What were they THINKING?! This is a disgrace to the XXL series! Asteris & Obelix XXL 1 and 2 were great games and Microids managed the conversinos pretty well, but this thing it's like they were not even aware of the games they remastered.
I might change my mind around not finishing this game If I ever find myself not having any good game to play, but it will not be soon.
After this turd and the bad rap the last Asterix & Obelix game got I finally understand why people shit on Microid so much despite the good work they did with the previous remasters.

A bit short compared to other VNs I have played but the quality is top-notch, it has 3 endings and a few animated scenes that spice up the content.
The story could be intersting but all the lore and characters are underdeveloped, and there's no sense of humour (at least not self-aware) or anything of the sort to keep it interesting. Basically an excuse to have Lewd-scenes, which I guess might be fine with the specific target audience but for somebody just midly curious the shock value loses steam pretty fast, not to mention it's tiring to read 500 lines that can be summed up to "If you do X I will go crazy".

Biggest fun playing a new game I've had since Sekiro was released!
This time Miyazaki put all his previous games on a blender and added an open-world. The plot is hilariously the same as always: "Defeat the 4 strong dudes, become a lord". However, Hidetaka keeps perfecting the formula, he probably won't stop until making a procedurally generated Souls-like game.

(I have not finished the game so they might be a twist regarding the "Defeat the 4 strong dudes, become a lord" thing, but I doubt it).

EDIT: There was no twist.

Vengeful Guardian: Moonrider is one of the most "By the numbers" retro-style games you can possibly find. This game was made by the same people that did Blazing Chrome, an already "By the numbers" game, but in comparison Chrome wins by a landslide.

I don't want to call "Moonrider" bad because it's not, but it's so damn safe in it's design and execution that while playing it you will be thinking how much more fun you would be having if you were playing the games that inspired it, specially Ninja Gaiden or Shinobi III (AKA Ninja Ryukenden and Super Shinobi II) which are masterpieces.

Aside from it's obvious ninja game inspirates, there's a fair deal of Megaman and "whatever was popular in the late 80's/early 90's". What I think hurts this game a lot is that does not just pays homage to those games, it outrights tries to copy them with flaws included.
It's endearing when you play an old game that had a barebones story and limited gameplay, but doing it today feels just like a regular shortcoming, there's not tongue-in cheek commentary done about it, it's just played straight.

The story is some barebones political revolution thing with no real explanation as to why things are happening, similar to Alien Soldier (this game wishes it was as tight). But Alien Soldier backstory is an excuse to throw boss fights at the player. In this game you keep getting information you could not give two shits about.

For some retro-style ninja fix I would much rather play "The Messenger", which is a game that pay homages to retro games while building upon them instead of limiting itself just for nostalgia's sake. (Cyber Shadow might be another good alternative but I have not played it).

Blade of Darkness is an interesting game from a by-gone era where games were trying to appeal to a more mature audience by full inmersing themselves in dark and often gory narratives. Foreboding music, dimly lit scenarios and heroes sporting deadly weapons that, instead of dealing "PG-violence", left enemy corpses lying over pools of their own blood. In this aspect, "BoD" suceeds quite well, although it's bread-crumb type of storytelling fails to make it as memorable as other titles from that era like Blood Omen or American Mcgee's Alice.

Having only played through the end as the Dwarf I cannot comment much on the overall gameplay from the perspective of the other characters with max levels and late-game weapons, but I have to say this is not AT ALL a "proto-souls" like a lot of people insist. Blade of Darkness is pretty much a "Tomb Raider era" game, but with little emphasis in puzzles and exploration (though it rewards the later) and bigger emphasis on combat, and this is where it can lose a lot of people. The combat is clunky, even with the faster characters the movement has the euro-jank feel and it clashes with the way the camera is implemented. Rotating it while walking makes it jump back and forth in an attempt to center itself which it's slightly annoying on a normal situation and super frustrating in platforming sections.

Another thing regarding gameplay that I barely see commented often is it's combo system and how it can fuck you up. This game has combos that are unlocked as you level up which are a not hard to pull off, but since they require simple buttons combinations they can activate while you're trying to move away from an enemy and get you into their range of attack, not to mention what happens if say combo drains your stamina which leaves your character for almost 5 whole seconds gasping for air while the enemy can hack freely at you. It's specially agravating in the end game where you get the best weapon which has a combo that's done by simply pressing attack and then down. Can't tell you how many times I accidentally triggered "You don't have enough stamina" animation and had to sit down and watch how the Dwarf got demolished by an Ogre.

All in all, classic Euro-Jank that can be pretty fun if you can be a friend of it's clunky controls.