Shenobi
2024
UPDATE: Finished the second playthrough, this time as Edward Carnby.
I neglected to mention all the stuttering and texture pop-ins and other graphical goofiness that happened (I think) in the previous review, so let me start with that -- it was present across both runs.
Some other fun things I encountered this time around while playing as Edward:
-- Audio repeating over itself multiple times while trying to have the same conversation with someone.
-- I could no longer use hatchets because the game decided I always had a hatchet, even when I didn't, so I could only use non-hatchet weapons for melee for the rest of the game. On a similar note, the Lagniappe for the Jack-in-the-Box apparently has a limit of one for its quantity you can have, which is interesting, as it's the only Lagniappe you can grab across both runs, as far as I can tell. But I did manage to grab it approximately six times during Edward's run, despite the limitations on inventory for it.
-- Starting from Chapter 3 onward, the map markers for rooms that still had stuff to do in them were all reset back to their flags for the beginning of Chapter 2 and they stayed that way for the rest of the game. This even went as far as things that were already done once that could not possibly be repeated, like in the case of opening the Medicine Box in Lottie's room. The box acts like you can interact with it with a key you no longer have and will tell you that you still need the key, even though you already opened it and got the key item needed for another puzzle.
-- I missed some trophies and was curious about what happened with them, so I went and googled the ones I was missing and found that four of them just straight-up don't work or only work for one character and not the other.
The role swap of using the opposite character results in almost the exact same situations, with the exception of one special scenario unique to each character in Chapter 4. If you play the game once with the character you want and then just watch a playthrough of Chapter 4 with the other character, you're covered instead of spending hours repeating the exact same processes. I guess playing as the other character for a second run does get you the ability to net all the Lagniappes (I did get them all), but there's very little reason to do so, unless you want to see a couple extra scenes that are callbacks to the original game...and one or two other scenes that involved the glitched trophies I mentioned, so you don't even get to see those!
In a sense, despite only spending less than half the hours on AITD this time around, I feel like the overall experience managed to be worse because of the ridiculous repetition with minimal payoff. I'm not going to lower the rating, but what a mess this game is. And I still don't have the trophy for playing for at least eight hours, despite having approximately fourteen hours of gameplay logged because of the weird bug during the Emily run where it just didn't accrue time for about eight hours!
Original update follows below:
--------------------------------------------------
So, quick thoughts on AITD2024 in no particular order because I just took my time through this and still finished it today in roughly one sitting (I apologize for lack of useful clarifications on stuff, I'm tired):
First, combat is absolute ass. And I mean beyond ass to the assieth power of assing. This varies between the few types of enemies you encounter, but generally speaking, you just swing wildly with R1 and hope you do enough damage to ruin them quickly (usually causing stunlock) with your melee weapon. If you're shooting, uhh...pray. Sometimes you can get a headshot and an enemy just drops, sometimes you have the four-legged facehuggers that...simply don't care if you shoot them because they just don't acknowledge bullets, even though bullets should hurt them. But that's more of a bug that we'll go over shortly. Also, there's attacks of opportunity (just called "opportunity"), but I only got one prompt to do so the entire game for some reason and even when I did it, the game didn't give me a trophy. Not a big loss, but it feels like some aspects of this game were more afterthoughts than anything else.
Second, HOLY FUCK THE BUGS AND GLITCHES. Things that happened during my run:
-- The very first time I started the game, apparently the game just stopped counting playtime after 49 minutes and 36 seconds. Why? No clue. But I got the trophy for beating the game in under three hours after spending about nine hours playing the game, with a final time of exactly two hours.
-- At one point, every time I tried a door that had a lock on it, my journal would update with an extra copy of the exact same page of objectives that I got at the start of the chapter. I added like seven copies of the same page just to test this and it just kept going.
-- The four-legged facehuggers are the only creatures with QTEs involved in their actions, and they can go from QTE -> you recover from QTE -> camera angle sucks so you can't see -> QTE again. Worse still, sometimes they just simply ignore bullets you fire at them. At one point, I emptied two entire clips into a facehugger and it just kept existing, so I reloaded the game and just ran past it. Some facehuggers were just getting stuck in walls or falling into existence from places or humping walls while I shot them.
-- Essentially, everything after Chapter 3 is a mess that needed some extreme polish.
Third -- The story is...a thing?
--------------------TINY MINOR SPOILER-----------------------
It's reality, it's all in your head, it's cosmic horror, it's none of the above, it's all of the above, it can't make up its mind on who the story is actually about.
---------------------TINY MINOR SPOILER END-------------------------
Granted, this was the Emily side of the story and not the Edward half (I'll do that tomorrow over the course of the day, probably). Also, there's only two bosses in the game and one was a total joke and the other was just a pain in the ass that involved enduring frustratingly dumb stuff in order to prevail.
Fourth -- I want to go back to bugs again because there's one room in the entire game that uses a single fixed perspective the whole way where you can't rotate your camera and every time I walked through the room at a certain spot, my character would get drunk and turn right and slam into a wall. It was amazing.
Fifth -- The lore was great, actually. If you want Lovecraftian storytime, it's the one thing this game does really well. I should probably have lumped this in with the general story comments, but I do love that there's so much stuff being covered, even if how it's all handled outside of reading up on or encountering said material doesn't amount to much.
Finally -- This is nothing like an actual remake. The overlap between the original mansion and Derceto is that there's like four or five rooms in the entire game that are similar. About half of the game takes place in "other locations". There is no really neat underground. You will not get attacked by a giant worm that can one-shot you. You will not go mad from reading any books. There are two enemies that can one-shot you, but they both have their own easy sections to deal with them.
Extra Finally -- The "sneak" mechanic is either stupid or broken because some things you need to sneak past can also simply be walked past. Magical.
I can't recommend you buy this at this time of release, it's not even worth it at half off. Maybe wait until the game is 15 bucks or less if you just want to enjoy some creepy lore dumps, but the game is passable visually, sparse in regards to enemies, and combat is extraordinarily bad. But hey, at least the sound design was alright, sometimes...I just remembered that at one point, a radio kept just starting to play for one second and then would cut out again, only to repeat after another ten seconds or so. That might have been unintentionally creepy, but it's just one more bug to acknowledge.
I neglected to mention all the stuttering and texture pop-ins and other graphical goofiness that happened (I think) in the previous review, so let me start with that -- it was present across both runs.
Some other fun things I encountered this time around while playing as Edward:
-- Audio repeating over itself multiple times while trying to have the same conversation with someone.
-- I could no longer use hatchets because the game decided I always had a hatchet, even when I didn't, so I could only use non-hatchet weapons for melee for the rest of the game. On a similar note, the Lagniappe for the Jack-in-the-Box apparently has a limit of one for its quantity you can have, which is interesting, as it's the only Lagniappe you can grab across both runs, as far as I can tell. But I did manage to grab it approximately six times during Edward's run, despite the limitations on inventory for it.
-- Starting from Chapter 3 onward, the map markers for rooms that still had stuff to do in them were all reset back to their flags for the beginning of Chapter 2 and they stayed that way for the rest of the game. This even went as far as things that were already done once that could not possibly be repeated, like in the case of opening the Medicine Box in Lottie's room. The box acts like you can interact with it with a key you no longer have and will tell you that you still need the key, even though you already opened it and got the key item needed for another puzzle.
-- I missed some trophies and was curious about what happened with them, so I went and googled the ones I was missing and found that four of them just straight-up don't work or only work for one character and not the other.
The role swap of using the opposite character results in almost the exact same situations, with the exception of one special scenario unique to each character in Chapter 4. If you play the game once with the character you want and then just watch a playthrough of Chapter 4 with the other character, you're covered instead of spending hours repeating the exact same processes. I guess playing as the other character for a second run does get you the ability to net all the Lagniappes (I did get them all), but there's very little reason to do so, unless you want to see a couple extra scenes that are callbacks to the original game...and one or two other scenes that involved the glitched trophies I mentioned, so you don't even get to see those!
In a sense, despite only spending less than half the hours on AITD this time around, I feel like the overall experience managed to be worse because of the ridiculous repetition with minimal payoff. I'm not going to lower the rating, but what a mess this game is. And I still don't have the trophy for playing for at least eight hours, despite having approximately fourteen hours of gameplay logged because of the weird bug during the Emily run where it just didn't accrue time for about eight hours!
Original update follows below:
--------------------------------------------------
So, quick thoughts on AITD2024 in no particular order because I just took my time through this and still finished it today in roughly one sitting (I apologize for lack of useful clarifications on stuff, I'm tired):
First, combat is absolute ass. And I mean beyond ass to the assieth power of assing. This varies between the few types of enemies you encounter, but generally speaking, you just swing wildly with R1 and hope you do enough damage to ruin them quickly (usually causing stunlock) with your melee weapon. If you're shooting, uhh...pray. Sometimes you can get a headshot and an enemy just drops, sometimes you have the four-legged facehuggers that...simply don't care if you shoot them because they just don't acknowledge bullets, even though bullets should hurt them. But that's more of a bug that we'll go over shortly. Also, there's attacks of opportunity (just called "opportunity"), but I only got one prompt to do so the entire game for some reason and even when I did it, the game didn't give me a trophy. Not a big loss, but it feels like some aspects of this game were more afterthoughts than anything else.
Second, HOLY FUCK THE BUGS AND GLITCHES. Things that happened during my run:
-- The very first time I started the game, apparently the game just stopped counting playtime after 49 minutes and 36 seconds. Why? No clue. But I got the trophy for beating the game in under three hours after spending about nine hours playing the game, with a final time of exactly two hours.
-- At one point, every time I tried a door that had a lock on it, my journal would update with an extra copy of the exact same page of objectives that I got at the start of the chapter. I added like seven copies of the same page just to test this and it just kept going.
-- The four-legged facehuggers are the only creatures with QTEs involved in their actions, and they can go from QTE -> you recover from QTE -> camera angle sucks so you can't see -> QTE again. Worse still, sometimes they just simply ignore bullets you fire at them. At one point, I emptied two entire clips into a facehugger and it just kept existing, so I reloaded the game and just ran past it. Some facehuggers were just getting stuck in walls or falling into existence from places or humping walls while I shot them.
-- Essentially, everything after Chapter 3 is a mess that needed some extreme polish.
Third -- The story is...a thing?
--------------------TINY MINOR SPOILER-----------------------
It's reality, it's all in your head, it's cosmic horror, it's none of the above, it's all of the above, it can't make up its mind on who the story is actually about.
---------------------TINY MINOR SPOILER END-------------------------
Granted, this was the Emily side of the story and not the Edward half (I'll do that tomorrow over the course of the day, probably). Also, there's only two bosses in the game and one was a total joke and the other was just a pain in the ass that involved enduring frustratingly dumb stuff in order to prevail.
Fourth -- I want to go back to bugs again because there's one room in the entire game that uses a single fixed perspective the whole way where you can't rotate your camera and every time I walked through the room at a certain spot, my character would get drunk and turn right and slam into a wall. It was amazing.
Fifth -- The lore was great, actually. If you want Lovecraftian storytime, it's the one thing this game does really well. I should probably have lumped this in with the general story comments, but I do love that there's so much stuff being covered, even if how it's all handled outside of reading up on or encountering said material doesn't amount to much.
Finally -- This is nothing like an actual remake. The overlap between the original mansion and Derceto is that there's like four or five rooms in the entire game that are similar. About half of the game takes place in "other locations". There is no really neat underground. You will not get attacked by a giant worm that can one-shot you. You will not go mad from reading any books. There are two enemies that can one-shot you, but they both have their own easy sections to deal with them.
Extra Finally -- The "sneak" mechanic is either stupid or broken because some things you need to sneak past can also simply be walked past. Magical.
I can't recommend you buy this at this time of release, it's not even worth it at half off. Maybe wait until the game is 15 bucks or less if you just want to enjoy some creepy lore dumps, but the game is passable visually, sparse in regards to enemies, and combat is extraordinarily bad. But hey, at least the sound design was alright, sometimes...I just remembered that at one point, a radio kept just starting to play for one second and then would cut out again, only to repeat after another ten seconds or so. That might have been unintentionally creepy, but it's just one more bug to acknowledge.
Short thoughts:
-- Story's great, once it really gets going.
-- Most of the dungeons feel distinct from one-another (especially the Womb of Grief, which was apparently an add-on to Redux).
-- As others have said, being able to allocate your stat points would be nice.
I think there could be some improvement in how fusion is handled in this game, but coming off of Soul Hackers 2, I feel like any fusion system is going to feel better to me, personally.
Overall, I'd highly recommend it for fans of dungeon crawlers. Never finished the original, so I can't really give a fair comparison between the two.
-- Story's great, once it really gets going.
-- Most of the dungeons feel distinct from one-another (especially the Womb of Grief, which was apparently an add-on to Redux).
-- As others have said, being able to allocate your stat points would be nice.
I think there could be some improvement in how fusion is handled in this game, but coming off of Soul Hackers 2, I feel like any fusion system is going to feel better to me, personally.
Overall, I'd highly recommend it for fans of dungeon crawlers. Never finished the original, so I can't really give a fair comparison between the two.
2022
This review contains spoilers
My short, short review is simply: If you're a fan of Pokemon, you'll probably enjoy the core experience here, regardless of technical issues. If you're on the fence, at least wait until there's some kind of patch to deal with some of the chugging, crashes, and other silly quirks.
I've been perusing the reviews and can see that I didn't get the same experience out of this game that other people did, for sure. I'm sure this is due, in large part, to certain expectations I had that either fell flat or were ruined in some cases. Let's talk shop.
I'm not going to say too much about the technical issues -- they're a huge mess and everyone's probably experienced their own fun/pain. My spouse is playing Scarlet and she's had seven crashes, while I've been playing Violet and have three. Both our copies are digital, she has a newer Switch -- though from the same generation as mine (2017-2018, I think?).
Crashes between our two games included the following happening at the time of crashing:
-- Walking
-- Trying to enter a building
-- Riding your All Terrain Dino
-- Talking to a trainer that wants to battle
-- Opening the world map
-- Trying to join a Union Party
Yeah, several of those happened multiple times, but what an experience. Both of us have only lost a minute or two in each instance, so no big deal. Beyond that, framerate that feels like a slog most of the time. Both of us are playing docked, so I can't speak on quality for playing handheld.
The glitches are vast and varied, but they're not really worth touching on -- they generally don't impact gameplay beyond a speedrun-worthy one near the end of the game where you can skip forced dialogue (that has its own issues) by jumping off the sides of some cilffs while leaning into a texture plane that's angled. If someone wants me to elaborate, I will, but much like being able to exploit reaching places you shouldn't via combat, that's more about favorable glitches than issues that need to be fixed.
Regarding actual gameplay, the thing is, the actual core experience of collecting your mons and building in a direction you want is just as fun as ever and also more accessible than ever. Maybe even too much so, as the bar for being capable of making a competitive mon is so low that breeding feels much less relevant to this entry. I'm a bit of a Brock when it comes to breeding, so I may have previously put some thousands of hours into breeding throughout other generations and it's both pleasant and a little saddening (for me, great for most other people) with the directions they've gone in for simplifying the alternatives. Regardless, if you like catching mons and making a competitive team, you're probably in for a solid experience all-around.
My issues take place with the non-linearity of the game -- I love the idea and I feel like the blueprint has been established with both SW/SH and Arceus Legends, but the actual implementation feels lacking unless you're playing it in a way that's largely the projected/predicted manner.
You're told early on that you have these three paths to take and that you're free to handle them as you see fit -- but that isn't entirely true. It makes sense that everything had to converge eventually, but it failed me in a rather brutal fashion.
I like running with one mon that champs all my fights while I focus on evolving party mons and collecting others, so I'm used to the rigamarole of running into trainers, dealing with them on the way, and using them as a stepping stool to prepare myself for whatever gyms I want. You tell me that I'm free to go where I want and do things how I want? Suddenly, gyms are the last thing I want to do and I'm leaning towards exploring as much of the world as I can, then coming back and probably dealing with the two non-gym paths first.
So, much to my surprise, Gatogetgoing (my starter) decided at Level 29 to stop obeying me and went as far as to go to sleep a few times. I look at my profile card and notice that mons only up to Level 20 will obey you, so I'm feeling both lucky and frustrated simultaneously. I had gone through Southern Province Four, worked my way back to Southern Province Two, then went west all the way out to the desert and did a jump off the side of the desert to land down on the docks at Porto Marinada before making that discovery.
I had managed to dodge every gym (although I did run through to Alfornada when I saw how strong the mons were in the area), only to find out that there was an obligation to hit up the gyms in order to deal with mons obeying you. A little annoying, but not a big deal -- generally speaking, badges were worth ten levels in past games (sometimes twenty levels for two), so easy enough fix.
I go hit up the Grass gym and have Gatogetgoing sleep through several turns of the battle but his level is so high that the fight is still cake, though abysmally slow because it's just unnecessary whiffing over and over. I get the badge and hit Level 30 during the fight, thinking I'll have to go deal with one more gym...and I get rewarded with a badge that lets mons up to Level 25 listen to me.
You're kidding me, right? Maybe it's just a fluke. I go smash the Bug gym. Mons up to 30 and my cat is at about 31. Electric gym, mons up to 35 and my cat is 32. And suddenly, I'm presented with an issue -- I'm not actually allowed to play the way I want to play, because leveling mons suddenly becomes prohibitive to enjoyment and there's a need to just progress as fast as possible between areas. I hit up Klawf Titan while I was in the area after the Electric gym and got my boost on, but I'm suddenly feeling like I'm more incentivized to stop exploring and just push through to every gym and complete them as fast as possible.
In a game that encourages you to go out there and find your own treasure, my treasure (exploration) was apparently going to have to be discarded in favor of beating a level cap that made no sense -- why would you change this facet of the game when it's worked fine for so long? But I dealt with it, pushed straight through all eight gyms, and got rewarded with no more restrictions placed on my mons.
On the gyms, I was a bit annoyed about the style of them -- I honestly like fighting gym trainers even if I don't care about most regular trainers, because they feel like a nice and logical test prep for what you're about to encounter and a good gauge for your levels. Instead, I'm using Miraidon to pop a giant olive over fences like I'm playing Bad Rocket League, riding Miraidon down a slope with worse controls while it slides, fast traveling to a location so I can have one fight while I deliver a wallet, or even just grabbing or fighting a few Sunfloras. The experiences don't feel natural and the idea of why some of them are there doesn't make them anymore authentic -- the olive rolling being explained as a cultural aspect would be fine if towns felt like they were more than just a few people standing around and the same few food stores every time.
That aside, Larry is the best damn gym leader ever and I will die on that hill. What a gem. I would accept him showing up in future games, even if it made no sense whatsoever.
Also, I did appreciate the Ghost gym double battles -- even if I normally play with one mon, I'm a fan of double battles (I force them on when playing older games on randomizers) so it was nice to see their reappearance, even if only briefly.
So, on the Titan path, it's a wholesome thing and it's worthwhile abilities, so not much else for me to add on that.
Starfall Street hurt my soul, though. When I first saw Team Star in Mesagoza, I was all-in on them because the star pose was stylish as all hell, so I was saving the Operation: Starfall missions for last because I liked the idea of having multiple bosses with personalities to fight against that might be like extra gyms catered toward a particular typing.
Instead, you're treated to a dumb mini-game, where you either have high enough level mons to just spam the R button over and over until it's over, or you potentially have to take a break at vending machines. Actual combat? Nope. You just waste time until you fulfill a quota of auto-battling, then you get one actual fight with the boss. The backstory feels like a joke when you learn about these characters, especially with Eri -- she's such a badass, I feel like she could just choke-slam anyone that wanted to bully her. All the fights being with Revarooms did nothing for me, as their fights overall just felt like a weaker Gym Leader battle in each instance.
When I resolved the Pokemon League (Larry's such a champ), Starfall Street, and Titans, I went into Area 0 and was greeted with forced, unscrollable text that didn't have boxes to even read it well while I'm trying to dodge mons that are gunning for me while I'm hoofing it to the bottom.
I mentioned earlier that I used a glitch to skip dialogue, and the reason is because of that text. It wasn't that it was awful having to read the text, but it was because while the dialogue was going on, you could not target visible mons or even access your own menu to heal your mons if you needed to. In the cave section of Area Zero, this became obnoxious when I was trying to grab a Glimmora and one of the Paradox mons. When I realized my choices were to wait for people to finish talking before doing any walking or trying to get around it, I decided to I'd try dropping off a cliff for fun and see if I could make faster progress. Turns out that if you hit the right kind of slopes, your group follows you down (while talking) OR you get your position reset right in front of the next checkpoint and the dialogue gets cut completely -- which means I'm free to try and catch things again. YAY.
I know I said that I didn't want to talk much about technical issues, but it's worth noting that upon beating the game, I was treated to credits I physically COULD NOT WATCH. The juddering was so intense that it was hurting my eyes to even look at the screen. I had to just kinda check back every minute or so to see how progress was going and just watch my spouse play her Scarlet version instead. What breaks my brain is that somehow this got through QA with either 1) nobody experiencing this particular bug or 2) someone experiencing this and it somehow being considered unimportant enough that it slid through, potentially for future patching. Maybe this doesn't happen on docked Switches. Once my spouse beats her version, I intend to see if the issue is replicated on her system as well.
Other things worth noting:
-- Nemona is wonderful and if you want great fanfic inspiration, playing a female character with Nemona as your best "rival" ever is a treat. It's so nice to have a character that's supposed to challenge you that isn't a complete jerk or just Captain Blandsville.
-- Online components are largely solid. We had one frustrating moment when trying to do co-op Tera Raids, but generally online trading between friends was smooth as silk. Haven't gotten to battle yet, so I can't speak on that.
-- Surprise (Wonder) Trades are very unintuitive. Why would you notify the player that the trade was successful and not take them straight to the trade? Instead, you're forced to jump into Poke Portal just to look. It'd make sense if you had to wait a long time for trades, but my longest wait was about 15 seconds. It just feels like extra steps that don't make sense.
-- Larry's still the best, but Nemona is also still the best.
-- Most of the new mons are interesting and I'm looking forward to testing them out. I also approve of the new evolutions added to some familiar mons.
-- Tera Types feel like they might allow for real strategic depth, but you absolutely would not realize it if you based it on the logic of gym leader fights.
-- The postgame is even worse than SW/SH, as it's just one legendary mon and a less-skillful Battle Tower (the Ace Tourney).
-- It's an absolute crime that Game Freak somehow decided not to add visual or audio cues for shinies. What the hell were they thinking? I've caught two so far (Murkrow and Goomy) and probably missed at least another four. Some mons are so tiny that the only real ways to test are auto-battling (they won't attack a shiny) or to run into them because you can't even tell with squinting as to what their colors are (and lighting and textures messing with lighting can mess with how a mon appears).
-- Really dig some of the new items, though some do feel overpowered (Covert Cloak, I'm looking at you).
-- Picnics feel like a natural evolution of Pokemon Amie, but my spouse got a lot more value out of it than me, as she's reaping the usual rewards of free dodges and status effect removals. I've only bred out four eggs, and that was just so I could give Quaxly to some friends who might need them.
-- I love me some Fashion Souls and Fashion Pokemon, so it's disappointing that I'm stuck with one of four awful outfits and just adding accents to the rest of the fashion around said outfits. I've wasted way too much currency in previous games on having all kinds of fashion choices to swap through. This one was a joke to save money on, because it's so hard to get a genuine look going, so I just settled for one outfit, some tights, shoes, glasses, and gloves, and called it a day. All the purple love, though.
That's probably a good attempt at summarizing my experience with the game. It's insanely glitchy and buggy and Game Freak has no business running a short development cycle on something like this and releasing it in such an unpolished state, but it's still a worthwhile game at its core. It absolutely demands a patch (and maybe a GTS if they can keep it free of absurd trade requests), and I feel like whatever DLC that's coming to account for the top-right corner of the map is going to be a disappointment, but maybe I'll be wrong on that. At this point, I'm looking forward to getting the last eight mons I need for a Shiny Charm and building some teams to battle friends with. Even with all my griefs, I can't avoid playing because at the end of the day, it's still Pokemon. It may not be my Pokemon, but that doesn't mean I can't appreciate that core experience.
I've been perusing the reviews and can see that I didn't get the same experience out of this game that other people did, for sure. I'm sure this is due, in large part, to certain expectations I had that either fell flat or were ruined in some cases. Let's talk shop.
I'm not going to say too much about the technical issues -- they're a huge mess and everyone's probably experienced their own fun/pain. My spouse is playing Scarlet and she's had seven crashes, while I've been playing Violet and have three. Both our copies are digital, she has a newer Switch -- though from the same generation as mine (2017-2018, I think?).
Crashes between our two games included the following happening at the time of crashing:
-- Walking
-- Trying to enter a building
-- Riding your All Terrain Dino
-- Talking to a trainer that wants to battle
-- Opening the world map
-- Trying to join a Union Party
Yeah, several of those happened multiple times, but what an experience. Both of us have only lost a minute or two in each instance, so no big deal. Beyond that, framerate that feels like a slog most of the time. Both of us are playing docked, so I can't speak on quality for playing handheld.
The glitches are vast and varied, but they're not really worth touching on -- they generally don't impact gameplay beyond a speedrun-worthy one near the end of the game where you can skip forced dialogue (that has its own issues) by jumping off the sides of some cilffs while leaning into a texture plane that's angled. If someone wants me to elaborate, I will, but much like being able to exploit reaching places you shouldn't via combat, that's more about favorable glitches than issues that need to be fixed.
Regarding actual gameplay, the thing is, the actual core experience of collecting your mons and building in a direction you want is just as fun as ever and also more accessible than ever. Maybe even too much so, as the bar for being capable of making a competitive mon is so low that breeding feels much less relevant to this entry. I'm a bit of a Brock when it comes to breeding, so I may have previously put some thousands of hours into breeding throughout other generations and it's both pleasant and a little saddening (for me, great for most other people) with the directions they've gone in for simplifying the alternatives. Regardless, if you like catching mons and making a competitive team, you're probably in for a solid experience all-around.
My issues take place with the non-linearity of the game -- I love the idea and I feel like the blueprint has been established with both SW/SH and Arceus Legends, but the actual implementation feels lacking unless you're playing it in a way that's largely the projected/predicted manner.
You're told early on that you have these three paths to take and that you're free to handle them as you see fit -- but that isn't entirely true. It makes sense that everything had to converge eventually, but it failed me in a rather brutal fashion.
I like running with one mon that champs all my fights while I focus on evolving party mons and collecting others, so I'm used to the rigamarole of running into trainers, dealing with them on the way, and using them as a stepping stool to prepare myself for whatever gyms I want. You tell me that I'm free to go where I want and do things how I want? Suddenly, gyms are the last thing I want to do and I'm leaning towards exploring as much of the world as I can, then coming back and probably dealing with the two non-gym paths first.
So, much to my surprise, Gatogetgoing (my starter) decided at Level 29 to stop obeying me and went as far as to go to sleep a few times. I look at my profile card and notice that mons only up to Level 20 will obey you, so I'm feeling both lucky and frustrated simultaneously. I had gone through Southern Province Four, worked my way back to Southern Province Two, then went west all the way out to the desert and did a jump off the side of the desert to land down on the docks at Porto Marinada before making that discovery.
I had managed to dodge every gym (although I did run through to Alfornada when I saw how strong the mons were in the area), only to find out that there was an obligation to hit up the gyms in order to deal with mons obeying you. A little annoying, but not a big deal -- generally speaking, badges were worth ten levels in past games (sometimes twenty levels for two), so easy enough fix.
I go hit up the Grass gym and have Gatogetgoing sleep through several turns of the battle but his level is so high that the fight is still cake, though abysmally slow because it's just unnecessary whiffing over and over. I get the badge and hit Level 30 during the fight, thinking I'll have to go deal with one more gym...and I get rewarded with a badge that lets mons up to Level 25 listen to me.
You're kidding me, right? Maybe it's just a fluke. I go smash the Bug gym. Mons up to 30 and my cat is at about 31. Electric gym, mons up to 35 and my cat is 32. And suddenly, I'm presented with an issue -- I'm not actually allowed to play the way I want to play, because leveling mons suddenly becomes prohibitive to enjoyment and there's a need to just progress as fast as possible between areas. I hit up Klawf Titan while I was in the area after the Electric gym and got my boost on, but I'm suddenly feeling like I'm more incentivized to stop exploring and just push through to every gym and complete them as fast as possible.
In a game that encourages you to go out there and find your own treasure, my treasure (exploration) was apparently going to have to be discarded in favor of beating a level cap that made no sense -- why would you change this facet of the game when it's worked fine for so long? But I dealt with it, pushed straight through all eight gyms, and got rewarded with no more restrictions placed on my mons.
On the gyms, I was a bit annoyed about the style of them -- I honestly like fighting gym trainers even if I don't care about most regular trainers, because they feel like a nice and logical test prep for what you're about to encounter and a good gauge for your levels. Instead, I'm using Miraidon to pop a giant olive over fences like I'm playing Bad Rocket League, riding Miraidon down a slope with worse controls while it slides, fast traveling to a location so I can have one fight while I deliver a wallet, or even just grabbing or fighting a few Sunfloras. The experiences don't feel natural and the idea of why some of them are there doesn't make them anymore authentic -- the olive rolling being explained as a cultural aspect would be fine if towns felt like they were more than just a few people standing around and the same few food stores every time.
That aside, Larry is the best damn gym leader ever and I will die on that hill. What a gem. I would accept him showing up in future games, even if it made no sense whatsoever.
Also, I did appreciate the Ghost gym double battles -- even if I normally play with one mon, I'm a fan of double battles (I force them on when playing older games on randomizers) so it was nice to see their reappearance, even if only briefly.
So, on the Titan path, it's a wholesome thing and it's worthwhile abilities, so not much else for me to add on that.
Starfall Street hurt my soul, though. When I first saw Team Star in Mesagoza, I was all-in on them because the star pose was stylish as all hell, so I was saving the Operation: Starfall missions for last because I liked the idea of having multiple bosses with personalities to fight against that might be like extra gyms catered toward a particular typing.
Instead, you're treated to a dumb mini-game, where you either have high enough level mons to just spam the R button over and over until it's over, or you potentially have to take a break at vending machines. Actual combat? Nope. You just waste time until you fulfill a quota of auto-battling, then you get one actual fight with the boss. The backstory feels like a joke when you learn about these characters, especially with Eri -- she's such a badass, I feel like she could just choke-slam anyone that wanted to bully her. All the fights being with Revarooms did nothing for me, as their fights overall just felt like a weaker Gym Leader battle in each instance.
When I resolved the Pokemon League (Larry's such a champ), Starfall Street, and Titans, I went into Area 0 and was greeted with forced, unscrollable text that didn't have boxes to even read it well while I'm trying to dodge mons that are gunning for me while I'm hoofing it to the bottom.
I mentioned earlier that I used a glitch to skip dialogue, and the reason is because of that text. It wasn't that it was awful having to read the text, but it was because while the dialogue was going on, you could not target visible mons or even access your own menu to heal your mons if you needed to. In the cave section of Area Zero, this became obnoxious when I was trying to grab a Glimmora and one of the Paradox mons. When I realized my choices were to wait for people to finish talking before doing any walking or trying to get around it, I decided to I'd try dropping off a cliff for fun and see if I could make faster progress. Turns out that if you hit the right kind of slopes, your group follows you down (while talking) OR you get your position reset right in front of the next checkpoint and the dialogue gets cut completely -- which means I'm free to try and catch things again. YAY.
I know I said that I didn't want to talk much about technical issues, but it's worth noting that upon beating the game, I was treated to credits I physically COULD NOT WATCH. The juddering was so intense that it was hurting my eyes to even look at the screen. I had to just kinda check back every minute or so to see how progress was going and just watch my spouse play her Scarlet version instead. What breaks my brain is that somehow this got through QA with either 1) nobody experiencing this particular bug or 2) someone experiencing this and it somehow being considered unimportant enough that it slid through, potentially for future patching. Maybe this doesn't happen on docked Switches. Once my spouse beats her version, I intend to see if the issue is replicated on her system as well.
Other things worth noting:
-- Nemona is wonderful and if you want great fanfic inspiration, playing a female character with Nemona as your best "rival" ever is a treat. It's so nice to have a character that's supposed to challenge you that isn't a complete jerk or just Captain Blandsville.
-- Online components are largely solid. We had one frustrating moment when trying to do co-op Tera Raids, but generally online trading between friends was smooth as silk. Haven't gotten to battle yet, so I can't speak on that.
-- Surprise (Wonder) Trades are very unintuitive. Why would you notify the player that the trade was successful and not take them straight to the trade? Instead, you're forced to jump into Poke Portal just to look. It'd make sense if you had to wait a long time for trades, but my longest wait was about 15 seconds. It just feels like extra steps that don't make sense.
-- Larry's still the best, but Nemona is also still the best.
-- Most of the new mons are interesting and I'm looking forward to testing them out. I also approve of the new evolutions added to some familiar mons.
-- Tera Types feel like they might allow for real strategic depth, but you absolutely would not realize it if you based it on the logic of gym leader fights.
-- The postgame is even worse than SW/SH, as it's just one legendary mon and a less-skillful Battle Tower (the Ace Tourney).
-- It's an absolute crime that Game Freak somehow decided not to add visual or audio cues for shinies. What the hell were they thinking? I've caught two so far (Murkrow and Goomy) and probably missed at least another four. Some mons are so tiny that the only real ways to test are auto-battling (they won't attack a shiny) or to run into them because you can't even tell with squinting as to what their colors are (and lighting and textures messing with lighting can mess with how a mon appears).
-- Really dig some of the new items, though some do feel overpowered (Covert Cloak, I'm looking at you).
-- Picnics feel like a natural evolution of Pokemon Amie, but my spouse got a lot more value out of it than me, as she's reaping the usual rewards of free dodges and status effect removals. I've only bred out four eggs, and that was just so I could give Quaxly to some friends who might need them.
-- I love me some Fashion Souls and Fashion Pokemon, so it's disappointing that I'm stuck with one of four awful outfits and just adding accents to the rest of the fashion around said outfits. I've wasted way too much currency in previous games on having all kinds of fashion choices to swap through. This one was a joke to save money on, because it's so hard to get a genuine look going, so I just settled for one outfit, some tights, shoes, glasses, and gloves, and called it a day. All the purple love, though.
That's probably a good attempt at summarizing my experience with the game. It's insanely glitchy and buggy and Game Freak has no business running a short development cycle on something like this and releasing it in such an unpolished state, but it's still a worthwhile game at its core. It absolutely demands a patch (and maybe a GTS if they can keep it free of absurd trade requests), and I feel like whatever DLC that's coming to account for the top-right corner of the map is going to be a disappointment, but maybe I'll be wrong on that. At this point, I'm looking forward to getting the last eight mons I need for a Shiny Charm and building some teams to battle friends with. Even with all my griefs, I can't avoid playing because at the end of the day, it's still Pokemon. It may not be my Pokemon, but that doesn't mean I can't appreciate that core experience.
2005
Kind of a PS2 Chrono Cross-like game, it feels like. I've only spent a couple hours with it, and I've also done a bit of searching around for info on it outside of the game and it's kinda wild.
Multiple possible starting locations that influence how your story gets going, different party members to start with for each of those locations, tons of recruitable party members, and based on events that transpire over the course of the game (or events you actively choose to engage in or not), you may have to fight some of those characters and some may even die.
I also read that the final boss section of the game can vary between two and six bosses based on the actions you've taken up to that point, and it seems like most of the playable characters you gain also have specific endings for them based on your affinity with them over the course of the game.
All of that is kinda cool, but the general combat system feels rather generic and I can't get past how awful the translation is, at times...although shout-outs to the one translation gaffe where an NPC says, "We're going to arrest Euris for blowing the academy." Damn, Euris -- you live your life, but that's a lot of mages.
More than anything, playing this makes me wish that Koei would port this to a current gen system with just a translation and a minor bit of polish, because I'd probably be more inclined to delve deeper into this if the translation was better.
If you're looking for a classic JRPG with a ton of potential party members that may or may not die based on your actions and a ton of endings, maybe go dig up the translated version of this.
Multiple possible starting locations that influence how your story gets going, different party members to start with for each of those locations, tons of recruitable party members, and based on events that transpire over the course of the game (or events you actively choose to engage in or not), you may have to fight some of those characters and some may even die.
I also read that the final boss section of the game can vary between two and six bosses based on the actions you've taken up to that point, and it seems like most of the playable characters you gain also have specific endings for them based on your affinity with them over the course of the game.
All of that is kinda cool, but the general combat system feels rather generic and I can't get past how awful the translation is, at times...although shout-outs to the one translation gaffe where an NPC says, "We're going to arrest Euris for blowing the academy." Damn, Euris -- you live your life, but that's a lot of mages.
More than anything, playing this makes me wish that Koei would port this to a current gen system with just a translation and a minor bit of polish, because I'd probably be more inclined to delve deeper into this if the translation was better.
If you're looking for a classic JRPG with a ton of potential party members that may or may not die based on your actions and a ton of endings, maybe go dig up the translated version of this.
2016
It's fine. All the Portal and Talos Principle comparisons feel apt, along with Q.U.B.E. if anyone wanted to go there while we're at it. It doesn't do anything new, it doesn't do anything specifically stand-out -- it's like a C-student equivalent that's just here to get credits and move on from gaming college, with hopes to be something greater someday. Don't we all desire to be a greater game than we are?
Also, shout-outs to getting softlocked in one of the side-puzzle rooms because I solved the camera puzzle but when I came back out to the room, the door would not stay open long enough for me to get into the room so I could head back to the main area because the game shifted the blocks I dropped so they were only partially obscuring the camera. At least it was a quick effort to restart the area outside of the puzzle room after already getting the trophy for it.
Also, shout-outs to getting softlocked in one of the side-puzzle rooms because I solved the camera puzzle but when I came back out to the room, the door would not stay open long enough for me to get into the room so I could head back to the main area because the game shifted the blocks I dropped so they were only partially obscuring the camera. At least it was a quick effort to restart the area outside of the puzzle room after already getting the trophy for it.
2020
The story might be something really worthwhile if you follow through with it, but I wouldn't know...I kinda got burned out in the second act while committing to various tales that weren't related to the main quest.
I think the biggest issue I've run into is that once you've unlocked most of the abilities, gameplay just kinda feels like the same basic loops over and over with very little to distinguish them. The duels were fun, if nothing else. Chain assassinations are also fun, but that's not surprising for someone who likes to play stealth in games like I do.
There's definitely some issues of polish, as I had some very magical glitches happen. My personal favorite was when I rescued a hostage in a farming village, and while we were having the usual exchange of "you'll be free soon, get to safety" and all that, Jin started levitating upwards for a good ten seconds into the sky. He came back down just fine, but it was definitely an experience.
Also, my own note of both praise and hilarity -- I appreciate that the method of accounting for movement that might create a softlock was by checking for velocity while Jin wasn't moving in any horizontal (or vertical?) direction. At least, I think that's what it checks for before resetting position right before whatever caused the lock. But there's something to be said for trying to jump from a guardrail on a platform to another guardrail on another platform and having Jin rack his nuts against the guardrail while furiously making a running motion for a good five seconds before it resets the position. I may have recreated this scenario multiple times because it's just magical to watch. What can I say? Simple things amuse me.
I'll come back to this at some point to finish it, but I just need a break from all the sameness.
I think the biggest issue I've run into is that once you've unlocked most of the abilities, gameplay just kinda feels like the same basic loops over and over with very little to distinguish them. The duels were fun, if nothing else. Chain assassinations are also fun, but that's not surprising for someone who likes to play stealth in games like I do.
There's definitely some issues of polish, as I had some very magical glitches happen. My personal favorite was when I rescued a hostage in a farming village, and while we were having the usual exchange of "you'll be free soon, get to safety" and all that, Jin started levitating upwards for a good ten seconds into the sky. He came back down just fine, but it was definitely an experience.
Also, my own note of both praise and hilarity -- I appreciate that the method of accounting for movement that might create a softlock was by checking for velocity while Jin wasn't moving in any horizontal (or vertical?) direction. At least, I think that's what it checks for before resetting position right before whatever caused the lock. But there's something to be said for trying to jump from a guardrail on a platform to another guardrail on another platform and having Jin rack his nuts against the guardrail while furiously making a running motion for a good five seconds before it resets the position. I may have recreated this scenario multiple times because it's just magical to watch. What can I say? Simple things amuse me.
I'll come back to this at some point to finish it, but I just need a break from all the sameness.
2022
This review contains spoilers
Note: This review is actually an observation of the entirety of my wife's playthrough -- she did 100% of the game on HARD difficulty (100% including all vault keys, all side-cutscenes, all optional emblems used for the side-cutscenes, MAX for all stats, and all the logs from Robotnik in fishing along with 100% of fish types caught).
I'm just going to go all over the place about this game. To start with, it should be noted that -- at least for the Switch -- the game has absolutely horrible pop-in. When looking for required emblems to advance the story, so much platform terrain just kinda pops in when you come within about 20 feet of it and it's a bit silly when you're running around at the speed of sound.
It's also worth noting that this pop-in seems to happen with a certain particular platform type -- one that requires you to press the correct button in order to launch yourself in the correct direction or else the platform drops you. In this instance, there are times where the platforms will simply fail to display the required button press in order to successfully use the platform. Whoops!
I get what people say about the overworld feeling rather lifeless at times, as it really is just cutscene spots and platforming areas for emblems, along with the occasional regular enemies and mini-bosses. Moreover, the music feels largely like ambience in the overworld and not really indicative of the usual Sonic fare that's upbeat and energetic.
Enemies are simple, but interesting enough when it comes to utilizing the mechanics you've learned. Mini-bosses shine a bit more, as they do require some significant work to deal with and some of the design behind them can feel rather clever -- I'm particularly fond of the Strider and Sumo mini-bosses, myself.
Actual bosses are much less interesting, as they devolve into battles with Super Sonic, where he's either taking so little damage as to be negligible while trying to dish out combos or it's QTEs that can result in instant death.
My wife is pretty good at Sonic games in general and has played through nearly all Sonic games that have been released, and she's stated that the game feels significantly too easy, even on HARD difficulty. It should be noted that HARD difficulty is required in order to fight the "true" final boss, but you might be better off for skipping it -- I'll go into that later.
The combos and abilities that you get by earning skill points through completing map puzzles and defeating enemies or exploring the maps are fun and allow you to feel like a wrecking ball of super damage. You'll max out your skill points eons before finishing the game -- my wife finished the game with approximately 700 extra skill points available.
The actual levels you find to play in each area are the real treasures of the game, as most of them are designed well enough and have lots of optional pathing to them, even if the pathing is simple in nature and ultimately leads back the same way. The soundtrack for the actual levels is anywhere between pleasant and downright solid. There's no real matching thematics between the overworld areas you're in and the actual levels (other than the last area having all levels with a similar background).
The most damning thing about this game is the optional final boss if you decide to play on HARD mode. There are points in the story where you'll be required to do mini-games to proceed and a couple instances, you get to play a bad version of Ikaruga. Your reward for reaching "THE END" (the final boss) is another Ikaruga sequence, but ridiculously long and with no way to exit the sequence at all -- if you die, you keep coming back and starting the fight anew. It's not a short fight, either -- it's probably about ten minutes long? And it doesn't care about whether you're Super Sonic, as it follows the same rules as the regular Ikaruga mini-games -- get hit three times and you lose and restart ad nauseum. No spin-dashing, no homing attacks (well, the ZR shot when you build enough charge is like a homing attack, I guess), nothing in the vein of what you'd expect from a Sonic boss fight. It's utterly absurd and I can't fathom why they thought it was a good idea for an end boss. But hey, there's a Super Sonic QTE set at the end, so it's fine, right?! ...RIGHT?!
Some positive things I want to touch on that were just a bit of everywhere for me, personally:
-- The training screen when loading in or out of levels is a great idea, especially since it lets you stay in them for as long as you want and lets you refresh yourself with random lessons.
-- The fishing mini-game is very relaxing and I could see the music being used as a YouTube Lo-Fi Beats track SO EASILY.
-- The platform bits for getting optional emblems were largely well-designed and a number of them evoked the speedy feeling you're looking for from a Sonic experience.
-- The ABSOLUTE BEST THING about this game might be the bugs. There is one annoying bug with a map puzzle that can be resolved by saving and reloading if it doesn't work properly.
In general though, the big bug with this game that makes for a stellar experience for anyone who wants to feel that Sonic speed in full is that certain texture planes in any of the second or later areas can be boosted into at certain angles and the game simply chooses not to limit your acceleration, so you can blast off into the sky so very far if you want. At one point, my wife was able to mostly climb to the highest points in the desert plateaus because she just kept using certain outcropping textures as points to launch herself into the sky. In one instance, she managed to fling herself halfway across the map in one boost, simply because as long as you don't boost again after you launch, the game just lifts you higher and higher (and you can do tricks for skill points while it's happening!). Although there's a hypothetical limit before deceleration kicks in, it's so absurd how much you can exploit it just to have a good time that it doesn't even matter that there's any limitations.
-- To add to that point, there are aspects of boosting in the actual levels that allows this kind of subversion of the design expectations for said levels. You can sometimes just boost under the right conditions and fling yourself drastic distances beyond what you'd normally expect. I encourage you to mess around with these things. Good times abound, I assure you.
All-in-all, I think it's a good enough time for your average Sonic fan and just blasting around in the overworld areas via boosting off textures is grand (to watch and do). My wife adores the game, outside of a couple pointless mini-games, so I'd say for anyone who really enjoys Sonic games and doesn't have too much judgment about them beyond just wanting to play more of them, you can probably feel fulfilled in picking this up. For anyone else, I'd say to wait for at least a half-off sale, and I'd advise everyone to avoid the Switch version just because of the awful pop-in issues the game has.
I'm just going to go all over the place about this game. To start with, it should be noted that -- at least for the Switch -- the game has absolutely horrible pop-in. When looking for required emblems to advance the story, so much platform terrain just kinda pops in when you come within about 20 feet of it and it's a bit silly when you're running around at the speed of sound.
It's also worth noting that this pop-in seems to happen with a certain particular platform type -- one that requires you to press the correct button in order to launch yourself in the correct direction or else the platform drops you. In this instance, there are times where the platforms will simply fail to display the required button press in order to successfully use the platform. Whoops!
I get what people say about the overworld feeling rather lifeless at times, as it really is just cutscene spots and platforming areas for emblems, along with the occasional regular enemies and mini-bosses. Moreover, the music feels largely like ambience in the overworld and not really indicative of the usual Sonic fare that's upbeat and energetic.
Enemies are simple, but interesting enough when it comes to utilizing the mechanics you've learned. Mini-bosses shine a bit more, as they do require some significant work to deal with and some of the design behind them can feel rather clever -- I'm particularly fond of the Strider and Sumo mini-bosses, myself.
Actual bosses are much less interesting, as they devolve into battles with Super Sonic, where he's either taking so little damage as to be negligible while trying to dish out combos or it's QTEs that can result in instant death.
My wife is pretty good at Sonic games in general and has played through nearly all Sonic games that have been released, and she's stated that the game feels significantly too easy, even on HARD difficulty. It should be noted that HARD difficulty is required in order to fight the "true" final boss, but you might be better off for skipping it -- I'll go into that later.
The combos and abilities that you get by earning skill points through completing map puzzles and defeating enemies or exploring the maps are fun and allow you to feel like a wrecking ball of super damage. You'll max out your skill points eons before finishing the game -- my wife finished the game with approximately 700 extra skill points available.
The actual levels you find to play in each area are the real treasures of the game, as most of them are designed well enough and have lots of optional pathing to them, even if the pathing is simple in nature and ultimately leads back the same way. The soundtrack for the actual levels is anywhere between pleasant and downright solid. There's no real matching thematics between the overworld areas you're in and the actual levels (other than the last area having all levels with a similar background).
The most damning thing about this game is the optional final boss if you decide to play on HARD mode. There are points in the story where you'll be required to do mini-games to proceed and a couple instances, you get to play a bad version of Ikaruga. Your reward for reaching "THE END" (the final boss) is another Ikaruga sequence, but ridiculously long and with no way to exit the sequence at all -- if you die, you keep coming back and starting the fight anew. It's not a short fight, either -- it's probably about ten minutes long? And it doesn't care about whether you're Super Sonic, as it follows the same rules as the regular Ikaruga mini-games -- get hit three times and you lose and restart ad nauseum. No spin-dashing, no homing attacks (well, the ZR shot when you build enough charge is like a homing attack, I guess), nothing in the vein of what you'd expect from a Sonic boss fight. It's utterly absurd and I can't fathom why they thought it was a good idea for an end boss. But hey, there's a Super Sonic QTE set at the end, so it's fine, right?! ...RIGHT?!
Some positive things I want to touch on that were just a bit of everywhere for me, personally:
-- The training screen when loading in or out of levels is a great idea, especially since it lets you stay in them for as long as you want and lets you refresh yourself with random lessons.
-- The fishing mini-game is very relaxing and I could see the music being used as a YouTube Lo-Fi Beats track SO EASILY.
-- The platform bits for getting optional emblems were largely well-designed and a number of them evoked the speedy feeling you're looking for from a Sonic experience.
-- The ABSOLUTE BEST THING about this game might be the bugs. There is one annoying bug with a map puzzle that can be resolved by saving and reloading if it doesn't work properly.
In general though, the big bug with this game that makes for a stellar experience for anyone who wants to feel that Sonic speed in full is that certain texture planes in any of the second or later areas can be boosted into at certain angles and the game simply chooses not to limit your acceleration, so you can blast off into the sky so very far if you want. At one point, my wife was able to mostly climb to the highest points in the desert plateaus because she just kept using certain outcropping textures as points to launch herself into the sky. In one instance, she managed to fling herself halfway across the map in one boost, simply because as long as you don't boost again after you launch, the game just lifts you higher and higher (and you can do tricks for skill points while it's happening!). Although there's a hypothetical limit before deceleration kicks in, it's so absurd how much you can exploit it just to have a good time that it doesn't even matter that there's any limitations.
-- To add to that point, there are aspects of boosting in the actual levels that allows this kind of subversion of the design expectations for said levels. You can sometimes just boost under the right conditions and fling yourself drastic distances beyond what you'd normally expect. I encourage you to mess around with these things. Good times abound, I assure you.
All-in-all, I think it's a good enough time for your average Sonic fan and just blasting around in the overworld areas via boosting off textures is grand (to watch and do). My wife adores the game, outside of a couple pointless mini-games, so I'd say for anyone who really enjoys Sonic games and doesn't have too much judgment about them beyond just wanting to play more of them, you can probably feel fulfilled in picking this up. For anyone else, I'd say to wait for at least a half-off sale, and I'd advise everyone to avoid the Switch version just because of the awful pop-in issues the game has.
1998
5.5 stars for being a great and innovative game. -0.5 stars for the Chrysler Building being SUCH A SLOG. It's still a five star game, though.
2023
I'm not really fond of writing reviews about something shelved unless I need to make a note to come back to it for technical reasons at some point, because I would honestly like to finish a game before writing up a full commentary of thoughts on it (or any witty zingers, were I able to muster any).
I think it's worth talking about TEVI (it's in all-caps on Steam, so that's how I'm going to refer to it) because I got deep into the fifth chapter (out of eight, I think?) and put 15 hours in already.
The difficult part about talking about TEVI is that there are really only two ways for me to talk about it:
1. Pretend like I've never played Rabi-Ribi (and pretend like I didn't see the cameo appearances of Erina and Ribbon or the Rabi Smash game in the back end of my playthrough)
2. Compare this game to Rabi-Ribi and expect some of the best exploration-based design in the history of Metroidvanias.
Well, I guess there's option 3: Why not both?!
Let me get the good out of the way: If you enjoyed the touhou aspect of bosses from Rabi-Ribi, you're not going to be disappointed here because the boss fights are easily the best part of the game. I didn't get to measure the differences in difficulty to see how vastly the bullets are applied over any given boss fight, but I'll always offer a shout-out when a game decides to modify difficulty based on actually affecting interaction and not just adding extra health, armor, or whatever. I played on Normal, I died a couple times, it felt like an okay difficulty, take that as you will.
The soundtrack is also pretty solid in some spots (I absolutely love the opening and Morose Town). Most stuff was fine and I think the soundtrack might be on par with Rabi-Ribi.
The game is huge, which I was rather expecting. I wasn't expecting that I'd only have 56% map coverage by the back end of Chapter 5, though. But also, this is where I need to bring up some gripes.
First, regarding level design: TEVI does something interesting with its room designs that I had to note, even if I absolutely don't like it -- there's almost always one-way paths forcing you in a direction away from the exploration that you're probably used to doing while playing a Metroidvania and these one-way paths often require you to go through some very roundabout traversing to get back onto what seems like the regular route you're taking. What makes this interesting is that this one-way funneling IS the regular route and is often the quickest way to the boss / next area while also showing you a significant amount of the area you're in. It's fascinating because you're getting probably over 50% of the map for the area completed just by being forced down these windy paths, but the act of being forced/corralled/funneled just leaves you feeling like you're not really that much in control of your movement through these areas. It's like a busted escalator that you can't go back up and you can't jump over the sides, either -- get to the bottom and see what's coming!
Some of the one-way pathing is peculiar because there are blocks you can occasionally bomb, but some blocks that look exactly the same can also just crumble and cause you to lock into an animation that looks like you stumbled as you fall through them slowly to the next room. Sometimes, you can just touch a crumbling block and move past it without falling in. Sometimes, you just get locked into it and you're going to the next level down and working your way around to the next big moment. Sometimes, you can get into that seeming funnel and work your way out of it, only to find yourself going back up to the exact same spot, with you probably opening up a shortcut back to the area you started from, with the notion that you never would have been able to continue in that direction if you had wanted to go your own way. The game has determined that YOU WILL GO SEE OUR BIG STORY DEAL THAT WE WANT TO SHOW YOU. YOU MUST. BY ANY MEANS.
I love exploration and solid bosses, so that's probably why I'm drawn to Metroidvanias (and Souls-likes). Exploration is paramount to me, with the more options available equating to a better experience overall. Rabi-Ribi gave me this in a way that few Metroidvanias (I'm also looking at you, Environmental Station Alpha!) ever have. So, it's with great disappointment that I share how very little there is in the way of enjoyable exploration in TEVI.
I mentioned the whole thing about the story by any means necessary, and I wasn't joking -- your gating abilities are locked behind storyline moments or areas leading to the next storyline beat. And not only are they locked behind those moments and beats, the game will go out of its way to let you know in multiple ways. In some instances, the game will actively tell you that you don't need to go somewhere right now if you try and take a path that's open to you (at first, I thought this was just because of the merchant conversation in the Prologue, but it happens with multiple areas throughout the game). In other instances, if you try to go into an area that's in the same direction as the story marker on your map, you'll get a warning that if you go into that area, you won't be coming out for a while and that you better prepare yourself. Not really sure what preparation entails, because crafting is silly in this game and healing items are one of the few things that don't really take much effort to craft. More on that later. But in one other way worth noting, should you decide that you want to go exploring with any newfound power-ups you have to check out places you haven't been yet, you will generally find yourself stuck and unable to progress further until you have YET ANOTHER story-based ability that you're likely missing. And if you're like me and went back to the first area of the game after every new ability you got, then you're also probably like me and gave up after you got multiple bombing and movement abilities and had come back FOUR TIMES without being able to get back up to the area where you started. And nearly every new area is like this even when backtracking to them after getting an upgrade, you'll just make a tiny bit more headway than before and be stuck all over again. No bosses (I don't count the Elite Battle challenges given by a particular NPC as a side quest among these), no neat looping back between areas by linking multiple places together in unrealized ways, no cool power-ups (maybe a random stat potion or a sigil if you're lucky). If this were one of my first Metroidvanias, this kind of thing wouldn't bother me but when I heard about this game being made after playing through Rabi-Ribi's POST-POST-POST GAME, I expected the kind of loose and wild craziness of a game that absolutely understood just how much you could break it while still being able to move around it freely if you just understood the mechanics well enough. TEVI is the exact opposite of that.
I mentioned crafting briefly and the sigils in this game are very much in the same vein as the badges from Rabi-Ribi. Some sigils are found in plain sight, some are hidden in rooms on maps, some are purchased with a limited money resource (money is found through destruction of certain blocks and is never dropped by monsters), and some are crafted via elementals and essences. Some of your other orbitar (little shooty-assist-things for a spoiler-free description) upgrades and some of the abilities themselves can be upgraded through crafting. How do you get resources? Kill enemies, hope they drop what you need, and if they don't, spend nine of one resource to get two sets of three of another elemental or essence resource and hope you get what you need. This whole system feels like an afterthought because you're given the ability to wade through enemies in hopes of getting what you need and just gambling for less resources if things don't go your way. It's padding that could have been usefully spent searching for those same sigils and ability upgrades as drops in some of those paths that you just were never allowed to go further down until you have every ability in the game. There was a real chance to put some real rewards down alternate paths of exploration and instead, you're just killing enemies and praying to the loot gods that you inevitably get what you need after a time. I don't like crafting in games where it feels like it's shoehorned in and this seems excessively so, especially since they let you burn resources to try and RNG your way to more resources.
I forgot in the midst of my rant on exploring (I'm not going back up to reinsert this!) that the worst offender for how the world design is set up is the Freeroam Mode. This is an option you can enable when starting a game that lets you skip the story entirely and gives you a move that Erina from Rabi-Ribi initially had that allowed you to sequence break into areas you couldn't reach previously. This mode originally wasn't available until you beat the game, but I'm guessing after some push-back about the lack of functional exploration with gating abilities from reviewers, it was patched to become unlocked at the start. I've seen arguments that the level system (experience is given through exploration and beating bosses, I believe) and the limited supply of coins and occasional sigil or stat-boosting potion make up for the fact that you're constantly only able to make slight headway further into these areas you're retracing your steps back to, but these arguments also seem to come from people who are playing on the highest difficulties and found themselves needing every edge to compete with the bosses. It's an argument I understand, but I don't think it justifies the stilted exploration experience, especially if Freeroam Mode is a thing in the first place.
I haven't really talked about the story and that's because since I didn't finish it, it's hard to really comment on how it all fleshed out without being speculative. I'll say that the all social and political commentary feels VERY heavy-handed, but that didn't really bother me -- your mileage may vary.
I feel like there was more I wanted to talk about, but I've been writing this for way too long instead of actually playing more games. Even though this game is lukewarm for me due to design decisions, I'm kinda all for supporting these devs and hoping the next game feels more fun (for me). Also, UP+DASH in the air is the most unintuitive choice ever for making a down-smash attack with the spanner weapon. WHY?!
If you read this far, you're obligated to go buy Rabi-Ribi and then either give this dev the equivalent money for TEVI and not play it or buy it and then tell me how wrong or right I am later. I just needed to rant and ranting to my spouse and friends about this wasn't enough. Rant over, get it on sale next summer when Steam inevitably has a sale with it at 50% off. It's still better than your average Metroidvania just for the bosses alone, despite all my disappointment with it. I hope to maybe decide to come back and finish it eventually.
I think it's worth talking about TEVI (it's in all-caps on Steam, so that's how I'm going to refer to it) because I got deep into the fifth chapter (out of eight, I think?) and put 15 hours in already.
The difficult part about talking about TEVI is that there are really only two ways for me to talk about it:
1. Pretend like I've never played Rabi-Ribi (and pretend like I didn't see the cameo appearances of Erina and Ribbon or the Rabi Smash game in the back end of my playthrough)
2. Compare this game to Rabi-Ribi and expect some of the best exploration-based design in the history of Metroidvanias.
Well, I guess there's option 3: Why not both?!
Let me get the good out of the way: If you enjoyed the touhou aspect of bosses from Rabi-Ribi, you're not going to be disappointed here because the boss fights are easily the best part of the game. I didn't get to measure the differences in difficulty to see how vastly the bullets are applied over any given boss fight, but I'll always offer a shout-out when a game decides to modify difficulty based on actually affecting interaction and not just adding extra health, armor, or whatever. I played on Normal, I died a couple times, it felt like an okay difficulty, take that as you will.
The soundtrack is also pretty solid in some spots (I absolutely love the opening and Morose Town). Most stuff was fine and I think the soundtrack might be on par with Rabi-Ribi.
The game is huge, which I was rather expecting. I wasn't expecting that I'd only have 56% map coverage by the back end of Chapter 5, though. But also, this is where I need to bring up some gripes.
First, regarding level design: TEVI does something interesting with its room designs that I had to note, even if I absolutely don't like it -- there's almost always one-way paths forcing you in a direction away from the exploration that you're probably used to doing while playing a Metroidvania and these one-way paths often require you to go through some very roundabout traversing to get back onto what seems like the regular route you're taking. What makes this interesting is that this one-way funneling IS the regular route and is often the quickest way to the boss / next area while also showing you a significant amount of the area you're in. It's fascinating because you're getting probably over 50% of the map for the area completed just by being forced down these windy paths, but the act of being forced/corralled/funneled just leaves you feeling like you're not really that much in control of your movement through these areas. It's like a busted escalator that you can't go back up and you can't jump over the sides, either -- get to the bottom and see what's coming!
Some of the one-way pathing is peculiar because there are blocks you can occasionally bomb, but some blocks that look exactly the same can also just crumble and cause you to lock into an animation that looks like you stumbled as you fall through them slowly to the next room. Sometimes, you can just touch a crumbling block and move past it without falling in. Sometimes, you just get locked into it and you're going to the next level down and working your way around to the next big moment. Sometimes, you can get into that seeming funnel and work your way out of it, only to find yourself going back up to the exact same spot, with you probably opening up a shortcut back to the area you started from, with the notion that you never would have been able to continue in that direction if you had wanted to go your own way. The game has determined that YOU WILL GO SEE OUR BIG STORY DEAL THAT WE WANT TO SHOW YOU. YOU MUST. BY ANY MEANS.
I love exploration and solid bosses, so that's probably why I'm drawn to Metroidvanias (and Souls-likes). Exploration is paramount to me, with the more options available equating to a better experience overall. Rabi-Ribi gave me this in a way that few Metroidvanias (I'm also looking at you, Environmental Station Alpha!) ever have. So, it's with great disappointment that I share how very little there is in the way of enjoyable exploration in TEVI.
I mentioned the whole thing about the story by any means necessary, and I wasn't joking -- your gating abilities are locked behind storyline moments or areas leading to the next storyline beat. And not only are they locked behind those moments and beats, the game will go out of its way to let you know in multiple ways. In some instances, the game will actively tell you that you don't need to go somewhere right now if you try and take a path that's open to you (at first, I thought this was just because of the merchant conversation in the Prologue, but it happens with multiple areas throughout the game). In other instances, if you try to go into an area that's in the same direction as the story marker on your map, you'll get a warning that if you go into that area, you won't be coming out for a while and that you better prepare yourself. Not really sure what preparation entails, because crafting is silly in this game and healing items are one of the few things that don't really take much effort to craft. More on that later. But in one other way worth noting, should you decide that you want to go exploring with any newfound power-ups you have to check out places you haven't been yet, you will generally find yourself stuck and unable to progress further until you have YET ANOTHER story-based ability that you're likely missing. And if you're like me and went back to the first area of the game after every new ability you got, then you're also probably like me and gave up after you got multiple bombing and movement abilities and had come back FOUR TIMES without being able to get back up to the area where you started. And nearly every new area is like this even when backtracking to them after getting an upgrade, you'll just make a tiny bit more headway than before and be stuck all over again. No bosses (I don't count the Elite Battle challenges given by a particular NPC as a side quest among these), no neat looping back between areas by linking multiple places together in unrealized ways, no cool power-ups (maybe a random stat potion or a sigil if you're lucky). If this were one of my first Metroidvanias, this kind of thing wouldn't bother me but when I heard about this game being made after playing through Rabi-Ribi's POST-POST-POST GAME, I expected the kind of loose and wild craziness of a game that absolutely understood just how much you could break it while still being able to move around it freely if you just understood the mechanics well enough. TEVI is the exact opposite of that.
I mentioned crafting briefly and the sigils in this game are very much in the same vein as the badges from Rabi-Ribi. Some sigils are found in plain sight, some are hidden in rooms on maps, some are purchased with a limited money resource (money is found through destruction of certain blocks and is never dropped by monsters), and some are crafted via elementals and essences. Some of your other orbitar (little shooty-assist-things for a spoiler-free description) upgrades and some of the abilities themselves can be upgraded through crafting. How do you get resources? Kill enemies, hope they drop what you need, and if they don't, spend nine of one resource to get two sets of three of another elemental or essence resource and hope you get what you need. This whole system feels like an afterthought because you're given the ability to wade through enemies in hopes of getting what you need and just gambling for less resources if things don't go your way. It's padding that could have been usefully spent searching for those same sigils and ability upgrades as drops in some of those paths that you just were never allowed to go further down until you have every ability in the game. There was a real chance to put some real rewards down alternate paths of exploration and instead, you're just killing enemies and praying to the loot gods that you inevitably get what you need after a time. I don't like crafting in games where it feels like it's shoehorned in and this seems excessively so, especially since they let you burn resources to try and RNG your way to more resources.
I forgot in the midst of my rant on exploring (I'm not going back up to reinsert this!) that the worst offender for how the world design is set up is the Freeroam Mode. This is an option you can enable when starting a game that lets you skip the story entirely and gives you a move that Erina from Rabi-Ribi initially had that allowed you to sequence break into areas you couldn't reach previously. This mode originally wasn't available until you beat the game, but I'm guessing after some push-back about the lack of functional exploration with gating abilities from reviewers, it was patched to become unlocked at the start. I've seen arguments that the level system (experience is given through exploration and beating bosses, I believe) and the limited supply of coins and occasional sigil or stat-boosting potion make up for the fact that you're constantly only able to make slight headway further into these areas you're retracing your steps back to, but these arguments also seem to come from people who are playing on the highest difficulties and found themselves needing every edge to compete with the bosses. It's an argument I understand, but I don't think it justifies the stilted exploration experience, especially if Freeroam Mode is a thing in the first place.
I haven't really talked about the story and that's because since I didn't finish it, it's hard to really comment on how it all fleshed out without being speculative. I'll say that the all social and political commentary feels VERY heavy-handed, but that didn't really bother me -- your mileage may vary.
I feel like there was more I wanted to talk about, but I've been writing this for way too long instead of actually playing more games. Even though this game is lukewarm for me due to design decisions, I'm kinda all for supporting these devs and hoping the next game feels more fun (for me). Also, UP+DASH in the air is the most unintuitive choice ever for making a down-smash attack with the spanner weapon. WHY?!
If you read this far, you're obligated to go buy Rabi-Ribi and then either give this dev the equivalent money for TEVI and not play it or buy it and then tell me how wrong or right I am later. I just needed to rant and ranting to my spouse and friends about this wasn't enough. Rant over, get it on sale next summer when Steam inevitably has a sale with it at 50% off. It's still better than your average Metroidvania just for the bosses alone, despite all my disappointment with it. I hope to maybe decide to come back and finish it eventually.
Beat this back on the PS3, but ended up getting a copy on Steam to give it another go. This game does not live up to repeat playthroughs (at least for me). It's very bare bones in its nature and you find out quickly that the simplest solutions to problems is often brute force tactics. I don't mean to just attack over and over with characters, though.
You'll notice shortly after you get through making your party (the usual rigamarole of rerolling until you get the bonus points you like, only with the complication of not knowing what stats are needed to choose particular classes) that you're way too poor to afford anything. The good news? You don't need 90% of it. Buy your top floor maps, buy some vulneraries just for the beginning, and then gain a few levels.
Sooner or later, you start picking up equipment with your levels and (assuming you started with a Bishop) you'll be pooling in money that you COULD spend on other stuff...or you could just save in case you really need it. For my party, I bought one katana and one claymore after a time and never spent another dime on anything other than resting at the inn or reviving characters.
If you keep saving money, you can burn that money at the temple with the "Tithe" command to get EXP instead. Those levels will come nicely early on and you'll be smashing enemies left and right while making headway in the dungeons as you figure out the intricacies of each level.
And then the monsters finally stop playing around. This starts probably around Shiin's Dungeon Level 4 with Dark Crusaders. If you brought a Bishop with you and you're high enough to have learned Magic Wall, fights are still pretty manageable. Without Magic Wall, you'll learn very quickly how susceptible you are to a lot of problems, be it status effects or just mass damage spells coming through unblocked.
Thankfully, you can save at any time -- though there's only one save slot, so be careful that you don't inadvertently save after your healer bites it if you want to explore (or worse, lose your mage too and have to walk back out). This means that if you do end up in a bad scenario, just close your game and reopen it (really useful on later floors when the enemies might be worth the experience but not worth the hassle that comes with them). You can also just run but later floors have enemies that will often make running an absolute chore, so you might end up doing a mixture of these tactics to make forward progress.
And that's the brute force -- slogging through fights after practically every doorway you pass through, resetting until you don't get annihilated on the lower floors while you try to complete the story. Advice for completing the story: just check GameFAQs because depending on when you initiate certain quests, the main story will open up for you well after you've already made progress beyond the floors you needed to be on for earlier portions of the story.
There's no markers or indicators as to where you need to be going for each aspect of the story quest beyond knowing which floor to go to for the first two story quests. The final quest has you hit certain places on the third, fourth, sixth, seventh, eighth, and tenth floors of Shiin's Dungeon, I believe. I didn't even activate that quest until I had already mapped the first eight floors, so without any indicators, my choices were an FAQ or simply retreading EVERY SINGLE STEP of each floor of those dungeons until you run into the next flag for the quest.
There are two different final bosses you can fight in Shiin's Dungeon (the Dungeon of Trials that acts as a companion has no final boss normally) for the main quest, but with only one save slot, that means you need to do a runthrough at least twice to see both fights unless you can manage to hit all those flags I mentioned in ONE shot and beat the boss in one try. Otherwise, any save after you hit the first flag(s) in the last story quest locks you into a specific final boss based on the choices you made prior to saving.
It's not a bad game, but it's a lot of sideways design decisions that will make you raise an eyebrow a few times and it wears its late-80's/early-90's mask poorly, as you can see lots of cases where it's simply going through the motions of trying to replicate that old-school feel and instead just creating frustration without warrant.
I still had fun, though...and I completed Human Female's Scenario (in order to "beat the game", you have to complete every race/gender combinations' scenarios...good luck).
Get it on sale if you're digging for a dungeon crawler on Steam. You could do worse, but you could certainly do better.
You'll notice shortly after you get through making your party (the usual rigamarole of rerolling until you get the bonus points you like, only with the complication of not knowing what stats are needed to choose particular classes) that you're way too poor to afford anything. The good news? You don't need 90% of it. Buy your top floor maps, buy some vulneraries just for the beginning, and then gain a few levels.
Sooner or later, you start picking up equipment with your levels and (assuming you started with a Bishop) you'll be pooling in money that you COULD spend on other stuff...or you could just save in case you really need it. For my party, I bought one katana and one claymore after a time and never spent another dime on anything other than resting at the inn or reviving characters.
If you keep saving money, you can burn that money at the temple with the "Tithe" command to get EXP instead. Those levels will come nicely early on and you'll be smashing enemies left and right while making headway in the dungeons as you figure out the intricacies of each level.
And then the monsters finally stop playing around. This starts probably around Shiin's Dungeon Level 4 with Dark Crusaders. If you brought a Bishop with you and you're high enough to have learned Magic Wall, fights are still pretty manageable. Without Magic Wall, you'll learn very quickly how susceptible you are to a lot of problems, be it status effects or just mass damage spells coming through unblocked.
Thankfully, you can save at any time -- though there's only one save slot, so be careful that you don't inadvertently save after your healer bites it if you want to explore (or worse, lose your mage too and have to walk back out). This means that if you do end up in a bad scenario, just close your game and reopen it (really useful on later floors when the enemies might be worth the experience but not worth the hassle that comes with them). You can also just run but later floors have enemies that will often make running an absolute chore, so you might end up doing a mixture of these tactics to make forward progress.
And that's the brute force -- slogging through fights after practically every doorway you pass through, resetting until you don't get annihilated on the lower floors while you try to complete the story. Advice for completing the story: just check GameFAQs because depending on when you initiate certain quests, the main story will open up for you well after you've already made progress beyond the floors you needed to be on for earlier portions of the story.
There's no markers or indicators as to where you need to be going for each aspect of the story quest beyond knowing which floor to go to for the first two story quests. The final quest has you hit certain places on the third, fourth, sixth, seventh, eighth, and tenth floors of Shiin's Dungeon, I believe. I didn't even activate that quest until I had already mapped the first eight floors, so without any indicators, my choices were an FAQ or simply retreading EVERY SINGLE STEP of each floor of those dungeons until you run into the next flag for the quest.
There are two different final bosses you can fight in Shiin's Dungeon (the Dungeon of Trials that acts as a companion has no final boss normally) for the main quest, but with only one save slot, that means you need to do a runthrough at least twice to see both fights unless you can manage to hit all those flags I mentioned in ONE shot and beat the boss in one try. Otherwise, any save after you hit the first flag(s) in the last story quest locks you into a specific final boss based on the choices you made prior to saving.
It's not a bad game, but it's a lot of sideways design decisions that will make you raise an eyebrow a few times and it wears its late-80's/early-90's mask poorly, as you can see lots of cases where it's simply going through the motions of trying to replicate that old-school feel and instead just creating frustration without warrant.
I still had fun, though...and I completed Human Female's Scenario (in order to "beat the game", you have to complete every race/gender combinations' scenarios...good luck).
Get it on sale if you're digging for a dungeon crawler on Steam. You could do worse, but you could certainly do better.
If you play this for one reason, it's so that you can throw a pizza instead of a disc-based weapon in NG+.
A lot's already been said about this game regarding its writing and I'll tenth, twelfth, hundredth, thousandth it because the writing is amazing and I have not laughed as hard as I did at my potential for chaos based on choices in a long time.
The short of it is, the game is fascinating in many ways and well-written, but the soundtrack is completely flat for me and I ran into some very strange bugs that caused varying degrees of grief for me.
Some were just minor issues like the wrong audio playing for whatever narrative aspect is talking at a given time, or when Kim went to say something and it was about triple the volume of what the rest of the dialogue was and almost blew out my speakers.
One was a bit annoying, in the case of a bug that caused me to be unable to traverse a room I'd already been into before because my character would not walk more than a few feet in and just ceased being willing to interact with anything I could see, giving me no choice but to leave, go all the way around to the other side of the building, and head back into said room from the other side to reach what I was trying to get to. Annoying, but not the worst thing ever.
The real crime is that for how slow the game is, the fast travel system is either a mess or broken, depending on who you talk to. I was able to fast travel one time with the map -- when I first unlocked a new fast travel point. After that, every time I tried to fast travel, it didn't give me an option. I read on the discussion board on Steam that some people suggested it was a requirement for you to be in one of the fast travel areas to travel to another area, but no dice for me. Then I happened upon people mentioning that it just stopped working for them after a certain day in the game.
It's nice that time doesn't move while you're not engaged in a particular activity, but for the amount of distance you get to cover with your Jamrock Shuffle, it's ridiculous that you have to just resign yourself (or at least I did) to walking all the way back and forth between multiple points in what I can only describe as a slog that deprives the enjoyment of digging deeper into the story.
Absolutely recommend the game, just with the caveat that you better bring patience because depending on the bugs you get (apparently others were worse off than I was), you may be getting more mileage than you're bargaining for -- especially when it comes to walking.
Absolutely get it, just get it on a sale. It's worth a playthrough, regardless of the slog.
The short of it is, the game is fascinating in many ways and well-written, but the soundtrack is completely flat for me and I ran into some very strange bugs that caused varying degrees of grief for me.
Some were just minor issues like the wrong audio playing for whatever narrative aspect is talking at a given time, or when Kim went to say something and it was about triple the volume of what the rest of the dialogue was and almost blew out my speakers.
One was a bit annoying, in the case of a bug that caused me to be unable to traverse a room I'd already been into before because my character would not walk more than a few feet in and just ceased being willing to interact with anything I could see, giving me no choice but to leave, go all the way around to the other side of the building, and head back into said room from the other side to reach what I was trying to get to. Annoying, but not the worst thing ever.
The real crime is that for how slow the game is, the fast travel system is either a mess or broken, depending on who you talk to. I was able to fast travel one time with the map -- when I first unlocked a new fast travel point. After that, every time I tried to fast travel, it didn't give me an option. I read on the discussion board on Steam that some people suggested it was a requirement for you to be in one of the fast travel areas to travel to another area, but no dice for me. Then I happened upon people mentioning that it just stopped working for them after a certain day in the game.
It's nice that time doesn't move while you're not engaged in a particular activity, but for the amount of distance you get to cover with your Jamrock Shuffle, it's ridiculous that you have to just resign yourself (or at least I did) to walking all the way back and forth between multiple points in what I can only describe as a slog that deprives the enjoyment of digging deeper into the story.
Absolutely recommend the game, just with the caveat that you better bring patience because depending on the bugs you get (apparently others were worse off than I was), you may be getting more mileage than you're bargaining for -- especially when it comes to walking.
Absolutely get it, just get it on a sale. It's worth a playthrough, regardless of the slog.
2009
I've played through this game twice. It is a visually magnificent game, but I can't get past a number of unlikable characters and some of the strictest linearity in any FF game ever.
It's really noticeable when you first reach the Gapra Whitewood early in the game and see a number of branching paths going into the forest -- of which you can't take any. It feels like there was a lot of ambition on hand and things got in the way of execution -- maybe they ran short on time or spent too much budget on pretty-ifying the game? Needless to say, the first ~25-30 hours of the game are like this. Then it commits a deeper sin.
[SPOILERS (minor) AHEAD, READ AT YOUR OWN PERIL]
Once you touch down on Gran Pulse, the game gives you the illusion of freedom by letting you wander out into the world in any direction you desire -- except that if you don't head directly toward a certain group of monsters, any other encounters are likely to annihilate you on contact. Gran Pulse essentially becomes a trial-and-error test of which encounters are the ones that are okay to fight and dictate which area you should be in until your party becomes hardy enough to take on the next big threat.
[END OF SPOILERS]
I wasn't fond of the Eidolons or Paradigm system, either -- but these issues (for me) were negligible compared to the sheer linearity imposed on the player with a ragtag crew of (mostly) frustrating characters.
It's really noticeable when you first reach the Gapra Whitewood early in the game and see a number of branching paths going into the forest -- of which you can't take any. It feels like there was a lot of ambition on hand and things got in the way of execution -- maybe they ran short on time or spent too much budget on pretty-ifying the game? Needless to say, the first ~25-30 hours of the game are like this. Then it commits a deeper sin.
[SPOILERS (minor) AHEAD, READ AT YOUR OWN PERIL]
Once you touch down on Gran Pulse, the game gives you the illusion of freedom by letting you wander out into the world in any direction you desire -- except that if you don't head directly toward a certain group of monsters, any other encounters are likely to annihilate you on contact. Gran Pulse essentially becomes a trial-and-error test of which encounters are the ones that are okay to fight and dictate which area you should be in until your party becomes hardy enough to take on the next big threat.
[END OF SPOILERS]
I wasn't fond of the Eidolons or Paradigm system, either -- but these issues (for me) were negligible compared to the sheer linearity imposed on the player with a ragtag crew of (mostly) frustrating characters.
2022
Without going into spoilers, I'll say that this game has very okayish combat, but it goes hard on exploration and the boss fights are largely a delight.
After a few upgrades, you feel ridiculous in terms of your vertical and horizontal mobility and it feels like the game encourages you to try and maximize your movement -- even to the point that there are some ability upgrades you can acquire early simply by understanding the combinations of movement gained from beating bosses. But even without those, you can discover that Iko will run after a certain distance and that roll-jumping from another ledge (above or below) will facilitate this -- meaning that if there's a room that's just out of reach normally by jumping from the ledge you're on, you can create your own rolling/running start and do another roll into a jump off that final ledge to get just a slight bit more distance or height to reach places that are slightly out of the way. And that's just one example out of several.
Of course, the level design is largely tight and what feels like lots of potential paths is actually just dead ends with upgrades or items (some of which might be required) or loops around to the same space, but I can't overstate that the FEELING of good movement in a platforming space was nearly always present throughout the game.
Of praiseworthy notion for me, as well -- bosses. I feel like the bosses were all over the place for difficulty, but outside of one on a later island that was gating a particular movement upgrade (this boss had some moves that you could dodge roll against but you'd still take damage and I never understood how to avoid damage against said boss), the patterns were actually pretty fun and I never felt like deaths had anything to do with poor telegraphing, frustrating mobility issues, or anything else of that nature.
The soundtrack is so very chill and I loved most of the island music. Boss music and overworld music was less impressive, but it did the job.
Things I had gripes with -- even though some of the ability upgrades could give your more currency or make enemies drop more currency and I explored nearly 100% on all five islands, I still had a bunch of grinding for currency to unlock everything by the time I reached the endgame, so I passed on that. Also, I purchased a particular upgrade that's supposed to facilitate teleporting between both teleporters and save locations (I think?), but I wasn't paying solid attention to how the upgrade worked and when I got it, it never told me again how to use it and searching online for info gave me nothing useful about it, so I just kept using shrines to teleport myself everywhere and left it at that.
Also, the last island does feel hollow compared to the first four and one particular boss lair feels frustrating because it felt like they were out of good ideas for puzzles, so it was just room filler for the sake of room filler.
I guess I'm supposed to say something about visuals, even though that usually doesn't matter much for me when playing a Metroidvania, so...hey, it looked pretty good. High-five!
I imagine the last bit of grinding for currency would probably put 100%ing the game at around 12 hours, maybe less? I don't know how difficult Boss Rush mode is, so I can't really speak on that. It took me a little over 8 hours to beat the game.
At 20 bucks, I'd say it's worth a full purchase, but at least as of 8/10/23, Islets is 30% off (14 bucks) until 8/16/23, so maybe if you've got a little loose cash around and want to give a Metroidvania some love, consider giving this a shot.
After a few upgrades, you feel ridiculous in terms of your vertical and horizontal mobility and it feels like the game encourages you to try and maximize your movement -- even to the point that there are some ability upgrades you can acquire early simply by understanding the combinations of movement gained from beating bosses. But even without those, you can discover that Iko will run after a certain distance and that roll-jumping from another ledge (above or below) will facilitate this -- meaning that if there's a room that's just out of reach normally by jumping from the ledge you're on, you can create your own rolling/running start and do another roll into a jump off that final ledge to get just a slight bit more distance or height to reach places that are slightly out of the way. And that's just one example out of several.
Of course, the level design is largely tight and what feels like lots of potential paths is actually just dead ends with upgrades or items (some of which might be required) or loops around to the same space, but I can't overstate that the FEELING of good movement in a platforming space was nearly always present throughout the game.
Of praiseworthy notion for me, as well -- bosses. I feel like the bosses were all over the place for difficulty, but outside of one on a later island that was gating a particular movement upgrade (this boss had some moves that you could dodge roll against but you'd still take damage and I never understood how to avoid damage against said boss), the patterns were actually pretty fun and I never felt like deaths had anything to do with poor telegraphing, frustrating mobility issues, or anything else of that nature.
The soundtrack is so very chill and I loved most of the island music. Boss music and overworld music was less impressive, but it did the job.
Things I had gripes with -- even though some of the ability upgrades could give your more currency or make enemies drop more currency and I explored nearly 100% on all five islands, I still had a bunch of grinding for currency to unlock everything by the time I reached the endgame, so I passed on that. Also, I purchased a particular upgrade that's supposed to facilitate teleporting between both teleporters and save locations (I think?), but I wasn't paying solid attention to how the upgrade worked and when I got it, it never told me again how to use it and searching online for info gave me nothing useful about it, so I just kept using shrines to teleport myself everywhere and left it at that.
Also, the last island does feel hollow compared to the first four and one particular boss lair feels frustrating because it felt like they were out of good ideas for puzzles, so it was just room filler for the sake of room filler.
I guess I'm supposed to say something about visuals, even though that usually doesn't matter much for me when playing a Metroidvania, so...hey, it looked pretty good. High-five!
I imagine the last bit of grinding for currency would probably put 100%ing the game at around 12 hours, maybe less? I don't know how difficult Boss Rush mode is, so I can't really speak on that. It took me a little over 8 hours to beat the game.
At 20 bucks, I'd say it's worth a full purchase, but at least as of 8/10/23, Islets is 30% off (14 bucks) until 8/16/23, so maybe if you've got a little loose cash around and want to give a Metroidvania some love, consider giving this a shot.
2020
Five stars if you don't count the Black & White DLC, even if it's supposed to give a definitive ending to the game. I 100%ed all the maps other than the DLC one and beat Chuka in the DLC, couldn't figure out how to progress and peaced out on it with 80% map completion.
I think it's my kind of platforming and exploration-based Metroidvania and I appreciate the potential levels of nonlinearity in it that are tied specifically to your ability to understand your mechanics fully (some of these skill sets can be learned via found notes in some areas).
There were a few minor issues, such as the camera not going back to center when doing the down-dash ability and the lack of ability to have quest markers in case you're looking for someone or something in particular -- this is especially a pain in the case of finding all the robots (which I had already found before I got the quest started, so I just skipped that whole deal), as well as the Subway Depot quest and a generator quest for a particular region -- it asks you to turn on generators and you can 100% the map without finding all of the generators if you're like me and simply didn't look in a particular direction in one room.
I think my only other gripe was very minor and involved a particular ability you eventually get that is really fun, but can make some of your other abilities become a bit more finicky, without going into spoiler territory for some of the cool stuff you get.
Ended up dropping 24 hours on it for 100% map completion for everywhere other than the DLC and gathered all relevant items in the game but didn't finish a couple side quests. Absolutely worth it at full price and I'd say it's worth a look for any Metroidvania player -- if you see a sale, snatch it up!
Also, shout-outs to the dev for being cool in the Steam discussions when a Dutch person called his game "cringe" because in Dutch, "haak" means "hook" and you have a hook weapon, even though the dev speaks Cantonese and "haak" means "black" because your brother (the main quest point of the game has you seeking him out) is "baak", which means "white". The very polite correction followed by dead silence from the Dutch user was golden.
I think it's my kind of platforming and exploration-based Metroidvania and I appreciate the potential levels of nonlinearity in it that are tied specifically to your ability to understand your mechanics fully (some of these skill sets can be learned via found notes in some areas).
There were a few minor issues, such as the camera not going back to center when doing the down-dash ability and the lack of ability to have quest markers in case you're looking for someone or something in particular -- this is especially a pain in the case of finding all the robots (which I had already found before I got the quest started, so I just skipped that whole deal), as well as the Subway Depot quest and a generator quest for a particular region -- it asks you to turn on generators and you can 100% the map without finding all of the generators if you're like me and simply didn't look in a particular direction in one room.
I think my only other gripe was very minor and involved a particular ability you eventually get that is really fun, but can make some of your other abilities become a bit more finicky, without going into spoiler territory for some of the cool stuff you get.
Ended up dropping 24 hours on it for 100% map completion for everywhere other than the DLC and gathered all relevant items in the game but didn't finish a couple side quests. Absolutely worth it at full price and I'd say it's worth a look for any Metroidvania player -- if you see a sale, snatch it up!
Also, shout-outs to the dev for being cool in the Steam discussions when a Dutch person called his game "cringe" because in Dutch, "haak" means "hook" and you have a hook weapon, even though the dev speaks Cantonese and "haak" means "black" because your brother (the main quest point of the game has you seeking him out) is "baak", which means "white". The very polite correction followed by dead silence from the Dutch user was golden.