AsukaFortune
I really wished this game was better than what I found out, I always like games where they introduce fairytale characters and give their stories a dark twist, but on this game, those elements were just scratching surface level and had no real plot relevance.
The story of the game is a huge mess, the plot twist is obvious since the beginning, to the point you're already thinking after the prologue if it's a Red Herring because of how much the game tries to shove it to your face. It doesn't help either that the story doesn't try to develop the main plot points at any time, leaving a lot of questions unanswered, which I guess they will develop in the sequel. I'm fine with some missing information, but here, there's too many important things that aren't revealed to the player.
The Main Characters are also way too many, there's 10 characters in total, excluding Jack, who feels more like a shoved mechanic. Gameplay-wise, every character has another one that has the same job system, the same stats and the same skills. Story-wise, a lot of the characters feels unnecessary, with the worst case being Sleeping Beauty, who mainly speaks in snores, there are other characters who feel similar, but she's the worst offender of this. I would say that the only character of the whole game is Gretel, who actually feels more developed than the rest of the cast and I actually enjoyed her presence.
And finally, is the gameplay good? No, it's a really generic dungeon crawler where Dungeons feel done by AI and have no real logic to travel through, they have some puzzles but they're so repetitive that calling the puzzles feels like an insult. The extra dungeon was obviously not tested, being too big for it's own good and even has an unexplorable part that you can't reach, but it's fully programmed for some reason.
The combat is also horrible, there's a weakness system, but it's totally forgetable because the best strategy to follow is spamming AoE skills all the time with all your party to defeat all the enemies before they can't counterattack.
And finally, there's the fanservice, which is cringeworthy at best, there's a lot of CGs and scenes that are totally unnecessary and are basically awful to read, it doesn't help that some characters who are on those parts look and act like they're too far from being able to concent.
The story of the game is a huge mess, the plot twist is obvious since the beginning, to the point you're already thinking after the prologue if it's a Red Herring because of how much the game tries to shove it to your face. It doesn't help either that the story doesn't try to develop the main plot points at any time, leaving a lot of questions unanswered, which I guess they will develop in the sequel. I'm fine with some missing information, but here, there's too many important things that aren't revealed to the player.
The Main Characters are also way too many, there's 10 characters in total, excluding Jack, who feels more like a shoved mechanic. Gameplay-wise, every character has another one that has the same job system, the same stats and the same skills. Story-wise, a lot of the characters feels unnecessary, with the worst case being Sleeping Beauty, who mainly speaks in snores, there are other characters who feel similar, but she's the worst offender of this. I would say that the only character of the whole game is Gretel, who actually feels more developed than the rest of the cast and I actually enjoyed her presence.
And finally, is the gameplay good? No, it's a really generic dungeon crawler where Dungeons feel done by AI and have no real logic to travel through, they have some puzzles but they're so repetitive that calling the puzzles feels like an insult. The extra dungeon was obviously not tested, being too big for it's own good and even has an unexplorable part that you can't reach, but it's fully programmed for some reason.
The combat is also horrible, there's a weakness system, but it's totally forgetable because the best strategy to follow is spamming AoE skills all the time with all your party to defeat all the enemies before they can't counterattack.
And finally, there's the fanservice, which is cringeworthy at best, there's a lot of CGs and scenes that are totally unnecessary and are basically awful to read, it doesn't help that some characters who are on those parts look and act like they're too far from being able to concent.
2022
As a free game, it knows what it wants to be: A short Contra-like videogame with well crafterd levels that don't overstay their welcome. It also features some extra challenges for players who want an extra step in difficulty, but the reward itself comes once you've done everything the game has to offer, so it felt kinda pointless.
2017
This is one of the hidden gems I've played this year, I came to the game with low expectations, seeing the previous games of the same studios were such letdowns for me, but with Cosmic Star Heroine, Zeboyd Studios really nailed their formula this time.
I like playing games in their highest difficulty most of the time, and with Breath of Death/Cthullu saves the world, that meant hours of grinding because the game wasn't balanced around those difficulties. But this time, there was almost no grinding needed at all once you fully understand the whole battle system.
The main gimmick of the battle system is also something I would like to see on more games. Here, you can't just spam your best skill over and over again, since almost all abilities are a one time use only, and are only recovered when you defend for a turn, this combined with hyper mode, a state where your next attack will do double damage every few turns, means that controlling the flow of the battle is the key for success.
The only downsides I've found is how many items are permanently missable, with a lot of places not being able to be revisited, and some side content is a bit obscure to find, abd also the story is not something extraordinary, but any of those things really hurt.
I like playing games in their highest difficulty most of the time, and with Breath of Death/Cthullu saves the world, that meant hours of grinding because the game wasn't balanced around those difficulties. But this time, there was almost no grinding needed at all once you fully understand the whole battle system.
The main gimmick of the battle system is also something I would like to see on more games. Here, you can't just spam your best skill over and over again, since almost all abilities are a one time use only, and are only recovered when you defend for a turn, this combined with hyper mode, a state where your next attack will do double damage every few turns, means that controlling the flow of the battle is the key for success.
The only downsides I've found is how many items are permanently missable, with a lot of places not being able to be revisited, and some side content is a bit obscure to find, abd also the story is not something extraordinary, but any of those things really hurt.
2014
While not being a remake, it feels like a copy of the original Yoshi's Island, and I think that on a lot of the levels, if this game had the same artistic style than the original, it would be really hard to spot from which game is each level.
While I think that the visuals are worse than the original, being this time a lot more generic, it's the only real downside I've found, being the gameplay at a similar level on both games.
There's also something that I have to comment and is that this game introduces the new scoring formula, where it's not needed to get all the collectables of a level in a single run, which is more lenient for completionists.
While I think that the visuals are worse than the original, being this time a lot more generic, it's the only real downside I've found, being the gameplay at a similar level on both games.
There's also something that I have to comment and is that this game introduces the new scoring formula, where it's not needed to get all the collectables of a level in a single run, which is more lenient for completionists.
2024
One of those games that are free and can be enjoyed for their length, there's not much novelty in gameplay, with an in-game achievement that rewards curiosity, it's a nice game to play and beat in one session.
2016
I came to this game expecting a lot more of what it had to offer, while there were some cool tricks that were executed here and there, I've found that they didn't had enough impact to make the game stand by it's own innovation.
So, when you basically remove those tricks, what you end up getting is a vanilla indie-horror RPG Maker game, but without the horror (which isn't either a good or bad thing by itself, just pointing that out), I thought the story would be more impactful, but in the end, everything was so fast paced that I didn't really empathize with any of the characters, and that includes the main character, I think it would have been ebtter that it was a slightly longer game so I could have seen more about the MC and some of the most important characters of the game, so I had an easier time getting attached to them.
So, when you basically remove those tricks, what you end up getting is a vanilla indie-horror RPG Maker game, but without the horror (which isn't either a good or bad thing by itself, just pointing that out), I thought the story would be more impactful, but in the end, everything was so fast paced that I didn't really empathize with any of the characters, and that includes the main character, I think it would have been ebtter that it was a slightly longer game so I could have seen more about the MC and some of the most important characters of the game, so I had an easier time getting attached to them.
This is one of those games that clearly knows what it wants to be, they went for a niche game and take full advantage of the main gimmick, being implemented on not only normal levels, but on other ones where the main objective varies.
The game in terms of difficulty is also on a sweet spot, being easy for the casual players, but turning way harder for people who want to obtain the highest scores on each stage, to the point that some of the stages have to be perfectly known to obtain every single important item.
The game in terms of difficulty is also on a sweet spot, being easy for the casual players, but turning way harder for people who want to obtain the highest scores on each stage, to the point that some of the stages have to be perfectly known to obtain every single important item.
2018
This is basically your average visual novel with some point-and-click elements. The main issue I found with that is that once you've found the main gimmick the game uses, there will be no novelty.
That gimmick surprised me the first time, not expecting that being what I had to do, but once I discovered it, I knew what I had to do each time before it even happened.
That gimmick surprised me the first time, not expecting that being what I had to do, but once I discovered it, I knew what I had to do each time before it even happened.
After beating and completing the game, I have mixed feelings about it, and while being my opinion mostly on the negative side, I have to give credit at the love that the creators of the game have given, since it seemed to me that this game was a passion project, but sadly, it was also a flawed project.
The thing that irks me the most is the gameplay balance, and I'm not joking, but I think this is the most untested game I've ever played. I played the game on Insane, which is the highest difficulty, and the name is perfect, because you need to be insane to program it. In the first area of the game, I needed to rely on RNG to even survive combats, since almost all enemy groups you face would kill you before you were able to attack. This just shows me the game wasn't even tested for that difficulty, since there was nothing I could do to improve on my situation.
I like a challenging difficult where I have to optimize my resources to beat the game, but on this one, that wasn't the case, there wasn't much thinking behind the strategy you have to follow, only pray to the RNG gods to be lucky all the time.
Insane Mode has also a really stupid addition, which is that to not face random encounters, you have to participate on 9.999 encounters on an area. On other difficulties, it is always around 25, but here, you are assigned an impossible to reach number, I imagine that they wanted to make things harder, but at least they could have made it that once you defeat the area boss, encounters were disabled, because random encounters appearing every few seconds makes exploring the maps harder.
The difficulty spikes were weird, one area was almost impossible and the next one could be a breeze, so after completing the game I can't really tell where I've been overleveled or underleveled.
I thought that maybe those were complains for playing the highest difficulty, but the next one is present on all of them, and it's the dungeon design. Almost all dungeons are claustrophobic: They are big, look the same on all parts, and are mainly composed of different paths that connect into each other, being really hard to know where you have to go next, there's also no map so it's even harder to know where to go. In the end, I found that the easiest way to find the next room was to use the old trick of sticking your left hand to the wall and keep walking forward.
And those were my main concerns with the game, now, the positive ones:
The PC version has a new mode once you beat the game called "Cthulhu's Angels", which changes the characters you use, the story and some bosses. This mode is slightly better balanced in terms of difficulty, there's still random difficulty spikes but at least I was able to defeat the monsters I faced in the first dungeon without problems, so it seems to be slightly more tested. It also helps that this time, there's a fixed party instead of being able to pick from several characters.
This mode also adds a new final dungeon, and this one is actually good. This time, it seems that the developers learnt from their mistakes and actually made a dungeon that consists on several rooms connected in a linear way, instead of just random corridors that could be a labyrinth.
Another detail I liked was the addition of the characters of Breath of Death VII as superbosses which you could recruit if you win, an extra optional character to use is a cool reward for exploring, specially when it's a cameo character and it's what makes me feel like the developers actually care for the games they create, even if the product doesn't fulfill their expectations.
The thing that irks me the most is the gameplay balance, and I'm not joking, but I think this is the most untested game I've ever played. I played the game on Insane, which is the highest difficulty, and the name is perfect, because you need to be insane to program it. In the first area of the game, I needed to rely on RNG to even survive combats, since almost all enemy groups you face would kill you before you were able to attack. This just shows me the game wasn't even tested for that difficulty, since there was nothing I could do to improve on my situation.
I like a challenging difficult where I have to optimize my resources to beat the game, but on this one, that wasn't the case, there wasn't much thinking behind the strategy you have to follow, only pray to the RNG gods to be lucky all the time.
Insane Mode has also a really stupid addition, which is that to not face random encounters, you have to participate on 9.999 encounters on an area. On other difficulties, it is always around 25, but here, you are assigned an impossible to reach number, I imagine that they wanted to make things harder, but at least they could have made it that once you defeat the area boss, encounters were disabled, because random encounters appearing every few seconds makes exploring the maps harder.
The difficulty spikes were weird, one area was almost impossible and the next one could be a breeze, so after completing the game I can't really tell where I've been overleveled or underleveled.
I thought that maybe those were complains for playing the highest difficulty, but the next one is present on all of them, and it's the dungeon design. Almost all dungeons are claustrophobic: They are big, look the same on all parts, and are mainly composed of different paths that connect into each other, being really hard to know where you have to go next, there's also no map so it's even harder to know where to go. In the end, I found that the easiest way to find the next room was to use the old trick of sticking your left hand to the wall and keep walking forward.
And those were my main concerns with the game, now, the positive ones:
The PC version has a new mode once you beat the game called "Cthulhu's Angels", which changes the characters you use, the story and some bosses. This mode is slightly better balanced in terms of difficulty, there's still random difficulty spikes but at least I was able to defeat the monsters I faced in the first dungeon without problems, so it seems to be slightly more tested. It also helps that this time, there's a fixed party instead of being able to pick from several characters.
This mode also adds a new final dungeon, and this one is actually good. This time, it seems that the developers learnt from their mistakes and actually made a dungeon that consists on several rooms connected in a linear way, instead of just random corridors that could be a labyrinth.
Another detail I liked was the addition of the characters of Breath of Death VII as superbosses which you could recruit if you win, an extra optional character to use is a cool reward for exploring, specially when it's a cameo character and it's what makes me feel like the developers actually care for the games they create, even if the product doesn't fulfill their expectations.
2022
I've found that this game wants to be about depression/lack of focus but ends up feeling instead a bunch of riddles that don't have much to do with the "plot" of the game. At least it's a free game and it's not that long, so it's not that bad, but I was expecting more of a narrative game rathen than just solving questions.
Oh, and there's a RNG jumpscare that is needed to watch to be able to reach the ending.
Oh, and there's a RNG jumpscare that is needed to watch to be able to reach the ending.
2022
As a clicker game, this game doesn't have any real mechanics that differenciates itself from any of the hundreds of clicker games available on Steam, but even then I find that the game knows what it wants to be and offers a fun, short (for clicker standards) experience where it feels you're always progressing, and doesn't need months to get the next update.
2019
Your typical management empire simulator, this time based on an arcade parlour. The game itself fullfills what it promises, it presents 12 different levels with main objectives to beat to continue to the next one, which makes every stage feel unique.
The main downside I feel with this game is that the first level will introduce every single mechanic it has to offer, with nothing new going on for the next levels. While they have their differences in how you should approach each one of them, the learning curve of the game can be tough, being a must to learn everything on the very first level in order to be able to succeed after the tutorial ends.
Another thing I found weird was how you obtain Stars, one of the currencies the game has, until the third level, I found that the amount I was obtaining was really small, but once I stayed a bit on the third level to farm those Stars before going to the next stage, I was overloaded with them, not needing to pay attention to the number I had.
What I liked the most about the game was discovering which combination of items was the best one for an optimal building, the game keeps track of several stats depending on the amount of arcade machines you have, the food/drink spots and such things, but not telling what is the ratio you should have of everything, and being the player the one who has to discover that, I personally really like looking on how to optimize my playthroughs so that is a huge plus for me, but that would depend on the player's approach too.
The main downside I feel with this game is that the first level will introduce every single mechanic it has to offer, with nothing new going on for the next levels. While they have their differences in how you should approach each one of them, the learning curve of the game can be tough, being a must to learn everything on the very first level in order to be able to succeed after the tutorial ends.
Another thing I found weird was how you obtain Stars, one of the currencies the game has, until the third level, I found that the amount I was obtaining was really small, but once I stayed a bit on the third level to farm those Stars before going to the next stage, I was overloaded with them, not needing to pay attention to the number I had.
What I liked the most about the game was discovering which combination of items was the best one for an optimal building, the game keeps track of several stats depending on the amount of arcade machines you have, the food/drink spots and such things, but not telling what is the ratio you should have of everything, and being the player the one who has to discover that, I personally really like looking on how to optimize my playthroughs so that is a huge plus for me, but that would depend on the player's approach too.
The story of the game feels pretty unique, with a lot of charming characters and a thrilling story that you discover little by little. The game uses the Amnesiac Main Character trope to make sure that the player will always be on par on knowledge with him, and having to discover the truth behind the events of the game at the same time.
The puzzles are almost all of the time in a good spot, not being too hard but needing to experience every single nook and cranny to find the optimal solution, there were some problems I've found that could be solver, but they were minimal, so nothing that should bother anyone too much.
The remake of Ghost Trick is basically the same game than the original version, with no new additions in terms of gameplay or extra content apart from some optional achievements.
I find that the PC version of this game enhances the overall experience in comparison to the original DS one. This is because of the update graphics, I've never been a fan of how that console did its 3D graphics, looking always very pixelated, luckily, for this version that is just a problem of the past and they are enhanced to look like actual 3D models, and because of that, one can enjoy all the animations the characters do while they're on screen.
The puzzles are almost all of the time in a good spot, not being too hard but needing to experience every single nook and cranny to find the optimal solution, there were some problems I've found that could be solver, but they were minimal, so nothing that should bother anyone too much.
The remake of Ghost Trick is basically the same game than the original version, with no new additions in terms of gameplay or extra content apart from some optional achievements.
I find that the PC version of this game enhances the overall experience in comparison to the original DS one. This is because of the update graphics, I've never been a fan of how that console did its 3D graphics, looking always very pixelated, luckily, for this version that is just a problem of the past and they are enhanced to look like actual 3D models, and because of that, one can enjoy all the animations the characters do while they're on screen.
2015
It's exactly the same than Braveland and Braveland: Wizard, not much to remark apart from another set of different characters to play as, but I feel like this time they have even less differences between them, being almost all of them melee based without enough differences to make up for different playstyles.
2019
A cozy puzzle game, it's around 1 hour and a half of length, so it's something you'll be able to finish from beginning to end in just a session, I found that the game has enough charm to justify it's gameplay, so it's a good recommendation to play if you have a free day and don't know what to play.