Katsono
I was recommended this port as the best version of the original Resident Evil and I can see why. It’s a solid port that really takes advantage of the touch screen to include some fun minigames and interactions.
The game is really fun, I’m genuinely surprised to discover that what I thought was an action series is pretty low on the action. Hell, I was gunning way more in Silent Hill 1. RE1 is a game of very limited supplies for the most part and it constantly keeps you on your toes.
Midway through the game, when I thought I was getting myself a steady supply and learning to deal with the monsters, it throws a sudden difficulty spike to keep the tension up. I lost all my healing supplies and I was running scared for my life.
The knife random encounters are a great way to give back life to areas you’ve emptied, as they can happen anytime and anywhere, putting you at the risk of dying. I died a few times to unexpected knife sequences but it’s a fun addition I like.
I’m not a fan of the inventory system. I can see what it’s trying to do but ultimately I just did multiple trips to pick up things I needed and I didn’t really feel held back otherwise. It wasn’t putting me in a situation where I have limited ammo or healing items because I could carry as much ammo as I want and usually one healing item is good enough. The quest items taking space, especially the keys taking one individual space, was kinda tedious.
The map on the top screen is nice but it’s lacking a lot (and I would prefer it on the bottom scream). It would be nice to see the direction your character is facing and to have more indications, at least player made ones. Not being able to write things on the map and not having any form of indication, not even for the save / storage areas was disappointing though not very bothersome.
I had a lot of fun playing this game. I always wanted a game where you explore a single seamless area such as a mansion and this delivers. The place feels realistic and you spend the entire game in one area with its surroundings. In a way, it reminds me a lot of Castlevania games and their castles, even the map and backtracking is somewhat similar.
The game is really fun, I’m genuinely surprised to discover that what I thought was an action series is pretty low on the action. Hell, I was gunning way more in Silent Hill 1. RE1 is a game of very limited supplies for the most part and it constantly keeps you on your toes.
Midway through the game, when I thought I was getting myself a steady supply and learning to deal with the monsters, it throws a sudden difficulty spike to keep the tension up. I lost all my healing supplies and I was running scared for my life.
The knife random encounters are a great way to give back life to areas you’ve emptied, as they can happen anytime and anywhere, putting you at the risk of dying. I died a few times to unexpected knife sequences but it’s a fun addition I like.
I’m not a fan of the inventory system. I can see what it’s trying to do but ultimately I just did multiple trips to pick up things I needed and I didn’t really feel held back otherwise. It wasn’t putting me in a situation where I have limited ammo or healing items because I could carry as much ammo as I want and usually one healing item is good enough. The quest items taking space, especially the keys taking one individual space, was kinda tedious.
The map on the top screen is nice but it’s lacking a lot (and I would prefer it on the bottom scream). It would be nice to see the direction your character is facing and to have more indications, at least player made ones. Not being able to write things on the map and not having any form of indication, not even for the save / storage areas was disappointing though not very bothersome.
I had a lot of fun playing this game. I always wanted a game where you explore a single seamless area such as a mansion and this delivers. The place feels realistic and you spend the entire game in one area with its surroundings. In a way, it reminds me a lot of Castlevania games and their castles, even the map and backtracking is somewhat similar.
2003
They warned me, they told me it was bad. They told me to skip it, I didn’t believe them. I thought maybe it would be like the Dark Souls 2 situation. Hell, someone once recommended I skip Trails in the sky 3rd and it ended up being my favourite game in the series.
No, this time they were right. The game is just as bad as everyone says.
Everything sucks about it except maybe the graphics. The melee moveset is pretty lame and a lot of the enemies require guns to be fought anyway. The upgrade system has been replaced by just numerical upgrades and honestly I’m not even sure I see the difference.
Mobs barely try to hit you. You can play most of the game by holding the button to fire your gun and you don’t even have to bother moving except for a few bosses. What’s more annoying is that it takes a lot of time to kill tanky enemies despite them not doing anything and the game loves throwing groups of enemies. You advance to a new area, you trigger a group spawn and you have to kill maybe twenty trash mobs. It never stops.
For my second playthrough as Lucia, I just skipped every optional encounter and the game was still dull. It feels like a bad copy of Mario 64 where I just follow the red coins. I don’t even know why I bothered playing this playthrough, it’s some of the same levels plus an underwater section and the cutscenes are barely different. Yes, even the cheesy cutscenes you get to watch twice.
Why is there even a story? Dante talks to a random girl who tell him to go somewhere and they both meet again there. Couldn’t they have do so right away? Then from a random village he’ll take a bike to go to a big city instead? Why? Why are you chasing this comical sorcerer dude and all? Why is there a full city “infested” (yes infested) by tanks?
Perhaps the only positive thing about this game is that it’s quite short, at least you only have to endure about six hours of suffering.
It’s a terrible experience, but real gamers don’t skip DMC 2.
No, this time they were right. The game is just as bad as everyone says.
Everything sucks about it except maybe the graphics. The melee moveset is pretty lame and a lot of the enemies require guns to be fought anyway. The upgrade system has been replaced by just numerical upgrades and honestly I’m not even sure I see the difference.
Mobs barely try to hit you. You can play most of the game by holding the button to fire your gun and you don’t even have to bother moving except for a few bosses. What’s more annoying is that it takes a lot of time to kill tanky enemies despite them not doing anything and the game loves throwing groups of enemies. You advance to a new area, you trigger a group spawn and you have to kill maybe twenty trash mobs. It never stops.
For my second playthrough as Lucia, I just skipped every optional encounter and the game was still dull. It feels like a bad copy of Mario 64 where I just follow the red coins. I don’t even know why I bothered playing this playthrough, it’s some of the same levels plus an underwater section and the cutscenes are barely different. Yes, even the cheesy cutscenes you get to watch twice.
Why is there even a story? Dante talks to a random girl who tell him to go somewhere and they both meet again there. Couldn’t they have do so right away? Then from a random village he’ll take a bike to go to a big city instead? Why? Why are you chasing this comical sorcerer dude and all? Why is there a full city “infested” (yes infested) by tanks?
Perhaps the only positive thing about this game is that it’s quite short, at least you only have to endure about six hours of suffering.
It’s a terrible experience, but real gamers don’t skip DMC 2.
Very short visual novel (about two hours long) with essentially nonexistent deviations from the main story (the choices change a few lines only and they only influence whether you get a bonus scene at the end or not).
The game mostly focuses mostly on the topic of insecurities and I think it does a great job at showcasing the two main characters, their problems then later trying to bring a solution. At the same time the story works as an encouragement to the reader! I also think that adding this theme to the story and making it central to the on-going romance makes it much stronger than if there wasn’t any such topic to accompany the love story.
The narration is a bit confusing because of the non-chronological order the story is told in. There is no proper date given for each scene so I was lost at the beginning and didn’t know in what order things were happening. It’s still an interesting choice and it allows the story to speed up its pacing and thus, to not drag.
One thing I really liked about this VN is that there is a small portrait in the bottom left corner of the screen which shows the main character and their expressions, instead of them being invisible like most VNs do. I think this is a really cool feature and I would love to see it in more games.
It’s refreshing playing something that looks this great. There is a lot of care put into the visuals and they are very pleasing to the eyes. There are animations added here and there to make things more alive than they’d be if they were still pictures.
The game mostly focuses mostly on the topic of insecurities and I think it does a great job at showcasing the two main characters, their problems then later trying to bring a solution. At the same time the story works as an encouragement to the reader! I also think that adding this theme to the story and making it central to the on-going romance makes it much stronger than if there wasn’t any such topic to accompany the love story.
The narration is a bit confusing because of the non-chronological order the story is told in. There is no proper date given for each scene so I was lost at the beginning and didn’t know in what order things were happening. It’s still an interesting choice and it allows the story to speed up its pacing and thus, to not drag.
One thing I really liked about this VN is that there is a small portrait in the bottom left corner of the screen which shows the main character and their expressions, instead of them being invisible like most VNs do. I think this is a really cool feature and I would love to see it in more games.
It’s refreshing playing something that looks this great. There is a lot of care put into the visuals and they are very pleasing to the eyes. There are animations added here and there to make things more alive than they’d be if they were still pictures.
2023
It's cute, it's fun, it's beautiful. It sticks to one concept and executes it. However, like me, you mind find yourself bored before you finish it entirely.
This is the first time I’ve seen an offline co-op game: both players need hints from the other player to solve puzzles but otherwise, no connection between the games is required. Luckily this allows for playing with a single steam copy of the game, pretty cool huh?
It’s a fairly short game and the puzzles are not too elaborate. It has four chapters during which you’ll see an environment where you can scroll through different screens and interact with things to find and solve puzzles.
So first of all, it’s very samey. You might expect a lot of difference between the two players but they just get different riddles and texts that are cut in half. The locations are the same and work the same way.
The game also lacks a lot of interactions. For example, you start the game on a desktop and you have a paperclip on it. You can’t do anything with it. It’s very obvious what is a puzzle component or not because of this. What’s more, most puzzles are extremely linear and isolated. If you go to a screen, you’re likely to find every element you need on that specific screen. It’s the same for coop, almost the entire cooperation is done with both players on the same screen and hence while the game advises you to hide your screen and share the information yourself, there isn’t all that much which is different.
It looks nice and has some cool animations but it’s all pretty samey and there isn’t really much to say about the presentation. Overall, the game was fun but I didn’t think much of it ultimately, especially the story which I think is neither very interesting nor well used in the context of a coop game.
It’s a fairly short game and the puzzles are not too elaborate. It has four chapters during which you’ll see an environment where you can scroll through different screens and interact with things to find and solve puzzles.
So first of all, it’s very samey. You might expect a lot of difference between the two players but they just get different riddles and texts that are cut in half. The locations are the same and work the same way.
The game also lacks a lot of interactions. For example, you start the game on a desktop and you have a paperclip on it. You can’t do anything with it. It’s very obvious what is a puzzle component or not because of this. What’s more, most puzzles are extremely linear and isolated. If you go to a screen, you’re likely to find every element you need on that specific screen. It’s the same for coop, almost the entire cooperation is done with both players on the same screen and hence while the game advises you to hide your screen and share the information yourself, there isn’t all that much which is different.
It looks nice and has some cool animations but it’s all pretty samey and there isn’t really much to say about the presentation. Overall, the game was fun but I didn’t think much of it ultimately, especially the story which I think is neither very interesting nor well used in the context of a coop game.
2022
You can quickly tell the game is somewhat lacking. It feels sluggish to play, from the movement speed to the animation of your main tools.
One of the things that bothered me is the lack of control and exposition through dialogues from the get go. I feel like it could have been handled much smoother. Maybe allowing the player to move during the intro cutscene for example, instead of watching your character move toward the NPCs and speak to them. The next thing you do is walking forever to reach the next NPC you talk to, with nothing in your way, and the game feels weird like that.
The town looks strangely dead and empty. While I'd say the graphics look fine, the main character also looks pretty strange especially when moving sideway, it reminds me of the spoderman meme.
One of the things that bothered me is the lack of control and exposition through dialogues from the get go. I feel like it could have been handled much smoother. Maybe allowing the player to move during the intro cutscene for example, instead of watching your character move toward the NPCs and speak to them. The next thing you do is walking forever to reach the next NPC you talk to, with nothing in your way, and the game feels weird like that.
The town looks strangely dead and empty. While I'd say the graphics look fine, the main character also looks pretty strange especially when moving sideway, it reminds me of the spoderman meme.
Not really interesting as a game. It's pretty much a visual novel with a few sections of walking straight before you hit the next conversation. It doesn't even have sound nor a save system for one thing. I feel like I would have been more interested in just reading this as a normal written story.
It's made for the gameboy so the text is kinda annoying to read. I don't really understand why, at least the other versions should have a bigger text box.
Not particularly fan of the pixel art. I did like the protagonist's design, it reminds me of Oyasumi Punpun.
The story really doesn't seem to be written for a game, it really is more of a blog post format. Hence it doesn't really benefit from being a game, for example putting you in the protagonist's shoes.
It's made for the gameboy so the text is kinda annoying to read. I don't really understand why, at least the other versions should have a bigger text box.
Not particularly fan of the pixel art. I did like the protagonist's design, it reminds me of Oyasumi Punpun.
The story really doesn't seem to be written for a game, it really is more of a blog post format. Hence it doesn't really benefit from being a game, for example putting you in the protagonist's shoes.
It’s a short visual novel. It has good horror vibes and it’s quite intriguing when you start playing it but… it’s not much.
After about fifteen minutes you’ve reached the end and I replayed to see what more it had to offer. Out of so many choices, there is something bound to happen? Well no, not really. There is a bad ending you can get any time and the normal ending I got on my first run.
There are a few moments where you can input text. I didn’t find anything that would trigger a reaction different from usual. After looking it up, there are only one or two keywords each time and all you get is a very weak reaction.
I’m pretty disappointed with the lack of depth. It didn’t have to be a long game but not even having an impact in the choices is what I didn’t like the most.
This short game does tackle some interesting themes about the perspective of a mentally ill person. Seeing through their eyes is indeed terrifying but other than that it just seems to throw some random stuff here and there and that’s it, you’re done with the game. Some of the stuff is also pretty common such as the game characters breaking the fourth wall so not much to say about that.
After about fifteen minutes you’ve reached the end and I replayed to see what more it had to offer. Out of so many choices, there is something bound to happen? Well no, not really. There is a bad ending you can get any time and the normal ending I got on my first run.
There are a few moments where you can input text. I didn’t find anything that would trigger a reaction different from usual. After looking it up, there are only one or two keywords each time and all you get is a very weak reaction.
I’m pretty disappointed with the lack of depth. It didn’t have to be a long game but not even having an impact in the choices is what I didn’t like the most.
This short game does tackle some interesting themes about the perspective of a mentally ill person. Seeing through their eyes is indeed terrifying but other than that it just seems to throw some random stuff here and there and that’s it, you’re done with the game. Some of the stuff is also pretty common such as the game characters breaking the fourth wall so not much to say about that.
This is an excellent pc port which is close to a remake of the game, I don’t believe this wasn’t entirely rewritten because of claims I’ve seen that the game behaves differently from the original.
It’s a very solid experience and adds a lot. It’s somewhat buggy but I personally had no game breaking bug at all. Here are the changes which improved my experience.
Seeing more of the map and no screen transitions:
Being able to see a wider screen is genuinely nice and makes the game look incredible on anything bigger than a gameboy. Of course this implies a lack of transition screens, everything is seamless.
Sure this may spoil dungeon rooms and a few secrets but in my opinion it’s worth it and I don’t think it breaks the experience or anything, it just makes it better. My first time playing the game was on this version and it’s just great, I don’t feel like it failed me in any way and I would recommend it.
This feature also brings some changes to the game: monsters can move between maps and dungeon rooms and you can also bring pots around for example, so the solutions to some puzzles may be different. Occasionally it can be confusing because you don’t know where the limits of a room are so you might look farther than you need for the answer.
One other really cool feature, although it’s pretty useless, is that you can zoom out and view the ENTIRE map of the game at once and yes with the monsters being there and moving. This is probably why the game can be heavy on resources.
Better UI, more item buttons:
Really not much to say here. Instead of a bottom white bar taking a part of the screen, it’s just some info in the corners of the screen. Much better.
Four item buttons instead of two, meaning you have to switch items way less often.
And lastly, 60 frames per second!
It does lack a few things some hacks did, like removing the messages every time you interact with a rock or pot. Not a big deal though especially since you can sort of skip the text in this version.
Would Nintendo ever do a port that does any of this? Hell no, even less so now that they have a 3D remake of the game. Instead they’d rather DMCA this guy and this is why we’ll never see bug fixes. Fans are doing one hell of a job making these games so awesome, Nintendo will barely bother to re-release these games in a buggy state once in a while and instead focus on suing people who do a better job. Fuck copyright.
It’s a very solid experience and adds a lot. It’s somewhat buggy but I personally had no game breaking bug at all. Here are the changes which improved my experience.
Seeing more of the map and no screen transitions:
Being able to see a wider screen is genuinely nice and makes the game look incredible on anything bigger than a gameboy. Of course this implies a lack of transition screens, everything is seamless.
Sure this may spoil dungeon rooms and a few secrets but in my opinion it’s worth it and I don’t think it breaks the experience or anything, it just makes it better. My first time playing the game was on this version and it’s just great, I don’t feel like it failed me in any way and I would recommend it.
This feature also brings some changes to the game: monsters can move between maps and dungeon rooms and you can also bring pots around for example, so the solutions to some puzzles may be different. Occasionally it can be confusing because you don’t know where the limits of a room are so you might look farther than you need for the answer.
One other really cool feature, although it’s pretty useless, is that you can zoom out and view the ENTIRE map of the game at once and yes with the monsters being there and moving. This is probably why the game can be heavy on resources.
Better UI, more item buttons:
Really not much to say here. Instead of a bottom white bar taking a part of the screen, it’s just some info in the corners of the screen. Much better.
Four item buttons instead of two, meaning you have to switch items way less often.
And lastly, 60 frames per second!
It does lack a few things some hacks did, like removing the messages every time you interact with a rock or pot. Not a big deal though especially since you can sort of skip the text in this version.
Would Nintendo ever do a port that does any of this? Hell no, even less so now that they have a 3D remake of the game. Instead they’d rather DMCA this guy and this is why we’ll never see bug fixes. Fans are doing one hell of a job making these games so awesome, Nintendo will barely bother to re-release these games in a buggy state once in a while and instead focus on suing people who do a better job. Fuck copyright.
2022
In recent years, there has been an uprising of farming games and many new developers have tried their hands at it. It has become increasingly difficult for a farming game to stand out but it shouldn’t have been a problem for Immortal Life with its unique setting amongst them: a farming game heavily inspired by Chinese cultivation stories. Unfortunately, the game is very janky. Fortunately, it’s still pretty good.
The game is absolute jank:
Everything from the menus to the gameplay is extremely buggy. The controls are off and sometimes they don’t work, sometimes you select a tool and because you were too fast it doesn’t work. There are many visual bugs too. Despite that, the game is playable and it’s fairly easy to look past the jank if you have played any other game like this. I did not encounter any game breaking bug.
This necessarily detracts from the enjoyment and it’s honestly a wonder why the devs did not invest more effort into the presentation when you see how much content there is behind it. As it stands, there is little hope to see improvements in this aspect, the game having been released as a 1.0 version.
Despite this, I did enjoy the game for about 40 hours because of all it offers.
Cool premises of cultivation:
The game is set in an ancient Chinese cultivation setting and that really rocks with me. I enjoy cultivation novels a lot and I think this game gets it right. It’s not straight out cultivation as you are a unique farmer / cultivator and I think this setup just works.
The game excels at setting up its cultivation atmosphere. There are moments where I was truly amazed: I am fishing in town and after I’m down, I notice a guy has popped up with a quest icon. I talk to him and he mentions the krills I caught, giving me a cooking recipe. That kind of thing feels so organic. There is a real life to the game through the numerous quests you get too, which set up every character’s role and what they do throughout the day.
It’s not perfect though. While the game has some unique moments like that, it also has a lot of static NPCs with the same dialogue throughout the entire game. Even the main characters will say the exact same line the whole game (not even two lines, yes) when you choose to talk to them to improve your relationship.
The translation could also use a rework. Sometimes it’s tough to understand the text.
Diversified gameplay and some unique features
One of the things that compensates the jankiness of this game is that it offers a variety of unique gameplay elements.
Tending to your farm is more fun when you have a spell to summon a rain cloud, magic scythes that tear down crops to collect them and you can use the wind to spread seeds. It’s very effective though it’s a shame that all of these tools are not available from the get go. They play into your MP reserves too, making stats quite important even outside of combat.
Instead of your standard full recovery at night, you only recover your stats partially according to the decorations in your house. Therefore, it becomes a minigame in itself to optimise your recovery. Sleep is also not mandatory and you can skip it if you have enough food instead or haven’t used up your stats.
Very late in the game, you get introduced to a “feng shui farming” system which is interesting but I didn’t really think much of it. As it really involves going back and forth from one side of town to buy things you need, I wasn’t a big fan of it.
There are a variety of other gameplay elements which aren’t quite as unique and in my opinion they also don’t work as well: cooking is a mini-game similar to Overcooked but a little too jank for my appreciation and it gets repetitive fast; the combat seems inspired by a game like Vampire Survivors but the spells aren’t really interesting and it’s also very repetitive, with boring maps on top of it; fishing or alchemy are your usual gameplay and don’t really offer much…
Not so desirable lategame:
I think that around 35 hours in the game, I had seen most of what it had to offer. I unlocked every gameplay element and past that point, all that’s left is the story progression and half a dozen dungeons to clear.
Unfortunately it’s around this time that the game starts being quite tedious. As you unlock more town areas, you get to walk more to reach farther places and there’s no efficient way of teleporting (nor is it easy to unlock). You don’t even get to build the save/storage crystals that allow you to quickly access your storage, unlike at the beginning of the game. This makes some portions of the game really savage: it takes a full minute to walk from the nearest storage crystal to the alchemist / smith and you can only consult their list of crafting by visiting them. It’s even farther away if you need something at the farm instead.
The dungeons also suddenly become extremely hard, as if to counter the player rushing and force you into a grind. You absolutely need to use buffs and upgrade to the maximum every time to get a normal level of difficulty. This really disincentivizes the upgrade system and buffs in my opinion because they become mandatory. You don’t feel the progress of upgrading any more because monsters stay tanky and constantly requiring to cook will also make you tired.
This is also somewhat a problem through the game: you’re constantly forced to engage with every single gameplay element and if you don’t like one or get bored of it, tough luck. If you play another game like Stardew, you know you could easily ignore a feature and get by just fine. You don’t really get alternative ways here, such as paying money to get some of the stuff.
Overall I had a fun time with the game but I’m not sure I would recommend it. The jankiness is really detrimental to the enjoyment of the game and I really wish they had put efforts into fixing that. Ultimately it feels like a forgettable game and it doesn’t really stand out in any way.
Despite the appearances, the game is extremely poorly optimised. On my laptop with a 1050 Ti and a i5-8300H, I would often get frame drops in later areas or the farm and I think the game suffers from memory leaks. And don’t even try to play this game on a HDD, it just doesn’t work somehow.
The game is absolute jank:
Everything from the menus to the gameplay is extremely buggy. The controls are off and sometimes they don’t work, sometimes you select a tool and because you were too fast it doesn’t work. There are many visual bugs too. Despite that, the game is playable and it’s fairly easy to look past the jank if you have played any other game like this. I did not encounter any game breaking bug.
This necessarily detracts from the enjoyment and it’s honestly a wonder why the devs did not invest more effort into the presentation when you see how much content there is behind it. As it stands, there is little hope to see improvements in this aspect, the game having been released as a 1.0 version.
Despite this, I did enjoy the game for about 40 hours because of all it offers.
Cool premises of cultivation:
The game is set in an ancient Chinese cultivation setting and that really rocks with me. I enjoy cultivation novels a lot and I think this game gets it right. It’s not straight out cultivation as you are a unique farmer / cultivator and I think this setup just works.
The game excels at setting up its cultivation atmosphere. There are moments where I was truly amazed: I am fishing in town and after I’m down, I notice a guy has popped up with a quest icon. I talk to him and he mentions the krills I caught, giving me a cooking recipe. That kind of thing feels so organic. There is a real life to the game through the numerous quests you get too, which set up every character’s role and what they do throughout the day.
It’s not perfect though. While the game has some unique moments like that, it also has a lot of static NPCs with the same dialogue throughout the entire game. Even the main characters will say the exact same line the whole game (not even two lines, yes) when you choose to talk to them to improve your relationship.
The translation could also use a rework. Sometimes it’s tough to understand the text.
Diversified gameplay and some unique features
One of the things that compensates the jankiness of this game is that it offers a variety of unique gameplay elements.
Tending to your farm is more fun when you have a spell to summon a rain cloud, magic scythes that tear down crops to collect them and you can use the wind to spread seeds. It’s very effective though it’s a shame that all of these tools are not available from the get go. They play into your MP reserves too, making stats quite important even outside of combat.
Instead of your standard full recovery at night, you only recover your stats partially according to the decorations in your house. Therefore, it becomes a minigame in itself to optimise your recovery. Sleep is also not mandatory and you can skip it if you have enough food instead or haven’t used up your stats.
Very late in the game, you get introduced to a “feng shui farming” system which is interesting but I didn’t really think much of it. As it really involves going back and forth from one side of town to buy things you need, I wasn’t a big fan of it.
There are a variety of other gameplay elements which aren’t quite as unique and in my opinion they also don’t work as well: cooking is a mini-game similar to Overcooked but a little too jank for my appreciation and it gets repetitive fast; the combat seems inspired by a game like Vampire Survivors but the spells aren’t really interesting and it’s also very repetitive, with boring maps on top of it; fishing or alchemy are your usual gameplay and don’t really offer much…
Not so desirable lategame:
I think that around 35 hours in the game, I had seen most of what it had to offer. I unlocked every gameplay element and past that point, all that’s left is the story progression and half a dozen dungeons to clear.
Unfortunately it’s around this time that the game starts being quite tedious. As you unlock more town areas, you get to walk more to reach farther places and there’s no efficient way of teleporting (nor is it easy to unlock). You don’t even get to build the save/storage crystals that allow you to quickly access your storage, unlike at the beginning of the game. This makes some portions of the game really savage: it takes a full minute to walk from the nearest storage crystal to the alchemist / smith and you can only consult their list of crafting by visiting them. It’s even farther away if you need something at the farm instead.
The dungeons also suddenly become extremely hard, as if to counter the player rushing and force you into a grind. You absolutely need to use buffs and upgrade to the maximum every time to get a normal level of difficulty. This really disincentivizes the upgrade system and buffs in my opinion because they become mandatory. You don’t feel the progress of upgrading any more because monsters stay tanky and constantly requiring to cook will also make you tired.
This is also somewhat a problem through the game: you’re constantly forced to engage with every single gameplay element and if you don’t like one or get bored of it, tough luck. If you play another game like Stardew, you know you could easily ignore a feature and get by just fine. You don’t really get alternative ways here, such as paying money to get some of the stuff.
Overall I had a fun time with the game but I’m not sure I would recommend it. The jankiness is really detrimental to the enjoyment of the game and I really wish they had put efforts into fixing that. Ultimately it feels like a forgettable game and it doesn’t really stand out in any way.
Despite the appearances, the game is extremely poorly optimised. On my laptop with a 1050 Ti and a i5-8300H, I would often get frame drops in later areas or the farm and I think the game suffers from memory leaks. And don’t even try to play this game on a HDD, it just doesn’t work somehow.
It's a short game that was developed after a game jam project and it's pretty well done. The game is certainly functional and isn't really lacking in any department: it looks okay, plays okay, the sound and animation qualities are there.
It could help if it had a few more improvements such as being able to get out from the zoom mode by using the left mouse click, making it less tedious to turn the clocks or having the cooking pan always land in the right direction instead of flying around but those are minute details in a game that's about two hours long.
Amanda is your typical horror game that tries to take advantage of childish things, here it’s obviously Dora. It doesn’t really hold any surprise but it’s fun enough to play. I do wish it went further with its themes or it focused better on one of them instead of multiple ones, I think there are a few good ideas such as a child being stuck in a TV world which turns into some kind of hellish place: it’s an interesting concept that doesn’t try to make the player scared for their lives, instead it’s just as scary as hearing about what a killer could have done to a kid. You’ve got a kid right in front of you, suffering, and you can’t do anything about it. There are vague hints of this but ultimately the game stays at a surface level with everything. It seems more like a mix of ideas and jump scares than something cohesive, which is a shame.
It’s a very good parody of Dora on the other hand. The presentation is really top notch.
The puzzles can also get really cryptic. One thing I didn’t understand personally is that at some points in the story where you hit a game over, I wasn’t experiencing a bug where the game didn’t save but it was intentional.
It could help if it had a few more improvements such as being able to get out from the zoom mode by using the left mouse click, making it less tedious to turn the clocks or having the cooking pan always land in the right direction instead of flying around but those are minute details in a game that's about two hours long.
Amanda is your typical horror game that tries to take advantage of childish things, here it’s obviously Dora. It doesn’t really hold any surprise but it’s fun enough to play. I do wish it went further with its themes or it focused better on one of them instead of multiple ones, I think there are a few good ideas such as a child being stuck in a TV world which turns into some kind of hellish place: it’s an interesting concept that doesn’t try to make the player scared for their lives, instead it’s just as scary as hearing about what a killer could have done to a kid. You’ve got a kid right in front of you, suffering, and you can’t do anything about it. There are vague hints of this but ultimately the game stays at a surface level with everything. It seems more like a mix of ideas and jump scares than something cohesive, which is a shame.
It’s a very good parody of Dora on the other hand. The presentation is really top notch.
The puzzles can also get really cryptic. One thing I didn’t understand personally is that at some points in the story where you hit a game over, I wasn’t experiencing a bug where the game didn’t save but it was intentional.
2013
Imagine how bad a "visual novel" would be if there was a delay of one second between every line. Like holy shit what's wrong with this game? I can't even get to the part that others are criticising because of the delays. It's even worse if there's an actual transition, it's something like 10 seconds.
That and I'm not sure how I feel about a game where the first choices I get as a supposed amnesiac characters are "Touch her butt" and telling someone to "Show me your panties".
That and I'm not sure how I feel about a game where the first choices I get as a supposed amnesiac characters are "Touch her butt" and telling someone to "Show me your panties".
Pocket Mirror has everything to reach excellence as a RPG Maker mix of horror/cute. Unfortunately, it has some heavy issues that lessen the experience.
A game that’s frustrating to play
As someone who’s played a few RPG Maker games, I certainly don’t have a problem with its default and limited core mechanics such as the grid based walking. This is not where this game has problems.
One of the issues of Pocket Mirror is in its game design, based around puzzles you need to solve to progress throughout the story. A lot of the puzzles are very time wasting because they are based on trial and error and their presentation doesn’t help you in solving them. For example, for one puzzle you get three keys to pick up in a room and you have to go back and forth between that room and another to try them. As far as I know there was no clue on how to proceed. Honestly, I didn’t even understand most puzzles.
The second issue is the most important and goes in pair with the problem of centering the puzzles around trial and error: you die A LOT. Dying in this game has two consequences: the first is that you are sent back to your last save and the second is that you have to endure an absurdly long animation before you can do so. Whenever you die, you have to redo all your progress and that means going through all the cutscenes on your way, which can take forever.
It doesn’t help that checkpoints can be quite rare in certain parts of the game and the nature of the deaths encourages you to go back every single time you trigger a cutscene, out of fear of having to restart them. You never know when you might die: perhaps a conversation will trigger a choice that leads to your death. Perhaps it’ll be a chase that starts as soon as the conversation ends: these chases don’t give you a single second to figure out they started before you die, making it almost mandatory to die on your first attempt. I find the deaths in this game to be extremely cheap for these reasons.
The first hour and a half of the game can be quite frustrating because of these problems and the lack of build-up for the story. That aside, I’d like to talk about what I, despite these problems, liked about the game after enduring a rough introduction.
A very beautiful RPG Maker game
If not for the gameplay quirks such as how you walk, perhaps you would not guess this is a RPG Maker game. The sprite work is absolutely beautiful and rich. The locations can get very varied and detailed with few repetitions. I also noticed some nice animations for the sprites here and there.
The game also has very pretty portraits for every character and some occasional drawings to illustrate a specific scene.
As far as music goes, I wasn’t impressed but neither was I disappointed. On another hand, the sound design works well to complement the atmosphere and the eerie noises used in this game work well. There’s a lot of ambient tunes heard throughout the game as well as a variety of noises meant to distress you.
I can’t say much about the story, I did enjoy it but I don’t think it’s a standout. The start is very slow however and there isn’t much of an introduction to anything at the beginning. It’s the overall experience which is pretty cool.
If you like the trendy mix of horror and cute things, then you will like this game. It doesn’t really do anything surprising but it’s not a bad game either.
A game that’s frustrating to play
As someone who’s played a few RPG Maker games, I certainly don’t have a problem with its default and limited core mechanics such as the grid based walking. This is not where this game has problems.
One of the issues of Pocket Mirror is in its game design, based around puzzles you need to solve to progress throughout the story. A lot of the puzzles are very time wasting because they are based on trial and error and their presentation doesn’t help you in solving them. For example, for one puzzle you get three keys to pick up in a room and you have to go back and forth between that room and another to try them. As far as I know there was no clue on how to proceed. Honestly, I didn’t even understand most puzzles.
The second issue is the most important and goes in pair with the problem of centering the puzzles around trial and error: you die A LOT. Dying in this game has two consequences: the first is that you are sent back to your last save and the second is that you have to endure an absurdly long animation before you can do so. Whenever you die, you have to redo all your progress and that means going through all the cutscenes on your way, which can take forever.
It doesn’t help that checkpoints can be quite rare in certain parts of the game and the nature of the deaths encourages you to go back every single time you trigger a cutscene, out of fear of having to restart them. You never know when you might die: perhaps a conversation will trigger a choice that leads to your death. Perhaps it’ll be a chase that starts as soon as the conversation ends: these chases don’t give you a single second to figure out they started before you die, making it almost mandatory to die on your first attempt. I find the deaths in this game to be extremely cheap for these reasons.
The first hour and a half of the game can be quite frustrating because of these problems and the lack of build-up for the story. That aside, I’d like to talk about what I, despite these problems, liked about the game after enduring a rough introduction.
A very beautiful RPG Maker game
If not for the gameplay quirks such as how you walk, perhaps you would not guess this is a RPG Maker game. The sprite work is absolutely beautiful and rich. The locations can get very varied and detailed with few repetitions. I also noticed some nice animations for the sprites here and there.
The game also has very pretty portraits for every character and some occasional drawings to illustrate a specific scene.
As far as music goes, I wasn’t impressed but neither was I disappointed. On another hand, the sound design works well to complement the atmosphere and the eerie noises used in this game work well. There’s a lot of ambient tunes heard throughout the game as well as a variety of noises meant to distress you.
I can’t say much about the story, I did enjoy it but I don’t think it’s a standout. The start is very slow however and there isn’t much of an introduction to anything at the beginning. It’s the overall experience which is pretty cool.
If you like the trendy mix of horror and cute things, then you will like this game. It doesn’t really do anything surprising but it’s not a bad game either.
999 seems to often be recommended as some kind of entrypoint into visual novels and maybe point and click, as a mix of both, somewhat similar to Ace Attorney. Hell, it has ladder jokes so you can see the common points.
It’s also an escape game… game. You are locked in places and you’ve got to figure out where to go. The game alternates between these escape puzzles and story sections where the party will progress inside the boat, looking for an exit.
The atmosphere is spot-on
You are locked inside a big boat and it’s gonna sink. The environments are modelized in very basic 3D but this works in the game’s favour because the poor 3D models make everything feel cold, alien and eerie. Similarly, the sound design is really nice. The sounds of the interface also have that eerie feel and the soundtrack manages to convey tension throughout the game.
The story perfectly captivates the vibe of being locked inside a mysterious location which you get to know through your progress in the game and your multiple runs, revisiting locations as the game centres around a few spots. It will introduce future locations early on too so you can get used to it: see that door? It’s locked, but now you know there’s a mysterious door with a mysterious symbol on it.
The puzzles are satisfying but not exceptional
999 is a hybrid between two genres and I don’t think it excels at puzzles. However, they are decent and provide a good amount of fun. I think that a lot of the puzzles are too linear and the solution comes up way too naturally: you usually can only do one thing at the beginning and you’ll easily know what to do next, until the end of the puzzle. For example, you do not get to pick up a lot of items that you’ll use later, especially because of the game’s nature where every puzzle is isolated instead of being a whole
You don’t get to visit the ship yourself but through the story, this is a pretty heavy limit and I think it does not play in the game’s favour as I would actually have loved having the freedom to do so. Linearity aside, it’s just too easy to guess what to do and the characters also give a lot of hints. Honestly, I think most hints sounded silly because the puzzles are simple enough yet you have to read all these talks where the characters are trying to figure out the solution but where at the same time the writing is trying to hide the actual answer.
A story too constrained into a single ending:
A lot of visual novels have multiple paths you can take yet ultimately a single “true” one. 999 is no exception and it comes with the flaws of the genre. The alternative possibilities in this story do not offer much and the main use is to have the player experience multiple attempts at solving the story. This ends up quite repetitive because the information you acquire through the alternative routes is eventually used in the true ending and thus had to be explained again, in a clumsy and redundant manner mostly (although there is a neat gimmick about it too).
Another problem 999 has is that it somewhat lacks a story for a good portion of the game. Because of the way the plot is designed, there aren’t many secrets to be revealed or progress to be made that wouldn’t give away the entire plot. Thus, the plot is heavily concentrated into the true ending of the game. This route is actually quite long and took me about a third of my entire playtime of the game, compared to other ending branches which would be maybe 30 minutes long.
Because the story is so concentrated, the feeling of progress is lessened and the incentives to move forward are limited. There are only little details that matter in most routes and nothing big to retain from them. You do one route, reach a dead end with no explanation of why you failed and you just got to try another path. Thankfully, the PC port has a flowchart allowing you to go back to any point in the story instead of restarting everything, this makes it very convenient to play through the entire content and I am not convinced at all by those who criticise this system.
The reason why I believe the flowchart is essential is that there’s no impact to the choices you make and your progress is up to luck. Almost all of your choices are about which door to go through and you wouldn’t know what happen ahead of time. The other choices are choices that appear pretty inconsequential yet they are required to reach two of the endings. I thought they were really bad. At one point, a character asks a maths question and I had to answer wrong to unlock a certain path: there’s no way I would guess it without indications.
That aside, I did actually enjoy the story and I think they were some very touching moments.
Pseudoscience and fun facts, I say no:
One last thing I strongly dislike about this game is how pedantic it can get. To explain this, I will try to make up a situation that didn’t happen in the game but in a way that would happen in the game:
The group finds a nuclear bomb with a timer counting down. They panic but one character manages to keep their calm and starts explaining, “this is a nuclear bomb, do you know how nuclear science has allowed us to make a nuclear bomb? It was discovered by…”. After a lengthy explanation of how nuclear bombs work, another character will reveal their expertise in this science and start adding some precisions, “hey, this is actually a 1 megaton bomb, the radius of explosion would be around 10 km. If this exploded, we’re all dead!”. After this, we finally get to see the characters do something and how it’s gonna matter in the plot.
Quite a lot of the time, the story is interrupted by this kind of needless jargon you would hear from a high schooler trying to tell you cool science facts, if not pseudoscience. Yeah, the game also has a lot of pseudoscience and because of the way it was introduced I really wasn’t convinced. Not only is the introduction improper but the fact that all of the characters turn into some weirdos with random fun fact encyclopaedias in their head is just absurd to me.
Overall I did enjoy the game and appreciated it. It’s not the VN nor puzzle game I liked the most but I still think it has its merits.
It’s also an escape game… game. You are locked in places and you’ve got to figure out where to go. The game alternates between these escape puzzles and story sections where the party will progress inside the boat, looking for an exit.
The atmosphere is spot-on
You are locked inside a big boat and it’s gonna sink. The environments are modelized in very basic 3D but this works in the game’s favour because the poor 3D models make everything feel cold, alien and eerie. Similarly, the sound design is really nice. The sounds of the interface also have that eerie feel and the soundtrack manages to convey tension throughout the game.
The story perfectly captivates the vibe of being locked inside a mysterious location which you get to know through your progress in the game and your multiple runs, revisiting locations as the game centres around a few spots. It will introduce future locations early on too so you can get used to it: see that door? It’s locked, but now you know there’s a mysterious door with a mysterious symbol on it.
The puzzles are satisfying but not exceptional
999 is a hybrid between two genres and I don’t think it excels at puzzles. However, they are decent and provide a good amount of fun. I think that a lot of the puzzles are too linear and the solution comes up way too naturally: you usually can only do one thing at the beginning and you’ll easily know what to do next, until the end of the puzzle. For example, you do not get to pick up a lot of items that you’ll use later, especially because of the game’s nature where every puzzle is isolated instead of being a whole
You don’t get to visit the ship yourself but through the story, this is a pretty heavy limit and I think it does not play in the game’s favour as I would actually have loved having the freedom to do so. Linearity aside, it’s just too easy to guess what to do and the characters also give a lot of hints. Honestly, I think most hints sounded silly because the puzzles are simple enough yet you have to read all these talks where the characters are trying to figure out the solution but where at the same time the writing is trying to hide the actual answer.
A story too constrained into a single ending:
A lot of visual novels have multiple paths you can take yet ultimately a single “true” one. 999 is no exception and it comes with the flaws of the genre. The alternative possibilities in this story do not offer much and the main use is to have the player experience multiple attempts at solving the story. This ends up quite repetitive because the information you acquire through the alternative routes is eventually used in the true ending and thus had to be explained again, in a clumsy and redundant manner mostly (although there is a neat gimmick about it too).
Another problem 999 has is that it somewhat lacks a story for a good portion of the game. Because of the way the plot is designed, there aren’t many secrets to be revealed or progress to be made that wouldn’t give away the entire plot. Thus, the plot is heavily concentrated into the true ending of the game. This route is actually quite long and took me about a third of my entire playtime of the game, compared to other ending branches which would be maybe 30 minutes long.
Because the story is so concentrated, the feeling of progress is lessened and the incentives to move forward are limited. There are only little details that matter in most routes and nothing big to retain from them. You do one route, reach a dead end with no explanation of why you failed and you just got to try another path. Thankfully, the PC port has a flowchart allowing you to go back to any point in the story instead of restarting everything, this makes it very convenient to play through the entire content and I am not convinced at all by those who criticise this system.
The reason why I believe the flowchart is essential is that there’s no impact to the choices you make and your progress is up to luck. Almost all of your choices are about which door to go through and you wouldn’t know what happen ahead of time. The other choices are choices that appear pretty inconsequential yet they are required to reach two of the endings. I thought they were really bad. At one point, a character asks a maths question and I had to answer wrong to unlock a certain path: there’s no way I would guess it without indications.
That aside, I did actually enjoy the story and I think they were some very touching moments.
Pseudoscience and fun facts, I say no:
One last thing I strongly dislike about this game is how pedantic it can get. To explain this, I will try to make up a situation that didn’t happen in the game but in a way that would happen in the game:
The group finds a nuclear bomb with a timer counting down. They panic but one character manages to keep their calm and starts explaining, “this is a nuclear bomb, do you know how nuclear science has allowed us to make a nuclear bomb? It was discovered by…”. After a lengthy explanation of how nuclear bombs work, another character will reveal their expertise in this science and start adding some precisions, “hey, this is actually a 1 megaton bomb, the radius of explosion would be around 10 km. If this exploded, we’re all dead!”. After this, we finally get to see the characters do something and how it’s gonna matter in the plot.
Quite a lot of the time, the story is interrupted by this kind of needless jargon you would hear from a high schooler trying to tell you cool science facts, if not pseudoscience. Yeah, the game also has a lot of pseudoscience and because of the way it was introduced I really wasn’t convinced. Not only is the introduction improper but the fact that all of the characters turn into some weirdos with random fun fact encyclopaedias in their head is just absurd to me.
Overall I did enjoy the game and appreciated it. It’s not the VN nor puzzle game I liked the most but I still think it has its merits.
2021
As a long time player, what did MH Rise offer to me?
A modern redesign of my favourite maps:
One of the things that blew my mind about Rise is how they recreated older generation maps, modernising them in a much needed way. Not only are they now in high definition but they have also been reworked into seamless maps. Some of those were my favourite and Rise makes you feel like you’re replaying a game from Gen 3 again.
The greatest addition to the maps is a lot of verticality. You can climb and find a lot of secrets or resources. Fights don’t take advantage of this though, for the most part.
The only regrettable aspect is that you can still see the corridors separating areas, an obvious leftover from the original design idea. We’ve learned that the developers didn’t initially intend to make the maps like this but after seeing the development of World, they decided to rework the maps. In my opinion, the result is worth it.
Solid roster and old favourites:
One of the undeniable additions that Rise did to World is bringing back many of the older monsters, which needed to be reworked into the newer engine. The selection is great and they didn’t just focus on the big classic ones, we get a lot of the smaller ones like Arzuros or Lagombi too and I think it’s great. Once again, the game just digs into my Gen 3 nostalgia.
The newer ones are also cool and Rise has a unique identity in that regard. For once, the monsters are not based on nature as much as they are designed on Japanese folklore. Still, I think they fit well into the series. I don’t think I was disappointed with any of them and I was especially impressed with Magnamalo, which I learned to love after grinding it in the demo challenge.
Further improvements to MHW’s weapon redesigns:
Rise takes the weapon redesigns in MHW and continues to improve them. As an example, the Switch Axe has many more moves during which it can now change forms. Additionally, the game brought back the hunter arts from MHGU into a new form and they’re also great additions. The combat is dynamic and perhaps the most refined the series has ever seen.
Some problems arise though. First, the new wirebug skills can be quite spammy for some weapons. The hammer meta for example is to throw Impact Crater as many times as possible. Of course, nobody forces you into doing that and it’s perfectly playable otherwise, just don’t aim for speedrunning times.
I also am not a fan of the Hunting Horn rework, it feels like a completely different weapon from World. Using the right move according to your position does not matter any more and the main combo is pretty much to spam A. It feels much faster paced and less heavy.
Some problems regarding immersion:
Immersion is a big deal for me and I have always loved what the Monster Hunter series has done. I am a person who enjoys spending hours gathering or going on hunts to kill small monsters, knowing I am hoarding a wealth of materials I would never need. It was a relaxing activity for me. I also happen to like the item management part and I wasn’t a fan of World removing a lot of them: pickaxes, hot/cool drinks… Well, Rise is pretty much the same in this regard.
The monster AI is where immersion suffers the most and I dare say it’s the worst the series has seen. For example, the ways the monster moves in the now seamless maps can get quite ridiculous and it also happens way too often. The monster encounters are also not only annoying but immersion breaking. They are very scripted events and the outcome is always the same: monsters which are not your target have a mount threshold which is very low so whenever they meet your hunting target, one hit from it will make them available for mounting so it’s always the same pattern. Whether you mount or not, which monster you chose to knock down: the outcome is always predictable and you just choose the most optimal choice, if not the most annoying.
You can also instantly locate them now, removing the entire searching process. This is not entirely a bad thing but it does contribute to giving the game a more arcadey feeling. I hope the next game will improve in this regard and find a proper immersion formula.
Some things have improved, others have not. I also don’t disagree that the games are getting easier. However, I am still very hopeful for this series. I can tell the devs understand what they’re doing and I appreciate that they always try to do something new, whether it’s hit or miss. If I want to play the older games, I still can and if I don’t enjoy an entry, maybe I’ll like the next one more!
A modern redesign of my favourite maps:
One of the things that blew my mind about Rise is how they recreated older generation maps, modernising them in a much needed way. Not only are they now in high definition but they have also been reworked into seamless maps. Some of those were my favourite and Rise makes you feel like you’re replaying a game from Gen 3 again.
The greatest addition to the maps is a lot of verticality. You can climb and find a lot of secrets or resources. Fights don’t take advantage of this though, for the most part.
The only regrettable aspect is that you can still see the corridors separating areas, an obvious leftover from the original design idea. We’ve learned that the developers didn’t initially intend to make the maps like this but after seeing the development of World, they decided to rework the maps. In my opinion, the result is worth it.
Solid roster and old favourites:
One of the undeniable additions that Rise did to World is bringing back many of the older monsters, which needed to be reworked into the newer engine. The selection is great and they didn’t just focus on the big classic ones, we get a lot of the smaller ones like Arzuros or Lagombi too and I think it’s great. Once again, the game just digs into my Gen 3 nostalgia.
The newer ones are also cool and Rise has a unique identity in that regard. For once, the monsters are not based on nature as much as they are designed on Japanese folklore. Still, I think they fit well into the series. I don’t think I was disappointed with any of them and I was especially impressed with Magnamalo, which I learned to love after grinding it in the demo challenge.
Further improvements to MHW’s weapon redesigns:
Rise takes the weapon redesigns in MHW and continues to improve them. As an example, the Switch Axe has many more moves during which it can now change forms. Additionally, the game brought back the hunter arts from MHGU into a new form and they’re also great additions. The combat is dynamic and perhaps the most refined the series has ever seen.
Some problems arise though. First, the new wirebug skills can be quite spammy for some weapons. The hammer meta for example is to throw Impact Crater as many times as possible. Of course, nobody forces you into doing that and it’s perfectly playable otherwise, just don’t aim for speedrunning times.
I also am not a fan of the Hunting Horn rework, it feels like a completely different weapon from World. Using the right move according to your position does not matter any more and the main combo is pretty much to spam A. It feels much faster paced and less heavy.
Some problems regarding immersion:
Immersion is a big deal for me and I have always loved what the Monster Hunter series has done. I am a person who enjoys spending hours gathering or going on hunts to kill small monsters, knowing I am hoarding a wealth of materials I would never need. It was a relaxing activity for me. I also happen to like the item management part and I wasn’t a fan of World removing a lot of them: pickaxes, hot/cool drinks… Well, Rise is pretty much the same in this regard.
The monster AI is where immersion suffers the most and I dare say it’s the worst the series has seen. For example, the ways the monster moves in the now seamless maps can get quite ridiculous and it also happens way too often. The monster encounters are also not only annoying but immersion breaking. They are very scripted events and the outcome is always the same: monsters which are not your target have a mount threshold which is very low so whenever they meet your hunting target, one hit from it will make them available for mounting so it’s always the same pattern. Whether you mount or not, which monster you chose to knock down: the outcome is always predictable and you just choose the most optimal choice, if not the most annoying.
You can also instantly locate them now, removing the entire searching process. This is not entirely a bad thing but it does contribute to giving the game a more arcadey feeling. I hope the next game will improve in this regard and find a proper immersion formula.
Some things have improved, others have not. I also don’t disagree that the games are getting easier. However, I am still very hopeful for this series. I can tell the devs understand what they’re doing and I appreciate that they always try to do something new, whether it’s hit or miss. If I want to play the older games, I still can and if I don’t enjoy an entry, maybe I’ll like the next one more!