters having different skills, that all require you to progress in some way, it's just frustrating and annoying. In order to get the full potential of the game is going to require almost 2GBs of extra data downloads. This is beyond annoying. I don't know about anyone else, but I really HATE having to download large files before even playing my game in order to be able to enjoy it to it's fullest. It's a decent game and I think Final Fantasy fans and Pokemon fans alike can enjoy this game, it just feels like it could have been better, much better.