2002
Similar to the first one, but with a bit more polish. There's a wider variety of stage aesthetics too. While you have your mainstays like grass starting level, and snow level, you also get some more unique choices. I think Music Plant is one of my favourite 2D Sonic stages now. Techno Base is also a really interesting zone, but I can't decide how I feel about it because it's so overly bright and flashy that I love it, but it also hurts to look at so I hate it.
There is a MASSIVE increase in boss difficulty here. It's obvious from the first boss, but the second boss honestly presented a legit challenge and I'm ashamed to say how much I died to it. They're also some of the most inventive bosses I've seen in a 2D Sonic game. For the challenge, it's never really to a point of being frustrating (except the Knuckles boss, fuck him), but this game loses a quality of life feature from the first, where you could restart any zone from either act. Now zones must be restarted from the first act, so it's much harder to try and actually get used to the patterns of the tougher bosses, leading to more frustrating defeats as you have to go through 2 stages again.
Difficulty in stages themselves was great up until the last zone. Egg Utopia is just full of unfair bottomless pits, blocks that can crush you etc.
My biggest complaint is the Chaos Emerald system in this one. First of all they don't share between characters like last time, so to get the true final ending you need to get them all as Sonic. But actually getting to a special zone now requires you to find 7 collectables in a stage rather than just one secret spring. And they don't save between playthroughs so you need to get them all in a single go. Way too much hassle, I honestly never even saw a special stage because I couldn't be bothered going through that. They could have easily made it more tolerable in many ways, like maybe having the requirement being 7 rings across both acts, this would still allow players who get all rings to have an advantage since they'd get 2 chances per special zone instead of 1. Maybe have the rings save between playthroughs. Have Chaos Emeralds shared. So many ways it could have been better.
I actually kinda like Cream as an addition though. I only tested her out in the first stage, but she doesn't have the handicap of not having spin attacks like Amy in the last game, and using a Chao as an attack is pretty fun.
For the majority of this game I loved it, my only complaint was the chaos emerald system. But as I neared the end, some extremely frustrating boss and stage designs put me off, especially when coupled with the changes to quality of life regarding level selecting. I'd still say it's an overall better game than the first, but by the time I ended, I'd say only just, whereas if I was asked after the first half an hour of playing I'd have claimed this one was far superior.
There is a MASSIVE increase in boss difficulty here. It's obvious from the first boss, but the second boss honestly presented a legit challenge and I'm ashamed to say how much I died to it. They're also some of the most inventive bosses I've seen in a 2D Sonic game. For the challenge, it's never really to a point of being frustrating (except the Knuckles boss, fuck him), but this game loses a quality of life feature from the first, where you could restart any zone from either act. Now zones must be restarted from the first act, so it's much harder to try and actually get used to the patterns of the tougher bosses, leading to more frustrating defeats as you have to go through 2 stages again.
Difficulty in stages themselves was great up until the last zone. Egg Utopia is just full of unfair bottomless pits, blocks that can crush you etc.
My biggest complaint is the Chaos Emerald system in this one. First of all they don't share between characters like last time, so to get the true final ending you need to get them all as Sonic. But actually getting to a special zone now requires you to find 7 collectables in a stage rather than just one secret spring. And they don't save between playthroughs so you need to get them all in a single go. Way too much hassle, I honestly never even saw a special stage because I couldn't be bothered going through that. They could have easily made it more tolerable in many ways, like maybe having the requirement being 7 rings across both acts, this would still allow players who get all rings to have an advantage since they'd get 2 chances per special zone instead of 1. Maybe have the rings save between playthroughs. Have Chaos Emeralds shared. So many ways it could have been better.
I actually kinda like Cream as an addition though. I only tested her out in the first stage, but she doesn't have the handicap of not having spin attacks like Amy in the last game, and using a Chao as an attack is pretty fun.
For the majority of this game I loved it, my only complaint was the chaos emerald system. But as I neared the end, some extremely frustrating boss and stage designs put me off, especially when coupled with the changes to quality of life regarding level selecting. I'd still say it's an overall better game than the first, but by the time I ended, I'd say only just, whereas if I was asked after the first half an hour of playing I'd have claimed this one was far superior.
2020
Doom Eternal takes the 2016 game and cranks it up to eleven. Everything good about the first game is in here, like the fast-paced gameplay, rewarding upgrades, the variety of weapons that all have their use and all feel viable even in the endgame.
Many of the things it adds do come with a downside though. While it can definitely make the original feel lacking in features, this one feels more like they didn’t put much thought into what should or shouldn’t be added and just threw in anything they could think of and just didn’t do any trimming to make them actually work properly.
I do like all the new combat options which complement the even more chaotic battles. The ice grenade and flame belch add a whole new layer to how you play the game and manage resources. The chainsaw is now much more utilised as an ammo refresh.
One of the things I mentioned above about adding things without properly sculpting it to fit the gameplay is the extra lives system. It makes sense to have them I guess to fit the more difficult game. The problem is that they don’t refresh either on death or reloading checkpoints. In other words, let’s say you get to a really tough encounter with 3 lives, but lose all your lives and die near the end, at that point you’ll respawn at the start of the battle with zero extra lives, meaning that the game was basically handing you extra lives to say “We acknowledge you may need this extra help to survive the 10 minute warzones all over the level, but if you die during one of them we expect you to somehow succeed the second time with even LESS lives”. Just seems like a crazy system.
They also added some extra strategic elements to many demons. Unfortunately this is another 50/50 feature because while it’s nice that some enemies have weak points that you can destroy, the gameplay just does not give you the breathing room required to properly aim at specific portions of an enemies weak spots. You’ll be overwhelmed in seconds if you try to aim at a manucbus’s arms to slightly lower his damage output rather than just unloading into his fat stomach which you can do much easier while avoiding the other 70 demons in the room. Some of them though, like shooting a grenade into the cacodemon to instantly stagger them, work well.
Then there’s the additional enemies. Many are great, many are annoying. The marauder completely changes the playstyle of the game and is near impossible to properly fight with the other demons in the room. The arch-vile is just a pain in the ass, being a bullet sponge, teleporter, area of denial-fire user, summoner and buff totem all in one.
It feels like for everything the game adds, it doesn’t take 2 steps back so to speak, but each step they take isn’t as finely tuned as it should be.
As for the story… I don’t like the way Doom handles story. 95% of it is told in collectable codex’s. Unfortunately these contain so much lore-specific terminology that it’s near impossible to read any of them without constant cross-referencing with the other (missable) codex’s. I kind of just gave up after a while because not only is it a huge pace-breaker to try to read these in the middle of a mission, but trying to piece anything together when half the words they use require the knowledge of something else you need to find became a chore. If you’re going to have this much backstory why not actually use it to tell the story, and if you’re not going to use it why bother making it up? It’s the worst case of telling and not showing I’ve ever seen.
Even the stages didn’t feel any different from before, despite the massively improved potential of being on Earth for some portions of this game. Hell, Mars and Earth all feel too similar to each other. It actually seemed like it’d go in the opposite direction at first, I seem to recall feeling like the first 3 levels had their own unique style, but then it devolved into fire and brimstone everywhere with random destroyed buildings or ruins.
I will say this though, the platforming never once bothered me. I actually found it kind of fun. There’s some other things that were a pure net positive for me too, like removing challenges for runes. I never liked how the original would force you to use specific runes to master them. Now you can just set what you want and go. I’m also a fan of the fact you can unlock cheat codes that let you both go on a power trip and make re-runs through stages to do missions and get collectibles much faster.
So throughout the entire campaign I was fighting with myself whether I preferred this version to the 2016 game. Half the time I’d feel the benefits of the new things, and half the time I’d feel the frustration.
Then I tried the multiplayer. Instead of any kind of fun, balanced standard FPS deathmatch multiplayer we have a single asymmetric gimmick mode.
Battlemode is basically the equivalent of coin smash in Smash Bros. It’s something that should be an extra, something that you see on a menu and go “huh, I wonder what this is?” then maybe play it a few times for the novelty then forget about it and go back to stock smash. Except now there is no stock smash. Or time smash. Or anything, there’s only coin battle.
How they went from a perfectly functional multiplayer mode in 2016 to this travesty is baffling. If you only care about single player, Doom Eternal is an improvement on the original even with some questionable additions, but if you count multiplayer then Eternal falls flat.
Many of the things it adds do come with a downside though. While it can definitely make the original feel lacking in features, this one feels more like they didn’t put much thought into what should or shouldn’t be added and just threw in anything they could think of and just didn’t do any trimming to make them actually work properly.
I do like all the new combat options which complement the even more chaotic battles. The ice grenade and flame belch add a whole new layer to how you play the game and manage resources. The chainsaw is now much more utilised as an ammo refresh.
One of the things I mentioned above about adding things without properly sculpting it to fit the gameplay is the extra lives system. It makes sense to have them I guess to fit the more difficult game. The problem is that they don’t refresh either on death or reloading checkpoints. In other words, let’s say you get to a really tough encounter with 3 lives, but lose all your lives and die near the end, at that point you’ll respawn at the start of the battle with zero extra lives, meaning that the game was basically handing you extra lives to say “We acknowledge you may need this extra help to survive the 10 minute warzones all over the level, but if you die during one of them we expect you to somehow succeed the second time with even LESS lives”. Just seems like a crazy system.
They also added some extra strategic elements to many demons. Unfortunately this is another 50/50 feature because while it’s nice that some enemies have weak points that you can destroy, the gameplay just does not give you the breathing room required to properly aim at specific portions of an enemies weak spots. You’ll be overwhelmed in seconds if you try to aim at a manucbus’s arms to slightly lower his damage output rather than just unloading into his fat stomach which you can do much easier while avoiding the other 70 demons in the room. Some of them though, like shooting a grenade into the cacodemon to instantly stagger them, work well.
Then there’s the additional enemies. Many are great, many are annoying. The marauder completely changes the playstyle of the game and is near impossible to properly fight with the other demons in the room. The arch-vile is just a pain in the ass, being a bullet sponge, teleporter, area of denial-fire user, summoner and buff totem all in one.
It feels like for everything the game adds, it doesn’t take 2 steps back so to speak, but each step they take isn’t as finely tuned as it should be.
As for the story… I don’t like the way Doom handles story. 95% of it is told in collectable codex’s. Unfortunately these contain so much lore-specific terminology that it’s near impossible to read any of them without constant cross-referencing with the other (missable) codex’s. I kind of just gave up after a while because not only is it a huge pace-breaker to try to read these in the middle of a mission, but trying to piece anything together when half the words they use require the knowledge of something else you need to find became a chore. If you’re going to have this much backstory why not actually use it to tell the story, and if you’re not going to use it why bother making it up? It’s the worst case of telling and not showing I’ve ever seen.
Even the stages didn’t feel any different from before, despite the massively improved potential of being on Earth for some portions of this game. Hell, Mars and Earth all feel too similar to each other. It actually seemed like it’d go in the opposite direction at first, I seem to recall feeling like the first 3 levels had their own unique style, but then it devolved into fire and brimstone everywhere with random destroyed buildings or ruins.
I will say this though, the platforming never once bothered me. I actually found it kind of fun. There’s some other things that were a pure net positive for me too, like removing challenges for runes. I never liked how the original would force you to use specific runes to master them. Now you can just set what you want and go. I’m also a fan of the fact you can unlock cheat codes that let you both go on a power trip and make re-runs through stages to do missions and get collectibles much faster.
So throughout the entire campaign I was fighting with myself whether I preferred this version to the 2016 game. Half the time I’d feel the benefits of the new things, and half the time I’d feel the frustration.
Then I tried the multiplayer. Instead of any kind of fun, balanced standard FPS deathmatch multiplayer we have a single asymmetric gimmick mode.
Battlemode is basically the equivalent of coin smash in Smash Bros. It’s something that should be an extra, something that you see on a menu and go “huh, I wonder what this is?” then maybe play it a few times for the novelty then forget about it and go back to stock smash. Except now there is no stock smash. Or time smash. Or anything, there’s only coin battle.
How they went from a perfectly functional multiplayer mode in 2016 to this travesty is baffling. If you only care about single player, Doom Eternal is an improvement on the original even with some questionable additions, but if you count multiplayer then Eternal falls flat.
2001
It's just classic 2D Sonic on GBA. There's a couple new moves in Sonic's arsenal, but nothing as game changing as homing attack or the dash boosts. Tails and Knuckles also appear with their Sonic 3 kits. And most interestingly, Amy also appears. Not only is Amy included, but she has by far the most unique playstyle, not having any spin dash or indeed any type of "ball" moves, relying solely on her hammer. This basically makes her the hard mode of the game, and while I don't really think her play style fits well with Sonic (not being able to turn into a ball during a fast section massively impacts the game since you have no safe way to get through enemies), I do commend them for putting effort into making her truly special instead of just a clone.
My one complaint about this game is the damn special stages. In concept they're not bad, but there's no depth perception, and no way to really tell the exact location of the rings and your character, so lining yourself up is next to impossible. Possibly the worst special stage I've played in a Sonic game.
Super short too. But it's just fun Sonic gameplay.
Post review edit: After playing through the game with each character and getting all the Chaos Emeralds, the special stages did seem to get easier. I found focusing on just the board helped to line up right.
My one complaint about this game is the damn special stages. In concept they're not bad, but there's no depth perception, and no way to really tell the exact location of the rings and your character, so lining yourself up is next to impossible. Possibly the worst special stage I've played in a Sonic game.
Super short too. But it's just fun Sonic gameplay.
Post review edit: After playing through the game with each character and getting all the Chaos Emeralds, the special stages did seem to get easier. I found focusing on just the board helped to line up right.
1986
Pros:
+The music is pretty good
Cons:
-Absolutely zero direction, with no map and everywhere looks exactly the same. There isn't even any indication of where you've already been, which would have been simple by just leaving the doors you've already opened, well, open.
-There appeared to be a lot of random dead ends, although I never finished so maybe they do have a purpose...
-Game has terrible frame rate issues.
-Annoying enemy placements and infinitely re-spawning enemies, and relative stiff movement means you're often just forced to take damage. Although I don't think the game ever had any straight up unfair enemies like in Kid Icarus (although I didn't get that far here).
Notes:
•Gave up after about 2 hours of what felt like little progress. If the game was more linear or the bare minimum had a map you could see that would let you know where you've been, it'd be a decent NES game. I may try again one day with a walkthrough, but for now it's going in the abandoned pile.
+The music is pretty good
Cons:
-Absolutely zero direction, with no map and everywhere looks exactly the same. There isn't even any indication of where you've already been, which would have been simple by just leaving the doors you've already opened, well, open.
-There appeared to be a lot of random dead ends, although I never finished so maybe they do have a purpose...
-Game has terrible frame rate issues.
-Annoying enemy placements and infinitely re-spawning enemies, and relative stiff movement means you're often just forced to take damage. Although I don't think the game ever had any straight up unfair enemies like in Kid Icarus (although I didn't get that far here).
Notes:
•Gave up after about 2 hours of what felt like little progress. If the game was more linear or the bare minimum had a map you could see that would let you know where you've been, it'd be a decent NES game. I may try again one day with a walkthrough, but for now it's going in the abandoned pile.
1986
Pros:
+The music is catchy
+Controls are tight. I never once felt like I wasn't in control even in the tight platforming sections in the last world.
+Rewards the player for getting a high score since score is based on how your health increases. Considering score is an arbitrary thing in most games it's nice to have a reason for it.
+Likewise with health, you can get stronger arrows by exploring every doorway, and you can get the extra items by completing challenges, also in doorways. There's a huge sense of power creep for the players who put in the time and effort and it feels great, while it's still possible to ignore everything for a hard mode run.
Cons:
-There are 3 types of enemies that really stop this game from being a very solid platformer. The first is the flying enemies that can move through walls. Their massive amount of mobility combined with your relative lack of it often feels far too unfair. The second is enemies that pop out of the sky or ground directly onto you without warning. The third is the eggplant enemy. Those three enemies alone (which to be fair take up a large amount of the enemy types) turn what should be fun skill-based action platformer into rage inducing damage sponging.
-Like with a lot of old games NOTHING is actually explained in-game. I assume you're supposed to use the manual to learn what all the items do and such, but as I was playing on the Switch's Nes emulator I had no such thing, so I had to have google handy at all times.
-All 3 dungeons felt the exact same.
Mixed/Not important enough to be a pro or con:
~The game honestly gets easier as it goes on. The actual difficulty never really increases imo, but the extra health, strength and weapons you get mean that the first levels where you're working with nothing are by far the hardest.
Notes/Comments:
•Kid Icarus deserved to be a long running series like Mario and Zelda. Too bad the series went into sleep until Uprising and has been dead since.
+The music is catchy
+Controls are tight. I never once felt like I wasn't in control even in the tight platforming sections in the last world.
+Rewards the player for getting a high score since score is based on how your health increases. Considering score is an arbitrary thing in most games it's nice to have a reason for it.
+Likewise with health, you can get stronger arrows by exploring every doorway, and you can get the extra items by completing challenges, also in doorways. There's a huge sense of power creep for the players who put in the time and effort and it feels great, while it's still possible to ignore everything for a hard mode run.
Cons:
-There are 3 types of enemies that really stop this game from being a very solid platformer. The first is the flying enemies that can move through walls. Their massive amount of mobility combined with your relative lack of it often feels far too unfair. The second is enemies that pop out of the sky or ground directly onto you without warning. The third is the eggplant enemy. Those three enemies alone (which to be fair take up a large amount of the enemy types) turn what should be fun skill-based action platformer into rage inducing damage sponging.
-Like with a lot of old games NOTHING is actually explained in-game. I assume you're supposed to use the manual to learn what all the items do and such, but as I was playing on the Switch's Nes emulator I had no such thing, so I had to have google handy at all times.
-All 3 dungeons felt the exact same.
Mixed/Not important enough to be a pro or con:
~The game honestly gets easier as it goes on. The actual difficulty never really increases imo, but the extra health, strength and weapons you get mean that the first levels where you're working with nothing are by far the hardest.
Notes/Comments:
•Kid Icarus deserved to be a long running series like Mario and Zelda. Too bad the series went into sleep until Uprising and has been dead since.
Pros:
+The Beerus fight was a lot of fun. Obviously that's the main draw too.
+You can easily grind training items to get to max level for the main event.
Cons:
-There's an extremely weird level curve to this. The main fight, the Beerus fight, requires you to be max level, and yet the very first "fight" requires you to be level 5. I guess they intended to let anyone play the DLC even if they just started the game, but it's so short by itself that no new player will EVER have a chance at the later stuff and no late game player will need to do the early stuff. They even let you unlock the Super Saiyan forms early for some reason, so even if you did play this as a new player it feels like it'd take away a huge experience from the main game.
-They didn't really do any story here. They didn't take the Battle of Gods story from either the anime or movie, instead just teleporting you to Beerus' planet and you just go through a couple of fights with Whis and Beerus.
-The actual SSj God ritual cutscene is shown in still images. Kakarot CAN have some amazing full cutscenes (See Vegetto vs Super Boo), and that would have been the perfect place to put one of those. Even outside of that disappointment all the other cutscenes are just the standard lifeless models with text boxes ones.
-In one cutscene my character models just...disappeared. It was pretty weird. In any other review I wouldn't call this a full on con, but since this DLC is so short, that glitched cutscene makes up quite a bit of content.
Mixed/not important enough to be pro or con:
~The two sidequests they have aren't too thrilling, but Vegeta's did have some laughs.
Notes:
•It's really hard to consider the worth of the price of this. On one hand this by itself feels like it should be a free update, but it's only part 1 of a season pass worth of content (there's 2 more stories like it I think). All 3 of them together could be good, but since you absolutely have to pay for the pass at once, having this be the first and only thing you get right now feels a bit underwhelming.
+The Beerus fight was a lot of fun. Obviously that's the main draw too.
+You can easily grind training items to get to max level for the main event.
Cons:
-There's an extremely weird level curve to this. The main fight, the Beerus fight, requires you to be max level, and yet the very first "fight" requires you to be level 5. I guess they intended to let anyone play the DLC even if they just started the game, but it's so short by itself that no new player will EVER have a chance at the later stuff and no late game player will need to do the early stuff. They even let you unlock the Super Saiyan forms early for some reason, so even if you did play this as a new player it feels like it'd take away a huge experience from the main game.
-They didn't really do any story here. They didn't take the Battle of Gods story from either the anime or movie, instead just teleporting you to Beerus' planet and you just go through a couple of fights with Whis and Beerus.
-The actual SSj God ritual cutscene is shown in still images. Kakarot CAN have some amazing full cutscenes (See Vegetto vs Super Boo), and that would have been the perfect place to put one of those. Even outside of that disappointment all the other cutscenes are just the standard lifeless models with text boxes ones.
-In one cutscene my character models just...disappeared. It was pretty weird. In any other review I wouldn't call this a full on con, but since this DLC is so short, that glitched cutscene makes up quite a bit of content.
Mixed/not important enough to be pro or con:
~The two sidequests they have aren't too thrilling, but Vegeta's did have some laughs.
Notes:
•It's really hard to consider the worth of the price of this. On one hand this by itself feels like it should be a free update, but it's only part 1 of a season pass worth of content (there's 2 more stories like it I think). All 3 of them together could be good, but since you absolutely have to pay for the pass at once, having this be the first and only thing you get right now feels a bit underwhelming.
This review contains spoilers
Warning: Major Spoilers
Pros:
+Characters are all made to feel a lot more unique from one another. From different unique skills, to abilities that you can unlock via their weapons, and even how they battle. If there's one thing I can't wait to see from the sequels it's how the rest of the characters will play.
+The music is as good as ever. FF7's soundtrack is my favourite game OST ever, so it'd be hard to mess it up.
+The game looks visually stunning and has some great cutscenes
+Being able to fight the summons is a cool idea.
Cons:
-Ever since I found out this game would end at Midgar I knew it would be held back. They tried to turn 1/5th of a game into a full game and it really shows. There's so much filler content added to sections in the original that were paced correctly. Like the annoying sun lamps in the second reactor, or the moveable arm puzzles, or how chapter 17 just starts with the cast getting split up for no reason so you're forced to spend an hour wasting time in samey-looking corridors. The pacing has just been massively upset.
-Related to above, they seem to try to overcompensate for the lack of length by also adding in side-quests, but the problem is the section of the game they're remaking is mostly linear, so they just kinda shoved all 26 side-quests into 3 total chapters. It's so obvious that they wanted to add more open-worldy feeling sections in those few chapters where you do get some freedom, but it's just so out of place.
-I'm not a fan of the battle system. Your allies don't use their abilities by themself, so you have to manually select something for them to do every single time one of their ATB gauges fill up (which happens fast), and slow down the battle. Also the dodge and block options don't seem all that useful defensively. Dodge roll doesn't actually allow you to dodge most attacks, and block seems way too slow to be able to use in response to anything.
-This game does something I hate in a lot of story-focused games. Forced walking sections. Just random sections of the game where your character starts walking at horrendously slow speeds.
-Any enemy attack that can stun you (and there's way too many of them) lasts way too long.
-There's only 4 enemy skills to learn. I feel like they threw it in at the last second.
Mixed/Not important enough to be a pro or con:
~All the story additions. Some of them are nice, like the avalanche trio getting way more development, and focusing far more on the destruction of sector 7. But then we have all the "fate" and "whisper" crap. The entire ending feels like it was ripped right out of Kingdom Hearts and I don't like it. After looking it up and fully understanding everything, I get what they're going for and do find it kind of interesting, but I think they went about it all wrong. This game may only be "part 1", but it's still a full fledged game, and it'll now always look like an attempt at properly remaking the OG game, while every other game will, presumably based on the ending, be going in its own way, making it essentially NOT an FF7 remake. The lack of consistency and how they split it all up like this really spoiled what could have been an interesting idea.
Note:
•FF7 is my favourite game of all time, and this was so disappointing.
•The camera is zoomed in too much by default. Like you can change it to an acceptable position, but I don't get why they made the standard one that you start with so claustrophobic.
Pros:
+Characters are all made to feel a lot more unique from one another. From different unique skills, to abilities that you can unlock via their weapons, and even how they battle. If there's one thing I can't wait to see from the sequels it's how the rest of the characters will play.
+The music is as good as ever. FF7's soundtrack is my favourite game OST ever, so it'd be hard to mess it up.
+The game looks visually stunning and has some great cutscenes
+Being able to fight the summons is a cool idea.
Cons:
-Ever since I found out this game would end at Midgar I knew it would be held back. They tried to turn 1/5th of a game into a full game and it really shows. There's so much filler content added to sections in the original that were paced correctly. Like the annoying sun lamps in the second reactor, or the moveable arm puzzles, or how chapter 17 just starts with the cast getting split up for no reason so you're forced to spend an hour wasting time in samey-looking corridors. The pacing has just been massively upset.
-Related to above, they seem to try to overcompensate for the lack of length by also adding in side-quests, but the problem is the section of the game they're remaking is mostly linear, so they just kinda shoved all 26 side-quests into 3 total chapters. It's so obvious that they wanted to add more open-worldy feeling sections in those few chapters where you do get some freedom, but it's just so out of place.
-I'm not a fan of the battle system. Your allies don't use their abilities by themself, so you have to manually select something for them to do every single time one of their ATB gauges fill up (which happens fast), and slow down the battle. Also the dodge and block options don't seem all that useful defensively. Dodge roll doesn't actually allow you to dodge most attacks, and block seems way too slow to be able to use in response to anything.
-This game does something I hate in a lot of story-focused games. Forced walking sections. Just random sections of the game where your character starts walking at horrendously slow speeds.
-Any enemy attack that can stun you (and there's way too many of them) lasts way too long.
-There's only 4 enemy skills to learn. I feel like they threw it in at the last second.
Mixed/Not important enough to be a pro or con:
~All the story additions. Some of them are nice, like the avalanche trio getting way more development, and focusing far more on the destruction of sector 7. But then we have all the "fate" and "whisper" crap. The entire ending feels like it was ripped right out of Kingdom Hearts and I don't like it. After looking it up and fully understanding everything, I get what they're going for and do find it kind of interesting, but I think they went about it all wrong. This game may only be "part 1", but it's still a full fledged game, and it'll now always look like an attempt at properly remaking the OG game, while every other game will, presumably based on the ending, be going in its own way, making it essentially NOT an FF7 remake. The lack of consistency and how they split it all up like this really spoiled what could have been an interesting idea.
Note:
•FF7 is my favourite game of all time, and this was so disappointing.
•The camera is zoomed in too much by default. Like you can change it to an acceptable position, but I don't get why they made the standard one that you start with so claustrophobic.
1999
Pros:
+Crossover between Nintendo's beloved icons. And Jigglypuff.
+Classic mode is more than just a generic "fight other playable characters" that a lot of fighting games have. You have mob fights, team up fights and even a couple of unique mini-bosses like Giant DK and Metal Mario (The mushroom and metal box weren't items in this game, meaning those fights were completely one-off)
+Sound effects sound kind of cartoonish compared to later entries, but I love them. It sounds powerful.
+Everyone talks about Break the Targets, but Board the Platforms is also such a great minigame that adds a fun platforming element.
+Having said that, Break the Targets is still great and deserves a mention.
Cons:
-As with a lot of old games, the controls have aged horribly. Movement can feel very clunky.
-Arcade mode path is always the exact same. Even after unlocking the new characters they don't start appearing (although Luigi appears even before you unlock him). It'd be nice if they changed up the order of the regular 1v1 matches, so Link wasn't always first and Samus wasn't always last, and add Ness, Captain Falcon and Jigglypuff as random replacements. And maybe swapped out Mario and Luigi's team match for something like Pikachu and Jigglypuff sometimes. Just shake it up a little.
-Lacking in content. 4 characters to unlock, 1 stage and a couple of extra bonuses (sound test and item switch for multiplayer). Considering how arcade mode is the exact same everytime, the game can get a bit dull very fast.
Mixed/Not important enough to be a pro/con
~Some targets can only be broken through walls. This is such a weird thing to me because it feels like hitting through walls like that is more of a small glitch than anything, but apparently it's a gameplay feature? I mean literally there can be a solid wall in front of a target and you're just expected to assume that if you do a smash attack you should be able to clip through the wall, and that's the INTENDED method?
~I'm honestly a big fan of how the Pokéball Pokémon aren't legendaries. I find it much more interesting to see how they'd use regular mons, compared to newer games that just make 80% of them legendary Pokémon. I'd much rather see Hitmonlee than Ho-Oh honestly.
Notes:
•The main reason to play this game is really just the novelty of replaying how Smash started.
+Crossover between Nintendo's beloved icons. And Jigglypuff.
+Classic mode is more than just a generic "fight other playable characters" that a lot of fighting games have. You have mob fights, team up fights and even a couple of unique mini-bosses like Giant DK and Metal Mario (The mushroom and metal box weren't items in this game, meaning those fights were completely one-off)
+Sound effects sound kind of cartoonish compared to later entries, but I love them. It sounds powerful.
+Everyone talks about Break the Targets, but Board the Platforms is also such a great minigame that adds a fun platforming element.
+Having said that, Break the Targets is still great and deserves a mention.
Cons:
-As with a lot of old games, the controls have aged horribly. Movement can feel very clunky.
-Arcade mode path is always the exact same. Even after unlocking the new characters they don't start appearing (although Luigi appears even before you unlock him). It'd be nice if they changed up the order of the regular 1v1 matches, so Link wasn't always first and Samus wasn't always last, and add Ness, Captain Falcon and Jigglypuff as random replacements. And maybe swapped out Mario and Luigi's team match for something like Pikachu and Jigglypuff sometimes. Just shake it up a little.
-Lacking in content. 4 characters to unlock, 1 stage and a couple of extra bonuses (sound test and item switch for multiplayer). Considering how arcade mode is the exact same everytime, the game can get a bit dull very fast.
Mixed/Not important enough to be a pro/con
~Some targets can only be broken through walls. This is such a weird thing to me because it feels like hitting through walls like that is more of a small glitch than anything, but apparently it's a gameplay feature? I mean literally there can be a solid wall in front of a target and you're just expected to assume that if you do a smash attack you should be able to clip through the wall, and that's the INTENDED method?
~I'm honestly a big fan of how the Pokéball Pokémon aren't legendaries. I find it much more interesting to see how they'd use regular mons, compared to newer games that just make 80% of them legendary Pokémon. I'd much rather see Hitmonlee than Ho-Oh honestly.
Notes:
•The main reason to play this game is really just the novelty of replaying how Smash started.
Good:
+It's Animal Crossing. It's hard to explain exactly what makes Animal Crossing fun in words because it sounds boring on paper. But it's fun, okay?
+The new home editor mode makes customising your house so much easier and more fluid.
+The ability to fully customise your island really helps bring out your creative side.
+There's some really neat visuals, like the wardrobe screen when changing clothes.
+The museum looks beautiful now
+Villagers seem more alive and have more random actions they do around the island
Cons:
-There are some massive quality of life improvements that this game lacks.
-For some reason you have to donate bugs/fish/fossils 1 by 1 during start of game until the museum opens up.
-Can’t craft multiple items at once.
-Breakable tools. Seriously this isn't just the lack of a quality of life thing, it's something they specifically made worse in this entry compared to older ones.
-I've never been a fan of AC's turnip system. Feels like a broken mechanic that just allows you to get insane profit with no effort due to the fact you can buy and sell from ANY island. Due to timezones (or even just time skipping) if you find a player who has a high turnip selling price, while your island has them to purchase, you can literally just make back and forth trips for infinite money.
-For some reason the little indication of what items are customisable is only present at certain times, like in the crafting menu. It isn't present in the inventory or your house storage, so I had to make multiple trips and pocket changes switching items in and out just to find out what I could customise. The fact that a little icon DOES exist in some places just makes it more noticeable that it's missing from other places.
-Trying to set up to travel anywhere, be it a friends island or nook miles island, takes way too long. Supposedly it's just a fancy loading screen, but in that case my complaint is the loading times in this game are atrocious.
-The shop closes at 10pm and they have a little box outside that let's you sell for 80% of their original price...and you only get the money the next day. Why would I ever sell things for less price if I could just keep them in my storage and sell them for full price the next day? If you got the money straight away the 80% would make sense, but there's no logical reason to use it as it is now.
-Can’t build and demolish bridges/inclines at the same time. For example I wanted to destroy the wooden bridge you essentially make as a tutorial and replace it with a better one, but it turns out demolishing an item not only takes a day, but you can't even build a new thing at the same time, so it took 3 days for me to finally get a single bridge (1 day for the bridge to be removed, 1 day to set up the new bridge location and 1 day for it to actually be built)
-The house editing mode is unavailable outside, meaning you still have to place items the old fashion way which can be very imprecise and finicky.
Notes:
•Despite that huge list of cons I still rated it fairly highly... Like I said, Animal Crossing is a hard game to really sell to someone.
+It's Animal Crossing. It's hard to explain exactly what makes Animal Crossing fun in words because it sounds boring on paper. But it's fun, okay?
+The new home editor mode makes customising your house so much easier and more fluid.
+The ability to fully customise your island really helps bring out your creative side.
+There's some really neat visuals, like the wardrobe screen when changing clothes.
+The museum looks beautiful now
+Villagers seem more alive and have more random actions they do around the island
Cons:
-There are some massive quality of life improvements that this game lacks.
-For some reason you have to donate bugs/fish/fossils 1 by 1 during start of game until the museum opens up.
-Can’t craft multiple items at once.
-Breakable tools. Seriously this isn't just the lack of a quality of life thing, it's something they specifically made worse in this entry compared to older ones.
-I've never been a fan of AC's turnip system. Feels like a broken mechanic that just allows you to get insane profit with no effort due to the fact you can buy and sell from ANY island. Due to timezones (or even just time skipping) if you find a player who has a high turnip selling price, while your island has them to purchase, you can literally just make back and forth trips for infinite money.
-For some reason the little indication of what items are customisable is only present at certain times, like in the crafting menu. It isn't present in the inventory or your house storage, so I had to make multiple trips and pocket changes switching items in and out just to find out what I could customise. The fact that a little icon DOES exist in some places just makes it more noticeable that it's missing from other places.
-Trying to set up to travel anywhere, be it a friends island or nook miles island, takes way too long. Supposedly it's just a fancy loading screen, but in that case my complaint is the loading times in this game are atrocious.
-The shop closes at 10pm and they have a little box outside that let's you sell for 80% of their original price...and you only get the money the next day. Why would I ever sell things for less price if I could just keep them in my storage and sell them for full price the next day? If you got the money straight away the 80% would make sense, but there's no logical reason to use it as it is now.
-Can’t build and demolish bridges/inclines at the same time. For example I wanted to destroy the wooden bridge you essentially make as a tutorial and replace it with a better one, but it turns out demolishing an item not only takes a day, but you can't even build a new thing at the same time, so it took 3 days for me to finally get a single bridge (1 day for the bridge to be removed, 1 day to set up the new bridge location and 1 day for it to actually be built)
-The house editing mode is unavailable outside, meaning you still have to place items the old fashion way which can be very imprecise and finicky.
Notes:
•Despite that huge list of cons I still rated it fairly highly... Like I said, Animal Crossing is a hard game to really sell to someone.
1992
Pros:
+The way all the different power ups have their own unique abilities is really neat. They're not just extra hit points or extra powers (mostly), they really add unique ways to get through a level.
+There's a lot of great designs, from the various power ups to the enemies. The stages look quite nice too.
Cons:
-Controls are slippery as hell and make any kind of platforming on small blocks impossible.
-It's got that unfair old-school difficulty, with many terrible game design choices.
-The level layouts are pure ass. Each stage is like a huge labyrinth with multiple dead ends. A game with multiple paths is great, especially when you can tailor each one to the specific power ups. What isn't great is making like 50 paths in a level and having 49 of them just lead to nothing.
-Enemy placements/bottomless pits and the like are placed in often unfair positions, making a lot of blind drops or sliding down a hill straight into a row of spikes.
-Many times the game requires you to progress via a random hole in the wall that is indistinguishable from a normal wall.
-The game is very unintuitive. I got a power up that sent huge lasers from my mask, so I figured it'd be a damaging thing. Turns out they reveal hidden blocks. That costume with the giant knights helmet? It lets you climb walls for some reason.
Mixed/Not important enough to be a pro or con:
~This goes in with the unintuitive, the first obvious assumption for the collectable gems is that they grant an extra life at 100 like all platformer collectables that are everywhere. Then I got 99 and the rest just kind of disappeared...weird. Turns out the gems grant you a bonus power that changes depending on your costume. That's such a neat idea, but why to activate it do you need to press a button combination that makes no sense? It isn't even mentioned on the controls screen in the options.
Note:
•So I was planning on completing this, but my save state got ruined. Probably fair to call it abandoned though since there's no real in-game save so you're supposed to complete it all in one sitting, despite the fact it has over 100 levels of pure BS.
+The way all the different power ups have their own unique abilities is really neat. They're not just extra hit points or extra powers (mostly), they really add unique ways to get through a level.
+There's a lot of great designs, from the various power ups to the enemies. The stages look quite nice too.
Cons:
-Controls are slippery as hell and make any kind of platforming on small blocks impossible.
-It's got that unfair old-school difficulty, with many terrible game design choices.
-The level layouts are pure ass. Each stage is like a huge labyrinth with multiple dead ends. A game with multiple paths is great, especially when you can tailor each one to the specific power ups. What isn't great is making like 50 paths in a level and having 49 of them just lead to nothing.
-Enemy placements/bottomless pits and the like are placed in often unfair positions, making a lot of blind drops or sliding down a hill straight into a row of spikes.
-Many times the game requires you to progress via a random hole in the wall that is indistinguishable from a normal wall.
-The game is very unintuitive. I got a power up that sent huge lasers from my mask, so I figured it'd be a damaging thing. Turns out they reveal hidden blocks. That costume with the giant knights helmet? It lets you climb walls for some reason.
Mixed/Not important enough to be a pro or con:
~This goes in with the unintuitive, the first obvious assumption for the collectable gems is that they grant an extra life at 100 like all platformer collectables that are everywhere. Then I got 99 and the rest just kind of disappeared...weird. Turns out the gems grant you a bonus power that changes depending on your costume. That's such a neat idea, but why to activate it do you need to press a button combination that makes no sense? It isn't even mentioned on the controls screen in the options.
Note:
•So I was planning on completing this, but my save state got ruined. Probably fair to call it abandoned though since there's no real in-game save so you're supposed to complete it all in one sitting, despite the fact it has over 100 levels of pure BS.
Pros:
+I absolutely love the Gulag. The whole atmosphere is perfect.
+The map is great. I don't have much experience in battle royale games, but this map really does feel like a bunch of well connected smaller maps into a comprehensive city.
Cons:
-For a battle royale game with the COD title AND crossplay, it seems to takes ages to start a match.
-This isn't really specific to this battle royale game, but is a flaw in all of them that carries over to this one, and that's that there's so many people that you can rarely ever get into a firefight with someone without alerting your position to the hundreds of others who may be nearby and instantly able to pick you off from their hidden spots.
-Another problem that I imagine is in most BR games - Too much camping potential. The huge map and many buildings to explore make simply hiding in one spot too viable an option that people do. Why run out into the open and risk being seen by hundreds of people from the safety of their windows when you can just hide until the circle becomes too small?
Mixed/Not important enough to be a pro or con:
~Contracts. It seems like a weird addition to add these little bonus objectives in a game where everyone in the map wants to kill you. To be fair the hitman ones are fine as they actively help the style of gameplay. But the capture the objective ones? They literally just force you to be exposed. It doesn't seem like its ever safe to take part in these (again, except the hitman one)
Notes:
•When the update came, I tried to download it and didn't have enough space. The game is already 100GB and I had 80GB left. Apparently to download the single update you need the space for the full game and not just the update file? It's wack. At this point the only viable way to keep playing is to keep re-deleting the game and downloading the massive 100+GB file every time an update comes, or remove every other game from the PS4 so I can always have a spare 100GB available.
•I played this as a standalone. Never played the Modern Warfare main game. No idea how that impacts my experience.
Edit: One of the cons I previously mentioned (See below) seems to have been changed in a recent update, so I changed the rating from 2 stars to 2.5:
"-There seems to be an inconsistent killcam? Or at least it only showed up like 10% of the time for me. I'd really like to know how I was killed a lot of the times, it feels like an important aspect in these kind of games."
+I absolutely love the Gulag. The whole atmosphere is perfect.
+The map is great. I don't have much experience in battle royale games, but this map really does feel like a bunch of well connected smaller maps into a comprehensive city.
Cons:
-For a battle royale game with the COD title AND crossplay, it seems to takes ages to start a match.
-This isn't really specific to this battle royale game, but is a flaw in all of them that carries over to this one, and that's that there's so many people that you can rarely ever get into a firefight with someone without alerting your position to the hundreds of others who may be nearby and instantly able to pick you off from their hidden spots.
-Another problem that I imagine is in most BR games - Too much camping potential. The huge map and many buildings to explore make simply hiding in one spot too viable an option that people do. Why run out into the open and risk being seen by hundreds of people from the safety of their windows when you can just hide until the circle becomes too small?
Mixed/Not important enough to be a pro or con:
~Contracts. It seems like a weird addition to add these little bonus objectives in a game where everyone in the map wants to kill you. To be fair the hitman ones are fine as they actively help the style of gameplay. But the capture the objective ones? They literally just force you to be exposed. It doesn't seem like its ever safe to take part in these (again, except the hitman one)
Notes:
•When the update came, I tried to download it and didn't have enough space. The game is already 100GB and I had 80GB left. Apparently to download the single update you need the space for the full game and not just the update file? It's wack. At this point the only viable way to keep playing is to keep re-deleting the game and downloading the massive 100+GB file every time an update comes, or remove every other game from the PS4 so I can always have a spare 100GB available.
•I played this as a standalone. Never played the Modern Warfare main game. No idea how that impacts my experience.
Edit: One of the cons I previously mentioned (See below) seems to have been changed in a recent update, so I changed the rating from 2 stars to 2.5:
"-There seems to be an inconsistent killcam? Or at least it only showed up like 10% of the time for me. I'd really like to know how I was killed a lot of the times, it feels like an important aspect in these kind of games."
2017
Pros:
+Colourful cast of characters. In games like this I find that having a varied-looking roster is a big deal, and I'm happy to say that everyone in this game have their own unique look and personality about them. Some (all?) of them even have unique traits, although these seem to be minor, like a character who does an auto-side step when he blocks an attack.
+The variety of different arm types. I didn't know enough about this game before going in, so the fact there was so many different arms surprised me. They each have unique properties, and for a game called "Arms", they did a great job of making the arms feel like different weapons.
+The stages are another thing that I didn't realise were so diverse. I figured it'd just be big empty boxing ring-like stages, but there's quite a few nice looking ones with their own gimmicks, like those beyblade-type things.
Cons:
-Very light on content. Even with DLC there's only 15 characters and stages. There's no story mode and arcade mode is basically the exact same for each character. There's a couple of extra modes, like 1v100 or the 3 types of mini-games, but they feel like nothing more than a few minutes of distraction.
-Control customisation is severely limited. I had problems with both the motion controls and the joycons in grip controls. In motion controls I found moving with motion control to be a pain, but you can't change it to the joystick, and in the joycon grip the block button is in an awkward place and you can't change that either.
Mixed/Not important enough to be a pro or con:
~So I haven't unlocked every arm for every character, but with what I have unlocked, it looks like every character can actually unlock every arm? On one hand it's nice that they basically let you use any character you want without worrying about how good their arms are, on the other hand it does have a huge impact on how unique the characters are.
~The game clearly emphasises motion controls above any other control scheme, but to me it just felt like movement with that was way too slow. I can't call it a complete con because it does let you use the controller, but I can't call that a pro either because when you do use the control you can't help but feel like you're not getting the full game experience (and I'm pretty sure the control you have over the arms is limited when you play with a controller too, since you can't control each arm separately). So even though the game gives you some choice, it felt like no matter what I picked I was missing out on something. I think that if I was fully invested in the game (I'm only playing it as part of the free trial for Nintendo Online members) I would put more effort into getting used to the motion controls.
Notes:
•I haven't played a ton of online, but what I did try out was super smooth and fun.
+Colourful cast of characters. In games like this I find that having a varied-looking roster is a big deal, and I'm happy to say that everyone in this game have their own unique look and personality about them. Some (all?) of them even have unique traits, although these seem to be minor, like a character who does an auto-side step when he blocks an attack.
+The variety of different arm types. I didn't know enough about this game before going in, so the fact there was so many different arms surprised me. They each have unique properties, and for a game called "Arms", they did a great job of making the arms feel like different weapons.
+The stages are another thing that I didn't realise were so diverse. I figured it'd just be big empty boxing ring-like stages, but there's quite a few nice looking ones with their own gimmicks, like those beyblade-type things.
Cons:
-Very light on content. Even with DLC there's only 15 characters and stages. There's no story mode and arcade mode is basically the exact same for each character. There's a couple of extra modes, like 1v100 or the 3 types of mini-games, but they feel like nothing more than a few minutes of distraction.
-Control customisation is severely limited. I had problems with both the motion controls and the joycons in grip controls. In motion controls I found moving with motion control to be a pain, but you can't change it to the joystick, and in the joycon grip the block button is in an awkward place and you can't change that either.
Mixed/Not important enough to be a pro or con:
~So I haven't unlocked every arm for every character, but with what I have unlocked, it looks like every character can actually unlock every arm? On one hand it's nice that they basically let you use any character you want without worrying about how good their arms are, on the other hand it does have a huge impact on how unique the characters are.
~The game clearly emphasises motion controls above any other control scheme, but to me it just felt like movement with that was way too slow. I can't call it a complete con because it does let you use the controller, but I can't call that a pro either because when you do use the control you can't help but feel like you're not getting the full game experience (and I'm pretty sure the control you have over the arms is limited when you play with a controller too, since you can't control each arm separately). So even though the game gives you some choice, it felt like no matter what I picked I was missing out on something. I think that if I was fully invested in the game (I'm only playing it as part of the free trial for Nintendo Online members) I would put more effort into getting used to the motion controls.
Notes:
•I haven't played a ton of online, but what I did try out was super smooth and fun.
2016
Pros:
+Tight and responsive controls controls
+You can feel yourself improving and it's satisfying as hell.
+There's an addicting mini-game you can unlock
Mixed/Not important enough to be a pro or con:
~It's an extremely short and simple game. I got it from PS+ a long time ago, and I don't think I'd ever have been happy paying for this, but it was a fun little thing to get for free
Notes:
•I played this solely because there's one day left until Animal Crossing comes out and I needed a super short game to play in the meantime. This was at the very top of my list of PS+ games and it fit that bill nicely.
+Tight and responsive controls controls
+You can feel yourself improving and it's satisfying as hell.
+There's an addicting mini-game you can unlock
Mixed/Not important enough to be a pro or con:
~It's an extremely short and simple game. I got it from PS+ a long time ago, and I don't think I'd ever have been happy paying for this, but it was a fun little thing to get for free
Notes:
•I played this solely because there's one day left until Animal Crossing comes out and I needed a super short game to play in the meantime. This was at the very top of my list of PS+ games and it fit that bill nicely.
Pros:
+The story is pretty good, albeit short.
+Each move has its own level, meaning that if you level up flamethrower on one mon, every other mon who gets flamethrower will have the powered up version. It's a great quality of life thing.
+The post game is huge. It's almost like the main story is just a tutorial for the larger, but less narrative-driven post-game.
+Having Pokémon as actual characters is fun.
+The constant rewards you get from completing missions makes it so easy for that "just one more dungeon" feeling.
+The water colour aesthetic is pretty nice.
Cons:
-The power of moves and accuracy only shows up as a bar instead of as numbers in the main game, making it kind of hard to compare.
-You can’t filter Pokémon by rare quality, so if you want to find a specific one, good luck searching through the entire list.
-Shiny Pokémon are locked to “Strong” Pokémon, meaning about 20 in total. It's a pretty weird decision that ruins the surprise of finding random shinies.
-Since you can only control the three main teammates, if any of your recruits gets attacked at the back of the group, you have literally no way to get to them to save them. There's not even a tactics option where you can send a main teammate to stay at the rear of a group for such situations. It's incredibly frustrating to constantly get interrupted every step because your Pidgey at the back is being attacked every turn and you can't do anything about it.
-Moves are unbalanced as fuck. Multi-hit moves and room-wide moves are basically the only viable ones in the endgame. Moves with only one tile are borderline useless, making a large section of the mons useless.
-You can only recruit wild Pokémon if the player kills enemy. So you can deal 199/200 damage, but if your teammate Weedle does that last 1hp you won't get a chance to recruit.
-The item inventory stops expanding after a certain rank (until the very last rank, which is a huge grind). Considering it's the most important rank-up reward, having it be stagnant for like 70% of ranks is annoying.
-If your current party is full, you can't just send recruited mons to camp. You have to choose between letting them go or switching another party member and letting THEM go. This means you can recruit at max 5 mons per dungeon (or 7 if you wanna get rid of 2 of your main teammates). It's basically just forcing extra playtime by making you re-run dungeons multiple times.
-99 floor dungeons. Screw them.
-Dungeons that reset your level to 5. If this was a single dungeon as a one-off challenge it might not be so bad, but there are THREE dungeons like this.
-Can’t feed multiple stat boosting items at once. Have a bunch of gummis or vitamins to give your mon? Gotta do it one by one.
-Dungeons are all basically the same. The themes (of which are limited and reused) never really add any actual gimmicks outside of weather.
Mixed/Not important enough to be a pro or con:
~It's really repetitive, but kind of addicting at the same time.
~Most of the power-up orbs in the game only last for a single room or floor. Keep in mind that some dungeons have up to 99 floors. Trying to use them as any kind of strategy doesn't really work.
~Controls in a dungeon feel stiff and clunky. But it also has an automode which negates this. The fact that letting the game play itself is a SOLUTION feels like a con to me, but if it makes the game more fun to play then that can't be a bad thing.
Note:
•Alakazam’s team is presented as the best team in the game for the story, but it's only gold rank. For reference that's the 5th rank in the game, out of a total of 12. It's kind of embarrassing to see them get so much praise for being a rank that I managed to get to in the main story alone, let alone the 6 (apparently unattainable by anyone) ranks I reached after that.
•Being Pokémon saved this game. Like without the Pokémon coat of paint I think this would be a below-average game.
•I wanted to fully complete this, but gave up on Purity Forest because it's an RNG-filled mess.
+The story is pretty good, albeit short.
+Each move has its own level, meaning that if you level up flamethrower on one mon, every other mon who gets flamethrower will have the powered up version. It's a great quality of life thing.
+The post game is huge. It's almost like the main story is just a tutorial for the larger, but less narrative-driven post-game.
+Having Pokémon as actual characters is fun.
+The constant rewards you get from completing missions makes it so easy for that "just one more dungeon" feeling.
+The water colour aesthetic is pretty nice.
Cons:
-The power of moves and accuracy only shows up as a bar instead of as numbers in the main game, making it kind of hard to compare.
-You can’t filter Pokémon by rare quality, so if you want to find a specific one, good luck searching through the entire list.
-Shiny Pokémon are locked to “Strong” Pokémon, meaning about 20 in total. It's a pretty weird decision that ruins the surprise of finding random shinies.
-Since you can only control the three main teammates, if any of your recruits gets attacked at the back of the group, you have literally no way to get to them to save them. There's not even a tactics option where you can send a main teammate to stay at the rear of a group for such situations. It's incredibly frustrating to constantly get interrupted every step because your Pidgey at the back is being attacked every turn and you can't do anything about it.
-Moves are unbalanced as fuck. Multi-hit moves and room-wide moves are basically the only viable ones in the endgame. Moves with only one tile are borderline useless, making a large section of the mons useless.
-You can only recruit wild Pokémon if the player kills enemy. So you can deal 199/200 damage, but if your teammate Weedle does that last 1hp you won't get a chance to recruit.
-The item inventory stops expanding after a certain rank (until the very last rank, which is a huge grind). Considering it's the most important rank-up reward, having it be stagnant for like 70% of ranks is annoying.
-If your current party is full, you can't just send recruited mons to camp. You have to choose between letting them go or switching another party member and letting THEM go. This means you can recruit at max 5 mons per dungeon (or 7 if you wanna get rid of 2 of your main teammates). It's basically just forcing extra playtime by making you re-run dungeons multiple times.
-99 floor dungeons. Screw them.
-Dungeons that reset your level to 5. If this was a single dungeon as a one-off challenge it might not be so bad, but there are THREE dungeons like this.
-Can’t feed multiple stat boosting items at once. Have a bunch of gummis or vitamins to give your mon? Gotta do it one by one.
-Dungeons are all basically the same. The themes (of which are limited and reused) never really add any actual gimmicks outside of weather.
Mixed/Not important enough to be a pro or con:
~It's really repetitive, but kind of addicting at the same time.
~Most of the power-up orbs in the game only last for a single room or floor. Keep in mind that some dungeons have up to 99 floors. Trying to use them as any kind of strategy doesn't really work.
~Controls in a dungeon feel stiff and clunky. But it also has an automode which negates this. The fact that letting the game play itself is a SOLUTION feels like a con to me, but if it makes the game more fun to play then that can't be a bad thing.
Note:
•Alakazam’s team is presented as the best team in the game for the story, but it's only gold rank. For reference that's the 5th rank in the game, out of a total of 12. It's kind of embarrassing to see them get so much praise for being a rank that I managed to get to in the main story alone, let alone the 6 (apparently unattainable by anyone) ranks I reached after that.
•Being Pokémon saved this game. Like without the Pokémon coat of paint I think this would be a below-average game.
•I wanted to fully complete this, but gave up on Purity Forest because it's an RNG-filled mess.
2018
Pros:
+Web swinging around the city is great. Any kind of open world game that can make travelling enjoyable is a plus in my book.
+The constant snarky Spider-Man dialogue adds some fun personality.
+Combat is fun and has enough variety to feel like more than a simple button masher.
+Action-packed cutscenes that look like they come right out of a Marvel movie
+The ending cutscene is some of the most emotion I've felt in a video game
+The game does a fantastic job of setting the mood during the villain escape section.
Cons:
-Too much padding of content. There's 4 different "crime" side quests, with 5 of each per district. It gets very repetitive.
-The stealth missions broke the flow of the game and were generally unfun to play. And there's way too many of them.
Mixed/Not important enough to be a pro or con:
~The powers you get via the suits don't seem to scale with the game. The power that lets you spin around and send out multiple webs was generally the one I found most useful for large mob fights (which are 99% of fights) and it's literally the first suit you can purchase.
+Web swinging around the city is great. Any kind of open world game that can make travelling enjoyable is a plus in my book.
+The constant snarky Spider-Man dialogue adds some fun personality.
+Combat is fun and has enough variety to feel like more than a simple button masher.
+Action-packed cutscenes that look like they come right out of a Marvel movie
+The ending cutscene is some of the most emotion I've felt in a video game
+The game does a fantastic job of setting the mood during the villain escape section.
Cons:
-Too much padding of content. There's 4 different "crime" side quests, with 5 of each per district. It gets very repetitive.
-The stealth missions broke the flow of the game and were generally unfun to play. And there's way too many of them.
Mixed/Not important enough to be a pro or con:
~The powers you get via the suits don't seem to scale with the game. The power that lets you spin around and send out multiple webs was generally the one I found most useful for large mob fights (which are 99% of fights) and it's literally the first suit you can purchase.