FallenGrace
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Monster Hunter's console return is a triumphant success.
My last experience with Monster Hunter was back on the Playstation portable when my friends and I used to gather together with a load of junk food, bring our PSP's along and play four player Monster Hunter for hours. When World was announced, my old Monster Hunter crew all gathered together again even though some of us live in different countries now and it has met all of our expectations. To those new to the series, Monster Hunter is essentially a form of RPG where you and up to three other players take on missions to hunt certain large monsters in maps, think of every level being a boss fight. It's a game that spawned it's own genre with series like Toukiden, God Eater and Soul Sacrifice doing their own take but never managing to be as good.
Monster Hunter World does have a story, you are part of a fleet following Elder Dragons out to the new world, in an unexplored land to try and find out why the migration is happening. To be honest...it's crap, the story exists solely to send you out to different areas and fight various monsters, you can pretty much ignore it, it literally isn't important. However it does get in the way, Monster Hunter is a co-op game, an absolutely fantastic one and the way it is implemented in World is mostly brilliant except for some reason you can't join a friend on a story mission if he/she hasn't seen the cutscenes in it or you haven't beaten it yet. So if you buy it to play it with a friend you could be let down, that was pretty frustrating for us at first. Fortunately the game really gets going after the story is over and how it plays is where it really shines.
Despite being an RPG, from the start of the game until the end your characters stats never change, what does change is your armour pieces (head, chest, arms and legs) and your weapons. These armour sets unlock as you find more monsters, this is because your armour is literally made from parts of their body you carve off after getting a kill and will often have attributes linked to that monster, one that uses lightning may have high lightning defense for example and weapons follow the same pattern. Each armour set has it's own unique skills and their are slots for customizing with extra skills or to level them higher later on in the game so you can design your character literally how you want, I have several load outs with different equipment and skills depending on the monster I'm fighting. Frankly the options in Monster Hunter for fighting are massive, various monsters have different strengths and weaknesses against weapon types, element types, ailment types to think about, the amount of skills is huge not to mention you can take into missions bombs, traps, throwing knives, buff items. Do you want to tank? speed heal? be highly resistant to roars and ground tremors? Experiment, there are tons of armour pieces and sets.
Adding to this 14 different weapons each with their own huge array of weapon trees and different attack styles. They differ from ranged weapons like bows, and guns with a variety of ammos to more up close and personal weapons like swords and axes. Most of these weapons are completely different to use and effective on different monsters. For example the sword and shield is quick, can allow you to use items super fast but does little damage compared with the charge blade that you build up charges by attacking before locking the shield and sword together in a giant axe before doing a massive elemental discharge, but it is super slow and easy to miss. Both weapons are sword and shield variants, I love them both but they are very different.
The maps in Monster Hunter World these battles take place in and the monsters involved are equally impressive. There are only five maps throughout the game but each one comes with plenty to explore with items to find, short cuts to unlock and even some little side missions for fishing, capturing wildlife and gaining little cat companions to help you fight when playing solo. My favorite map is the first, the ancient forest which is very vertical in design winding around a giant tree. It's pretty confusing until you know it but the new ability of having scout flies that will direct you towards your prey once you've found enough tracks makes it fairly straight forward even for new players.
There is a good amount of different monsters to fight (Though I hear a lot less than previous handheld titles) with already one new one added free to the roster already. They range from cool looking flying dragons to a T-rex, a lightning unicorn, and others hard to describe like one that's made of bone and rolls around like a tire. They are really fun to fight with decent attacks and tactics allowing you to trap them, use the environment on them in some cases and my favorite, ride them! Yep, in Monster Hunter World if you jump on them from a higher vantage point you can sometimes ride them stabbing them with your boot knife for minimal damage but as they tire they will fall over giving your team a chance to beat on them.
Presentation wise the game is great. The visuals are wonderful and the game runs pretty smoothly performance wise considering all that is going on at any one time in the game. The game is richly detailed, the art design of the monsters and environments is also brilliant. The game is fully voiced in English for the story and cutscenes and for the most part I enjoyed it, the performances are all good to great with none I hated. Lastly the music is very good, I especially like The Rotten Vale's theme but it's all round excellent.
In conclusion, to stop myself typing about how much I liked it, Monster Hunter World is just really great, while you can probably beat the main story in 40 hours? My total clock time before Iceborne was at 800....
Recommended.
+ Huge amounts of armours, weapon variety, items and skills.
+ The maps and monsters are great.
+ Fantastic graphics with excellent music and good voice acting.
+ Co-op is really good fun...
- But having to beat story missions first was a terrible decision.
- Only five maps.
- Story is terrible.
My last experience with Monster Hunter was back on the Playstation portable when my friends and I used to gather together with a load of junk food, bring our PSP's along and play four player Monster Hunter for hours. When World was announced, my old Monster Hunter crew all gathered together again even though some of us live in different countries now and it has met all of our expectations. To those new to the series, Monster Hunter is essentially a form of RPG where you and up to three other players take on missions to hunt certain large monsters in maps, think of every level being a boss fight. It's a game that spawned it's own genre with series like Toukiden, God Eater and Soul Sacrifice doing their own take but never managing to be as good.
Monster Hunter World does have a story, you are part of a fleet following Elder Dragons out to the new world, in an unexplored land to try and find out why the migration is happening. To be honest...it's crap, the story exists solely to send you out to different areas and fight various monsters, you can pretty much ignore it, it literally isn't important. However it does get in the way, Monster Hunter is a co-op game, an absolutely fantastic one and the way it is implemented in World is mostly brilliant except for some reason you can't join a friend on a story mission if he/she hasn't seen the cutscenes in it or you haven't beaten it yet. So if you buy it to play it with a friend you could be let down, that was pretty frustrating for us at first. Fortunately the game really gets going after the story is over and how it plays is where it really shines.
Despite being an RPG, from the start of the game until the end your characters stats never change, what does change is your armour pieces (head, chest, arms and legs) and your weapons. These armour sets unlock as you find more monsters, this is because your armour is literally made from parts of their body you carve off after getting a kill and will often have attributes linked to that monster, one that uses lightning may have high lightning defense for example and weapons follow the same pattern. Each armour set has it's own unique skills and their are slots for customizing with extra skills or to level them higher later on in the game so you can design your character literally how you want, I have several load outs with different equipment and skills depending on the monster I'm fighting. Frankly the options in Monster Hunter for fighting are massive, various monsters have different strengths and weaknesses against weapon types, element types, ailment types to think about, the amount of skills is huge not to mention you can take into missions bombs, traps, throwing knives, buff items. Do you want to tank? speed heal? be highly resistant to roars and ground tremors? Experiment, there are tons of armour pieces and sets.
Adding to this 14 different weapons each with their own huge array of weapon trees and different attack styles. They differ from ranged weapons like bows, and guns with a variety of ammos to more up close and personal weapons like swords and axes. Most of these weapons are completely different to use and effective on different monsters. For example the sword and shield is quick, can allow you to use items super fast but does little damage compared with the charge blade that you build up charges by attacking before locking the shield and sword together in a giant axe before doing a massive elemental discharge, but it is super slow and easy to miss. Both weapons are sword and shield variants, I love them both but they are very different.
The maps in Monster Hunter World these battles take place in and the monsters involved are equally impressive. There are only five maps throughout the game but each one comes with plenty to explore with items to find, short cuts to unlock and even some little side missions for fishing, capturing wildlife and gaining little cat companions to help you fight when playing solo. My favorite map is the first, the ancient forest which is very vertical in design winding around a giant tree. It's pretty confusing until you know it but the new ability of having scout flies that will direct you towards your prey once you've found enough tracks makes it fairly straight forward even for new players.
There is a good amount of different monsters to fight (Though I hear a lot less than previous handheld titles) with already one new one added free to the roster already. They range from cool looking flying dragons to a T-rex, a lightning unicorn, and others hard to describe like one that's made of bone and rolls around like a tire. They are really fun to fight with decent attacks and tactics allowing you to trap them, use the environment on them in some cases and my favorite, ride them! Yep, in Monster Hunter World if you jump on them from a higher vantage point you can sometimes ride them stabbing them with your boot knife for minimal damage but as they tire they will fall over giving your team a chance to beat on them.
Presentation wise the game is great. The visuals are wonderful and the game runs pretty smoothly performance wise considering all that is going on at any one time in the game. The game is richly detailed, the art design of the monsters and environments is also brilliant. The game is fully voiced in English for the story and cutscenes and for the most part I enjoyed it, the performances are all good to great with none I hated. Lastly the music is very good, I especially like The Rotten Vale's theme but it's all round excellent.
In conclusion, to stop myself typing about how much I liked it, Monster Hunter World is just really great, while you can probably beat the main story in 40 hours? My total clock time before Iceborne was at 800....
Recommended.
+ Huge amounts of armours, weapon variety, items and skills.
+ The maps and monsters are great.
+ Fantastic graphics with excellent music and good voice acting.
+ Co-op is really good fun...
- But having to beat story missions first was a terrible decision.
- Only five maps.
- Story is terrible.
Beautiful and unique but boring and uninspiring to play.
Hellblade is an interesting game and one i'm struggling to actually review. The idea is pretty fascinating and I tilt my hat to the developer Ninja Theory for the attempt. It focuses on a young pict warrior called Senua on a journey to take her husbands head to Helheim to save his soul. Senua however is suffering from psychosis both hearing voices as well as hallucinating which obviously makes her journey a lot more....complicated.
The voices Senua hears are excellent and disconcerting. They come from different directions (I, and the game, recommend earphones for best effect) with completely different tones, some shout warnings while other laugh when Senua gets hurt. I rather liked it and they are really unsettling and really help you get into Senua's head. Unfortunately the way her psychosis is used for the game part of video game doesn't quite work as well as the cinematic part.
The game plays as a fairly linear adventure mixed with puzzles and combat, both of which have fairly big issues. The puzzles are...mostly exactly the same, having a locked door that Senua needs to find a matching shaped rune out of objects in the nearby environment to unlock it by visualizing it. This has you wandering around trying to find the right spot and then angle for items to line up. It's not particularly interesting as puzzles go and there are loads of them with some doors requiring two or three runes to pass. It feels like they thought they needed something to have the player do and tried to tie it in to the mythology of the world but it's not actually fun and would be better off without.
On the combat side things are better but still have big issues, they mostly seem to be foes Senua is hallucinating but are no less dangerous to her because of it as she believes them to be real. There are several enemy types from sword wielding barbarians to axe wielding ones and erm...shield wielding ones. Ok so there aren't that many and you will see them a reasonable amount in the 7-8 hour adventure. During combat Senua can light attack, heavy attack, block, dodge and parry. The camera is honestly...terrible, one on one fights it is fine but once there are multiple enemies in becomes unwieldly to fight and you will get hit in the back. The voices sometimes shout out "behind you" giving warning to block (really neat idea) but they don't always and the enemies often come in waves sometimes spawning behind you for cheap hits. The combat is functional but it's just not really all that great. I feel one on one battles against more unique foes would have been a lot more satisfying. Lastly, Hellblade has a move called focus that allows Senua to slow down time. I found out by accident hitting the wrong button as the game never actually explains this. I had the voices shouting at me during a boss fight to "focus" which came across as insulting, not a tutorial for a newly unlocked ability.
So although the gameplay lacks polish the presentation is polished to high heaven. The graphics are amazing, especially for a small published title. Easily rivaling games like Horizon Zero Dawn or God of War in places. Senua looks especially impressive, her face and clothes are so detailed and the environments are gorgeous with stunning skyboxes and environment design, it really is a looker. The audio design as mentioned earlier is also top notch. The voice acting is perfect to immerse you inside Senua's head with several characters on top of the normal voices Senua hears like flashbacks. The music is also excellent and often melancholy setting the atmosphere.
As mentioned previously, the game is around 7 hours long. It doesn't have much replay value outside of some audio logs found through examining runestones hidden around the environments. but at it's smaller price it's still fairly good value for money considering it's production values I feel.
So to sum up, it's an interesting experiment trying to put the player in the shoes of someone suffering from a mental illness and in that aspect I feel the game really succeeds. It's also an absolute gorgeous looker and sounds superb but it doesn't nail the gameplay aspect of the game. I feel like it doesn't hit it's full potential in some important areas which is a real pity.
+ The voices and attempt to put the player in Senua's shoes are excellent.
+ The presentation is amazing, the game is beautiful.
- The puzzles are a incredibly tedious and repetitive.
- The combat is clunky, boring and repetitive, especially when fighting groups.
Hellblade is an interesting game and one i'm struggling to actually review. The idea is pretty fascinating and I tilt my hat to the developer Ninja Theory for the attempt. It focuses on a young pict warrior called Senua on a journey to take her husbands head to Helheim to save his soul. Senua however is suffering from psychosis both hearing voices as well as hallucinating which obviously makes her journey a lot more....complicated.
The voices Senua hears are excellent and disconcerting. They come from different directions (I, and the game, recommend earphones for best effect) with completely different tones, some shout warnings while other laugh when Senua gets hurt. I rather liked it and they are really unsettling and really help you get into Senua's head. Unfortunately the way her psychosis is used for the game part of video game doesn't quite work as well as the cinematic part.
The game plays as a fairly linear adventure mixed with puzzles and combat, both of which have fairly big issues. The puzzles are...mostly exactly the same, having a locked door that Senua needs to find a matching shaped rune out of objects in the nearby environment to unlock it by visualizing it. This has you wandering around trying to find the right spot and then angle for items to line up. It's not particularly interesting as puzzles go and there are loads of them with some doors requiring two or three runes to pass. It feels like they thought they needed something to have the player do and tried to tie it in to the mythology of the world but it's not actually fun and would be better off without.
On the combat side things are better but still have big issues, they mostly seem to be foes Senua is hallucinating but are no less dangerous to her because of it as she believes them to be real. There are several enemy types from sword wielding barbarians to axe wielding ones and erm...shield wielding ones. Ok so there aren't that many and you will see them a reasonable amount in the 7-8 hour adventure. During combat Senua can light attack, heavy attack, block, dodge and parry. The camera is honestly...terrible, one on one fights it is fine but once there are multiple enemies in becomes unwieldly to fight and you will get hit in the back. The voices sometimes shout out "behind you" giving warning to block (really neat idea) but they don't always and the enemies often come in waves sometimes spawning behind you for cheap hits. The combat is functional but it's just not really all that great. I feel one on one battles against more unique foes would have been a lot more satisfying. Lastly, Hellblade has a move called focus that allows Senua to slow down time. I found out by accident hitting the wrong button as the game never actually explains this. I had the voices shouting at me during a boss fight to "focus" which came across as insulting, not a tutorial for a newly unlocked ability.
So although the gameplay lacks polish the presentation is polished to high heaven. The graphics are amazing, especially for a small published title. Easily rivaling games like Horizon Zero Dawn or God of War in places. Senua looks especially impressive, her face and clothes are so detailed and the environments are gorgeous with stunning skyboxes and environment design, it really is a looker. The audio design as mentioned earlier is also top notch. The voice acting is perfect to immerse you inside Senua's head with several characters on top of the normal voices Senua hears like flashbacks. The music is also excellent and often melancholy setting the atmosphere.
As mentioned previously, the game is around 7 hours long. It doesn't have much replay value outside of some audio logs found through examining runestones hidden around the environments. but at it's smaller price it's still fairly good value for money considering it's production values I feel.
So to sum up, it's an interesting experiment trying to put the player in the shoes of someone suffering from a mental illness and in that aspect I feel the game really succeeds. It's also an absolute gorgeous looker and sounds superb but it doesn't nail the gameplay aspect of the game. I feel like it doesn't hit it's full potential in some important areas which is a real pity.
+ The voices and attempt to put the player in Senua's shoes are excellent.
+ The presentation is amazing, the game is beautiful.
- The puzzles are a incredibly tedious and repetitive.
- The combat is clunky, boring and repetitive, especially when fighting groups.
2019
Amazing remake of a classic Playstation 1 game .
I'm a big Resident Evil fan so this was always going to be huge on my radar and having played through it now multiple times I can say it hit my expectations and more, probably going to be my personal game of the year. A few small complaints aside, Capcom absolutely nailed this remake being both faithful to the original as well as changing enough to keep it fresh for players and it's all around just a quality production I recommend.
The story to Resident Evil 2 follows two characters, Claire Redfield, a college student traveling to Racoon City looking for her older brother Chris and Leon Kennedy a rookie police officer also heading to Racoon City to start his first assignment. Upon their arrival the pair of them discover the city in ruins with a huge zombie outbreak taken over, now they have to survive and try and escape while finding out what caused it all.
It's a horror game through and through and is incredibly tense. The zombies in this game are genuinely scary and a real threat, even one lone zombie can deal a lot of damage if you mess up and killing them is incredibly difficult. Shooting them will put them down after a few bullets to the head but often they will simply get up again and keep coming. You can put them down for good with enough ammo, a lucky headshot (their heads pop like melons, amazingly satisfying when it happens) or more advanced weapons but there is a finite amount of ammo so often it's best to shoot them once in the face of legs to stagger them and run past saving your bullets to clear corridors you will come back to. These lessons can be brutal at first until you adjust to how it plays and I love it for how constantly tense the game leaves you. One enemy in particular is pretty terrifying when it turned up I panicked, and found it so tense I had to stop playing the game for a while to calm down, absolutely brilliant. If you suffer anxiety, this is not the game for you.
The game gives you plenty of upgrades and tricks however to help with these encounters as you explore the locations you are in. At first you have limited slots in which to hold items but you can find belt bags to expand your inventory, knives and grenades to use as defense items when a zombie grabs you to prevent them biting you, boards to nail up windows and stop zombies crawling through, weapon upgrades like expanded magazines and sights hidden in locked safes and lockers you need to find the codes for etc.
Exploring the locales looking for where to go and items to help you survive is just a fantastic experience, the locations are oozing with atmosphere from a police station that was a former art museum, Racoon City's streets, underground labs etc. Each one is just a joy to explore often with new enemies or basic locked door puzzles to solve to progress. The visuals for these locations and the lighting are excellent, the first time I stepped into Racoon Police Department it was really impressive how detailed it was and yet I could clearly identify it from the original game made 20 years earlier. While incredibly faithful in most ways so areas are recognizable, some bits have changed, some enemies are different, the order you travel to rooms or the location they are in are different. Just enough to keep players both on their toes and also to make some of them make more sense. Traveling around the police station often reminded me a little bit of the Dark Souls or Castlevania games the way you unlock paths back to areas you've been before unlocking shortcuts.
The characters are similar the way they are the same but different. They have both had design updates (Claire especially needed it being in jeans and a leather jacket as a biker rather than denim shorts and a lycra thing underneath) though their original costumes are nice unlockable extras. Their dialogue and voice acting are also both really really good, if anything I would have liked far more scenes with both of them which is my first complaint that I don't feel there are enough locations where they interact. It's not really a big issue but would have made the story flow a little better in my mind.
My other small complaint is related to the replay value. The game has two paths depending on who you choose, Route A is the first time you beat it, then an alternative path opens up route B for the opposite character you chose the first time. This in itself is great, it adds a lot of replay value to the game as you start in a different place with items in slightly different locations etc. It also has what seems to be a bit of this is what the other character was doing while you were playing your first run. You even meet up with the other character at the places they meet but on the other side of the fence (figuratively and literally) which is really cool. The problem is the timelines for these don't quite add up, you kill at least one of the same bosses, get to an area far too quick etc. It feels like a missed opportunity to have essentially two different games sharing locations that work together side by side, but it only makes a half effort to actually accomplish this. Route B is still fun with some nice differences but it isn't as satisfying as was hoping.
All that said it still gives four possible paths to play, plus trophy challenges like beating it without using healing items, opening the storage box, getting S ranks for beating it under a certain amount of time of without saving etc. My first playthrough took about eight and a half hours but getting all the trophies and learning the game I could do it in just over two. On top of that there are also several bonus modes, The fourth survivor playing as series legend Hunk fighting his way to a helicopter extraction. If you beat that you unlock Tofu mode, the same but playing as a lump of tofu with just knives, if you beat that you get Tofu's with different weapons. Lastly in a free DLC update there are several what if scenarios where you get to play as Kendo the gun shop owner, The Mayors daughter, another Umbrella soldier and lastly the Sheriff each in their own scenario. There's no dialogue but there are some new enemies to mix it up. The Sheriffs mode fending off waves of enemies was my favorite, and it was hard!
All in all I spent a good 40 hours playing Resident Evil 2 and loved pretty much every minute of it. The game is atmospheric, tense, gorgeous and just generally a high quality produced game. It has a ton of replay value with free DLC and it doesn't matter if you're a fan of the original game or not you can jump in and it's well worth your time doing so.
Highly recommended.
+ Genuinely tense at times, enemies are a real threat.
+ Exploring looking for upgrades and ammo is surprisingly fun.
+ The visuals are fantastic, Claire and Leon's updates are especially good.
+ Great replay value with added modes and free DLC.
- I wish Claire and Leon had more interactions over the course of the game.
- Route B isn't quite the alternate path I was hoping for.
I'm a big Resident Evil fan so this was always going to be huge on my radar and having played through it now multiple times I can say it hit my expectations and more, probably going to be my personal game of the year. A few small complaints aside, Capcom absolutely nailed this remake being both faithful to the original as well as changing enough to keep it fresh for players and it's all around just a quality production I recommend.
The story to Resident Evil 2 follows two characters, Claire Redfield, a college student traveling to Racoon City looking for her older brother Chris and Leon Kennedy a rookie police officer also heading to Racoon City to start his first assignment. Upon their arrival the pair of them discover the city in ruins with a huge zombie outbreak taken over, now they have to survive and try and escape while finding out what caused it all.
It's a horror game through and through and is incredibly tense. The zombies in this game are genuinely scary and a real threat, even one lone zombie can deal a lot of damage if you mess up and killing them is incredibly difficult. Shooting them will put them down after a few bullets to the head but often they will simply get up again and keep coming. You can put them down for good with enough ammo, a lucky headshot (their heads pop like melons, amazingly satisfying when it happens) or more advanced weapons but there is a finite amount of ammo so often it's best to shoot them once in the face of legs to stagger them and run past saving your bullets to clear corridors you will come back to. These lessons can be brutal at first until you adjust to how it plays and I love it for how constantly tense the game leaves you. One enemy in particular is pretty terrifying when it turned up I panicked, and found it so tense I had to stop playing the game for a while to calm down, absolutely brilliant. If you suffer anxiety, this is not the game for you.
The game gives you plenty of upgrades and tricks however to help with these encounters as you explore the locations you are in. At first you have limited slots in which to hold items but you can find belt bags to expand your inventory, knives and grenades to use as defense items when a zombie grabs you to prevent them biting you, boards to nail up windows and stop zombies crawling through, weapon upgrades like expanded magazines and sights hidden in locked safes and lockers you need to find the codes for etc.
Exploring the locales looking for where to go and items to help you survive is just a fantastic experience, the locations are oozing with atmosphere from a police station that was a former art museum, Racoon City's streets, underground labs etc. Each one is just a joy to explore often with new enemies or basic locked door puzzles to solve to progress. The visuals for these locations and the lighting are excellent, the first time I stepped into Racoon Police Department it was really impressive how detailed it was and yet I could clearly identify it from the original game made 20 years earlier. While incredibly faithful in most ways so areas are recognizable, some bits have changed, some enemies are different, the order you travel to rooms or the location they are in are different. Just enough to keep players both on their toes and also to make some of them make more sense. Traveling around the police station often reminded me a little bit of the Dark Souls or Castlevania games the way you unlock paths back to areas you've been before unlocking shortcuts.
The characters are similar the way they are the same but different. They have both had design updates (Claire especially needed it being in jeans and a leather jacket as a biker rather than denim shorts and a lycra thing underneath) though their original costumes are nice unlockable extras. Their dialogue and voice acting are also both really really good, if anything I would have liked far more scenes with both of them which is my first complaint that I don't feel there are enough locations where they interact. It's not really a big issue but would have made the story flow a little better in my mind.
My other small complaint is related to the replay value. The game has two paths depending on who you choose, Route A is the first time you beat it, then an alternative path opens up route B for the opposite character you chose the first time. This in itself is great, it adds a lot of replay value to the game as you start in a different place with items in slightly different locations etc. It also has what seems to be a bit of this is what the other character was doing while you were playing your first run. You even meet up with the other character at the places they meet but on the other side of the fence (figuratively and literally) which is really cool. The problem is the timelines for these don't quite add up, you kill at least one of the same bosses, get to an area far too quick etc. It feels like a missed opportunity to have essentially two different games sharing locations that work together side by side, but it only makes a half effort to actually accomplish this. Route B is still fun with some nice differences but it isn't as satisfying as was hoping.
All that said it still gives four possible paths to play, plus trophy challenges like beating it without using healing items, opening the storage box, getting S ranks for beating it under a certain amount of time of without saving etc. My first playthrough took about eight and a half hours but getting all the trophies and learning the game I could do it in just over two. On top of that there are also several bonus modes, The fourth survivor playing as series legend Hunk fighting his way to a helicopter extraction. If you beat that you unlock Tofu mode, the same but playing as a lump of tofu with just knives, if you beat that you get Tofu's with different weapons. Lastly in a free DLC update there are several what if scenarios where you get to play as Kendo the gun shop owner, The Mayors daughter, another Umbrella soldier and lastly the Sheriff each in their own scenario. There's no dialogue but there are some new enemies to mix it up. The Sheriffs mode fending off waves of enemies was my favorite, and it was hard!
All in all I spent a good 40 hours playing Resident Evil 2 and loved pretty much every minute of it. The game is atmospheric, tense, gorgeous and just generally a high quality produced game. It has a ton of replay value with free DLC and it doesn't matter if you're a fan of the original game or not you can jump in and it's well worth your time doing so.
Highly recommended.
+ Genuinely tense at times, enemies are a real threat.
+ Exploring looking for upgrades and ammo is surprisingly fun.
+ The visuals are fantastic, Claire and Leon's updates are especially good.
+ Great replay value with added modes and free DLC.
- I wish Claire and Leon had more interactions over the course of the game.
- Route B isn't quite the alternate path I was hoping for.
2017
It's fine, but a little dull.
AER is a relaxing adventure puzzle game similar to Rime and Journey in a lot of ways. Unlike those games though AER is missing that special something so that at times rather than relaxing it's just a little boring and directionless though it does have some great moments of beauty here and there.
The basic premise of the game is really good, you play the role of a girl called Auk who is a pilgrim that can transform into a bird allowing her to explore a series of floating islands while traveling from Temple to Temple.
Taking flight and soaring through clouds and low skimming the ground in bird form is great, relaxing and thrilling at the same time though sometimes the landings on small islands can be tricky, especially when I first started the game I had to adjust the camera sensitivity in the options as it was hyper sensitive, I had to literally halve it to make it playable which for such a relaxing game with no enemies I found really strange to be set that high. When not flying Auk is on foot either solving very basic puzzles in Temples or running around the islands looking for spirits or tablets that expand the words lore. The main problem is that lore is insufferably boring. After a while of looking around I realized I just didn't care and moved on with the very short story instead because there is little else to gain from going from island to island. The three temples you visit have some incredibly basic puzzle solving that could have done with more items or objects to give more options. As it is you mostly just activate switches with a lantern and that's it.
The Visuals and audio are mostly good. The graphics are intentionally done in the old 3D polygon style from the early 90's and it's an effective style so the game looks good. Though no voice acting the music is pretty good with some epic scores while flying around or in temples. There was an annoying audio glitch from time to time of a sort of ticking audio pop which while I was playing in headphones was extra annoying.
All in all, the game was fine. I finished it in about 4 hours and it had some nice moments but it's the sort of game in a week I will have completely forgotten about. If you want a game like this pick up Rime, Journey, Flower or Abzu all of which manage the style a lot better in my opinion. A real shame as I'd been interested in AER for a while.
+ Flying around as a bird is pretty cool.
- Starting camera is insanely sensitive, had to tone it way down.
- Lore and story are pretty boring.
- Puzzles have pretty much only one aspect the whole game.
- Audio pop glitch got annoying.
AER is a relaxing adventure puzzle game similar to Rime and Journey in a lot of ways. Unlike those games though AER is missing that special something so that at times rather than relaxing it's just a little boring and directionless though it does have some great moments of beauty here and there.
The basic premise of the game is really good, you play the role of a girl called Auk who is a pilgrim that can transform into a bird allowing her to explore a series of floating islands while traveling from Temple to Temple.
Taking flight and soaring through clouds and low skimming the ground in bird form is great, relaxing and thrilling at the same time though sometimes the landings on small islands can be tricky, especially when I first started the game I had to adjust the camera sensitivity in the options as it was hyper sensitive, I had to literally halve it to make it playable which for such a relaxing game with no enemies I found really strange to be set that high. When not flying Auk is on foot either solving very basic puzzles in Temples or running around the islands looking for spirits or tablets that expand the words lore. The main problem is that lore is insufferably boring. After a while of looking around I realized I just didn't care and moved on with the very short story instead because there is little else to gain from going from island to island. The three temples you visit have some incredibly basic puzzle solving that could have done with more items or objects to give more options. As it is you mostly just activate switches with a lantern and that's it.
The Visuals and audio are mostly good. The graphics are intentionally done in the old 3D polygon style from the early 90's and it's an effective style so the game looks good. Though no voice acting the music is pretty good with some epic scores while flying around or in temples. There was an annoying audio glitch from time to time of a sort of ticking audio pop which while I was playing in headphones was extra annoying.
All in all, the game was fine. I finished it in about 4 hours and it had some nice moments but it's the sort of game in a week I will have completely forgotten about. If you want a game like this pick up Rime, Journey, Flower or Abzu all of which manage the style a lot better in my opinion. A real shame as I'd been interested in AER for a while.
+ Flying around as a bird is pretty cool.
- Starting camera is insanely sensitive, had to tone it way down.
- Lore and story are pretty boring.
- Puzzles have pretty much only one aspect the whole game.
- Audio pop glitch got annoying.
A challenging yet hauntingly beautiful adventure.
I'd seen many people on gaming websites giving praise to Hollow Knight, so when it finally came to the Playstation 4 I had to try it. Starting as a Kickstarter project (people fund to pay for the game getting made based on the idea pitch) Hollow Knight became a smash hit now on multiple platforms which in itself is a feat considering Team Cherry the developer is made up of only two people. The main question though is, does it deserve it? is it good?
No it's not good, it's great! Hollow Knight is a metroidvania in style. For those unaware that's a term mixing Metroid and Castlevania, classic 2D side scrolling games designed around exploration and finding new items and abilities to unlock new paths to continue to progress. The exploration in Hollow Knight is superb. Each area is distinct in design with it's own enemies and challenges yet all work well with each other to form a cohesive world. You will travel through crumbling ruins, old tram stations, overgrown gardens, crystal mines among many other locales each of which has their own place in the world with cryptic clues given from occasional lore, an assortment of odd characters hidden around and visual clues from the level designs themselves. The story in Hollow Knight is not laid out bare before you but instead drip fed to you as you explore piecing together aspects to understand what's going on. To be honest I never fully understood the game from a narrative point of view but I really enjoyed the elements, atmosphere and gameplay behind it all.
As you explore there will be a huge amount of enemies in every area constantly in the way. All of them are pretty distinct from flying lancers, to small knights, giant worms, and everything in between. Combat is pretty challenging throughout, especially the bosses, some of which take multiple attempts and tweaking with your equipment to eventually beat. A few I had to leave and come back once i'd explored more to fight again once stronger. Most of them are because of this, really memorable though learning their moves and patterns. I really respected that the game wasn't just a push over to progress through. Though there are ways to increase your characters health, increase the power of their nail (sword) the biggest factor is the games badge system. Your character can equip a certain amount of these based on their power level which will increase as the game goes on. Each badge is unique and gives a particular bonus to your character, for example one might increase your swords range, another boosting your attack at full health, one gives you a mini shield, others boost your healing charge etc. The combination of these badges can make different builds fitting your play style and in a couple of cases some bosses had me changing up my badge equipment to deal with them and it made all the difference. To see your character on the map you even need to equip a badge so learning each area and balancing what you can equip becomes really important.
Each of the enemies and bosses also looks amazing due to the games both distinct and utterly brilliant art design. The whole game is based on a world of insects with Mantis, flies, Dung Beatles etc. all changed into knights and fallen warriors to fight. The lines are thick and clear cut with a lot of solid colors yet the backgrounds have amazing hues of purples, greens and yellows. It looks simple yet is amazingly detailed, I absolutely love how it looks and the animations are absolutely top notch to boot. Along with looking great the sound effects and music are equally of high quality (Nightmare King Grim's boss theme is especially ace). For a two person team they put most larger developers to shame with the overall production quality on display here.
Exploring everything and fighting through the bosses takes quite a bit of time though technically it isn't a huge game. You could probably beat it if you were pretty good in around 15 hours but Hollow Knight is full of hidden content from whole hidden areas, bosses, badges and easter eggs so you would be missing out if you didn't explore. The PS4 version also comes with all the DLC like The Grimm Troupe and Godmaster which piles on a lot of extra content. All in all exploring everything for every item and getting the platinum trophy took me 50 hours.
My one complaint if I had to choose one is that the Godmaster DLC is a little too hard to actually finish. The final challenge is a boss rush that involves fighting over 40 bosses in a row, every boss in the game including the super hard ones. If you die, there is no check point and you have to start again. That needed toning back especially as it had a full game ending attached to it.
That aside the game is amazing. It's imaginative, fun to explore, looks gorgeous with a lot of content and I can't wait for the already announced sequel, Hollow Knight: Silksong.
+ Exploration is really fun.
+ Combat is tough but satisfying.
+ Badge system is a great way to vary the characters builds.
+ Amazing art design.
+ A lot to find, fight and explore content wise with all DLC included free.
- It may be too challenging in places for some people, one part of the optional DLC is particularly unforgiving to finish.
I'd seen many people on gaming websites giving praise to Hollow Knight, so when it finally came to the Playstation 4 I had to try it. Starting as a Kickstarter project (people fund to pay for the game getting made based on the idea pitch) Hollow Knight became a smash hit now on multiple platforms which in itself is a feat considering Team Cherry the developer is made up of only two people. The main question though is, does it deserve it? is it good?
No it's not good, it's great! Hollow Knight is a metroidvania in style. For those unaware that's a term mixing Metroid and Castlevania, classic 2D side scrolling games designed around exploration and finding new items and abilities to unlock new paths to continue to progress. The exploration in Hollow Knight is superb. Each area is distinct in design with it's own enemies and challenges yet all work well with each other to form a cohesive world. You will travel through crumbling ruins, old tram stations, overgrown gardens, crystal mines among many other locales each of which has their own place in the world with cryptic clues given from occasional lore, an assortment of odd characters hidden around and visual clues from the level designs themselves. The story in Hollow Knight is not laid out bare before you but instead drip fed to you as you explore piecing together aspects to understand what's going on. To be honest I never fully understood the game from a narrative point of view but I really enjoyed the elements, atmosphere and gameplay behind it all.
As you explore there will be a huge amount of enemies in every area constantly in the way. All of them are pretty distinct from flying lancers, to small knights, giant worms, and everything in between. Combat is pretty challenging throughout, especially the bosses, some of which take multiple attempts and tweaking with your equipment to eventually beat. A few I had to leave and come back once i'd explored more to fight again once stronger. Most of them are because of this, really memorable though learning their moves and patterns. I really respected that the game wasn't just a push over to progress through. Though there are ways to increase your characters health, increase the power of their nail (sword) the biggest factor is the games badge system. Your character can equip a certain amount of these based on their power level which will increase as the game goes on. Each badge is unique and gives a particular bonus to your character, for example one might increase your swords range, another boosting your attack at full health, one gives you a mini shield, others boost your healing charge etc. The combination of these badges can make different builds fitting your play style and in a couple of cases some bosses had me changing up my badge equipment to deal with them and it made all the difference. To see your character on the map you even need to equip a badge so learning each area and balancing what you can equip becomes really important.
Each of the enemies and bosses also looks amazing due to the games both distinct and utterly brilliant art design. The whole game is based on a world of insects with Mantis, flies, Dung Beatles etc. all changed into knights and fallen warriors to fight. The lines are thick and clear cut with a lot of solid colors yet the backgrounds have amazing hues of purples, greens and yellows. It looks simple yet is amazingly detailed, I absolutely love how it looks and the animations are absolutely top notch to boot. Along with looking great the sound effects and music are equally of high quality (Nightmare King Grim's boss theme is especially ace). For a two person team they put most larger developers to shame with the overall production quality on display here.
Exploring everything and fighting through the bosses takes quite a bit of time though technically it isn't a huge game. You could probably beat it if you were pretty good in around 15 hours but Hollow Knight is full of hidden content from whole hidden areas, bosses, badges and easter eggs so you would be missing out if you didn't explore. The PS4 version also comes with all the DLC like The Grimm Troupe and Godmaster which piles on a lot of extra content. All in all exploring everything for every item and getting the platinum trophy took me 50 hours.
My one complaint if I had to choose one is that the Godmaster DLC is a little too hard to actually finish. The final challenge is a boss rush that involves fighting over 40 bosses in a row, every boss in the game including the super hard ones. If you die, there is no check point and you have to start again. That needed toning back especially as it had a full game ending attached to it.
That aside the game is amazing. It's imaginative, fun to explore, looks gorgeous with a lot of content and I can't wait for the already announced sequel, Hollow Knight: Silksong.
+ Exploration is really fun.
+ Combat is tough but satisfying.
+ Badge system is a great way to vary the characters builds.
+ Amazing art design.
+ A lot to find, fight and explore content wise with all DLC included free.
- It may be too challenging in places for some people, one part of the optional DLC is particularly unforgiving to finish.
Charming, albeit flawed little RPG.
I really liked the first Ni No Kuni, it took some of the themes and aesthetics from the famous Japanese animation studio Studio Ghibli and merged it with Japanese Role playing games to create a beautiful and interesting experience. The sequel follows that trend exactly, creating a wholesome gorgeous game though it also brings the same flaws with it.
The story follows King Evan Pettiwhisker Tildrum, a young man whose father has just died and whose kingdom is being overthrown in a coup. Fortunately for him a man from another world named Roland has appeared before him saving his life and helping him escape. At the edge of despair Evan doesn't know what to do but with Roland's advice decides to create a brand new Kingdom, a place where everyone is welcome regardless of race or background. Evan is an idealist who wants to create a world of peace without war and with Roland's help may even manage it...
The story isn't the deepest thing in the world but actually has some really nice moments and the ending I especially liked as certain things tie in really well together. A lot of the game involves traveling the world visiting different kingdoms and attempting to get them to sign your peace accord, while recruiting people to live in your kingdom on the way. this is one of the aspects of the game I really loved, kingdom building. Evan's kingdom of Evermore needs residents to thrive, most of which you get through quests as the game progresses allowing for you to recruit them. Each resident has different skills and can be put to work in your kingdom researching new abilities, producing materials, and some of them can even join King Evan's army. Your kingdom produces it's own currency allowing you to build new structures and upgrade them over time such as a weapons shop, mine, inn, magic research lab etc. I spent far too much time upgrading and building everything as well as recruiting the 100+ residents available. It was really addictive.
While traveling from Kingdom to Kingdom Evan and his party will get in combat with a variety of monsters and enemies and this is where the game falls down a bit. Combat is frankly, boring. It's essentially an action role playing game (rpg) where you control one of three party members being able to swap between them on the fly. Each character can block, attack, use a range attack or up to 4 equipable skills. There is no real strategy involved except for gaining magic to use skills, most of which are pretty underwhelming or using higgledies. These are little creatures Evan can equip that run around the battlefield using passive skills and occasionally ones you have to manually trigger. They do very little damage and most of their skills don't seems especially useful outside of healing. They simply clog up the battlefield. Combat was kind of Ni No Kuni's weakness and it feels the same in the second game only they've changed it.
Dungeons themselves are equally unexciting. Half of them are just copy paste procedurally generated looking corridors of either the same looking forest, temple or cave which is a little disappointing considering how gorgeous the art, visuals and animation are. All the characters really look like they've jumped out of an anime into the game. the world is extremely colorful and the different cities and character races are fantastic. Which brings me to another point, you get 6 characters in your party, in a world with cat, rat, and dog people as well as robots and merfolk, the cast you get is.....six white humans. Two of which are so forgettable and bland it's not even funny. Why couldn't we recruit a cool cat warrior? A Merfolk Magician or something? With those options it feels so uninspired.
On the audio side of things the music is very good, especially the main theme which really stands out. I also really love the voice acting, it sounds like the cast from a Studio Ghibli animation really nailing the atmosphere. The problem is, there isn't enough of it. Only a few key cut scenes are fully acted, most of the time you get a "hello" or "Knickers" one of the characters might say to set the tone for the dialogue. Some of the text boxes are also tiny at times making it a pain to read.
All in all despite some issues I really did enjoy this game a lot. I played it for about 80 hours getting absorbed in the gorgeous atmosphere of the world. It's incredibly charming but it falls down in a few key areas that make it merely a good game rather than a great one. Still worth it if you were a fan of the first game or want a relaxing Japanese Role Playing Game to play.
+ Kingdom managing is surprisingly addictive.
+ Enjoyable quest system.
+ Art and visuals are gorgeous.
+ Atmosphere is really charming.
+ Great voice acting.
- Combat is kind of boring.
- Dungeons are mostly bland corridors.
- Main cast takes no risks, just 6 dull humans.
- Not enough voice acting, text is too small.
I really liked the first Ni No Kuni, it took some of the themes and aesthetics from the famous Japanese animation studio Studio Ghibli and merged it with Japanese Role playing games to create a beautiful and interesting experience. The sequel follows that trend exactly, creating a wholesome gorgeous game though it also brings the same flaws with it.
The story follows King Evan Pettiwhisker Tildrum, a young man whose father has just died and whose kingdom is being overthrown in a coup. Fortunately for him a man from another world named Roland has appeared before him saving his life and helping him escape. At the edge of despair Evan doesn't know what to do but with Roland's advice decides to create a brand new Kingdom, a place where everyone is welcome regardless of race or background. Evan is an idealist who wants to create a world of peace without war and with Roland's help may even manage it...
The story isn't the deepest thing in the world but actually has some really nice moments and the ending I especially liked as certain things tie in really well together. A lot of the game involves traveling the world visiting different kingdoms and attempting to get them to sign your peace accord, while recruiting people to live in your kingdom on the way. this is one of the aspects of the game I really loved, kingdom building. Evan's kingdom of Evermore needs residents to thrive, most of which you get through quests as the game progresses allowing for you to recruit them. Each resident has different skills and can be put to work in your kingdom researching new abilities, producing materials, and some of them can even join King Evan's army. Your kingdom produces it's own currency allowing you to build new structures and upgrade them over time such as a weapons shop, mine, inn, magic research lab etc. I spent far too much time upgrading and building everything as well as recruiting the 100+ residents available. It was really addictive.
While traveling from Kingdom to Kingdom Evan and his party will get in combat with a variety of monsters and enemies and this is where the game falls down a bit. Combat is frankly, boring. It's essentially an action role playing game (rpg) where you control one of three party members being able to swap between them on the fly. Each character can block, attack, use a range attack or up to 4 equipable skills. There is no real strategy involved except for gaining magic to use skills, most of which are pretty underwhelming or using higgledies. These are little creatures Evan can equip that run around the battlefield using passive skills and occasionally ones you have to manually trigger. They do very little damage and most of their skills don't seems especially useful outside of healing. They simply clog up the battlefield. Combat was kind of Ni No Kuni's weakness and it feels the same in the second game only they've changed it.
Dungeons themselves are equally unexciting. Half of them are just copy paste procedurally generated looking corridors of either the same looking forest, temple or cave which is a little disappointing considering how gorgeous the art, visuals and animation are. All the characters really look like they've jumped out of an anime into the game. the world is extremely colorful and the different cities and character races are fantastic. Which brings me to another point, you get 6 characters in your party, in a world with cat, rat, and dog people as well as robots and merfolk, the cast you get is.....six white humans. Two of which are so forgettable and bland it's not even funny. Why couldn't we recruit a cool cat warrior? A Merfolk Magician or something? With those options it feels so uninspired.
On the audio side of things the music is very good, especially the main theme which really stands out. I also really love the voice acting, it sounds like the cast from a Studio Ghibli animation really nailing the atmosphere. The problem is, there isn't enough of it. Only a few key cut scenes are fully acted, most of the time you get a "hello" or "Knickers" one of the characters might say to set the tone for the dialogue. Some of the text boxes are also tiny at times making it a pain to read.
All in all despite some issues I really did enjoy this game a lot. I played it for about 80 hours getting absorbed in the gorgeous atmosphere of the world. It's incredibly charming but it falls down in a few key areas that make it merely a good game rather than a great one. Still worth it if you were a fan of the first game or want a relaxing Japanese Role Playing Game to play.
+ Kingdom managing is surprisingly addictive.
+ Enjoyable quest system.
+ Art and visuals are gorgeous.
+ Atmosphere is really charming.
+ Great voice acting.
- Combat is kind of boring.
- Dungeons are mostly bland corridors.
- Main cast takes no risks, just 6 dull humans.
- Not enough voice acting, text is too small.
2018
Interesting puzzle adventure game that tries some unique ideas.
I had been interested in this game ever since I saw the first trailer for it, a narrative heavy episodic historic puzzle adventure game? That presses my buttons and for the most part The Council is absolutely a success in what it aims to accomplish though there is the odd stumble along the way.
The year is 1793 and our hero Louis de Richet is looking for his missing mother, the founder of the Golden Order, a group dedicated to studying the occult. Louis receives a letter from the enigmatic Lord Mortimer who informs Louis about his mother having gone missing when attending a meeting at his mansion on a private island. Upon arriving Louis finds himself in such esteemed company as George Washington, Napoleon Bonaparte, as well as dukes and duchesses of various nations. Just who is Lord Mortimer and why has his mother gone missing?
The game is set almost entirely within Lord Mortimer's mansion as Louis explores and interacts with the various guests looking for clues and trying to find out what is going on. There are a lot of dialogue, puzzles and secrets to find as you would expect with this kind of title though The Council does try some unique mechanics to separate itself from it's contemporaries. As Louis gains experience between chapters as well as certain choices or items he can level up various stats in several skill trees much like an RPG. These trees fall into three main categories (Detective, Occultist and Diplomat) each of which has it's own branching skills that have three levels of upgrades. These skills all have opportunities to come up and be used in conversation allowing Louis to manipulate, convince or misdirect conversations to progress the story. This will be entirely dependent on what skills you have invested in as to what options you can take during dialogue so some you will not be able to use at all at first but as you level Louis up more, there will be a greater selection.
It isn't quite so simple though as each skill has a cost to use, and Louis has a limited amount of power points for this (though items found throughout the mansion can replenish them). Each skill costs a different amount of points depending on who you talk to and your level in that skill, the higher your level, the cheaper it is (or even free) to use. Additional to that each of the characters in the mansion are unique individuals with their own strengths and weaknesses making them vulnerable or immune to certain types of manipulation Louis will have to discover as he talks to them so there is a degree of strategy to choosing these dialogue options depending on who you talk to and how many points you have to spend.
When you aren't talking to characters you are exploring the mansion looking for consumable items that replenish power points, show vulnerabilities, give a free skill usage and solving puzzles to progress the story. The puzzles are of varying quality for me, some I rather enjoyed that required a bit of thought and exploring every inch of an area to pass while others were an absolute slog going through menus reading passages from bible quotes that feel cumbersome and boring. Most are of the fun variety though with perhaps three that were a real chore across all five episodes.
On the presentation and audio side The Council is pretty good considering it's a fairly low budget title. The art design is top notch, I love the way most the characters look from stylistic choices to their period clothing and the mansion is pretty gorgeous and surprisingly detailed to boot. It does have some slight performance issues though like when Louis runs there are frame hiccups and stuttering at times which considering he isn't moving very fast and the areas are small is a surprise. The characters during dialogue also have a tendency to lack any real facial animations and the eyes especially of Duchess Emily Hillsborough look completely dead like a doll during conversations or aren't looking in the right place killing the immersion a bit. On the audio front the music is pretty good where there is any and there are some good sound effects of creaking and settling wood of an old mansion as Louis travels around. The voice acting is a little bit more hit and miss, not so much the actors themselves, I think most the voices fit the characters but more some of the performances at times especially when things are getting heated are a little flat but overall they are pretty good.
I would like to take this moment to talk about the storyline which I actually really enjoyed, the dialogue doesn't always flow completely smoothly but the different characters are all interesting to interact with and the story takes some twists especially near the end I never saw coming, the ending was a real let down however but I'm hoping a sequel would expand upon where they left off. The game lasts about 10-12 hours depending on how much you explore every chapter and how long some of the puzzles take, for the £20 I paid originally I'd say that's pretty good value for money for the entertainment I had.
All in all, The council is a great little game that tries some interesting new things in an established genre. It has great art design, interesting characters and story. It doesn't always nail everything it tries to do perfectly but it's a fun title all the same I recommend.
+ RPG dialogue system is a unique implementation.
+ Great art design and nice visuals.
+ Excellent setting and character variety.
+ Story has some great moments.
- A couple of puzzles are an absolute chore to go through.
- Some doll like expressions and frame hiccups while running.
- Ending was a bit of a let down.
I had been interested in this game ever since I saw the first trailer for it, a narrative heavy episodic historic puzzle adventure game? That presses my buttons and for the most part The Council is absolutely a success in what it aims to accomplish though there is the odd stumble along the way.
The year is 1793 and our hero Louis de Richet is looking for his missing mother, the founder of the Golden Order, a group dedicated to studying the occult. Louis receives a letter from the enigmatic Lord Mortimer who informs Louis about his mother having gone missing when attending a meeting at his mansion on a private island. Upon arriving Louis finds himself in such esteemed company as George Washington, Napoleon Bonaparte, as well as dukes and duchesses of various nations. Just who is Lord Mortimer and why has his mother gone missing?
The game is set almost entirely within Lord Mortimer's mansion as Louis explores and interacts with the various guests looking for clues and trying to find out what is going on. There are a lot of dialogue, puzzles and secrets to find as you would expect with this kind of title though The Council does try some unique mechanics to separate itself from it's contemporaries. As Louis gains experience between chapters as well as certain choices or items he can level up various stats in several skill trees much like an RPG. These trees fall into three main categories (Detective, Occultist and Diplomat) each of which has it's own branching skills that have three levels of upgrades. These skills all have opportunities to come up and be used in conversation allowing Louis to manipulate, convince or misdirect conversations to progress the story. This will be entirely dependent on what skills you have invested in as to what options you can take during dialogue so some you will not be able to use at all at first but as you level Louis up more, there will be a greater selection.
It isn't quite so simple though as each skill has a cost to use, and Louis has a limited amount of power points for this (though items found throughout the mansion can replenish them). Each skill costs a different amount of points depending on who you talk to and your level in that skill, the higher your level, the cheaper it is (or even free) to use. Additional to that each of the characters in the mansion are unique individuals with their own strengths and weaknesses making them vulnerable or immune to certain types of manipulation Louis will have to discover as he talks to them so there is a degree of strategy to choosing these dialogue options depending on who you talk to and how many points you have to spend.
When you aren't talking to characters you are exploring the mansion looking for consumable items that replenish power points, show vulnerabilities, give a free skill usage and solving puzzles to progress the story. The puzzles are of varying quality for me, some I rather enjoyed that required a bit of thought and exploring every inch of an area to pass while others were an absolute slog going through menus reading passages from bible quotes that feel cumbersome and boring. Most are of the fun variety though with perhaps three that were a real chore across all five episodes.
On the presentation and audio side The Council is pretty good considering it's a fairly low budget title. The art design is top notch, I love the way most the characters look from stylistic choices to their period clothing and the mansion is pretty gorgeous and surprisingly detailed to boot. It does have some slight performance issues though like when Louis runs there are frame hiccups and stuttering at times which considering he isn't moving very fast and the areas are small is a surprise. The characters during dialogue also have a tendency to lack any real facial animations and the eyes especially of Duchess Emily Hillsborough look completely dead like a doll during conversations or aren't looking in the right place killing the immersion a bit. On the audio front the music is pretty good where there is any and there are some good sound effects of creaking and settling wood of an old mansion as Louis travels around. The voice acting is a little bit more hit and miss, not so much the actors themselves, I think most the voices fit the characters but more some of the performances at times especially when things are getting heated are a little flat but overall they are pretty good.
I would like to take this moment to talk about the storyline which I actually really enjoyed, the dialogue doesn't always flow completely smoothly but the different characters are all interesting to interact with and the story takes some twists especially near the end I never saw coming, the ending was a real let down however but I'm hoping a sequel would expand upon where they left off. The game lasts about 10-12 hours depending on how much you explore every chapter and how long some of the puzzles take, for the £20 I paid originally I'd say that's pretty good value for money for the entertainment I had.
All in all, The council is a great little game that tries some interesting new things in an established genre. It has great art design, interesting characters and story. It doesn't always nail everything it tries to do perfectly but it's a fun title all the same I recommend.
+ RPG dialogue system is a unique implementation.
+ Great art design and nice visuals.
+ Excellent setting and character variety.
+ Story has some great moments.
- A couple of puzzles are an absolute chore to go through.
- Some doll like expressions and frame hiccups while running.
- Ending was a bit of a let down.
Corridor Simulator VII is terribly inconsistent.
Where to start with this game? it's a hard one to review because while I don't completely hate it, I don't remotely like it either. It's a mix of things that don't really work together leaving a bit of a flat experience for me if you look past the Final Fantasy VII aesthetic and nostalgia involved in it's creation.
For those unaware Final Fantasy VII remake is, obviously a remake of Final Fantasy VII, originally a Playstation 1 game released in 1997. I say Remake, it only actually covers the part of the original game set in Midgar which was only a few hours but has been dragged out into a 30-40 hour experience. It is being sold episodic and while I don't have a problem with this as a principal. I do have a problem with it in execution because so much of the game is inconsistent.
The game is incredibly linear, I'm not talking about story, I have no problem with that, i'm talking about level design. It is awful. Awful! Past the first chapter which was the game highlight for me it's just incredibly narrow corridors leading from one place to the next with very little to explore or do. These corridors are also filled with slow forced walking sections or narrow gaps Cloud has to slowly shimmy through like he's in Uncharted or Tomb raider destroying the pacing completely. The few branching paths you meet you are often railroaded past "this way Cloud!" without being allowed to explore. These few side paths are often just corridors to arena rooms anyway for obvious later side quests.
Speaking of which, Side quests! Cool right? A chance to see more of Midgar and meet cool characters? wrong. These are terrible. There are 20 plus in the game and every. Single. One. is. boring. Meet a forgettable character, have mundane dialogue, backtrack through a narrow corridor to above mentioned obvious side quest area, kill monster variant, come back. Repeat. there is no soul to them at all, they feel thrown in to extend the game length, no more, no less. while I understand a lot of RPGs use this kind of formula they might at least be funny or have memorable characters, these all just feel bland like created by committee or for an mmo.
Fighting the above mentioned monsters is also a let down for me. I love action RPGS, I love turn based RPGs, I dislike whatever this is. It's a jack of both and master of none. You have three party members to swap between on the fly, each can attack, block, dodge, use a variety of skills and magic and you can pause the game to select abilities and order characters to use moves. Sounds great? wrong.
The dodge is useless. It has no invincibility frames so doing a last minute well timed dodge like most action games is a waste of time, you'll get hit anyway and can only use it for slow obvious attacks. Block lessens damage but you take a huge amount anyway and you can't cancel out of attacks to block so if you're committed you're taking huge damage. the game seems designed to make sure you're taking damage.
The AI is just intentionally bad. Your team mates can't do anything on their own but some basic attacking occasionally and sit like lemmings most of the time. Square Enix solved this themselves years ago with the gambit system on Playstation 2 yet have weirdly regressed. Enemy AI just swarms your controlled character forcing you to constantly swap characters for breathing room. All I want to do is play as Tifa but I can't do that to use the combat effectively. She is also the only fun character to use in combat (Barrett especially is so boring) Don't even get me started on the stagger system where enemies take almost no damage unless you assess them and use the right magic on them. Not got those equipped? a boss fight can take like 40 minutes unless you reload your game. It gives you options on what you want to use, then often forces you another way anyway. Throw in how useless and limited summons are, (they may as well not be in the game) and how terrible the camera often is keeping track, especially in narrow confines and flying enemies and the combat is just disappointing :(
I really dislike it and yet I can see where it could have been fantastically fun but it feels like they hamstrung themselves and the whole game feels like that. Expanded story could have been wonderful but it's often cringey or bland. Bigger Midgar would be great, but it's a linear corridor simulator. Action combat could be exciting but it's instead got shoe horned in mechanics that slow it all down and leave it in a genre limbo.
This brings me to the visuals. This game is gorgeous, the character models look amazing, better than the Advent Children CG movie and Chapter 1 is also stunning for detailed areas, brickwork and textures. So why do some other parts look so awful? there seems to be a texture issue especially in Chapters 3 and 8 but can happen any time where the walls, junk or posters are so blurry sections of it look like a Playstation 2 background. For a game that's so linear and small in level scope that shouldn't be happening. See what I mean? Inconsistent.
Lastly the ending is absolute garbage. A lot of the added content is appalling or cringe worthy but the ending just felt like they wanted to make Advent Children 2 rather than a FFVII remake and Barrett is just an awful stereotype the whole way through.
Overall I'm aware i'm probably in the minority but I just don't like it that much. By chapter 14 I dropped the difficulty down to easy, not because it was hard, it's not, it's just tedious. Easy at least allowed me to combo in as Tifa and made that more fun to see it through to the end. I'm glad I played it and saw it through to the end but it just wasn't the game I wanted I guess, it felt like Final Fantasy XIII crossed with Kingdom Hearts and that is not a sentence I ever want to write again. I have no interest in playing this again or the next part.
+ Expanded character development about Avalanche is a (mostly) welcome addition.
+ Tifa is at least semi fun in combat when you can use her.
+ The nostalgia of playing a new FFVII game is great, especially when some of the iconic music fires up.
+ The game is gorgeous...
- .....except when it isn't texture wise.
- Narrow corridor, forced walking, crevice crawling moments are horrendous.
- Side quests are laughably dull.
- Combat is no fun. Intentionally road blocks any fun you could have, camera is terrible, summons are useless, stagger is a chore.
- New content is just padding. Ending to the game is terrible.
- Roche.
Where to start with this game? it's a hard one to review because while I don't completely hate it, I don't remotely like it either. It's a mix of things that don't really work together leaving a bit of a flat experience for me if you look past the Final Fantasy VII aesthetic and nostalgia involved in it's creation.
For those unaware Final Fantasy VII remake is, obviously a remake of Final Fantasy VII, originally a Playstation 1 game released in 1997. I say Remake, it only actually covers the part of the original game set in Midgar which was only a few hours but has been dragged out into a 30-40 hour experience. It is being sold episodic and while I don't have a problem with this as a principal. I do have a problem with it in execution because so much of the game is inconsistent.
The game is incredibly linear, I'm not talking about story, I have no problem with that, i'm talking about level design. It is awful. Awful! Past the first chapter which was the game highlight for me it's just incredibly narrow corridors leading from one place to the next with very little to explore or do. These corridors are also filled with slow forced walking sections or narrow gaps Cloud has to slowly shimmy through like he's in Uncharted or Tomb raider destroying the pacing completely. The few branching paths you meet you are often railroaded past "this way Cloud!" without being allowed to explore. These few side paths are often just corridors to arena rooms anyway for obvious later side quests.
Speaking of which, Side quests! Cool right? A chance to see more of Midgar and meet cool characters? wrong. These are terrible. There are 20 plus in the game and every. Single. One. is. boring. Meet a forgettable character, have mundane dialogue, backtrack through a narrow corridor to above mentioned obvious side quest area, kill monster variant, come back. Repeat. there is no soul to them at all, they feel thrown in to extend the game length, no more, no less. while I understand a lot of RPGs use this kind of formula they might at least be funny or have memorable characters, these all just feel bland like created by committee or for an mmo.
Fighting the above mentioned monsters is also a let down for me. I love action RPGS, I love turn based RPGs, I dislike whatever this is. It's a jack of both and master of none. You have three party members to swap between on the fly, each can attack, block, dodge, use a variety of skills and magic and you can pause the game to select abilities and order characters to use moves. Sounds great? wrong.
The dodge is useless. It has no invincibility frames so doing a last minute well timed dodge like most action games is a waste of time, you'll get hit anyway and can only use it for slow obvious attacks. Block lessens damage but you take a huge amount anyway and you can't cancel out of attacks to block so if you're committed you're taking huge damage. the game seems designed to make sure you're taking damage.
The AI is just intentionally bad. Your team mates can't do anything on their own but some basic attacking occasionally and sit like lemmings most of the time. Square Enix solved this themselves years ago with the gambit system on Playstation 2 yet have weirdly regressed. Enemy AI just swarms your controlled character forcing you to constantly swap characters for breathing room. All I want to do is play as Tifa but I can't do that to use the combat effectively. She is also the only fun character to use in combat (Barrett especially is so boring) Don't even get me started on the stagger system where enemies take almost no damage unless you assess them and use the right magic on them. Not got those equipped? a boss fight can take like 40 minutes unless you reload your game. It gives you options on what you want to use, then often forces you another way anyway. Throw in how useless and limited summons are, (they may as well not be in the game) and how terrible the camera often is keeping track, especially in narrow confines and flying enemies and the combat is just disappointing :(
I really dislike it and yet I can see where it could have been fantastically fun but it feels like they hamstrung themselves and the whole game feels like that. Expanded story could have been wonderful but it's often cringey or bland. Bigger Midgar would be great, but it's a linear corridor simulator. Action combat could be exciting but it's instead got shoe horned in mechanics that slow it all down and leave it in a genre limbo.
This brings me to the visuals. This game is gorgeous, the character models look amazing, better than the Advent Children CG movie and Chapter 1 is also stunning for detailed areas, brickwork and textures. So why do some other parts look so awful? there seems to be a texture issue especially in Chapters 3 and 8 but can happen any time where the walls, junk or posters are so blurry sections of it look like a Playstation 2 background. For a game that's so linear and small in level scope that shouldn't be happening. See what I mean? Inconsistent.
Lastly the ending is absolute garbage. A lot of the added content is appalling or cringe worthy but the ending just felt like they wanted to make Advent Children 2 rather than a FFVII remake and Barrett is just an awful stereotype the whole way through.
Overall I'm aware i'm probably in the minority but I just don't like it that much. By chapter 14 I dropped the difficulty down to easy, not because it was hard, it's not, it's just tedious. Easy at least allowed me to combo in as Tifa and made that more fun to see it through to the end. I'm glad I played it and saw it through to the end but it just wasn't the game I wanted I guess, it felt like Final Fantasy XIII crossed with Kingdom Hearts and that is not a sentence I ever want to write again. I have no interest in playing this again or the next part.
+ Expanded character development about Avalanche is a (mostly) welcome addition.
+ Tifa is at least semi fun in combat when you can use her.
+ The nostalgia of playing a new FFVII game is great, especially when some of the iconic music fires up.
+ The game is gorgeous...
- .....except when it isn't texture wise.
- Narrow corridor, forced walking, crevice crawling moments are horrendous.
- Side quests are laughably dull.
- Combat is no fun. Intentionally road blocks any fun you could have, camera is terrible, summons are useless, stagger is a chore.
- New content is just padding. Ending to the game is terrible.
- Roche.
2020
Gorgeous, fun remake of Resident Evil 3 but just too short.
For those unaware this is a remake of the original Resident Evil 3 on the PlayStation 1 back in the late 90's. I don't have a huge amount of Nostalgia for it as I only played it a little bit of the original so don't have a lot to compare, but what I can tell you is it's a gorgeous, fun, action horror title that is worth picking up if you're a fan of the series, but probably not at full price given the amount of content.
The game is set after the original Resident Evil in Raccoon City and roughly at a parallel time of last years Resident Evil 2 remake. While you can play this stand alone no problem without either of those titles I really recommend you do play them as A) they are amazing, and B) there are story beats that you would miss without them.
The game follows Resident Evil's protagonist Jill Valentine, she stayed in Raccoon City investigating the Umbrella Corporation and was planning on escaping the city when a zombie outbreak hit and she started being chased by a giant seemingly indestructible monster intent on killing her. Jill is one of the stand out points of the game. Her character has been updated with a better costume and her tough personality and interactions with the other characters I loved.
As Jill tries to escape the city there will of course be a lot of exploration and combat. The game is pretty linear with only a few basic locks and very rare puzzle to progress. Jill is played in a third person view and will have to scrounge for different weapons and ammo as she explores. The zombies and monsters are tough so ammo shouldn't be wasted where possible, placing accurate shots, choosing the right weapon, using explosive barrels or just running by enemies that you can safely avoid are all valid strategies though there is enough to kill everything should you choose.
The game plays very similarly to the recently released Resident Evil 2 except Jill now has a dodge. If timed right, almost like a parry, at the very last second Jill's dodge will enable a brief slow motion period allowing you to aim and take a shot after rolling. It looks great and at higher difficulties in certain places it's almost necessary.
Presentation wise resident Evil 3 is simply gorgeous. Capcom the developer use a technique called Photogrammetry. This has them scanning and taking photos of people and objects from all angles to get accurate representations in the game resulting in some incredibly detailed visuals. The cutscenes of the characters in particular are really good, as each character is based on a real life model. Sound wise the game knocks it out the park too with some great atmospheric music and the voice acting is perfect. We have come a long way since the B-movie voice acting of the original Playstation games, that's for sure.
Sounds almost perfect right? Why only four stars? It just feels so very short. My first play-through took me 6 hours and even then I was trying to find everything and looking at all the graphical details I could as I like to really look at my game worlds. One of my friends completed it in 4 hours first time. This in itself wouldn't be a problem if it had something else to give it replay value at that price but it just doesn't. You can unlock a store to buy infinite weapons and there are harder difficulties which add a little bit of fun but with these weapons I sped through in 2 hours, and even once at an hour and 15 minutes (I was speed running for an S rank but still).
The original game came with a mercenaries mode where you run through levels rescuing people collecting ammo and weapons as I recall, this version doesn't but comes with a separate online multiplayer with it's own trophy list I suspect was a separate game originally but got bundled in, called Resistance. Not going to lie, I didn't even try it, didn't care, wasn't interested as that's not why I buy Resident Evil games so your mileage may vary there.
All in all I had a great time. I beat it four times in a couple of days and got the platinum trophy. It's definitely a quality experience I recommend, just not at £45 for the amount of content. Grab it when it's more like £20 as that's probably a better estimate.
+ Jill is great.
+ Gameplay and the dodge mechanic are really fun.
+ Stunning visuals and great voice acting.
+ Good pacing, nice tie ins to Resident Evil 2.
- Game is short, lacking replay value or extra modes unless you're into tacked on multiplayer.
For those unaware this is a remake of the original Resident Evil 3 on the PlayStation 1 back in the late 90's. I don't have a huge amount of Nostalgia for it as I only played it a little bit of the original so don't have a lot to compare, but what I can tell you is it's a gorgeous, fun, action horror title that is worth picking up if you're a fan of the series, but probably not at full price given the amount of content.
The game is set after the original Resident Evil in Raccoon City and roughly at a parallel time of last years Resident Evil 2 remake. While you can play this stand alone no problem without either of those titles I really recommend you do play them as A) they are amazing, and B) there are story beats that you would miss without them.
The game follows Resident Evil's protagonist Jill Valentine, she stayed in Raccoon City investigating the Umbrella Corporation and was planning on escaping the city when a zombie outbreak hit and she started being chased by a giant seemingly indestructible monster intent on killing her. Jill is one of the stand out points of the game. Her character has been updated with a better costume and her tough personality and interactions with the other characters I loved.
As Jill tries to escape the city there will of course be a lot of exploration and combat. The game is pretty linear with only a few basic locks and very rare puzzle to progress. Jill is played in a third person view and will have to scrounge for different weapons and ammo as she explores. The zombies and monsters are tough so ammo shouldn't be wasted where possible, placing accurate shots, choosing the right weapon, using explosive barrels or just running by enemies that you can safely avoid are all valid strategies though there is enough to kill everything should you choose.
The game plays very similarly to the recently released Resident Evil 2 except Jill now has a dodge. If timed right, almost like a parry, at the very last second Jill's dodge will enable a brief slow motion period allowing you to aim and take a shot after rolling. It looks great and at higher difficulties in certain places it's almost necessary.
Presentation wise resident Evil 3 is simply gorgeous. Capcom the developer use a technique called Photogrammetry. This has them scanning and taking photos of people and objects from all angles to get accurate representations in the game resulting in some incredibly detailed visuals. The cutscenes of the characters in particular are really good, as each character is based on a real life model. Sound wise the game knocks it out the park too with some great atmospheric music and the voice acting is perfect. We have come a long way since the B-movie voice acting of the original Playstation games, that's for sure.
Sounds almost perfect right? Why only four stars? It just feels so very short. My first play-through took me 6 hours and even then I was trying to find everything and looking at all the graphical details I could as I like to really look at my game worlds. One of my friends completed it in 4 hours first time. This in itself wouldn't be a problem if it had something else to give it replay value at that price but it just doesn't. You can unlock a store to buy infinite weapons and there are harder difficulties which add a little bit of fun but with these weapons I sped through in 2 hours, and even once at an hour and 15 minutes (I was speed running for an S rank but still).
The original game came with a mercenaries mode where you run through levels rescuing people collecting ammo and weapons as I recall, this version doesn't but comes with a separate online multiplayer with it's own trophy list I suspect was a separate game originally but got bundled in, called Resistance. Not going to lie, I didn't even try it, didn't care, wasn't interested as that's not why I buy Resident Evil games so your mileage may vary there.
All in all I had a great time. I beat it four times in a couple of days and got the platinum trophy. It's definitely a quality experience I recommend, just not at £45 for the amount of content. Grab it when it's more like £20 as that's probably a better estimate.
+ Jill is great.
+ Gameplay and the dodge mechanic are really fun.
+ Stunning visuals and great voice acting.
+ Good pacing, nice tie ins to Resident Evil 2.
- Game is short, lacking replay value or extra modes unless you're into tacked on multiplayer.
So I fancied playing this again after playing it on the DS at launch years ago. I saw it was £2.50 in a PSN sale so I went for it and boy has this aged badly.
Let's get the big part out the way, this is a port of the PS2 version. It's a low effort port at absolute best. The volume quality is so bad I played 90% of the game with my headphones on listening to music because it was sharp, crackly and fiddling with the settings did absolutely nothing.
The rest of the game is just way worse than I remember it. The battles are done using a match 3 type puzzle mode and I still love the idea but the computer is ridiculous constantly making perfect moves chaining things together to take multiple turns in a row. It's really frustrating yet despite that I would win almost every time. The balancing feels terrible.
Added to that is this is a pseudo RPG, you get level ups, equipment and skills. The level ups are so pointless for how little they effect your stats you may as well not bother, I was level 50 by the end of the game and did very little more damage than at level 1. Equipment is pretty much the same throughout the game, I just barely felt like I was making any real impact to my character.
The game is pretty long, like 30 hours? The problem is it's pretty much the same from start to end and some battles become long and tedious. The narrative just isn't that interesting and by the final boss I was just happy for it to be over.
Some games hold up really well through time, others, like this one should stay in the past through rose tinted glasses.
+ The idea is still great.
- Terrible port.
- Unbalanced fights.
- Boring equipment and progression system.
- Too long for it's mechanics.
Let's get the big part out the way, this is a port of the PS2 version. It's a low effort port at absolute best. The volume quality is so bad I played 90% of the game with my headphones on listening to music because it was sharp, crackly and fiddling with the settings did absolutely nothing.
The rest of the game is just way worse than I remember it. The battles are done using a match 3 type puzzle mode and I still love the idea but the computer is ridiculous constantly making perfect moves chaining things together to take multiple turns in a row. It's really frustrating yet despite that I would win almost every time. The balancing feels terrible.
Added to that is this is a pseudo RPG, you get level ups, equipment and skills. The level ups are so pointless for how little they effect your stats you may as well not bother, I was level 50 by the end of the game and did very little more damage than at level 1. Equipment is pretty much the same throughout the game, I just barely felt like I was making any real impact to my character.
The game is pretty long, like 30 hours? The problem is it's pretty much the same from start to end and some battles become long and tedious. The narrative just isn't that interesting and by the final boss I was just happy for it to be over.
Some games hold up really well through time, others, like this one should stay in the past through rose tinted glasses.
+ The idea is still great.
- Terrible port.
- Unbalanced fights.
- Boring equipment and progression system.
- Too long for it's mechanics.
Sci-fi B-movie, the game!
Been a fan of the series since playing EDF 2017 as the premise was so dumb but the games, despite being repetitive, are silly fun and that applies to EDF 4.1.
This is a port of EDF 2025 on the PS3 with some of the DLC missions included and a few slight changes. The basic principle though is the same; pick one of four classes and use daft weapons to kill giant insects, retro looking robots and spaceships while destroying half the city as B-Movie dialogue and voice acting spur the missions on.
The four classes all play slightly differently depending on what you choose. Ranger is an all around class with strong weapons, Wing Diver can fly and has great speed and mobility but the lowest health gain, Air Raider can summon artillery, air strikes and usable vehicles and the Fencer is basically a walking tank with highest health and canons. Each class can gain new weapons and extra health to slowly increase their total from killed enemies.
The game has a huge 98 missions and 5 difficulties which are really quite hard (I'm still trying to beat hardest or Inferno without success, need to level up more) and supports 2 player split screen or 4 player online. The lobbies now days are pretty quiet but I still manage to play 4 player pretty often.
If I had to complain i'd say the grind is insane to get the armour required to try the harder difficulties, the game doesn't respect your time at all. Also the user interface is horrible, trying to set up an online game or invite people takes a while to get used to.
Otherwise this is chewing gum for the brain fun. It's on sale constantly, I picked it up for just over £3 so you've got nothing to lose trying it.
+ Mindless fun.
+ A lot of content.
+ B-Movie feeling is great.
+ EDF!
- Grinding is ridiculous.
- User interface for menus is hideous
Been a fan of the series since playing EDF 2017 as the premise was so dumb but the games, despite being repetitive, are silly fun and that applies to EDF 4.1.
This is a port of EDF 2025 on the PS3 with some of the DLC missions included and a few slight changes. The basic principle though is the same; pick one of four classes and use daft weapons to kill giant insects, retro looking robots and spaceships while destroying half the city as B-Movie dialogue and voice acting spur the missions on.
The four classes all play slightly differently depending on what you choose. Ranger is an all around class with strong weapons, Wing Diver can fly and has great speed and mobility but the lowest health gain, Air Raider can summon artillery, air strikes and usable vehicles and the Fencer is basically a walking tank with highest health and canons. Each class can gain new weapons and extra health to slowly increase their total from killed enemies.
The game has a huge 98 missions and 5 difficulties which are really quite hard (I'm still trying to beat hardest or Inferno without success, need to level up more) and supports 2 player split screen or 4 player online. The lobbies now days are pretty quiet but I still manage to play 4 player pretty often.
If I had to complain i'd say the grind is insane to get the armour required to try the harder difficulties, the game doesn't respect your time at all. Also the user interface is horrible, trying to set up an online game or invite people takes a while to get used to.
Otherwise this is chewing gum for the brain fun. It's on sale constantly, I picked it up for just over £3 so you've got nothing to lose trying it.
+ Mindless fun.
+ A lot of content.
+ B-Movie feeling is great.
+ EDF!
- Grinding is ridiculous.
- User interface for menus is hideous
I really hated this expansion at first due to the survival mode. It's really hard and found it frustrating. I'm a trophy hunter though so a friend and I kept trying to the point we were addicted once we learned the best equipment, combos etc. It forced us to try weapons and items we never bothered before finding some of them amazing. By the time we stopped playing we could make runs to level 15 - 17 without issue.
It's a hard one to recommend though as I can see how people could bounce off it but we had a great time with it after a rough start.
It's a hard one to recommend though as I can see how people could bounce off it but we had a great time with it after a rough start.
Not a bad expansion to Remnant. It adds new areas to explore, some new enemies and weapons and gear. It doesn't exactly rock the boat but if you're having a good time with the main game this is certainly worth picking up to expand the content. It also adds some areas to the other DLC's survival mode.
I picked it up as I was playing the whole game with a friend co-op and didn't regret it.
I picked it up as I was playing the whole game with a friend co-op and didn't regret it.
Bought this on a friends recommendation and found it to be an incredibly charming nod to retro JRPGS.
The game is set in a group of floating islands. You play a young adventurer called Lita, she is a bit of a wild child but skilled with a bow. I will say this, I love Lita, she reminds me a bit of Estelle from Trails in the Sky. She's tough, sassy and quite often really funny. She's a great character. The story is pretty straight forward but it takes the party to some great looking locales and scenes. I especially loved the game ending and was hoping for a sequel but it appears the developer is working on something new (Rise of the Third Power, looks great).
The combat is turn based, with a few small twists where you regenerate a certain amount of magic points per turn depending on stats to power up your skills. It can be quite tough in places (I played on hard) but some skills you might ignore for buffing your party can be essential so I liked some of the strategy elements to it.
The sprite visuals are lovely, the game looks excellent and I loved a lot of the music, which surprised me most. It's also a decent length at about 40 hours though you can do it quicker, I was exploring everywhere.
Overall it's a really charming game. if you're a fan of Snes or PS1 rpgs like early Final Fantasy games or Breath of Fire this could be right up your street and i'd recommend giving it a try.
+ Lovely visuals and music.
+ Lita is a great character.
+ Just generally charming.
The game is set in a group of floating islands. You play a young adventurer called Lita, she is a bit of a wild child but skilled with a bow. I will say this, I love Lita, she reminds me a bit of Estelle from Trails in the Sky. She's tough, sassy and quite often really funny. She's a great character. The story is pretty straight forward but it takes the party to some great looking locales and scenes. I especially loved the game ending and was hoping for a sequel but it appears the developer is working on something new (Rise of the Third Power, looks great).
The combat is turn based, with a few small twists where you regenerate a certain amount of magic points per turn depending on stats to power up your skills. It can be quite tough in places (I played on hard) but some skills you might ignore for buffing your party can be essential so I liked some of the strategy elements to it.
The sprite visuals are lovely, the game looks excellent and I loved a lot of the music, which surprised me most. It's also a decent length at about 40 hours though you can do it quicker, I was exploring everywhere.
Overall it's a really charming game. if you're a fan of Snes or PS1 rpgs like early Final Fantasy games or Breath of Fire this could be right up your street and i'd recommend giving it a try.
+ Lovely visuals and music.
+ Lita is a great character.
+ Just generally charming.
Ok this game is bonkers in the best way. It's a choose your own adventure game in which you can reselect scenes for characters and make different choices to change the paths of other characters. It can be a little trial and error but I absolutely love the idea and how it plays.
The characters are all interesting and very different and it all comes together surprisingly well in the end though I found it a little abrupt.
What really stands out though it that the entire game is made from photographs of real Japanese actors. It almost felt like I was choosing the path of a tv show in a way.
I really enjoyed this a lot and I didn't have high expectations. It's quite long too, took me over 30 hours to see through to the end and has some secret extra stories, one of which is really heart wrenching (I thought the other was terrible) as well as an anime spin off film (which was also terrible). So not perfect but they are optional extras.
All in all this is one of the best visual novels i've played and I highly recommend it.
+ Love the choose your own adventure timeline gameplay.
+ Great characters.
+ The real life photo aspect is wonderful.
- Some of the extras aren't great.
- The ending felt like there should have been a bit more.
The characters are all interesting and very different and it all comes together surprisingly well in the end though I found it a little abrupt.
What really stands out though it that the entire game is made from photographs of real Japanese actors. It almost felt like I was choosing the path of a tv show in a way.
I really enjoyed this a lot and I didn't have high expectations. It's quite long too, took me over 30 hours to see through to the end and has some secret extra stories, one of which is really heart wrenching (I thought the other was terrible) as well as an anime spin off film (which was also terrible). So not perfect but they are optional extras.
All in all this is one of the best visual novels i've played and I highly recommend it.
+ Love the choose your own adventure timeline gameplay.
+ Great characters.
+ The real life photo aspect is wonderful.
- Some of the extras aren't great.
- The ending felt like there should have been a bit more.