2013
The literal only thing I knew about this game before I played was that it was solitare with horse racing. Except it wasn't even the version of solitare that I knew, so I knew nothing about this game.
The mechanics work surprisingly well for two wildly different ideas. Though they do work against each other too. The luck based game of solitaire doesn't mesh well with the need to consistently do well for the horse part (or is it luck? Is every single game of solitaire technically winnable if you're not bad like me?). Then again there's a lot of luck involved in the horse racing part too, as you could end up perfecting the card game only to be sandwiched so tight in the final sprint that you literally can't possibly win. Or there's times when I do well on the set off portion only for other horses to bump me so far out of the "comfort zone" that it's impossible to come back from. So you've really got 2 layers of RNG to deal with, which is a bit frustrating in a game where winning trophies is the goal.
But what I really don't like about the game is the age system. A horse stops growing after 10 or so races, which means you can't gain exp, thus its stats are capped. When this happens you can play some more races in "mature mode" (some of which are mandatory for even getting the credits since they only show up in this mode), but after another 10 or so races in this mode (or 3 losses), the horse is retired. You can then breed that horse in the farm, but only for a certain amount of times before it becomes unbreedable and thus useless for the rest of the game.
What this means is you'll end up raising a shit ton of horses, raising them, getting them skills and exp, only for the horse to become unusable after all that effort and you have to start fresh. Sure you can use that horse to breed other horses, for a little while, but not only is this time consuming since you'd at minimum need a good male and female horse, but it takes a full round in "growth mode" to even make a baby horse, so you have to essentially waste a round just to get that offspring for the next decent thing to use. Then it just repeats over and over, and only by constantly getting good male and female horses AND overcoming the RNG so they do well in races, is there a way to consistently climb the difficulty ceiling of the game. Because if you've have a pair of horses that can make good babbys, but the babbys do badly in races, the parents will stop love making, and you're back to square one.
And that's not even getting in to many other aspects of the breeding system, like how horses with the same "peak times" are better compatible, or how to even be able to race in certain races your horse needs to be a short or long distance runner (based on that peak type stat).
Fun game absolutely destroyed by a convoluted and grindy system. But it should be noted this is ONLY a problem if you want to complete the game, which unfortunately requires winning every race in the game at least once, bar one "bonus" race. If you're content just jumping in to the game and playing some solitare, and racing some horses until you get tired of it, you'll have a lot more fun. The whole resetting your skills every time may still be a bit annoying though.
Let me give some more praises to the game too, the game has 5 unique owners whose horses you essentially use in racing - even your own bred horses will get one of the owners attached to them. They all have unique personalities and come in to occasionally chat with your protagonist in cheap little puppet-style scenes. It can be entertaining to see these colourful characters interact, but admittedly by the end of the grind I was skipping through all the dialogue. There are also unique horse models that you can get too, like horses with fire-style hair, a horse with a cat hanging onto its back, or a horse with a dragon shaped head etc. So that's neat.
The mechanics work surprisingly well for two wildly different ideas. Though they do work against each other too. The luck based game of solitaire doesn't mesh well with the need to consistently do well for the horse part (or is it luck? Is every single game of solitaire technically winnable if you're not bad like me?). Then again there's a lot of luck involved in the horse racing part too, as you could end up perfecting the card game only to be sandwiched so tight in the final sprint that you literally can't possibly win. Or there's times when I do well on the set off portion only for other horses to bump me so far out of the "comfort zone" that it's impossible to come back from. So you've really got 2 layers of RNG to deal with, which is a bit frustrating in a game where winning trophies is the goal.
But what I really don't like about the game is the age system. A horse stops growing after 10 or so races, which means you can't gain exp, thus its stats are capped. When this happens you can play some more races in "mature mode" (some of which are mandatory for even getting the credits since they only show up in this mode), but after another 10 or so races in this mode (or 3 losses), the horse is retired. You can then breed that horse in the farm, but only for a certain amount of times before it becomes unbreedable and thus useless for the rest of the game.
What this means is you'll end up raising a shit ton of horses, raising them, getting them skills and exp, only for the horse to become unusable after all that effort and you have to start fresh. Sure you can use that horse to breed other horses, for a little while, but not only is this time consuming since you'd at minimum need a good male and female horse, but it takes a full round in "growth mode" to even make a baby horse, so you have to essentially waste a round just to get that offspring for the next decent thing to use. Then it just repeats over and over, and only by constantly getting good male and female horses AND overcoming the RNG so they do well in races, is there a way to consistently climb the difficulty ceiling of the game. Because if you've have a pair of horses that can make good babbys, but the babbys do badly in races, the parents will stop love making, and you're back to square one.
And that's not even getting in to many other aspects of the breeding system, like how horses with the same "peak times" are better compatible, or how to even be able to race in certain races your horse needs to be a short or long distance runner (based on that peak type stat).
Fun game absolutely destroyed by a convoluted and grindy system. But it should be noted this is ONLY a problem if you want to complete the game, which unfortunately requires winning every race in the game at least once, bar one "bonus" race. If you're content just jumping in to the game and playing some solitare, and racing some horses until you get tired of it, you'll have a lot more fun. The whole resetting your skills every time may still be a bit annoying though.
Let me give some more praises to the game too, the game has 5 unique owners whose horses you essentially use in racing - even your own bred horses will get one of the owners attached to them. They all have unique personalities and come in to occasionally chat with your protagonist in cheap little puppet-style scenes. It can be entertaining to see these colourful characters interact, but admittedly by the end of the grind I was skipping through all the dialogue. There are also unique horse models that you can get too, like horses with fire-style hair, a horse with a cat hanging onto its back, or a horse with a dragon shaped head etc. So that's neat.
2022
One of the most satisfying games I've ever played. The rush of fighting a huge group of enemies and perfectly weaving through them, parrying them and smacking them with the beautiful sound effects is amazing. It's a game that requires patience and a lot of repetition to be able to master every level. For that purpose, the (admittedly small amount) of levels are fantastic. On top of all being very fast paced levels that are fit for replaying with little to no breaks, they all look great and have neat set pieces; a big shout out to level 3 especially. A very minor thing, but there are a couple of empty areas that seem a bit pointless and on a first run are nothing more than 10 second breather, but on the 5th+ run make you wish you could just skip them.
Another issue I had at one point was when trying to get a good run, either for keeping your age down, or keeping the multiplier up so you can get the shrine skills that require the most points, the parts of the level you've perfected become a bit annoying to have to constantly run through until you can get to the part where you're struggling.
The age mechanic is a creative way to add a lives system into the game and tie it directly into the story. And the fact that death counters build up to make you skip more lives at once fits with the demand for avoiding mistakes.
There's a lot of skills to unlock, and this is one area I feel the game purposefully tried to drag out its small content. Skills themselves are easy to unlock once, but to permanently unlock them (so you can use them in any run), you need to purchase them an extra 5 times after the initial purchase - and if you've say, purchased them 4 extra times then start a new run, you'll need to do the initial purchase again before you can buy the final extra and unlock it for good. Doing this for all skills becomes a needless grind imo.
There also weren't enough context-sensitive skills, and as a result of the huge list of skills I probably only ended up using about 30% of them as they were the most effective against every enemy. That said, there are still plenty of skills that you can get which just make you feel that much stronger in the game.
Another issue I had at one point was when trying to get a good run, either for keeping your age down, or keeping the multiplier up so you can get the shrine skills that require the most points, the parts of the level you've perfected become a bit annoying to have to constantly run through until you can get to the part where you're struggling.
The age mechanic is a creative way to add a lives system into the game and tie it directly into the story. And the fact that death counters build up to make you skip more lives at once fits with the demand for avoiding mistakes.
There's a lot of skills to unlock, and this is one area I feel the game purposefully tried to drag out its small content. Skills themselves are easy to unlock once, but to permanently unlock them (so you can use them in any run), you need to purchase them an extra 5 times after the initial purchase - and if you've say, purchased them 4 extra times then start a new run, you'll need to do the initial purchase again before you can buy the final extra and unlock it for good. Doing this for all skills becomes a needless grind imo.
There also weren't enough context-sensitive skills, and as a result of the huge list of skills I probably only ended up using about 30% of them as they were the most effective against every enemy. That said, there are still plenty of skills that you can get which just make you feel that much stronger in the game.
2016
I like the gameplay in fusions, it has a very novel battle system that is both very simple, yet has a lot of strategy behind it. Positioning plays a huge deal in the game, as knocking opponents outside of the invisible ring will cause extra damage, and reset their position on the timeline (basically making it so they have longer to wait for their turn). So it's all about trying to get opponents outside the ring, while keeping yourself far from the edge. But position also matters for many other things, like certain moves will only hit opponents close enough to you, or moves will fit in a straight line or arc, so you want to group opponents up in specific ways.
Then there's ki blasts vs physical attacks. Ki blasts cannot be blocked (although super attacks that are a "beam" type can be countered with a beam struggle if the opponent has an appropriate move and enough ki), but they do less knockback. Physical moves do more knockback, but every time you activate one, your opponent gets a chance to block it in a semi-RNG system where you have to predict which direction the attack will hit you. So if you think they'll hit you out the ring, they'd punch you from the left so you'd fly right, thus you want to block left. But they might be planning to hit you towards their teammate instead for a bit of extra damage, so it's semi-RNG in a lot of cases. Of course with AI specifically they don't always follow logic at all, so this block system can feel pure rng in some cases.
My biggest issue with the battle system is the lack of ability to speed up or skip animations. They are very slow, and repetitive battles. In big story battles it's fine to watch everything play out, but the majority of fighting in this game is just grinding or otherwise a filler battle to activate something else. It desperately needed a way to speed these up.
I've gotta give them props for the controls outside of battles too. Flying around a 3D space on a 3DS might seem limiting with only one circle pad (the additional one on new models does nothing) but they really made it work. And they managed to put all the iconic locations into the game by having the world take place in weird space-time distortions so all these landmarks everyone knows are just kind of scattered around.
Customisation is pretty good. Every time you unlock a new (canon) character you get the option to buy their outfit for your own CAC. This even includes things like Saibamen and Cell. So you can have a totally normal looking human on a Saibamen body.
But we're all here for the what-if fusions right? There's some really great ones here. But it's also where my biggest complaints with the game lie...
First of all, fusing and unfusing is such a tedious process. You go through so many confirmation screens, and every single time you do a fusion, or undo one, you have to reassign all the special moves the fusee's had. For a game that has this as a central mechanic, to the point they have a pokédex-esque completion screen for getting every single character, including fusions, the fact they didn't streamline this process is baffling.
Characters can also only fuse with specific characters, which makes sense, it's not like they could design a unique fusion for god knows how many potential results. But I'm not a big fan of the way they did this, because many characters only have 1 potential partner, but that partner can have multiple. Piccolo, for example, can fuse with both Pikkon and Boo saga Gohan (among some others), but both of these characters can ONLY fuse with Piccolo. That means if you want to fuse Piccolo with Pikkon, Gohan is left without a fusion, because you can't make multiple fusions with one character, you have to unfuse them first. There are so many cases like this, where one character can have so many fusion partners, but those partners HAVE to be with this one guy, leaving so many lonely non-fusees.
Then there's a bunch of characters that can't fuse with anyone at all.
Transformations count as their own character slots, and weirdly none of them can fuse with anyone. Even transformations of characters that CAN fuse. Like you can fuse base Kid Gohan and base Kid Trunks, but you can't fuse SSj Kid Gohan and SSj Kid Trunks into the Super Saiyan version of that very fusion. Literally all they'd have had to do is change the hair to blonde!
These are technically lies. Your OC can fuse with literally any character in the game. Of course because you get to design your OC with gender, hair style, and even race, they can't have unique designs. Whenever you fuse your character it's basically just your character + the fusion choice's hair style, with both their hair colour and yours thrown in (think how Gotenks has black and lavender hair). So if you decide to fuse your OC with Tenshinhan, you literally just create a bald version of your character lol. They're also the only ones able to fuse with the transformed characters. Even their name stays exactly the same, and their place in your "pokédex" is always 000. It's clear that OC + anyone is not supposed to be a real "fusion", but more like a power-up for your OC. I think this is a great way to do it since any other system would be like not letting your OC fuse with anyone, having a set design for them so they can make specific fusions with specific characters, or something.
You might look at the character list and go "holy shit there's over 1000 characters in this game!", and...yeah kinda. There's even some very interesting picks, like Bra and Gine. But only the first 110 or so are canon show characters (plus a handful of game-specific main characters). Then there's maybe 50-60 fusions of these canon characters. The rest of this millennial roster are pure made up characters. And I get it, you gotta have filler characters to pad out those filler fights. Some of them even get a bit of story in the game, like a female version of the Ginyu Force. But why the hell are their fusions so complex? These no need at all for these characters nobody even wants to use to have literal entire fusion trees with a ton of criteria for each one. Like let's say you want to fuse Jerry with Todd, but before you do that Jerry must have previously fused with Jeff, and Todd must have previously fused with Sarah. So now that you've done both of those fusions, you have to unfuse them (keep in mind the annoying reassigning of special moves every time) and now you try to fuse Jerry and Todd, but you still can't because first Todd needs to know this specific move! Why the hell did they make such intricate and convoluted fusion trees for these literal who characters?? Why is 80% of the roster just padding with weird models nobody gives a crap about? Literally the only thing it does is make the roster LOOK bigger, and make 100% completion not worth it.
If they just made it so that none of the game-only characters could fuse, except maybe a few unique ones that get spotlight in side quests, and make even just 50 more unique versions of canon characters, it'd have been so much better!
In short? This game is a fusion of a great concept with horrible execution, and fun but slow gameplay with no way to mitigate the pacing.
Then there's ki blasts vs physical attacks. Ki blasts cannot be blocked (although super attacks that are a "beam" type can be countered with a beam struggle if the opponent has an appropriate move and enough ki), but they do less knockback. Physical moves do more knockback, but every time you activate one, your opponent gets a chance to block it in a semi-RNG system where you have to predict which direction the attack will hit you. So if you think they'll hit you out the ring, they'd punch you from the left so you'd fly right, thus you want to block left. But they might be planning to hit you towards their teammate instead for a bit of extra damage, so it's semi-RNG in a lot of cases. Of course with AI specifically they don't always follow logic at all, so this block system can feel pure rng in some cases.
My biggest issue with the battle system is the lack of ability to speed up or skip animations. They are very slow, and repetitive battles. In big story battles it's fine to watch everything play out, but the majority of fighting in this game is just grinding or otherwise a filler battle to activate something else. It desperately needed a way to speed these up.
I've gotta give them props for the controls outside of battles too. Flying around a 3D space on a 3DS might seem limiting with only one circle pad (the additional one on new models does nothing) but they really made it work. And they managed to put all the iconic locations into the game by having the world take place in weird space-time distortions so all these landmarks everyone knows are just kind of scattered around.
Customisation is pretty good. Every time you unlock a new (canon) character you get the option to buy their outfit for your own CAC. This even includes things like Saibamen and Cell. So you can have a totally normal looking human on a Saibamen body.
But we're all here for the what-if fusions right? There's some really great ones here. But it's also where my biggest complaints with the game lie...
First of all, fusing and unfusing is such a tedious process. You go through so many confirmation screens, and every single time you do a fusion, or undo one, you have to reassign all the special moves the fusee's had. For a game that has this as a central mechanic, to the point they have a pokédex-esque completion screen for getting every single character, including fusions, the fact they didn't streamline this process is baffling.
Characters can also only fuse with specific characters, which makes sense, it's not like they could design a unique fusion for god knows how many potential results. But I'm not a big fan of the way they did this, because many characters only have 1 potential partner, but that partner can have multiple. Piccolo, for example, can fuse with both Pikkon and Boo saga Gohan (among some others), but both of these characters can ONLY fuse with Piccolo. That means if you want to fuse Piccolo with Pikkon, Gohan is left without a fusion, because you can't make multiple fusions with one character, you have to unfuse them first. There are so many cases like this, where one character can have so many fusion partners, but those partners HAVE to be with this one guy, leaving so many lonely non-fusees.
Then there's a bunch of characters that can't fuse with anyone at all.
Transformations count as their own character slots, and weirdly none of them can fuse with anyone. Even transformations of characters that CAN fuse. Like you can fuse base Kid Gohan and base Kid Trunks, but you can't fuse SSj Kid Gohan and SSj Kid Trunks into the Super Saiyan version of that very fusion. Literally all they'd have had to do is change the hair to blonde!
These are technically lies. Your OC can fuse with literally any character in the game. Of course because you get to design your OC with gender, hair style, and even race, they can't have unique designs. Whenever you fuse your character it's basically just your character + the fusion choice's hair style, with both their hair colour and yours thrown in (think how Gotenks has black and lavender hair). So if you decide to fuse your OC with Tenshinhan, you literally just create a bald version of your character lol. They're also the only ones able to fuse with the transformed characters. Even their name stays exactly the same, and their place in your "pokédex" is always 000. It's clear that OC + anyone is not supposed to be a real "fusion", but more like a power-up for your OC. I think this is a great way to do it since any other system would be like not letting your OC fuse with anyone, having a set design for them so they can make specific fusions with specific characters, or something.
You might look at the character list and go "holy shit there's over 1000 characters in this game!", and...yeah kinda. There's even some very interesting picks, like Bra and Gine. But only the first 110 or so are canon show characters (plus a handful of game-specific main characters). Then there's maybe 50-60 fusions of these canon characters. The rest of this millennial roster are pure made up characters. And I get it, you gotta have filler characters to pad out those filler fights. Some of them even get a bit of story in the game, like a female version of the Ginyu Force. But why the hell are their fusions so complex? These no need at all for these characters nobody even wants to use to have literal entire fusion trees with a ton of criteria for each one. Like let's say you want to fuse Jerry with Todd, but before you do that Jerry must have previously fused with Jeff, and Todd must have previously fused with Sarah. So now that you've done both of those fusions, you have to unfuse them (keep in mind the annoying reassigning of special moves every time) and now you try to fuse Jerry and Todd, but you still can't because first Todd needs to know this specific move! Why the hell did they make such intricate and convoluted fusion trees for these literal who characters?? Why is 80% of the roster just padding with weird models nobody gives a crap about? Literally the only thing it does is make the roster LOOK bigger, and make 100% completion not worth it.
If they just made it so that none of the game-only characters could fuse, except maybe a few unique ones that get spotlight in side quests, and make even just 50 more unique versions of canon characters, it'd have been so much better!
In short? This game is a fusion of a great concept with horrible execution, and fun but slow gameplay with no way to mitigate the pacing.
Lots of fun brain teasers mixed together with a charming little story. They don't do an amazing job with fitting the puzzles into the story (not that I'd expect them to) but they do have a few moments where it either ties in to what's happening, or a character has a personality based around puzzle types that can be pretty fun. There is a heavy reuse of puzzle types the further you get though. Even most of the bonus puzzles you can unlock are just the same ones you've done before but on "hard mode".
There's probably some kind of analysis that could be done on people based on what puzzles they find easy or struggle with.
I liked that some puzzles gave you items which were used for other puzzles. The room one was a fun way to show off character personalities, albeit one where the "rules" didn't seem consistent. The gizmo also had a neat little effect when it was completed.
There's probably some kind of analysis that could be done on people based on what puzzles they find easy or struggle with.
I liked that some puzzles gave you items which were used for other puzzles. The room one was a fun way to show off character personalities, albeit one where the "rules" didn't seem consistent. The gizmo also had a neat little effect when it was completed.
It's weird to think that Resident Evil 4 would work, let alone be considered a competing best entry game in the franchise along with REmake. It practically reinvents everything the franchise was known for, removing all signs of survival horror for a more action focused game. Puzzles are few and far between. Linearity is more pronounced now, with things like weapons no longer being found on the map, but bought from a merchant, along with weapon upgrades. The game even lacks zombies of all things, at least in the usual sense. It even adds elements that people just dislike about gaming in general - half the game is essentially an escort mission, and quick time events are everywhere.
So why is it so good?! I guess because the shift was done so well, the game acting so fluently in the genre, that newcomers may not even realise it hasn't always been this way. The shooting in the game feels so satisfying and set pieces are so memorable, such as the minecart section. The atmosphere is incredible too, which helps a lot to keep that horror Resident Evil vibe.
Inventory management is still around, but not at all like it used to be. Whereas old games were more about trying to juggle the many key items with your weapons and healing, this one gives you a ton of space, puts key items in a separate section completely, but now the literal positioning of your non-key items matters. Like before weapons take up varying amounts of space, but not just a case of shotgun = 2 slots and pistol = 1. A shotgun will take up a comparatively large section, and rather than fitting neatly into squares, you have to manoeuvre your items around in an efficient way in the trunk to maximise the amount of stuff you can store at once. It's like its own little minigame which is surprisingly addictive, and satisfying.
I liked the game a lot. Just a few minor nitpicks here and there, most notable for me was the lack of quick weapon switching. This game will have you swapping weapons a lot, so needing to go into your menu every single time to throw a single grenade can throw off the flow of the battle just a little bit.
So why is it so good?! I guess because the shift was done so well, the game acting so fluently in the genre, that newcomers may not even realise it hasn't always been this way. The shooting in the game feels so satisfying and set pieces are so memorable, such as the minecart section. The atmosphere is incredible too, which helps a lot to keep that horror Resident Evil vibe.
Inventory management is still around, but not at all like it used to be. Whereas old games were more about trying to juggle the many key items with your weapons and healing, this one gives you a ton of space, puts key items in a separate section completely, but now the literal positioning of your non-key items matters. Like before weapons take up varying amounts of space, but not just a case of shotgun = 2 slots and pistol = 1. A shotgun will take up a comparatively large section, and rather than fitting neatly into squares, you have to manoeuvre your items around in an efficient way in the trunk to maximise the amount of stuff you can store at once. It's like its own little minigame which is surprisingly addictive, and satisfying.
I liked the game a lot. Just a few minor nitpicks here and there, most notable for me was the lack of quick weapon switching. This game will have you swapping weapons a lot, so needing to go into your menu every single time to throw a single grenade can throw off the flow of the battle just a little bit.
This review contains spoilers
This turn-based RPG for my favourite franchise has always interested me, but somehow I never played it until now.
The story timing of the game was confusing. How do you make an RPG out of a saga that consists of one battle, a training period, and then another couple of battles? Well the answer is of course to fill that training period with a lot of filler. But first, the game actually starts at...the beginning of the 23rd Budokai arc? You actually start BEFORE the 3 year time skip too, during which you get to spend some time with Krillin, Yamcha and Tenshinhan on some game-exclusive training missions, both together and alone.
Once into the canon part of the martial arts tournament the game sets a weirdly misleading idea of how the pacing will go. Most of this arc is skipped. Plot points are only briefly brought up in dialogue (my favourite part is when they talk about how Piccolo "ate" Kami after he sealed him, only for Kami to appear in a later cutscene with no explanation), and every fight except Goku vs Piccolo is skipped entirely, shown only as static images.
So after we get 1 fight for this entire ass tournament, we move on to the main event, right? Well actually no, first we get the wedding dress filler arc! Which gets way more attention and time than the actual canon fighting arc. I guess it is more adventure-focused, so whatever.
By the time we get to Z and finally get Gohan as a character, he starts at level 1, while everyone else has the benefits of their training in previous chapters. Accurate to the story? Kinda (not accounting for Gohan's hidden powers). Balanced for gameplay? I mean... also kinda, they don't put Gohan in high level areas. But it's annoying to have done all that training just to start fresh with a new character.
Anywho from here canon plot points are given major focus, unlike the 23rd Budokai. Cutscenes go on for a very long time, pretty much explaining everything in detail. I'm not saying it's a bad thing, it's just...weird. Why start the game with this kind of rushed storytelling, as if you're acknowledging players should be familiar with the story, then afterwards make sure the player understands every story beat to the letter?
From here we kind of alternate between canon, anime filler and game-exclusive. The biggest chapter of the game, and the one that really tells you "we're a video game, we need more content that our separated cast can't bring!" being when you have to find the dragon balls, at which point Piccolo, with Gohan in tow, teams up with the Earthlings to look for them. Oh and Goku gets brought back by Baba to help them look! Can you imagine how insane that'd be in the real story? Goku being brought back mid-way through their training, to team up with still-evil Piccolo and the good guys? It's funny. And to get a lot of locations for this DB hunt, the game goes back to the original. You visit places like Muscle Tower, the pirate cave and Pilaf Castle.
So that's how you make an RPG about a very simple, small-scoped saga. You essentially shoehorn in everywhere from the series that doesn't appear in this era. And that's not even getting in to the game-exclusive areas.
I do like some of the little stories they added to the game. Plus there's one moment in said chapter where everyone teams up to search for the dragon balls, at the end of it they of course need to go their separate ways so they're in position to be in their canon spots when we get back to that part, well since Gohan is supposed to be kidnapped, but has been hanging out with everyone just fine, the game addresses this by actually having Piccolo offer Gohan to stay behind with the heroes, only for Gohan to say he wants to keep training. A surprisingly great character development moment.
This all gets even weirder when you realise that in Japan this was branded as a "Kai" game (it came out around the same time Kai started airing). But that just raises so many more questions! OK, it does help explain why they picked this specific period since that's where Kai starts, but why would it then add 23rd Budokai stuff that doesn't exist in Kai? Why does it add filler that only exists in Dragon Ball Z, that Kai specifically removed to make a more accurate retelling of the manga? If you were a kid who just started watching Kai, and then picked this game up, you'd be so confused, but even more confused when you learned many parts of this game aren't actually made up for the game, but came from the old anime. Why brand it a damn Kai game when it's clearly based on Z?!
So in summary the way this game handles story is an absolute mess. Oh and I figured the reason they didn't do a sequel is because the Namek saga would be awful for this type of game. You'd only really be able to play as Gohan, Krillin and Vegeta for most of it, and there's hardly any interesting landmarks on Namek to visit. And yet, the game STILL teases that a sequel was being worked on! It ends with them talking about the DB's on Namek (as in the manga) and then says "to be continued" before ending with a post credits screen of a silhouetted Freeza. What the heck was going on with this game? Let's not even get in to what the game would do if it ever got to the Boo arc, now that it used up Baba's 24-hour revival magic here.
I've already typed this much and I haven't even gotten to the gameplay yet. The story is easily the least important part of this whole thing, and yet the way it was done just fascinates the hell out of me.
Gameplay is fine. It's a pretty basic turn-based RPG honestly. There's a few things that stand out, like I don't know how many games have a dedicated "recovery" attribute where you auto-gain a bit of HP every turn. You've got a few special moves per character, but since Dragon Ball isn't known as being a very strategic RPG, you're mostly relying on brute strength with these. There's a few buff or healing movies, but I think only Tenshinhan's solar flare can cause a status effect. For the rest, you rely on items.
I don't think it's a bad battle system. It's simple, but it's flashy and fast enough. Basic attacks are a multi-hit combo rather than just a standard sword slash or something, and you even have the chance to get a lucky combo extender for extra damage. You've got a "sparking" meter which essentially acts as a limit bar. When full you can fire off a super move, or if multiple characters have a full one you can chain specific moves together to form an S-Combo. What is an S-Combo? Well it seems to just be literally watching the characters perform the moves as they would have anyway with zero difference, but now it has a unique name! I guess it might do more damage than using the moves alone? I basically never used these, just preferring to fire off the ultimate attacks.
There's a lack of polish in the translation that can be best seen by how the stats call one stat "Tc" which you'd assume stands for "Technique", especially since it's the stat that buffs your Ki moves. So what does every item that interacts with this stat call it? "Skill". Use an item that raises a characters "skill" stat and watch their "Tc" raise. Weird.
The speed stat also felt horribly broken. It's pretty simple how it's supposed to work - order in battle goes by biggest speed number to smallest. The first turn almost always goes like that, but why then does every turn after seem to shit the bed? Why is my Krillin going first on turn 1, but then 2nd on turn 2? There were no stat changes or status moves between. Why is the enemy attacking before or after me seemingly RNG? Why does the enemy sometimes straight up miss a turn? It's like the speed stat in this game is more a suggestion than hard numbers.
The game doesn't take much advantage of being an RPG by adding side quests. There's only 2 in the whole game, and both are long grindy ones rather than small self-contained stories. The first one has you give one NPC 1000 carrots. To get a carrot you need to equip a specific field item and defeat enemies, turning them into carrots. When using this item you do not get money or any regular item drops. So essentially you need to defeat 1000 enemies while forgoing the ability to gain cash or items, and you need to waste an item slot on it. Not very fun.
The other side-quest is pretty great though. Use Tenshinhan's mafuba to capture all non-boss enemies in the game. Whether the move will work isn't guaranteed, but you can raise the chances by lowering enemy health and giving them status effects, or getting new field-items (each is just an upgraded rice cooker). Sounds familiar right? Catching things by weakening them, into containers that have various tiers? To drive this point home even more, there are exactly 150 enemies in the game to capture. It's a very creative side quest. Albeit a grindy one, and the game lacks any info in-battle to say if you've already successfully used the technique on that specific enemy.
The games movement speed was a bit low, but it annoys me more because it has 2 different levels of unlockable speeds. Both are field items, meaning you have to use your slot on them if you wanna go faster than a snails pace. The first is gotten mid-way through the game (in a missable, albeit not easily, chest) and the second is the final reward for that capturing every enemy in the game mission. So yeah you'll likely have almost finished the game by the time you can get it.
Being slow is one thing, but I hate when a game offers what should be a run button as a damn unlockable.
The game has a secret boss, and it's no secret anymore that it's Broly. I guess fitting for the title, but surely Turles would fit both the title AND era? I'm not surprised at all they went with the more popular of the two though.
One other thing I wanna talk about is how in a couple of the chapters where Goku is in otherworld, Kaio sends him on a quest to a game-specific location (I think so anyway, maybe it was from a filler ep). For some reason in these 2 visits to this location, Goku is joined by a fully AI controlled Bubbles and Gregory. This assist party member thing NEVER happens outside of these chapters! Why are freaking Bubbles and Gregory implemented in this way but actual fighters like Chaozu and Yajirobe never get to see the battle screen? Lmao. It's not like it's a case of wanting to make sure Goku wasn't alone in his fights, because many chapters have characters fighting solo, including other chapters with Goku in Other World (like the Princess Snake segment). They're not even that helpful. They're mildly decent the first time, more as damage sponges than anything. But the second time they don't get any stronger despite the fact the enemies do, so their best use is to take a hit or two before they "run away" for that battle. I'd rather have just played Goku alone than have to sit through their animations every turn.
I feel like I've mostly complained about this game despite giving it 4 stars! But that's because it's only really the more minor complaints that are easy to hone in on. I can only really say that I loved playing the game in so many ways. I loved going through all these Dragon Ball locales with gorgeously designed backgrounds. The graphics truly can't be faulted. I liked the additional story stuff, I liked the music and little easter eggs. It's fun to fight well-known characters in a different way than the usual methods for Dragon Ball (fighting games or beat-em-ups).
It's an RPG for Dragon Ball fans, and the love of the franchise kinda just makes the game work in a way it would probably fail as a unique IP.
The story timing of the game was confusing. How do you make an RPG out of a saga that consists of one battle, a training period, and then another couple of battles? Well the answer is of course to fill that training period with a lot of filler. But first, the game actually starts at...the beginning of the 23rd Budokai arc? You actually start BEFORE the 3 year time skip too, during which you get to spend some time with Krillin, Yamcha and Tenshinhan on some game-exclusive training missions, both together and alone.
Once into the canon part of the martial arts tournament the game sets a weirdly misleading idea of how the pacing will go. Most of this arc is skipped. Plot points are only briefly brought up in dialogue (my favourite part is when they talk about how Piccolo "ate" Kami after he sealed him, only for Kami to appear in a later cutscene with no explanation), and every fight except Goku vs Piccolo is skipped entirely, shown only as static images.
So after we get 1 fight for this entire ass tournament, we move on to the main event, right? Well actually no, first we get the wedding dress filler arc! Which gets way more attention and time than the actual canon fighting arc. I guess it is more adventure-focused, so whatever.
By the time we get to Z and finally get Gohan as a character, he starts at level 1, while everyone else has the benefits of their training in previous chapters. Accurate to the story? Kinda (not accounting for Gohan's hidden powers). Balanced for gameplay? I mean... also kinda, they don't put Gohan in high level areas. But it's annoying to have done all that training just to start fresh with a new character.
Anywho from here canon plot points are given major focus, unlike the 23rd Budokai. Cutscenes go on for a very long time, pretty much explaining everything in detail. I'm not saying it's a bad thing, it's just...weird. Why start the game with this kind of rushed storytelling, as if you're acknowledging players should be familiar with the story, then afterwards make sure the player understands every story beat to the letter?
From here we kind of alternate between canon, anime filler and game-exclusive. The biggest chapter of the game, and the one that really tells you "we're a video game, we need more content that our separated cast can't bring!" being when you have to find the dragon balls, at which point Piccolo, with Gohan in tow, teams up with the Earthlings to look for them. Oh and Goku gets brought back by Baba to help them look! Can you imagine how insane that'd be in the real story? Goku being brought back mid-way through their training, to team up with still-evil Piccolo and the good guys? It's funny. And to get a lot of locations for this DB hunt, the game goes back to the original. You visit places like Muscle Tower, the pirate cave and Pilaf Castle.
So that's how you make an RPG about a very simple, small-scoped saga. You essentially shoehorn in everywhere from the series that doesn't appear in this era. And that's not even getting in to the game-exclusive areas.
I do like some of the little stories they added to the game. Plus there's one moment in said chapter where everyone teams up to search for the dragon balls, at the end of it they of course need to go their separate ways so they're in position to be in their canon spots when we get back to that part, well since Gohan is supposed to be kidnapped, but has been hanging out with everyone just fine, the game addresses this by actually having Piccolo offer Gohan to stay behind with the heroes, only for Gohan to say he wants to keep training. A surprisingly great character development moment.
This all gets even weirder when you realise that in Japan this was branded as a "Kai" game (it came out around the same time Kai started airing). But that just raises so many more questions! OK, it does help explain why they picked this specific period since that's where Kai starts, but why would it then add 23rd Budokai stuff that doesn't exist in Kai? Why does it add filler that only exists in Dragon Ball Z, that Kai specifically removed to make a more accurate retelling of the manga? If you were a kid who just started watching Kai, and then picked this game up, you'd be so confused, but even more confused when you learned many parts of this game aren't actually made up for the game, but came from the old anime. Why brand it a damn Kai game when it's clearly based on Z?!
So in summary the way this game handles story is an absolute mess. Oh and I figured the reason they didn't do a sequel is because the Namek saga would be awful for this type of game. You'd only really be able to play as Gohan, Krillin and Vegeta for most of it, and there's hardly any interesting landmarks on Namek to visit. And yet, the game STILL teases that a sequel was being worked on! It ends with them talking about the DB's on Namek (as in the manga) and then says "to be continued" before ending with a post credits screen of a silhouetted Freeza. What the heck was going on with this game? Let's not even get in to what the game would do if it ever got to the Boo arc, now that it used up Baba's 24-hour revival magic here.
I've already typed this much and I haven't even gotten to the gameplay yet. The story is easily the least important part of this whole thing, and yet the way it was done just fascinates the hell out of me.
Gameplay is fine. It's a pretty basic turn-based RPG honestly. There's a few things that stand out, like I don't know how many games have a dedicated "recovery" attribute where you auto-gain a bit of HP every turn. You've got a few special moves per character, but since Dragon Ball isn't known as being a very strategic RPG, you're mostly relying on brute strength with these. There's a few buff or healing movies, but I think only Tenshinhan's solar flare can cause a status effect. For the rest, you rely on items.
I don't think it's a bad battle system. It's simple, but it's flashy and fast enough. Basic attacks are a multi-hit combo rather than just a standard sword slash or something, and you even have the chance to get a lucky combo extender for extra damage. You've got a "sparking" meter which essentially acts as a limit bar. When full you can fire off a super move, or if multiple characters have a full one you can chain specific moves together to form an S-Combo. What is an S-Combo? Well it seems to just be literally watching the characters perform the moves as they would have anyway with zero difference, but now it has a unique name! I guess it might do more damage than using the moves alone? I basically never used these, just preferring to fire off the ultimate attacks.
There's a lack of polish in the translation that can be best seen by how the stats call one stat "Tc" which you'd assume stands for "Technique", especially since it's the stat that buffs your Ki moves. So what does every item that interacts with this stat call it? "Skill". Use an item that raises a characters "skill" stat and watch their "Tc" raise. Weird.
The speed stat also felt horribly broken. It's pretty simple how it's supposed to work - order in battle goes by biggest speed number to smallest. The first turn almost always goes like that, but why then does every turn after seem to shit the bed? Why is my Krillin going first on turn 1, but then 2nd on turn 2? There were no stat changes or status moves between. Why is the enemy attacking before or after me seemingly RNG? Why does the enemy sometimes straight up miss a turn? It's like the speed stat in this game is more a suggestion than hard numbers.
The game doesn't take much advantage of being an RPG by adding side quests. There's only 2 in the whole game, and both are long grindy ones rather than small self-contained stories. The first one has you give one NPC 1000 carrots. To get a carrot you need to equip a specific field item and defeat enemies, turning them into carrots. When using this item you do not get money or any regular item drops. So essentially you need to defeat 1000 enemies while forgoing the ability to gain cash or items, and you need to waste an item slot on it. Not very fun.
The other side-quest is pretty great though. Use Tenshinhan's mafuba to capture all non-boss enemies in the game. Whether the move will work isn't guaranteed, but you can raise the chances by lowering enemy health and giving them status effects, or getting new field-items (each is just an upgraded rice cooker). Sounds familiar right? Catching things by weakening them, into containers that have various tiers? To drive this point home even more, there are exactly 150 enemies in the game to capture. It's a very creative side quest. Albeit a grindy one, and the game lacks any info in-battle to say if you've already successfully used the technique on that specific enemy.
The games movement speed was a bit low, but it annoys me more because it has 2 different levels of unlockable speeds. Both are field items, meaning you have to use your slot on them if you wanna go faster than a snails pace. The first is gotten mid-way through the game (in a missable, albeit not easily, chest) and the second is the final reward for that capturing every enemy in the game mission. So yeah you'll likely have almost finished the game by the time you can get it.
Being slow is one thing, but I hate when a game offers what should be a run button as a damn unlockable.
The game has a secret boss, and it's no secret anymore that it's Broly. I guess fitting for the title, but surely Turles would fit both the title AND era? I'm not surprised at all they went with the more popular of the two though.
One other thing I wanna talk about is how in a couple of the chapters where Goku is in otherworld, Kaio sends him on a quest to a game-specific location (I think so anyway, maybe it was from a filler ep). For some reason in these 2 visits to this location, Goku is joined by a fully AI controlled Bubbles and Gregory. This assist party member thing NEVER happens outside of these chapters! Why are freaking Bubbles and Gregory implemented in this way but actual fighters like Chaozu and Yajirobe never get to see the battle screen? Lmao. It's not like it's a case of wanting to make sure Goku wasn't alone in his fights, because many chapters have characters fighting solo, including other chapters with Goku in Other World (like the Princess Snake segment). They're not even that helpful. They're mildly decent the first time, more as damage sponges than anything. But the second time they don't get any stronger despite the fact the enemies do, so their best use is to take a hit or two before they "run away" for that battle. I'd rather have just played Goku alone than have to sit through their animations every turn.
I feel like I've mostly complained about this game despite giving it 4 stars! But that's because it's only really the more minor complaints that are easy to hone in on. I can only really say that I loved playing the game in so many ways. I loved going through all these Dragon Ball locales with gorgeously designed backgrounds. The graphics truly can't be faulted. I liked the additional story stuff, I liked the music and little easter eggs. It's fun to fight well-known characters in a different way than the usual methods for Dragon Ball (fighting games or beat-em-ups).
It's an RPG for Dragon Ball fans, and the love of the franchise kinda just makes the game work in a way it would probably fail as a unique IP.
2013
This review contains spoilers
I love the job system in this game, the potential to set a secondary job moveset for every character, and select any unlockable ability from any job, not only encourages trying out multiple jobs on multiple characters, but ends up giving you so many ways to mix and match the traits from them. There's "only" 24 jobs in the game, but the decisions the game gives you for how to use the DNA of each job results in hundreds, or even thousands of combinations.
The titular mechanic adds a small bit of extra strategy, use bravely to risk a burst of power to end a boss fight, or even slice through mobs easily, or default to skip a turn but save the action for next turn, while acting as a regular block in an RPG. In fact even some classes are built on using turns for their move cost rather than MP or some such.
The soundtrack is fantastic, if a little repetitive.
Many of the towns look absolutely fantastic, though dungeons can be somewhat bland in appearance.
Gotta give the game credit for making the tedious part of JRPG's (grinding) so much more player friendly. Either the ability to set random encounter rate to 0, or the ability to fast forward battles and use "auto" mode, which will repeat the last actions each character was manually commanded. The latter includes the use of brave so you can just brave x4 attack everything with every character when going through generic enemies.
The story of the game is a way too close to how JRPG's are represented in basically any parody ever. Protagonist whose small childhood home was destroyed, with an obvious romantic connection to the leading female, who has a unique role in this worlds religion. Story is centred around crystals. Last boss is some kind of universe-destroying being. It's all some of the most derivative plot I've ever seen.
Luckily the characters make it all worth sitting through. I enjoyedall most of them. And each job even has a corresponding villain, each with a memorable personality and a variety of roles in the story. The biggest problem I had with the characters was the 2 who spent 90% of their dialogue being perverts. Luckily this trait does kind of fade away as the stakes are raised, but it takes way too long. What really saves them is the fact that both of these characters have some of the better backstories in the game.
The elephant in the room is the Groundhog Day portion of the game. In theory I think it would be fun, but they do so little with the idea. Every old boss is fightable again as a side-quest during these portions, but there's only very brief dialogue that changes how these encounters happened the first time, and by the third loop sometimes they don't even change the dialogue at all, and your player characters are reacting in shock to things they've already been told 2 loops ago. Loops 4 and 5 do change things up a bit more by moving the bosses around and teaming them up together, but that mostly just results in a small cutscene where you get to see charatcers interacting who never did so in the first part of the game, and then a harder than usual boss fight. Not the worst extra content, but it really shouldn't have been 4 extra rewinds long just for that.
At least if you don't care about these optional rematches you can do the entire section in just a few hours, with the main story beats at least offering more palpable progress. It's pretty much due to this that I didn't lower the rating any more, because I could honestly have given the game a 10 at first, even with its unoriginal story, I found the rest of the game extremely fun and addicting. But the latter half was too drawn out and did way too little with the concept.
The titular mechanic adds a small bit of extra strategy, use bravely to risk a burst of power to end a boss fight, or even slice through mobs easily, or default to skip a turn but save the action for next turn, while acting as a regular block in an RPG. In fact even some classes are built on using turns for their move cost rather than MP or some such.
The soundtrack is fantastic, if a little repetitive.
Many of the towns look absolutely fantastic, though dungeons can be somewhat bland in appearance.
Gotta give the game credit for making the tedious part of JRPG's (grinding) so much more player friendly. Either the ability to set random encounter rate to 0, or the ability to fast forward battles and use "auto" mode, which will repeat the last actions each character was manually commanded. The latter includes the use of brave so you can just brave x4 attack everything with every character when going through generic enemies.
The story of the game is a way too close to how JRPG's are represented in basically any parody ever. Protagonist whose small childhood home was destroyed, with an obvious romantic connection to the leading female, who has a unique role in this worlds religion. Story is centred around crystals. Last boss is some kind of universe-destroying being. It's all some of the most derivative plot I've ever seen.
Luckily the characters make it all worth sitting through. I enjoyed
The elephant in the room is the Groundhog Day portion of the game. In theory I think it would be fun, but they do so little with the idea. Every old boss is fightable again as a side-quest during these portions, but there's only very brief dialogue that changes how these encounters happened the first time, and by the third loop sometimes they don't even change the dialogue at all, and your player characters are reacting in shock to things they've already been told 2 loops ago. Loops 4 and 5 do change things up a bit more by moving the bosses around and teaming them up together, but that mostly just results in a small cutscene where you get to see charatcers interacting who never did so in the first part of the game, and then a harder than usual boss fight. Not the worst extra content, but it really shouldn't have been 4 extra rewinds long just for that.
At least if you don't care about these optional rematches you can do the entire section in just a few hours, with the main story beats at least offering more palpable progress. It's pretty much due to this that I didn't lower the rating any more, because I could honestly have given the game a 10 at first, even with its unoriginal story, I found the rest of the game extremely fun and addicting. But the latter half was too drawn out and did way too little with the concept.
1999
A huge improvement over the first game. It solves so many of its issues, from fixing things like bugs, frame rate issues and adding quality of life changes.
The lack of a map is still a bit of a problem, but this time around the locations seem more forgiving as far as dead-ends and the like go. At least until the third map, that thing had so many boxed off areas, that you'd take ages finding a gap to get in, and then once you've navigated around the labyrinth inside, you gotta find your way back out. The sheer amount of these often means you'll be driving along a few miles across a fence while you look for a bit of access to keep following the arrow.
Gun combat was improved significantly. No longer did my bullets seem to just pass through the heads of NPCs, everything felt very on-target and much better overall to play, meaning the more combat-based missions in this game weren't a problem.
I did like the inclusion of each stage having 3 gangs that you can build up loyalty to, to unlock harder missions for that gang, or piss off one of them so that not only are you locked out of their missions, but they'll attack you on the street, with increasingly dangerous weapons. It really adds something to the player experience as you choose a group to partner with and an area of the map belonging to their rival gang becomes dangerous.
Although the missions themselves all seemed pretty similar regardless of the gang you chose, it does help add a bit of personality to them, instead of just being random phone calls as they were in the first game. Each gang even gives you their own nickname.
The game was a lot shorter this time around however. While it still has 3 maps, you only play each one once, as opposed to twice like the original game. In this game you only need a total of 8 million points to beat the game, while in GTA 1 you needed, I think, 15 million.
Getting points also feels a lot easier now for one reason: The tank. I easily racked up millions of points at a time when I got into a tank. I'm not saying this is a problem with the game, as its completely option if you wanna cheese it this way, but it's a thing in the game, and one that I used and found myself shocked by just how buffed it was.
However all that's not to say this game has less replay-ability though. While the minimum amount needed to beat the game is less (which admittedly, is all I did), I'm pretty sure there are more missions and kill frenzies per stage, so if you wanted to 100% it, it'd probably even out.
They also added bonus stages, I only tried out a couple of them - I was only in this to get a good feel of GTA's history, don't judge me - they were essentially just standalone missions you could do for fun.
So basically this is just taking the first game, fixing most of its issues, and adding a bunch of little extras. The only problem I have with this version is the lack of a map still, and the third map (which I guess is 1/3rd of the game, or technically more since it's the level that needs the most points, but still)
The lack of a map is still a bit of a problem, but this time around the locations seem more forgiving as far as dead-ends and the like go. At least until the third map, that thing had so many boxed off areas, that you'd take ages finding a gap to get in, and then once you've navigated around the labyrinth inside, you gotta find your way back out. The sheer amount of these often means you'll be driving along a few miles across a fence while you look for a bit of access to keep following the arrow.
Gun combat was improved significantly. No longer did my bullets seem to just pass through the heads of NPCs, everything felt very on-target and much better overall to play, meaning the more combat-based missions in this game weren't a problem.
I did like the inclusion of each stage having 3 gangs that you can build up loyalty to, to unlock harder missions for that gang, or piss off one of them so that not only are you locked out of their missions, but they'll attack you on the street, with increasingly dangerous weapons. It really adds something to the player experience as you choose a group to partner with and an area of the map belonging to their rival gang becomes dangerous.
Although the missions themselves all seemed pretty similar regardless of the gang you chose, it does help add a bit of personality to them, instead of just being random phone calls as they were in the first game. Each gang even gives you their own nickname.
The game was a lot shorter this time around however. While it still has 3 maps, you only play each one once, as opposed to twice like the original game. In this game you only need a total of 8 million points to beat the game, while in GTA 1 you needed, I think, 15 million.
Getting points also feels a lot easier now for one reason: The tank. I easily racked up millions of points at a time when I got into a tank. I'm not saying this is a problem with the game, as its completely option if you wanna cheese it this way, but it's a thing in the game, and one that I used and found myself shocked by just how buffed it was.
However all that's not to say this game has less replay-ability though. While the minimum amount needed to beat the game is less (which admittedly, is all I did), I'm pretty sure there are more missions and kill frenzies per stage, so if you wanted to 100% it, it'd probably even out.
They also added bonus stages, I only tried out a couple of them - I was only in this to get a good feel of GTA's history, don't judge me - they were essentially just standalone missions you could do for fun.
So basically this is just taking the first game, fixing most of its issues, and adding a bunch of little extras. The only problem I have with this version is the lack of a map still, and the third map (which I guess is 1/3rd of the game, or technically more since it's the level that needs the most points, but still)
1998
Very satisfying fast-paced racing across excellently designed tracks, with plenty of fun things like jumps, half pipes, full pipes and loops.
One aspect of F-Zero X I love is the attacking mechanic. Winning a cup is not all about coming first in every race. While that IS an option (though I tend to think less likely in higher difficulties which require perfect driving), it's much more viable to take out the person currently winning the overall ranking (conveniently labelled "rival") so they get 0 points for a race and effectively remove them as an opponent for the rest of the cup.
The attacking mechanic is also a big risk vs reward factor, as missing a hit could instead have you slamming into a wall, losing health and slowing you down.
Speaking of risk vs reward, making the boost and health system the same bar is so evil and I love it. You really have to balance your greed.
A few things I wasn't a fan of, such as the fact the Ai blatantly cheats. As I mentioned, taking out your rival is a huge part of winning on higher difficulties. Unfortunately the cpu cars basically go way faster than you, so you tend to have only a single chance to knock out a rival at the very start, before they speed past you and get to the front of the pack for the rest of the race. Of course if you're good enough to consistently get to the front in a race you can have another chance, but if you're driving that perfectly AND want to risk your placement by trying to knock out an opponent, I'd say you're good enough to win even without knocking out your rival (at least on Expert, I never tried master and don't intend to).
I know it's a big skill issue, but the #1 tip I always saw for this game was double tap turning. While I could do this perfectly on truly sharp corners, and hairpin turns (which ironically made the later cups slightly easier as that's where they tend to be), it never worked for me at all in the corners that weren't necessarily sharp, but just enough to make me skid if I tried to take them raw. Anytime I tried to do it in those cases I'd just slam in to a wall, and I could never work out how to do it despite watching videos. That bugged me the whole time knowing I could be doing better, but could never get it to work how it's supposed to.
Supposedly the N64 version is the best because the sensitivity of the control stick, and the Switch pro controller just ain't built for the precision needed. That's why I did not feel bad about using save states between some races to win lol.
Anywho it's a really fun game, with exhilarating speed and tracks, with mechanics that can really turn you pro if you want to dig deep, otherwise expert may be a little frustrating (I only did it because it was needed for the credits).
One aspect of F-Zero X I love is the attacking mechanic. Winning a cup is not all about coming first in every race. While that IS an option (though I tend to think less likely in higher difficulties which require perfect driving), it's much more viable to take out the person currently winning the overall ranking (conveniently labelled "rival") so they get 0 points for a race and effectively remove them as an opponent for the rest of the cup.
The attacking mechanic is also a big risk vs reward factor, as missing a hit could instead have you slamming into a wall, losing health and slowing you down.
Speaking of risk vs reward, making the boost and health system the same bar is so evil and I love it. You really have to balance your greed.
A few things I wasn't a fan of, such as the fact the Ai blatantly cheats. As I mentioned, taking out your rival is a huge part of winning on higher difficulties. Unfortunately the cpu cars basically go way faster than you, so you tend to have only a single chance to knock out a rival at the very start, before they speed past you and get to the front of the pack for the rest of the race. Of course if you're good enough to consistently get to the front in a race you can have another chance, but if you're driving that perfectly AND want to risk your placement by trying to knock out an opponent, I'd say you're good enough to win even without knocking out your rival (at least on Expert, I never tried master and don't intend to).
I know it's a big skill issue, but the #1 tip I always saw for this game was double tap turning. While I could do this perfectly on truly sharp corners, and hairpin turns (which ironically made the later cups slightly easier as that's where they tend to be), it never worked for me at all in the corners that weren't necessarily sharp, but just enough to make me skid if I tried to take them raw. Anytime I tried to do it in those cases I'd just slam in to a wall, and I could never work out how to do it despite watching videos. That bugged me the whole time knowing I could be doing better, but could never get it to work how it's supposed to.
Supposedly the N64 version is the best because the sensitivity of the control stick, and the Switch pro controller just ain't built for the precision needed. That's why I did not feel bad about using save states between some races to win lol.
Anywho it's a really fun game, with exhilarating speed and tracks, with mechanics that can really turn you pro if you want to dig deep, otherwise expert may be a little frustrating (I only did it because it was needed for the credits).
2015
Not too bad, but nothing special. Each world/zone brings about a new gimmick which gets used in increasing difficulty for 5 or so levels before entering the next zone and getting another new gimmick to play with. For the most part the game is pretty easy due to the fact it keeps balancing itself around having to use at least 1 level per zone just to teach the player a new mechanic. Though I didn't try the post-game levels which is where I imagine the true challenge lies.
Kind of concerned how they managed to stretch this into 3 sequels.
Kind of concerned how they managed to stretch this into 3 sequels.
This review contains spoilers
Everyone is calling this a breath of fresh air for Pokémon, which is true, but it's a shallow breath that can't even help the game get to its own finish line before it's exhausted itself of everything there is to do.
I'll start by talking about what I like though. There's a fantastic flow when in the field of this game. You can be throwing a Pokémon at a wild mon while throwing another of your mons at some resources and it's all so quick and fun. Plus getting a back strike on a wild mon feels so satisfying.
The game does a great job at matching locations in the game to where they are in the modern Sinnoh map, as well as putting in some bonus details, like showing how the Spear Pillar got destroyed.
Ride Pokémon somewhat make a return from Sun and Moon, unlocking a new one after each area, so you can explore more and more of the terrain. It is fun to go back to old areas with the ability to cross rivers or climb up mountains. There's a few niggles I have with the system though, like for some reason you can ONLY throw Pokéballs on Basculegion, so if you're riding Wyrdeer you have to keep getting off every time you want to catch something or gather material. It's a small thing since getting on and off is as fast as a literal button press, but it's still pretty immersion breaking.
The game did what is basically expected of most modern mainline games (except you, BDSP) of adding new forms and evos of old mons. Some are a miss, but there's a lot of ones I love, like an actual evolution of Ursaring. Not even a regional Ursaring, just a regular old evolution. I hope at least that stays in future games.
There's a whole bunch of sidequests here. While most of the quests are nothing too special, and most of the rewards you get from them are just general items you can farm, one thing I loved was how beating a quest keeps updating the town. If you do a quest involving giving someone a Pokémon, you'll see them around with that Pokémon from now on. It gives a sense of progression to the world and really makes you feel like you're helping out. Some of them are also pretty fun story-wise. I particularly liked the one where I had to find a guys Spheal that had rolled down a hill, and at the very end of the quest it rolls down again. So yeah, quests are a little repetitive in terms of being fetch quests or just "show me this mon", but they have some fun elements around the storytelling of the quests.
The battle system is something I'm very mixed on. It's completely different from the other games in many ways. The first is the obvious agile and strong style moves, which funnily I found were the least impactful addition. Like I never seemed to get extra moves from agile style unless I was so high above the enemy I'd be guaranteed a one shot anyway. On the other hand I'd ALWAYS lose a turn from strong style, which was never worth the 10-20 extra base power unless I knew it would kill.
Stat buffs have also been changed. Anything that raises offense or defence raises both now, meaning calm mind and bulk up are the literal same move, rather than being tailored for special or physical. From what I can tell each buff can only be applied once too, so no more stacking 6 buffs - and they also run out after a few turns.
Some status effects like sleep and freeze have been changed.
The entire damage formula seems to have changed this time, I don't know exactly what it is, but things seem to hit harder, regardless of level. It's not unusual to be able to one shot something with a type advantage when you're 10 levels lower.
Another thing is the fact that turn order isn't reset when a new mon is sent out. If the opponent has had their turn and killed your mon, it will be your turn next no matter what (unless they used agile style or something). It's very strange and ultimately makes trainer battles even easier than they've EVER been because it's just a roundabout of you sent out a mon to hit their mon, they sent out a new mon to kill yours with a SE move, then you get a free chance to kill theirs etc. And that's only if they can even kill you since it's so easy to over level in this game. The only challenging fight in the entire game is a post-game one and only because it's essentially an 6v8, so those free turns your opponent gets can really turn the battle in their favour.
Alpha Pokémon seem terrifying at first, but with all the battle changes above, they're really not scary at all. Sure they'll one shot the first mon you bring out, but since you're guaranteed some turns anyway you can easily take them down with some super effective moves. This is a stark contrast to past games which would have a level 40 sweeping your entire level 20 team by out speeding it every turn.
All these battle changes, along with stuff like the removal of abilities, items and a huge list of moves, generally make the game very unga bunga and just hitting each other hard. It's fast paced but zero depth, which I guess was the point to match the pace of catching mons.
It's fine for this game, but I really really hope they don't keep this system in future games.
And that's not even all the changes in battles - that's basically just the actual mechanic ones. For example you can now walk around in battles and freely control the camera. This is...basically pointless because you can't DO anything while controlling your character except flee the battle (which can be done anyway - plus that reminds me, fleeing is a guaranteed escape now so you'll NEVER have to worry about whiting out as you can just run on your last mon). You can't even get hurt from enemy attacks despite them clearly hitting you. It'd have been so much cooler if you had to manually move out of the way of the fighting Pokémon attacks to avoid your trainer blacking out, or be able to position yourself behind a wild mon to get a back strike in battle.
This would at best just make the feature fun and immersive but pointless, but in fact it hurts the animations a lot. Pokémon has never been known to have good animations in the first place, but some of the stronger moves, and especially signature moves made good use of a forced camera to make them little cutscenes. Now everything has to be shown in real time making all the moves animations feel very lacklustre. Basically everything now is on the level of generic moves from other games like rollout, razor leaf, water gun etc, even if it's the god damn God of Pokémon's special move, Judgement. I understand that it's faster, but I think there's room for both. Like having the fixed camera angles for important battles to make them feel more grand.
I really enjoyed the system of having a movepool you can constantly switch between on the fly. The games have basically got to this point anyway with the room reminder being free, but it's nice to not have to travel to do it. Although getting new moves is a lot easier now, just having a guy in the hub town that will teach your mons anything on his list for a small fee, and less rewarding than exploring and finding TMs to strengthen your team. Kind of ironic really that this game boasts exploration as far more of a selling point but generally had less rewards FOR exploring.
There are some things I think are just straight up bad. The most obvious is the graphics. EVERYONE has talked about it so I won't go into too much detail, but it's beyond just bad, it's straight up ugly as shit and has some really weird things (like white pixels around your character in caves).
The locations all feel very barren of anything interesting. They're almost all just some theme with the same hills, mountains and rocks everywhere. The only one I found to be a slight exception was the coastlands, which had a few differing points of interest, like a beach, a haunted shipwreck, a wide open sea, a volcano, and a memorial for the old noble Pokémon on top of a cliff. Pretty much every other area is just boring to explore and you'll probably never care to realise where you even are on the map unless it's something like a rare Pokémon spawn. I did also think this area had the best story for its noble battle.
Speaking of noble Pokémon, they do something very unique with their battles. In the sense that they're not Pokémon battles. Huge missed opportunity there to have real boss battles in Pokémon akin to the totem mons. Instead you get a lame bag throwing minigame where everything you've trained doesn't matter because you'll have the same "move set" and same health for every one of these encounters.
They could even use alpha Pokémon more sparingly to be boss battles instead, but nah they're just plastered around the world, with a dozen guaranteed spawns, so you can easily get a team 30 levels ahead of the current area.
Catching Pokémon, while fun at first, does become quite an old and boring process long before the end of the game. And by the time you get razz berries and ultra balls you can basically easily catch anything, including alpha Pokémon, in a single throw. It doesn't help that the game tries to get you to do this up to 25 times per Pokémon to 100% the dex. This is far from a requirement, but research tasks in general just seem way too bloated and clearly exist to try to force extended play time. Not to mention that unless you beeline for the story (which the game doesn't necessarily encourage by giving you a huge checklist of shit to do with every new thing you find and catch), you're going to very overlevelled way too fast. Not that it really matters when the game gives you so few opportunities to use the Pokémon you train in an actual battle.
Between a very worn out catching system, and a battle system, which you rarely even get to use, but that exists to get you through it as fast as possible with sheer unga bunga, I really hope this ISN'T the direction the games go in in the future without a huge overhaul. It's kind of fun at first, but by the end the whole process becomes so monotonous and you realise how simplified it is that it can't carry itself with such little content. Keeping the general idea here and the catching system, but bringing back the old battle system and making trainer fights more prominent would definitely help.
I'll start by talking about what I like though. There's a fantastic flow when in the field of this game. You can be throwing a Pokémon at a wild mon while throwing another of your mons at some resources and it's all so quick and fun. Plus getting a back strike on a wild mon feels so satisfying.
The game does a great job at matching locations in the game to where they are in the modern Sinnoh map, as well as putting in some bonus details, like showing how the Spear Pillar got destroyed.
Ride Pokémon somewhat make a return from Sun and Moon, unlocking a new one after each area, so you can explore more and more of the terrain. It is fun to go back to old areas with the ability to cross rivers or climb up mountains. There's a few niggles I have with the system though, like for some reason you can ONLY throw Pokéballs on Basculegion, so if you're riding Wyrdeer you have to keep getting off every time you want to catch something or gather material. It's a small thing since getting on and off is as fast as a literal button press, but it's still pretty immersion breaking.
The game did what is basically expected of most modern mainline games (except you, BDSP) of adding new forms and evos of old mons. Some are a miss, but there's a lot of ones I love, like an actual evolution of Ursaring. Not even a regional Ursaring, just a regular old evolution. I hope at least that stays in future games.
There's a whole bunch of sidequests here. While most of the quests are nothing too special, and most of the rewards you get from them are just general items you can farm, one thing I loved was how beating a quest keeps updating the town. If you do a quest involving giving someone a Pokémon, you'll see them around with that Pokémon from now on. It gives a sense of progression to the world and really makes you feel like you're helping out. Some of them are also pretty fun story-wise. I particularly liked the one where I had to find a guys Spheal that had rolled down a hill, and at the very end of the quest it rolls down again. So yeah, quests are a little repetitive in terms of being fetch quests or just "show me this mon", but they have some fun elements around the storytelling of the quests.
The battle system is something I'm very mixed on. It's completely different from the other games in many ways. The first is the obvious agile and strong style moves, which funnily I found were the least impactful addition. Like I never seemed to get extra moves from agile style unless I was so high above the enemy I'd be guaranteed a one shot anyway. On the other hand I'd ALWAYS lose a turn from strong style, which was never worth the 10-20 extra base power unless I knew it would kill.
Stat buffs have also been changed. Anything that raises offense or defence raises both now, meaning calm mind and bulk up are the literal same move, rather than being tailored for special or physical. From what I can tell each buff can only be applied once too, so no more stacking 6 buffs - and they also run out after a few turns.
Some status effects like sleep and freeze have been changed.
The entire damage formula seems to have changed this time, I don't know exactly what it is, but things seem to hit harder, regardless of level. It's not unusual to be able to one shot something with a type advantage when you're 10 levels lower.
Another thing is the fact that turn order isn't reset when a new mon is sent out. If the opponent has had their turn and killed your mon, it will be your turn next no matter what (unless they used agile style or something). It's very strange and ultimately makes trainer battles even easier than they've EVER been because it's just a roundabout of you sent out a mon to hit their mon, they sent out a new mon to kill yours with a SE move, then you get a free chance to kill theirs etc. And that's only if they can even kill you since it's so easy to over level in this game. The only challenging fight in the entire game is a post-game one and only because it's essentially an 6v8, so those free turns your opponent gets can really turn the battle in their favour.
Alpha Pokémon seem terrifying at first, but with all the battle changes above, they're really not scary at all. Sure they'll one shot the first mon you bring out, but since you're guaranteed some turns anyway you can easily take them down with some super effective moves. This is a stark contrast to past games which would have a level 40 sweeping your entire level 20 team by out speeding it every turn.
All these battle changes, along with stuff like the removal of abilities, items and a huge list of moves, generally make the game very unga bunga and just hitting each other hard. It's fast paced but zero depth, which I guess was the point to match the pace of catching mons.
It's fine for this game, but I really really hope they don't keep this system in future games.
And that's not even all the changes in battles - that's basically just the actual mechanic ones. For example you can now walk around in battles and freely control the camera. This is...basically pointless because you can't DO anything while controlling your character except flee the battle (which can be done anyway - plus that reminds me, fleeing is a guaranteed escape now so you'll NEVER have to worry about whiting out as you can just run on your last mon). You can't even get hurt from enemy attacks despite them clearly hitting you. It'd have been so much cooler if you had to manually move out of the way of the fighting Pokémon attacks to avoid your trainer blacking out, or be able to position yourself behind a wild mon to get a back strike in battle.
This would at best just make the feature fun and immersive but pointless, but in fact it hurts the animations a lot. Pokémon has never been known to have good animations in the first place, but some of the stronger moves, and especially signature moves made good use of a forced camera to make them little cutscenes. Now everything has to be shown in real time making all the moves animations feel very lacklustre. Basically everything now is on the level of generic moves from other games like rollout, razor leaf, water gun etc, even if it's the god damn God of Pokémon's special move, Judgement. I understand that it's faster, but I think there's room for both. Like having the fixed camera angles for important battles to make them feel more grand.
I really enjoyed the system of having a movepool you can constantly switch between on the fly. The games have basically got to this point anyway with the room reminder being free, but it's nice to not have to travel to do it. Although getting new moves is a lot easier now, just having a guy in the hub town that will teach your mons anything on his list for a small fee, and less rewarding than exploring and finding TMs to strengthen your team. Kind of ironic really that this game boasts exploration as far more of a selling point but generally had less rewards FOR exploring.
There are some things I think are just straight up bad. The most obvious is the graphics. EVERYONE has talked about it so I won't go into too much detail, but it's beyond just bad, it's straight up ugly as shit and has some really weird things (like white pixels around your character in caves).
The locations all feel very barren of anything interesting. They're almost all just some theme with the same hills, mountains and rocks everywhere. The only one I found to be a slight exception was the coastlands, which had a few differing points of interest, like a beach, a haunted shipwreck, a wide open sea, a volcano, and a memorial for the old noble Pokémon on top of a cliff. Pretty much every other area is just boring to explore and you'll probably never care to realise where you even are on the map unless it's something like a rare Pokémon spawn. I did also think this area had the best story for its noble battle.
Speaking of noble Pokémon, they do something very unique with their battles. In the sense that they're not Pokémon battles. Huge missed opportunity there to have real boss battles in Pokémon akin to the totem mons. Instead you get a lame bag throwing minigame where everything you've trained doesn't matter because you'll have the same "move set" and same health for every one of these encounters.
They could even use alpha Pokémon more sparingly to be boss battles instead, but nah they're just plastered around the world, with a dozen guaranteed spawns, so you can easily get a team 30 levels ahead of the current area.
Catching Pokémon, while fun at first, does become quite an old and boring process long before the end of the game. And by the time you get razz berries and ultra balls you can basically easily catch anything, including alpha Pokémon, in a single throw. It doesn't help that the game tries to get you to do this up to 25 times per Pokémon to 100% the dex. This is far from a requirement, but research tasks in general just seem way too bloated and clearly exist to try to force extended play time. Not to mention that unless you beeline for the story (which the game doesn't necessarily encourage by giving you a huge checklist of shit to do with every new thing you find and catch), you're going to very overlevelled way too fast. Not that it really matters when the game gives you so few opportunities to use the Pokémon you train in an actual battle.
Between a very worn out catching system, and a battle system, which you rarely even get to use, but that exists to get you through it as fast as possible with sheer unga bunga, I really hope this ISN'T the direction the games go in in the future without a huge overhaul. It's kind of fun at first, but by the end the whole process becomes so monotonous and you realise how simplified it is that it can't carry itself with such little content. Keeping the general idea here and the catching system, but bringing back the old battle system and making trainer fights more prominent would definitely help.
I love the new stage. A giant cruise ship with a bunch of areas connected in multiple ways. It's perfect for exploration. But that's basically ALL it's for, since all 3 of the new missions are basically variants of the same formula. First it's just a regular scavenger hunt, then it's a timed delivery mission, and then another scavenger hunt, but now the boat is capsized (which tbh is a REALLY cool idea, albeit one that comes with some camera problems). There isn't even any new bosses, or hats, y'know the thing the game is named after, to play with. The time rifts are decent challenges.
So the new stage is fun and has as much charm as any other world (I love the seals), it's just kinda short and lacks diversity in the missions.
As for the "deal" part of this, it's perfect for people craving a true challenge and completionists. For me it was something that I knew I wasn't gonna 100%, so I didn't feel like there was any benefit in doing many at all, y'know? I like the idea, and admittedly I had some fun with the few I tried, just not for me.
So the new stage is fun and has as much charm as any other world (I love the seals), it's just kinda short and lacks diversity in the missions.
As for the "deal" part of this, it's perfect for people craving a true challenge and completionists. For me it was something that I knew I wasn't gonna 100%, so I didn't feel like there was any benefit in doing many at all, y'know? I like the idea, and admittedly I had some fun with the few I tried, just not for me.
2021
This review contains spoilers
So supposedly time constraints led to Oddworld: Abe's Exoddus to be more of an expansion to Abe's Oddysee than the team wanted, and Soulstorm was the chance to tell the story they initially wanted to tell. But...There's very little to the story really. Most cutscenes are just Abe moving forward while Mullock and his henchman slig talk about him, meanwhile other Glukkon's talk about using Mullock as a scapegoat for the Rupturefarms incident. I don't see how they couldn't have fit such a simple story into the original Exoddus game.
It's really in terms of game mechanics that you can see how they may have had to compensate way back then. This game takes the very limited item system from the first game (which let you throw rocks and grenades), and creates an entire crafting system. It works fine I suppose, but was that really the part of Oddworld people wanted more of? Ironically Exoddus did a better job at expanding the Oddworld mechanics by focusing on its signature mechanic - possession - increasing the amount of enemies you could take control of. In the original it was just Sligs, but Exoddus allowed taking control of Paramite's, Scrabs (both of which aren't even in this game!) and even Glukkon's, which you can't do in this game as it goes back to just being taking control of Sligs.
I guess the best new mechanic here is the ability to tie up and pickpocket Sligs. Instead of just having them automatically explode to kill them after you're done possessing them, it's nice to have a choice to instead spare them in order to gain extra resources. Even that is flawed though because tying up a Slig requires tape. You can pickpocket a Slig without tying them up if you lack tape, but for some reason if you have tape you NEED to tie them up before you steal from them. If it isn't a requirement in the first place, why not let me just pickpocket them and save my tape? I guess it's because the game realised the way to abuse easily getting the extra resources by knocking the Slig out, stealing from them, and then re-possessing them and just killing them. But if you need to do something that makes no sense in order to fix a system that you created that is broken, maybe have a look at the broken system you created instead...
And that's the weirdest part of this game to me. You'd think a game that took, what, 5 years to develop that was specifically trying to re-do a game they initially had to compensate on due to time issues, would be massive in scope. Instead it seems to strip all the improvements they had already made in Exoddus and went back to Oddysee as its base and said "The only thing we need is more items, and way more fast-paced action sequences".
They focused far too much on making the game more typical action that it lost all its charm and even a lot of its identity around stealth. To make matters worse, the aiming can make the action sequences a pain in the ass for the tight time limits you have in some sections, as you control Sligs and have to mow down other sligs before they reach Abe, who is standing in the open, but you aim with your right stick and bullets just fly everywhere because trying to steady an aim at small, moving, flying targets is hard.
Speaking of controls, I think where the game is at its worst is trying to get up and down ledges properly. Oddworld's always been a VERY timing sensitive game, and the OG games worked amazingly with it due to being on a very tight system where you could tell exactly where you'd end up after every jump, and hitting ledges is easy. Now it all feels very loose, and half the time I'd jump at a ledge, and Abe would touch it but not grab on. Or I'd want to drop down, but when I tried, Abe would instead grab a ledge and hoist himself up it - straight into view of a Slig that would kill me. The controls just constantly fought me in this game and it's the exact worst game for that kind of thing to happen.
I guess the place the team benefited the most from waiting till 2021 to unleash their "true vision" of Abe's Exoddus was the graphics. Cutscenes look fantastic, and levels contain so many dynamic camera angles (albiet sometimes at the cost of good depth perception. If I'm trying to time jumps to avoid a swinging object I'd like to look at the object straight on please, not from an awkward angle).
Abe's voice acting felt significantly worse here than ever before. I could tell in New n Tasty that things were off comparing the lines to the original, but now he just feels so monotone in everything he says.
The game does have quite a few bugs as of the time of writing. Nothing game-breaking, or even level-breaking, but I lost a few lives or was forced to reset checkpoints due to bugs, such as falling through the floor.
I found the game to vary quite a lot from being great, being terrible and being okay but flawed. The change in focus from stealth and rescuing small groups of Mudokon's at a time, to rapid action pieces that involve you trying to protect literally hundreds of Mudokon's at once was jarring. There is still a lot of the former in here, but that just causes a clash of how important, or lack thereof, a single Mudokon feels now. Also speaking of saving Mudokon's, they often lag behind you in ways that makes trying to time hiding them in lockers or smoke INCREDIBLY painful. I swear the original games had them follow Abe by just a second or less, but now you can hide in a locker and your friends will scramble about for 5 seconds until they get spotted and shot.
After getting past the initial difficulty wall, I did enjoy my time with the game overall, but damn if it didn't piss me off a lot. So many small things that added up, like why put the checkpoint BEFORE the valve that opens the next area? It just means every time I die I waste an extra 10 seconds opening the door again and again.
It's really in terms of game mechanics that you can see how they may have had to compensate way back then. This game takes the very limited item system from the first game (which let you throw rocks and grenades), and creates an entire crafting system. It works fine I suppose, but was that really the part of Oddworld people wanted more of? Ironically Exoddus did a better job at expanding the Oddworld mechanics by focusing on its signature mechanic - possession - increasing the amount of enemies you could take control of. In the original it was just Sligs, but Exoddus allowed taking control of Paramite's, Scrabs (both of which aren't even in this game!) and even Glukkon's, which you can't do in this game as it goes back to just being taking control of Sligs.
I guess the best new mechanic here is the ability to tie up and pickpocket Sligs. Instead of just having them automatically explode to kill them after you're done possessing them, it's nice to have a choice to instead spare them in order to gain extra resources. Even that is flawed though because tying up a Slig requires tape. You can pickpocket a Slig without tying them up if you lack tape, but for some reason if you have tape you NEED to tie them up before you steal from them. If it isn't a requirement in the first place, why not let me just pickpocket them and save my tape? I guess it's because the game realised the way to abuse easily getting the extra resources by knocking the Slig out, stealing from them, and then re-possessing them and just killing them. But if you need to do something that makes no sense in order to fix a system that you created that is broken, maybe have a look at the broken system you created instead...
And that's the weirdest part of this game to me. You'd think a game that took, what, 5 years to develop that was specifically trying to re-do a game they initially had to compensate on due to time issues, would be massive in scope. Instead it seems to strip all the improvements they had already made in Exoddus and went back to Oddysee as its base and said "The only thing we need is more items, and way more fast-paced action sequences".
They focused far too much on making the game more typical action that it lost all its charm and even a lot of its identity around stealth. To make matters worse, the aiming can make the action sequences a pain in the ass for the tight time limits you have in some sections, as you control Sligs and have to mow down other sligs before they reach Abe, who is standing in the open, but you aim with your right stick and bullets just fly everywhere because trying to steady an aim at small, moving, flying targets is hard.
Speaking of controls, I think where the game is at its worst is trying to get up and down ledges properly. Oddworld's always been a VERY timing sensitive game, and the OG games worked amazingly with it due to being on a very tight system where you could tell exactly where you'd end up after every jump, and hitting ledges is easy. Now it all feels very loose, and half the time I'd jump at a ledge, and Abe would touch it but not grab on. Or I'd want to drop down, but when I tried, Abe would instead grab a ledge and hoist himself up it - straight into view of a Slig that would kill me. The controls just constantly fought me in this game and it's the exact worst game for that kind of thing to happen.
I guess the place the team benefited the most from waiting till 2021 to unleash their "true vision" of Abe's Exoddus was the graphics. Cutscenes look fantastic, and levels contain so many dynamic camera angles (albiet sometimes at the cost of good depth perception. If I'm trying to time jumps to avoid a swinging object I'd like to look at the object straight on please, not from an awkward angle).
Abe's voice acting felt significantly worse here than ever before. I could tell in New n Tasty that things were off comparing the lines to the original, but now he just feels so monotone in everything he says.
The game does have quite a few bugs as of the time of writing. Nothing game-breaking, or even level-breaking, but I lost a few lives or was forced to reset checkpoints due to bugs, such as falling through the floor.
I found the game to vary quite a lot from being great, being terrible and being okay but flawed. The change in focus from stealth and rescuing small groups of Mudokon's at a time, to rapid action pieces that involve you trying to protect literally hundreds of Mudokon's at once was jarring. There is still a lot of the former in here, but that just causes a clash of how important, or lack thereof, a single Mudokon feels now. Also speaking of saving Mudokon's, they often lag behind you in ways that makes trying to time hiding them in lockers or smoke INCREDIBLY painful. I swear the original games had them follow Abe by just a second or less, but now you can hide in a locker and your friends will scramble about for 5 seconds until they get spotted and shot.
After getting past the initial difficulty wall, I did enjoy my time with the game overall, but damn if it didn't piss me off a lot. So many small things that added up, like why put the checkpoint BEFORE the valve that opens the next area? It just means every time I die I waste an extra 10 seconds opening the door again and again.
My favourite non-karting Mario sports title. And I don't even like football/soccer.
It's just so fast paced, chaotic and feels good to play.
It's full of personality too. Every single character you can choose to put on your team is different. You've got different stats obviously, something like 4 different categories, but each team captain has their own unique item, each sidekick has their own unique special shot, each character has different theme music that plays when they score a goal, and different dodge animations (which itself is different per character class, with some being more offensive, some being able to bypass the goalie with the right timing etc). It just really helps feel like every character you pick makes your team personalised to you, rather than just generic characters with a Mario skin.
My main issue is with the super strike mechanic. While this also plays into the idea of the game making each character unique, by giving them characteristic animations during the move, it is way too powerful and slows the game down every time it's used. I think it would have been fine if it was just limited to once per match, including the set-up screen, so that if you tried to use one at a bad time, you're out of luck. It'd add a lot more strategy and give it a huge risk-reward factor, while right now it's just no reward-reward.
Luckily you can turn Super Strikes off, along with many other things like stage gimmicks, via "cheats" you can unlock by doing challenges, or winning awards for things like most goals in a cup. These only work in standard vs mode however, so the regular single player "story" will have to be beaten without any help. Speaking of which...
The last cup in single player mode is pure BS. The AI so blatantly cheats to disgusting degrees. All 4 of the enemies team will act like fully controlled characters, esentially turning the game into a 1v4, this results in things like the opponent ALWAYS covering your characters, so that you'll never find the chance to use a super strike or power shot, or when a stage has a gimmick that can knock characters off, the AI team will be able to control all their players to dodge it while the characters on your team you're not in control of with just run into the hazard like a blind chicken. This cup also has extreme amounts of input reading.
Basically this game is a fantastic multiplayer game, and the single player is great for the first 2 cups, but the last cup is pure and utter shit. The challenge mode adds an extra bit of single player content for those looking to master the game and unlock more cheats/gameplay variables.
It's just so fast paced, chaotic and feels good to play.
It's full of personality too. Every single character you can choose to put on your team is different. You've got different stats obviously, something like 4 different categories, but each team captain has their own unique item, each sidekick has their own unique special shot, each character has different theme music that plays when they score a goal, and different dodge animations (which itself is different per character class, with some being more offensive, some being able to bypass the goalie with the right timing etc). It just really helps feel like every character you pick makes your team personalised to you, rather than just generic characters with a Mario skin.
My main issue is with the super strike mechanic. While this also plays into the idea of the game making each character unique, by giving them characteristic animations during the move, it is way too powerful and slows the game down every time it's used. I think it would have been fine if it was just limited to once per match, including the set-up screen, so that if you tried to use one at a bad time, you're out of luck. It'd add a lot more strategy and give it a huge risk-reward factor, while right now it's just no reward-reward.
Luckily you can turn Super Strikes off, along with many other things like stage gimmicks, via "cheats" you can unlock by doing challenges, or winning awards for things like most goals in a cup. These only work in standard vs mode however, so the regular single player "story" will have to be beaten without any help. Speaking of which...
The last cup in single player mode is pure BS. The AI so blatantly cheats to disgusting degrees. All 4 of the enemies team will act like fully controlled characters, esentially turning the game into a 1v4, this results in things like the opponent ALWAYS covering your characters, so that you'll never find the chance to use a super strike or power shot, or when a stage has a gimmick that can knock characters off, the AI team will be able to control all their players to dodge it while the characters on your team you're not in control of with just run into the hazard like a blind chicken. This cup also has extreme amounts of input reading.
Basically this game is a fantastic multiplayer game, and the single player is great for the first 2 cups, but the last cup is pure and utter shit. The challenge mode adds an extra bit of single player content for those looking to master the game and unlock more cheats/gameplay variables.
Almost everything from the first game and more. Tight platforming, thoughtful puzzles, and intense action sequences that are designed to be made by the skin of your teeth.
This is pretty much as good as you could expect of a sequel without any generational gaps. It eclipses the first game by about 3 times as much (300 muodokans to save vs just 99), expands many of the elements of the first game, like introducing new things to possess and more enemy types (flying sligs etc) and introduces a ton of quality of life features, like being able to command multiple mudokans at once, and a quicksave.
What's impressive is that it only had a 9 month development cycle. This can mostly be seen in the story more than anything, which follows a verrrry similar outline to the first, most prominently is how after the opening section you're back to doing more trials in the "wild" parts of Oddworld to gain a new scar and thus a new power.
The only place I think this game falters over the original is the atmosphere. And the thing is, that aspect isn't even bad in this game; in fact the pre-rendered backgrounds look amazing. It's just a testament to how much I loved the originals, they were just on another level. This ones feels more dull in comparison.
I did also notice a lot of things that may not work so great for first time players. Like there's some information posts that explain how to use a mechanic AFTER you've already gone through a section requiring that mechanic. Also you can probably expect a lot of trial and error, but that's what quicksave is for, so use it liberally (and on the PS4/5 release, you can rewind).
Oh and they removed Elum, which was my least favourite part of the first game. Love this game.
This is pretty much as good as you could expect of a sequel without any generational gaps. It eclipses the first game by about 3 times as much (300 muodokans to save vs just 99), expands many of the elements of the first game, like introducing new things to possess and more enemy types (flying sligs etc) and introduces a ton of quality of life features, like being able to command multiple mudokans at once, and a quicksave.
What's impressive is that it only had a 9 month development cycle. This can mostly be seen in the story more than anything, which follows a verrrry similar outline to the first, most prominently is how after the opening section you're back to doing more trials in the "wild" parts of Oddworld to gain a new scar and thus a new power.
The only place I think this game falters over the original is the atmosphere. And the thing is, that aspect isn't even bad in this game; in fact the pre-rendered backgrounds look amazing. It's just a testament to how much I loved the originals, they were just on another level. This ones feels more dull in comparison.
I did also notice a lot of things that may not work so great for first time players. Like there's some information posts that explain how to use a mechanic AFTER you've already gone through a section requiring that mechanic. Also you can probably expect a lot of trial and error, but that's what quicksave is for, so use it liberally (and on the PS4/5 release, you can rewind).
Oh and they removed Elum, which was my least favourite part of the first game. Love this game.