Lambert
7 reviews liked by Lambert
Rise of the Ronin
2024
While Rise of the Ronin is a fun game it has a bit of identity crisis. It takes inspiration from both the Assassins Creed RPGS and blends it with its Nioh siblings. What we end up getting is a okay story about an interesting time in Japan mixed with some fun combat even though it can be inconsistent in quality. The game also clutters your inventory frequently and the skill tree is filled with arbitrary numbers. If you want a Samurai RPG then pick Rise of the Ronin up when it hits sale prices (Rec $30 or less). 6.5/10.
Yakuza 0
2015
Nowadays, I have trouble maintaining interest in almost any game that’s over like 30+ hours, maybe even less than that. I don’t know how I could stomach it when I was younger. There are exceptions however, and Yakuza 0 is one of them. I was completely enamoured the whole way through at somewhere between 90-100 hours, and I still hadn’t come close to 100%. It’s Yakuza tradition to have a mind-boggling degree of variety, but 0 really kicks it up a notch.
Not much to say that hasn’t been said already, but something I do wanna touch on because I don’t hear it talked about much, is how immersive it is, and this applies to all Yakuza games, not just this one. The world is painstakingly detailed. Navigating Kamurocho and Sotenbori feels incredibly organic, especially if you take the time to learn street names and play without the minimap. After a certain point, it begins to feel like how a regular commute feels in real life. All the activities you can do just hammer this home even more. And the ambient audio during exploration is fucking amazing. Seriously, pay attention to that shit the next time you play one of these games.
Anyway yeah it’s one of my favourite games. It rocks.
Not much to say that hasn’t been said already, but something I do wanna touch on because I don’t hear it talked about much, is how immersive it is, and this applies to all Yakuza games, not just this one. The world is painstakingly detailed. Navigating Kamurocho and Sotenbori feels incredibly organic, especially if you take the time to learn street names and play without the minimap. After a certain point, it begins to feel like how a regular commute feels in real life. All the activities you can do just hammer this home even more. And the ambient audio during exploration is fucking amazing. Seriously, pay attention to that shit the next time you play one of these games.
Anyway yeah it’s one of my favourite games. It rocks.
Never played a Final Fantasy prior. If you like any form of character development or live action rpg combat this game will sink you in for 35 hours minimum. Top 5 game easy personally.
delusional game. they had a good thing going on with the first one, but this one just lacks everything. power-stancing and majula cool though
I truly went into this game thinking that people were merely exaggerating its flaws; and even though they were, it did not make it any less of a painful experience.
Lies of P
2023
A well polished game. It took the good features of Darksouls and Sekiro and blended them together. So, if they take such good features and make a game, that's enough for me. The bosses are high quality and the game is ending without being repetitive. The visual effects are truly next-gen. On ultra quality, the screen explodes from the effect. It's perfect.
Final Fantasy XVI
2023
Final Fantasy XVI is a very conflicting game for me. As a massive fan of the Final Fantasy franchise, a lot of the decisions when it comes to the direction of this franchise does not interest me all that much. Final Fantasy XVI features a lot of the extremes of those negatives for me. Especially in the combat department.
Final Fantasy 7 Remake, to me, is this action based combat style at its best. Final Fantasy 16 is this style at its worst.
Combat is so not fun. It's so tedious with battles oftentimes feels way too dragged out. You do get some powers that help make things move a bit quicker, with a lot of these powers having their own pros and cons for enemies.
The biggest problem with these powers though is your limitations in equipping them. You're only able to equip three at a time. Unfortunately, I found myself oftentimes being in a big boss battle or sub boss battle where one of my powers was just not the best for the enemies' patterns. This is a problem because during combat you aren't able to swap these out with others. It just feels like a silly restriction that would free up combat and make experimenting with combos and power up sets a lot easier.
The end result for me was just a ridiculous amount of button mashing and controller stress testing. Even when you're leveling up, this is a constant feeling and issue. Near the end I was having less issues with this but it wasn't enough.
The action heavy focus and negative shift compared to the previous attempts at this just make the game overall feel like an RPG in name only.
The game story wise though is still very much Final Fantasy with a whole bunch of crystal talk and massive summons.
The game is gorgeous which helps with some of the normal Final Fantasy summons. The scale and scope may be the biggest its ever been here in Final Fantasy with action moments consistently being way over the top. The final boss in particular is one of the most insane battles I've maybe ever had given some of the cutscenes and action moments.
The soundtrack does a lot of the heavy lifting in this as well. The music in Final Fantasy 16 is some of the best the series has ever had. It adds so much and fits so perfectly with the world and visual style.
The story is pretty good. It feels convoluted at times and character development is very hit or miss. Thanks to some great VO performances, Starr being one of them, the overall game does enough for me to be pretty pleased and make up for some of the story and character issues.
The world map and setting in general are also not good. The setup and functionality of the world map just aren't very good and the towns and locations aren't all that interesting.
The highs are really high but the lows are also pretty low. It makes for a frustrating at times experience but the end game stuff was enough to get it up to a 3.5. Unfortunately, combat being what it is though, that is enough to hold it back from anything higher than that. It's a head scratching end result.
Final Fantasy 7 Remake, to me, is this action based combat style at its best. Final Fantasy 16 is this style at its worst.
Combat is so not fun. It's so tedious with battles oftentimes feels way too dragged out. You do get some powers that help make things move a bit quicker, with a lot of these powers having their own pros and cons for enemies.
The biggest problem with these powers though is your limitations in equipping them. You're only able to equip three at a time. Unfortunately, I found myself oftentimes being in a big boss battle or sub boss battle where one of my powers was just not the best for the enemies' patterns. This is a problem because during combat you aren't able to swap these out with others. It just feels like a silly restriction that would free up combat and make experimenting with combos and power up sets a lot easier.
The end result for me was just a ridiculous amount of button mashing and controller stress testing. Even when you're leveling up, this is a constant feeling and issue. Near the end I was having less issues with this but it wasn't enough.
The action heavy focus and negative shift compared to the previous attempts at this just make the game overall feel like an RPG in name only.
The game story wise though is still very much Final Fantasy with a whole bunch of crystal talk and massive summons.
The game is gorgeous which helps with some of the normal Final Fantasy summons. The scale and scope may be the biggest its ever been here in Final Fantasy with action moments consistently being way over the top. The final boss in particular is one of the most insane battles I've maybe ever had given some of the cutscenes and action moments.
The soundtrack does a lot of the heavy lifting in this as well. The music in Final Fantasy 16 is some of the best the series has ever had. It adds so much and fits so perfectly with the world and visual style.
The story is pretty good. It feels convoluted at times and character development is very hit or miss. Thanks to some great VO performances, Starr being one of them, the overall game does enough for me to be pretty pleased and make up for some of the story and character issues.
The world map and setting in general are also not good. The setup and functionality of the world map just aren't very good and the towns and locations aren't all that interesting.
The highs are really high but the lows are also pretty low. It makes for a frustrating at times experience but the end game stuff was enough to get it up to a 3.5. Unfortunately, combat being what it is though, that is enough to hold it back from anything higher than that. It's a head scratching end result.