otakon17

If this game wasn't so hard, especially compared to the original SNES version, it would score higher. Continuing is worthless as you won't be able to unlock anything on that run because everything is based on beating a run without continuing. Want to unlock the original OST to use? Beat the game flawlessly. Want to unlock other color palettes for the characters? Beat the game flawlessly. Want to unlock Hard? Beat the game flawlessly. If you weren't penalized for continuing the score would be higher but you also have no way to continue a game. You must ALWAYS bear Carson City first every run. And some of the scenarios you end up with seem very luck based, with shots literally coming at you from every angle on the screen. Changes I would have recommended: Make Carson City optional after you beat it once with every character, make 9 lives the default on Easy4 default on Normal and able to score more every 50K points and don't put all the unlocks behind beating the game without continuing.

First the good: Presentation and characterization with consequences for your actions are very well done. The voice work and NPCs are pretty fleshed out and the explorable parts of London you have access to are nice and gritty. The story and take on vampire lore in game is also a good twist.. Now, the bad: The combat is mediocre at best. It uses a semi-Dark Souls like system of locking on and a stamina meter for keeping you from spamming attacks on enemies. You have a limited amount of Vampire powers to use against a fairly small amount of enemies but the biggest issue comes from if you want to NOT use the games touted feature of feeding on NPCs to give yourself XP. The XP amounts you get from combat and even quest is a piddling amount compared to what you get if you drain an NPC you got to know and did a sidequest for, but the consequences for draining NPCs can be unknown at the time you make them, and usually blow up in your face without fail at a later time in the game no matter how scummy the NPC you drain. Still there hasn't been an RPG vampire centric game in ages so it's still good in that regard.

The game is very rough technically and can be vague mechanically. Henry starts out as weak as a kitten and requires major training and doing activities before he improves. You'll struggle with a single opponent with a rusty butter knife at the beginning of the game but with time and effort Henry becomes a master combatant, a silver tongued orator or practically a shadow that can steal an entire towns wealth in a few moments.

First, the good stuff. The game is charming in it's presentation in terms of writing style, graphics and art design, music and sound. Controls are great, tight and responsive very simple to understand. Now, the bad stuff. It's a chore to play and the charm quickly wears thin when you're on your third attempt to just get past the FIRST dungeon. The procedurally generated dungeons seem to have their own rules and you'll quickly die if you aren't careful. Or are unlucky like me and get trapped in a room with no way out with an enemy you cannot kill that summons endless enemy reinforcements. The game forces you to level grind before you can even attempt the dungeon again after you die, but it's pointless since the game scales the world to your level, just adding busy work and wasting the EXTREMELY limited time you have before you fight "the final boss" as it were.

It's a fun homage to old school brawlers but it's still full of old school brawler bullcrap tactics. Enemies will instantly grab you, have massive invulnerability frames on their attacks and super armor along with perfect tracking of your character making dodging an attack an impossibility.

As someone who played the original release of this game on the PS2 over 10 years ago now, I might be a little biased. Hell I still have my copy of the game and the memory card of my final save after besting the absolute final boss, the only thing left to do in the game being reach level 100 with every character. I've enjoyed Dragon Quest games for years and this re-release is no different. The graphics take a bit of of a hit when coming to the 3DS however it's still a good looking game with very smooth animations both in the overworld and in battles. There are a host of "convenience" changes like when you level up you fully heal and encounters are now represented by monsters on the field and in dungeons. The sound is still enjoyable, the voice acting just as punny as it was in the original with little loss of sound quality despite being jammed on a 3DS card. The story is fairly simple and most folks who get this will have owned it originally. I highly recommend this for RPG lovers.

This is a game that draws heavily from the Earthbound school of RPGs with strong characterizations, interesting looking character designs and a LOT of well written humor. The graphics, while simple are very well animated and expressive with a few surprises. The REAL draw of this game is the surprising depth which the game treats morality of the player themselves. Really if you're any kind of fan of Earthbound or RPGs in general, you owe yourself to give this game a shot. Oh and the OST is completely fantastic, I've been humming many of the tunes months after beating the game.

An excellent "sequel" to From Softwares "Demon's Souls", Dark Souls is an unforgiving, open world romp through a dark fantasy world. You play as a Dark Sign cursed Undead, doomed to die and come back until eventually you go mad from it. However you are captured and put into the Undead Asylum, where the Undead wait for the end of the world. You however, with some help manage to get out and start out on a quest to discover the true destiny of the Dark Signed cursed Undead. At the beginning you'll be asked to make a character from one of many starting classes, but don't think you'll be regimented to playing a certain way the entire game. The upgrade system is open and allows you(through increasingly steep costs) to upgrade your abilities in any way you see fit. And as you should, for if you die(and you will) to one of the many horrors or pitfalls that litter the land of Lordan, you will lose of the precious 'Souls' needed to upgrade your stats and purchase services from the few sane Undead that remain there. Die a second time on the way to 'Reclaim your power' and those Souls are gone forever. The game offers a large challenge in that enemies are fairly aggressive and will chase you for quite some time, along with many of them using group tactics to overwhelm your defenses or just being so much stronger than you that a head-on fight is tantamount to suicide. No, Dark Souls punishes those that treat this like a "hack and slash" game like so many 'action-rpgs' that have come before it. You must consider everything going forward in the world of Dark Souls and every enemy has it's own strengths and weaknesses that you can exploit and look out for. Graphically, the game is fairly impressive looking but isn't stellar by any means. However, the art design, along with the weapon, equipment and monster designs are both familiar and alien at the same time. The first dragon you see is nothing like the standard fire-breathing red lizard with wings that is so popular in fiction. However, something like that shows up fairly early and it's not even a boss. The game is dark and I mean that both figuratively and literally. Many areas are so black that you'll need a spell or special item to see more than a foot in front of you and you'll want these to keep you from stumbling into enemies lying in wait. Or pitfalls just begging for someone to step over them into the gaping void. The game features a unique multiplayer aspect in the form of 'Invasions', 'Summons' and 'Covenants'. 'Invasions' are just as they sound, another player(with the help of certain items) can invade your game to try and kill you for both Souls and even more precious Humanity(another commodity you need to continue on). However there are balances to keep someone from being constantly invaded by players much further along(usually, I will get back to this). 'Summons' can happen one of two ways, the player can lay down a 'Summon Sign' to offer their services to another player online to defeat a local area boss or if the player is 'Human' instead of 'Hollow' they can summon other players to help them with a local area boss. Finally, 'Covenants' have their own set of rules that influence 'Summons' and 'Invasions'. Some allow you to 'infect' other worlds(players games) with powerful enemies but at the cost of opening the infector to 'Invasion' by up to three people at a time. Another offers numerous chances to 'Invade' other characters if they tarry in a specific area of the game, however there is no upper limit to whom they may invade so the invaders may find they bite off more than they can chew at times. Another 'Covenant' allows you to invade frequent invaders and punish them(i.e. kill them) for their 'Sins'. Onto combat and controls, the game offers a wealth of weapons and armor that all affect how you fight. Do you prefer dodging around your foe and harrying them with quick attacks then backing off before they can even face you? Or cladding yourself in the heaviest armor you have and wading into melee with a massive two-handed sword, letting your ability to shrug off lesser blows carry you while you cleave them in twain? Or something in-between? They're all possible and the game rewards experimentation. As for negatives, the game on PC as of late has had a flux of cheaters as of this review. People who use certain programs to reduce their Soul Level(your overall power rating, numbering from 1 to over 700) low enough that it allows them to invade anyone, even new players while using things like infinite health or weapons/equipment far more powerful than the first time player is even capable of getting. However they can be avoided by staying Hollow, but this can cut off certain scenarios that allow you to see more scenes or get different items. Another sour note is that even though the game was ported to PC, there are still areas that suffer massive framerate drop but that is more of the engines fault.

Snowblind Studios returns to the gaming community with what is essentially a fanfiction to the land of Middle-Earth. Everything is pretty well tied to the lore, beyond the game-y elements however. The story is typical "Save the world" as your heroes gain strength to stop the titular "War in the North". Dialogue is pretty well crafted and there are side quests to do that will give you extra experience and money to spend. The combat is usually fast and frantic, with you and your allies able to lay out the pain but still able to lose if you don't keep your head. However, some enemies are just health sinks, taking minutes worth of combo's to down even with your most powerful techniques. They are thankfully few of these moments for the most part. The trolls however are the biggest perpetrators of this crime. The game has co-op and single play, with up to three selectable characters. The hardy Dwarf Warrior that can act as the parties tank or melee monster, a Dunedain Ranger that mostly is the ranged support but can also mix it up in melee just fine with the right skills and the Elven Loremaster who acts as the support caster and healer, with a few "nuke" like spells to help deal with crowds. However the game has a very odd way of handling character switching; everyone shares an inventory pool but do NOT give any items to your CPU allies, as it'll be lost forever. To that note, your CPU allies equip their own gear and it's separate for ever variation. If you play the Dwarf through, your Ranger and Loremaster will have their own gear. Switch over to the Ranger, and your Dwarf and Loremaster will have different gear depending on what they've found and the same if you play as the Loremaster. As for difficulty, it's fairly standard progressing onward to the final boss, but there are some parts that are downright impossible without human companions(a defense mission on the hardest difficulty comes to mind) but beyond that it's a fairly by the numbers hack and slash action RPG. In ending, if you have any love for the land of Middle-Earth and want to wander some of the more known environments of it in the shoes of the brave and bold warriors of the land, give this a shot.

Warframe is pretty, runs well even on lower end computers and has a wealth of content to play with from varying Warframes(basically classes like in any MMO that range from full out offense, defense and anything inbetween) along with a myriad of wacky looking weapons that still fit into the standards of Assault Rifle, Shotgun, Pistol, Sword and the like. There are three enemy factions with varying units and tactics along with a wealth of randomly generated levels. However most of the environments end up looking very same-y. And the game becomes a massive grind for materials if you want to unlock anything beyond the standard gear you're given in the game. Everything costs Platinum to get but a few items, you can't even get any Warframes unless you either buy them for cash(the most expensive being 56 dollars American) or grinding for blueprints for individual pieces(which are not guaranteed drops) and then components(usually several hundred of varied just to build the constituent components) and then you need to grind for credits to buy ANOTHER blueprint so you can put them together. And the building is all real time cooldowns, usually 3 days just to BUILD your new Warframe or Sentinel(think familiar that shoots things) or Weapon. Which ALL start at level one with no abilities( you only earn mods through combat and they give you your abilities to use in game). Comparing this to a similar game style that is Mass Effect 3's multiplayer, it doesn't take you nearly as long to progress in unlocking content. Unless you don't mind a grind or have a massive amount of money, don't bother with this Skinner box ****. It is one of the worst examples of "Pay2Play" I've seen in a while despite its fun(at first) combat and funky aesthetic. Also one more note, even with a 50mb download the game lags horribly most of the time.

This is a disappointment when compared to Dragon Age Origins. The story is haphazardly told, on the first release the combat is lopsided with difficulty spikes and cheap tactics(enemies that literally spawn on top of your weakest characters with no time to react or regroup), your characters are mostly one note individuals(they butchered the character of Anders), lackluster loot, button mashing combat, simplified ability tree's. However there is some joy to hear your party members converse with each other and the graphics are improved over DAO with a more unified art style. This is a lackluster sequel in nearly all ways and doesn't really let you PLAY a ROLE in the world of Dragon Age despite the illusion that you are. The story ends the same exact way every time, every major event that happens in the game happens the same way every playthrough, unlike DAO that allowed you to affect the major events through dialogue and gameplay choices. After the patches and DLC, this is playable and is only recommended for die hard fans of the series. If you're interested in Dragon Age, do NOT start with Dragon Age 2, it is a black spot on the world that will most likely turn you off to the rest of the series released.