One of the few survival style games that really forces you into bad positions not just for yourself but for the game's other characters. You will be prevented from doing everything that you want and saving everyone you want to save, aligning with a game's story where your doctor isn't a savior or representative of a power fantasy but just another player in a town's story. Excellent atmosphere and aesthetic choices with conversation screens, the opening of the game and moments throughout presents the story as a play with the dialogue screen seeming to put the stage light and focus solely on the character you are speaking to. Well written dialogue and translation with an interesting story for the Haruspex character coming home after six years and his struggle between his roots with the native people and recent past pushing him away from those beliefs and discovering his murdered father's role in the town and if and how to succeed him. Makes failure, struggle, and choice meaningful. You won't be able to do everything each day and certain events can be important to the game's completion, only there to give you more details on the town and characters, they might get you useful supplies and items, they might be little more than an interesting distraction, and some side actives might even be harmful to the town or certain characters if completed.

Combat and stealth is poor, but easily exploitable, which makes it more bearable but also a bit ridiculous that some doctor can fight off multiple people often easily. Also a bit unusual that everyone knows it was you if you kill, autopsy, or loot people but that they like you more if you kill surrendering people as long as they attacked first. It can be hard to get into, but the addition of difficulty sliders that cover a lot of different areas can be used while you learn the game, to make aspects you don't enjoy or that the game doesn't handle well more enjoyable, or you could use it to make certain aspects even more difficult than in the base game. The limited amount of time, resources, and stamina you have can make certain aspects much more annoying than they would otherwise be, things like having to take long detours to reach areas in town because you can't just walk on or jump over small fences, rocks, or knee high boxes. With only one of the three playable characters available at this point (or possibly ever) you don't get the full story of the town and some of the supporting cast barely has a role at all in the Haruspex's story.

Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1182560943848378369

Story told by cutscenes is the melodramatic ridiculousness that I remember from six with the more interesting moments both character wise and thematic coming from the in mission dialogue. Story about how war is bad and there are drones but drones are bad so human pilots should be fighting in the wars instead of drones, and going to space, and drone country took over a lot of other countries taking the culture and language of those countries away from the natives which is bad but they should also just move on so everyone can come together to watch the only not useless pilot (MC) shoot down the super drones. Some story moments and characters do seem to tie into Ace Combat 0 and 5, which I have not played.

As far as I remember this plays like the Ace Combat 6 with no real improvements other than having missions that tend to change things up more with the environment or how you go about destroying targets, which can lead to some nice sights but more often than not the missions changing things up are easy, shorter, and lack the more intense fights of larger air battles or the more story heavy or fun moments of flying around the battlefield supporting your allies in larger fights. I think that's the thing I miss most from my memory of six, a lot of that game was fighting with the same groups of air, vehicle, infantry, and support crafts and you choosing who to help or helping everyone in time could change dialogue, mission medals and who survives, having more larger battles and allied communication is something I'd take over flying through a sandstorm to locate enemy vehicles with noting really posing a threat to your plane or your allies. Having so many allied groups over and over again gave you more of a connection with them unlike here where your support is frequently changing. Having less story significant enemy aces appear in most missions of some of the previous games that you may or may not shoot down also felt better than the one story guy appearing every now and then to do impossible maneuvers until you hit him with 8 missiles to get him to leave.

The game is a lot of fun though, even more so in larger battles, so it's just a shame so much time is spent with what are basically tutorial missions or doing really simple things like guiding bombs or flying in low viability areas against a couple normal targets. Really could have used more larger and more challenging battles.

Origin takes place around 50BC and is primarily set in Egypt. It is easily the best setting change in series since Ezio's games, and a unique well made location just in general. Detailed beautiful environment that can be explored outside of the game with a historical focus. Excellent weather effects, and day/night changes that alter how NPCs behave. Your eagle animal companion, Senu, serves as stand in for the usual dull vision mode is a very nice change as it allows you to focus on the world more and to use the view as the eagle to mark enemies, find alternate paths, or just to get a different view of the environments.

Easily the best series protagonist, a character focused on revenge as a motivation but not in a dull constantly raging or drunk way that tends to go there are a lot of moments to humanize the main character throughout the game. You are older than most game protagonists and your role in Egyptian society has you running into a lot of friends, your wife (also a playable character), and past acquaintances in your travels that lets you learn more about him. When he's not dealing with his enemies, Bayek is friendly, sarcastic, good with children while seeing his own dead son in them, and actively attempting to help the people he cares about and learn about the problems effecting his people. Side quests are the best they have been in the series, showing more about the main characters past, continuing to aid allies after their role in the main story is done, showing more about the people and culture, and offering much more variety gameplay and world building wise than the past games obsession with killing random targets or tailing people for information. The first good modern plot in some time, both character and information wise but also easier to ignore it and to just quickly get back to the main plot if its what you want.

Animus hack feature allows you to edit many different games settings, animations, how enemies and NPCs behave, it and the lab for Total War Warhammer 2 are two of the best setting/cheat/mechanic altering features added to games that I've seen in recent years.

The only real negative I had with the game is the amount of experience you need to not only gain all of your abilities but to at least gain all of your tools or options to engage with enemies. It would be nice if you at least gained all of your tools through normal gameplay.

Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1125222020877152257
https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1124939314943578113
https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1125218250390827008

Interesting well written sandbox murder mystery with mysteries inside mysteries, in an even more interesting Vaporwave inspired setting involving syndicate and council members living in a pocket dimension called Paradise Island. The island is regenerated after mistakes/tragedies with the coming 25th said to be perfect. Each with adducted enslaved citizens to serve as fuel to resurrect ancient genocidal gods, run by a council that has lived for thousands of years and other chosen who have started to grow bored of their lives, the way things are run, or their place in the island's hierarchy. When the council is discovered to be murdered by what is assumed to be a demon an investigator is called back after over 3,000,000 days of exile to discover the truth.

The look, setting, writing, music, and being rewarded for looking into things and exploring are the strong parts of the game. The actual investigating and case connections are basically done for you when you find new information by exploring the environment or questioning characters. You can't actual get your questioning wrong and even the trial at the end only involves accusing the people that make sense based on the evidence you discovered (you can easily miss things or start the trial early) and clicking every choice to present all of your findings to the judge. The actual running around back and forth, looking for currency in addition to collectibles and evidence to pay for upgrades or fast travel, and platforming to reach those collectibles also ends up being a fairly mediocre part of the game. Though the actual lore based items you find can be interesting and give a clearer picture of the game's unique setting.

Not everyone will be satisfied with the ending as the trial doesn't have the tense, shocking, back and forth moments of games like Phoenix Wright or Donganronpa, you don't have to piece much together like in Return of the Obra Dinn, and it isn't in the game's or your character's job's scope to solve or influence the problems with the setting's society or to delve deeper into real world/gods/demons talked about in the lore. But it does tell a good story in a world that is both unique with a rarely used art style, and searching the island to uncover more of the facts about the case and the island's citizens is different but very satisfying experience.

Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1330782389035966466

Adventurers Adol and Dogi are stranded on a cursed island with about 20 other survivors of a shipwreck, needing to band together to build a camp to defend against attacks from what should be long extinct creatures (basically dinosaurs). Later involving a threat to the world from the goddess of earth, a serial killer, and a scapegoated ghost pirate.

Released with a poor translation that was later fixed. Uses the more active battle system started with Napishtim and the party system of Seven with character switching, weapon weaknesses, dodges, blocks, and specials, and the mapping from Celceta. Has a second character you play in the past that will alter the island in the present, though these are always very obvious and few changes.

Fun combat. Good music and characters. Gives a lot of time to not just your five other party members but to the NPC characters you are stranded with. A lot of the early bosses are pretty good, getting you used to mechanics or having interesting details. Later bosses can start to just have dull gimmicks, have way too much health, or can just be so pitiful and awkward to fight that it seems like they ran out of good ideas with the large number of them. Still has the problem of unlocking skills that are just useless when put next to other options or when you are limited to only four skill bindings. At about 30 hours it is on the longer side for Ys games, like Celceta was.

Minor issues starting the game where it might just close itself (and would always close itself if I clicked to start it in Steam and then brought up a different window) but was always quickly and easily solved by just starting it a second time.

A solid entry in the series.

Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1337838147342745600

When the new protagonist of the Yakuza series was revealed a few years ago, I was partly worried about his often humorous appearance and expressions signifying that the series was going to lose a lot of the more emotional elements and problems heavily grounded in reality to fully embrace the absurd. That was not the case. Ichiban is a fun and likable protagonist with a backstory that fits the series norm of having a protagonist that never had the culturally accepted family lifestyle which also causes him to fit in well with his new friends and companions. Even his Yakuza back tattoo of a dragonfish highlights the way his past is viewed, being seen as someone lower in society while also representing trying to take the reigns as series protagonist from Kiryu. He even comments when asked about his tattoo by saying he wanted a dragon but that represents the top of the food chain, and that one day it will shine brighter than a dragon. His look and usual antics make him seems like more of a doofus but he can often be smart and frequently uses his knowledge of criminal and Yakuza lifestyle and hierarchy to trick or intimidate the games antagonists. There is also a focus on bonding with your party and friends that often feels like an extension of the bar friends and conversations from Yakuza 6 with conversations at your favorite bar hangout spot, conversations when you go to certain parts of the city, and conversations that happen when you eat certain meals with your friends that all allow for a deeper understanding of each character. The usual high quality voice work, character expressions, and clothing detail the series is known for continues in this entry.

The change to an RPG battle system is both fun and fits well with the main character's desire to be a hero like in the old Dragon Quest games that he played, and that ends up supporting a plot often dealing with Ichiban becoming a source of support towards the abused and forgotten of society (homeless, sex workers, orphans, elderly, immigrants, poor, whistle blowers). With the main plotline also having the usual well written Yakuza fare of the dealings and backstabbing of Yakuza and police, rising politicians, a family at odds, surprising reveals, and a group of foreign gangs that put your party in the middle of a decades old counterfeiting operation that has been keeping the peace between three rival factions.

A well made assortment of side quests are here, featuring both the touching and funny situations that the series is known for. There is also a variety of activities to participate in throughout the cities such as karaoke (with all but one of your party members having their own song to sing), go kart racing, shogi, mahjong, cabaret clubs, Sega arcade cabinets, gambling, baseball, darts, golf, pachinko, movie watching, a bicycle riding can collection game, and a property management and shareholder meeting side quest. Three different areas are featured with the main one being Isezaki Ijincho and with both Kamurocho and Sotenbori being available to travel to at a later point in the story. The new area is well detailed and as enjoyable to explore as Kamurocho.

The new battle system is fun and often works well but the biggest issue is one that I didn't expect the game to have. A shift to an RPG like commands seemed like a change that would just get us even more of the great visceral/hilarious/bone crunching heat attacks of the main games (even more so with a lot of the more out there combat elements just being what Ichiban sees in his head), instead many of moves are just dull to look at until you start getting into a lot of the late game unlocks or co-op attacks. You also miss out on a lot of the environment based combat that has been around since Yakuza 6, apart from hitting enemies into cars that are still moving in the background, you won't be seeing friends help you out with special heat moves, knocking enemies into stores, throwing them over railings on trains, throwing them into microwaves, etc. Other problems involve awkward battle positioning when it comes to hitting multiple enemies, people getting stuck on things (though the game will eventually just teleport them to the correct position if it the environment is causing characters to get completely stuck), and using objects in the environment to attack doesn't always seem to work to the extent that half the time it doesn't even seem functional. The camera can also make it difficult to block attacks well (by hitting O/B before an attack lands) and can sometimes be so slow to react that you can be hit before you even seeing the attack coming.

Grinding job XP if you want to try out new things, the sudden loss of 4th party member unless you have done the business management side quest to replace him, quests to find and beat certain enemy types that the game sometimes just never seems to want to spawn, at times almost immediate enemy respawns, and enemies that have no chance of killing you but have ridiculous amounts of health can all make the game feel like an old JRPG in a bad way. The women in your party job role's and some of their character skills are much more sexualized and flirty than anything the men get and some of the enemy types you run into can be questionable (like how most any black guy you run into is giant muscleman, wearing giant chains, or someone who draws a gun on you and starts shooting it sideways). Plot wise the game ends with some of the most expressive and emotional acting in the series, rivaling Yakuza 0's best moments, though also hurt quite a bit by having your only real attachment to the moments being what Ichiban is personally feeling. This is due to one of the main antagonists that you watch him pour his heart out to being easily one of the most repugnant people in the entire series, to the point that I can easily see people (especially people from the kind of backgrounds that you have been supporting through the game) liking Ichiban less for his actions at the end of the game.

There is a decent number of classes with every character tending to fit two or three of them well, but all job skills and animations are the same for each character. While you can learn and keep two skills in every class that can then be used in a different job those two carry over skills are the same for every character, taking a bit of characterization out of it (though each character does have different color costume options). Each party member does have their own unique class (Ichiban has two) to give them a few unique options, though three of them basically start as their most useful one. It is also unfortunate that two of the classes are locked behind paid DLC.

Like A Dragon succeeds at not just being one of the best Yakuza games but at creating a new protagonist that isn't just a great character but who is every bit as strong as Kiryu and reworks the series into a completely different combat and party focused style that, for the most part, works well while being fun to play but also further surrounds you with the friends, allies, and social issues that have always been at the heart of the series. It sounds like Ichiban is planned to head future games and that is a great choice. If the series continues with the RPG like battle system I think a lot of the issues would be fairly easy to fix and what we have here was a good start to a new gameplay style.

Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1343379463740878848

Action adventure game that continues the series tradition of having you play as a wandering ronin that arrives in a town and through your involvement with different events reach a variety of different possible endings based on the people and factions you support. Large number of combat styles for swords, spears, unarmed, guns, and dual wielding with the better ones giving some cool (or amusing) looking moves. Easier to follow events than previous games and to see what choices lead where by looking at a branching narrative tree. Town, building related events, and things like your ability to understand foreigners can change based on actions in previous playthroughs. Hilarious and ridiculous dialogue choices, from what I remember this is least serious of the series. A number of side activities, though most aren't that interesting other than the four side quest chains.

Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1284465847084318720

A good story and setting trapped in a terrible card game.

It makes a good use of its setting. Has a great main character, it's well written even putting in world details or the inner thoughts of character for every minor battles, very nice artwork in the environment, in the cutscenes, and for some of the cards. The framing of the game is a guy telling a story and everything that happens is either narrated by him or voiced by the game's characters, all with well done voice work. There are important and difficult decisions throughout the game that can change what cards you get and what named allies follow you, with characters have dialogue in and out of battles and can help in random events, there are some weak elements to decision making as your army morale never really matters but choice can come back to help or hinder you long after you make them and the game only keeps one save file automatically updated.

So why did it take two years to finish? Because, Gwent is a terrible card game and the battles tend to be so easy that the problem is more the length of the game forcing you to play such a large slow number of dull encounters in between nearly every good story moment. It would be difficult to explain why for people not at all familiar with it. It was a passable distraction in The Witcher 3 with an interesting element of leaders getting use of a one use battle order that could change the field up, weather effects, and having to place units in melee, ranged, and support areas which was hurt due to overpowered character cards you could keep adding to your deck and with the game only being a side focus. So of course, when they go to make Gwent an official game weather is basically removed, leader abilities are done frequently, and the melee and ranged rows now do nothing except for effect a very small handful of the game's cards.

For the majority of the game (all but the final battle) I used roughly the exact same deck, only adding in a few hero cards from the characters I kept with me. I made no use of spending the gold, recruits, and wood you gather to create new cards until I realized that there were achievements for having all of them in the last chapter of the game. This does hurt the decisions and narrative a bit as you end up swimming in money and wood by the last two chapters of the game. Do you help the peasants? Well that will cost a small fortune of 1,000 gold. Good thing I have 60,000. The game is so mindlessly easy that I just never cared to exploit any of the ridiculous strategies you can make use of. Gwent is a game where you could pull off bullshit like this if you construct an annoying enough deck with hero, relic, and main cards that interact with each other enough https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBIsZlV1jHk

Your choices effecting who joins you and if they ever decide to leave you (not counting ones who always will leave you) is obviously perfectly fine in a normal game and how it works is handled well here, but when those characters also act as cards that you might create entire strategies around you have a developer that clearly doesn't know what they are doing. Nonsensical siege battles when you have to take forts or towns are frequently said that they will be costly battles but never matter in terms of story, only gaining you resources, and the fortification walls that block the entire melee row for the enemy side, only hurt them as they limit where they can play cards and for some reason provide them no benefits. As my deck always used guys that could set a row on fire to deal out damage to ever character on it each turn, limiting the defenders to one row is certainly not helping them.

The game's final main battle resorts to doing what all games like this do, just blatantly cheating with two massively overpowered leader abilities and overpowered cards in their deck. Luckily the AI is nonexistent when it comes to actually using card abilities so I built a deck (really for the first time in a 30 hour game) that gets stronger as characters take low amounts of damage and gets much stronger when characters are killed and the AI used the 10+ turns they had on me after I could no longer do anything to keep constantly attacking me (on average doing about 10 damage to my side, and then gaining me 20-40 additional strength from the game each time). ...And I still barely won. Good thing I made the story decisions that got me and allowed me to keep all those cards I needed.

The game is full of optional puzzle battles in a game that doesn't really function as a puzzle style card game, so these are frequently throwing you into situations where cards do completely different things that you need to try to learn for a brief extra event or they might have the puzzles just play like different card games (Hearthstone or even one that is just a flip over pair matching card game).

I still kind of recommend it. It's an enjoyable narrative with some good events to interact with and a good use of The Witcher's setting. But if you've playing any kind of remotely good card games, Gwent is just terrible by comparison. Even dull simplistic things like Hearthstone are better.

Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1248524673249234944

This is the Police 2 is heavily story focused and tells an interesting, slow, and uncomfortable story of fetization of power and those with it, toxic masculinity, and people doing or trying to convince themselves that they are doing the right thing often while abusing the power given to them to combat other people abusing their own power. Rarely getting into how the police force as a whole abuses the town through their normal actions, you won't be causing accidents with speeding cameras, meeting quotas of black people to arrest, no stated abuse of the sex workers you arrest, and your officers aren't framing people for crimes on their own time. It's not a story about the systemic problems of the wider organization. The plot primarily follows the main character of the previous game, former police chief Jack Boyd, now on the run and hiding out in a small snowy town of the poor and forgotten middle America in the late 80s. A town filled with a cartoonish level of crime, murders, gang wars, sacrificial pagan cults, and Christians wanted to purge the nonbelievers, and all with a new sheriff that is unable to control the men working under her.

Voice work has the the characters sounding like they are always on the edge of a breakdown if their own sudden monologue become incapable of convincing them to keep going. Everyone is perfectly acted, even when overacted, and practically everyone is unlikable adding to the uncomfortable nature of the narrative. The scenes are primarily done in motion comic style panels with characters that are given no eyes and at times appear completely faceless, there are random lengthy dialogue bits about what color and how long the mold has been showing on the roof of the dilapidated police station, even done in a motion comic style it effectively allows panels, sounds, and darkness to linger long enough to convey the mood of the scene. The style is unique for a game and striking. Even the moments that could easily be cut or shortened were such amusingly strange or foreboding things to watch that I wouldn't want them to be. The soundtrack is excellent, varied, and perfectly matches the tone of the game.

The main gameplay involves looking at an over-world map of the town as you answer emergency and investigation calls that have you choosing what officers to send on the call and if you want to send your volunteer sniper with them, or if you think the call is a prank or a mistake that you should just ignore. The prank calls are often pretty easy to identify by what kind of information is being given and who is giving it. There are certainly some Karen wants to speak with the manager style call ins. You will choose what and how many officers to send based on their professionalism level with each calling having a minimum required amount, what their skills are and what you believe you will need, what equipment they each carry, and how much energy they have. Skills consist of strength, intelligence, speed, stealth, shooting, and negotiation with each having three levels. Every call gives an officer 10 professionalism if they were just there for the ride, 30 if they were the one that solved the situation, or -10 if the offender wasn't caught. Officers can become tired or drunk which can cause them to crash their cars leading to a few days of injury if they are sent out in those conditions. Once your officers arrive you get a description of what is going on and then choose an officer to take on of three options that might either end the event or continue it with a new series of choices until it is solved. An event might end with an escaped, killed, or captured offender, a safe, wounded, or killed victim, and possibly a wounded or killed officer. As you help townspeople you will also unlock options where you can pay to train your officers in each skill, help them to end their alcohol addiction, recover their stamina, or you can gain access to stores to buy and sell given or confiscated materials.

What you will need in calls often makes sense based on what kind of call it was, if two otherwise normal people are fighting a negotiation skill will likely work, if someone seems to be trying to beat someone to death you will likely need more strength and possibly a baton or taser to deal with the situation, armed suspects might be negotiated with but might be better dealt with stealth or a stun grenade, car chases are unlikely to need your personal strength or speed skill, investigations need intelligence, and a call sending you to respond to someone armed and with a body count will likely need an officer with a high shooting skill and possibly a taser for a better outcome. When receiving call for favor from town residents they will tell you what they need your officers to be good at and if they need them to being anything. Calls can range from being extremely dark, to sad, to being completely ridiculous and amusing.

When a day starts you can assign available batons, tasers, taser ammo, stun grenade, shockers, and pepper spray to your officers with each one having four open slots and each one always carrying a gun and knife. Each new day will likely have officers not show up to work, ask for the day of for mostly ridiculous reasons, and disloyal officers that refuse to wear their full uniform will only come to work every other day. You will also assign your more intelligent officers to investigations, Each investigation can have 1-3 people assigned to it with one looking for clues and the others looking into the 2-3 potential suspects. You will have to look at the clues and piece together the events that took place for the suspect you believe did the crime before being able to arrest them. There are two larger gangs where you will follow a chain of crimes by asking the right questions of the gang members you capture, or torture if you fail to ask the right questions, that will lead you to missions where you arrest the leader of the gang.

Officer skills also come into play during the tactical turn based events. Some days will have a hostage situation, bomb threat, gang assault, or robbery that will need you to choose officers to respond to call. Once they arrive each officer can choose four skills based on what they have unlocked through their skill ranks. They might be able to move more spaces, get an extra turn if they remain undiscovered, hide better and with more cover, see further, go into overwatch, shoot faster or more accurately, locate and disarm traps and bombs, negotiate for more time in hostage situations, hold up and ask criminals to surrender, break open or silently open windows and doors, jump fences, etc. Combat is lethal, every shot allows you to aim for the head, body, arm, or legs. Headshots are kills, body shots down a person and put them in a bleed out timer, and leg and arm shots create a slower bleed out timer but prevent either movement or shooting while leaving the combatant active. You never want to get into a gunfight as it is better to use stealth to get into range where you can hold up or stun with gadgets so you can handcuff your enemies, both safer and leads to a better outcome. Sending a cop that isn't loyal to you will cause them to be AI controlled, they will basically just run up and shoot at people causing everyone to get killed, meaning it shouldn't even have been an option to send them in the first place. It's overall a decent system with tense combat if you end up in it or are forced into it, stealth is pretty simplistic, some skills are clearly better than others, and some skills that would be cool in a more focused game are never really utilized. The sequel to this, Rebel Cops, made an entire game focused on this turn based stealth combat with additions. Each tactical stage allows you to retry it, so messing up or being bad at it won't cause you to have to suffer a huge loss or to replay the rest of the day.

Something I can certainly praise this game for is that when it comes to your decisions during events it is often quite clear what would be a good or bad idea, what skills would effect your options, allowing having the right equipment and using it to almost always be a successful option, and the events that allow you options outside of your normal skill range usually give you all the background information you could need to make your decision or are only set dressing. You will never get a random left, right, straight option where two of the choices lead to failure and random death. Though I can't say the same for some of the game's overworld events where taking on a cleaning lady can make one of your officers retire to marry her or where taking in some pound dogs can either lead to two of your cops playing with them for fun or one of your cops getting bit while trying to pet them and instantly dying. If something just utterly ridiculous does happen that is out of your control, you could even just reload the fairly short days to either make a different decision or for the random event to play out differently.

It would be nice if this loyalty and ridiculous number of calls-ins system was mostly dropped in favor of giving you fewer officers with more interesting and varied personalities and backstories. As it is now you do have a few characters with unique quirks, typically only shown with an annoying habit or one unique line they say. Two work very well together and double each others professionalism score, two are germaphobes, one won't use batons, one steals things, one likes to play dress up and won't go on tactical missions, one refuses to go out on call more than once a day, a man refuses to work with women, a woman refuses to work with less professional men but doubles everyone's experience when sent out in all female squads, and a few characters tend to be naturally loyal or disloyal or start out as alcoholics. All of them also have their own appearance, with most definitely looking cooler in their street clothes and hair when they are disloyal to you, you both gain and lose when they finally put on their officers hat that they respect you.

The game is unfortunately, full of half baked ideas that, luckily, effect so little or it is so easy to get around them that most do little to sully the experience but they do interfere thematically. The collection of goods and money needed to continue the game or to complete side activities becomes pointless as once you have access to two of the shops money no longer means anything as you can just buy leather shoes and chocolate from one store to sell to the other at 2-4 times the price. Money no longer being an option and two activities you can pay for to help with stamina or to raise loyalty essentially make stamina meters, loyalty, and to an extent even call ins have no real effect on you. One of the shops will even sell you police equipment which you are unlikely to need as you can already buy more by doing well in main activities, this and the lack of a need for money makes all side missions where town resents and organizations request you to do terrible things pointless. Sitting on $200,000 with everyone loving me after a couple weeks kind of hurts the narrative of desperately trying to acquire money and power. You can refuse to perform the more questionable actions that people want out of you, but you can never take the good option and arrest the person making the request, and the linear narrative of the game gives you no reason to believe your character would have the morals to deny many requests. Though, rolling in money and trust from all my other good work did allow me to take the moral high ground of ignoring any calls to bring in sex workers or recreational marijuana users.

There is a brief point where the station's cook leaves and you need to spend a combination of station and your own money to feed the on duty officers, some of them will make requests, some that contradict other officers, and not getting someone the french fries they wanted that day might cause them to lose their loyalty to you. This strange distraction is likely over a few days later as you are given the option to pay for catering for the rest of the game. Most of the tactical missions happen on each day but two force you to plan for four days, assign officers to roles, and gather information, this would all be great except that it forces skill and equipment choices on characters and adds in an extremely odd system where the chosen six characters are unable to come to work until the assault happens but they are unable to be used at work but they can be taken off the team and just added back to it if you want to use them in a normal day but taking them off gives them no equipment for the day. Even this really doesn't matter as you will likely have more than enough officers to just not assign anyone until right before the mission happens, it's just a very what the hell were they thinking kind of system.

It ended up being a lot more interesting that I thought it would be, with some good ideas, some common ideas that were better realized than most games, and some bad ideas that for the most part came together in a way where none of them caused many real issues with the overall experience.

Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1249818269659234304

One of the best beat em ups I've played. Some great changes with desperation moves now draining health that can be gotten back by damaging enemies if you aren't hit and being able to catch thrown weapons allowing you to rapidly throw them at approaching enemies 12 stages that all look great and have their own quirks to help or hinder you. 17 total characters with five being main characters that make full use of the game's full movesets and the other 12 being the playable main characters from Streets of Rage 1-3 and Shiva from 3, all looking like they did in those games. All around great art style even making good use of the ambient stage lighting.

The responsive nature of the game and the move-sets and sound effects of those old character make them still fun to play as. Five difficulties with the most difficult at least doubling the amount of enemies to fight and making them come at you with greater speed but still allowing you to deal with large groups well from the speed of the series attacks and ability to quickly change your direction (and the back attacks and desperation moves). Some hidden arcade machines that, when hit with a taser, let you fight a boss from the older games in their old area. A few good enemy types change up the best way to fight them by countering your attacks or needing you to connect a hit just as they lunge at you with one of their moves.

Has the occasional odd hit box, would like a mode that allowed you to use weapons more often. The boomerang at the start of one level is fun with the new mid air weapon grabbing ability.

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aaa5gGHKr8E
Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1257113090388144128

Vertical shoot em up. Similar to the first game but makes a few small changes and adds a third character option. Changes up some scoring elements, gives you a button that can be held to constantly shoot the main weapon without going into the slower charged shot mode, "bomb" attack now visually looks to pack a greater punch, the music is better and feels like it has its own style, you don't have to chase down your powerups every time you die. Much higher difficult with even a couple enemies usually filling the screen with bullets.

Still fairly dull stages/enemies.

Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1344786531739865088

Vertical shoot em up. Two characters with one shooting straightforward lasers and the others attacks having more of a spread. Attack button will fire a few shots, holding fire will slow you down but maintain a constant higher damage attack. The game has some cool features, "bombs" reduce a power meter with your character having an aura around them that grows as you drain the meter to charge an attack while also protecting you (so a quick tap of the bomb button will drain limited meter while possibly saving you from being hit). You can also build power for a mode that slows down enemies and their shots while also charging your attacks and changing your characters gender and outfit, it will also change destroyed enemies active bullets into gold but it will increase enemy attack speed if overused (though going into the overdrive mode is enough way of scoring in itself).

Fairly dull stage design and similar enemies in them.

Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1344603415226109953

"There are none happiest in the world but those who enjoy freely a vast horizon."

Ruminate on life, choices, and our place in the world with a deer while teetering on a cliffs edge from sunset to sunrise with moments of humor sprinkled in. Inspired in part by the works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, John Muir, and Henry David Thoreau. Your choices mostly made to highlight her outlook on the current situation with mostly small conversation changes. Good art work and relaxing music.

Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1295250273816862720

Good base gameplay, really nice use of cover movement and overwatch that feels at home for the series. Good level design, with occasional areas that have very similar looks to them. Unit classes with mostly good ability choices, some only good for certain mission types and some poor descriptions that make you think they will do things or different things than what they actually do. Poor recruitment system where you get a pool of new characters every mission likely stronger than your current ones that come with new gear, rescued characters already spend skill points when others allow you to choose making them worse choices. I had one character that I used every chance I could and she was the only one who, barely, levels above new characters, making the limited cosmetics and color options even more pointless as it is better to constantly replace everyone. Heroes have no unique features and even they might fall behind in level even when taking them as often as you can. What there is is good but lack of objective variety. Easy to sit around to wait for ability cooldowns.

For a strategy game there is almost no replayablity as you will have the characters to try all skills and you will see what all the maps and objectives have to offer. There is no larger strategic game outside battles, no good in world explanation for the strange level modifiers. Feels a lot like the original XCOM remake to me. Some poor choices with a lot that could be improved on with pretty solid base gameplay. Would like a sequel with new enemies and equipment and either more focused on randomization of levels and new objectives or just all varied prebuilt set-pieces let going through a Gears campaign. The grenades are massively overpowered, making the scout class that has an upgrade path where they can throw them every turn along with proximity grenades massively overpowered. Not enough emergence holes or fortified positions, way too many enemy dropships.

Cole was a preorder (or early game pass) hero character and his taunts and yelling as you use him made him the only character I really personality wise enjoyed having. There are some terrible looking beards on the recruitable characters.

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8qIkZ9138E
Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1259654508939898880