EffieArtoria
2023
I really do love some solid inventory management. There's something about squeezing in the maximum amount of cargo, of having a container stuffed full of healing items, or treasure, or weapons, that feels really satisfying. And this game has that in spades.
Also: fishing!
It's short and sweet, I finished in about 20 hours and I did all* the sidequests except for "find all the rare fish". I found there are some pacing and balance issues, money stopped being a problem midway through the game, and by the end I was up to my ears in it, but still had miles to go to finish all the research. There are a lot of intermediate engines or nets or rods that feel a bit pointless, and I definitely struggled to tell the difference between +55% fishing speed and +100% speed. If it were a longer game these would be bigger issues, but since it's on the short side I was still having enough fun hunting down different fish.
One questline I would like to single out as really frustrating - there are four NPCs in the world who will ask you for a series of very specific fish, delivered to them in order. As soon as you talk to them, they're on a timer, and if you don't deliver their fish, they die, permanently removing the reward for the quest. In one case I bumped into one of these guys and he asked for a fish only accessible with a hook from a completely different questline I hadn't even discovered, so he was more or less doomed to starve. The quest rewards aren't dealbreakers so at the end of the day it's a "nice to have", but it felt so counterintuitive. I only satisfied one of these NPCs by avoiding him all game long until I had all the rods, engines and abilities. I never got a chance to use the quest reward before finishing the story after that!
Overall, a lovely wee treat that I'd highly recommend!
Also: fishing!
It's short and sweet, I finished in about 20 hours and I did all* the sidequests except for "find all the rare fish". I found there are some pacing and balance issues, money stopped being a problem midway through the game, and by the end I was up to my ears in it, but still had miles to go to finish all the research. There are a lot of intermediate engines or nets or rods that feel a bit pointless, and I definitely struggled to tell the difference between +55% fishing speed and +100% speed. If it were a longer game these would be bigger issues, but since it's on the short side I was still having enough fun hunting down different fish.
One questline I would like to single out as really frustrating - there are four NPCs in the world who will ask you for a series of very specific fish, delivered to them in order. As soon as you talk to them, they're on a timer, and if you don't deliver their fish, they die, permanently removing the reward for the quest. In one case I bumped into one of these guys and he asked for a fish only accessible with a hook from a completely different questline I hadn't even discovered, so he was more or less doomed to starve. The quest rewards aren't dealbreakers so at the end of the day it's a "nice to have", but it felt so counterintuitive. I only satisfied one of these NPCs by avoiding him all game long until I had all the rods, engines and abilities. I never got a chance to use the quest reward before finishing the story after that!
Overall, a lovely wee treat that I'd highly recommend!
2023
Had a very bad time playing this with 5 other pals. I think it's really designed for a twitch streamer to play with their chat. As a party game it wasn't so great- the host spent a lot of time making choices and reading, and then very rarely the rest of us would get to make a decision. By luck of the draw my faction only had one person in it - me - and every other faction had two, so I was outvoted on everything, every time, and just spent the entire session getting screwed. Deeply unpleasant.
The art style is lovely, and I could definitely imagine it being a lot more fun for a streamer with a big chat, but my experience was so bad I don't know that I'll touch it again.
The art style is lovely, and I could definitely imagine it being a lot more fun for a streamer with a big chat, but my experience was so bad I don't know that I'll touch it again.
Gave up I think about a third of the way through the game. I've been told there are bonkers plot twists that are really good later on in the game, but I found it slow, awkward and not particularly fun. It's a weird combat that's like a very very clunky version of MMO combat, but with rotten AI controlling 2/3rds of the party. I ended up cranking the difficulty right down to try and get through things faster, and it definitely helped, but the whole thing still dragged.
Also the inventory management in this game should be illegal- MMO drops, massive loot tables, dozens and dozens of pairs of nigh-identical trousers with no option to optimise, just endless comparisons of oblique stats. And don't even get me started on the gem crafting.
Might come back to it, I'm at least under the impression that you get to control a giant robot in the second or third title, so that's at least something to look forward to.
Also the inventory management in this game should be illegal- MMO drops, massive loot tables, dozens and dozens of pairs of nigh-identical trousers with no option to optimise, just endless comparisons of oblique stats. And don't even get me started on the gem crafting.
Might come back to it, I'm at least under the impression that you get to control a giant robot in the second or third title, so that's at least something to look forward to.
2022
I rate this game very highly, but I have also found that I have to put it down, unfinished. The core of the game, polishing off these perfect little speedruns of precise platforming and shooting is absolutely amazing, great idea, great execution, great style.
However, as I got further into the game I found the levels got longer and longer and more and more complicated. Redoing a 20-30 second level a dozen times over to shave a couple of seconds off my time was fantastic fun, but things really started to drag with levels that were over a minute in length of involved a lot of fiddly weapon swaps or mechanics, or else required a lot of time just to figure out in the first place. It killed the pace. I could have moved on through the levels quickly if I took some gold or silver medals, but it just didn't feel right.
In the end, I felt like I was facing diminishing returns. The parts of the game I enjoyed I really enjoyed, absolutely worth the price of entry. I think if I kept playing the game I'd have liked it a lot less, so I decided to cut it short.
Oh, and I skipped as much of the plot as possible. It's a pitch perfect recreation of high school dub anime hijinks, and just as unbearable as the real thing.
However, as I got further into the game I found the levels got longer and longer and more and more complicated. Redoing a 20-30 second level a dozen times over to shave a couple of seconds off my time was fantastic fun, but things really started to drag with levels that were over a minute in length of involved a lot of fiddly weapon swaps or mechanics, or else required a lot of time just to figure out in the first place. It killed the pace. I could have moved on through the levels quickly if I took some gold or silver medals, but it just didn't feel right.
In the end, I felt like I was facing diminishing returns. The parts of the game I enjoyed I really enjoyed, absolutely worth the price of entry. I think if I kept playing the game I'd have liked it a lot less, so I decided to cut it short.
Oh, and I skipped as much of the plot as possible. It's a pitch perfect recreation of high school dub anime hijinks, and just as unbearable as the real thing.
2022
Quite a pleasant entry in the crafty-explorey-base building genre. There's a gorgeous pixel art top down aesthetic that just looks absolutely fantastic, and there are moments of great beauty looking out across flooded caverns illuminated by glowing blue flowers.
There were a couple of flies in the ointment. Tried playing this in a group of 4 or 5 pals, and the scaling on the boss combat feels decidedly wonky, one boss is notorious for being nigh-impossible with a large party. The time/reward ratio on some activities felt disproportionate - there's an extensive fishing system with equippable rods, baits and buffs, but in the time it took me to catch half a dozen fish my pal could grow hundreds of vegetables. Other times, if you wanted to refloor a room it was always a total chore- walls are incredibly abundant from mining, but you have to specifically go out of your way to dig out bottomles s pits in order to collect the appropriate ground tiles. One of the worst elements for me personally is the complete absence of signs, making it nigh-impossible to effectively organise a group base without repeatedly being asked "where do we keep the minecarts"
I enjoy the look, I enjoy a lot of the systems, I greatly enjoy making little rail lines to all corners of the map. Something holds me back from a ful lthroated endorsement, and I'm really optimistic that by the end of early access it'll be firing on all cylinders. As-is, it's 90% there, and just needs a little axle grease to make it perfect.
There were a couple of flies in the ointment. Tried playing this in a group of 4 or 5 pals, and the scaling on the boss combat feels decidedly wonky, one boss is notorious for being nigh-impossible with a large party. The time/reward ratio on some activities felt disproportionate - there's an extensive fishing system with equippable rods, baits and buffs, but in the time it took me to catch half a dozen fish my pal could grow hundreds of vegetables. Other times, if you wanted to refloor a room it was always a total chore- walls are incredibly abundant from mining, but you have to specifically go out of your way to dig out bottomles s pits in order to collect the appropriate ground tiles. One of the worst elements for me personally is the complete absence of signs, making it nigh-impossible to effectively organise a group base without repeatedly being asked "where do we keep the minecarts"
I enjoy the look, I enjoy a lot of the systems, I greatly enjoy making little rail lines to all corners of the map. Something holds me back from a ful lthroated endorsement, and I'm really optimistic that by the end of early access it'll be firing on all cylinders. As-is, it's 90% there, and just needs a little axle grease to make it perfect.
2018
Only played for a couple of hours with pals, dipping in and out for a steam refund. I've enjoyed crafting and survival games so I get the overall appeal, but after two hours we just felt kind of exhausted. It was an endless grind of fishing to scrape together enough food not to starve, hovering between three water purifiers trying to manage thirst, and then shoveling plastic out of the sea of garbage to build another fishing rod. Things that ought to be fun, like exploring unknown islands, instead felt tense and frustrating as we staggered around, famished, and got eaten by sharks on the way back to the raft. Even as we started to get on top of the resource game, there was still no view to automating anything. Progress would be hours and hours of necessary chores, with only a much smaller amount of time and resources available for luxuries like building a bigger raft or 'having fun'.
Maybe it's better single player (or just without five people crowded onto one 2x2 raft), or maybe it evens out later on.
There was one transcendental moment of humour in the game. We were adrift at sea, trying desperately to boil salt water so that we could get something to drink, watching our raft get swallowed up piece by piece by a shark, and then my friend announced "I've built a research table". Ah, perfect. We might be starving to death, but at least the march of science continues.
Maybe it's better single player (or just without five people crowded onto one 2x2 raft), or maybe it evens out later on.
There was one transcendental moment of humour in the game. We were adrift at sea, trying desperately to boil salt water so that we could get something to drink, watching our raft get swallowed up piece by piece by a shark, and then my friend announced "I've built a research table". Ah, perfect. We might be starving to death, but at least the march of science continues.
2022
I wanted to like this more. I adore the character design & animations, it's the cutest anime stuff around and it rules. The concept of a potion crafting business romance deckbuilding card game is absolutely my jam on paper, buuuut in practice it just didn't grab me. I cleared two or three of the competitions and drifted off. I might come back to it later if I ever find time.
Part of the problem I had was that you're given aggressive 10 day deadlines and told "your potion should be 3 stars!", so I rushed and rushed to get cash to get a bigger cauldron and ingredients to make these potions, didn't spend any time chilling out with NPCs because time is money, got to the big tournament and found out it was a total cakewalk. But then there's another 10 day deadline and every hour you're not brewing or selling potions feels wasted so I did the whole damn thing again. IDK if you get more time to talk to the NPCs later or what but it just felt like a bit of a grind. As for the deck building part, it felt kind of obvious and straight forward, without a way for me to really put a spin on it or build in specific directions.
I'd be really really pleasantly surprised if I come back to this over the Christmas break or something and find out that all my problems dissolve in the back half of the game, but where I left it I wasn't feeling it.
Part of the problem I had was that you're given aggressive 10 day deadlines and told "your potion should be 3 stars!", so I rushed and rushed to get cash to get a bigger cauldron and ingredients to make these potions, didn't spend any time chilling out with NPCs because time is money, got to the big tournament and found out it was a total cakewalk. But then there's another 10 day deadline and every hour you're not brewing or selling potions feels wasted so I did the whole damn thing again. IDK if you get more time to talk to the NPCs later or what but it just felt like a bit of a grind. As for the deck building part, it felt kind of obvious and straight forward, without a way for me to really put a spin on it or build in specific directions.
I'd be really really pleasantly surprised if I come back to this over the Christmas break or something and find out that all my problems dissolve in the back half of the game, but where I left it I wasn't feeling it.
2022
Scarlet and Violet are a buggy, ugly mess, but also kind of so good they've restored my faith in Pokemon? It's awkward to look at these games, which are clearly rushed out the door and riddled with flaws and say "actually this is what I want", but it is. Obviously I’d prefer if Game Freak were actually given time to finish their games, or maybe allowed to pull the scope back to something a little more manageable for their team, but after a series of titles that really frustrated me, Violet drew me back in and is far and away my favourite of the Switch games.
The first major improvement is that there is just a lot more stuff to do in the story content. Gyms, titan pokemon, star raids, an endgame and postgame, compared to Sword’s anaemic single player experience it’s night & day. The character writing and plotting is also a marked improvement, although anything would be better than the double whammy of Hop and Professor Laventon. Nemona, the game’s rival, is a particular highlight for me, I haven’t looked forward to a rematch with a rival like this since the DS era. All the characters benefit enormously from the biggest change: the game’s structure.
Here’s the problem with older pokemon games: NPCs standing at the end of a road telling you to go and watch a load of awful cutscenes before they’ll let you pass to the part of the game you actually want to play. Scarlet & Violet have the solution: the NPC is gone, you can do what you want. If you want to pursue a mad minmax strategy and take on the 8th gym before the first, you absolutely can. There are powerful incentives for doing the story content- gym badges allow you to control high level pokemon, titan badges grant additional mobility for exploring the world- and it feels more cause and effect. I wanted to beat gyms and titans in this game, whereas in PLA doing the main story felt like eating my peas before the game would deign to hand over Braviary. I cannot stress enough, this is IT, this is THE difference, the game is packed with things to do and I actively wanted to do them because of the structure. I was sceptical of an open world pokemon game beforehand, but the game completely won me over.
I don’t want to spend too much time gushing, but one more thing I have to say: the new pokemon are killing it. I had a whole team of brand new Paldea native pokemon going into the endgame and was astonished to find pokemon so exciting that I wanted to bring on a full new team of six. I don’t think I’ve enjoyed a set of pokemon so much conceptually since the Ultra Beasts.
Okay, so that’s all good, what about the bad stuff? The game has more bugs than Viridian Forest. I have multiple times jumped or fallen or exited battle into a crevice in the terrain where Miraidon slides around hopelessly for 5-10 seconds before the game warps me back to the path. Twice the game has crashed and closed out completely, although in both instances I lost no more than 30 seconds of playtime because of the frequent autosaves.
Even if all the bugs are patched, it’s not exactly a good looking game. You will spend a lot of time looking reeeeeal close at an unadorned ground texture, because that’s just what 90% of the world is, and when two kitten-sized pokemon are fighting 12 feet apart from each other, the camera is going to show you a lot of ground. One of the big technical shifts is that battles take place in the same world-space as the overworld exploration rather than a separate scene, replacing carefully choreographed and dressed battle scenes with a freeform camera floating around uneven terrain. One time I legitimately could not figure out physically where my pokemon was in battle because it had spawned underneath the bridge we were fighting on. A lot of the time the pokemon look tiny and plain, a far cry from the 2D era where you may only get two angles on a pokemon but they were designed to show off all the appeal they had. It’s possible to toggle a more cinematic battle camera but it can’t fix everything that’s wrong here. I’m sympathetic to the developers, it’s hard to imagine how to make a world and camera that solve all these problems, but regardless, it’s a challenge they have set for themselves and failed to overcome.
So it’s a flawed gem, perhaps an appropriate metaphor for a game whose gimmick is all about magical crystals. If you’re a longtime pokemon fan and you’re sceptical after the last couple of games I urge you to give this one a shot. You’ll need a little patience, but the good stuff is in there, I promise.
The first major improvement is that there is just a lot more stuff to do in the story content. Gyms, titan pokemon, star raids, an endgame and postgame, compared to Sword’s anaemic single player experience it’s night & day. The character writing and plotting is also a marked improvement, although anything would be better than the double whammy of Hop and Professor Laventon. Nemona, the game’s rival, is a particular highlight for me, I haven’t looked forward to a rematch with a rival like this since the DS era. All the characters benefit enormously from the biggest change: the game’s structure.
Here’s the problem with older pokemon games: NPCs standing at the end of a road telling you to go and watch a load of awful cutscenes before they’ll let you pass to the part of the game you actually want to play. Scarlet & Violet have the solution: the NPC is gone, you can do what you want. If you want to pursue a mad minmax strategy and take on the 8th gym before the first, you absolutely can. There are powerful incentives for doing the story content- gym badges allow you to control high level pokemon, titan badges grant additional mobility for exploring the world- and it feels more cause and effect. I wanted to beat gyms and titans in this game, whereas in PLA doing the main story felt like eating my peas before the game would deign to hand over Braviary. I cannot stress enough, this is IT, this is THE difference, the game is packed with things to do and I actively wanted to do them because of the structure. I was sceptical of an open world pokemon game beforehand, but the game completely won me over.
I don’t want to spend too much time gushing, but one more thing I have to say: the new pokemon are killing it. I had a whole team of brand new Paldea native pokemon going into the endgame and was astonished to find pokemon so exciting that I wanted to bring on a full new team of six. I don’t think I’ve enjoyed a set of pokemon so much conceptually since the Ultra Beasts.
Okay, so that’s all good, what about the bad stuff? The game has more bugs than Viridian Forest. I have multiple times jumped or fallen or exited battle into a crevice in the terrain where Miraidon slides around hopelessly for 5-10 seconds before the game warps me back to the path. Twice the game has crashed and closed out completely, although in both instances I lost no more than 30 seconds of playtime because of the frequent autosaves.
Even if all the bugs are patched, it’s not exactly a good looking game. You will spend a lot of time looking reeeeeal close at an unadorned ground texture, because that’s just what 90% of the world is, and when two kitten-sized pokemon are fighting 12 feet apart from each other, the camera is going to show you a lot of ground. One of the big technical shifts is that battles take place in the same world-space as the overworld exploration rather than a separate scene, replacing carefully choreographed and dressed battle scenes with a freeform camera floating around uneven terrain. One time I legitimately could not figure out physically where my pokemon was in battle because it had spawned underneath the bridge we were fighting on. A lot of the time the pokemon look tiny and plain, a far cry from the 2D era where you may only get two angles on a pokemon but they were designed to show off all the appeal they had. It’s possible to toggle a more cinematic battle camera but it can’t fix everything that’s wrong here. I’m sympathetic to the developers, it’s hard to imagine how to make a world and camera that solve all these problems, but regardless, it’s a challenge they have set for themselves and failed to overcome.
So it’s a flawed gem, perhaps an appropriate metaphor for a game whose gimmick is all about magical crystals. If you’re a longtime pokemon fan and you’re sceptical after the last couple of games I urge you to give this one a shot. You’ll need a little patience, but the good stuff is in there, I promise.
2012
A really interesting title with a ton of ideas packed into a small space. It's sort of a 3D Shmup, I guess? Where your attack and defence use the same resource, and it has a unique control scheme where you use the 3DS analogue and touch screen. I found it a bit hard to follow at times and had to dial down the difficulty when I just couldn't figure out what was hitting me, but it feels pretty great to lock on a massive salvo of missiles and shoot them off all at once.
The setup is the most bombastic anime nonsense you've ever heard. An opening cutscene shows us our heroine mourning her father's passing, before revealing we're on a giant flying biosphere. No more than 10 seconds later, our heroine has been elected President of Neo Japan, and declares that she's going to retake the country, personally, hopping into her mecha and zooming into battle while an aid shouts "MADAM PRESIDENT!" It's great stuff, marred only by an overly horny character design that leaves the President's butt sticking out at the camera half the time. There's no dual-language feature either so I was stuck with English audio which seems to swap out the JPop soundtrack too.
It's pretty short too, and inexpensive. If you have a 3DS and you're reading this before the eshop closes down for good in March 2023 I'd grab this one while you can.
The setup is the most bombastic anime nonsense you've ever heard. An opening cutscene shows us our heroine mourning her father's passing, before revealing we're on a giant flying biosphere. No more than 10 seconds later, our heroine has been elected President of Neo Japan, and declares that she's going to retake the country, personally, hopping into her mecha and zooming into battle while an aid shouts "MADAM PRESIDENT!" It's great stuff, marred only by an overly horny character design that leaves the President's butt sticking out at the camera half the time. There's no dual-language feature either so I was stuck with English audio which seems to swap out the JPop soundtrack too.
It's pretty short too, and inexpensive. If you have a 3DS and you're reading this before the eshop closes down for good in March 2023 I'd grab this one while you can.
2015
Pretty cute and fun puzzle game. I found the pacing a little slow- there are a lot of simple introductory puzzles before you start getting onto the more interesting mechanics and tricky solutions.
Ran out of time before hitting the end, so I might revisit this when I get the chance.
Ran out of time before hitting the end, so I might revisit this when I get the chance.
2012
The 3DS eShop is closing up next March so I’ve been looking for titles to pick up before they disappear for good. Crimson Shroud, an RPG designed by Yasumi Matsuno, the Ivalice guy, places pretty highly on those lists, and the pitch is pretty good: a short JRPG presented as if it’s a tabletop RPG with miniatures for the characters moving between little dioramas while you roll dice to determine success. The whole thing took me about eight hours to complete, tells a complete story with a compelling cast of character and a unique world. But overall my impression of it is still mixed.
Crimson Shroud is the kind of game I like to remember more than I like to play. There are a lot of big headaches that stop it from being fun to play. There are cutscenes and sections of prose that make up a strong story and the atmosphere, which is all very strong, but then they’ll be broken up by half hour sections stuck in brutal, repetitive combat, or poking at a dead end to try and find the way to progress. There are so many ideas that sound great, but are just stuffed into a game already bursting at the seams so that they’re an absolute headache. It all comes to a head in the last couple of boss fights when the difficulty overtook me and I spent two hours in absolute frustration. Multiple times difficult boss fights rewarded in powerful weapons, which did absolutely zero damage in the very next fight because of an elemental rock paper scissors system you had no way of anticipating. Overall it could have been a good deal simpler, and a fair bit easier and been every bit as memorable.
A few of the bits I really liked- some in execution, others only in theory
You have a shared resource of dice which you can commit to any attack or spell to roll for extra accuracy or damage
You earn dice by chaining together combos of elements, so sometimes you’re choosing between the best short term tactic (using super effective fire) or the best long term combo (using a wind buff)
There’s a nice layered mystery where you’re presented with the dangerous idea that this book contains heresy (it was the Devil, not God that gave people magic), and when you actually find the resolution to that it has a nice elaboration- not contradictory, but expanding the truth into something somehow more scandalous
The female lead Frea’s design looks great, even if it is the kind of horny anime design that somehow shows off a huge amount of skin despite wearing a lot of fabric. I like a mage in red, white & black!
Anyway, I’m glad I picked this up before it disappeared. A flawed gem, but a unique one.
Crimson Shroud is the kind of game I like to remember more than I like to play. There are a lot of big headaches that stop it from being fun to play. There are cutscenes and sections of prose that make up a strong story and the atmosphere, which is all very strong, but then they’ll be broken up by half hour sections stuck in brutal, repetitive combat, or poking at a dead end to try and find the way to progress. There are so many ideas that sound great, but are just stuffed into a game already bursting at the seams so that they’re an absolute headache. It all comes to a head in the last couple of boss fights when the difficulty overtook me and I spent two hours in absolute frustration. Multiple times difficult boss fights rewarded in powerful weapons, which did absolutely zero damage in the very next fight because of an elemental rock paper scissors system you had no way of anticipating. Overall it could have been a good deal simpler, and a fair bit easier and been every bit as memorable.
A few of the bits I really liked- some in execution, others only in theory
You have a shared resource of dice which you can commit to any attack or spell to roll for extra accuracy or damage
You earn dice by chaining together combos of elements, so sometimes you’re choosing between the best short term tactic (using super effective fire) or the best long term combo (using a wind buff)
There’s a nice layered mystery where you’re presented with the dangerous idea that this book contains heresy (it was the Devil, not God that gave people magic), and when you actually find the resolution to that it has a nice elaboration- not contradictory, but expanding the truth into something somehow more scandalous
The female lead Frea’s design looks great, even if it is the kind of horny anime design that somehow shows off a huge amount of skin despite wearing a lot of fabric. I like a mage in red, white & black!
Anyway, I’m glad I picked this up before it disappeared. A flawed gem, but a unique one.
2022
Really lovely pixel art aesthetic with monochromatic palettes. It's an interesting, tense loop of diving down to dig then rushing back to defend, although personally I found that the game eventually got a bit too stressful- there's no point where I could sit back and take a well earned break until the session was over. Might give it another look if there's an update, otherwise it's a good weekend's fun.
A delightful short sweet mystery puzzle game, like a more bitesized version of Obra Dinn. You're presented with a series of scenes just after a death and have to look through people's pockets, read anything lying around and generally poke about to figure out what's happened. There's something very satisfying about this kind of mystery where you're presented with dramatic, puzzling events and then have to gradually work your way back to a complete understanding.
2022
This review contains spoilers
Finally, I thought, digging into the first scenarios of Live-A-Live, Asano has made a well paced game. The creators of the Bravely and Octopath series have remade a classic SNES game, a series of episodic self contained RPG adventures, there’s no way this can fall victim to the awful third act pacing that plagues those titles.
I was wrong.
Perhaps the original Live-A-Live is the true root of evil; the inspiration behind the terrible pacing in Asano’s original titles that take influence from it. It’s hard to say. All I’m certain of is that Live-A-Live starts off filled with charm, and finishes a total slog.
Spoiler free thoughts first; the game has seven scenarios you can tackle in any order which each represent a different time period and a different genre. A wuxia adventure, a wild west shootout, an Alien ripoff, etc. The quality varies but generally these are all fun and unique. There’s a really earnest effort to capture the genres in the RPG template in a way that- and I mean this in the best way possible- makes it feel like an anthology of the most ambitious RPG Maker titles.
The wuxia chapter was my favourite by a wide margin. I love the genre- secret techniques, rivalries, emotional breakthroughs, and the scenario has some solid twists which play well with the RPG character progression. The near future is another hit, some pulpy old fashioned shounen with psychics, punks and super robots.
Other chapters are more grating. On paper, the Distant Future chapter should be a hit, a claustrophobic murder mystery, but in execution it’s a drag, playing as a camera on legs scuttling between predetermined cutscenes where the human crew scratch their heads and say “Whose Footprints are these?”. The ninja chapter is just very long, both it and the Prehistoric chapter give you big rambling maps that are frustrating to navigate.
On the whole, the scenarios are excellent, and even the ones I found more frustrating all have fantastic endings where the pumping boss track “Megalomania” kicks in. These are far and away the strongest portion of the game, and the part I’d recommend. They constitute a half to two thirds of the overall playtime of the game and provide short stories and good memories.
Spoilers follow.
After completing the other seven scenarios you unlock the eighth chapter, the middle ages. While the other chapters push into unusual genres for JRPGs, this one plays it straight with a pat, by the numbers save the Princess quest for silent protagonist Oersted. The twist is that Oersted, becomes… dun dun dun The Dark Lord, the villain of the whole game!
It’s not a bad idea, but it fell totally flat for me. On the one hand, Oersted isn’t characterised throughout the chapter: he’s silent. Does he want to marry the Princess? Does he want to be a hero? The intention is that the player will naturally slip into this role as a hyper entitled chosen one, but I disassociated with Oersted the moment I was locked into several of his bad decisions. He stops being a silent protagonist at the end of the scenario when he opens his mouth to start whining loudly about how mean everyone’s been to him ever since he started murdering innocents wholesale. As a villain, he doesn’t hit any of the right notes- he’s not a fun evil-and-loving-it Kefka, nor a sympathetic Magus, nor even a guy-you-love-to-hate Gary Oak.
After Oersted the final-final chapter starts, this is the one that actually unifies all the characters from the different scenarios and brings them together for a final adventure. But the throughline is very weak, I get the impression that the scenarios were written individually and then the final chapter was written after the fact. Ostensibly, Oersted’s magical hatred powers cross the void of space and time, connecting him to villains in the far flung future and ancient past so long as they’re filled with hatred. In practice, this makes little sense. One of the villains is a T-Rex, a wild animal that just happened to try and eat us because we were nearby, but according to Oersted it hated our guts. Oersted can win the scenario and wipe out life on Earth, despite the fact that, you know, more than half the scenarios take place after the middle ages.
Regardless, for the final chapter you pick a protagonist. A highlight for me here is that your chosen successor represents the wuxia scenario, meaning I could play the final scenario as a heroine. There are, otherwise, no female party members.
Whoever you pick, you travel through the small generic fantasy world from chapter 8, recruiting the other characters. This is where the pacing dies- there’s a ton of RPG progression suddenly where everyone can level up, and a dungeon for each of the 7 characters to get their ultimate weapon. It’s a grind that manages to take up more time than any individual chapter beforehand despite having no real story to tell.
The finale has its moments, provided you did recruit all the characters. There’s a cruel twist if you skipped a character, dumping you into a bad end between boss fights. But once you’ve got the lot there’s a good moment where everyone shows up to do their turn and you get to absolutely wallop the boss with every super move you’ve unlocked. There’s no feeling of connection between the characters, but it’s still fun.
I really can’t emphasise enough how much the end of the game dragged for me. I completed the first seven chapters in a few weekends but struggled for months to come back to the finale, and thought over and over again “well at least there’s only a little bit more” before getting stung by hours and hours more play. In the end, I’ll try to remember the positives, because there were a lot of them, and even if the pacing was wonky I still made it to the end, unlike Octopath. I’m certainly glad I played it. If nothing else it deepens my appreciation for Chrono Trigger, a game that built upon Live-A-Live’s legacy to tie multiple time periods together more successfully.
I was wrong.
Perhaps the original Live-A-Live is the true root of evil; the inspiration behind the terrible pacing in Asano’s original titles that take influence from it. It’s hard to say. All I’m certain of is that Live-A-Live starts off filled with charm, and finishes a total slog.
Spoiler free thoughts first; the game has seven scenarios you can tackle in any order which each represent a different time period and a different genre. A wuxia adventure, a wild west shootout, an Alien ripoff, etc. The quality varies but generally these are all fun and unique. There’s a really earnest effort to capture the genres in the RPG template in a way that- and I mean this in the best way possible- makes it feel like an anthology of the most ambitious RPG Maker titles.
The wuxia chapter was my favourite by a wide margin. I love the genre- secret techniques, rivalries, emotional breakthroughs, and the scenario has some solid twists which play well with the RPG character progression. The near future is another hit, some pulpy old fashioned shounen with psychics, punks and super robots.
Other chapters are more grating. On paper, the Distant Future chapter should be a hit, a claustrophobic murder mystery, but in execution it’s a drag, playing as a camera on legs scuttling between predetermined cutscenes where the human crew scratch their heads and say “Whose Footprints are these?”. The ninja chapter is just very long, both it and the Prehistoric chapter give you big rambling maps that are frustrating to navigate.
On the whole, the scenarios are excellent, and even the ones I found more frustrating all have fantastic endings where the pumping boss track “Megalomania” kicks in. These are far and away the strongest portion of the game, and the part I’d recommend. They constitute a half to two thirds of the overall playtime of the game and provide short stories and good memories.
Spoilers follow.
After completing the other seven scenarios you unlock the eighth chapter, the middle ages. While the other chapters push into unusual genres for JRPGs, this one plays it straight with a pat, by the numbers save the Princess quest for silent protagonist Oersted. The twist is that Oersted, becomes… dun dun dun The Dark Lord, the villain of the whole game!
It’s not a bad idea, but it fell totally flat for me. On the one hand, Oersted isn’t characterised throughout the chapter: he’s silent. Does he want to marry the Princess? Does he want to be a hero? The intention is that the player will naturally slip into this role as a hyper entitled chosen one, but I disassociated with Oersted the moment I was locked into several of his bad decisions. He stops being a silent protagonist at the end of the scenario when he opens his mouth to start whining loudly about how mean everyone’s been to him ever since he started murdering innocents wholesale. As a villain, he doesn’t hit any of the right notes- he’s not a fun evil-and-loving-it Kefka, nor a sympathetic Magus, nor even a guy-you-love-to-hate Gary Oak.
After Oersted the final-final chapter starts, this is the one that actually unifies all the characters from the different scenarios and brings them together for a final adventure. But the throughline is very weak, I get the impression that the scenarios were written individually and then the final chapter was written after the fact. Ostensibly, Oersted’s magical hatred powers cross the void of space and time, connecting him to villains in the far flung future and ancient past so long as they’re filled with hatred. In practice, this makes little sense. One of the villains is a T-Rex, a wild animal that just happened to try and eat us because we were nearby, but according to Oersted it hated our guts. Oersted can win the scenario and wipe out life on Earth, despite the fact that, you know, more than half the scenarios take place after the middle ages.
Regardless, for the final chapter you pick a protagonist. A highlight for me here is that your chosen successor represents the wuxia scenario, meaning I could play the final scenario as a heroine. There are, otherwise, no female party members.
Whoever you pick, you travel through the small generic fantasy world from chapter 8, recruiting the other characters. This is where the pacing dies- there’s a ton of RPG progression suddenly where everyone can level up, and a dungeon for each of the 7 characters to get their ultimate weapon. It’s a grind that manages to take up more time than any individual chapter beforehand despite having no real story to tell.
The finale has its moments, provided you did recruit all the characters. There’s a cruel twist if you skipped a character, dumping you into a bad end between boss fights. But once you’ve got the lot there’s a good moment where everyone shows up to do their turn and you get to absolutely wallop the boss with every super move you’ve unlocked. There’s no feeling of connection between the characters, but it’s still fun.
I really can’t emphasise enough how much the end of the game dragged for me. I completed the first seven chapters in a few weekends but struggled for months to come back to the finale, and thought over and over again “well at least there’s only a little bit more” before getting stung by hours and hours more play. In the end, I’ll try to remember the positives, because there were a lot of them, and even if the pacing was wonky I still made it to the end, unlike Octopath. I’m certainly glad I played it. If nothing else it deepens my appreciation for Chrono Trigger, a game that built upon Live-A-Live’s legacy to tie multiple time periods together more successfully.
2022
Played this for one evening with pals- we've been looking for something 6v6 to replace Overwatch when it moves down to 5v5, but this ain't it. The gameplay's just overall clunky, the characters don't feel fun, the maps are so-so. Weirdly, despite the fact you're supposedly 60ft tall giant robots, all the maps take place in like, giant robot indoor obstacle courses or something, so it never feels like you're all that big.
Free to play though, and has a decent spread of Gundam mobile suits so if you're a fan and fancy scooting around as Zaku it's worth a punt.
Free to play though, and has a decent spread of Gundam mobile suits so if you're a fan and fancy scooting around as Zaku it's worth a punt.