Initially I gave this game an 8 out of 10 because I thought it was overall a fun f2p open world rpg, with a cast of colorful characters and overall a simple but enjoyable combat, but the more I played the more I realized the issue with the game itself, and how I couldn't really enjoy it as much. Now I could start with the fact that the game is greedy, which it is, but i want to be honest here: the extra characters aren't "really" required to play the game, they're only needed to play "optimally" and that's mostly it: in today's era where people like ultra optimized runs, having specific combo of characters is a wet dream coming true, but this also comes with the problem of how expensive the game becomes in this regard. Besides characters, everything else is also tied to rolls - for the exception of experience, but more to that later - so the game actively expects you to roll and roll and roll in order to obtain 1) Better characters 2) Better weapons 3) More constellation stars, which are given when you roll a double. 4) The currency which is gotten from doubles, in which you can use to to obtain extra items. It easily becomes a vicious cycle here: yes you are able to roll without paying but it takes a lot of time to grind the required primogems to obtain 10 rolls - and yes you WANT to do 10 rolls as it gives a guaranteed 5 star roll, which may also be a weapon too by the way - and while you can play freely and without actually paying money this can become a problem when it comes to weapons and other stats: I never paid a single dime but I struggle to find better weapons due to my lack of good rolls, and the battle pass (yes, there's even a battle pass now) really doesn't incentivize you enough, and even then you can probably get one weapon anyway. It's just a lot of money to play decently, and it can be frustrating when you try to play without and suddenly you get a block because "Oh crap I don't have any good weapons now". And while there's crafting, their weapons are subpar in comparison to rolls and battle pass. But this is nothing, I haven't really tackled on one of the major issues of the game: the resin system. The resin system is essentially your amount of available activities you can do as it dries up the more you do them. This is nothing new to be honest, other mmorpgs do similar ways with fatigue systems and the like, heck Granblue Fantasy does the same (but better). The problem here is tied to the exp and money you are needed in order to play the game and how this can very well be a problem in the future. Let me be straightforward: the game is not easy to level up after a certain threshold, as it doesn't require you to kill or grind enemies but to grind books, the most expensive and rare giving you 20k each plus a certain amount of mora (the money) you must spend. This can be extremely problematic later on because the price gets higher and higher, the exp required gets to millions and the money expenses get more and more and the only way to farm money after you're done with everything is to farm ley lines, which are tied to resin: this means the resin can actively hold you back if you don't grind well. But unfortunately, there's more: after a certain levels you get (20 levels until 40, then every 10 levels) you need to do what's called an ascension, which is basically what I'd call "level break" as you need to grind some materials in-game and of course spend some mora, which is actually not a lot. The problem? You need to do certain bosses and said bosses might drop one out of, say, 2 or 3 of the items required for your ascension, but due to the resin system, this might drain your storage and force you to try again and waste more resin! You have 160 resin (up from 120) but a boss can take 40 resin! That's 4 attempts before you need to stop. Or if you pay money to recharge (or primogems, not that you want to). It's truly a shame though because I think the game is actually nice: the story is nice enough, I like the quality behind it, there's a lot of voice acting and the characters are well designed and enjoyable, there are some really nice twists here and there that make the story very enjoyable (but nothing too mindblowing), but due to how the game plays and demands your full money it can be discouraging: I usually try to play around events because I know I can get some exp and mora boosts, so I can level up some characters. I have about 10 characters but I cannot level all of them because of the poor resin system and the lack of books (which cannot be bought with money but rolls allow you to obtain currency that you can spend on them). Until they try to tone down some of the requirements for the leveling and upgrade system (I forgot you can also upgrade talents, which also costs mats and mora. NICE!), it's better to take it easy and maybe wait for when they nerf a little. Or just skip it entirely and move on.
Simply put, one of the best jrpgs of this year: the combat was good old turn based fun, with a job system like the old times, and vast amounts of minigames that alone are very fun (especially loved dragon kart, even though it was very easy). Not just that: the story is very good, a bit confusing at times but definitely a story that kept me curious until the end, and with plenty of twists and turns that got me really hooked into it. But even though the story was serious it still didn't shy away to be funny when it **** is yakuza, after all, it can do both flawlessly and this time the game makes fun of jrpgs tropes, and it's just so fun! But be warned, the game isn't flawless, AT ALL. In fact I would say there are a huge amount of flaws in the game, some of which are very frustrating to deal with and ruined my day a lot of times. For starters, avoiding combat is hard: enemies have an ENORMOUS vision and will see you very easily, making the escape much harder than it should. Secondly, the game is very unbalanced when it comes to leveling and jobs: leveling through normal fights is pretty much pointless, they give almost no exp and you're required to grind either the arena or the invested vagabonds, basically the metal slimes of this game which gives a lot of exp and job exp. As for jobs, they're fine for the most part and they're basically the jobs you may see in a class-based MMORPG or JRPG: bodyguards are more like berserkers, enforcers are knights, chefs are ninjas, and so on. The major issue is how most of the jobs are weaker than the character's unique jobs, and the only reason to use a different job is to get their unique skills, in particular, the elemental skills since most jobs don't have any. In fact, this leads to the issue of jobs being very unbalanced: most jobs have too many samey with same attributes and only very few can be brought to other jobs, like the lightning spell from the fortuneteller or the bomb from the foreman, which usually leads to these jobs only being important to give you the needed spells and nothing more. This can be a serious problem because the game has only 6 elements - Blunt, Blade, Gun, Fire, Water, Lightning - but a lot of late enemies are weak to the actual spells and not to physical attacks, which forces you to spam one or two moves at best. A lot of enemies are simply too resistant to blunt and blade attacks, and there are not many magic spells or gun attacks to make for it, so you WILL have to learn as many skills as you can to get on the other jobs... In addition, there's a huge imbalance with leveling as well: at chapter 12 you'll unlock the arena, at around level 30 or something, and you are REQUIRED to do this as the next boss you'll fight is a bloody level 50 boss! I repeat, you are required to do this seemingly optional content at chapter 12, or else you will die at the level 50 boss! And it's a very hard one considering it has adds, and then a second boss comes into the fight as well! And last, but definitely not least, the game is over if the leader **** all the bloody things they had to take inspiration from, why take the flaw of Persona (or Shin Megami Tensei in general)? This is so, SO frustrating I cannot believe they did this. Kasuga, the protagonist, isn't a terrible character at all, the hero class can pretty much do everything from healing to buffing, and even has a self-saving spell that allows him to survive a fatal **** why give us a game over if he dies?! There are resurrecting spells, and very easy to obtain, and even items that can ress characters! So why is it a game over if Kasuga dies?! I just...URGH! Beyond that, the game is overall fine: there's no difficult selection but the game is overall easy (if you keep yourself leveled that is) and most of the options like crafting are pretty useless until late game. The business management game is fun but you'll also have to do it in order to unlock an additional extra character - which also has no point to the story, so you'll never see them ever interacting with anyone...just why even bother? - and most minigames are enjoyable. There's also a lot of side-stories to do, some good, some great, some funny. Overall, the game is chockfull of content to do and it's a good time waster if you are into minigames, and there are many to do. I guess the biggest issue is, being a Yakuza game, it's no longer a brawler and I respect the skepticism, however, I highly recommend giving the game a try even if you're a fan of the Yakuza series, because I think they were very bold to try something completely different than before, and overall succeeded in doing it, and if this game is good enough we might get an even better sequel with more balanced gameplay, and an even better story! It's definitely not a masterpiece by any means, but the game is so full of stuff, and so much fun to play, I cannot recommend it enough! Give it a shot if you can!
I have so many questions about this game, but if I could use one word to summarize this game, it would be "disappointing", because there was so much potential but it ends up being a mediocre sequel to the original DERQ, which was a jrpg that I really enjoyed and was above average for the standards. So the question now is, why do I think this game is mediocre? I can boil it down to 3 points: 1) Worse Characters. The main roster consists of 3 characters which are Mai, Rotten (or Rottie), and Liliana, and that's about it. What about the others? Oh, there's Shina but she doesn't fight, instead, you use her Avatar, just like the avatars of the other girls. But that's not actually Shina fighting with you! Anyway, the main trio is really pathetic: Mai starts out really interesting but ends up being really meh, and Rottie is constantly **** Mai to become her girlfriend (just to be fair, Rottie does get good scenes much later). As for **** exists I guess, she doesn't get many many good scenes except very few in the middle and maybe at the end. As for the rest, I appreciate the fact there are a lot of NPC with faces, but that's about it. Overall, the characters feel mediocre and not that interesting, and even in the end, it's really disappointing. 2) Too much VN, very little JRPG: The first game was a mix between VN and JRPG, and it felt like a decent mix in my opinion as both parts were required and they had a contrasting feeling, with the VN parts being in the real world and the JRPG in the game world. This game however brings far too much VN sections and this also causes the problem that "there's no more distinction" between the two parts and now you're basically in the real world, sorta. On top of that, there's much, MUCH fewer choices now, and the game is also lacking in the atmosphere since it's basically one location, a city called "Le Choara" (and later on another area), so even on that regard is lacking! Even the Pain Area is the same thing as the first! They added some unique puzzle mechanics sure, but that's it! There's so much less to explore in this sequel that it makes Neptunia look like a better game! And last but not least... 3) Death end Re;Quest 2? More like Corpse Party 3! I'm almost certain that this game wasn't meant to be a sequel to DERQ but instead was meant to be a game more akin to Corpse Party: If you remove everything about the programming, the gaming world, the hacking and etc, this game becomes a jrpg about the occult where you fight demons at night and need to discover the truth. I appreciate that they tried to tie the first game though, in particular by adding bits of story with Lydia from the first game in ng+, but i really don't see this game as a sequel to DERQ: the fact that you're "hacking" in the real world, the fact that you're using avatars in the real world, it's a mess. Stuff like Glitch Mode isn't even explained, or the Buggie, or why the world is filled with Code... In addition, the game is very short, clocking in about 24 hours or less, depending on your reading speed, and there's not much content beyond the Pain Area, which probably took me 2 to 3 hours to finish, and only because it's long and really repetitive. Honestly, this game is just disappointing but it's not bad, which is the problem: if the game was simply bad I wouldn't bother too much but this game had a lot of potentials, a lot of promise, but it comes out just as another below-average jrpg, whereas DERQ1 was above average! And add the fact that there's a freaking sequel bait in the EX ending, we're supposed to get another DERQ **** honestly, I'm not having many hopes and, honestly, DERQ1 had a pretty decent ending. Do I recommend it? Yes but don't buy it full price, it is NOT worth the full price: I spent 40 and I still feel disappointed. And if you can, grab and play the first game, cause there are going to be spoilers from the first game.
I only heard of this game through some random videos on youtube but I was already struck by the style and music: the style is unique and the first game that comes to mind is Psychonauts, while the music is varied and extremely enjoyable - and I still listen to the OST everytime. When I got the game I was very curious because I didn't know much else besides being a platform game with a sort of boss rush mechanic, but in the end it's a very good game. The characters are fantastic, they are so charming and enjoyable to watch, the animations are great and the faces so expressive. Also the bosses are quite unique and I really enjoy all them, being some stereotypes of today's music industry (The DJ, the vocaloid, the child prodigy, the boyband, and the "Lady Gaga") but still have enough personality to make them enjoyable to watch. What's even great here is that, as much as the NSR are the villain here, the game really doesn't side with anyone and there's even a great message at the end of the game that really wants to say that "all types of music are valid and as good!" So that's why I want to be brutally honest here and say that as much as I love this game, it's very hard to recommend it as it is due to the annoying amount of bugs that can ruin the game. Now, the ps4 version overall works fine, didn't have any major game-breaking bugs so far and it's overall functioning and even managed to reach the end of the game, but the problem starts when you try to play and do other things, as well as some people having worse bugs than me: currently the only major bug I have is the inability to unlock perfect parry mode but I heard of people having black screens, while for me the boss energy bar was all white. The game itself seems to work overall fine, but that's because I got lucky, and I can't say you if you buy it, will have the same luck. Because of this, I would recommend caution when buying this game: the game is overall cheap too, only 40 euros to me, so it is worth the price at least, but if you're the unlucky one who was unfortunate enough to get a game breaking bug, then it's either restarting the game, wait for a patch, or give up... If the game had no bugs, I would've easily given this game a full 8/10 because it still does have some other small flaws - the game is very short, finished it in less than 8 hours, and some fights in higher difficulties don't seem to be very balanced either. But once this game gets fully fixed, it'll be an amazing ride with no straight roads!
Besides the first day issue with servers, the game is a fun time and it deserves attention: it's battle royale about managing to go through an obstacle course rather than shooting or killing and if you win the match you get to the next and try to stay alive. There are about 4-5 matches each "episode" (I think that's what its called) and each match can last from 1 to 5 minutes, depending on how difficult it is. Honestly, my only issue is how the game is reliant on luck than actual skills: you can learn the games and eventually get good at them but it's extremely difficult to win because it's solely relied on luck and hardly on anything else. Your fall guy is sluggish and doesn't move fast, he's slow and any hit will make him ragdoll for a brief moment which alone can make you lose some games, and even then you might still love if you just jump wrong or move differently: it wasn't uncommon for me to lose a match despite having an advantage on position. I wish they would make it possible for the others to have a way to recover their position somehow, like a rubber band, because there are many "races" in this game and one of the final stages IS a race, so if you start wrong you're gonna lose. Also, the game gets repetitive fast and that's an issue that should be taken care off soon because people might get tired and leave the game and this game requires players to be playable: I think they should have a custom play where few friends can play other minigames and have specific matches played or simply have custom plays with X amount of players so that you can at least enjoy short matches. For the moment, I think it's a fine game: still needs some cure and I hope they expand the game soon because it does get repetitive even after short playing sessions.
Before starting this review, a few disclaimers: I have played neither Zero no Kiseki or Aoi no Kiseki but my judgment of the game won't change a whole lot, and secondly I never finished the Trails in the Sky trilogy...because I hate that game. With that out of the way, I had a lot of expectations after finishing the second game: CS2 is easily one of my favorite jrpgs of all time, just a few notches below Berseria, and not just that but the combat in CS2 was fun thanks to the changes in magic and making the fight overall more varied and yet still complex. On top of that, the ending was self-contained enough to be satisfying regardless of this sequel. So it is sad for me to say, that Trails of Cold Steel **** good, but not as good. I want to start with some positives: graphically the game has improved...somewhat, it still feels very ps3-ish and there's an overabundance of blur used. It reminds me of the ps4 ports of CS1 and 2, which were upscaled ps3/vita versions, so graphically speaking it does its job but you can see there's not a lot of new things going. The gameplay has improved a little: they put the turbo mode from the ps4 ports of cs1 and 2 which is GOOD because the game is extremely slow-paced, so slow that I would play them in turbo to make sure the fights ended quicker. You can also save anywhere by pressing options instead of going to the menu AND then pressing select/option, which is one step less. And the minigames have also improved: fishing is a lot less annoying and requires only to hold a button, while the Vantage Masters card game ("SIGH" another card game) is essentially a simpler version of hearthstone. More stuff to later. Combat hasn't seen many changes overall, but these changes are pretty interesting: beyond the UI changes of the combat (which has the ONLY issue of being too small IMHO) they added a new thing called Brave Orders, which are AoE buffs that use Brave Points - the same you use for Rush and Burst - to help the game. They also added Break Gauges, which are mini defense bars that enemy have that when depleted will lead them to a state of weakness, every attack will be a critical hit, and they won't act until it's their turn And with that, I think it's time to talk about the negatives because I'm extremely conflicted here. Don't get me wrong it's a great game so far, spent over 50 hours in and I'm in chapter 3 and I know I should at least finish, but I have many concerns about this game....starting with the combat itself. I want to be honest here: I never found combat in trails of cold steel (and even in sky tbh) to be balanced or "fun" at all, for the simple reasons that it was hard and very unfair and always against you and this game doesn't shy away from that - I think this game is way harder than 1 and 2. As per usual every enemy in the game will solely rely upon status effects or 1 shot moves to make the game hard and because of that, it can lead to frustrating moments that can make you ragequit, like frogs spamming nightmare status on all your team and then SLOWLY killing them off without even letting you escape. This is why you want to usually use rush the enemies and bosses before they react and why Brave Orders are here. Despite being simple buffs, they're EXTREMELY important, and by the end of the game you'll be using 2: Sledgehammer and Wind Blade, a.k.a. "break and stunlock to death". That's the only to survive most boss OHKO moves or being afflicted from status effects. Sure it was usually "spam S-Crafts until they die" but that's not as effective anymore, or only situational. Annoying really, but not as annoying as the story. First and foremost, I do like the fact that you get to meet the old class VII and all of the graduates but this time you deal with a new class VII and, to be blunt, they're not as interesting as the OG class VII I'm not sure how important they are at the end - which is why I regret not writing this after finishing the game - but good lord they're annoying! I would explain why but my space is little, but they're just uninteresting **** that have no part of the story, except being your students! I would have loved having Elise or Alfin as students under Rean instead (and it would make sense too but I can't say why) or maybe even Thoma from Nord trying to follow Gaius steps or something. At least Altina is back and she's pretty good and better developed. Overall, it's a good jrpg, and a worthy sequel but in comparison to 1 and 2 I thought it's lacking a lot. I highly recommend playing this after 1 and 2, as there's too much stuff recurring and not just characters and events. I think it's the bare minimum. As for the ties to Ao/Zero and sky stuff, I think it's not all that needed: it's a good boost but the game doesn't sway from the Erebonian arc so much you MUST have played it. It made me curious but that's it.
I have quit Xenoblade Chronicles on the Wii years ago because I was waiting for this, and it finally did, at long last I can finally play Xenoblade Chronicles 1 with a decent controller, better QoL changes, and put Xenoblade Chronicles 2 where it belongs: into the trash. XC:DE is essentially a remastered version of the original game from wii and with some added bonus like the extra campaign, added QoL changes like quest tracking and signs for moves, and of course that (horrendous) anime style that reeks of Xenoblade 2. This is probably my biggest nitpick of all because the original wii version had a style more reminiscent of a final fantasy game, which was pretty good and it fit the style of the game, but now they took the AWFUL style of Xenoblade 2, which already didn't know which style to stick with, and made the characters into anime characters. To be very fair, some characters do look fine like Melia, Shulk, Sharla and even Riki looks nicer, but some others look terrible (What have they done to you Reyn and Fiora?) and some don't even look much different (****, Mumkhar, Dunban etc). It's very hit or miss and I wish they'd stick with the original game **** at the very least it's one style instead of hundreds like in XC2. With that out of the way, the game is just like 10 years ago: the combat is fast, it's fun, it's tactical and basically, what XC2 should've been (and what XCX did but not as good), you have skill trees which allow each character to have up to 5 talent trees, with each character having the ability of a skill link that allows borrowing a talent from one of the characters - based on the friendship level. Skills can be upgraded further via points and books, allowing them to become even stronger, and thanks to the talent trees each character is capable to be ACTUALLY multiple role (I will never forget swimsuit dunban with so much strength he was a dps machine). The amount of customization in this game is maddening and truly shows the amount of care this game received, including different armor for each character (YES, actual armor showing in a jrpg, when was the last time you saw this?) incredible large areas to explore, crafting, trading, building (for the colonies), and much, much, MUCH, MUCH more! In all honesty, the bad things I could tell, are very minimal but still quite annoying. For one the gem removal could've been tweaked better. Aggro is still an issue and Reyn isn't all that better, requiring me to stack up aggro gems to avoid others from being obliterated. Expert mode is a joke and it's basically XC2 way of banking experience instead of using them right away instead of, you know, an actual difficulty option (there is Casual mode but the game is a joke already). Jumping is very floaty and really unreliable even in this version, the minimap is incredibly small and the large map (pressing the L analog) is too big and not well zoomed. Still only 3 slots but at the very least you get an autosave. And personally, my biggest pet peeve is the price point: 60 euros for a remaster is quite a lot and really didn't sit well to me when you can buy remasters - and remakes too - for much less. Don't take me wrong, the game is worth all its money, and the extra campaign is a nice touch, but would you pay 60 euros for a hd remaster of, say, Final Fantasy 10? or Dragon quest 8? It's a 10-year-old game, it shouldn't be priced like a recent game, especially when it's quite literally the same game on the Wii with improved graphics and nothing more (the voice acting is the same as the Wii version, and the music, while re-arranged, it was still good back in the way). And I'm fairly sure the extra campaign isn't worth the 60 euro price point either and if we can compare it to Torna, it won't be longer than 20 hours. But It's sad to say that, despite the price issue and the minimal tweaking done, it shows this game is as solid as a rock: this game was good back in 2010 and it's still good today, and there's hardly any other jrpg that can be compared to this when it comes to content. The only issue I could add is that the story is...okay, and very predictable, but I'll take this story over XC2 anytime so it's still solid! So if you're curious, and you want to play a PROPER Xenoblade chronicles after that disgrace of a sequel called 2, then this is the game you must play. It's a solid jrpg in every way and it's easily one of the best jrpg of all time.
I never managed to finish this game when I bought and for almost a decade it stood there taking dust: it was after playing Nier Automata that I got the will to try again, managing to clear it once and for all. I guess Nier automata wasn't so bad if it made me want to play this one! Either way, Nier - or its actual name Nier Gestalt - is an action RPG where you play the role of, well, "Nier" whose task is to save Yonah from a disease called the "Black Scrawl". While in Gestalt you play the role of a father, in Replicant you'd play the brother but both games are identical no matter what. Anyway, the game is an action styled RPG which means you have weapons to take and use, initially starting with 1h swords and eventually adding 2handed and spears to the mix. You also have magic to use alongside weapon attacks, split into normal and "special" which is different for each type of weapon (1h does a small nudge that can push back, spears do a lunge and 2handed does an AoE attack around you). You can dodge and parry and overall the magic you have is plenty enough to let you experiment, including words that augment your weapons and magic. What doesn't work in the end is the lack of polish: graphically this game is terrible and chugs frames, the combat is sluggish and there's not even a lock-on option, enemies are all the same and only have 2 variants (armored and not armored) magic is good but only a few spells are worth the effort, leveling is grindy and uneventful, the world is small and only has a few areas with no dungeons (there are only 5 cities) and overall it's mediocre on many levels. However, it's the story that makes it all the worthwhile: the story starts very slowly and will take you a while to enjoy it to its fullest, but once things start it gets intriguing and you want to see the end. Characters are all likable and they get some very good screentime of their own - I especially enjoyed Kainè's story after the first ending - and the music is SUPERB, probably one of my favorite music of all time and I constantly listen on repeat. And one thing that I love about this game's story is that it doesn't try so hard to be interesting: the story is all about how humans can easily fail because of their emotions and how not everything can go to plan and they have to cope with it. It's deep but not pretentious like automata, where half of the sad scenes were so shoved in that it was hilarious and often made no sense. In Gestalt I was legitimately sad because characters you knew and loved from quests or the story could disappear at any time - in that regard, the quests are really good too, many good and bittersweet stories that were legitimately enjoyable to do - and none felt that pretentious or forced in: **** happens", that's what I thought....even though some deaths still felt forced and not all that fleshed out, but overall they were all pretty good. Do I recommend the game? Absolutely: Nier Gestalt was quite an enjoyable trip and unlike Automata, which was a chore from start to end, here you aren't required to replay the entire game 3 times but only from the middle end. The game has also 4 endings, ABCD, but ending D is the infamous one where it deletes your save file AND UNLIKE NIER AUTOMATA ENDING E this isn't optional and will require you to delete your save file for **** considering I spent nearly 70 hours completing this game to 100% it was pretty tough to see all my progress being wiped out. Still, if you enjoyed Automata, this game will definitely make you enjoy it even more and if you come from Automata you'll enjoy all the references you'll see. And maybe I'll get to enjoy Automata a bit more, who knows....
I don't know what crazy thought went through my head after new year's eve, but I decided to try this game again after 10 years it came out - or close to 10 years - and only today I managed to finally finish it and get over it and I'm glad to say It doesn't disappoint in disappointing. It's not a surprise if this game was THE game that made Square Enix become the laughing stock they are in current year and for good reasons: plot is non-sensical, has glaring plot-holes that eventually keep stacking up, there's barely any explanation for anything, characters are unlikable, combat is a chore, game is so linear it makes Call of duty look open world in comparison, and many MANY more issues. Let's start with the plot: Lightning and the gang are humans who turn into l'cie, which are essentially tools for beings called fal'Cie, and are given a focus to complete. If they manage to complete said focus they will be turning into crystal but if they lose they'll be turned into crystal zombies. What's the focus? We don't know because the writers didn't know how to make it any more idiotic and instead actually telling us "we have to figure it out ourselves" they relied on images and dreams because "deep". The main cast is also abhorrent to say the least: Lightning is a totally unlikable B, Hope is your whiny teen boy who cries for half the game, Vanille is your generic japanese school girl if she was australian and a dressed like a native american, Snow is an idiot and Fang is a man but turned into a woman at the last minute but without changing her dialogue or even how she behaves. Sazh is probably the only good character but because Square wanted to make him a comedy relief they tried to make him that, resulting in a mishmash of ideas. In addition a lot of plot details aren't explained ingame, which is a role given to the datalog...yeah, if you don't know what a l'cie is check the datalog. What's the PSICOM? check the datalog. Don't you love having to do homework for following a plot? I don't! There's more I could say about the plot but bottom line it's borderline boring and insipid: there's no flow, there's no pacing, characters keep repeating the same thing all the time and the deus ex machina at the end is so **** it would make anyone lose credibility this plot had any potential. I played bad stories before but this one isn't even that bad, it's just boring and uninspired. But let's step into the main part ****, the gameplay, and oh my Lord this game is terrible: for starters the game is extremely linear and for at least 20-30 hours you will have long hallways of fights to do in order to complete the game, which aren't funny nor are exciting. Secondly, when the game opens up you are required to grind a lot of in order to be "acceptable" later in the game, as enemies in Pulse hit like trucks. And third the combat is so unfun, so repetitive that at the end fo the game I couldn't bother fight anymore and went straight to the end boss. Infact let's put the focus - HAHAHA - on the combat: the combat is turn based and you'll be controlling one character per time, and if the leader dies it's game over. That's a good start isn't it? Secondly, the game is based around "classes" such as dps tank, healer and buffer and shifting paradigms to change formation each time required to kill the enemies. However there's one major fact in the game which is the "stagger" system", which after a certain amount of damage your enemy will be staggered, turn orange, and for a short time will take X more amount of damage shown in the stagger bar, and after the bar ends you fill it again. That's the entire combat for the rest of the game: you quite literally do this over, and over, and OVER again, for 50-60 hours, non-stop. Bosses cannot be killed normally - I mean last boss has 6 million hp! - so you NEED stagger to kill any enemy with more than regular hp, which is all of them, and this makes combat not only redundant but also not fun or exciting. There's no variety, no real tactics or anything: all you do is stagger and kill. Close to death? Heal, buff, then stagger again, until they die. Of course unless the enemy will suddenly decide to insta-kill your leader and make your entire 10-15 minute boss fight go to waste...which is so nice and totally didn't make me wanna rage quit one single bit! So, bottom line, do I recommend this? ABSOLUTELY NOT. Stay away as far as possible from this abomination!. There is a reason Square Enix - not Square SOFT - has been going downhill for a while and this game is the proof of all that: it has no "focus", it has no passion, it has no love, it has no sense, it literally has nothing going for it. It's simply a shallow game with a famous brand name on top of it which meant it sold a lot, even had 2 sequels, but no quality into it. I just wished I finished it 10 years ago so I would return it but alas, this game will stain my collection forever and ever...
Tokyo Xanadu Ex+ (shortening to TXE from now on) it's the upgraded version of Tokyo Xanadu for the vita and it's an action jrpg with a lot of emphasis on story, characters and **** before someone might say "it's just like persona" I am going to stop you there and tell you "this is actually like Trails of Cold Steel", complete with the same UI, same ideas, same questing system, same event, and bonding system, literally same everything. Except the combat that is. The story revolves around Kou which is your generic grumpy and unlikable MC who suddenly sees the generic tsundere love interest of the game getting into a portal to another world and from here the game will soon open up to the fact there are organizations aimed to clear these dungeons and that everything is all undercovered in the underground. While the obvious similarities to persona is there, I would at least say "it's similar to persona 3" which is my favorite persona of the bunch, especially with all the "secret organization vibe going" that I really enjoy. However, the main issue with the story it's the characters: they're the most generic and stereotypical anime characters you can find and it's a hard swallow for those who aren't into anime culture like me. For example, Kou looks like your generic uncaring guy with a potential harem surrounding him, Asuka is so tsundere (or kuudere?) it makes me yawn how much she hides her personality, and Sora is the ultra generic childhoodfriend-love interest-tomboy-love triangle rival it's so painful to watch. I didn't get all of the characters but it's really annoying the first time you meet them and while the characters do improve with time, it does have an anime vibe that might discourage normal players to get into it. To put it on perspective, TOCS cast is also very generic and clichè but they do show their best and their improvements early on, and the cast is bigger so you have a lot of options. In here it feels like I'm watching some sort of super sentai show with harem elements. It's really hard to watch at times. Overall, if you're heavy into anime, the cast won't bother you really that much and the story is interesting enough to keep you hooked, plus if you played TOCS you're pretty much already acknowledged of how the game works. Heck the game is so similar to TOCS even Towa is in thanks to the power of Mary Sue. But if the system and gimmicks work a lot like TOCS, the actual game itself is completely different and it's more similar to a Ys game: the combat is action-based and you're going to fight in long, semi-linear dungeons in an attempt to get the highest rank possible and getting S so to get the best results. The combat is pretty fast and it uses an elemental base system to fight against enemies and each character can use up to 2 elements (you start with 1) to fend them off and it's heavily encouraged in order to get S rank, which improves Kou 3 main stats (Courage, Wisdom, Virtue). You have different types of attacks you can upgrade the Grid system and each slot can be upgraded so you can put different Elements, including a Master Core. Sound familiar? Jokes aside, the system works but it does feel overcomplicated for the wrong reasons, however upgrading slots - which requires materials to grind - do give bonuses to your stats and it will force some extra grind to make yourself viable. If anything money is much easier to obtain. Overall the combat system does **** man it's tough as nails! I'm not going to beat around the bush: TXE is pretty hard and I think it's because you have fewer enemies on screen than a regular Ys game, which means they compensate for the lack of enemies by making each enemy much more difficult to take down. I'm not kidding when I say that I actually died on the first bosses because of the damage output they make and how tough it is to dodge their attacks, however, the dodging system is a lot clunkier and it's much easier to get hit, despite having a "timing" gimmick where you can be invulnerable for a few seconds but after that, you can get hit very easily. Honestly, the problem with the combat's difficulty is that you usually fight alone, enemies have a lot of mechanics and moves to predict (especially in Calamity) and especially at the beginning you can easily lose more than half your entire hp bar, if not die completely, if you get hit with several attacks in a row. It's relentless but the combat system isn't as smooth or polished as ys 8, which makes it a lot harder to grasp and less satisfying to master. Bottom line, do I recommend? Yes but at the same time I'd recommend to get a copy of Ys8 and play that game first, which is a lot better in every aspect and you can find it everywhere for cheap (except switch which I highly discourage because of poor framerate. You've been warned) But if you played that game already and hoped for some action jrpg, this could be a good choice. Just don't expect Ys8!
Rather than a Battle Royale, this game is more like a regular deathmatch game with survival elements and it's not a bad thing at all! I'm not a huge fan of BR to begin with - I only really ever played Apex Legends and SOME fortnite before getting bored - but this game surprised at how simple and yet so complex it can be. For starters, the game matches have only 10 players plus the announcer if there is one (more to that later) and the game is split into 7 areas where players will randomly spawn, rather than drop by from the sky. Once the game started your focus is to kill the other enemies...before the cold kills you. This is where the survival mechanics come in: you can gather wood and leather and they're required to make everything you need, from arrows for your bows to upgrades to your coat to help to reduce the cold, including enough wood to make a fire. The game has no guns: you have a bow and an axe while the rest is meant to be taken from the ground. On top of that the cold is your enemy and to avoid dying from it you have to put up a fire that will reveal your position and can potentially get you killed. And even then, enemies can still track you down if they scout the places you've looted which means there's always some tension behind, whether from the cold, scavenging, or running away from another player. Another feature that makes the game very fun is how the arena is split into 7 hexagons and instead of a ring that shrinks now and then you can get a random area being denied after several seconds: this makes the overall game much easier to breathe and it gives a lot of time to search before going away...however the electronics will force players to eventually go an area and retrieve it since electronics are the only method to obtain extra skills. Said extra skills are chosen before a match via a proper skill selector which allows you to choose all sorts of varieties of upgrades and the skills you need, from invisibility to jump higher or glide, etc. And last but not least, the announcer is probably the funniest thing you can do: it's essentially an eleventh player who doesn't play the game but instead affects the game itself by making decisions, such as giving items to a player to help him out or deciding which area to eliminate or to ask players to talk if they want rewards. I didn't get many matches with an announcer but when I did it was always fun because it forced players to either play along or be punished. Bottom line, this game is very fun, much smaller in scale and simpler in terms of mechanics but there's a lot of fun to be had. I played it while in beta and i was really enjoying and now that it's released I highly recommend to give it a shot.
Long time ago, in a generation of consoles far away, there was this little game called Drakengard which was a mixture between an action and an rpg very similar to Dynasty Warriors, with large areas to go, the ability to ride the dragon and many, MANY enemies to kill. The plot was dark, the characters likable yet questionable, and one of the endings - ending A - would lead to a sequel, Drakengard 2, which is a much lighter in tones than the first game. However, it's ending E that would lead to the eventual creation of a little title that not many knew, probably one of the most curious games I ever played. That game is of course NieR. Yeah I guess Nier Automata also exists but now I digress. This is all to say how much I LOVED the Drakengard series: I played the first 2 games so much, i got all weapons, got all endings, and everything. I was so in love with the series that I only bought NieR later because I had no clue it was tied to the series! Then there's NieR automata but we don't talk about that. So it pains me to say that Drakengard 3 is, to put it nicely, complete garbage. Let's start with what could be a good point: the story is interesting and I really enjoyed the character interactions and overall dark humor behind it. I was afraid that the silly humor would ruin the overall dark and gritty and bloody theme of the game but I'm glad it didn't: between swear words and a sex joke there was legitimate care and talent in making the game flow greatly and I'm amazed how it works well. I was NEVER tired of the dialogues, I was NEVER tired of the swearings and highly offensive regards but that's because it KNEW how to pace it, it KNEW how to make each sentence work against another. I'm just amazed how well it worked and I played this game non-stop for over 10 hours because it was just that entertaining. Why can't Square Enix be like this anymore... The plot itself, not to go into spoilers, is a prequel to the original Drakengard which means nothing can be lost if you start with this one, however one thing I felt it wasn't a good choice was to sell tons and tons of DLC that serves as prologues for the events before the main game. We wouldn't see this kind of greed until ff15 but it's sad to see it started from **** least I think so. But beyond the story, which is interesting and definitely the best (and only) good thing of the game, it's EVERYTHING ELSE that completely takes the cake and makes it from a potential nice action game from a complete wreck. How can I start this **** controls are godawful, probably one of the worst controls I've had in a long time and I played enough games to know that this is bad enough that I can't believe they let it go. It's so bad that not only it often doesn't connect hits but it also locks you in one direction, making you go to another direction despite you're pressing another. I also want to mention how IT CANNOT BE CUSTOMIZED, how it randomly opens the menu, how the lock on always disappears, how there is 2 buttons for weapon swap for no reason, how the intoner mode doesn't always turn on because R3 and L3 don't always work, and many many many MANY more issues, i think it's safe to say that more attention to the controls would've made a world of difference. When you make a game hard because of bad controls, you made a bad game. But oh no, there's more: if controls don't bother you there's the technical issues that will definitely poke your eyes and probably blind you. The game is quite literally broken on many levels: the game is supposedly on a 30 fps, which was normal back then for most action games too, but it DROPS CONSTANTLY and there are times that I can safely say it went below 10 fps to the point of a slideshow. Not only that but the camera is completely uncontrollable and will often get stuck on walls and make you see nothing of the enemies. It also makes other sections of the game, like the dragon ones, just a pain to sit through. This is all technical stuff that could've been fixed but guess what? Square Enix did exactly diddly squat! I'm currently playing the 1.00 version which means it never got patched - AND YES, I did check for updates and there are none! On top of that, IT'S DIGITAL ONLY FOR EUROPE! They absolutely did NOT care to release it here in retail! How scummy can you **** be?! In other words, this game was dead on arrival and Square Enix killed it before even release. It's clearly it was rushed to meet a deadline and they had no expectations that this game would be any good so they released it without even testing it properly. It would take 3 years for Nier Automata to give some justice to the series and give it some recognition to old and new fans for the series but considering what we got I would have preferred to let it rest. Do I recommend it? Absolutely not, don't buy this game: I got it on discount and I still feel it wasn't worth it. Watch a longplay and save your money and your patience.
It's an okay game: I'm glad it was included with psn because if I bought it I would want a refund right away, and not because it's bad but because it's less than 3 hours long and frankly I didn't get it. WRoEF is, in few words, a walking simulator where you discover the story of Edith Finch in her journey back to her old house 7 years after she left it: here she will discover the past of her family and the presumed "curse" of it, where all of her family members seemed to slowly disappear in a way or another and her job is to discover the reason behind it and why by delving into the large house and eventually figure out why or if there is a curse. The game is, as you expected, set into the large house of the Finches and since there's no running you'll be slowly - SLOWLY - walk around without the chance to even increase the pace. I'm not blaming the game to be slow but I wish I could get a little faster in some areas, alas this is not the case. The house is well detailed, very nicely done and I really enjoyed exploring it and see the past of the family members of the Finches, until the very end. Now credits where credits due, the presentation is well done and I really like how the dialogue written in a way you don't have to look down on the bottom of the screen. Add a well-written dialogue that is a bit campy at times but it does its job, I overall enjoyed the story and I felt satisfied with the ending as well. Still...I don't get **** I supposed to feel sad? I mean yeah, it was sad to see people dying but that's pretty obvious, but what about showing more about the characters that weren't a few lines and just a short section of them? there was barely enough material for me to care about the family members, maybe some had a few more but there was just not enough. I know show don't tell is a vital rule but sometimes telling me more wouldn't hurt either, especially when it feels the game was deliberately omitting details for some reason! If the game doesn't care enough to show me more about the characters, why should I? Perhaps I'm too biased against it so let me say this way: if you're into a mystery driven story about the disappearance of family members then this game is for you. If not save your money: I don't think it's worth more than 5 bucks, especially when it's so short and not really replayable either.
Shining Resonance Refrain is an HD port of a ps3 game that was japan only, adding all the DLC in it as well as a new mode called Refrain which allows you to play 2 extra characters from the start rather than postgame. Despite being an HD port it does have some issues due to the Ps3 limitations of the time and other details that could've used some QoL changes The game is an action JRPG so your usual "button spamming" and "skill usages" are your main thing, including a stamina bar to avoid spamming your basic attacks and a heavy attack that can break defenses. The combat itself is a mixed bag: it's very satisfying and very fun, especially how the characters differ and have different playstyles but, on the other hand, combat is also rather slow and whenever you enter or win a battle you have to wait a few seconds. Combat animations are also rather slow and the skills feel lackluster and not powerless, including the sound effects used for your attacks. It could've been made better for sure. Combat customization is pretty interesting though: characters don't have armors or weapons to equip but instead you buy aspects, which are your stats upgrade and perks: the system is highly reminiscent of FF7 materia system and each "materia" grants specific buffs or even perks to specific characters and considering they don't become obsolete all that much they're quite useful to keep. There's also tuning customization which is like a specc-kind of upgrade: each character can change the tuning of their weapon and which allows them to have different effects, such as elemental attack or stronger heals or faster attacks. Together with the Aspects you can create some interesting builds! And last and least the story is...well there, it's detailed enough but it does take some time to get better, however, the main issue is that the game is very anime, and by anime I mean "super-duper innocent boy has harem of super duper sexy girls who want to get laid by him and believe me when I say that it does get distracting. One reason why I never got into anime is for this reason: fanservice can be enjoyable but in a lot of anime I've seen it's just distracting and serves no purpose but to arouse boys (and I guess girls too) into having fantasies with their favorite waifus and husbands. Don't get me wrong here I LOVE some of the girls too but the fanservice is really distracting here and you'll notice all the generic clichès right away: Yuma is a silent innocent boy who strangely enough attracts all the girls like a magnet and said girls, from potentially interesting and well-rounded characters, become so relentlessly dumber it feels like it's a joke. For example, Kirika is a very composed woman but practically starts ventilating when she's around Yuma; Rinna teases him all the time for no real reason but because he's innocent, and Marion is pretty much so direct she hugs him and tells how nice he is. If anything Sonia and Excella seem the most normal girls of the bunch...they got other interests beyond **** Yuma's D. And the fun fact is I don't hate Yuma! He's actually kinda nice, I like his determination near the middle of the game, he does become better and sure of himself but it's like he's got an aura that renders all young women of the game dumber. I assume it's some clichè but I can't tell. Do I recommend it? Yes, it's honestly a good game, nothing too amazing but it does its job well, the characters are likable until they enter "dumb" mode and the voice acting is pretty good too - there's also JP too. The only problems are that it's a port of a ps3 game and it shows - textures are still meh and the areas are very incredibly small - and despite having a new mode there's no reason to play in Original since Refrain is "complete". In addition, the game is insanely greedy and it will ask you to farm mats to create the best aspects in order to be effective, including an aspect that allows your characters to get exp while not in combat - yep, it's that kind of RPG where you gotta keep everyone leveled and YES you need to keep everyone leveled! Add the issue that some fights can be broken and easily wipe your party, overly expensive items that force you to either farm money or farm mats to save money, or that there's no fast travel AT ALL in the entire game, meaning that you will ALWAYS have to run to your destination every time you must proceed with the story (there is a teleport back to the home city, THANK GOD), it's gets really hard to give a good score since a lot of the issues could've been patched or modified, as they could easily be small QoL changes. Heck the game suffers from annoying frame rate too! How can you NOT fix that?! Overall I do recommend it, even better if discounted: it's a nice and enjoyable jrpg to relax while you wait to play a much bigger game. Just a shame that there's so many little flaws that only stack up and create a bigger issue that can't be ignored. But overall it's fine!
Valkyria Revolution is a spin-off (SPIN-OFF, aka, not part of the main series) of a famous yet underrated tactical game called Valkyria Chronicles, where instead of commanding your troops you will play a semi-action rpg which is very reminiscent of games like White Knight Chronicles: for attacking you're required to wait for a little bar near the character's portrait to fill which will let you do any actions, such as attacking or using your guns, your grenades or your ragnites. Overall, I don't hate the combat at all, in fact, I enjoy quite a bit after tweaking here and there and with enough time in the game you can have some enjoyment too in neutralizing a lot of enemies at **** more to that later. The story is told in flashback instead of the usual way: the story tells of the events from 100 years ago, where 5 people called "the traitors" were condemned for actions against their countries and eventually executed: the flashbacks are a conversation between a student and his teacher and the "truth" behind the so-called traitors will be slowly revealed the more you play, which is the entire theme of this game: discovering the truth. As much as I don't really enjoy flashback type of storytelling, the way it starts is actually interesting and the game does an ok job to lure the player into wondering what truly happened, especially when you know they're all dead by now. I mean, it's been 100 years, pretty sure they're dead in a way or another... So let's talk about what's wrong with this game, starting with combat: it's too easy and normal enemies barely give you a challenge, especially when later on you can get some powerful ragnites that can 1 shot most enemies at once. Not only it's easy but it's made even easier by making the game pause whenever you want to use other attacks or weapons (by pressing triangle), so if you need to heal or cast spells you can literally spam your best skills and barely get hit, as you will hit the immobile enemy without any chance to be hit. The only exceptions are the boss fights, which suddenly gives a difficulty spike that could potentially wipe your team if you're not careful enough. On top of that bosses are hp sponges and take a lot of time to go down, easily 10 minutes if you aren't prepared at least a bit. But the game is still overall easy even with the bosses being tougher than usual: you can ress anyone anytime by pressing R1 and you're invincible while doing so. Again, very easy. Levels are also extremely short, barely 10 minutes at best and it doesn't really make a difference if they got different paths or have chests - which, by the way, can't be opened if you're seen by the enemy - You'll just want them to be over for the exp. And now the second big issue: the story and how it's presented, which is very poor quality and overall extremely slow-paced. Don't get me wrong, the game does have some quality in it: practically all cutscene are voiced acted with pretty good English VA (there's JP too) and I could recognize some known VA in there too (Patrick Seitz, Wendee Lee, Greg Chun, Jamieson Price, Cherami Leigh and many more) so in that regard, they clearly spent time and effort. But the game is RIDDLED with cutscenes and especially at the start you WILL sit down and watch at least a dozen of cutscenes in a row, so get ready to see a lot of cutscenes - with many not being really good. To put this in perspective, I played this game for about 50 hours, practically at the final chapter (the 12th chapter if you count the prologue and finale as chapters) and of those 50 hours I can guarantee half is just cutscenes, while the rest is playing the missions or grinding ragnites for upgrading your weapons - which is probably the most boring, unfun method of upgrading your weapons in the game as it basically forces you to replay missions over and **** yes you WILL grind a lot for those upgrades! The bottom line is, the balance between story and gameplay is ruined due to having too many cutscenes but not enough gameplay: in VC you could spend over an hour in a match to finish it, commanding troops and making sure you win without losing any members, but a match in VR only lasts 10 minutes at best (slightly more if you do bosses). And it's a shame because I think the story if done better, could have made this game a little better and worth its time but as it is it feels...unpolished rather than rushed. Do I recommend it? Considering the slow pace and the "not so fun" combat" it's really hard to, especially when you can get better action RPGs for the same price (like Ys 8) and it's also set in a different world (there's no Gallia and the Valkyria is also different) which makes this game completely separated from the main games in the series and a tough sell for any fans. If you're VERY curious and can find it dirt cheap, give it a shot and see for yourself, but I would recommend a skip instead and look elsewhere.
I'm only halfway through the game, but if this keeps up, I can safely say this is one of the best jrpgs I ever played in a long time, probably only second to Berseria to me. First things first, if you didn't play the original TOCS, DO NOT PLAY THIS ONE: the game lacks a lot of explanation that is obvious to anyone who played it, characters come and go without introduction, and overall the pacing is much faster and leaves not much to the building of the game, therefore, if you start from this game you WILL feel lost. But if you did, oh dear, this game is such a huge improvement I can't believe I skipped it throughout all these years. The first TOCS was great but it was flawed, it was slow-paced, and the story wasn't very well explained until the very end of the game, but that's because the original TOCS was more of an introduction to the world and characters, a way for us to get involved in the game's world and the characters, which sounds overly annoying but it did that splendidly: I actually cared a lot for the characters, I felt invested in their struggles, and the world was actually interesting to visit, it was fun to see the sights and everything and I wish I could've visited more without being restricted. But if TOCS 1 is just an introduction to the characters and world, TOCS 2 is where the story actually starts: the plot is settled, you got a goal, and the pacing is more hectic and you FEEL the threat all over the place and suddenly the places you visited are now all changed because of the story, which is much better in every aspect. But this is still a game and one thing I disliked of the previous installment was that the combat felt slow and not all that exciting, especially when your only method of playing the game was to use Crafts and S-crafts to finish off enemies...well that's still a thing but in TOCS 2 the spells have gotten a massive buff and they actually are BETTER now! Too good in fact since you actually miss a lot more with your physical attacks and most physical attacks don't deal as much damage as a physical one - Rean and Laura were powerhouses in TOCS1 but in TOCS2 they're very weak, especially when even a simple magic can do double the damage of a physical attack. That's all because now the spells are incredibly strong and much faster to cast (with one cast sepith the longest I wait is 2 turns, while before you wouldn't even see when your spell would be cast) and the quarts also give additional stats to your character, alongside the old status from tocs1, so equipping the right quarts can boost your character even further and make them a lot stronger. This not only makes the combat a lot better and more varied but also much more fun and easier to play, without mentioning this makes leveling also faster due to the bonuses you get from multi-kills and combat just flows more smoothly. Suddenly you can kill all enemies in one turn thanks to Emma and her Criminal Master Quartz that has 90% critical chance and everyone takes over 30-40k dmg and dies instantly. Before you were lucky enough if she casted her arts! But overall, TOCS 1 and 2 are practically the same in almost every aspect and besides the buffs in magic and combat only minor things were tweaked, like some animations and maybe some better textures, but the game feels MUCH different than what I played before! I actually enjoy fighting because I love casting spells, while in the original I would usually avoid combat if I could and only fight to gain CP - which is also easier to gain by going to an inn now! And quests give money now! Holy crap, they fixed that too! It was so frustrating to grind money because I needed to get some weapons! It's not much but it's still better than nothing! Overall the game is a MASSIVE improvement over TOCS1 in practically everything: story is better, combat is more exciting, the pacing is better and overall they fixed a lot of nuisance of the first game. Are there flaws? Unfortunately yes: enemies still rely on cheap shotting you with status effects rather than having tactics and a lot of the content is missable, to the point that a guide is mandatory if you wish to complete the game at its **** have a lot of patience and do the good old "do everything after every progress" So is the game good enough to be recommended? Yes, but at the only condition that you played the first game, and also enjoyed it, because this game is still slower than most other jrpgs and you can still feel the game feeling sluggish at times. But overall, it's a massive improved from the first game, and I sincerely can't wait to play until the end. Plus the third game is there to be started!
I decided to up the score to 8 after I finished it and saw it all, which gave me a nice bit of nostalgia and not because of the game itself. So this is essentially a Medievil remake, the first game only, with better graphics but also worse camera control and controls: the movement feels sloppy and often enough I get stuck into corners, while the camera is slow and often locked in position. I mean how do you worsen the controls and the camera controls from a game that wasn't meant to be used with a dual shock? Remember when this game came out dual shock wasn't mainstream yet and most games were made with the regular ps1 controller in mind, the one without dual shock, and the control scheme was meant for that controller in mind: how did they manage to make it even more sluggish is beyond me. With that out of the way, the game itself is almost a perfect remake of the original game - heck the dialogues are the same too, at least in my language - and it's essentially Medievil with better graphics, and MAYBE a little harder too. If anything I wished for both games as Medievil 1 is not exactly a long game and it took me about 2 days to complete it at a slow pace, so even if the game is solid it's relatively short for today's standards which is why they added additional content with the lost souls, forcing you to backtrack and gather souls in order to lay them to **** let me just say this wasn't fun, at all. However if you do it and manage to finish this additional content that won't last more than couple of hours, you probably get the best reward you could ask from this **** ORIGINAL MEDIEVIL GAME! I think that every remake should have the original game by default included and this game made me smile when I saw the original being played: suddenly all of my nuisances were gone and all I could think was "damn, I forgot how ugly this game was", which made me appreciate the remake even more. Overall, it's a fine remake, even if a bit short on the longterm appeal but thanks to the cheap price of 30 bucks it's very accessible to anyone, and overall it's a very good remake. Just don't expect anything "too" new from the remake.
So I decided to properly try this game after feeling more sure about abilities in Code Vein, which is essentially an easier version of DS/BB - but with a bit more style in my opinion. So I boot it up, get about halfway into the game and after 20+ hours of game I decided to give my two cents. So Bloodborne is essentially Dark Souls but in a gothic setting in a british-like place, which was why I wanted to play this first rather than Dark Souls as I was never a huge fan of Dark Fantasy. The game is fairly simple: circle is for dodging, R1 for basic attack, R2 for charge attack, L1 does a switch to your main weapon which is very nice (the axe is probably the best weapon when switched) and L2 shoots your secondary weapon, usually a gun. The usual Dark Souls thing is here: enemies do a truckload of damage and if you die you lose your echoes, which is your currency/experience/everything in this game. When you die you're forced to get it back or else you'll lose it forever. Overall I think everyone has an idea of this game by now and I have to say I have fun, but I can't stop thinking about the fact this game is supposedly hard...well it's not really hard, it's just frustrating. See when I started enemies were doing a lot of damage but that wasn't hard, what was hard was how enemies kept coming from blindspots and cheap shots you from far away, or how certain enemies can stunlock you and kill you in two hits (Hello witches from Upper Cathedral Ward!) and basically how the game will pit you down against unfair challenges...which is why it's hard, but not for good reasons, and I say this because I'm at a point that I "Understand" how the game works and I'm practically living every encounter, including some bosses. It's hard to explain but what I'm trying to say is every enemy has a gimmick and as soon as you realize said gimmick you'll manage to do most battles without issues because the only real difficulty of this game is the damage you receive and the stamina limit, especially the latter cause it's required for both attacking and dodging, while health becomes less of a problem the more hp you get since defense is not a vital stat. And this is the part where it should have made me hate the game and ragequit out of boredom and frustration, especially since there's no bloody story - or if there is it's buried beneath the low fps and blur effect the game has, which is a big nuisance after playing games like Code Vein or The Surge - and the thing ****'s addicting as a drug. Yeah the game has a lot of **** you moments" that a normal person would just quit, which is reasonable, but as soon as you start getting there and manage to "understand" the fights and "understand" what to do, and manage to beat the boss, it's extremely satisfactory: suddenly you have managed to get a step further and more is unlocked, and all you can think is "well now I wonder what's next". This is how I managed to get so far in this game: it's not the story that caught me, it's not the challenge, it's not the gameplay, it's nothing like that, but what kept me going is the fact that I'm being put to another frustrating moment and the moment I managed to get past over it, it's so satisfactory it's hard to quit: I'm writing this review after killing 2 bosses, one after 2 tries and another on the first try, and I was damn euphoric! So bottom line, the game is mostly a frustrating mess but if you give it some time and dedicate yourself at least a good dozen hours to sink in you will get yourself a very rewarding game, which is not entirely bad. I just wished the challenges were **** know, like any action game would?
After Zero Escape I was looking forward to Uchikoshi next game and followed the game in somewhat close detail, including the made-up youtube account and twitter account in order to advertise the game - which is a very clever idea, considering the character doing the videos IS in the game too -, and after the release I was eager to give the game a try as I was really eager to play an adventure game with heavy **** the game is good but it does push the wrong buttons for me. AI is an adventure game done in first person - and less reminiscent of a VN - and the game follows Kaname Date, a police officer of the MPD and the ABIS in the search of the Cyclops Killer and the game starts with him investigating the death of a first victim. From here you can see how the game doesn't shy away to show you graphical content: the victim has blood on it, misses an eye, and later on you'll see more of it in the most gruesome ways. It doesn't ALWAYS show all of its gore details but it will show some bloody details too from time to time...afterall the game is rated 18/M so it has to! But on the other hand, the game doesn't also hide its lightheartedness and often puts in silly lines and scenes just to make the scene lighter in mood and **** it works! In such a gritty, often depressing and serious game, the funny lines don't really seem to be unfitting and they did make me chuckle more times than I wanted. It helps that the roster is very likable too: Date is an enjoyable character and funny character, Iris is very mysterious but cheerful since she's an Idol, Ota starts out annoying but he becomes much better later on in his ending, as well as Mizuki and even the secondary cast such as Boss, Pewter, Mama and Moma - this one, in particular, is just hilarious, guaranteed you'll laugh in some parts of the game. And of course there's Aiba who's an AI put inside an Eye in your eye socket - and yes that's the pun about her. So maybe it's not that the funny lines are funny because they fit, but it's because the characters are well written, are likable and overall are flawed people with issues that are believable so it works very well. Add a story that is...good for the most part, despite its hiccups here and there, and you get a very solid game, right? Well...I have ONE reason why this game doesn't score higher, ONE sole reason that ruins this game to be a must-buy for everyone: the Somnium sections. During the story, you'll occasionally jump into people's minds to discover truths and other things and you'll basically dive into what's a Somnium (latin for Dream), a place where you visit the patient's mind and discover hidden truths. The first time you enter it's very exciting, you get to see the rules that dominate the dreams and it's all intriguing and disturbing at the same time. After the first somnium you know you want to do it **** then you actually do it and here comes the fatal flaw of this section: the time limit of SIX MINUTES! Let me start by saying this: the six-minute time limit is a plot critical detail that will later return when it's time, so it's not there **** STILL couldn't they have made the time limit just a plot-relevant point and NOT a gameplay mechanic?!? It heavily limits your interactions as each interaction option CONSUMES time too! So not only you got a time limit but you also have actions that will shorten time even further! And yes it's not fun at all! I CANNOT stress more than enough that this time limit put into the somnium is what killed the mood for me: whenever there was a somnium I KNEW I would be spending at least an hour doing it and trying to figure out what to do within the time limit, only to run out of time and have to restart. There's no penalty either so why even bother?! I just cannot understand this choice really. If they just made the time limit something unrelated to the gameplay you could have explored the somnium and figure out the solution, explore everything and have fun with **** know, LIKE THE ZERO ESCAPE TRILOGY DID?! I just feel so sad that the major gameplay focus of the game is just a wreck because of the limit - and believe me you WILL replay them at least a couple times, guaranteed. - which lowers the score from a possible 8 to a 7. There are other issues like how some plot points aren't well explained but that's all spoilers so I won't comment. Is the game worth it then? Yeah, it is, but get a guide for the somnium sections and just get rid of those asap. A missed opportunity to make a fun adventure game with a dream section and let me say the game is very well done, with incredibly good English dubbing and a lot of great animations - and the character models aren't bad either, designed by the same artist who made fire emblem Awakening and Fates. It's just this one part of the game that makes it really hard for me to give it a higher score.
I never properly played a souls game before: I did play bloodborne for a dozen hours and same for the Surge and then stopped, as I really never got into those games for some reason. And it's not really because they're hard really: the difficult part is in knowing the patterns of enemies and where the enemies come from, as a lot of these games LOVE to cheap shot you from blind corners. But still, these games never caught my attention for too long and I feel that I found the reason while playing Code Vein. Code Vein is essentially a soulslike game: combat is similar with light and heavy hits, stamina is used for swinging and dodging and parrying, haze is your currency and experience, there are giant enemies who will try to kill you in few hits, movement is done by teleportation through the mistles you find and if you die you lose all of your currency and must retrieve it - although it's dropped on the floor rather than being owned by the enemy. What makes the difference, in my opinion, are the little details: the game reminds a lot of Godseater with its dark apocalyptic scenarios and a grittier, more realistic anime style and overall more punkish themes. Speaking of anime style, the game has very extensive character customization that allows you to pretty much modify anything - even though you only have two body types and not much of that is customizable - and you can still modify it in-game after you reach the hub which is really nice. On top of that, you have some neat little interactions with the environment, like being able to sit down or make emotes with the speech which is nice and gives your character a little bit of personality. What makes the game very fun for me was how the class system works: essentially you collect what's called a Vestige which is basically a soul of a Revenant - undead who feeds on blood, just like everyone - and from collecting said Vestiges you gain their blood code which not only gives stats but also gifts which are abilities and perks. The fun part is you can master these gifts and carry over to other classes which allow to create a stronger class, and it's pretty fun to experiment! The way it works is like this: a blood code has a stats sheet and gifts and weapons power scale depending on the stat of the blood code, so if you have a code who has A in dexterity you'll want to carry a weapon who benefits from dexterity, which is usually swords or bayonets. However, if you want to play a "mage" type of character you'll want to go with a mind code and put long-range gifts in your skill bar, as well as a weapon for it. The way gifts works are also interesting: you have a certain amount of Ichor and hitting enemies recharges ichor but also increases the maximum amount of ichor you can have, so you'll have to switch combat styles and if you go to the mistle the ichor resets. If you played Godseater you can easily see the similarities too. Bottom line, the combat is expansive enough thanks to the many passives and active gifts you can unlock, master and then carry over in order to create the "best class" you want and unlocking them requires a lot of search in the field, which is always welcome. Another big difference is the NPC who follows **** granted you can play without them and have true soulslike experience BUT the game is riddles with enemies and you can be overrun fairly easily. Sure it makes the game a lot easier but it's not a bad thing for someone who wants to take a step in the souls-type of games. And last, but not the least, the story: i will admit it's nothing too special but this is what kind of pushes me further into the game, having a goal and a story alongside characters to interact. Like I said I played Bloodborne and the Surge but those games were really lonely experiences and I never felt motivated to go further because "what's the point?". Sure the circumstances are interesting and I love BB design and gothic atmosphere but I'm just a silent character with no reason to walk around and as much as I had fun with that game I really got bored soon. Here, even if the game isn't stellar all the time, the story pushes me to keep going forward and having character interactions really makes the lonely experience more enjoyable, and even when the game makes you struggle the story helps to give you a good push and go forward and makes me wanna grind to get that extra push forward I'm NOT saying BB or any Souls game is bad because they lack proper storytelling or characters: I'm just saying that I was more motivated in CV thanks to the story. With that said, I highly recommend CV if you're wanting to give this genre a try: it's definitely a good game and I didn't have any bugs in my copy, so if you're curious but afraid this type of games CV gives a very noob-friendly experience and a good introduction for future games. But if you're a hardcore DS and BB player who can play the entire game without being hit once I'd say skip it
Hmm I have mixed feelings about this game: I really enjoyed the story and it had some dark tones but also funny ones, and the combat is easy to get in but somewhat hard to master, especially when you have a lot of choices with the covens and such. The game itself is a dungeon crawler RPG, very similar to games like Etrian Odyssey or Demo Gaze, and the story revolves the witch Dronya, who possesses a book called Tractatus de Monstrum (which is somewhat latin for Treaty of Monsters) which allows her to control puppet soldiers to do her bidding. Alongside other characters, like the cheerful Luca, the story revolves about solving the mystery of the Labyrinth of Refrain, the city where the story is set. Now I will say this: combat is pretty fast and the character creation pretty deep, enough to give enough variation to a class since it's more about giving the right spells to the right class, of facet. You get spells not by levelling but instead putting the puppets into a coven, which is a group of fighters where all of their stats will combine into one and create a powerful brigade. This allows a lot of customization but it's very strict at the start, as it costs reinforcement points, so you'll be sticking with few puppets for the first hours of the game. Now, with that out of the way, I wish to speak of the main reason why this game isn't perfect and that's the story, which has the issue of being fragmented and hard to follow. The main protagonists are two: Dronya, the Dusk Witch, ****, the book. Yeah you're actually playing the role of the book, not Dronya, which is more of a secondary MC. The story is split between the labyrinth section and the city sections: in the labyrinth you'll find characters to speak with and will follow various stories inside, from how the gnomes got a tyrant queen or how the trolls will kill anyone they meet. In these parts you can see what makes this game pretty charming: it has a cheerful look at first glance but it can turn very dark at times and despite showing no graphics of what's happening, a lot of people will die and in very gruesome ways. Not only that but some enemies are pretty creepy too, like the giants in the gnome city - which are actually humans lobotomized - or how trolls look like beasts from the nightmares, with one scene literally telling how "he strips the clothes of a woman and proceeds to put into his mouth", followed by a gush of red. It's very effective at showing how dark the place can be and that's without showing a hint of gore, which I guess they didn't or else the rating would raise to 18+ or even adult only! So while you, the book, follow the story of the labyrinth, dronya has a completely different story which is loosely tied to you for most of the game: while you explore the maze she is doing all sorts of stuff that aren't always that important....like making a prank with a love potion, or being flirted from a nun, or having a birthday party. It's not always bad though and some parts ARE important but it feels like I'm following two separate stories: it's like I'm watching an anime and every 30 minutes I have to stop and play the game for a certain amount of time before resuming. It feels extremely disconnected and hard to get interested sometimes, which is a shame. Overall, It's a solid game and there is a lot of cure into it: the facets aren't many, only 8 in total, but are very varied and have a lot of customization possible in how they grow - similar to Disgaea, complete with "reincarnation" - and Dronya is an interesting character that makes you wonder a lot about her and how she came to be. I do recommend it if you can find on discount, but otherwise, I'm inclined to say "get Demon Gaze II"
I bought the original game years ago on the pc and had a pretty good time, despite needing a controller to be able to play properly. Then a few days ago I saw this game on discount and I thought "hey, I remember this game being good, I'll play it again! Oh, it's a remaster too". So here we go again I guess. Mark of the Ninja was originally released in 2012 and it was a very good stealth-based game with very interesting mechanics and a rather intriguing story that didn't want to be imposed and instead was more of a background thing, which made the game easier to follow. Its art style was and still is very good to look at, very reminiscent of Samurai Jack and similar, and the setting is a sort of modern world with still bits and pieces of antiquity and more. The game was essentially a 2D action-platformer but in a way I would say "it's more like a Puzzle game with action elements": even if our nameless ninja can kill and has a lot of moves to use the levels are made in a way that you have to find the solution without making too much noise or die and the final result would give you points according to how you played. Said points are only used to gain the marks which are used for unlocking upgrades, like additional executions and tools. Add the fact that the game is fairly long - 12 levels + an additional one for the remastered version, which also unlocks a new costume and tools - you get a very lengthy but fun game that I think everyone will enjoy. The only thing that bothered me with it, and they're nitpicks so be easy with me, is that the game has some issues with controls and has occasional bugs too, as well as having some padding in the levels that felt unnecessary. For the controls, it's most noticeable when you try to move bodies around to hide them: the button to pick the bodies is O but it's the same button also for hiding yourself and it can be problematic when you want to hide these bodies from other guards. Sometimes executions won't even work and instead, I accidentally punch the guards and the hook occasionally hooks me farther than I wanted, killing me in the process. Bottom line, controls aren't exactly stellar, but I wouldn't say they're terrible either. Just requires some practice. Secondly, the game does get buggy sometimes: I accidentally died once by running to a **** idea why really, I was disintegrated as if a laser was there. And later one of my key targets got killed while I wasn't even near and the reason I noticed that was because I got the trophy because I would never have realized it! And last, and least really, the game feels a little padded at times: certain levels are fine but some lack the charm and smarts of the other and I got tired sometimes because it wasn't as fun as before. Also, from level 10 through 13, the game gets an incredible difficulty spike for really no reason: from there you get to deal with traps, enemies that can go through shafts like you - and can't be killed - and you also have some annoying mechanics to deal with as well. I didn't enjoy the last few levels of the game. But overall, it's a very good game and the remastered version is a solid deal, especially if you find it for cheap. But even at full price, I would still recommend it.
When I was 16 I played WoW and it was about 1 year off from TBC: it was one of the most amazing games I ever played, with such a big vast world that I couldn't wait to explore it, and so much content that I never experienced before in my life. Before then my experience with mmorpgs was with smaller ones like GW1 or even Phantasy Star Online on the dreamcast, but this game was THE game that I was looking for in a long while and it got me addicted for several years. And to think I wanted to play FF11 instead! Anyway, 15 years later classic servers are back because players are bored of an easy game with everything for granted, and yet it's not too different in here, with people getting addons to help in their game (didn't they want the whole vanilla experience, or just the ones convenient for them?) and overall the same mentality of **** you got mine" that is reeking in current wow. Let me be 100% perfectly honest here: Classic is fine, it does what it's supposed to do which is giving us a classic experience with few tweaks here and there, but to say this is the BEST wow has ever gotten is simply ludicrous. If WoW never changed people would've complained it was the same but people are complaining that wow is bad because it changed: it's stupid, plain and simple, and let me explain why. Classic wow didn't really allow your class to be that expansive, only one specc (MAYBE two) was good and if you want to raid you WILL be forced into that specific spec. Do you like Molten Core? Do you like fire mage? BZZZ, wrong, you gotta go frost. Don't like it? Well goodbye, we got more mages giving a **** about raiding than you do and we got 40 spots to fill. Secondly, the game is all sorts of unbalanced and I'm not talking about hard enemies or the likes, but about specific race/class combos who WILL be stronger than other no matter how hard your character is geared. Oh you're a human frost mage uh? Well nice but we want a gnome mage, they got more intellect! A human priest? Nice but we want a dwarf priest cause of fear ward, even if he's got level 40 loot. This is also a big problem in pvp because certain classes and races just nuke the crap out of others. Right now there's no BGs yet BUT it will be a big problem later on. Another issue is that the game is grindy, very **** back then it was the norm: I remember grinding the last 2 levels killing the undead in Eastern Plaguelands and I was excited to start doing dungeons for loot. However, the leveling process is extremely long and not necessarily fun but again it was NORMAL back in 2004. People even now complain the game is grindy and leveling takes too long despite taking me literally a couple of days to reach level 90 and a couple of days more to level to 120, but taking a month worth of leveling is suddenly fine? And let's not beat around the bush: this is not the community of 2004, this is the new generation of people, the ones who like theme park MMOs and who only care about their single-player experience IN AN ONLINE GAME, which means that a lot of players won't be as helpful as they should be. See, in WoW it was normal for players to help each other, even if it was for a brief moment: grouping was a common thing and doing dungeons in premade practically the best solution - oh did I forget to mention that there's no LFG tool and you HAVE to run over to the dungeon yourself? Yeah, no teleports! But nowadays, where there's this **** you got mine" mentality, where everyone wants to do things on their own, this game won't be for them: these players will realize that current wow is more suited for their tastes because old WoW was from another time where people actually cared about helping and, yes, being a bad person could have repercussions. You know, like in real life? Bottom line, I feel this game will only stick for those who REALLY, REEEAAALLLYYY wanted to play Vanilla and was doing so in private servers, because I don't know who I would recommend it: this game lacks a lot of QoL that made wow simply better (dailies, available specs, multiple ways of leveling, etc) and it's more like an old relic you see in a book, rather than a treasure you want to keep. Do I recommend it though? I do recommend it to AT LEAST give it a shot: try the game for yourself and experience how WoW was in its beginning and how better (or worse?) it got during the years. But as a former Vanilla player from late 2005 who raided throughout vanilla until cataclysm, who experienced plenty of changes, liked some hated some, met and lost a lot of people, experienced love and hate, and overall had an unforgettable time and met some of the best and worst people of my life, I personally do not recommend it. I would rather recommend playing any other MMORPG and save your sub, even a crappy f2p. At least you can try for free and leave if it's bad!
I really wanted to like this game but, after reaching the very lackluster and disappointing ending, I was left with a huge sense of incompletion that only games who try to be pretentious seem to have. Let's start from the very beginning: the game, which is mostly story by the way, is about a man named Henry who decides to work as a fire lookout in order to escape his life for the summer and in here he'll "meet" with a woman called Delilah, however something happens and you will have to discover why this is happening. I'm not going into spoilers but for what it was, it was very disappointing: it starts out very interesting at first but then it turns out it was just a flash in the pan, and the ending was just "there" to be made but with really no big send-off. I was told this game had a great story, and I think there was one somewhere buried beneath the rocks from mountains of this area, but it was so poorly written and explained that I just couldn't see the big picture. There WAS something but it was just there without an actual good explanation, and in the end it felt like none of my choices mattered: I could replay the game and I bet the results would be the exact same! Let's skip to the gameplay, which is barebone too: the place is rather large I'll give them that but with the inability to jump and being forced to go through forced paths throughout the area - and overall lack of exploration rewards - the big area feels as empty as a small mansion: it's big, nice and looks great at first glance, which I have to give them credit, but the interaction with the environment is very limited and you can only pick up some items and that's it. Overall, I don't think this game is bad, but it's just...uneventful, to say the least: something happens, which could lead to something interesting, but in reality nothing has really happened and I felt so underwhelmed when I finished the game because it just stops with nothing solved, nothing gained. Do I recommend? At full price no: try to find it at a discounted price and give it a look, although I got mine very cheap and I still don't think it was worth it.
I wasn't really going to come back here: FFXIV is a game with a lot of potential, but an infinite amount of issues that truly makes it hard for me to enjoy, however the reason I came back is only one: the story. But I'll talk about that later. Anyway, what to say about this expansion: It's the same exact game you played in the last years with almost the same exact way of playing, which is grinding tomes every week to cap get loot then wait 4-5 months for next dungeon, upgrade it to raid level, rage about eureka 2.0 and so on for the next 2 years. It's practically been the same since 2.0 with utmost precision, with really few modifications here and there, like how leves are only for crafting now, fates give a currency and few other things. The major changes I did notice is in the classes, as in they removed what made them unique and homogenized them into basically one role but with fancy weapons: the 4 tanks are practically the same, and so are the melee and etc, gone all of their unique traits that made them unique and instead they're all exactly the same, with maybe one or less move in their arsenal. In a way, I applaud this idea because this means now that all classes can be used, especially when they kept saying they weren't able (or were incapable or too lazy?) to balance them out so this means now that all classes viable. But this is an online mmorpg and raiding is relegated to the usual 8 man content: eventually, a meta will come out and only 8 classes will be the winners, while the rest...well that's your problem! Another nice addition is the Trust System, which is another name for the Squadron but without the pain to actually levelling your team-up: it's a nice addition if only you could use it in older dungeons, instead it's going to be relegated to 5.0 dungeons and nothing else. Too bad but I guess "data limitations" and such. But game issues aside, my main issue and the one that first turned me away from continuing, is the horrid community that everyone keeps praising but I only see hypocrisy and spite. Don't get me wrong on this: I don't think ALL of the community is bad, of course I'm sure 1 out o 10 is good, however, we're talking of a community that is so blinded by this game that they will actively defend anything they do, even if it's a broken mess. I played this game since 2.0 but I was never able to say anything negative without receiving extremely harsh backlash, being called mentally disabled, a tasteless one and even death threatened because of my simple dislike of the raids (I did coil btw). I will never understand what people see of good in this community: it's the same the others. I came into this game years ago with the promise of a better community, but instead, I got so frustrated and stressed out that I actively stopped trying to be making friends and move on with my day, never saying my real opinions in fear of being backlashed. Which brings me to the point I missed: the story, the major selling of point of this expansion. I didn't follow the story until now besides some snippets but everyone kept praising it for how good it is, and how it's like the second coming of Christ or something. I took the challenge and spent the next 2 weeks watching long, long, LONG cutscenes and tried to see what's going on after finishing it yesterday - and waiting nearly half an hour for the queue as well, I could only say one thing: "This story is just average". Let me say this: I did like the setting, I liked how it's not the same world and how it has its own culture and difference. and I liked some of its secondary characters too. I also did like a couple of lines and overall, I did feel it had something in it. But honestly, I just felt it was average: its plot is your generic "go there, do chores, kill bad guy of the land, repeat" for each zone until the end where you get to beat the OBVIOUS bad guy of the game, so obvious that the game tries desperately to sway your attention from him, and failing. The cast is BORING, they only have one emotion throughout the entire game (Gotta love Minfilia's constant ****!) and the enemies you first meet are so one dimensional that I was glad they were gone because they were just not fun. And I just will not understand how the game still thinks to trick me into believing that my character will die: this is a mmorpg, of course, I'm not gonna die you idiots! How am I gonna do endgame?! For the main cast it's a different story since some did disappear. Maybe they'll get rid of the whiny blondie so there's hope! Bottom line, I don't hate it but I don't like it either: I just played tons of better jrpgs in my long gaming life and I was expecting something at least on par to some of my favorites, but if this is the best they could do then I think I'll just go back to the JRPGs I know and love. See for yourself and draw your own conclusion. For me, it's just average.
I only played the first game for a few chapters before getting into a hard wall that stopped me from progressing (chapter 6 if I'm correct) which also discouraged me to continue ever again, which was a shame because I was having fun but the game was so ungodly and unfairly difficult in some parts that it left you with no way for errors. Add the fact that I'm practically the worse tactical player in the whole galaxy, capable of failing tutorial missions too, the game was too hard for me and despite my best intentions in enjoying it I simply could not get past the hard missions. I might eventually try it again with the remaster though. With that said, VC4 was a welcome addition because it felt easier for me to get into it, thanks to an easy mode that helps noobs like me to get past choke points and hard missions without risking to lose your troops and considering the changes and improvements made in the past 3 games it was all fresh for me. So overall if you were unsure about the game for its difficulty, VC4 helps you out with an easier difficulty that will make the game **** the game can still quite a **** when it wants so even on easy mode just be careful on how you play. With that out of the way, the game is set around the same time frame of VC1 and VC3 - at least according to the wiki - and the story revolves the members of Squad E and its quirky group: plenty of characters in the squad are unique and very interesting, with their flaws and pros and overall each character is well distinguished. Add the fact that there are squad stories that develop members of the team even better, it's fair to assume that its roster it's the best feature of the story. And probably only too. See, I've only reached chapter 6 (again, although I'm not stuck this time) and so far the main story **** lack a little depth: besides the squadron, you're not given much detail about the enemy and it feels as if we're fighting an unnamed enemy. I hope it gets better later but, I ask again, "Why can't the story be good right now?" I will never understand when RPGs need 10-20 hours for a story to be good when you can give some good starters! Right now I just feel like I'm doing chores without any objective which is a shame because I WANT to know more. Good thing that the squadron makes the story more tolerable and enjoyable because they're the best thing of the game: everyone is just interesting and fun to see interact and I love when new cutscenes come out. I love how Raz keeps bragging about being the invincible guy or how Kai is always picking him up, or how Claude is a simple but reassuring commander - although not as charismatic as Gunther. So at the very least, you can have a great time with how the characters **** some might dislike that so be ready to witness countless of (crappily made) cutscenes. At least they are voiced though. And lastly but not the least, the combat: honestly I don't think it's a whole lot different than VC1 but as far as I can see you got a new class, the grenadier, and you can use vehicles to get people inside them. For the rest is pretty much the same as VC1 with some tweaks here and there: you use a CP, Command Point, to control someone in third person, move them on the map for a certain amount of time thanks with the AP provided, and then shoot by aiming with the R1 button. Rinse and Repeat. It's a very simple but satisfying way of playing the game, so much so it's barely got any changes from VC1 and all the changes it got in this game were either from previous installments or brand new here, but the core mechanic remained the same which isn't entirely bad. So overall, do I recommend it? For newcomers, I do because it's more noob friendly and allows to play an easy setting to make the game fun and enjoyable for those who want to follow the story and take it easy. For those who aren't new however, you're going to get pretty much the same if not a little less because VC1 had an overall better story but VC4 has some better balancing in comparison. Honestly I just recommend it to everyone and give it a shot: whether new or old, this game deserves a spot in anyone's shelf.
I already reviewed this game on the ps3, about 2 years ago, and for me, it scored a full out 10/10 because it's simply one of the best RPGs of the last years - only second to Berseria in my opinion, and maybe third to Persona 5. TOCS is one of the biggest and largest games I played in a while, less in size and more about in lore and character development: each character has their development, their backstories and overall they go through their arc in a semi-flawless manner (semi because it does feel forced sometimes) but I never once got issues with how a character changed and the flow of the narrative is top notch and seamless - albeit very slow sometimes. And add combat that is both extremely deep and satisfying, with quartz, links, moves and everything, it's REALLY hard to not recommend this game. Back on my ps3 review I mostly had 3 major issues with this game: the combat is not exactly hard but the enemies have the tendency to exploit their debuffs and status effects more than actually make a fight hard, which is very cheap and easy to counter by just having the right resistance gear. Because of this, some fights are quite literally a matter of equipping the right item to counter a certain status effect and clear the boss with your S skills so that they die almost instantly. The other issue I had was the technical standpoint because it was obviously a low-res game meant for psvita and ps3 and to be honest it's not a whole lot different: it didn't exactly get a graphics overhaul and it looks just as "bad" as on the ps3 and vita. The only difference is that it's much smoother than before, having a constant 60 fps framerate, and the loadings are extremely quick. And third but not last, the flow of the game is extremely slow which was solved by the addition of the Turbo mode, probably THE BEST addition of this port: by pressing L2 you can go on turbo mode and essentially make the game run twice as fast, including dialogues and cutscenes AND the combat button, so that now the game is a lot faster. I know JRPGs are meant to be slow and methodical but TOCS has the tendency to take too much time to move forward and while I have absolutely no problem on following the story and its characters having the option to increase the speed is quite a welcomed one: I finished the prologue and chapter 1 in less than 5 hours on NG+! Another nice thing that I appreciate is that you can play from the ps3 and Vita games! just upload the files with a cross save and transfer it to the ps4 version: it's very easy and I managed to grab my data files from the vita and ps3 and continue the game on the ps4 version now! Add the fact that it has all DLC included and more extras, It's seriously hard to not recommend this game to those who couldn't get it or didn't care enough back then. If you like JRPGs and you're looking for one then I definitely recommend TOCS 1 - and eventually 2 and 3. Just don't expect AAA quality in graphics and animations...
I was very disappointed by this game: I didn't expect GTA levels of detail but at least expected more fun from a gangster based free roaming **** know, like Saints Row. Despite being called "Definitive Edition" it feels lackluster and even with the DLC episodes cleared, I have a big sense of emptiness inside as if something was missing. Let's start with the story: the plot is revolved around Wei Shen who's an undercover cop who's a double agent for the triad and has to rise in ranks to take out the big **** that's the deal really. You get to do many missions but I honestly can't even remember half of them, because not many were important for the main plot: a lot of fluff missions where nothing happened and all I did was to steal crap for no reason but to get more money. It doesn't help that the characters are bad too: the game tries to give a sort of conflict within Wei Shen, to choose between triads and cop, but the reality is that it never really shows its full effects: Shen always does his job like normal and whenever he said something, nothing really happened anyway. His attachment for the Triad is the same for the cops: he doesn't care, so why should I? Even when he said his best friend - HIS BEST **** FRIEND - that he will not leave him behind, all he did was...leaving him behind. Just what the **** And top it all of, even the secondary stuff like dating girls is so underplayed it's amazing: all they serve is to allow you to check extra on the map and that's it. You cannot date them a second time. Okay, nevermind the story: this game is all about fun, so is the game fun? Honestly no, I was really bored after doing the tenth same mission about fighting enemies and chasing thugs. Most of the missions are quite literally the same deal, whether cop or not, and even in the DLC, they didn't really try harder. More to that later. What saddens me is that the game is big, there are MANY activities to do, from cop jobs to racing, and It never EVER changed: it was the same thing all over with almost no difference it was mind-numbing. It doesn't help that the fight is also repetitive: just press one button and do a basic combo to kill most enemies while triangle is countering. it's easy at least and you can do environmental kills, but that's it. Also, gunplay is soooooo bad and underwhelming - and so easy to do: just vault over a cover and kill enemies: infinite slow mo! And to top all of this, the DLC missions are even more underwhelming! I liked the nightmare on north point the most but because at least they gave us new enemies and I liked the new face meter which allowed some neat animations. But once again it's all the same thing: kill enemies to death. The second DLC is even worse because it felt more like an additional case for the main **** the main game case is actually better! Just...just disappointing, that's all I can say. So I said how the game is boring but hey, it's still a big game right? It can't be so bad...except that I finished the main game in about 20 hours and about 2 hours for each DLC to **** I didn't rush, in fact I took my time and only had to resort to maps online because I couldn't find some places on my own, but in less than 30 hours the game was over for me (I platinum it in 29 hours, it's that short). It's a real shame, it's all I can say: I wish the game to be bigger, to expand more, but I feel that it was rushed because everything is barebone developed: characters come and go and the story has only a few points that make any sense, while the rest is fluff. Add an underwhelming world with boring missions - and I didn't mention the many bugs I had, but no crashes at least - you get a game that is just "okay". It's neither good or bad, but not even mediocre or above average: this game is okay. Do I recommend it? On discount, yes, without a **** Saints Row instead. At least It didn't bore me!
After Transformed I was legitimately curious about this game: Transformed was one of the most fun kart games I played in a long time - even more than Mario kart 8 in my opinion- and I spent dozens of hours to finish that game and still haven't for how fun and difficult it was. TSR is a nice addition to the franchise, but I can't really say it's an upgrade: I still think Transformed is vastly superior despite its flaws such as having 3 different types of vehicles to LEARN and how inhumanly difficult the AI can be at S ranks. TSR however is a really fun game and I've been playing all day non stop, it's that fun. TSR adds the team mechanic, which is actually pretty interesting albeit very easily exploitable: instead of racing alone - even though you can still race alone in other modes - you got a team of 3 and this allows you to do some neat new features such as the slingshot, where you basically track behind the other team members in order to get a boost which really helps in rubber banding the race, and being able to pass power ups to other members: not only these actions are useful but they're extremely encouraged as you get more turbo, eventually unleashing a super turbo that gives you maximum speed and handling and invicibility for a short period of time TO ALL YOUR MEMBERS. Unlike Transformed however you can't shoot but only bump on others, but overall the team mechanic serves a good purpose on allowing ways to recovery from the last positions, which is often a problem in kart games. Another thing tht the team mechanic brings is that you just don't have to reach first to win: you need to get your squad to a higher position as well or else your score won't be as high as it should, making your efforts to reach first useless. For example if you're first but your squad is in the last position you're not going to score high to win the race. It seems weird but it works really well and it invites players to actually play in a team while racing. And add the fact that there's a career mode with a little story to follow, customization for your car including painting and parts - although it's only 3 pieces for 3 parts + 3 legendaries that don't really make any difference - and an INCREDIBLE price point of 40 euros, I could easily recommend this over mario kart honestly: for such a little price there's a ton of content and it's well cured enough! Honestly my only issues are very few: the game is REALLY tough, even at normal difficulty, and hard feels like I'm racing against S ranks from transformed, not really looking forward to do extreme. Upgrades are done randomly, with each race giving you coins to use in a gashapon machine where you unlock random upgrades for your race or new pieces for your cars and even though it's random IT DOESN'T REQUIRE REAL MONEY. It is tedious however. And while I didn't play a lot of the other sonic racing games, most of the races and even parts of the game feels recycled from previous games and of course you only have cars this time: if you missed that from transformed it's not going to be back here. Overall, I highly recommend it: a lot of stuff and content for a really good price. Hard to pass up, especially when you only got Mario Kart 8 (which costs a whooping 60 after a hundred thousand years and doesn't have the game modes that TSR or even SASRT had) or Sonic all stars racing transformed (which is cheaper and you can even get it on pc, but it's a lot harder due to 3 vehicles) to choose from. Or just wait a little longer and get CTR because that's going to be the definitive karting game!
So, I played the original FF12 on the ps2 centuries ago, and It was easily the worst RPG I ever played back then: the story was boring, uninteresting, hard to care and the characters had the personality of a cardboard with drawings on it: only good character was Balthier because had something called "personality", something that the rest of the cast severely lacked. And don't get me started on the combat: the most boring and uninvolving combat system ever created, you'd literally do nothing for 90% of the game and the only times you would do something is on some bosses - and even only side-missions are somewhat challenging/frustrating. So, centuries later, we get the legitimately complete version that never arrived "because" and added the jobs and other tweaks and...I won't lie, it changes a lot of things. In positive too! First of all, one of my main complaints of the original game was the License Board: it's probably the worst evolution of the Sphere grid you could think of, where essentially you buy the license to use the items BUT you don't actually use them which means you could unlock Holy and not being able to use it because the LB **** major balls. Another issue was that each LB was the same so you could easily gear up everyone "the same" as long as you had the armor to equip it. However with the new system, the LB still **** unfortunately but now each character has job-limited requirements that while sounds backward, it actually makes good for tactical variation. In the original, you could just use 3 for the entire game and never change because they were all the same, but now each character can use different jobs and this makes them able to be unique, which is nice! Suddenly using a good combination of character is important because of their unique abilities and not because they're higher levels! I honestly enjoyed to grind in this game for once because I looked forward to unlocking actual unique skills for my white mage or my red battlemage, and since there are 12 jobs you can also mix them up! And the combat, while still as boring as before, they fixed it with the simple addition of the turbo, which essentially doubles or quadruples the gameplay speed and literally kills those dead times during grinding! In fact, a lot of the enemies die in one or two hits so being able to speed this procedure REALLY helps a lot! It makes boring combat still boring, but at least it's faster! The Gambit system is the same but I'm almost sure that it's much easier to get the gambits? I remember that in the original it was harder but I can't say. However, I can't say the rest is improved at all: the game story is just...well, square Enix quality really: a jumbled mess of plotlines that try so hard to look intriguing or interest but behind all of that there's nothing of substance. I hardly cared about any of the characters, mostly because there's nothing to care about and they're just there to "be the group of heroes". Vaan is the most infamous character in this case because he has literally no point in any of the story and just gets involved because "bad timing", same for Penelo who is just Vaan's love interest with zero personality, and Fraan being the fanservice girl with a skimpy clothing and talking in big words to explain that "this place is dangerous, watch out or you're screwed". Ashe is potentially good but the way she talks and acts makes it really had to like her and Basch could've been interesting but his presence is overall lacking and he feels more like a guide, telling us that "we need to go there and there". Balthier is probably the best of the bunch: not only he has a cool and charming personality but he has an interesting story behind and he's likable enough to make me care. I genuinely cared about Balthier because he had legitimate struggles...while the rest was too busy talking nonsense for something that I couldn't care, with Vaan and Penelo on each every scene to remind us the players that "HEY, HEY, YOU SEE THEM? THEY'RE THE MAIN CHARACTERS, DON'T FORGET, DON'T FORGET, SEE HOW THEY ARE THE MAIN PROTAGONISTS?" Okay look, it is clear that I don't have time playing Square Enix games and I generally don't care about them either - I'm probably one of the fewest persons who didn't like Nier Automata either - and I'm probably being far too harsh so is the game worth it? The answer is yes. No really, I do recommend it: it's flawed beyond belief, the story is a bore and overall it's a grind fest but in comparison to the first version this game is just so much better than I can easily recommend this version. I'm currently playing it because I like the remade license board and the turbo, very little yet amazing improvements that made the game extremely more enjoyable to play even though the story is so boring and badly told that I literally cry of laughter. I think it's still a solid game - and probably better than any recent SE games in a while
I decided to play this game in length, having a total of 60 hours between pc and ps4, but sticking with the ps4 version for the reasons I'll explain soon. So for starters, I want to say that I'm not a huge fan of BR games but this game gave me fun enough to give it a shot for a longer time: it's still a BR but has some good tweaks such as heroes, abilities, team playand better weapon balancing (well except for Mozambique I have to admit that I like the overall game because of those features: playing in small groups is a lot of fun and can create a lot of different situations and the heroes having useful abilities helps making the gameplay varied - even though not all heroes are as good, like Caustic being very situational and Gibraltar being very mediocre despite being my most played legend. The shooting feels satisfying and I like the weapons that can be upgraded with attachments: makes for a very good way to keep your weapons without tossing old ones, and you can customize them in many ways. And the arenas are well done, I really enjoy their diversity and it feels like little battlezones, where you need to remember where's who. So why am I giving such a low score? Because the game has, for now, a major issue with teamplayers leaving the game too soon and forcing you to stay with 2, or even alone, especially on pc. I stopped counting the matches where my team just left and I was alone or with 2 members left and in a game about team it can be very hard to win by yourself. However, despite this happening also on ps4, on pc is probably the worst offender: I almost never play a match with my entire team online and as soon as someone dies they leave the game. It's also too common to be left alone entirely which makes the game harder for wrong reasons. And sadly there's no punishment for leaving too early: you can leave at any time and have no repercussions about it, so if you team dies within seconds of landing they'll probably just leave, despite being able to respawn them. Again, it's a problem on all versions, but I played plenty on ps4 and pc and so far the pc seems to have the worst case of this problem, while on ps4 it seems tame in comparison. For those reasons I'm going to stick with the ps4 version and just play on pc on occasion. Insert your "PC master race vs console peasant" jokes here. when that issue will be solved, in a way or another, then I'll probably return to pc and play it more. Right now I'm just tired to play solo in a BR game...because I can always download fortnite or buy pubg for that.
I only played about 8 hours and reached chapter 3 (or stage 3) so my review is obviously incomplete, but those 8 hours went so fast I barely noticed: the game surprised me despite its rather weird concept and the story and characters hooked me to discover more. Zanki Zero is a sort of blend between Zero Escape and Danganronpa - both games made by Spike Chunsoft themselves - so the style is somewhat similar when it comes to setting or at least the mentality behind the whole game: 8 people are stuck in a place called Garage Island and, supposedly, they are the last survivor of the human race and they have to help save it by using the Extend Machine in order to complete their missions. At first, they think it's a game but soon they discover that everything is more than real when two of the cast dies. Zanki Zero is an RPG but to be honest it has barely any RPG elements in it: leveling doesn't actually grants status bonuses but only unlocks better proficiencies and stats like better attack or cooking, meaning that you won't be grinding any levels and instead you'll be grinding mats and food for your survival. It's better to say that ZZ is more of an action adventure game, where you'll fight enemies in dungeons while also seeing cutscenes, mostly with grunts, and proceed with the plot. I want to start with the combat because I heard really bad comments on it, saying that it looks like etrian odyssey or other dungeon crawler RPGs...well they're partially right but it's closer to games like Dungeon Master or Legend of Grimrock instead: you don't have random battles and you can move freely during combat, which is on grids, and it's important to be able to move around while attacking or else you can die in this game. And yes, you will die...which is probably the weirdest mechanic of the entire game. I said that there's no progress from leveling, but that's because it's tied to the Extend Machine and its Shigabane system, which essentially rewards you for...dying. Literally. Whenever one character dies, their death will be recorded into the machine and the next body they'll come out will have perks that increase their stats: dying of old age grants a general buff to all stats but, for instance, dying from a physical attack might reduce the damage next time, or dying from stress or lack of sleep might give you more stamina, and so forth. In other words, you must die, a lot, in order to get the good stats and you might be grinding deaths in order to get them since there's over a hundred of them! Unfortunately, it's not infinite: you need to use your SCORE to clone your new body and while not expensive at first the more shigabane you get, the expensive it gets. You get SCORE from beating enemies and thankfully they do respawn, although randomly and not always timely so you can grind those score points. Add the fact that your characters will die after 13 days, you'll eventually have to understand the system and manage its perks properly. But honestly, what draws me into the game it's the story: the 8 characters aren't exactly well defined at first but the more you play, the more you want to know about them. Each dungeon is, supposedly about sin and each character is their representation, which means that not only you'll get to know them in depth but you'll also be playing from their PoV! Yep, each chapter (or stage) will make you play from the perspective of another survivor and you'll get to see their feelings, thoughts and mental process: you're not going to stuck with the "main" protagonist like most VN games but you'll keep jumping to each character until their story is complete. It's interesting and really hooks you in because you know what they're thinking and the game will show each part of their backstory in stylized scenes with dark figures and no voicing, which is both weird and fascinating. I played 8 hours straight because I just wanted to know what's going to happen, why did this happen, or if that character did something wrong, or why is something wrong. Even though they really don't seem to grow a lot afterward but maybe it's too early to say it. So, do I recommend it? Honestly yes, I do, but you must realize that this game is a little different than your usual jrpgs and it requires a little bit of patience to understand its system: the combat is simple, extremely simple, but it's also extremely simple to die from enemies (2-3 shots and you're dead) and the Clione mechanic makes the game about high-risk high reward, but that's something I haven't fully tested as of now. The best I can describe it is, Zanki Zero is an action adventure game with semi-survival elements and visual novel hints too, that while not perfectly flawless they make a rather intriguing and bizarre mix that I can't wait to discover more about it!. And considering Danganronpa and Zero Escape were already weird on their own, I hope to get the same here!
Yeah, I'm definitely late for this, 5 years in fact, but this is because I couldn't bother to review this game back when it was new and I was extremely hyped for it. Xillia was "officially" my first tales - even though I had Vesperia but I never managed to actually play it back then - and I loved that game so much: I loved the combat, I loved the Lilium system, I loved the characters (except Milla. **** Milla), I loved the setting, I loved the graphics, I loved the linked system...I just loved it and I'm just now replaying it for the first time in 6 years! My review of Xillia 1 might be a bit off but I truly enjoyed that game, so much that I'm even going to attempt the platinum I loved it so much. But Xillia 2 is **** good. Let's start from the very first thing you see when you start the game: what the **** happened to our characters? they look TERRIBLE, and I don't mean "Yeah they don't look as good" NO I mean they look terrible, their design is atrocious, HORRIBLE, UGLY! Jude's lab coat is so bland it feels like it's an extra costume! Alvin just looks blander now and Leia, just, how could they change her adorable design into a journalist? And Elize?! Argh! Why is she now a chirpy, slutty schoolgirl?! She doesn't act nor look like Elize, she's a completely different character! On this regard, yes, time has passed since the first game, changes are normal to occur and I'm not saying they shouldn't change them, but I at least expected them to grow into better people! Jude has become boring, Leia is a loser journalist instead of a charismatic and happy nurse, Alvin is shady once again - even though I remember him stopping doing that? - Elize is just a bland school girl with the personality of **** frankly, that's it for now, because I have more for later. But of course, how could I forget? Now we control Ludger, a new character **** doesn't speak at all. Yep, we got a silent protagonist now ****'s just okay, at best. It's really okay but I wish he spoke more rather than allow us to choose his answers. In addition, Elle, the other main protagonist, is a pain in the butt and she won't stop talking. What saves them from complete horror is definitely Rollo...I don't know why but whenever I saw him my complaints would end. It's hard to get mad when a damn big fat cat looks at you, and I'm a bird type of person! Okay, characters are ****ed, what's left? Oh the combat, one of my favorite parts of the game and probably the best combat I ever had in a tales so far: the linked arts and the unique talents of the character made it fun to experiment and the Lilium orb, a system similar to FFX's Sphere grid, made it all enjoyable and customizable at the player's pace. Well, the combat is pretty much the **** the Lilium system is not, replaced for probably one of the worst progression systems of those years. Remember whenever you leveled you'd receive GP to use it in the Lilium Orb? Forget that now: in order to obtain everything, from skills to artes, you're now having to get elemental ore. How do you get elemental ore? From enemies and from the overworld. Why is it worse? Because you can only grow certain elements at once depending on the Extractor, meaning that you can play 20 hours without obtaining any of the important artes like resurrection or pixie circle or anything. I played Xillia 2 for over 20 hours, 20 hours of boring grind - since combat is practically meaningless and you can grind the ores by just running out and in of the map - until I simply call it quits. I hardly quit games so soon because of boredom and it's usually a Square Enix game, but this time Tales of Xillia 2 beat them to it. I didn't even bother to get the last 3 characters like Milla but considering she was a **** in the first game I HIGHLY DOUBT she's any better in this game. At least I don't have to Boo her every 30 seconds. Bottom line, I just don't like this game...I replayed it twice but the feeling I get is the same: it's boring and the plot is just needless. The questing system **** and it's now tied to a "debt system" where zones are unlocked the more you pay and then you get the Rollo minigame which forces you to wait for REAL-TIME for his return and it is required in order to get certain items for quests. I just couldn't get more than that time and the more I played, the more I wanted to return to Xillia 1. And I did, despite the flaws it has (mostly Milla. because **** Milla) Apologies for the swearing, but this game pissed me off so much that I couldn't do a review years ago, and now I finally said my piece: **** this game, play Xillia 1.
They said this was one of the biggest projects of the company, and I can see why: there was a lot of detail and effort put into this game and from the way it tries to tell a different, more dark-themed story can be seen from the very start. The game has two aspects attached to it: The RPG and the VN, both required to play through the game. -In the RPG part, you play the role of Shina, a girl with amnesia who seeks to find her memory by literally reaching the endgame and trigger the credit roll. While I won't spoil anything about it, there's a huge sense of tension throughout the game and lots of violence in it, with blood splatter and all that goodness appearing - or at least it would if they bothered to show more pictures of it happening. But there are tons of fan service pictures at least! The combat is very intuitive: each character has a set amount of skills you can learn via experimentation with the 3 skill slots and it's really fun to see if there's a new spell popping. I haven't seen this kind of system since, maybe, legend of legaia on the ps1. There is also a lack of hubs, at least at the start of the game, which means you'll be traveling from point A to point B for a majority of the time which is a nice change. No cities though which is a shame. - The VN parts, as for every VN ever, consists in lots of text - usually without voices, unless you play with Japanese voices - and the occasional choice you must do that will either halt your progress or lead to a new point in the story. In this side, you play as Arata, a Game Programmer who knew Shina and finds out she's still in the game: his job is to lead her to the endgame by any means necessary. Despite the fact it's kind of light on the VN aspect - there are usually 2 choices, with only one time giving you 3 - I honestly enjoyed the VN parts far more than I anticipated: there's a constant sense of tension, far more than in the RPG part, and you get hooked really quickly to see what's going to happen with your choice, which will lead you to either a new path or into many of the dead ends - or should I say, "Death Ends"?. With those two major points out of the way, I want to say that despite the large amounts of effort put into this game, there were some huge issues that not only were annoying but definitely frustrated me to no end. Starting with the Death Ends. Being a hybrid game, both parts have choices that can lead you to a death end - basically a game over - and the problem with this is that you have no way to know which option is the right one, resulting in having your first game over in the first hours of the game. VN games let you save anytime and this is true for the VN sections, but in the RPG sections you can only save on save points for the most part with the OCCASIONAL possibility to save during dialogues - and even then it's not guaranteed: be ready to reload! This is SO FRUSTRATING, especially with the really vague choices you can get that are not exactly easy to figure out: running away was a bad decision and helping calming down a girl was worse than letting her rant. I don't get this! In addition, and forgive me for my lack of VN experience, but don't they usually let you choose paths? Why it's only one path and the other is always a death end? There's also a huge lack of imagery throughout the game BUT I assume it's because of the Pegi, as the game will often mention decapitation, gore, and blood. Or maybe they were lazy. And lastly but not least, the RPG aspect has quite a lot of nuisances too, starting with limiting your characters with only 16 skills (3 assigned to Attack, Guard and Items) despite each character has only 20 to 30 skills (Celica has the most, with 32 I think). The hacking mode allows you to use different stuff, from changing a genre to summoning monsters, however, I barely used them at all: fighting genre was the best option and I must have used a summon or a debug once or twice in total - which makes upgrading them a total waste too. I also never understood how countering works and the endings are supposed to be gained by talking to the girls at the **** finishing the game twice so that you can choose right before the end. And can anyone tell me why the girls have to pant every time they run? It's uncomfortable, to say the least! Is this a fetish that I'm not aware of?! Overall, do I recommend it? Honestly, yeah, it's very good, the story was well written (except when it wasn't) and the RPG parts were fun (except when it wasn't). The game is also slightly longer than usual - I finished in about 35 hours - 38 for getting all endings - and the game doesn't really have a proper good ending either, making for a pretty interesting sequel bait. Give it a shot, but I recommend a price cut if you're not sure about it.
Another disappointment from SE: I'm not even surprised at this point and if anything I have myself to blame for this. I KNEW this was going to **** and I didn't try to listen. And here I am, with a game that I CANNOT continue due to being so bad, so boring, I can't even get past hour 13 - in a game supposedly 20 hours long. And this is truly a shame because I believe that with more polish this game could've been even better than SO4, which was considered one of the worse installment. Sure SO4 had crappy plots - which SO doesn't have crappy plots? - but it had a charming kind of crappy and the combat was simply wonderful and fun: I definitely enjoyed that game far more than I imagined. But before we get to the bad stuff, what's good in it? Well, the characters are decently good, even better than SO4: Fidel is not a terrible MC, Miki is annoying but okay, Relia is mysterious but not annoying, and Fiore is surprisingly less **** than she makes it appear, Emerson is more skilled than he makes it look, Anne is okay and Victor is too. I mean it's not Oscar worthy but it's not "Lymle" or "Phaze" levels of bad either. And the story isn't that bad too - at least to the point I was in I got interested - and I could try to go further once I get beyond the ****. Other good things are the large amounts of good voice acting, interactions with your companions, smooth but barebone graphics that at least remain at a stable 60 fps, combat with 7 people which is a nice difference and the usual mix of sci-fi and fantasy where we can play the fantasy side first - I think only star ocean 1 and 2 made you play from the part of the fantasy dwellers first, and in 2 you could choose which characters to go with first. Anyway, that's the good stuff so let's talk about bad because there are plenty! Star Ocean has always been fast-paced action combat by using 2 buttons in different ranges and that's it: there wasn't much else to learn and it worked pretty fun. It's still the same now but with a difference: skills take a century and a half to cast or perform and this makes combat less fluid than you might think. Even the first skill you use, Double Slash, is extremely slow at performing and it's a 2hit combo! There are 7 people in combat, which is nice, but one will never fight so you actually have 6 people fighting and one buffing all the time. I feel that if they looked at Suikoden they would've learned a lot more in making passive fighters but instead, Relia is a character you'll be pumping with passive roles. Oh right, the roles: instead of giving your characters orders now you can only give them roles, which are actual buffs and passives that you level up...I fail to see the point of this: why not just give them actual orders? Why square does have to overcomplicate everything?! Speaking of overcomplicated: quests are needed if you want to learn new abilities and skills. Yes, you heard it right: abilities (like compounding, smithing, gathering, emoting, etc) and skills (the ones you use in combat) are learned from books and said books can come from quests or chests. I wouldn't complain if quests weren't a pain to **** of course they are **** and requires a lot of backtracking and they knew nobody would do them. So they ended up locking important stuff behind it. I can't say it's not brilliant manipulation at least! Also, at least to the point, I'm in (13 hours) I could NOT teleport or move anywhere freely which means backtracking on foot and let me tell you that you run so slow you NEED to hold the sprint button to make it more bearable. Problem with sprint? It's on the circle button which means you cannot reposition your camera while you sprint - in SO4 the sprint was a dash that you couldn't control, which made sense. Again, more chores to a game full of chores. Another issue with combat is that you can switch control to anyone you desire but outside of combat you will always return to Fidel, which is not the problem: the problem is that you enter combat without loading and this means that whenever you start a fight the camera will jerk around from Fidel to X then X to Fidel: this is really stressing on your eyes as you can feel motion sick and even eye strain! In addition, since I like using long ranged fighters, I ALWAYS have to move because as soon as I get into combat I'm beyond the edge and an escape meter appears as if I want to escape. They didn't even properly test this game. I just can't even...seriously just forget this game: it's clear as day they cut the funds and made it barely work just for the sake of it. Square only cares for Final Fantasy, Kingdom Hearts and Dragon Quest, and it shows - actually not really because FF15 and KH3 are also rushed but whatever. If anything this means SO4 is no longer the worst one so go ahead and pick that one up: I'll take Lymle's M'kay and Phaze bootlicking every day if it means to play a better game.
Disclaimer: even though I'll be harsh with the game, it's still a very good one and it deserves all the praise it gets. On top of that, I also played the original one back on the ps1 but more to that later So, Resident Evil 2 finally has a remake and in the literal sense of the word: just like RE1 it got many new features, new weapons, sub-weapons and the layout of the RPD station has been drastically changed so that even for those like us who can remember the game step by step will be surprised with the changes. The game controls à la resident evil 4 and that was a great idea: RE4 was fantastic thanks to the third person perspective and the shooting was satisfying for that reason, and the fact that you can aim while walking and also enter doors without loading, it's all a nice touch. Most of the enemies of the series have returned with even strong zombies now. dogs, lickers, Mr x and the good old Birkin who tries to become a one punch cosplayer. Just kidding: he's more aggressive than ever and he'll be a pain to deal with. I could go on with how much the game has changed but I do have a lot of issues too and after finishing the game several times, both scenarios, and an S+ on hardcore (The rocket launcher is amazing!) I have to say that while the game is definitely improved, it's also a chore to deal with. Let's start with the zombies: they're tougher now, which is great, however, headshots do jack now! Why? In the original, the reason why you couldn't aim was that you couldn't aim! You were stuck in place and only able to aim at a 45% degree angle! It made sense if you couldn't headshot (although the shotgun "could" headshot if close enough). in the remake you can freely aim anywhere on the zombie but despite that your damage will be the same, head or feet or whatever, and this is sad because the zombies are MARVELOUSLY animated and they interact flawlessly with the environment: they can crawl on tables, fall from stairs, their limbs can be torn apart and more. I mean it's a tactic to basically shoot to their knees as it stuns them! However, headshots should at least do the most damage and the only way to reliably one-shot zombies is to score a critical hit. Or use the shotty/magnum The weird thing, however? These are the hardest enemies in the game! Lickers? Just walk past them. Dogs? 3-4 shots and they're down. Mr. X? he's so easy to dodge and you're safe in certain areas anyway! The sewer monsters? Annoying but easy to dodge once you know the pattern. Plant zombies? Tough but you don't want to kill them only stun them. Even boss fights are a joke in comparison to zombies! And yet zombies have no weak points. It's no wonder the RPD is the hardest part of the game. Speaking of enemies, I HATED Mr. X: he was the biggest nuisance of the entire game and I can't believe people are actually scared by him. For starters, he looks less threatening than the original version and secondly he's so easy to avoid that the only reason he'll give you pain, is when you need to do puzzles. Yeah that's it: he's annoying when you need to get puzzles done, but besides that? It's a joke really. What a letdown: from a legitimately scary enemy that in the original you had the anticipation and the fear of "when" he'll come to you, in the remake he's just another "stalker" enemy that stalks you too much - he can hear your gunshots - and only serves to cause annoyance. PLEASE CAPCOM DON'T DO THIS FOR NEMESIS PLEASE, MAKE HIM ACTUALLY SCARY AND NOT THIS PITIFUL EXCUSE OF A HORROR TROPE. And lastly, too many swear words. No, I'm not one of those don't worry but I can't say the dialogues are brilliant. In the original, there weren't many swearings (or any at all?) and all dialogues were about campy and corny lines delivered to make it look like a cheesy gore **** it worked! These lines helped lighten the mood because they were so hilariously bad it's amazing. But in the remake? You'll see so much **** that you'll get bored and feel annoyed more than anything because they take everything too seriously and it's really hard to follow. I get it, it's a remake, but the original trilogy was a campy horror game and while I don't expect the same dialogues at least make them sound less edgy! It's silly but the whole wrong reason! Oh and Claire looks terrible and I mean it: she looks like a cosplayer who plays the role of Claire. Leon is fine and so everyone else, especially like the new look of Ada, Ben, Annette and Irons. Thankfully you can swap some costumes. Overall, I recommend this game because it's very good, it's extremely well made, it's detailed and it's basically what I hoped after RE4 came: a dark, scary game with a great setting. And thanks to the remake's changes it'll be all fresh like in '98! PS: shame on you capcom for forcing us to buy the soundtrack for the original game! It was only 3 bucks but come on! Nickle and diming already? At least the '98 models are free...
This game is a big mixed bag for me, and for good reasons: I initially bought this game that also came along with a code for TSOT and I LOVED that game, despite its flaws and being utterly short. Still, It was a game I could easily recommend and even if the gameplay was meh, the story and the humor behind it was what kept me playing until the end. Twice. But TFBW is...different. The game is drastically improved and I cannot lie: the combat got a massive overhaul, from a paper Mario-esque kind of combat to a more tactical version and from 2 characters you can have now 4 on the field - even though in the first game you could swap your companion with anyone. The combat is very fun, despite being slow, and I had a really good time playing it on high difficulty: it makes combat more challenging but not impossible. The new guy is also changed: while in the first game you could choose 4 classes, and stick with said class to the end, in TFBW you will be able to change class and use specific skills and ultimates for having a very variable kit, without mentioning the extremely well done customization with artifacts and DNA, which drastically changes your stat distribution...even though your character does feel a bit weaker than everyone else, even with a potency of 810. I just made him the healer, with one of the best AoE heals and the medium ultimate which heals and grants shield: almost made every battle a breeze. South Park itself is much different, but not too much: many areas are revamped and different - I suppose many are also referenced in the series but since I'm a dirty European we don't really know. Yeah, we ****. Anyway, I will give them at the very least the benefit of not censoring the game anymore, probably thanks to the 18 rating our version got so we could enjoy the game without any issues. Either way, South Park was slightly revamped, redesigned with more paths to take and overall the area feels new but familiar which is a good thing. And the story...well it's good, it's south park, but this is where I'm going to stop because I want to say this: while TBFW is a much better game in terms of GAMEPLAY I felt that TSOT is a much better game in terms of STORY. TBFW's plot is a mess and very unfocused and honestly not really fun, at least not as fun as TSOT which could keep me glued to the screen for hours until the end, and I really had a hard time to follow it at times: it starts with you needing to find a cat, although you end up going after Chaos, then suddenly you have a conspiracy behind and...honestly I'm not even sure about the plot is so unfocused. The characters "characters" are really fun and somewhat inventive but it's less about satirizing and more about making fun of in TSOT the fantasy setting was a parody of EVERYTHING fantasy, from games to dungeons and dragons, and even me who doesn't play DnD I still get tons of the references and the feeling of being a fantasy satire. But TFBW doesn't feel anything like this: it's just parody for the sake of parody with the only major satiric point being "making several movies for promoting the franchise". It just feels...unfocused, that's all I can say! The gameplay got better too and the fact your character can customize your skills at will makes the entire "start with a new class" not required since you'll have every class unlocked near the end of the game and you also got more characters to use in battle. Still, the first game used the vs2 combat much better by allowing you to swap characters when needed, having perks, upgrading skills and more. Yeah, you can't upgrade skills anymore and you have no perks anymore - there are but it's tied to artifacts - which feels like a big contrast with RPGs. Where, you know, there's a lot of customization! Not that there aren't any it's just less customization. Armor is also for cosmetic purposes only, whereas in the first game armor was an essential part of the game...I get it the idea, you can make your personal superhero costume, but still, I feel there could be some sort of glamour option to fix the issue. And the game length, while being longer (I finished in 25 hours vs 13 in TSOT) I would need to pause once in a while because I would get bored. Exploration is still important but now you have only 6 abilities to use (fart, firecrackers, and 4 hero related powers) and I don't really feel as rewarded to backtrack on previous areas, especially when only thing you can get is crafting mats. Oh I forgot there is also **** it's okay. Overall, I do want to recommend this game because it's objectively a better GAME than TSOT, but as a SOUTH PARK GAME it's much worse. I recommend trying TSOT first - especially if cheaper - and then this, because that game was addictive and I could easily stay an entire day playing and laughing at the humor. This game just feels tiresome after a while.
Few premises: I'm from Europe and in my country the show is practically absent due to its vulgarity and dirty humor, so if I have to watch it it's usually re-runs of the old seasons - meanwhile movies with LOCAL vulgarity is fine for children, because consistency! Secondly, being from Europe this game is censored for us and I will have to mention it for good reason and one of the major issues for my lower score. South Park: The stick of truth is a turn-based RPG with a heavy emphasis on interactions, which is heavily shown in the combat: each ability requires a certain input to be done properly in a very similar way to Paper Mario or any recent Mario RPG games. As a result, the combat is very fun and often varied thanks to the four classes you can choose (I played with Thief and Jew) and lots of different equipment you can get that grants different stats. On top of that you can get perks and upgrade skills to do more damage and the companions are well varied to give you enough incentives to try all. Only thing I can say that **** is that the level cap is 15 and it won't take long to reach it. The story...well let's start from the surface: the story is about two kingdoms, elves and humans, fighting against each other for the possession of the Stick of Truth which is told to grant control over the galaxy and you can do anything: you'll go high and low in order to find it with a relatively good twist at the end. An there's Morgan Freeman too. But below that, it's just a story of how a bunch of kids is LARPing as knights and warriors for the control of a branch and that there's a real conspiracy where zombies are going to be involved and that could potentially destroy the entirety of south park. And there's Morgan Freeman too. The story is definitely not what you likeabout this game: it's the "HOW" the story is told, which is very amusing and smart in its ways. The kids are LARPing so when they fight or use abilities, it's actually in their **** then you can defeat bums and soldiers with a gun with holy lightning? The blend of reality and fiction is what makes the aspect of combat hilarious: you can't really know if they're really LARPing or it's all serious stuff. But besides the story, it's still South Park and it doesn't shy away from picking up and mocking the standards of RPGs and such, which alone could make this game an episode on its own. The smartness of the show it's well shown and it's really fun to see everyone's reaction to everything. It's a comedy Gold. But then comes the problems and I want to start with one in particular: the censorship. Bits and parts of the games are censored for us because we can't live in a place with offensive imagery and we can't think of ourselves so the people there thought it would be great to remove imagery that could be harmful to our delicate European senses...yeah I'm being sarcastic here of course, but as I said some parts are censored and one of those is a vital part of the game later too! On top of that, these censored part cannot be skipped and it's a pain to just stand there and wait until the blue screen goes away! I get it, the game is censored, Europe **** balls and we can't take a joke (I can of course, which is why I watched it online later) but let me at least skip it and don't waste precious time! And considering that one part of the game has a tutorial that is hidden behind censorship, you're going to struggle later when there's a scene that is NOT censored and requires the procedure that the game skipped! Another big issue is the game's length: I finished the first time in about 13 hours and then a second time in about 10...I got it for free after buying the sequel but I don't know if I would've bought it at launch for full price if this was the entire game. Sure you can replay the game with another class and there are sections that allow you to choose a side, but the entire game has one ending and there's no real room for variation: only a few bits and pieces are actually different while the rest will always end the same way. The combat, while fun, it's rather simple and very easy to learn but even there there's not much variety either: sure weapons and armors give different buffs and stats but you'll either stick with what works for your class or what works with your perks. I usually stuck with dot attacks and armor breaking moves, especially the dots that do a ton of damage in this game. Bottom line, I highly recommend it but only on discount: as a full price game (it's 30 bucks on steam) it's a bit too high and even if it's a fun game, the best you will get out of it is two playthroughs for trying the other faction and maybe another class. I doubt you'll try a third or fourth time to try the remaining classes. But if you're a south park fan, it's another incentive to try it!
I had to return this game and get myself a copy of the ps4 version instead, making this the third game I returned for the switch (Bayonetta, Doom and this one) for the sole reason that it's practically a crappier version on almost every level. Let me say this: the game ITSELF is great, now that I'm playing on a ps4 version instead, and it's clearly one of the best action RPGs of the last years. However, I cannot pass over the big flaws that the switch version has and forced me to essentially switch - HAHAHA - to the ps4 version instead. And why am I here reviewing this game instead of ps4 version? Because I'm tired of everyone saying that "Switch version of X is better because it's portable" when it's clearly the opposite and like a dumbass, I fell for it. But this will be the last time, for sure. First but not least, 50 euros for an (almost) 2-year-old game...stay classy switch games! I mean it's not like I can buy this game for 30 euros NEW for ps4 and pc! Secondly, the game is locked at 30 fps and let me say that the difference is abysmal: on the switch, the gameplay is a lot less fluid and it feels like I'm playing an old ps2 game. Sure it works, it's functional and it's working but this game is meant to be played in full speed and having 60 fps does help a lot more. Not being able to play at 60 is a huge letdown and as a result, your actions feel not as fluid or as fast, which is honestly weird considering that, from what I found, the game was firstly considered for the VITA which is even worse, meaning that this is a port of a port! Even the PC version is better! And third, I experienced quite the slowdowns when there's too much action going on - and believe me you WILL have a lot of enemies on screen at times - which drops the framerate even lower and that was the moment I said "F--k it, I'm getting the ps4 version" because this is unacceptable. I will ignore the fact that this game had translation issues since that's an already fixed problem. In conclusion, I love Ys 8 and I wanted to give it a good try on the switch but it's just not really good and not worth the price, especially when for less you can get a much better version. "BUT IT'S PORTABLE" Yeah, I know it's portable, but so is my portable computer and guess what? It's also on steam, which is also a pretty decent port from what I know. So here's the thing: would you rather buy a version who has smooth 60 fps combat, no slowdowns, a better price point but no portability or buy a version who has 30 fps combat, lots of slowdowns, a full retail price with the only positive remark being it's portable? Measure your cons and pros I say, which is why I gave it a 5: it's a fantastic game, no denying that, and it's extremely fun and enjoyable and I'm having a blast exploring, fighting, fishing, crafting, everything. But on the switch, this game is only HALF of what's on the ps4 and pc version, which is why I'm giving it a 5. But if you only care about portability - AND ONLY CARE ABOUT THAT ONE FEATURE THAT ALSO A PORTABLE COMPUTER CAN DO AND ABSOLUTELY NOTHING ELSE - then add another 5 and enjoy yourself with yet another amazing action RPG in your collection.
I never played a YS game before and what a way to start this franchise with one of the best action RPG of the last years. Heck, even the start is exhilarating, with a fantastic rock tune to welcome you in with a bang. Seriously, I was never this excited about running around and fighting in years and that alone made me want to continue playing more and more. But I'm getting ahead of myself: the game talks about Adol, the main protagonist the series and he's an adventurer who shipwrecks in an island - apparently it's as common as elder's scroll prisoner's theme! The game is set in this island called "The Island of Seiren" and your job is to get out of it alive while saving castaways, protecting your village from enemies and discovering the secrets behind this island in turn. What fascinated me about the story is that it can literally go anywhere and not feel forced: too many times I played RPGs where the plot just stops in order to tell you another story that has nothing to do with it, but here there's just no real story because your main job is to get out of the island while everything else is an additional, and the more you discover the more you learn about the island, which only makes you more curious to play! It's been since Berseria I wasn't this curious for a plot before and I can easily spend 5-6 hours playing non-stop! And it doesn't stop there: the island is huge and the game rewards for exploring it with rewards, crafting materials - there's no money since you're all castaways- fishing spots, questing, etc. There's always something to do here and I NEVER got bored to fight once. Speaking of combat: it's amazingly fun and fast, showing its 60 fps that really makes it a great experience! The combat is super fast, flashy, rewarding (dodging and parrying in time buffs you) and very responsive: I never felt the game doing something I never intended and the commands can be customized at your leisure. It's almost **** it wasn't for the camera and lock-on that occasionally confuses you by not letting you turn the camera around, forcing you to unlock your target. In fact, the camera is probably the clunkiest thing in the game thus far and it can be troublesome when climbing or when needing to see down below. It's not game-breaking but still a pain to deal with. Other than that I have no complains about combat: enemies are well balanced for all difficulties and none of their attacks are broken (I tried hard and nightmare and it was quite enjoyable but the exp rates are lower so I got back to normal) and the game is not even stingy with SP and it's kind of encouraged to spam skills in order to kill them and obtain half of the sp back, and it's just so fun! And how can I forget about the music?! This is usually a subjective thing but HOLY CRAP, the moment I got to the island, and Sunshine Coastline (that's the name on youtube at least) hit, I was like "Oh wow, this is...amazing, time to do some adventuring!". And it's not just one music: many tracks in the game are outstanding and really remarkable! I sincerely recommend checking the OST of the game and it's not something I say all the time! The game is just so **** what's wrong with it? Hmm it's hard to **** instance while the story is pretty good the characters are your basic anime clichè that really changes nothing - Laxia is your usual tsundere who hates you for no reason, Sahad is your Bara character with a golden heart, Hummel is your silent and mysterious character and Ricotta is your overly cheerful character. The game is filled with clichè characters which are not entirely bad, but it feels like they tried to make anime fans happy first...I mean did we REALLY need to see Adol peeking on Laxia naked at the beginning, with her getting all mad for X hours of gaming - even though it's later explained but it's still crap-? No we didn't. Also while the bosses are challenging and fun, the enemies tend to die rather quick unless you play on higher difficulties, which makes them more resilient. In addition you have a 3-type system where depending on your type of hits you can break enemies...however considering you can have 3 characters at all times, and the 6 characters are of 3 types each, you can essentially have one of each everytime - and it's encouraged considering you get more rare materials. The map is also kind of **** will take a while before you can learn how to use it, and there's a serious lack of voice acting in the game - at least in the English version - and the graphics aren't really that great, looking like ps3 era graphics. But I would just nitpick at this point: I cannot stop recommending this game for anyone needing for a fun action RPG with some surprisingly good plots and overall a clichè but likable roster of characters. And considering it's also pretty long - easily 40-50 hours on your first playthrough - it's a good value for your money! Give it a shot!
Pokemon and Digimon were the big deal back in the day, however, after a while, I went with team Digimon and practically stayed with them until **** let's just say it wasn't the best experience when it comes to games. Sure pokemon games are good but they're so identical from one another that puts call of duty to shame. Anyway, after hearing of this game I decided to give it a go, knowing it's a turned base rpg - which automatically makes it better than 90% of the rest - and with the roster of well-known Digimon which really helps. I mean it: seeing Palmon as my starter Digimon gave me the shivers and nostalgia from back when I watched the Digimon cartoon, probably one of my favorite series of my childhood - and back then pokemon was still pretty good too. The more I played the more I just loved to finally get my team of Digimon, like Greymon or Angemon (I screamed like a fangirl at her sight) or Leomon (R.I.P.) and more. Not just that: each Digimon has an iconic skill that has its own animation and it's just like the anime: angemon's knuckle, Lillymon's cannon, Greymon's meteor! It makes me wish this game was available back when it was new, it would've blown pokemon away by a longshot! I could go on for hours and tell you why this is amazing but let's be real here: unless you never liked Digimon this might be half a turn-off because none of these details might get you. When I got Lillymon I was literally the happiest man in a while and alongside Garudamon and Metalgreymon, it was the best feeling ever to have your own dream team But if you never liked it, or just never got really into Digimon, this might be only half the fun and a tough cookie in general. Just beware. Anyway, let's switch to combat, which is very good as you can use 3 Digimon in battle and carry 8 with you - depending on your character's memory. The combat, as I said, it's your generic turn-based RPG that works and it's pretty simplistic too, having 3 types of Digimon (Virus, Vaccine, Data) alongside 8 weaknesses (Water, Fire, Plant - Electricity, Earth, Wind - Light and Dark), which can be mixed and allow you to do up to triple damage. Some Digimon can also have no weaknesses or very little of it, such as Flamedramon who's a Fire Armor type (only weak to water). In addition, each Digimon can learn up to 20 moves but only use 6 in combat and as far as I know, these skills are carried over while digivolving, making the formation of the perfect Digimon group a challenge of its own. Overall, the combat is good and has tons of iconic Digimon, and it's very vast and expanded. Too bad it's ungodly unbalanced. Normal is far too easy and you can almost do every battle on auto mode (minus the bosses, some of which are really tough) and hard is, well, hard enough that'll make even normal battles tough and make sure you save anytime. I appreciate the fact that it has a difficulty slider but I also wished that the game would be overall balanced without resulting in "ultra-easy mode" and "Insane mode". And last but not least, the story, and I won't go any deeper as it could be a spoiler but let me just say it's very, VERY hard to follow. The game has a hub world system so it's reasonable to say that there are not huge places to explore: only dungeons and city locations. The problem is not that though: the main problem is that the story keeps jumping focus all the time and it makes the story really hard to follow. For example in a chapter (I think 4?) you get tasked to prove that ghost exists: great, you think it's a digital ghost right? Nope! Ghosts are real, you proved their existence! Case closed...what?! That's it? Yes, that's it. This feels like a subquest mini-plot but it's actually in the main quest! These mini-plots constantly stop the flow and makes it all harder to enjoy the really good plot of the game: it has dark turns - extremely dark ones too - and its tone is taken seriously all the time, but without losing its opportunity to remind you that "it's a game about digital monsters and some of them are weirdly shaped". It's really great when it goes on the plot and tries to tackle on the real deal. it's really unfun when the game decides to stop and make me do useless chores. Overall, I HIGHLY recommend this game if you're a Digimon fan but if you aren't I would recommend it as a decent jrpg with "monster catching" elements and an overall good story that while hard it is quite good on its own. Really hard to say no so give it a shot: you might enjoy Digimon more than you think! PS: the game lacks English dubbing so for those who aren't into reading while watching, get ready to direct your eyes on the bottom of the screen 24/7!
Ni no Kuni 2 was a pleasant surprise, to say the least: I hated the first game because the combat was a mess, the characters were meh and overall the only thing that saved the original game was the exploration and the fact you had a huge world to **** the sequel does pretty much the same too. To a certain extent. First thing first, the game is supposedly set in another world, possibly the same as the first but due to the only reference being Ding Dong Dell it's hard to tell if it's actually the same world: I assume it's the future since there's a reference to an "ancestor" in the game but there's no real hint about that at all. The "another world" gist is important since it's "kind" of the main theme of the two games (Ni No Kuni means "second country"), including stuff like soul mates which are a thing of the previous game but is very barebone present here. In fact, many things in this game are barebone: the story is about Roland, a president of an unnamed country (most likely USA) who gets transported into another world and meets Evan who's the actual main protagonist since Roland is more like an excuse for the "another world" theme. The plot starts off pretty interesting but falls flat after a couple of hours due to the premise: Evan wants to build a kingdom where there's no war and the first chapters are all about signing an alliance treaty while chasing the obvious final boss complete with dark aura and snake-like costume. Problem with the plot is simple: it's poorly told and the more you play the more you notice a severe lack of character development or arcs and it's a shame because the potential was there. On the other hand the ending was pretty nice, had a very good twist and the lack of details and hints worked. For the rest it feels rushed to say the least. Let's move to the combat, which is actually better than the first game. No more action/turn-based hybrids mumbo jumbo that didn't know what it wanted to be but instead legit action combat with dodging, heavy and light attacks and skills to use at full charge: this all sounds great if it wasn't for two major issues that make the combat really bad: 1) Animation lock. Each time you use a skill or magic your character will be locked in animation for several seconds and this makes you an easy target AND interrupt your skill midway, resulting in losing both mana and charge. On top of that enemies have the tendency to aim straight at the player and ignore the other two, resulting in many one-sided battles against them. This leads to my other issue which is... 2) Unbalanced difficulty. The game has 3 difficulties: normal hard and expert, but unless you're a masochist you'll always go for either hard or normal because in expert you can be one shot fairly easy - and since enemies will ALWAYS ignore the other two team members this means you'll always have to kite them. However normal is far too easy but gives the less loot so it's really not worth it which means you'll want to stick with hard most of the time because you get more loot and the fights are more challenging - even though one-shots can still happen. However, despite these two major issues of the game it's hard to ignore the best part of the whole package: it's a huge world and filled to the brim with content to do! Sidequests, skirmishes, kingdom simulator, crafting, gathering...there's so much stuff is amazing! The world is also fully explorable and with many dungeons to unlock and secret enemies to beat, they are definitely the best components of the game. For starters the kingdom is easy to manage and recruiting all 100 citizens takes a while and involves doing all sorts of activities and requests: each citizen is qualified for something more than the rest so make sure to use them properly to get the benefits out of them. The kingdom also unlocks perks which are very useful for postgame content and it's highly recommended to focus on unlocking everything available as soon as you can. Skirmishes are 100% okay but they're not too thrilling. Just make sure to have a skirmishing party around 25-30 for the final chapter of the game. Questing is very easy due to a tracker that works wonders and in case you need to find an item the game will tell you where to go and get it! However many quests are all about fetching so be ready for it. Crafting is actually not bad for both weapons and armor, as well as higgledies - basically combat helpers - and with the right combination, they can be devastatingly good. And overall plenty of challenges which requires a lot of time - for leveling up - and gear to achieve. Do I recommend it? Yes of course! it's a fun little game with plenty of content to do but ruined by a poorly told story with no character development and missing plot arcs and combat that is not smooth or balanced enough. Play it for the exploration and the content that it **** ignore the story if you can.
First things first, the fact you have to download 2 of the 3 games IS annoying: i had to wait an hour to get the game running because of the downloads and i had no internet in the morning, so i had to wait a LONG time before getting to play. With that out of the way, the game is damn good: it's just how i remembered back at the ps1 with some great controls too, which was something that i hated in crash instead. Controls are tight and you can control your charge even better too, and the hit detection is great too - maybe too great: I can hit enemies before they approach me. Levels are very detailed and the fact they added extra challenges for unlocking stuff is a nice touch. I can't think of anything that the game does wrong right now, because overall it does a great job and I don't even see a point of making a mini review of each game - if anything the first one is a bit blander since it has basically no plot, the second is a vast improvement over the first in gameplay and plot (what little of it) and the third has multiple characters you can play with which is a nice addition. My issues are very few: I encountered a bug or two such as invisible enemies and the game lacks a sort of indicator of the missing levels and such which means you can potentially miss a level (like I did). But overall the game is beyond playable and the issues didn't stop me from enjoying the game! Overall I highly recommend the game despite the huge issue of the download size: I suppose it's a minor evil to withstand but comparing to other games that are even smaller and require as much memory as this game, I think we can deal with it. Without forgetting that it's 3 games and not just one!
I want to start off saying that this game isn't BAD: it has some nice unique things and unlike OW this game does feel more like a MOBA - minus the levels. I legitimately enjoyed the game in its beta - a bit less during OB64 - and overall I spent about 200 hours give or take and I was looking forward for its final release... ...but sadly I'm not sure I'll keep on playing for that much longer though. First things first, I do like that the game is free to play but allows (or allowed?) to purchase the current heroes and future ones and that's how I kept coming back essentially: new heroes got released and I gave it a look, maybe trying the new heroes and probably move on: I went with the pack and I'm glad I did because I get always new heroes for free **** at what cost now. I want to be straightforward: i don't like the lootboxes idea in this game, which is probably even worse than OW. In OW you can buy lootboxes for your costumes BUT you also got the possibility to buy them with coins: it's expensive but it's there, and you got your skin, done. In Paladins it's a mixed bag: you can buy skins with crystals but ONLY some costumes, but the rest are in lootboxes. For instance I want to buy one of Seris skins? well time to spend cash on the specific **** I said specific, because there are multiple lootboxes to choose from, each giving specific skins of specific type. Suuuure, you can buy specific skins too, but if you want to buy some specific ones you have to buy them when on a limited sale or else...well they might return later on but by that time you wouldn't care much. Seriously why such a big deal?! This literally killed my mood because I did like some of these skins, I wanted to buy them, but I didn't care enough to gamble at the lootbox! Sure you also get some occasional bonus to unlock some older skins (like Archangel Tyra right now) but COME ON, I just want one skin or two and move on Jesus! And what about the battle pass? Because that's a thing now: PUBG did it, Fortnite did it, now also this game did it. I guess it's their way to remove the VIP system (when it had FOUR currencies to track off). Still it's about 13 euros (for me) per month and while you can do without a "sub", you essentially unlock "nothing" with it but few stupid sprays, boosts and additional gold - while if you sub you get emotes, skins, you name it. People complain about how OW is all about gambling and how lootboxes should be banned, but paladins does this and more and everyone is fine? OH BECAUSE IT'S FREE, OF COURSE THEN IT'S FINE...freaking hypocrites. In conclusion, this game is just a shell of its former glory - or what glory it could've been: it's not BAD, it's not pay to win or anything but it's clear they're too busy making skins and making us pay more money for stuff that feels just there for making us spend. I do care about skins but not to the point of spending more money than a sub. Leave that scammy practice to Final Fantasy 14 please. Give it a try and see for yourself, but I sincerely lost interest by now. PS: personal opinion, the heroes are uninspired, boring looking, and really don't fit with the world in my **** hi-rez changing your goblin mech into a wooden mech, or kinessa rifle into a lesser technological one STILL won't change the fact that those two don't fit (and what about freaking Moji? Pip? Willo? I swear they're so out of place, but that's just my opinion and it didn't affect the score))
My version is the ps2 version and while I know there's a ps4 version, I decided to put it here instead because...well that's my version, and I'm not sure if there's any difference besides the slight graphical update and trophies. PROS: + Great story with two POV for a better immersion and good twists + A large and balanced roster of characters (10 + 2 secret characters) + Easy to learn tactical combat + Many skills to unlock + Customizable armor and weapons (instead of buying new ones) + Challenging side content (The arena) that grants amazing rewards. + Good music with some enjoyable tunes. + A relatively long game (I finished in about 60+ hours) CONS: - Incredibly slow pace and the impossibility to skip cutscenes. - Spirit Stones instead of Mana for skills makes it needlessly harder. - Mediocre voice acting - Lack of information during combat (no bars above heads or etc) - Annoying looting system (no automatic pick after fight) - Lack of sidecontent besides the arena. - Huge difficult spike at the end of the game. Overall the game is great but it suffers from being a relatively old-school tactical rpg that has a lot of difficulty spikes and very slow paced combat and story. Add the fact that the game can become incredibly frustrating during the last session of story - and a final boss that nearly defeated me DESPITE having unlimited spells and basically everyone overlevelled, this game is a diamond in the rough: you'll have to go through the flaws to fully enjoy. But if you do you'll have a really good time and the lots of grind you've done will be worth it.
Well I hate to say this, but this game is ACTUALLY a lot better than the main game Xenoblade 2: in fact if I had to review this expansion on its own I'd gladly say that this was a "fun" jrpgs with a fun combat, some good story bits, and overall a decent narrative, basically everything that the main game missed. I mean, this game LITERALLY fixes every issue I had in the main version: combat is actually faster, and fun, and exciting, and rewarding, gathering is not a chore anymore because with fewer blades (6, 2 for each character) it's much easier to gather stuff up and the game even tells you what the node gives you. Quests are MUCH more precise and tell you everything to do, including where and who to speak, and AUX CORES ARE ALREADY FILLED WHEN YOU GET THEM! Holy **** **** I can't believe they've fixed it in an expansion but not in the god-forsaken main game! Nobody knows how many empty cores I had because I couldn't be fussed to fill them up. Blades are less now, only 6 like I said, which means less convoluted gameplay and less RNG: combos are easier to do and doesn't require those long and unnecessary complex moves you need to do to put an orb: you just need to use an elemental skill. On the other hand, breaking SAID orbs is much **** I think it's a nice change. The Affinity chart still **** as usual BUT this is the thing: in here it's better because you only have 6 blades and not only that some charts FINALLY TELL YOU where to go for killing enemies and tyrants! Again, where the **** was this in the main game?! And to top all of this, the story is actually good and more interesting...I mean not that it required a lot of work mind you but Addam is a FAR superior character than Rex, Lora is interesting and her relationship with Jin is also intriguing (especially if you played the main game), and the Niall-clone is...well okay, Aegeon has more personality here and Brighid is okay too. Mythra is as bad as always. In addition, you have fewer skills (one less even though you could only put 3) but instead, each blade and character have a passive - THAT'S RIGHT, someone actually got the brilliant idea to finally make each character unique with a passive (or talent). It was too common to see blades with basically the same exact skills with only a few of them being actually unique (I can only think of Perceval and Finch right now) but in here while they do have some similar traits, their unique passives does help differentiate them! Also you can ACTUALLY play as a blade during fights...I mean that's pretty obvious but not obvious enough to be in the main freaking game! This was how Xenoblade 2 should've been! Fun and fast combat, interesting characters, relaxing and rewarding quests (seriously the filled aux cores makes everything better) and rewarding characters to play **** why I'm giving this game a 5? Because this is a goddamn expansion ONLY! When I saw all of these features I couldn't help but scream "WHY!" every second, because these changes could've made the main game a lot better but instead we had these changes in a 40 buck (or 30 if you got season pass) standalone expansion that barely lasts 10-20 hours. In addition, this was CLEARLY a playable flashback that was supposed to be played between chapter 5 and 6, it's so clearly obvious: in the main game that was a part of the game where essentially nothing of importance happened and I can bet anything that this was supposed to be a part playable in the main game but they had to scrap for time restraints. A truly big shame to see what Xenoblade 2 could've actually become, but instead, we have a mediocre semi-action jrpg that is so grindy and unfocused on every level on one hand (XB2), and a good and very well balanced and shaped actual combat jrpg on the other (Torna). So I'll give this a 5 only because not only it's short (but good), but because if you play this game you will NOT enjoy how backward and how underdeveloped the main game **** you must play that as well if you want to continue the story and it's hard not to resist. 5+5 is a 10 so in a way, this is a good thing, but it could've been much more than just this...
Once again, say it with me, "do you have Doom from pc or any other console before? Then don't bother because this is both the worst version you can get and the most overpriced one to boot: this game is NOT worth the 60 buck asking price. But if you never got doom before...well that's much difficult to answer: the game itself is objectively the worst version of all console ports but it's still quite amazing on how they managed to make it run without too many issues. Yes it's downgraded but for good reasons and It's really hard to judge it: they managed to make a massive game like doom work on a switch and that's really commendable. I mean sure it's a console port of a pc game and you'll have the usual issues with the sticks but that's expected from a console versions: you can't expect the smoothness of a pc and you can't even plug an usb keyboard and mouse to make it work properly (or else it wouldn't be nintendo). Too bad they still **** up in two ways: the game STILL requires a download (about 8gb) for multiplayer and other content features that will snatch away your already poor memory of the switch because nintendo didn't think of adding an internal SD or memory to help with data, that would be too freaking logical. Screw the ps4 or xbone with their 1tb of storage: 25gb is all you need and if you want more spend hundreds of bucks for a measly 128gb memory update. TOTALLY BETTER! But what kills it is the price point...I'm sorry but 60 euros for a nearly 2-year-old game, a game you can literally find anywhere for cheap, a game I spent 7 bucks on steam to buy and literally has everything you can ask (including the snapmap, which is missing on the switch), and they DARE to ask us full price again? Of course I can't recommend it: if this came out together with other versions I would say otherwise but I simply CANNOT recommend a fully price port of an old game. And no, the portability is not a reason enough to be worth the price because if I have to be a mean bastard I can reply with "buy a portable computer and get doom on it: even on low setting it will look much better than the switch version. And you can even hook a keyboard and mouse!" So, to put it simply, the game is a real marvel in terms of technicalities and I simply couldn't ignore that, but it's the price point that makes it hard to recommend, especially when you can simply get it anywhere - ANY-FREAKING-WHERE - for cheaper. Oh sure if you buy this version you'll finally be able to play it while you're on the toilet woohoo, good waste of money for 3 hours of gameplay (or even less, considering how powerful doom is), but if you're smart and value your money - which I'm sure you do - I HIGHLY recommend it if you find it CHEAP and ONLY if it's CHEAP, as the game is simply not worth 60 bucks, not after 2 years of its initial release. Or if you like wasting money and you're starving for new games on your switch, then go ahead: I'm sure those countless sales won't come back at tormenting you...
Among the 3 zero escapes games, this is probably the weakest of the bunch and that's saying a lot considering 999, the first in the series, had nearly nothing tied to VLR and ZTD besides the characters and few other mentions, had many simple puzzles, no voice acting and so forth. This game basically fails on 3 levels: characters and story, gameplay, and technicalities. The 9 characters are now split in to 3 fixated groups of 3, which already causes a bit of an issue: in both 999 and VLR the 9 people would be mixed depending on the occasion and this caused different story bits to open, giving more development time. In here it's not the same and it's a problem when certain characters are simply not engaging: Q Team is one of the worst of the 3: Mira and Eric are probably two of the worst because not only Mira is "not **** enough" when she needs to, she also has a twist that doesn't feel fitting and feels out of place, while Eric looks like he needs a chill pill or something. Q is alright, although he always acts like a scared dog for some reason. C Team is fine for the most part, with Carlos being one of the best of the new characters, while Akane and Junpei got worse: Akane is just too weakly and silly, almost like a silly anime character - EVEN THOUGH she has a crush on Junpei ever since school - and Junpei, a very likable character from 999 (and I'm not going to say much more) is now a broken mess of a character who acts tough, angry, depressed, and so forth. He gave us an explanation as to why he's like this but it doesn't feel natural and, obviously, it's not likable. I have played depressed characters before and they still tried to be relatable: Junpei is just annoying. And D team is alright for the most part: Phi comes back in her constant haughtiness, Sigma now has a voice actor and he's pretty good and smart (if you played VLR you know why) and Diana is relatable and decent enough, even after her backstory explained. Beyond the cast being debatable, few other issues mine the experience however and they're hard to ignore: for example, the dialogue cutscenes are not only too many but also BADLY paced and always have tiny breaks between dialogues that always slow the gameplay, which wasn't an issue in the previous games. Infact this also causes the graphics to show off their ugliness and how cheap the animation are, which isn't worse than VLR BUT they got away thanks to being a semi-visual novel game, which animation was to a minimum but had better drawings and pacing. More to that later. The game also doesn't have a linear plot, instead of making you play several scenes separated from each other and only later they'll be matched to be one storyline split into several paths. It's an interesting approach but still feels not as immediate than VLR, which was still a lot better, and 999 which only had the issue of forcing you to constantly restart the game in order to get all endings. On top of that several twists felt...weird, like the transporter, the snail and the reveal of Zero - which is so odd I can't say it was genius or just silly. Overall the story is just okay, but definitely a stepback from the previous games and, on top of that, this game does require having played the first 2 games - or at the very least the second - to know what really happens in here, as there are tons of references to the previous games. The gameplay is decent enough: the puzzles are much simpler to learn than VLR and not as easy than 999 - which were jokes - and there's no hard mode in this game, which helps a bit and makes the game flow better. **** game is also a bit shorter and the actual puzzle rooms are fewer, with about 13 puzzles to play (instead of the 21 in VLR) and not requiring a lot of writing either. Most of the remaining puzzles are either typing down stuff from other timelines, like numbers or names (the 3way stand-off has a freaking funny ending if you type "his" name) and other details. But overall, it's okay, no complains. And last, but not least, the game has very bad animation and the graphics aren't totally bad thanks to the celshading, which doesn't totally hurt the eye, but like i said earlier in VLR and 999 the games were set as visual novels, making the graphics not stand out and instead stylized as 3d anime - and the first game was totally 2D instead. In here it's shot like a cinematic game - which has a reason to be like this - and it's hard to follow due to the slow pacing. I could say more but really, if this wasn't the final chapter of the Zero Escape series (at least I hope so!) I would definitely rate it lower but it was already a miracle we got this game and finally got closure: I can highly recommend it if you need to see the ending but if you didn't, get the first 2 games and get to them first, and THEN play this one. It's not the best, but you just don't look a gift horse in the mouth, right?
