AllstarBrose
2017
People sure love playing as the bad guy, huh?
(Spoiler Warning)
I tend to really enjoy game mods in Source, something about how they play always scratches a good itch for me and I can tend to put up with a mediocre experience due to that. Entropy: Zero fits that spot to a tee, it's an alright HL2:E2 mod that functions and has some neat ideas but is pretty unremarkable
The tone is probably the strongest part of the game, I think it does a good job at imitating HL2's vibe despite being the story being on the opposite foot. Instead of the misery of the world having a tinge of hope due to Gordon's appearance, you're the one removing any and all hope the rebels could have had. It's really effective when clearing out the streets at the beginning where you see the rebel call-outs in a different light, and I found the most effective use to be the stealth section: you hear the rebels all chatting about how they'll go on after the war in their compound with hacked turrets. Once you sneak to the final room, you can revert the hack, leading to every turret firing for a single second causing the entire area to go dead silent. Something about that really stuck with me and I was expecting more of that throughout the game
Instead the rest of the game was mostly focused on slogging through the underground and citadel with boring puzzles and a lot of searching for the right item/place to use an item. None of the puzzles were engaging and they all felt like artificial reasons to lock the player from progressing forward instead of being more diegetic like the ones in the Half-Life games. I did shockingly find the escort section to be enjoyable, the pace at which enemies were sent at you combined with the size of the area and the speed of the escort target made it so I felt like I was constantly doing something without being overwhelmed
And then comes the two boss fights after all that, both sucking major ass. Both have issues where it's hard to tell whether the damage you're doing is affecting the boss and both bugged out on me multiple times, with the first refusing to go to the next area in its first phase and the second not taking any damage in its final phase (I had quite a few bugs throughout the brief hour and a half I spent but those two were the worst).
It's fortunate the weapons aren't the issue at least, they're more or less the same to base HL2 except they feel a bit more potent overall and the modified AR2 feels amazing. I played on the hardest difficulty but never felt like I was having too much trouble, they give you plenty of ammo and health/shield throughout the game but not too much of an excess so reckless players can still easily die. I think the only issue that comes up relating to this is the few sections with endlessly spawning enemies aren't very fun since there isn't much risk if you carefully position yourself
Entropy: Zero is an alright hour and a half to two hour experience that won't amaze you but won't enrage you. Honestly I played the game just because I wanted to play the sequel, but I'd say it was somewhat worth my time (especially because it's free)
(Spoiler Warning)
I tend to really enjoy game mods in Source, something about how they play always scratches a good itch for me and I can tend to put up with a mediocre experience due to that. Entropy: Zero fits that spot to a tee, it's an alright HL2:E2 mod that functions and has some neat ideas but is pretty unremarkable
The tone is probably the strongest part of the game, I think it does a good job at imitating HL2's vibe despite being the story being on the opposite foot. Instead of the misery of the world having a tinge of hope due to Gordon's appearance, you're the one removing any and all hope the rebels could have had. It's really effective when clearing out the streets at the beginning where you see the rebel call-outs in a different light, and I found the most effective use to be the stealth section: you hear the rebels all chatting about how they'll go on after the war in their compound with hacked turrets. Once you sneak to the final room, you can revert the hack, leading to every turret firing for a single second causing the entire area to go dead silent. Something about that really stuck with me and I was expecting more of that throughout the game
Instead the rest of the game was mostly focused on slogging through the underground and citadel with boring puzzles and a lot of searching for the right item/place to use an item. None of the puzzles were engaging and they all felt like artificial reasons to lock the player from progressing forward instead of being more diegetic like the ones in the Half-Life games. I did shockingly find the escort section to be enjoyable, the pace at which enemies were sent at you combined with the size of the area and the speed of the escort target made it so I felt like I was constantly doing something without being overwhelmed
And then comes the two boss fights after all that, both sucking major ass. Both have issues where it's hard to tell whether the damage you're doing is affecting the boss and both bugged out on me multiple times, with the first refusing to go to the next area in its first phase and the second not taking any damage in its final phase (I had quite a few bugs throughout the brief hour and a half I spent but those two were the worst).
It's fortunate the weapons aren't the issue at least, they're more or less the same to base HL2 except they feel a bit more potent overall and the modified AR2 feels amazing. I played on the hardest difficulty but never felt like I was having too much trouble, they give you plenty of ammo and health/shield throughout the game but not too much of an excess so reckless players can still easily die. I think the only issue that comes up relating to this is the few sections with endlessly spawning enemies aren't very fun since there isn't much risk if you carefully position yourself
Entropy: Zero is an alright hour and a half to two hour experience that won't amaze you but won't enrage you. Honestly I played the game just because I wanted to play the sequel, but I'd say it was somewhat worth my time (especially because it's free)
2016
Like everybody else’s review, this is gonna be a wall of text
With every Suda game I play, I question more and more why I continue playing them. Before playing TSC, I had played Killer7, the three main No More Heroes games, and Killer is Dead with it being the only game I came out of with a fully positive feeling. I find Suda’s writing style to be obtuse, esoteric, and obnoxious for the sake of being obnoxious. I don’t feel like he writes compelling characters as most just have a single gimmick they stick to for the entire story or their characterization feels like a mishmash of other characters from media he likes (he’s stated he’s inspired by everything he likes). I feel the worlds he writes tend to not live up to their potential, feeling like he either wasn’t able to finish all the background writing or he thought he did but there’s a lot missing. His newer works also feel masturbatory, he never stops referencing his old works and how freaking awesome! they are, which is funny to me because I think almost all of them aren’t very good
I was really hesitant to play The Silver Case. My friend @Kungfugloves spent weeks shouting about how insane and amazing it is, how “it doesn’t feel like a human wrote it” and how everything feels super unique and interesting. The thing is I hate visual novels. I do not find them engaging, I put gameplay and story on an equal pedestal and visual novels tend to be stripped of the former. As stated, I also do not like Suda’s writing and this is nothing but that. He tried to ease me in by saying one of the campaigns was written by someone else so I’d at least like that one. He bought it for me despite me telling him not to and so I bit the bullet and tried my hardest to go into it with an open mind
I remember watching my friend play this a few months prior to my playthrough and genuinely getting a headache from the UI and backgrounds. I didn't have as much of an issue with it this time around but I do think they're waaaay too busy and a lot of them seem like they're trying to be cryptic and weird for the sake of it. I also found the music to be largely uninteresting, very little of it being downright bad but there isn't a single song that ever stuck out to me and I couldn't even hum a single tune from the game if you stuck a gun to my head
But how did I feel by the end? I think “underwhelmed and frustrated” is probably the best descriptor. The story wasn’t nearly as complex or interesting as I was led to believe. I did have the context that the original release was 1999, but at the same time none of the concepts or story beats felt original to that time period. I’d definitely seen police procedurals of a similar nature as a child with my grandparents that followed a lot of the same beats. Mental clones had been done before in comics and manga well before this. Manic obsessions with serial killers had been a phenomenon for ages.
This game also plays like complete and utter shit. I go into further detail about it in Placebo later in this review but I cannot understate how little I enjoyed the simple act of playing this game. The little exploration you do isn't interesting and takes ages. The puzzles aren't interesting, fun, or engaging, searching every nook and cranny for what you can interact with is actively shit. I cannot and straight up refuse to understand anyone who says that playing this is a good time
The chapter I was most disappointed by was Parade, which my friend described as being “actually crazy, there’s explosions and kidnappings, it’s insane”. Those were present, sure, but the presentation of the game didn’t do the former any good and the latter felt like any other political kidnapping in any other media, topped off with Suda’s esoteric writing that I hate (I know the conclusion is very much easy to understand but the way it’s presented prior to the reveal really rubbed me the wrong way). Runner up goes to Spectrum which felt like an insane waste of time from beginning to end and Lunatics which doesn’t add anything except a miserable conclusion for the five fans of Moonlight Syndrome
I enjoyed Placebo more than Transmitter for the sole reason that the mundane life Tokio lived was more compelling to me than the police procedural of Transmitter. Seeing Tokio’s life descend and him slowly lose his mind as it becomes less clear what’s real and what isn’t was interesting and despite how much more fantastical parts of it were than Transmitter, the grounded tone felt less miserable than Transmitter. I did feel the gameplay was more frustrating though due to the constant back and forth of the three interactables in the room, not telling you which you should do first so you have to constantly trial and error which leads to reading the same lines over and over. I’m told this is a holdover from the original PS1 version but I feel they could have just cut out that spot in the room by the bed if they wanted to
The only other character I ended up liking by the end was Kusabi. I say this because he was easily my least favorite character for a lot of the game. Most of his dialogue early on felt like it was written around the profanity instead of the profanity being written in after, it felt like Suda just discovered the words “fuck”, “shit,” and “goddamn”. I do think he gets some nice development as the game goes on and he effectively becomes the protagonist due to how intertwined he is in everything, but I feel the way he’s more or less dropped at the very end (and how he’s used in the future games now that I’ve played them) is a major misstep
I understand TSC. I get what it’s trying to say. I don’t think it’s an interesting story, I don’t think anything it does is new, I feel it expects the player to never have even considered anything it says throughout its runtime which feels like an insult to the player’s intelligence. I do think the world of the 24 wards is really interesting and had me intrigued the whole time. This game’s world seems downright miserable to live in and the things they hint toward really had me itching for more, but unfortunately instead of any interesting developments I spent the final chapter going up and down ten buildings for some lore that easily could have been consolidated to a drastic degree. Maybe if I liked visual novels more I might have given this a higher score but I don't think that's the case
Most of the criticism I’m writing comes from during and after the playthrough but now that I’ve gone through Flower, Sun, and Rain (terrible) and MUCH MORE IMPORTANTLY The 25th Ward (amazing), this game’s flaws mean much more to me because I can see what was possible in this world that has been created and how the establishing framework placed down in this game could have been so much better. I do think it’s interesting how prescient the writing is when it comes to the way government corruption and terrorism are presented, but I don’t think this game is very good in any way honestly
At least it got me to play The 25th Ward
With every Suda game I play, I question more and more why I continue playing them. Before playing TSC, I had played Killer7, the three main No More Heroes games, and Killer is Dead with it being the only game I came out of with a fully positive feeling. I find Suda’s writing style to be obtuse, esoteric, and obnoxious for the sake of being obnoxious. I don’t feel like he writes compelling characters as most just have a single gimmick they stick to for the entire story or their characterization feels like a mishmash of other characters from media he likes (he’s stated he’s inspired by everything he likes). I feel the worlds he writes tend to not live up to their potential, feeling like he either wasn’t able to finish all the background writing or he thought he did but there’s a lot missing. His newer works also feel masturbatory, he never stops referencing his old works and how freaking awesome! they are, which is funny to me because I think almost all of them aren’t very good
I was really hesitant to play The Silver Case. My friend @Kungfugloves spent weeks shouting about how insane and amazing it is, how “it doesn’t feel like a human wrote it” and how everything feels super unique and interesting. The thing is I hate visual novels. I do not find them engaging, I put gameplay and story on an equal pedestal and visual novels tend to be stripped of the former. As stated, I also do not like Suda’s writing and this is nothing but that. He tried to ease me in by saying one of the campaigns was written by someone else so I’d at least like that one. He bought it for me despite me telling him not to and so I bit the bullet and tried my hardest to go into it with an open mind
I remember watching my friend play this a few months prior to my playthrough and genuinely getting a headache from the UI and backgrounds. I didn't have as much of an issue with it this time around but I do think they're waaaay too busy and a lot of them seem like they're trying to be cryptic and weird for the sake of it. I also found the music to be largely uninteresting, very little of it being downright bad but there isn't a single song that ever stuck out to me and I couldn't even hum a single tune from the game if you stuck a gun to my head
But how did I feel by the end? I think “underwhelmed and frustrated” is probably the best descriptor. The story wasn’t nearly as complex or interesting as I was led to believe. I did have the context that the original release was 1999, but at the same time none of the concepts or story beats felt original to that time period. I’d definitely seen police procedurals of a similar nature as a child with my grandparents that followed a lot of the same beats. Mental clones had been done before in comics and manga well before this. Manic obsessions with serial killers had been a phenomenon for ages.
This game also plays like complete and utter shit. I go into further detail about it in Placebo later in this review but I cannot understate how little I enjoyed the simple act of playing this game. The little exploration you do isn't interesting and takes ages. The puzzles aren't interesting, fun, or engaging, searching every nook and cranny for what you can interact with is actively shit. I cannot and straight up refuse to understand anyone who says that playing this is a good time
The chapter I was most disappointed by was Parade, which my friend described as being “actually crazy, there’s explosions and kidnappings, it’s insane”. Those were present, sure, but the presentation of the game didn’t do the former any good and the latter felt like any other political kidnapping in any other media, topped off with Suda’s esoteric writing that I hate (I know the conclusion is very much easy to understand but the way it’s presented prior to the reveal really rubbed me the wrong way). Runner up goes to Spectrum which felt like an insane waste of time from beginning to end and Lunatics which doesn’t add anything except a miserable conclusion for the five fans of Moonlight Syndrome
I enjoyed Placebo more than Transmitter for the sole reason that the mundane life Tokio lived was more compelling to me than the police procedural of Transmitter. Seeing Tokio’s life descend and him slowly lose his mind as it becomes less clear what’s real and what isn’t was interesting and despite how much more fantastical parts of it were than Transmitter, the grounded tone felt less miserable than Transmitter. I did feel the gameplay was more frustrating though due to the constant back and forth of the three interactables in the room, not telling you which you should do first so you have to constantly trial and error which leads to reading the same lines over and over. I’m told this is a holdover from the original PS1 version but I feel they could have just cut out that spot in the room by the bed if they wanted to
The only other character I ended up liking by the end was Kusabi. I say this because he was easily my least favorite character for a lot of the game. Most of his dialogue early on felt like it was written around the profanity instead of the profanity being written in after, it felt like Suda just discovered the words “fuck”, “shit,” and “goddamn”. I do think he gets some nice development as the game goes on and he effectively becomes the protagonist due to how intertwined he is in everything, but I feel the way he’s more or less dropped at the very end (and how he’s used in the future games now that I’ve played them) is a major misstep
I understand TSC. I get what it’s trying to say. I don’t think it’s an interesting story, I don’t think anything it does is new, I feel it expects the player to never have even considered anything it says throughout its runtime which feels like an insult to the player’s intelligence. I do think the world of the 24 wards is really interesting and had me intrigued the whole time. This game’s world seems downright miserable to live in and the things they hint toward really had me itching for more, but unfortunately instead of any interesting developments I spent the final chapter going up and down ten buildings for some lore that easily could have been consolidated to a drastic degree. Maybe if I liked visual novels more I might have given this a higher score but I don't think that's the case
Most of the criticism I’m writing comes from during and after the playthrough but now that I’ve gone through Flower, Sun, and Rain (terrible) and MUCH MORE IMPORTANTLY The 25th Ward (amazing), this game’s flaws mean much more to me because I can see what was possible in this world that has been created and how the establishing framework placed down in this game could have been so much better. I do think it’s interesting how prescient the writing is when it comes to the way government corruption and terrorism are presented, but I don’t think this game is very good in any way honestly
At least it got me to play The 25th Ward
I can't think of another game that has a jokes per minute ratio that comes CLOSE to Jazzpunk, I think I spent about 90% of my time either actively chuckling, smiling, or cackling. Straight up a must recommend to anyone with the condition that you only know that it's an exploration-focused game. This is the type of game you buy for your friends just to see their reactions and find new jokes you might have missed
You could spend 15 minutes scrolling through ShootaCat on Twitter or you could spend 15 minutes here, either way you'll be seeing lots of cats
2019
This game is like a mosquito bite that keeps on itching the more you scratch it and it never gets more satisfying or relieving but you just have to keep on scratching it because it won't go away
Also the developer is a real piece of work so that doesn't work toward this game's favor
Also the developer is a real piece of work so that doesn't work toward this game's favor
2013
Suda fans will play an actually fun game that isn't esoteric, boring, or full or dogshit and say "wow this sucks ass!"
2018
Played this game back when it launched initially on PS4 and loved it, but over the years I've come to develop some retroactive opinions on it that soured it in my mind. A friend recently gifted me the game for PC however so I decided to take the time to re-assess how I feel about it and I came out of it pleasantly surprised. Here's a hodgepodge of my feelings towards the game split into positive, neutral, and negative sections.
+ Still arguably the best story RGG has ever written, everything's so well thought out and the mystery that's built and slowly unraveled is intensely interesting at all times. Nothing that is mentioned is forgotten and everything ties up really neatly by the end.
+ The final long battle and final boss segment is one of the best in the series, the stakes feel incredibly high for Yagami and the stormy setting fits the tone perfectly. I'm also a fan of the little story bit in the middle since it brings the plot back around from Yagami's start, but I know that part's a bit divisive.
+ The English voice cast is amazing and I struggle to think of any particularly bad line reads. The main characters have great chemistry and the VAs definitely seemed like they enjoyed themselves while recording. Yagami, Kaito, and Sugiura are standout performances but I also loved Ayabe and Saori too. All of the antagonists also do an incredible job at being conniving and downright evil at times.
+ The theme of the importance of friends and allies really shines, even with 7 directly following it and using a similar theme. Building up your reputation through both the story and side content really makes Kamurocho feel like it's important to Yagami and vice versa. Scenes like the one after the amour fight or the Golden Mouse side case are great examples of that.
+ The SP and money grind weren't nearly as bad as I remembered, if you're using growth extracts during the story you'll get tons of SP and only need to chug a dozen or so of the expensive hug bombs to top off the required SP.
+ The OST is insanely good from beginning to end, better than most games in the series. Standouts include Destination, Alpha, and It's Showtime, but I'd say every track is really good at worst.
= The combat isn't as frustrating as I remembered but your options are more limited than I remembered, there aren't a lot of heat actions and comboing is limited due to the lack of any useful juggle setups without the use of EX mode and style switching being incredibly slow. Wall grabs are also incredibly overpowered and it feels like you're meant to rely on them waaaaay too much.
= Extracts are cool but their use is still pretty limited, I wish there was more variety and the materials for making them were both less rare and less frustrating to get while also letting you hold more.
= The story pacing is very inconsistent, the first half of the game is glacial in pace (most notably chapters 1, 2, and 3) while the second half is in constant "go-mode", which is when it's at its best.
- Street fights are fucking incessant and never end and the extract to get rid of them is too costly to craft constantly. To add to that, the Keihin Gang system is awful and doesn't add to the game at all. It needed a toggle once you completed a certain side case so you aren't forced to engage in it.
- Damage output is incredibly inconsistent and unbalanced. Having no damage ups in the early game was fine but midgame I needed at least one for a few notable battles. This lead to a certain mid-late game boss getting decimated while the buildup to him was an actual challenge. Late game I decided to max out my damage for Amon and proceeded to crush the final boss. Most Dragon Engine games have this issue, having damage ups as an upgrade is never good.
- Side content sucks in general, the selection of minigames is incredibly weak, uninteresting, and unrewarding. The side cases don't fare much better, I'd argue 3/4 of the side cases are forgettable at best and downright boring at worst. There are a handful of standouts but I'd say they don't outweight the bad ones.
- Yagami's characterization in the side content is incredibly inconsistent. They sometimes just decide he's a perverted creep for no reason and act like it's a funny joke, then you play the story or do another activity and he's nothing like that. The girlfriend system also sucks and none of the women are written in an interesting way, plus it feels creepy for 39 year old Yagami to be dating a 19 year old.
- Some incredibly important skills are unlocked waaaaaay too late, with chapter 5 and 6 being the main point for a lot of them with the requirement of Quickstarter. I shouldn't need to go through almost half the game to be able to increase my Heat Gain or get Re-Guard, and I can't imagine how frustrated I'd be if I missed getting Double Quickstep since if you miss it in chapter 1, you can't get it until chapter 5.
- Tailing is downright miserable and used far too much. I don't think a single tailing mission is fun despite the fact you do more or less at least one per chapter in the story alone. The one you do in chapter 12 is a desperately miserable example of the mechanic at its worst, with the tailing mission lasting nearly ten whole minutes.
- The Amon fight is terrible due to inconsistency. His gimmicks are neat but he's either a brick wall that's a frustrating ordeal to even get to phase two or he decides to be incredibly docile and you can nuke his ass from orbit in seconds. The reward for beating him also isn't worth it since you can easily get ¥1,000,000 from a single good King Koro-Nyan in VR.
- Too many enemies have too many stun attacks. Some bosses can decide to stunlock you by repeating them over and over and you can't even block them with Re-Guard once you've been hit by the first one. Some of the Keihin Gang members and the final boss are notable examples of this.
- The completion process is downright terrible. KamuroGO formats store completion TERRIBLY and makes it annoying to keep track of every location. I desperately wish it was an alphabetized list instead of a grid, but it's at least separated between restaurant and minigames. City completion is even worse, with garbage requirements like "Defeat 1000 enemies with each style", "Play 300 minigames", "Destroy 1000 objects in battle", and "Use EX Actions 300 times". I love 100%ing this series but I genuinely did not enjoy 100%ing this game both times I've done it.
All-in-all, Judgment is really damn good. I think the game's a must play for the sake of the story alone and it stands as a really solid entry in the series, but the side content isn't something worth bothering with aside from a handful of decent side cases. Definitely a solid entry in the series but I'd struggle to find where I'd place it in order from best to worst.
+ Still arguably the best story RGG has ever written, everything's so well thought out and the mystery that's built and slowly unraveled is intensely interesting at all times. Nothing that is mentioned is forgotten and everything ties up really neatly by the end.
+ The final long battle and final boss segment is one of the best in the series, the stakes feel incredibly high for Yagami and the stormy setting fits the tone perfectly. I'm also a fan of the little story bit in the middle since it brings the plot back around from Yagami's start, but I know that part's a bit divisive.
+ The English voice cast is amazing and I struggle to think of any particularly bad line reads. The main characters have great chemistry and the VAs definitely seemed like they enjoyed themselves while recording. Yagami, Kaito, and Sugiura are standout performances but I also loved Ayabe and Saori too. All of the antagonists also do an incredible job at being conniving and downright evil at times.
+ The theme of the importance of friends and allies really shines, even with 7 directly following it and using a similar theme. Building up your reputation through both the story and side content really makes Kamurocho feel like it's important to Yagami and vice versa. Scenes like the one after the amour fight or the Golden Mouse side case are great examples of that.
+ The SP and money grind weren't nearly as bad as I remembered, if you're using growth extracts during the story you'll get tons of SP and only need to chug a dozen or so of the expensive hug bombs to top off the required SP.
+ The OST is insanely good from beginning to end, better than most games in the series. Standouts include Destination, Alpha, and It's Showtime, but I'd say every track is really good at worst.
= The combat isn't as frustrating as I remembered but your options are more limited than I remembered, there aren't a lot of heat actions and comboing is limited due to the lack of any useful juggle setups without the use of EX mode and style switching being incredibly slow. Wall grabs are also incredibly overpowered and it feels like you're meant to rely on them waaaaay too much.
= Extracts are cool but their use is still pretty limited, I wish there was more variety and the materials for making them were both less rare and less frustrating to get while also letting you hold more.
= The story pacing is very inconsistent, the first half of the game is glacial in pace (most notably chapters 1, 2, and 3) while the second half is in constant "go-mode", which is when it's at its best.
- Street fights are fucking incessant and never end and the extract to get rid of them is too costly to craft constantly. To add to that, the Keihin Gang system is awful and doesn't add to the game at all. It needed a toggle once you completed a certain side case so you aren't forced to engage in it.
- Damage output is incredibly inconsistent and unbalanced. Having no damage ups in the early game was fine but midgame I needed at least one for a few notable battles. This lead to a certain mid-late game boss getting decimated while the buildup to him was an actual challenge. Late game I decided to max out my damage for Amon and proceeded to crush the final boss. Most Dragon Engine games have this issue, having damage ups as an upgrade is never good.
- Side content sucks in general, the selection of minigames is incredibly weak, uninteresting, and unrewarding. The side cases don't fare much better, I'd argue 3/4 of the side cases are forgettable at best and downright boring at worst. There are a handful of standouts but I'd say they don't outweight the bad ones.
- Yagami's characterization in the side content is incredibly inconsistent. They sometimes just decide he's a perverted creep for no reason and act like it's a funny joke, then you play the story or do another activity and he's nothing like that. The girlfriend system also sucks and none of the women are written in an interesting way, plus it feels creepy for 39 year old Yagami to be dating a 19 year old.
- Some incredibly important skills are unlocked waaaaaay too late, with chapter 5 and 6 being the main point for a lot of them with the requirement of Quickstarter. I shouldn't need to go through almost half the game to be able to increase my Heat Gain or get Re-Guard, and I can't imagine how frustrated I'd be if I missed getting Double Quickstep since if you miss it in chapter 1, you can't get it until chapter 5.
- Tailing is downright miserable and used far too much. I don't think a single tailing mission is fun despite the fact you do more or less at least one per chapter in the story alone. The one you do in chapter 12 is a desperately miserable example of the mechanic at its worst, with the tailing mission lasting nearly ten whole minutes.
- The Amon fight is terrible due to inconsistency. His gimmicks are neat but he's either a brick wall that's a frustrating ordeal to even get to phase two or he decides to be incredibly docile and you can nuke his ass from orbit in seconds. The reward for beating him also isn't worth it since you can easily get ¥1,000,000 from a single good King Koro-Nyan in VR.
- Too many enemies have too many stun attacks. Some bosses can decide to stunlock you by repeating them over and over and you can't even block them with Re-Guard once you've been hit by the first one. Some of the Keihin Gang members and the final boss are notable examples of this.
- The completion process is downright terrible. KamuroGO formats store completion TERRIBLY and makes it annoying to keep track of every location. I desperately wish it was an alphabetized list instead of a grid, but it's at least separated between restaurant and minigames. City completion is even worse, with garbage requirements like "Defeat 1000 enemies with each style", "Play 300 minigames", "Destroy 1000 objects in battle", and "Use EX Actions 300 times". I love 100%ing this series but I genuinely did not enjoy 100%ing this game both times I've done it.
All-in-all, Judgment is really damn good. I think the game's a must play for the sake of the story alone and it stands as a really solid entry in the series, but the side content isn't something worth bothering with aside from a handful of decent side cases. Definitely a solid entry in the series but I'd struggle to find where I'd place it in order from best to worst.
2023
I've put almost 500 hours into Fallout 4. I've played Fallout 3 dozens of times. I've explored every inch of Skyrim. I've grinded out all skills to the max level in Oblivion. I like Bethesda games. Starfield though? Starfield will never get me back. Some people are harsh critics of most of Bethesda's post-Morrowind content, saying they're bland and sanded down to the point of blandness. Starfield has less of an edge than a perfect sphere.
I think in my 100 or so hours, there was exactly one interesting quest called Operation Starseed; an extremely distant planet had a colony of clones of historical figures from Earth's history and several factions had been made between them based on wanting to leave or not. This quest had some interesting moral choices based on the concept of if a clone would act the same as their genetic base; more or less the moral argument on if behavior is genetic or learned. On top of that, the dungeon you had to crawl through was incredibly unique, it wasn't possible to have an "everyone wins" ending to the quest, and you got Amelia Earheart as a companion in your ship.
Meanwhile every questline and every other quest was boring at best, total shit at worst. None of them were well written nor did any have interesting plot beats. Several ended before they could even build up any momentum leading to an incredibly flat, wet fart of an ending without any worthwhile reward. When you can land on a planet and kill a single enemy and get more experience than a 20 minute long quest, what's the point of questing? On top of that, most quests are simply a matter of entering loading zones repeatedly with little to no content to make it enjoyable. Where's the Oasis? Where's the Whodunit? Where's the Lost to the Ages? Where's the Brain Dead? Even though I praised Operation Starseed, I don't even think it compares to any of the listed missions.
On top of all this, despite what Bethesda has said I found Starfield to be the buggiest game of theirs by a country mile, even more than launch Skyrim. Major NPCs not spawning, enemies refusing to function properly, entire planets not spawning in when landing, constant crashes, terrible performance, the list goes on. I feel they were straight up lying when they said this was the least buggy release yet.
I bought a GPU for this game and I regret it. The specific Amazon listing I bought to get the game bundled in was a scam, on top of the game genuinely sucking ass. If the launch version of this game sucked ass, I cannot imagine how bad the game would have been if it had released a year prior as initially planned. I wish this game's tone was closer to that of the animated three-piece series they put out before the game came out. I wish the combat was better than their game from 2008. I wish there was a reason to care about this game, but there isn't.
At least it functions properly.
I think in my 100 or so hours, there was exactly one interesting quest called Operation Starseed; an extremely distant planet had a colony of clones of historical figures from Earth's history and several factions had been made between them based on wanting to leave or not. This quest had some interesting moral choices based on the concept of if a clone would act the same as their genetic base; more or less the moral argument on if behavior is genetic or learned. On top of that, the dungeon you had to crawl through was incredibly unique, it wasn't possible to have an "everyone wins" ending to the quest, and you got Amelia Earheart as a companion in your ship.
Meanwhile every questline and every other quest was boring at best, total shit at worst. None of them were well written nor did any have interesting plot beats. Several ended before they could even build up any momentum leading to an incredibly flat, wet fart of an ending without any worthwhile reward. When you can land on a planet and kill a single enemy and get more experience than a 20 minute long quest, what's the point of questing? On top of that, most quests are simply a matter of entering loading zones repeatedly with little to no content to make it enjoyable. Where's the Oasis? Where's the Whodunit? Where's the Lost to the Ages? Where's the Brain Dead? Even though I praised Operation Starseed, I don't even think it compares to any of the listed missions.
On top of all this, despite what Bethesda has said I found Starfield to be the buggiest game of theirs by a country mile, even more than launch Skyrim. Major NPCs not spawning, enemies refusing to function properly, entire planets not spawning in when landing, constant crashes, terrible performance, the list goes on. I feel they were straight up lying when they said this was the least buggy release yet.
I bought a GPU for this game and I regret it. The specific Amazon listing I bought to get the game bundled in was a scam, on top of the game genuinely sucking ass. If the launch version of this game sucked ass, I cannot imagine how bad the game would have been if it had released a year prior as initially planned. I wish this game's tone was closer to that of the animated three-piece series they put out before the game came out. I wish the combat was better than their game from 2008. I wish there was a reason to care about this game, but there isn't.
At least it functions properly.
2021
Eastward made me sad. Not because the game wanted it to but because it's missing so much of its potential. I had been excited for this game for years, I remember seeing it pop up on my Twitter feed several years before it came out. Every new image and video, every new character, every piece of music had me increasingly excited. As time went on I forgot about it and it came to my attention again when it was added to Game Pass. It was finally time to satisfy this urge and play one of my most anticipated games in a long time.
And it was boring. Almost everything in this game is boring. The combat, the exploration, the writing, the side content. Almost nothing about this game is engaging. The art is downright gorgeous and straight up alive at times and the music is phenomenal and fitting at just about every single moment, but other than that this game just doesn't work. There is very little about this game that I will remember fondly but godDAMN this game is so good artistically. I want this team to make more games but I want them to learn how to make it fun first.
And it was boring. Almost everything in this game is boring. The combat, the exploration, the writing, the side content. Almost nothing about this game is engaging. The art is downright gorgeous and straight up alive at times and the music is phenomenal and fitting at just about every single moment, but other than that this game just doesn't work. There is very little about this game that I will remember fondly but godDAMN this game is so good artistically. I want this team to make more games but I want them to learn how to make it fun first.
2016
An insane man would consider these machines to be normal, quite pleasant even
On one hand, I love Star Wars and FPS games. On the other hand, I don't love getting nauseous by simply turning while moving
2022
Crazy that all Flying Wild Hog had to do to make a good Shadow Warrior game was get good voice actors, remove the previous shitty leveling systems, and make a shorter game
2022
Signalis is a perfect game in the presentation aspect - every single bit of this game gels thematically and hits a spot I've wanted for ages. The art style is gorgeous, the visuals are flawless, the sound design is amazing, the worldbuilding is impeccable. I'm normally not a fan of games where the plot is obtuse and requires the player to piece it together but Signalis creates such an intriguing world that it's impossible to resist it. I can't get over how much I love everything about this game - except the gameplay.
I love survival horror games. Signalis made me incredibly frustrated for numerous reasons. The six item inventory limit doesn't add to the game (as of the 25th the devs made it so the flashlight and eidetic modules don't take up a slot by default which is a great change but I didn't get to experience that since the Game Pass version didn't update). Most of my experience was running with nothing but a pistol and flashlight (sometimes not even those), filling up my inventory in two rooms, then run back through enemies to empty my inventory. I never felt like I should kill enemies either because they'd get up like RE1R crimsonheads (I wasn't aware that they had a limited amount of times they could get back up). I can't say it was challenging because I finished the game with a fuckton of ammo and heals in my item box so it felt like the inventory limit was entirely artificial.
On top of that, the key hunting got incredibly tedious a few areas in which, combined with the incredibly limited inventory, lead to endless backtracking that wasn't fun, difficult, or beneficial. I will say the fact you can enter your inventory, notes, and radio while interacting with a puzzle is incredibly convenient and makes for a lot of saved time. The puzzles for the most part were solid and made sense but a few left me stumped in a way that I couldn't intuit or the answer wasn't clear (namely the tarot card puzzle and dials near the end, don't use the words "sun-like" and have both the sun and the star as a tarot card since the sun is literally a star). Out of my complaints for this game, this is near the bottom but compared to other survival horror games I was mildly disappointed by this aspect.
At the very end, I came out of this game wanting more from the developers. I fail to think of any other games that nail the PS1 aesthetic as good as this and the music, visuals, and gameplay are so cohesive that I need something else like this. I don't care if it's another survival horror, if it's something closer to Parasite Eve, if it's an RPG in the same world. Despite my dislike for the gameplay, I'm desperate for more.
I love survival horror games. Signalis made me incredibly frustrated for numerous reasons. The six item inventory limit doesn't add to the game (as of the 25th the devs made it so the flashlight and eidetic modules don't take up a slot by default which is a great change but I didn't get to experience that since the Game Pass version didn't update). Most of my experience was running with nothing but a pistol and flashlight (sometimes not even those), filling up my inventory in two rooms, then run back through enemies to empty my inventory. I never felt like I should kill enemies either because they'd get up like RE1R crimsonheads (I wasn't aware that they had a limited amount of times they could get back up). I can't say it was challenging because I finished the game with a fuckton of ammo and heals in my item box so it felt like the inventory limit was entirely artificial.
On top of that, the key hunting got incredibly tedious a few areas in which, combined with the incredibly limited inventory, lead to endless backtracking that wasn't fun, difficult, or beneficial. I will say the fact you can enter your inventory, notes, and radio while interacting with a puzzle is incredibly convenient and makes for a lot of saved time. The puzzles for the most part were solid and made sense but a few left me stumped in a way that I couldn't intuit or the answer wasn't clear (namely the tarot card puzzle and dials near the end, don't use the words "sun-like" and have both the sun and the star as a tarot card since the sun is literally a star). Out of my complaints for this game, this is near the bottom but compared to other survival horror games I was mildly disappointed by this aspect.
At the very end, I came out of this game wanting more from the developers. I fail to think of any other games that nail the PS1 aesthetic as good as this and the music, visuals, and gameplay are so cohesive that I need something else like this. I don't care if it's another survival horror, if it's something closer to Parasite Eve, if it's an RPG in the same world. Despite my dislike for the gameplay, I'm desperate for more.
I remember having a rough go of it with this game as a child and I was shocked to come back to it and have a similar experience. Pokemon XD is rough in the best way possible, as once you hit the halfway point the difficulty ramps up and the game does not hold your hand. You've got a limited roster of Pokemon (both shadow and normal), generation 3's bad movesets and limited TM selection, a complete lack of an easy way to grind money, and an exponential difficulty curve that does not let up. The only other game in the series I've played where you have to strategize for your boss fights was near the end of Legends: Arceus, but this knocks those fights out of the park. I'm praying either TPC or Genius Sonority manages to either port this and Colosseum to modern hardware or that they get another shot to make a similar experience because there aren't any other games in the series like these two.
2021
One of the realest games out there, the character performances are so fucking fantastic and the dialogue exchanges feel so natural that it's a shame it's stuck in what's effectively a walking sim/visual novel. I would have enjoyed this much more if it was done in a non-interactive environment as I feel playing as the protagonist doesn't add anything to the experience. At an hour of playtime I feel Adios is worth experiencing just for the core performances of the actors, as I struggle to think of a game that hits the same kind of realism this small cast does.