Gana
it's good
(for a licensed game)
(for a licensed game)
2004
wandering aimlessly while feeling mildly uncomfortable can only be good for so long
Every level is very creative and well designed, music is banging, secrets are done well
Also the silhouette levels are amazing
Also the silhouette levels are amazing
I had a good time but it definitely feels like a hurdle to jump over on your way to better expansions, especially at the start. Gameplay is still fun though
This review contains spoilers
This might be the least subtle thing I've ever read and that's okay.
The theme of "talk to your friends instead of self isolating when you have problems" is constantly present and is super well represented. There are very few stories where I think a political activism arc is a sensible plot point, but it fits in perfectly here thanks to the buildup from previous episodes and, again, the central theme.
The trapped in a time loop bit was also very well done. Despite the circumstances it was extremely easy to relate to Rika's situation and to draw parallels with depression, and the talking to and working alongside friends to beat "fate" was incredibly good.
Hinamizawa Syndrome, while a bit out of nowhere, is also a very direct anti-isolation metaphor.
The only reason I don't have this at a perfect score is because I think the plot twist at the end was kinda bad. For a story set in a small town, having the true culprit's main weapon be a private army of goons with no personality coming all the way from Tokyo feels anticlimactic. A complete tonal shift that wasn't foreshadowed particularly well and feels completely removed from everything else in the novel about small town life and interpersonal interactions.
The theme of "talk to your friends instead of self isolating when you have problems" is constantly present and is super well represented. There are very few stories where I think a political activism arc is a sensible plot point, but it fits in perfectly here thanks to the buildup from previous episodes and, again, the central theme.
The trapped in a time loop bit was also very well done. Despite the circumstances it was extremely easy to relate to Rika's situation and to draw parallels with depression, and the talking to and working alongside friends to beat "fate" was incredibly good.
Hinamizawa Syndrome, while a bit out of nowhere, is also a very direct anti-isolation metaphor.
The only reason I don't have this at a perfect score is because I think the plot twist at the end was kinda bad. For a story set in a small town, having the true culprit's main weapon be a private army of goons with no personality coming all the way from Tokyo feels anticlimactic. A complete tonal shift that wasn't foreshadowed particularly well and feels completely removed from everything else in the novel about small town life and interpersonal interactions.
rowling aside it's not that fun, a lot of stuff is locked behind learning new magic as the story goes on which almost makes it like a metroidvania, so the overworld stuff is fun, but it also means more menuing than most lego games
the 2nd level has you change genders to progress which i find very funny
the 2nd level has you change genders to progress which i find very funny
astral chain looking a little different
Probably my favorite FE game I've played so far.
Ike's a really good character. The nature of FE makes it so that it's pretty hard to have good supporting characters beyond just their vibes, but I do like this game's cast for what it's worth.
I liked the plot a lot less after Begnion. The magic medallion stuff didn't really interest me at all compared to the compelling themes about uniting different cultures and ending discrimination.
One thing that somewhat bothers me is how characters would be joining your army super late into the game. I get that people die but towards the end things start feeling really bloated and my army was filled more and more with characters that I barely even knew. Also, limiting supports is dumb. Even if you don't want to give out the mechanical benefit too often you still shouldn't put a hard limit on them given that a good amount of them have character backstories, and for some characters the support scenes make up a majority of their lines. The dialogue in general is really well written though.
Ike's a really good character. The nature of FE makes it so that it's pretty hard to have good supporting characters beyond just their vibes, but I do like this game's cast for what it's worth.
I liked the plot a lot less after Begnion. The magic medallion stuff didn't really interest me at all compared to the compelling themes about uniting different cultures and ending discrimination.
One thing that somewhat bothers me is how characters would be joining your army super late into the game. I get that people die but towards the end things start feeling really bloated and my army was filled more and more with characters that I barely even knew. Also, limiting supports is dumb. Even if you don't want to give out the mechanical benefit too often you still shouldn't put a hard limit on them given that a good amount of them have character backstories, and for some characters the support scenes make up a majority of their lines. The dialogue in general is really well written though.
I probably like this game's combat more than most of the series's. The command leveling and melding made it so that I was regularly upgrading and changing my moveset to keep things fresh, which I really like.
Storywise, it could've been better. Terra and Ventus both had interesting plots related to themselves but Aqua's is pretty much just devoted to following them around without much agency. This is somewhat balanced by her playstyle being my favorite one, but it's still a long time without much of an interesting story. I will say that this game does a better job than most in the series when it comes to tying the disney world plots and the main plot together.
Storywise, it could've been better. Terra and Ventus both had interesting plots related to themselves but Aqua's is pretty much just devoted to following them around without much agency. This is somewhat balanced by her playstyle being my favorite one, but it's still a long time without much of an interesting story. I will say that this game does a better job than most in the series when it comes to tying the disney world plots and the main plot together.
I have no big issues with AITSF, it's just that after a while it kinda lost me. While the characters have good and funny conversations none of them really stand out to me, and the investigation segments that take up a vast majority of the gameplay get dull after a couple routes.
Often times the somnium segments feel more like throwing random guesses at a wall to see what works than a real conscious effort for me to try and solve a puzzle like with the Zero Escape series or other crimesolving visual novels. I understand that the whole "we're in a dream it's supposed to be random" thing is in the plot, but it doesn't make it any more fun. I'm guessing the timer exists to pressure me into thinking more before I interact with something, but it just has the effect of making me feel frustrated for wasting time, both in and out of game.
Often times the somnium segments feel more like throwing random guesses at a wall to see what works than a real conscious effort for me to try and solve a puzzle like with the Zero Escape series or other crimesolving visual novels. I understand that the whole "we're in a dream it's supposed to be random" thing is in the plot, but it doesn't make it any more fun. I'm guessing the timer exists to pressure me into thinking more before I interact with something, but it just has the effect of making me feel frustrated for wasting time, both in and out of game.
2021
fuck NYT
2017
I can kinda see the appeal but right out the gate the combat and just general movement felt really awkward, and I don't know if they were supposed to be or not. The map system is also clearly designed to be an obstacle in itself, and while I can definitely see some players liking that, I definitely didn't. Between those things and some odd game design elements like the mechanic that literally adds an extra enemy to the places you die in, cause apparently it wasn't hard enough the first time through, and requiring you to go all the way to a town in order to get upgrades, I was just very turned off within a couple hours of playtime.
2021
This review contains spoilers
I like the story a lot, though I agree with the take that the first half was better paced. Still enjoyed the second half primarily because of Shionne and Alphen, who kinda carried this game for me. Don't get me wrong I like the rest of the cast but these two were always the ones I thought of when thinking of this game's good scenes and lines. The only really bad part in the plot was the exposition scene after Lenegis that felt like it took half an hour. It was just a big lore dump, nothing too compelling or exciting, and I'd already predicted most of it anyway.
The combat was good overall. I think in terms of series it's almost the best but Xillia 2 still beats it. This is one of those games where you can tell the combat was designed for the normal encounters. Normal encounters are very fast, flowing, and exciting. The boss fights on the other hand all feel very long due to how much HP the bosses get, and the combat feels a lot more like doing the same combos into a wall over and over again until it falls down.
The difficulty could've been better balanced, as it felt like using multiple items was very necessary for success in pretty much any boss fight on moderate or higher. That wouldn't be such an issue if it weren't for how expensive the consumables are. However I'm not too upset about it given that Tales difficulties can be changed in a snap.
Another minor problem is with the way they did the DLC. For starters, the game initially had DLC advertisements on the campfire menu, but those were taken out with a patch, so I'm not letting it affect the score. The only thing that bothers me now is that I feel like the purchase of DLC has a significant effect on how hard of a time you have with the game, and the suspicious part of me suspects that this was intentional. I did not purchase any DLC and as the game went on I had to steadily decrease the difficulty mode as the game went on in order to keep up with the levels of the bosses, which were sometimes 15 levels higher than me despite me fully exploring all areas and not even avoiding encounters. (For the record, 10 levels costs about $2, and you can get about 50 levels worth of these. I chose not to purchase them out of principle.)
Listing all the problems out like that makes it look worse than it is, the game still deserves a 9/10
The combat was good overall. I think in terms of series it's almost the best but Xillia 2 still beats it. This is one of those games where you can tell the combat was designed for the normal encounters. Normal encounters are very fast, flowing, and exciting. The boss fights on the other hand all feel very long due to how much HP the bosses get, and the combat feels a lot more like doing the same combos into a wall over and over again until it falls down.
The difficulty could've been better balanced, as it felt like using multiple items was very necessary for success in pretty much any boss fight on moderate or higher. That wouldn't be such an issue if it weren't for how expensive the consumables are. However I'm not too upset about it given that Tales difficulties can be changed in a snap.
Another minor problem is with the way they did the DLC. For starters, the game initially had DLC advertisements on the campfire menu, but those were taken out with a patch, so I'm not letting it affect the score. The only thing that bothers me now is that I feel like the purchase of DLC has a significant effect on how hard of a time you have with the game, and the suspicious part of me suspects that this was intentional. I did not purchase any DLC and as the game went on I had to steadily decrease the difficulty mode as the game went on in order to keep up with the levels of the bosses, which were sometimes 15 levels higher than me despite me fully exploring all areas and not even avoiding encounters. (For the record, 10 levels costs about $2, and you can get about 50 levels worth of these. I chose not to purchase them out of principle.)
Listing all the problems out like that makes it look worse than it is, the game still deserves a 9/10
2020
y'know usually when i give games a 10/10 it's cause it had a really good story that i can write a whole essay about combined with good gameplay but honestly this game is just really fucking fun and it's that simple
On an objective level it's fine and it also has good music but throughout the entire game it feels like something is missing, and that something is the soul.
The combat has potential but there isn't enough variety in the enemy formations so after a while it's just muscle memory with no real challenge to it. The game giving you very little reward after battling also makes enemies feel more like annoying obstacles in your path than something you benefit from. I will say that the bosses were good, though.
The combat has potential but there isn't enough variety in the enemy formations so after a while it's just muscle memory with no real challenge to it. The game giving you very little reward after battling also makes enemies feel more like annoying obstacles in your path than something you benefit from. I will say that the bosses were good, though.