A very middling ho-hum brawler with not a lot going for it. None of the characters have much personality and the limited movesets just feel clumsy and lifeless.

If you have to slog through this for one reason or another, do make sure you stick to the original Japanese version. The overseas release is rather embarrassing in how mangled the translation is from what's supposed to be a brawler based off Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Sure you'll understand little but at least the character names will stick.

On the surface it's a fun and intelligent little puzzle platformer full of neat tricks and clever level design that doesn't wear out it's welcome and you'll generally be happy and satisfied by the twist conclusion.

Dig deeper and it's a frustrating mess with reams of plot dump, excessive meta commentary, stupid secrets and hidden meanings that turns a fun game into an ego fuelled nightmare.

My advice? Play the game, skip the story and just play for fun.

I feel like Mr Grumpy playing this game because I see how cheery and silly some elements are and how much some others like the characters and all this is well and good but.... Nah. This game has all the goodwill going to it but when it comes to actually pulling off something engaging it fails.

Its main problem is that there just isn't much here. Most of the game's moments are completely based around the same couple of quicktime events (press X in time to a meter, hammer X as fast as possible) and that's about it. Outside of that there's a host of colourful characters but most of them don't get to do enough outside of one or two cutscenes.

Technically the cast do have stuff to do from day to day, the game runs on a timer and a three day cycle... but they all just stand about and say the few lines over and over until the night-time hits. Its just dull and makes most of the characters feel fluffy and pointless.

The problems just spill out everywhere else too. Often you'll be halted progress wise because you dont have enough cash and the only way to gain cash is to grind bottle collectables to convert into cash.... But why are we converting when theres literally nothing else to do with the bottles? Agh.

Its annoying because theres glimpses of fun here, especially during some of the more chaotic group events... But outside of that its just a drag doing rather basic fetch quests and grinding up bottles and cash just so you can actually move on.

This game is very much the equivalent of one of those Netflix movies and shows that pop up, nobody pays attention to it other than to go 'Oh that looks interesting' and thats it. At its core its a very pretty cyberpunk dystopian RPG and everything looks incredibly detail filled and flat out GORGEOUS.

However the game also just isnt all that fun to play either. The core gameplay just is rather dull and while the cyberpunk areas look pretty, theres also so much of the same as you plough through similar looking walkway after street after district. Its a wave of neon and grey that just all blends into each other as you go from dull battle to dull battle.

But just to spice things up, the game loves throwing high levelled enemies near you if you so much as step slightly away from where the game thinks you should be going. You can be just mowing down enemies with ease, enter a sidedoor and get blasted to pieces by a enemy you've barely had a chance to register. Its frustrating and tedious and this is a repeated issue thanks to gun enemies often taking aim at you from outside your own field of view.

Its just not a game I really want to continue with anymore as neither the rather plain story nor the dull featureless combat is making me want to go on. Its all graphics and little else of note.

This game feels nostalgic for me and not in a totally good way. It very much feels like one of those dime a dozen ps2 licensed games you'd find slung all over the place years ago. Sure theres some fun to be had here but theres so many caveats and bullet points to the point where you dont really want to bother.

Sure theres a wide open map but it feels so lifeless and empty. Sure theres a wide range of playable characters but most are really interchangable outside of the odd exploration moment. Sure theres combat but its so stiff and clumsy, where you'll spend most of your time just mashing the basic attack as the strong attacks take too long and just invite damage.

Add in the usual canned dialogue whenever you so much as do a hop and add in some grindy cash/map mechanics and you've got a game that had all the potential but none of the results. A shame.

Sidenote: The pizza delivery minigame has 'THAT' music that makes me go 'PIZZA. PASTA. PUT IT IN A BOX. DELIVER IT TO MY HOUSE AND PUT IT ON MY...' before I remember im playing a kids game and I should stop being so horrible.

Firstly I want to say that ive seen a lot of reviews calling this a Zelda-like game. Its really not. Aside from a couple of context situations, most of this game is really more like a Diablo-dungeon crawler, albiet exchanging the neverending loot drop system for one where you mix and match abilities across various different in-game forms.

For the most part it works quite well, blasting through dungeons is mostly fun and the overall art and gameplay can get pretty addictive. The best parts of the game is when you can get really creative with the combinations and cause even the most unassuming of forms to turn into a whirlwind of destruction.

However good lord the game does like to get in the way of that through its unlock mechanics. In order to unlock more forms and level up forms (to gain more skills), you need to do various task lists for each form. These mostly boil down to beating enemies in particular fashion, using specific attacks or breaking enemy defences. This is all great in theory but in reality it just leads to grinding with select characters to get to where you really want.

Once you've really broken through that grind, there's a lot to love here but that grind is notable and it does force you to play characters/use abilities you may not like for good chunks of time. Its not something that ruins the game thanks to just how frantic and silly the game can be (and it can get very silly through its missions, oddball characters and weird mechanics) but it does stop the game from really being more than it could be.

This honestly feels like a platformer just on the verge of something good but through level design it doesnt quite work.

Generally theres some really nice ideas and some fun collectathon elements in play with the general gist being Dr Muto trying to collect isotopes, animal DNA, machine parts and other material in order to restore his destroyed planet.

As you move along in a very Banjo-Kazooie manner, you'll unlock various animal transformation moves which will let you access all manner of other areas like the Rat can get you into small spaces, the bat lets you fly for short periods of time. Its all generally pretty workable and fun.

But... Oh boy. The level design is not good. Most of the levels flat out are just not very intresting to traverse thanks to the game's colour palette of browns and greys as you explore sewers, junkyards and factorys aplenty. Worse are some of the collectables and the game's habit of sticking them in incredibly shitty and fustrating to reach locations. Sure, you dont have to get ALL of them to finish the game but theres still way too many gotcha and pixel perfect jump moments to really make you want to get to that point.

Shame really...

I honestly dont even know how to rank or rate this. The original Overwatch I put hours and hours into and this? Its the same game but I just cant deal with it. I dont know if its just me being completely burnt out from the game, I dont know if its the balancing and changes that have thrown me out of whack or if its the shift from loot boxes to whatever the battle pass expense hell this is.

All I know is I used to enjoy playing Overwatch. Now I dont. I'll always have fond memories of the characters, the various toys I own of them and the fun fanart, the shipping and the sense of fun that originally sprung forth but it just feels like the window to actually make people give a toss about this as a franchise came and went. So meh.