Shenobi
Just to clarify, this rating is for the non-PS4 version, since it has all the good music still. There is nothing quite like popping this game in, stealing a car, and driving around the city to some amazing soundtracks.
2022
Been really excited about getting around to play this. Not going to rate it because it's hard to appreciate a game centered around movie-like gameplay with QTEs when the game is chugging and the audio's decided to just leave the video behind.
I'm using a GTX 1070 and the Minimum Requirements calls for a GTX 780, but damn...especially when first moving to a new scene, anything above lowest settings was giving me Frames Per Minute instead of Frames Per Second in many cases. On lowest settings, there was still substantial chugging to the point that I just wasn't comfortable with trying to play it any further.
Will come back to this if I ever get a new video card or if I PS+ ends up offering up the game at some point like they did with Man of Medan (unlikely, but I can always hope). Mostly just dropping this here so people can make a note that they probably want a better video card than what I've got unless they're willing to settle for some awful chugging at times and poor visual quality.
I'm using a GTX 1070 and the Minimum Requirements calls for a GTX 780, but damn...especially when first moving to a new scene, anything above lowest settings was giving me Frames Per Minute instead of Frames Per Second in many cases. On lowest settings, there was still substantial chugging to the point that I just wasn't comfortable with trying to play it any further.
Will come back to this if I ever get a new video card or if I PS+ ends up offering up the game at some point like they did with Man of Medan (unlikely, but I can always hope). Mostly just dropping this here so people can make a note that they probably want a better video card than what I've got unless they're willing to settle for some awful chugging at times and poor visual quality.
2021
It's a step up from FF2J, but it's not without some design issues, which make sense if you look at the direction the games went in -- it's a bit of a feeling out and adjustments that were to try and craft a new experience, even if said adjustments may not have had the best end result.
A lot of jobs are largely pointless, equipment can be a pain to acquire if you are trying for certain jobs, and some early jobs just get outclassed by later iterations (not counting the two secret jobs if you do the optional dungeon -- one of those jobs is simply broken in terms of power).
I appreciate the attempt to really bring a story into the mix this time around, but this game really ends up being a story of grinding more than anything else. Even with the easing of difficulty, you're going to have to put in a little more work than usual to get some smooth sailing in this game.
It's on the fringe of being good for me, but doesn't quite get there. The soundtrack is solid in a few spots, if nothing else. Also, thank all the gods for this being the only game with airships that don't understand how height works. Mountain jumping might have been one of the dumbest things in FF-history, especially when you consider how the world in this game works.
A lot of jobs are largely pointless, equipment can be a pain to acquire if you are trying for certain jobs, and some early jobs just get outclassed by later iterations (not counting the two secret jobs if you do the optional dungeon -- one of those jobs is simply broken in terms of power).
I appreciate the attempt to really bring a story into the mix this time around, but this game really ends up being a story of grinding more than anything else. Even with the easing of difficulty, you're going to have to put in a little more work than usual to get some smooth sailing in this game.
It's on the fringe of being good for me, but doesn't quite get there. The soundtrack is solid in a few spots, if nothing else. Also, thank all the gods for this being the only game with airships that don't understand how height works. Mountain jumping might have been one of the dumbest things in FF-history, especially when you consider how the world in this game works.
2016
EDIT: Now that I've played the free and paid DLCs, I'm bumping this to five stars.
My original gripe with sequence breaking and not being able to progress in the non-Volcano area was my fault because there actually are ways around those "roadblocks", to the extent that there's actually a 0% Item/Ability run you can do that you can get achievements for in both the main game and postgame. You can actually play the entire game without your weapon and still beat it in a non-pacifist manner. In fact, the game was designed with so many different ways to approach it that the devs added in achievements for each scenario that you could pull off and encouraged you to break the game as much as possible, while still making it manageable for anyone who wants that challenge.
The volcano thing is still weird because you needed to have a particular conversation and then have a couple cutscenes to progress that exploration because of story, and this happens with a few other postgame sections, including a post-postgame (yes, there is one).
I'd say that my only real standing gripe is the buttons being listed as numbers in the movelists because yes, I do enjoy experimenting with controls, but sometimes I would rather just look and see a familiar button list to know how to do things. Everything else is essentially golden, with some very excellent boss fights on top of that exploration and sequence breaking that the game unabashedly showcases.
Original review follows.
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If you like Metroivanias with non-linear exploration and bosses that are fun bullet hells, this game is made for you and you need to play it.
I have only a couple gripes.
1) Although the UI itself is absolutely lovely, text instructions for abilities that show up in them are unintuitive because it doesn't account for the names of controller buttons, so explanations of moves will be things like, "Press (down arrow) + BUTTON 4." Sometimes when I'd learn a new ability/move, I'd just mess around with all buttons and directions until I figured it out. Not a big deal, just a small thing that makes you burn a few extra seconds to figure stuff out.
2) The non-linearity of this game is mostly excellent, and it's the "mostly" that's come back to haunt me a couple times in one form or another. There's an area I found early on that I couldn't proceed through because the game wants you to clear the first chapter before you're allowed to go do it.
At another point, I used hidden moves to get myself really deep into the volcano area and found myself eventually at a long shaft that seems to repeat infinitely with a save point in the middle of it. I was looking for hidden ledges to drop onto while falling infinitely because the map overlay on the save screen shows a separate-colored room at the bottom.
After spending about fifteen minutes wandering slamming into walls with my face or hammer or magic (and the brief opening that has some spikes on the ground in one section), I checked a walkthrough, only to find out that this area was inaccessible until MUCH later in the game and I had to use my hidden-tech skills to work my way all the way back out of the volcano to the teleporter (which was much more difficult to get back to than it was getting in from). This one was a little more frustrating because the non-linearity encourages exploration, but I was also penalized very thoroughly for exploring in this instance, to the point that I had to check a walkthrough to see I was wasting my time.
Those are minor issues, though -- the walk back from the first area I mentioned wasn't that bad (even if I did it twice) and if you're reading this and haven't played it yet, you're now aware that you shouldn't go too deep into the volcano using hidden tech abilities once you figure out how they work. It's essentially an extra 30 minutes I tacked onto the game for walking back from places and if nothing else, the volcano situation was good practice for honing those skills, even if it was frustrating.
I used all of this review to talk about these things because frankly, I don't want to lay out all the good things this game has going for it because they're innumerable. It's beautiful, non-linear, mostly encourages exploration, lets you progress story at your leisure for the most part, and the soundtrack is nice. There's a postgame and I haven't started it yet, but I will soon. There's also a free DLC that is suggested to be played in postgame and two other DLCs that add more areas/content and I intend to check those out eventually, as well.
Easily in the Top 20 and possibly Top 10 best Metroidvanias just for content alone.
My original gripe with sequence breaking and not being able to progress in the non-Volcano area was my fault because there actually are ways around those "roadblocks", to the extent that there's actually a 0% Item/Ability run you can do that you can get achievements for in both the main game and postgame. You can actually play the entire game without your weapon and still beat it in a non-pacifist manner. In fact, the game was designed with so many different ways to approach it that the devs added in achievements for each scenario that you could pull off and encouraged you to break the game as much as possible, while still making it manageable for anyone who wants that challenge.
The volcano thing is still weird because you needed to have a particular conversation and then have a couple cutscenes to progress that exploration because of story, and this happens with a few other postgame sections, including a post-postgame (yes, there is one).
I'd say that my only real standing gripe is the buttons being listed as numbers in the movelists because yes, I do enjoy experimenting with controls, but sometimes I would rather just look and see a familiar button list to know how to do things. Everything else is essentially golden, with some very excellent boss fights on top of that exploration and sequence breaking that the game unabashedly showcases.
Original review follows.
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If you like Metroivanias with non-linear exploration and bosses that are fun bullet hells, this game is made for you and you need to play it.
I have only a couple gripes.
1) Although the UI itself is absolutely lovely, text instructions for abilities that show up in them are unintuitive because it doesn't account for the names of controller buttons, so explanations of moves will be things like, "Press (down arrow) + BUTTON 4." Sometimes when I'd learn a new ability/move, I'd just mess around with all buttons and directions until I figured it out. Not a big deal, just a small thing that makes you burn a few extra seconds to figure stuff out.
2) The non-linearity of this game is mostly excellent, and it's the "mostly" that's come back to haunt me a couple times in one form or another. There's an area I found early on that I couldn't proceed through because the game wants you to clear the first chapter before you're allowed to go do it.
At another point, I used hidden moves to get myself really deep into the volcano area and found myself eventually at a long shaft that seems to repeat infinitely with a save point in the middle of it. I was looking for hidden ledges to drop onto while falling infinitely because the map overlay on the save screen shows a separate-colored room at the bottom.
After spending about fifteen minutes wandering slamming into walls with my face or hammer or magic (and the brief opening that has some spikes on the ground in one section), I checked a walkthrough, only to find out that this area was inaccessible until MUCH later in the game and I had to use my hidden-tech skills to work my way all the way back out of the volcano to the teleporter (which was much more difficult to get back to than it was getting in from). This one was a little more frustrating because the non-linearity encourages exploration, but I was also penalized very thoroughly for exploring in this instance, to the point that I had to check a walkthrough to see I was wasting my time.
Those are minor issues, though -- the walk back from the first area I mentioned wasn't that bad (even if I did it twice) and if you're reading this and haven't played it yet, you're now aware that you shouldn't go too deep into the volcano using hidden tech abilities once you figure out how they work. It's essentially an extra 30 minutes I tacked onto the game for walking back from places and if nothing else, the volcano situation was good practice for honing those skills, even if it was frustrating.
I used all of this review to talk about these things because frankly, I don't want to lay out all the good things this game has going for it because they're innumerable. It's beautiful, non-linear, mostly encourages exploration, lets you progress story at your leisure for the most part, and the soundtrack is nice. There's a postgame and I haven't started it yet, but I will soon. There's also a free DLC that is suggested to be played in postgame and two other DLCs that add more areas/content and I intend to check those out eventually, as well.
Easily in the Top 20 and possibly Top 10 best Metroidvanias just for content alone.
1999
The first time I ever played this, I borrowed it from a friend and it got lost in a backlog of other games that just caught my attention at the time. I didn't really like Squall and his generally complain-y attitude, but I soldiered through to Disc 3 (I think?) before the Backlog Monster ate it.
When I finally got around to playing it again several months later, I found myself completely lost on what to do and ended up driving my mountain/school bus around the world for about an hour before eventually just giving up and moving on to other stuff. I didn't feel particularly invested in the story up to that point, so no real loss for me.
Eventually, I decided to go back and do a run-through of every FF game in the main series and came back to knock this one out. My opinion of things didn't really change, though I made sure to actually focus on the game wholly this time so I didn't lose track of where I could/should be going.
The story didn't really do anything for me and coming off the Materia system (which I really enjoyed), the Draw system just felt like some monstrous mixture of "not interesting" and "easily exploitable". The visuals were fine for their time, but given that it was almost 18 years later or so, there wasn't anything really hooking me that other RPGs didn't do better before or after this.
To each their own, right? Maybe it deserves a 1.0, but it's (at least for now) tied for my least favorite FF game alongside FF XIII.
When I finally got around to playing it again several months later, I found myself completely lost on what to do and ended up driving my mountain/school bus around the world for about an hour before eventually just giving up and moving on to other stuff. I didn't feel particularly invested in the story up to that point, so no real loss for me.
Eventually, I decided to go back and do a run-through of every FF game in the main series and came back to knock this one out. My opinion of things didn't really change, though I made sure to actually focus on the game wholly this time so I didn't lose track of where I could/should be going.
The story didn't really do anything for me and coming off the Materia system (which I really enjoyed), the Draw system just felt like some monstrous mixture of "not interesting" and "easily exploitable". The visuals were fine for their time, but given that it was almost 18 years later or so, there wasn't anything really hooking me that other RPGs didn't do better before or after this.
To each their own, right? Maybe it deserves a 1.0, but it's (at least for now) tied for my least favorite FF game alongside FF XIII.
As far as the games in the series go, kinda enjoyed this one a lot more than I thought I would. Felt like a story dealing with military characters wasn't going to resonate well with me (especially given how very pointedly they try and make your initial interactions between characters awkward for one-another), but it kinda drew me in as the game progressed.
I still hate QTEs to death, House of Ashes at least made me feel like stealth and action moments were important, even if you could feel out the pattern of when the QTEs were coming (especially in the final stand-off of the game).
It doesn't win any awards for me and sometimes characters had a bit of that creepy uncanny valley look to them (Rebecca more than anyone else), but it was fun and probably the best DPA game in the series (if you don't count Until Dawn, which the series doesn't seem to do, either).
Get it on sale, as it's about six to seven hours if you are being careful and trying to find collectables (I collected all frames and 43/50 secrets). There is replayability as always because of different storyline potentials and achievements/trophies, so it's worth it simply on the principle of treating it like going to the movies -- this is largely just an interactive movie that runs about 3-4 times as long as your typical movie, priced at about 2-3 times the cost of a movie, with extra reasons to go back and "watch" it again. If nothing else, get a friend to come over and watch them play through it and see how much their choices differ.
I'd say it's a reasonable deal at 30% off, a steal at 50%.
I still hate QTEs to death, House of Ashes at least made me feel like stealth and action moments were important, even if you could feel out the pattern of when the QTEs were coming (especially in the final stand-off of the game).
It doesn't win any awards for me and sometimes characters had a bit of that creepy uncanny valley look to them (Rebecca more than anyone else), but it was fun and probably the best DPA game in the series (if you don't count Until Dawn, which the series doesn't seem to do, either).
Get it on sale, as it's about six to seven hours if you are being careful and trying to find collectables (I collected all frames and 43/50 secrets). There is replayability as always because of different storyline potentials and achievements/trophies, so it's worth it simply on the principle of treating it like going to the movies -- this is largely just an interactive movie that runs about 3-4 times as long as your typical movie, priced at about 2-3 times the cost of a movie, with extra reasons to go back and "watch" it again. If nothing else, get a friend to come over and watch them play through it and see how much their choices differ.
I'd say it's a reasonable deal at 30% off, a steal at 50%.
Let me preface this by saying that I had very mixed thoughts on the original Alundra before giving this a go.
I didn't spend a great deal of time with Alundra 2. Essentially, I got out of the first area of the game, progressed a little further and quit. I may not have given this game a fair shake, but it didn't feel like it handled particularly well (and this might be due to how much later in life I played it) and I also felt like despite the obvious attempt to improve upon visuals, it felt more like a step back from the LTTP/IoG-esque look of the first game that would lend it a more appropriate feel for the type of game it tried to emulate.
So, that's the long and short of it. This 0.5 is mostly for me and if you like games in the vein of Link to the Past or Illusion of Gaia, maybe this is something you should give a chance. For me, I just couldn't do it.
I didn't spend a great deal of time with Alundra 2. Essentially, I got out of the first area of the game, progressed a little further and quit. I may not have given this game a fair shake, but it didn't feel like it handled particularly well (and this might be due to how much later in life I played it) and I also felt like despite the obvious attempt to improve upon visuals, it felt more like a step back from the LTTP/IoG-esque look of the first game that would lend it a more appropriate feel for the type of game it tried to emulate.
So, that's the long and short of it. This 0.5 is mostly for me and if you like games in the vein of Link to the Past or Illusion of Gaia, maybe this is something you should give a chance. For me, I just couldn't do it.
1998
The premier survival horror escape simulator, with a monster AI that was surprising and engaging and rather unmatched for the style of game until Alien: Isolation came around. I don't know if the game wasn't finished or what, but there were many items that had no purpose I was aware of and some areas felt a little unfinished.
I rate this game so highly because there are defining moments in gaming where you get immersed thoroughly and the way the AI for this game ramps up from area to area despite how basic it was for its time meant and still means a lot to me.
I rate this game so highly because there are defining moments in gaming where you get immersed thoroughly and the way the AI for this game ramps up from area to area despite how basic it was for its time meant and still means a lot to me.
2000
Resident Evil, but on an aircraft carrier with plant-zombies. What more could you ask for? Well, a lot, but this was still an alright game.
1989
When I was younger, I rented this game several times because I thought the graphical style was really neat -- it had that simulator feel of some other games for that time and was billed as an RPG. Also, cool dragon on the cover and I was a kid.
I never really got very far in the game each time I played it because I had no real clue at how to proceed. As an adult, I just looked at the game and thought, "This is one seriously ugly baby of a game."
THE END.
I never really got very far in the game each time I played it because I had no real clue at how to proceed. As an adult, I just looked at the game and thought, "This is one seriously ugly baby of a game."
THE END.
1990
One of my favorite FF games in terms of job systems. The last dungeon is ludicrous in terms of difficulty spikes, though. Put me off of finishing the game the first time around and I had to come back sometime later and give it a real go, but it was worth it.
I guess this is going to exist perpetually in my backlog.
Originally, I played this up to the Tree of Life point and once I got there, I fed it to the backlog monster so I could play some other stuff that was more appealing at the time.
Time passes, I come back and find out my save is corrupt. Eh, it happens, but I remember it being fun enough, so let's start up again! And...some weird jankiness is going on where Death continued to list to the right when I was moving in the opening area, so I deleted the game and threw it onto the backlog again.
Several years pass, I finally go back and the controls are behaving fine this time, so I beat the opening area...and backlog it again.
And...it's April of 2022, I finally come back to it. It's got that Metroidvania-meets-Zelda-with-other-gimmicks feel that I remember that's charming...until you go through a couple dungeons and realize it's TOO puzzle-oriented and the experience system is strange.
You can't grind extra levels because enemies eventually just pay zero experience...which is fine, I guess. But this means that if you're good at fighting things that might be out of your league early, you're suddenly getting equipment that you can't use until Level 10 and you're Level 5 and the only thing you can do is just progress the game normally...and by the time I got to level 10, I had better equipment than the reward I was given from an optional boss fight in the first place.
The decision to use Diabloesque loot drops is fine, but when they eclipse the special rewards you get from beating something optional and significant, it seems like maybe this game is just seated too far into the gimmick territory.
The world is amazing, but it's a shame that the dungeons feel so flat by comparison because it's just stone with different colors to them and maybe some lava or water. I made it back to the Tree of Life area and then went to do an optional boss fight, which descended into doing ANOTHER lava dungeon and my brain just switched off.
I love the first game, but this just feels like the pinnacle of mediocrity. I'll probably come back to it yet again at some point and hopefully my save won't be corrupted this time and I'll discover that the future dungeons aren't just stone with an element theme attached to them and boatloads of puzzles to pad the dungeon time.
Sticking with the 2.5 star rating until further notice.
Originally, I played this up to the Tree of Life point and once I got there, I fed it to the backlog monster so I could play some other stuff that was more appealing at the time.
Time passes, I come back and find out my save is corrupt. Eh, it happens, but I remember it being fun enough, so let's start up again! And...some weird jankiness is going on where Death continued to list to the right when I was moving in the opening area, so I deleted the game and threw it onto the backlog again.
Several years pass, I finally go back and the controls are behaving fine this time, so I beat the opening area...and backlog it again.
And...it's April of 2022, I finally come back to it. It's got that Metroidvania-meets-Zelda-with-other-gimmicks feel that I remember that's charming...until you go through a couple dungeons and realize it's TOO puzzle-oriented and the experience system is strange.
You can't grind extra levels because enemies eventually just pay zero experience...which is fine, I guess. But this means that if you're good at fighting things that might be out of your league early, you're suddenly getting equipment that you can't use until Level 10 and you're Level 5 and the only thing you can do is just progress the game normally...and by the time I got to level 10, I had better equipment than the reward I was given from an optional boss fight in the first place.
The decision to use Diabloesque loot drops is fine, but when they eclipse the special rewards you get from beating something optional and significant, it seems like maybe this game is just seated too far into the gimmick territory.
The world is amazing, but it's a shame that the dungeons feel so flat by comparison because it's just stone with different colors to them and maybe some lava or water. I made it back to the Tree of Life area and then went to do an optional boss fight, which descended into doing ANOTHER lava dungeon and my brain just switched off.
I love the first game, but this just feels like the pinnacle of mediocrity. I'll probably come back to it yet again at some point and hopefully my save won't be corrupted this time and I'll discover that the future dungeons aren't just stone with an element theme attached to them and boatloads of puzzles to pad the dungeon time.
Sticking with the 2.5 star rating until further notice.
This review contains spoilers
Short, short answer: When it's fun, it's really fun. When it's obnoxious, it's really obnoxious.
Longer answer: Well, let's break it down piece-by-piece.
Visually, the game is a mixed bag. Occasionally solid visuals get marred by horrible jagging and outlines (especially with characters), textures popping in and out that can sometimes happen so fast and repeatedly that it looks like a clinical in how to induce an inadvertent seizure, and the oft-mentioned draw distance problem coming into play, usually in the form of mons or other things you're specifically looking for not showing up until you're right on them. Not a deal-breaker by any means, but it's always a fun time when you're crouching in a cave and can see white light pouring through the seams of textures that don't quite touch the ground properly (or worse in some cases).
The game is fine as audio goes. Cues for alpha mons, some fun area music, subdued music when crouching in tall grass -- it's all pretty nice. If I had one concern, it's a question of why music sometimes just isn't present in an area at all. My wife and I have both had points where we'd be moving around for long periods of time with no area music playing, only to have it start up all of the sudden out of nowhere.
Technical issues, I only ran into a few.
At one point, the game started lagging a lot, so I saved, only to have it crash about ten seconds later. Nothing intensive, was just walking out of Galaxy Hall and heading over to the item box.
Another issue is that turn order in combat sometimes doesn't care about said order anymore when you're facing multiple pokemon at once. I can't speak to any specifics, but I definitely had a fairly fast mon that was significantly higher in level than the three mons it was up against sit there through five actions after using an Agile attack that -- at least according to the turn counter -- suggested it should only have to wait through three actions. Had a few situations like this, but I can only speculate on some aspects of it and it largely doesn't make sense to me in the case of the example I cited.
USEFUL TECHNICAL ISSUE FOR PLAYERS WANTING TO GAME THE SYSTEM -- Was doing some trading with my wife to test the usual mons to see if they'd evolve on trades with or without items, and noticed something very peculiar. Essentially, mons that you traded to someone and had traded back to you counted as another new mon in your research list for the purposes of catching mons.
Having trouble with Request 17 wanting you to fill out a Cherrim entry completely? Get someone to evolve a Cherubi and trade it back and forth until you're done. Especially useful since they're (at least for us) a pain to find and Petal Dance -- the move it asks to see for research purposes -- isn't learned until near level 50.
Basically, if you have a friend and are willing to commit to back-and-forths for trades, you can knock out some of the more frustrating mons pretty easily to get your Research Level 10 quotas.
Regarding gameplay, the game really manages to feel both fun and irritating for me depending on any given moment. I actually enjoyed the sneaking around to catch mons far more than I thought I would, and battling is mostly fine.
Battles feel really binary, as it seems like mons are built in a stacked manner against a player who might bring mons that should be strong against them to the battle. A lot of strategy is out the window because certain things just aren't relevant anymore -- status effects are temporary (and gone after battle), setups (both field-based and stat-based) are temporary during the battle, and you will occasionally be forced into battles against multiple mons at once with no ability to hit all mons present (as far as I know).
I'm not sure to the full extent of which AI behaves in this manner, but some mons specifically formulate their turn AFTER you've dealt damage -- in the case of one particular legendary in the postgame, it would heal itself right after a hit would reduce it to red bar levels WITHOUT FAIL. Trying to balance your attacks to get it into the red so you can catch it? Better stack yourself up with a second free turn because you're going to need it (or in my case, just get tired of it and throw a ball while it was in the yellow and get lucky).
Wasn't fond of the bosses for the most part. My wife said that they're there to test your understanding of the mechanics of the game, but I feel like it's just another "thing" that they wanted to try out, as per the standard in Pokemon games. You never sneak around or try and catch the bosses, nor do you even really actively engage them with your own mons -- instead, you're required to play an arena dodging game for a bit until the mon either does something that stuns it and allows you to engage it with a mon, or it gets tired of going through its cycle of moves and lets you throw a mon then. Yeah, you're throwing stuff at it to weaken it the whole time, but that's not something you do in the wild with normal mons, either. And the reward for beating a given boss with a mon is to have a few extra seconds to throw more stuff at the boss.
Some of the patterns do result in a fun time (second boss for me, specifically), but it mostly just feels like a chore. I died to the third boss once because dodging out of the way resulted in me clipping against invisible walls because of the way the terrain is set up for the fight, so that's an added bonus!
If you are having trouble with them, you are given the option to restart the fight or even restart the fight with your current progress against that boss counted in the restart. Nice option to have for people having trouble, I guess.
Having an invisible stamina bar for your dash/sprint/run move seems weird, but since there isn't any stamina required for dodging, you can always dodge roll forward whenever your sprint runs out because it's slightly faster than your normal movement and a few seconds will recharge your invisible stamina bar.
There's some weird design decisions, like giving the player the option to drown after they've acquired the water mount -- if you're using a mount and hit the water, you automatically call the water mount...but if you just jump into the water, you have to choose to call the water mount or drown and get sent back to shore. This also applies to the flying mount allowing you to switch to a non-flier in mid-air and drop (potentially to your death) if you want to. Kind of weird that they allow it, but in a way, it did allow me to realize that you could use the climbing mount to move up a wall, let go, fly to rise higher, then cling to the wall and switch again to move up the wall slightly faster. Beyond that, still seems like some weird decisions.
I don't mind there not being any breeding or (as far as I know) player battling in the game, but it does kinda put a damper on my desire to push beyond just collecting all the mons up and through postgame.
I did like some of the design decisions for alternate forms for some mons (which I will not mention here, regardless of the spoiler warning). I did end up using a couple of them through the end and postgame sections because I kinda grew attached to them. STILL WAITING ON SOME NEW EEVEELUTIONS, CAN'T WAIT FOR 2037 WHEN THEY FINALLY GIVE US A NEW ONE.
So yeah, essentially...when I'm not fighting bosses (outside of the second one) or just occasionally getting ganked in a goofy way in combat, it's a pretty alright time. I think I died three times in total? Once to the third boss, once to the endgame boss, and once to trying to be a good Samaritan by trying to get someone's bag they dropped and falling off an invisible-walled cliff because they dropped their bag in an area I wasn't normally able to access because of incorrect mounts, but it didn't stop me from walking/sprinting/jumping up awkward textures until I was too high to save myself from falling. Whoops!
Can't imagine getting this on sale unless you get lucky with one of those rare 30% sales that happen like twice a year, so I'd say it's worth getting full price if Pokemon is your bag, but if you think you can hold off, keep an eye out for one of those rare sales and just wishlist it. It's fun enough, the lore they try to throw out there is interesting (at times), and you get some new forms of several mons that make for some more interesting team chemistry if that's your bag.
Longer answer: Well, let's break it down piece-by-piece.
Visually, the game is a mixed bag. Occasionally solid visuals get marred by horrible jagging and outlines (especially with characters), textures popping in and out that can sometimes happen so fast and repeatedly that it looks like a clinical in how to induce an inadvertent seizure, and the oft-mentioned draw distance problem coming into play, usually in the form of mons or other things you're specifically looking for not showing up until you're right on them. Not a deal-breaker by any means, but it's always a fun time when you're crouching in a cave and can see white light pouring through the seams of textures that don't quite touch the ground properly (or worse in some cases).
The game is fine as audio goes. Cues for alpha mons, some fun area music, subdued music when crouching in tall grass -- it's all pretty nice. If I had one concern, it's a question of why music sometimes just isn't present in an area at all. My wife and I have both had points where we'd be moving around for long periods of time with no area music playing, only to have it start up all of the sudden out of nowhere.
Technical issues, I only ran into a few.
At one point, the game started lagging a lot, so I saved, only to have it crash about ten seconds later. Nothing intensive, was just walking out of Galaxy Hall and heading over to the item box.
Another issue is that turn order in combat sometimes doesn't care about said order anymore when you're facing multiple pokemon at once. I can't speak to any specifics, but I definitely had a fairly fast mon that was significantly higher in level than the three mons it was up against sit there through five actions after using an Agile attack that -- at least according to the turn counter -- suggested it should only have to wait through three actions. Had a few situations like this, but I can only speculate on some aspects of it and it largely doesn't make sense to me in the case of the example I cited.
USEFUL TECHNICAL ISSUE FOR PLAYERS WANTING TO GAME THE SYSTEM -- Was doing some trading with my wife to test the usual mons to see if they'd evolve on trades with or without items, and noticed something very peculiar. Essentially, mons that you traded to someone and had traded back to you counted as another new mon in your research list for the purposes of catching mons.
Having trouble with Request 17 wanting you to fill out a Cherrim entry completely? Get someone to evolve a Cherubi and trade it back and forth until you're done. Especially useful since they're (at least for us) a pain to find and Petal Dance -- the move it asks to see for research purposes -- isn't learned until near level 50.
Basically, if you have a friend and are willing to commit to back-and-forths for trades, you can knock out some of the more frustrating mons pretty easily to get your Research Level 10 quotas.
Regarding gameplay, the game really manages to feel both fun and irritating for me depending on any given moment. I actually enjoyed the sneaking around to catch mons far more than I thought I would, and battling is mostly fine.
Battles feel really binary, as it seems like mons are built in a stacked manner against a player who might bring mons that should be strong against them to the battle. A lot of strategy is out the window because certain things just aren't relevant anymore -- status effects are temporary (and gone after battle), setups (both field-based and stat-based) are temporary during the battle, and you will occasionally be forced into battles against multiple mons at once with no ability to hit all mons present (as far as I know).
I'm not sure to the full extent of which AI behaves in this manner, but some mons specifically formulate their turn AFTER you've dealt damage -- in the case of one particular legendary in the postgame, it would heal itself right after a hit would reduce it to red bar levels WITHOUT FAIL. Trying to balance your attacks to get it into the red so you can catch it? Better stack yourself up with a second free turn because you're going to need it (or in my case, just get tired of it and throw a ball while it was in the yellow and get lucky).
Wasn't fond of the bosses for the most part. My wife said that they're there to test your understanding of the mechanics of the game, but I feel like it's just another "thing" that they wanted to try out, as per the standard in Pokemon games. You never sneak around or try and catch the bosses, nor do you even really actively engage them with your own mons -- instead, you're required to play an arena dodging game for a bit until the mon either does something that stuns it and allows you to engage it with a mon, or it gets tired of going through its cycle of moves and lets you throw a mon then. Yeah, you're throwing stuff at it to weaken it the whole time, but that's not something you do in the wild with normal mons, either. And the reward for beating a given boss with a mon is to have a few extra seconds to throw more stuff at the boss.
Some of the patterns do result in a fun time (second boss for me, specifically), but it mostly just feels like a chore. I died to the third boss once because dodging out of the way resulted in me clipping against invisible walls because of the way the terrain is set up for the fight, so that's an added bonus!
If you are having trouble with them, you are given the option to restart the fight or even restart the fight with your current progress against that boss counted in the restart. Nice option to have for people having trouble, I guess.
Having an invisible stamina bar for your dash/sprint/run move seems weird, but since there isn't any stamina required for dodging, you can always dodge roll forward whenever your sprint runs out because it's slightly faster than your normal movement and a few seconds will recharge your invisible stamina bar.
There's some weird design decisions, like giving the player the option to drown after they've acquired the water mount -- if you're using a mount and hit the water, you automatically call the water mount...but if you just jump into the water, you have to choose to call the water mount or drown and get sent back to shore. This also applies to the flying mount allowing you to switch to a non-flier in mid-air and drop (potentially to your death) if you want to. Kind of weird that they allow it, but in a way, it did allow me to realize that you could use the climbing mount to move up a wall, let go, fly to rise higher, then cling to the wall and switch again to move up the wall slightly faster. Beyond that, still seems like some weird decisions.
I don't mind there not being any breeding or (as far as I know) player battling in the game, but it does kinda put a damper on my desire to push beyond just collecting all the mons up and through postgame.
I did like some of the design decisions for alternate forms for some mons (which I will not mention here, regardless of the spoiler warning). I did end up using a couple of them through the end and postgame sections because I kinda grew attached to them. STILL WAITING ON SOME NEW EEVEELUTIONS, CAN'T WAIT FOR 2037 WHEN THEY FINALLY GIVE US A NEW ONE.
So yeah, essentially...when I'm not fighting bosses (outside of the second one) or just occasionally getting ganked in a goofy way in combat, it's a pretty alright time. I think I died three times in total? Once to the third boss, once to the endgame boss, and once to trying to be a good Samaritan by trying to get someone's bag they dropped and falling off an invisible-walled cliff because they dropped their bag in an area I wasn't normally able to access because of incorrect mounts, but it didn't stop me from walking/sprinting/jumping up awkward textures until I was too high to save myself from falling. Whoops!
Can't imagine getting this on sale unless you get lucky with one of those rare 30% sales that happen like twice a year, so I'd say it's worth getting full price if Pokemon is your bag, but if you think you can hold off, keep an eye out for one of those rare sales and just wishlist it. It's fun enough, the lore they try to throw out there is interesting (at times), and you get some new forms of several mons that make for some more interesting team chemistry if that's your bag.
My second favorite Wizardry game (the third being the PS3 one and the first being Wizardry 8). I wish more dungeon crawlers were like this.
2008
Surprisingly good horror DS game. I didn't think those would be a thing (Nanashi no Geemu and Geemu: Me didn't really do it for me), but here we are with something showing you can do a lot in a little space with horror in a good way.