Shenobi
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.
2021
I couldn't even remember this from when I played through it on the PSX, so what better time than now to give it another go?
...nope, there was never going to be a better time, because the negative impressions I had but couldn't remember came back tenfold this time around.
Encounter rates that make Suikoden IV's sailing segments seem reasonable, unintuitive directions at times for where to go next (often enough that it could get annoying), lack of combat-free travel until right near the end of the game (yes, the airship takes that long to get), and holy crap, the stat growth system is really THAT BAD.
I'm not sure if there was some kind of bugginess going on, but despite working on unarmed skills on Guy (the most generic Guy who ever Guy'ed), he stopped gaining skill points once he hit Weapon Skill Level 11 and the others slowly but surely passed him with a bow and swords. Even at endgame, he was never gaining points no matter how many enemies he'd kill. Weird stuff.
Also, I think it's safe to say that making a QoL change to create a quick autosave each time you enter an empty room in a dungeon is probably indicative of how bad the game design is when the later dungeons have long paths to traverse where you can just die to being ambushed and bad RNG. Mysidia Tower screams "FIX ME" at the top of its lungs, but FF2PR can't hear it over all the stun/stone-inflicting doom it's throwing at people while they're trying to cross a single hallway. I swear that I must have gotten ambushed about 33% of the time in this game, and in the late game areas, that sometimes equates to death or a lot of wasted resources.
So, yeah...unless you bought the collection, maybe consider skipping this game. And if you bought the collection...maybe consider skipping this game.
...nope, there was never going to be a better time, because the negative impressions I had but couldn't remember came back tenfold this time around.
Encounter rates that make Suikoden IV's sailing segments seem reasonable, unintuitive directions at times for where to go next (often enough that it could get annoying), lack of combat-free travel until right near the end of the game (yes, the airship takes that long to get), and holy crap, the stat growth system is really THAT BAD.
I'm not sure if there was some kind of bugginess going on, but despite working on unarmed skills on Guy (the most generic Guy who ever Guy'ed), he stopped gaining skill points once he hit Weapon Skill Level 11 and the others slowly but surely passed him with a bow and swords. Even at endgame, he was never gaining points no matter how many enemies he'd kill. Weird stuff.
Also, I think it's safe to say that making a QoL change to create a quick autosave each time you enter an empty room in a dungeon is probably indicative of how bad the game design is when the later dungeons have long paths to traverse where you can just die to being ambushed and bad RNG. Mysidia Tower screams "FIX ME" at the top of its lungs, but FF2PR can't hear it over all the stun/stone-inflicting doom it's throwing at people while they're trying to cross a single hallway. I swear that I must have gotten ambushed about 33% of the time in this game, and in the late game areas, that sometimes equates to death or a lot of wasted resources.
So, yeah...unless you bought the collection, maybe consider skipping this game. And if you bought the collection...maybe consider skipping this game.
It's...fine?
Exploration is sometimes fun because there's a lot of secrets to discover, especially if you're willing to just pay attention and also in respect to powers you acquire later for when you start backtracking in the world.
Platforming is fine sometimes, and other times it's a chore because some terrain blends in with the background or some areas are just a pain to go back through. You get to the end of a path, acquire something, and assuming you don't want to come back and get it again, you've got to get back to a save point and that can mean a lot of precision platforming that might be harder on the way back than it was getting there. Not terrible, but not exactly fun times.
Bosses are extremely underwhelming, despite being these huge things that should be really fun. In most cases, they're 1, 2, or 3-trick ponies and as soon as you understand what those tricks are, you can sleepwalk your way through the fights.
As an example, there's a boss that will spit out these root-like things that will embed themselves in the ground and come up, hoping to contact you to do damage. They always show up at the same places and there's never more than three. The only other attack it has is to dash toward you and attempt to "eat you" (overlap and cause damage), and it will only do that if you're too close. You can quite literally stand next to one of the roots, charge up a spell, and leap up (so you don't hit a root) and shoot it over and over without ever having to break a sweat. And even if you hit a root, it'll simply spit another one back out to replace it!
A lot of bosses have that feel I mentioned above -- just take your time and be methodical and the fight will easily go your way.
Fast travel is limited and roughly evenly spread out throughout the game (once you've unlocked it), but if you're interested in checking out the optional areas of the game, there's going to be a substantial amount of extra footwork involved because there's only five warp points in total.
The soundtrack is fine -- my favorite track out of the whole game is the Sunken Temple, which is a completely optional area you can skip/miss out on, which is a shame...that track needed more love.
Equipment is a mixed bag that basically amounts to the same amount of functionality as your platforming abilities from the controls -- clunky, occasionally fun and useful, and largely uninspiring.
The game definitely wears its 8-bit homage on its sleeve, since there's obvious references to the NES era -- the SMB-like curtain drop for some story scenes, the House of Ruth and Summon Falcon spell that reference "8 Eyes" (the falcon's name is Citrus, even!), a relic that lets you jump on goomba-like things, some obvious LoZ references, and even a terrible TMNT-like swim section with electric seaweed.
From a nostalgia standpoint, it's a good time. Outside of nostalgia, though, it's just a game that's got so many features that have been handled better by other games that have come before and after it. Good effort, but it's not going to be getting any Christmas cards from me this year (or ever).
Exploration is sometimes fun because there's a lot of secrets to discover, especially if you're willing to just pay attention and also in respect to powers you acquire later for when you start backtracking in the world.
Platforming is fine sometimes, and other times it's a chore because some terrain blends in with the background or some areas are just a pain to go back through. You get to the end of a path, acquire something, and assuming you don't want to come back and get it again, you've got to get back to a save point and that can mean a lot of precision platforming that might be harder on the way back than it was getting there. Not terrible, but not exactly fun times.
Bosses are extremely underwhelming, despite being these huge things that should be really fun. In most cases, they're 1, 2, or 3-trick ponies and as soon as you understand what those tricks are, you can sleepwalk your way through the fights.
As an example, there's a boss that will spit out these root-like things that will embed themselves in the ground and come up, hoping to contact you to do damage. They always show up at the same places and there's never more than three. The only other attack it has is to dash toward you and attempt to "eat you" (overlap and cause damage), and it will only do that if you're too close. You can quite literally stand next to one of the roots, charge up a spell, and leap up (so you don't hit a root) and shoot it over and over without ever having to break a sweat. And even if you hit a root, it'll simply spit another one back out to replace it!
A lot of bosses have that feel I mentioned above -- just take your time and be methodical and the fight will easily go your way.
Fast travel is limited and roughly evenly spread out throughout the game (once you've unlocked it), but if you're interested in checking out the optional areas of the game, there's going to be a substantial amount of extra footwork involved because there's only five warp points in total.
The soundtrack is fine -- my favorite track out of the whole game is the Sunken Temple, which is a completely optional area you can skip/miss out on, which is a shame...that track needed more love.
Equipment is a mixed bag that basically amounts to the same amount of functionality as your platforming abilities from the controls -- clunky, occasionally fun and useful, and largely uninspiring.
The game definitely wears its 8-bit homage on its sleeve, since there's obvious references to the NES era -- the SMB-like curtain drop for some story scenes, the House of Ruth and Summon Falcon spell that reference "8 Eyes" (the falcon's name is Citrus, even!), a relic that lets you jump on goomba-like things, some obvious LoZ references, and even a terrible TMNT-like swim section with electric seaweed.
From a nostalgia standpoint, it's a good time. Outside of nostalgia, though, it's just a game that's got so many features that have been handled better by other games that have come before and after it. Good effort, but it's not going to be getting any Christmas cards from me this year (or ever).
2011
Played on Steam. Got some good futures. Didn't get them all. It's fun. Japanese soundtrack is light years better than the American soundtrack. Worth it if you want a deviation from some people's expectations of Sonic games being "hold right to win".
This review contains spoilers
When this game doesn't get in the way of itself, it can actually be a fun time.
Level design is all over the place, ranging from interesting exploration to headache-inducing platforming (including escape sequences). Fast travel is one point per area, but for vital items that you might have missed, enjoy traipsing ALL THE WAY back through areas. I know that shouldn't sound bad in a Metroidvania, but this game started to grate on me after a little while when it came to going back to explore stuff.
Bosses are varying levels of okay-to-bad, in some cases just based on whether you're in the second phase or not. There are several bosses with attacks that follow based on what side you're on, so even if they telegraph the move to give you an opportunity to react, rolling past them or jumping in the opposite direction they're facing just means you're going to take a hit on the other side of them because they 180 on a dime.
In the case of one boss, you have an NPC assisting you for parts of the fight and it felt like the boss had a larger health bar because of this. I don't know if that's actually the case or not, but the fight felt like a slog because the boss had homing projectile attacks that would only come after you and since you're doing about 90% of the damage for this fight, you spend a good portion of the fight at times just dodging instead of being able to take a swing while NPC occasionally gets in a single hit every thirty seconds or so.
Weapons/weapon skills are a mixed bag, because some skills are vital abilities needed to make progression in the game and in conjunction with your ability tree, sometimes create really awkward scenarios just because of the dev's design choice. One weapon has a secondary ability to shield you from inclement weather and other hazards and you're required to use it against a boss. You have an ability that lets you check the health of a boss by using your weapon skill to hit the boss. What happens when you're forced to use a weapon that just acts as a shield when you're next to a boss? You end up standing there next to a boss, probably looking like an idiot.
I'm not suggesting that ability (seeing boss HP) is particularly important or necessary, but there's lots of little design decisions that don't make a lot of sense like this. That same weapon I mentioned can protect you from a hazard as long as you have it up, but you can't jump while you're using it and there's an area where you have to navigate down while holding up said weapon and there's spikes on either side of some ledges you can land on. What do you do if you land on a ledge? Well, you stand there until you decide to take a lot of damage because you're going to have to eat the hazard, the spikes, or both in order to proceed further down. If you get to that area, you'll probably understand what I mean, because I promise I'm making it sound way less annoying than it is if you have even a passing interest in getting secrets and exploring rooms.
Design rant incoming:
I think the most criminal design moment is the first (yes, there's two!) escape sequence you find around the halfway point in the game. You get about a half-screen's worth of distance from the boss the whole time and the sequence is probably somewhere around 90 seconds of precision platforming. Since your character has the ability to switch between their normal form and their companion's form (that of a giant frog that can use some gate-smashing abilities), you learn quickly (by dying) that you need to be in frog form to start the run.
When you get to the point where you need to use the frog's ability, you have to wait an extra moment longer than you think you do to use the ability. This is because the ability is tied to the same button as the roll / air-dash command and the prompt that shows up when you're in range of using said ability doesn't cause the ability to become active. You actually have to stop in order to activate it, THEN you can get things moving again.
You keep platforming and work your way further over and find another gated section your frog has to smash through in a different way. It's a charge-up move, so you need to stick the landing and set it up quickly because it takes a bit of time to get going. There is an ability on your ability tree that shortens charge time for frog's moves, but we'll come back to why this mostly doesn't matter shortly.
Assuming you get through all that, you think you're probably home free, so you do a bit more platforming (or just eating damage so you can use I-Frames to exploit air dashing and ignore some of the platforming), and reach a ledge. You can see another ledge on the other side, so you do what you know and jump/air-dash across to the other side from the ledge...and die because you were expected to fire a projectile past the edge of the screen that you could see to hit a lever to bring that platform over to the other side so you could clear a particular jump over there in order to keep going.
So, you rinse and repeat all this until the platforming goes right. Or quit the game. Because even though you have save checkpoints throughout the game, the developer of this game thought you should start right from this boss escape sequence over and over until you got it right. I mentioned that the charge time reduction ability wasn't really relevant, and this is largely why -- if you didn't purchase it before this point, you're definitely not purchasing it now. Since slight goofs bring the boss about 33% closer to you in each instance, it takes very little in the way of mistakes to have to restart the fight. I could easily see people giving up on the game during that fight because I already wasn't having a good time and mostly just wanted to play to see the end of the game instead of because I was enjoying myself.
End of design rant...or is it?
The next area of the game, you get a double jump ability. Use it by jumping in the air and then jumping again. Simple enough, right? It even has a sound cue to indicate the second jump happened. And this is where I think what should be a quality one would appreciate might exist because there was an issue with coding.
Your abilities you gain in each area get a lot of workout from them to make you feel like you're getting the most out of them. This particular area that requires double jumping has A LOT of platforms and wall jumping to navigate around. The problem is, sometimes you jump once and you suddenly hear the double jump sound. Lo and behold, you press the jump button again and nothing happens! Kinda makes me wonder if the sound cue was added in because something was wrong with the double jump and they wanted you to hear the cue so you could make a manual adjustment on the fly -- which I had to do probably several dozen times over the course of the next two areas.
TRUE end of design rant.
Beyond that, lots of little dialogue mistakes (mostly misspellings, but one particular story scene they refer to the character as "she", but then instruct someone multiple times to keep an eye on "him") and some impressive screen tearing in certain areas.
Soundtrack is okay, regular enemies are mostly fine. The one shining element of the game is that there's a lot of dialogue you can access if you really want to seek it out by going back and talking to the usual NPCs each time you make progress to a new area. Story's nothing to write home about, but they did do a solid job trying to establish some worldbuilding, so kudos for that, and it's largely why I give this two stars.
I quit at 70% area completion according to the game and I don't really see an interest in carrying on. It's not that I couldn't -- I just got tired of fighting the game and weird design decisions that made the experience less fluid than it should have been. I think it says something that I was looking at someone's map they made to make sure I didn't miss out on secrets, only to find out that -- in regards to the second sequence -- they quite literally mention that you shouldn't attempt the second sequence if you're in a bad mood and not having a good time trying to handle the controls. OOF.
Get it on deep sale, or get it in the Humble Monthly Bundle like I did. Not the worst Metroidvania, but it really tried to shoot itself in the foot with a rocket launcher.
Level design is all over the place, ranging from interesting exploration to headache-inducing platforming (including escape sequences). Fast travel is one point per area, but for vital items that you might have missed, enjoy traipsing ALL THE WAY back through areas. I know that shouldn't sound bad in a Metroidvania, but this game started to grate on me after a little while when it came to going back to explore stuff.
Bosses are varying levels of okay-to-bad, in some cases just based on whether you're in the second phase or not. There are several bosses with attacks that follow based on what side you're on, so even if they telegraph the move to give you an opportunity to react, rolling past them or jumping in the opposite direction they're facing just means you're going to take a hit on the other side of them because they 180 on a dime.
In the case of one boss, you have an NPC assisting you for parts of the fight and it felt like the boss had a larger health bar because of this. I don't know if that's actually the case or not, but the fight felt like a slog because the boss had homing projectile attacks that would only come after you and since you're doing about 90% of the damage for this fight, you spend a good portion of the fight at times just dodging instead of being able to take a swing while NPC occasionally gets in a single hit every thirty seconds or so.
Weapons/weapon skills are a mixed bag, because some skills are vital abilities needed to make progression in the game and in conjunction with your ability tree, sometimes create really awkward scenarios just because of the dev's design choice. One weapon has a secondary ability to shield you from inclement weather and other hazards and you're required to use it against a boss. You have an ability that lets you check the health of a boss by using your weapon skill to hit the boss. What happens when you're forced to use a weapon that just acts as a shield when you're next to a boss? You end up standing there next to a boss, probably looking like an idiot.
I'm not suggesting that ability (seeing boss HP) is particularly important or necessary, but there's lots of little design decisions that don't make a lot of sense like this. That same weapon I mentioned can protect you from a hazard as long as you have it up, but you can't jump while you're using it and there's an area where you have to navigate down while holding up said weapon and there's spikes on either side of some ledges you can land on. What do you do if you land on a ledge? Well, you stand there until you decide to take a lot of damage because you're going to have to eat the hazard, the spikes, or both in order to proceed further down. If you get to that area, you'll probably understand what I mean, because I promise I'm making it sound way less annoying than it is if you have even a passing interest in getting secrets and exploring rooms.
Design rant incoming:
I think the most criminal design moment is the first (yes, there's two!) escape sequence you find around the halfway point in the game. You get about a half-screen's worth of distance from the boss the whole time and the sequence is probably somewhere around 90 seconds of precision platforming. Since your character has the ability to switch between their normal form and their companion's form (that of a giant frog that can use some gate-smashing abilities), you learn quickly (by dying) that you need to be in frog form to start the run.
When you get to the point where you need to use the frog's ability, you have to wait an extra moment longer than you think you do to use the ability. This is because the ability is tied to the same button as the roll / air-dash command and the prompt that shows up when you're in range of using said ability doesn't cause the ability to become active. You actually have to stop in order to activate it, THEN you can get things moving again.
You keep platforming and work your way further over and find another gated section your frog has to smash through in a different way. It's a charge-up move, so you need to stick the landing and set it up quickly because it takes a bit of time to get going. There is an ability on your ability tree that shortens charge time for frog's moves, but we'll come back to why this mostly doesn't matter shortly.
Assuming you get through all that, you think you're probably home free, so you do a bit more platforming (or just eating damage so you can use I-Frames to exploit air dashing and ignore some of the platforming), and reach a ledge. You can see another ledge on the other side, so you do what you know and jump/air-dash across to the other side from the ledge...and die because you were expected to fire a projectile past the edge of the screen that you could see to hit a lever to bring that platform over to the other side so you could clear a particular jump over there in order to keep going.
So, you rinse and repeat all this until the platforming goes right. Or quit the game. Because even though you have save checkpoints throughout the game, the developer of this game thought you should start right from this boss escape sequence over and over until you got it right. I mentioned that the charge time reduction ability wasn't really relevant, and this is largely why -- if you didn't purchase it before this point, you're definitely not purchasing it now. Since slight goofs bring the boss about 33% closer to you in each instance, it takes very little in the way of mistakes to have to restart the fight. I could easily see people giving up on the game during that fight because I already wasn't having a good time and mostly just wanted to play to see the end of the game instead of because I was enjoying myself.
End of design rant...or is it?
The next area of the game, you get a double jump ability. Use it by jumping in the air and then jumping again. Simple enough, right? It even has a sound cue to indicate the second jump happened. And this is where I think what should be a quality one would appreciate might exist because there was an issue with coding.
Your abilities you gain in each area get a lot of workout from them to make you feel like you're getting the most out of them. This particular area that requires double jumping has A LOT of platforms and wall jumping to navigate around. The problem is, sometimes you jump once and you suddenly hear the double jump sound. Lo and behold, you press the jump button again and nothing happens! Kinda makes me wonder if the sound cue was added in because something was wrong with the double jump and they wanted you to hear the cue so you could make a manual adjustment on the fly -- which I had to do probably several dozen times over the course of the next two areas.
TRUE end of design rant.
Beyond that, lots of little dialogue mistakes (mostly misspellings, but one particular story scene they refer to the character as "she", but then instruct someone multiple times to keep an eye on "him") and some impressive screen tearing in certain areas.
Soundtrack is okay, regular enemies are mostly fine. The one shining element of the game is that there's a lot of dialogue you can access if you really want to seek it out by going back and talking to the usual NPCs each time you make progress to a new area. Story's nothing to write home about, but they did do a solid job trying to establish some worldbuilding, so kudos for that, and it's largely why I give this two stars.
I quit at 70% area completion according to the game and I don't really see an interest in carrying on. It's not that I couldn't -- I just got tired of fighting the game and weird design decisions that made the experience less fluid than it should have been. I think it says something that I was looking at someone's map they made to make sure I didn't miss out on secrets, only to find out that -- in regards to the second sequence -- they quite literally mention that you shouldn't attempt the second sequence if you're in a bad mood and not having a good time trying to handle the controls. OOF.
Get it on deep sale, or get it in the Humble Monthly Bundle like I did. Not the worst Metroidvania, but it really tried to shoot itself in the foot with a rocket launcher.
2017
The game is really fun and I made it into Chapter 3, but as with any game that has lots of sidequests/substories and mini-games, I am my own worst enemy and spend half my time playing shogi, bingo golf, and other random stuff because I can instead of advancing the plot. Will definitely come back to this someday.
2017
Was fun enough for the hours I've put into it.
Might be a solid game, but given that I've still got Disgaea 4-6 on my plate still, I feel like I have to put this down and play some iterations that probably improved upon this formula at this point.
Not sure who I'd recommend this to, as you either played the first game and are interested in checking this out, or you're someone who probably has come in on D4+ or later and I can't imagine there's much reason to suggest going back to this. If you're one of the twelve people on Earth that are interested in this game and haven't played D1 or anything after D2, congratulations -- you may as well check this game out.
Might be a solid game, but given that I've still got Disgaea 4-6 on my plate still, I feel like I have to put this down and play some iterations that probably improved upon this formula at this point.
Not sure who I'd recommend this to, as you either played the first game and are interested in checking this out, or you're someone who probably has come in on D4+ or later and I can't imagine there's much reason to suggest going back to this. If you're one of the twelve people on Earth that are interested in this game and haven't played D1 or anything after D2, congratulations -- you may as well check this game out.
This review contains spoilers
Replayed this again since it's been a fair amount of time and I'd also never bothered to play the Steam copy I owned (had played the PS3 and PS4 iterations in the past).
I get the gripes about too many humanoid-type creatures and I think there are some awkward design decisions (mainly in the DLC, which is -- for me, at least -- a largely mixed bag of mostly misses), but when this game shines, it really shines.
I still think the Looking Glass Knight is one of the more fun bosses I've fought in any game and some optional methods for tackling some of the bosses in this game really encourage diversity in builds and paying attention to your arena.
Most people will light the areas on the sides of the Lost Sinner to make the fight more manageable for targeting, but maybe you want to play a mostly-archer build (I like to do this a lot in games), and DS2 has you covered. Covetous Demon? Shoot down the pots above it and get free shots while the demon eats undead meals courtesy of you. Executioner's Chariot? Kill the Necromancers and run all the way down to the other end of the arena where the ledge to the pit dips slightly on the inside (this puts you out of range of the wheel spikes) and shoot an arrow each time the chariot makes a circuit. Once it gets low enough, the chariot breaks and the horses cling to the pit's ledge. One shot and they're toast.
It's neat little flourishes like those that really make me appreciate a lot of design decisions going on in this game -- for instance, even if I don't use the 12-kill system to make progress, I think it's smart. I'm not sure which of the main three Dark Souls games is my favorite and it's probably not this one, but there's just so much to love with the experimentation that went on with this game in terms of design.
I get the gripes about too many humanoid-type creatures and I think there are some awkward design decisions (mainly in the DLC, which is -- for me, at least -- a largely mixed bag of mostly misses), but when this game shines, it really shines.
I still think the Looking Glass Knight is one of the more fun bosses I've fought in any game and some optional methods for tackling some of the bosses in this game really encourage diversity in builds and paying attention to your arena.
Most people will light the areas on the sides of the Lost Sinner to make the fight more manageable for targeting, but maybe you want to play a mostly-archer build (I like to do this a lot in games), and DS2 has you covered. Covetous Demon? Shoot down the pots above it and get free shots while the demon eats undead meals courtesy of you. Executioner's Chariot? Kill the Necromancers and run all the way down to the other end of the arena where the ledge to the pit dips slightly on the inside (this puts you out of range of the wheel spikes) and shoot an arrow each time the chariot makes a circuit. Once it gets low enough, the chariot breaks and the horses cling to the pit's ledge. One shot and they're toast.
It's neat little flourishes like those that really make me appreciate a lot of design decisions going on in this game -- for instance, even if I don't use the 12-kill system to make progress, I think it's smart. I'm not sure which of the main three Dark Souls games is my favorite and it's probably not this one, but there's just so much to love with the experimentation that went on with this game in terms of design.
2019
Thought maybe there was something wrong with my controller because I was experiencing extremely sensitive inputs where Vincent would climb on blocks when I just wanted to turn him around, but forum discussions confirmed this was apparently just a thing that could happen in this game. Dying to standing on spikes because I'm trying to turn around and grab a spike block isn't my idea of a good time, no matter how much I enjoyed this game in its 360 iteration.
Short answer:
Never played the original Diamond/Pearl and want to go see what all the fuss is about? Sure, the game is good for a once-over, have fun. Want to be a completionist and get that Shiny Charm (that doesn't work properly in this game) and get all the mons? Maybe you should pass on this one for some time.
Long answer:
No functioning GTS/GWS at this point, no expected ability to send to / pull from Pokemon Home until some unknown time in 2022, archaic requirements for getting some of the mons -- and the games are riddled with glitches depending on your luck.
As someone who likes to complete a National Dex when I can, I'm used to having to rely on others to play through the opposite game I'm using -- in this case, my wife played through Shining Pearl. That's fine for dealing with trading back and forth. My problem with "archaic requirements" is the weird decision to wall a number of stones -- quite literally.
Different mon evolutions require different stones in some cases and most of these stones can be found by digging the walls underground. The issue is the random luck and disparity that comes with digging. After a lengthy amount of time underground, my evolution stone count (including the one or two of some of them in the overworld) looks like this:
Fire Stone x25
Thunder Stone x22
Sun Stone x7
Water Stone x3
Leaf Stone x3
Dusk Stone x2
Shiny Stone x2
Moon Stone x2
Dawn Stone x2
I can't put my finger on it, but something about those values is pretty uneven. Making the game more accessible by making it possible to acquire multiple amounts of stones is fine by me (I'm aware that Pickup can be used for low percentages for some of those stones), but this whole game feels like it's designed to try and emulate what BDSP was like while trying to allow for that accessibility, and the result is just something obnoxious in that respect.
Why bother with the dowsing rod when you can now go back in time and click a button multiple times to shift through a ton of Poketch apps so you can use the dowsing app briefly! Want to defog an area? Just pull up your Poketch and scroll through all over again! Forgot something in the area and need to come back later? Hope you didn't switch apps on there!
It's minor stuff, but it feels less like an homage to the original games and more like an active nuisance. Want to get X mon for your National Dex? Better slather all the trees with Honey and hope you get the 5% rarity in your favor. Or use the Pokeradar at one or two specific spots in the case of a couple other mons. Or wait each day for a new swarm and hope that it's the right one you're missing. Same for the Great Marsh. Same for the Trophy Garden.
All of this could largely be alleviated if active trading through the GTS/GWS were readily available or if we could access Home, but that's a big no.
Regarding the glitches I mentioned, I get some extreme jagging when moving horizontally or slightly diagonal while moving horizontally and it looks like the game is chugging at sub-10 FPS when it happens. If you get motion sickness and had to watch me do circles while breeding eggs, you'd probably vomit constantly. In my wife's case, her menu audio will just randomly stop working until she exits and re-enters the menu. No rhyme or reason. Sometimes happens in battles too with the move audio not working. Different Switches, different games, different issues.
I didn't experience any of the bizarre softlocks I'm aware of this game having, but there's enough problems here that it's not something I want to come back to anytime soon. I'll just wait for Pokemon Legends. If you've read this far, I'd generally advise the same because all the good will that's provided in accessibility to legendaries and strong gym leaders in the postgame and such is squandered on bugginess and haphazard decision making for item allotments and RNG. Weird thing to say after putting in 120+ hours already, but here we are.
Never played the original Diamond/Pearl and want to go see what all the fuss is about? Sure, the game is good for a once-over, have fun. Want to be a completionist and get that Shiny Charm (that doesn't work properly in this game) and get all the mons? Maybe you should pass on this one for some time.
Long answer:
No functioning GTS/GWS at this point, no expected ability to send to / pull from Pokemon Home until some unknown time in 2022, archaic requirements for getting some of the mons -- and the games are riddled with glitches depending on your luck.
As someone who likes to complete a National Dex when I can, I'm used to having to rely on others to play through the opposite game I'm using -- in this case, my wife played through Shining Pearl. That's fine for dealing with trading back and forth. My problem with "archaic requirements" is the weird decision to wall a number of stones -- quite literally.
Different mon evolutions require different stones in some cases and most of these stones can be found by digging the walls underground. The issue is the random luck and disparity that comes with digging. After a lengthy amount of time underground, my evolution stone count (including the one or two of some of them in the overworld) looks like this:
Fire Stone x25
Thunder Stone x22
Sun Stone x7
Water Stone x3
Leaf Stone x3
Dusk Stone x2
Shiny Stone x2
Moon Stone x2
Dawn Stone x2
I can't put my finger on it, but something about those values is pretty uneven. Making the game more accessible by making it possible to acquire multiple amounts of stones is fine by me (I'm aware that Pickup can be used for low percentages for some of those stones), but this whole game feels like it's designed to try and emulate what BDSP was like while trying to allow for that accessibility, and the result is just something obnoxious in that respect.
Why bother with the dowsing rod when you can now go back in time and click a button multiple times to shift through a ton of Poketch apps so you can use the dowsing app briefly! Want to defog an area? Just pull up your Poketch and scroll through all over again! Forgot something in the area and need to come back later? Hope you didn't switch apps on there!
It's minor stuff, but it feels less like an homage to the original games and more like an active nuisance. Want to get X mon for your National Dex? Better slather all the trees with Honey and hope you get the 5% rarity in your favor. Or use the Pokeradar at one or two specific spots in the case of a couple other mons. Or wait each day for a new swarm and hope that it's the right one you're missing. Same for the Great Marsh. Same for the Trophy Garden.
All of this could largely be alleviated if active trading through the GTS/GWS were readily available or if we could access Home, but that's a big no.
Regarding the glitches I mentioned, I get some extreme jagging when moving horizontally or slightly diagonal while moving horizontally and it looks like the game is chugging at sub-10 FPS when it happens. If you get motion sickness and had to watch me do circles while breeding eggs, you'd probably vomit constantly. In my wife's case, her menu audio will just randomly stop working until she exits and re-enters the menu. No rhyme or reason. Sometimes happens in battles too with the move audio not working. Different Switches, different games, different issues.
I didn't experience any of the bizarre softlocks I'm aware of this game having, but there's enough problems here that it's not something I want to come back to anytime soon. I'll just wait for Pokemon Legends. If you've read this far, I'd generally advise the same because all the good will that's provided in accessibility to legendaries and strong gym leaders in the postgame and such is squandered on bugginess and haphazard decision making for item allotments and RNG. Weird thing to say after putting in 120+ hours already, but here we are.
Some of the power-up ideas in this game are brilliant and the Ikaruga-esque combat style of element-swapping to absorb damage and gain back MP is fun and makes for some excellent boss designs.
The arrow puzzles are a little off-putting, though -- not because they're particularly bad (other than one section late in the game that's mandatory), but because they kinda detract from the action-centric feel of the game. I appreciate trying to find a way to incorporate Deedlit's archery skills, but maybe have the bows do more with their arrows based on the bow type (a few bows fire more arrows or use homing arrows as examples). Players should be encouraged to use the bow, but aside from the mandatory puzzles or optional ones, there's no real need to use the bow.
The game's a little on the short side and enemies are a mixed bag, ranging from complete pushovers to absolutely obnoxious depending on their placement in rooms (looking at you, Mummy Masters alongside those flying gargoyles with both of you immune to opposite elements). For the most part though, enemies are just a very poor-paying XP obstacle on your way to bosses.
I won't speak on the boss design, other than to say that the difficulty range is all over the place, but I still approve of them for the most part. There's some really fun ideas at play in there and I would liked to have seen a bit more gameplay length to maybe offer a few more creative boss ideas on top of what was already there. Some moves are shared between bosses, but that didn't really bother me.
Overall, the game is fun but very short -- I clocked about 7.5 hours with nearly all rooms explored. Definitely worth checking out at least once but if Metroidvanias aren't your thing, consider waiting for a sale -- it's a solid one, but it's not a must-buy for your average gamer who just wants to check out a random given game.
The arrow puzzles are a little off-putting, though -- not because they're particularly bad (other than one section late in the game that's mandatory), but because they kinda detract from the action-centric feel of the game. I appreciate trying to find a way to incorporate Deedlit's archery skills, but maybe have the bows do more with their arrows based on the bow type (a few bows fire more arrows or use homing arrows as examples). Players should be encouraged to use the bow, but aside from the mandatory puzzles or optional ones, there's no real need to use the bow.
The game's a little on the short side and enemies are a mixed bag, ranging from complete pushovers to absolutely obnoxious depending on their placement in rooms (looking at you, Mummy Masters alongside those flying gargoyles with both of you immune to opposite elements). For the most part though, enemies are just a very poor-paying XP obstacle on your way to bosses.
I won't speak on the boss design, other than to say that the difficulty range is all over the place, but I still approve of them for the most part. There's some really fun ideas at play in there and I would liked to have seen a bit more gameplay length to maybe offer a few more creative boss ideas on top of what was already there. Some moves are shared between bosses, but that didn't really bother me.
Overall, the game is fun but very short -- I clocked about 7.5 hours with nearly all rooms explored. Definitely worth checking out at least once but if Metroidvanias aren't your thing, consider waiting for a sale -- it's a solid one, but it's not a must-buy for your average gamer who just wants to check out a random given game.
2021
Love the art style (both for cutscenes and both characters and monsters in general). Soundtrack is alright-to-fun in spots.
Things that either bothered me or really got on my nerves:
-- Had a freeze at the end of a quest where the audio and all functional gameplay still seemed to work (I could move and interact with menus on my controller, but the screen had frozen on a specific frame. Had to restart and do the quest again, not the biggest deal.
-- The map UI is TERRIBLE. A series of boxes that are connected to indicate rooms, with all visible-but-unexplored exits hidden whenever you highlight an area because it covers the area in a white border that includes exit paths? Symbols that don't have a legend, but some of them tell you what they mean when you go over them and some just ask you to divine the intention of those symbols? Make a map legend and make paths you've explored more readily understandable.
-- 8-bit era jump logic where swinging a weapon while jumping in mid-air causes you to cease all forward momentum. This is OBNOXIOUS at times, especially if you happen to be using 2-Handed weapons that have a slow start-up and need to hit something above you and off to the side.
-- A boss that reverses your controls with homing projectiles for several seconds at a time.
-- That same boss causing you to get stuck on a door when trying to move because the door needs to let you know you don't have the key from the boss fight yet to leave the room.
-- Dying to a boss because you pressed the button for the inventory screen while bleeding out and somehow the start menu popped up to ask you if you wanted to continue playing or load a game, so coming back to the game to try and activate the inventory screen didn't leave you enough time to get to the inventory screen a second time. This one bothers me because I had the menu glitch happen probably at least half a dozen times before this and I couldn't tell you what prompted it other than that it would just happen now and then.
Level design for the first 60% or so of the maps is a mixed bag for me, but that jump mechanic is horrendous and the glitches are off-putting. Not even going to go into how strange the HP/MP system feels and the healing system -- I didn't like them, short answer. Just not interested in finishing this game.
Things that either bothered me or really got on my nerves:
-- Had a freeze at the end of a quest where the audio and all functional gameplay still seemed to work (I could move and interact with menus on my controller, but the screen had frozen on a specific frame. Had to restart and do the quest again, not the biggest deal.
-- The map UI is TERRIBLE. A series of boxes that are connected to indicate rooms, with all visible-but-unexplored exits hidden whenever you highlight an area because it covers the area in a white border that includes exit paths? Symbols that don't have a legend, but some of them tell you what they mean when you go over them and some just ask you to divine the intention of those symbols? Make a map legend and make paths you've explored more readily understandable.
-- 8-bit era jump logic where swinging a weapon while jumping in mid-air causes you to cease all forward momentum. This is OBNOXIOUS at times, especially if you happen to be using 2-Handed weapons that have a slow start-up and need to hit something above you and off to the side.
-- A boss that reverses your controls with homing projectiles for several seconds at a time.
-- That same boss causing you to get stuck on a door when trying to move because the door needs to let you know you don't have the key from the boss fight yet to leave the room.
-- Dying to a boss because you pressed the button for the inventory screen while bleeding out and somehow the start menu popped up to ask you if you wanted to continue playing or load a game, so coming back to the game to try and activate the inventory screen didn't leave you enough time to get to the inventory screen a second time. This one bothers me because I had the menu glitch happen probably at least half a dozen times before this and I couldn't tell you what prompted it other than that it would just happen now and then.
Level design for the first 60% or so of the maps is a mixed bag for me, but that jump mechanic is horrendous and the glitches are off-putting. Not even going to go into how strange the HP/MP system feels and the healing system -- I didn't like them, short answer. Just not interested in finishing this game.
2019
Short answer: It's not a bad game but is only very loosely a Metroidvania, unlike what you might see it tagged as if you're looking on Steam. Lots of samey areas, ability trees that feel like fluff, bosses that aren't difficult, and some occasional glitches keep it from being better than it is.
Longer answer: The game is a bit of a mess, but mostly in a good way.
Every location (other than hidden rooms) are made up of four uplink terminals and progression can largely be done by picking a direction you want to go in and rolling with it. When you find terminals in a location and use them, you're basically saving your data, making a backup point if you die, and also unlocking more potential paths and fast travel points in case you want to come back to the location you just completed to try a different route. Essentially, you spend a bit more time in each "room" so that you can fast travel back later instead of having to walk back.
The leveling system is a little obtuse, in that you get the experience to level by destroying enemies, but you don't level until you use an uplink location (whether you've liberated it or are just coming back to it). Leveling up gives you four stats to choose between, but they're not particularly intuitive as to their benefits. The damage bonuses I got while focusing on Strength for my melee weapon were negligible (there's no numbers, so you're just eyeballing lifebars as they go down).
In addition, you get a skill point to throw in one of four fields (two of which are for weapons that you have to spend a skill point just to unlock a blueprint to build those weapons -- and one of those weapons is mandatory if you intend to beat the game, I believe). Most of the abilities in a field are concentrated to a weapon, but occasionally there are skills that give you increased armor or something of the like.
The fourth skill field is the fun one, in that you get access to infinite oxygen and zero fall damage if you invest enough points in the field. 10000% worth it.
Combat is just wailing away with your melee weapon or one of your one-to-three guns (if you've crafted them) until the enemy stops coming at you. There's little in the way of strategy with enemies other than the tried and true "don't get hit" approach.
Bosses are a mixed bag -- the ideas are interesting sometimes, but as far as bosses go, they're largely pushovers. I know this is a short paragraph, but they're that underwhelming.
I've encountered some glitches with dying because a spike wheel lifted me into a corner and just continuously damaged me until I died, or jumping off ledges causing my second jump in my double jump ability to just not go off while I take a plunge into a pit far below. It's frustrating, but since it's so easy to respawn and head right back to where you were within a minute or two, it's not the biggest deal. I've also had issues with sometimes getting new pieces of equipment, trying to put them on, and having the game exit the inventory menu. Again, not a big deal, but still annoying.
Music is alright, if not extremely repetitive after a time. At least for all its repetition, it isn't unpleasant repetition.
Order of progression is the weirdest thing, in that you can miss entire abilities granted to you by the game simply by going in a different direction than what the game might have expected, even if that expectation wasn't signposted in any way. I got the freeze ability for my third gun only after I had already done about half of the entire world map and decided to go back and check out some earlier areas -- not because I was stuck, but because I just wanted to be a completionist.
All-in-all, it's an alright game. Serviceable and passes the time, but not really the fix you're going to want if you're craving a Metroidvania. Steam price is 18 bucks, I think. I'd recommend waiting for a sale of 12 or less, if only because of the lack of variety and polish. I completed the game with 12.5 hours to my name and I imagine anyone who wants to just run around and not fill stuff out can LEISURELY get most of the rooms explored (even if you skip half the uplinks) within 6 hours.
This would probably be an interesting game to speedrun, if nothing else.
Longer answer: The game is a bit of a mess, but mostly in a good way.
Every location (other than hidden rooms) are made up of four uplink terminals and progression can largely be done by picking a direction you want to go in and rolling with it. When you find terminals in a location and use them, you're basically saving your data, making a backup point if you die, and also unlocking more potential paths and fast travel points in case you want to come back to the location you just completed to try a different route. Essentially, you spend a bit more time in each "room" so that you can fast travel back later instead of having to walk back.
The leveling system is a little obtuse, in that you get the experience to level by destroying enemies, but you don't level until you use an uplink location (whether you've liberated it or are just coming back to it). Leveling up gives you four stats to choose between, but they're not particularly intuitive as to their benefits. The damage bonuses I got while focusing on Strength for my melee weapon were negligible (there's no numbers, so you're just eyeballing lifebars as they go down).
In addition, you get a skill point to throw in one of four fields (two of which are for weapons that you have to spend a skill point just to unlock a blueprint to build those weapons -- and one of those weapons is mandatory if you intend to beat the game, I believe). Most of the abilities in a field are concentrated to a weapon, but occasionally there are skills that give you increased armor or something of the like.
The fourth skill field is the fun one, in that you get access to infinite oxygen and zero fall damage if you invest enough points in the field. 10000% worth it.
Combat is just wailing away with your melee weapon or one of your one-to-three guns (if you've crafted them) until the enemy stops coming at you. There's little in the way of strategy with enemies other than the tried and true "don't get hit" approach.
Bosses are a mixed bag -- the ideas are interesting sometimes, but as far as bosses go, they're largely pushovers. I know this is a short paragraph, but they're that underwhelming.
I've encountered some glitches with dying because a spike wheel lifted me into a corner and just continuously damaged me until I died, or jumping off ledges causing my second jump in my double jump ability to just not go off while I take a plunge into a pit far below. It's frustrating, but since it's so easy to respawn and head right back to where you were within a minute or two, it's not the biggest deal. I've also had issues with sometimes getting new pieces of equipment, trying to put them on, and having the game exit the inventory menu. Again, not a big deal, but still annoying.
Music is alright, if not extremely repetitive after a time. At least for all its repetition, it isn't unpleasant repetition.
Order of progression is the weirdest thing, in that you can miss entire abilities granted to you by the game simply by going in a different direction than what the game might have expected, even if that expectation wasn't signposted in any way. I got the freeze ability for my third gun only after I had already done about half of the entire world map and decided to go back and check out some earlier areas -- not because I was stuck, but because I just wanted to be a completionist.
All-in-all, it's an alright game. Serviceable and passes the time, but not really the fix you're going to want if you're craving a Metroidvania. Steam price is 18 bucks, I think. I'd recommend waiting for a sale of 12 or less, if only because of the lack of variety and polish. I completed the game with 12.5 hours to my name and I imagine anyone who wants to just run around and not fill stuff out can LEISURELY get most of the rooms explored (even if you skip half the uplinks) within 6 hours.
This would probably be an interesting game to speedrun, if nothing else.
2019
This game finally got out of Early Access and I can safely say -- still a train wreck.
-- Music doesn't play at all (switching ON or OFF does nothing, volume is at max)
-- Sometimes your down smash just goes off without your permission while jumping and this can lead to a lot of lost progress when you're trying to carefully platform UPWARDS
-- Pits that auto-kill you in a game that encourages you to explore in multiple directions (this is easily one of the dumbest features I've ever seen in a game)
-- Some pits are pits but don't advertise themselves as such because some kinds of weird behaviors are happening right at the bottom of the screen to indicate that stuff SHOULD be down there
-- The boss that didn't do anything before when I fought her? Still doesn't do anything
-- The Dash Power-Up is in multiple locations and I'm not entirely sure if this is intended or not
-- You're not given any indication of what any power-ups do
-- If you choose a windowed resolution and hit the MAP button at any point, the resolution changes to fullscreen and does not change back
-- There's still no way to quit out other than hard-closing the program from outside
-- See an area that you need to crawl through but don't have the power up you need? Just lean into it, then try and do a down-smash and you'll fling yourself through. Beware that sometimes this results in you being stuck in a weird crawl animation and unable to jump or move in any direction but forward. Fun times!
-- My assist character and I both vanished off the screen at one point after walking to one side of the room. It seems we just left the plane of existence and there was no way back. After a few jumps, I stopped hearing sounds to indicate movement progress. Map command still worked, so I tried entering and exiting that to get back, no dice. Had to hard-quit the game (just like quitting normally!).
This game is an atrocious mess and I cannot recommend it in its "complete" state. It's unbelievable how bad the game is.
Original review follows.
--------------------------
My first 30 minutes of this game summed up briefly:
-- Double jump sometimes works, sometimes doesn't and the only correlation I can find is that it sometimes fails when your companion is also jumping around
-- Companion occasionally gets stuck on things or stuck in random animations and does nothing until you progress far enough away from them to have them catch back up with you
A series of short events en masse:
-- After getting my companion, I decided to go right instead of left because I like exploration and found some neat upper paths that I used my double-jump + down-hammer to get up to.
-- Got to a boss and made short work of her. Her AI didn't really do anything other than walk into me.
-- Went right and got a power-up that let me slide under things (though it gave no indication that it did this nor bothered to explain how).
-- Tried to go back to a save room on my map and when I got to the room, didn't see anything indicating a save point and didn't remember seeing one in that room on my map when I came through the first time.
-- Figured maybe it was below the conveyor belts I jumped across, so I dropped down below them to see what was down there.
-- Surprise, it's actually a pit that instakills you and returns you back to your last save and wipes all your progression you made!
The game's still in Early Access on Steam, so maybe there will be some intuitive changes made to address some of the bad logic going on here, but we'll see. The fact that the game uses key prompts (C and X) on the menu while you're using a gamepad isn't inspiring, but worse still is that while you're on the map page, the map moves while you're trying to scroll down the sidebar options to the left of the map because it doesn't function independently of the sidebar. Whoops.
Will throw it back into the backlog, but yeah...the game is both simultaneously too easy and too poorly designed to want to play more at this point.
-- Music doesn't play at all (switching ON or OFF does nothing, volume is at max)
-- Sometimes your down smash just goes off without your permission while jumping and this can lead to a lot of lost progress when you're trying to carefully platform UPWARDS
-- Pits that auto-kill you in a game that encourages you to explore in multiple directions (this is easily one of the dumbest features I've ever seen in a game)
-- Some pits are pits but don't advertise themselves as such because some kinds of weird behaviors are happening right at the bottom of the screen to indicate that stuff SHOULD be down there
-- The boss that didn't do anything before when I fought her? Still doesn't do anything
-- The Dash Power-Up is in multiple locations and I'm not entirely sure if this is intended or not
-- You're not given any indication of what any power-ups do
-- If you choose a windowed resolution and hit the MAP button at any point, the resolution changes to fullscreen and does not change back
-- There's still no way to quit out other than hard-closing the program from outside
-- See an area that you need to crawl through but don't have the power up you need? Just lean into it, then try and do a down-smash and you'll fling yourself through. Beware that sometimes this results in you being stuck in a weird crawl animation and unable to jump or move in any direction but forward. Fun times!
-- My assist character and I both vanished off the screen at one point after walking to one side of the room. It seems we just left the plane of existence and there was no way back. After a few jumps, I stopped hearing sounds to indicate movement progress. Map command still worked, so I tried entering and exiting that to get back, no dice. Had to hard-quit the game (just like quitting normally!).
This game is an atrocious mess and I cannot recommend it in its "complete" state. It's unbelievable how bad the game is.
Original review follows.
--------------------------
My first 30 minutes of this game summed up briefly:
-- Double jump sometimes works, sometimes doesn't and the only correlation I can find is that it sometimes fails when your companion is also jumping around
-- Companion occasionally gets stuck on things or stuck in random animations and does nothing until you progress far enough away from them to have them catch back up with you
A series of short events en masse:
-- After getting my companion, I decided to go right instead of left because I like exploration and found some neat upper paths that I used my double-jump + down-hammer to get up to.
-- Got to a boss and made short work of her. Her AI didn't really do anything other than walk into me.
-- Went right and got a power-up that let me slide under things (though it gave no indication that it did this nor bothered to explain how).
-- Tried to go back to a save room on my map and when I got to the room, didn't see anything indicating a save point and didn't remember seeing one in that room on my map when I came through the first time.
-- Figured maybe it was below the conveyor belts I jumped across, so I dropped down below them to see what was down there.
-- Surprise, it's actually a pit that instakills you and returns you back to your last save and wipes all your progression you made!
The game's still in Early Access on Steam, so maybe there will be some intuitive changes made to address some of the bad logic going on here, but we'll see. The fact that the game uses key prompts (C and X) on the menu while you're using a gamepad isn't inspiring, but worse still is that while you're on the map page, the map moves while you're trying to scroll down the sidebar options to the left of the map because it doesn't function independently of the sidebar. Whoops.
Will throw it back into the backlog, but yeah...the game is both simultaneously too easy and too poorly designed to want to play more at this point.
2011
Tried this game out ages ago and thought it might be a fun dungeon crawler and threw it into the backlog for the backlog monster to feast on for awhile. Recently came up again, so I decided to give it a more substantial go.
The story is pretty much a nothingburger, although the explanation of why the protagonist is a Level 1 weakling is amusing enough.
The game feels largely like your basic dungeon crawler, but with a few varied mechanics thrown in to try and spice things up. None of the mechanics feel particularly unwelcome, though harvest points are obnoxious when they require you to buy or synthesize items with which to harvest them -- the latter being ironic, since you must harvest some materials in order to synthesize some items in the first place.
Leveling seems to be a slog, though the reward of skill points to distribute across a skill map as you see fit feels nice enough.
Equipment (whether purchased, synthesized, or found via rewards or combat or dungeon searching) feels mostly negligible early on in the benefits they provide. Equipping a new helmet and pants that give me an additional +3 defense to one of my characters just means that they're taking about 30 damage instead of 33 per hit, it seems like.
Not much else to say at the moment, as I'm only probably around four hours in and am navigating the first of several "Titan dungeons". It's not particularly inspiring as games go, but not a bad experience, either. Will come back to it at some point and continue the journey and see if the experience gets better, but for now, it's going back into the jaws of the backlog monster.
Edit: Since I forgot to mention it, the chaining system for acquiring monsters sounded neat at first, but it feels like the benefits from the monsters are largely random. You don't control them, they sometimes take hits for you or deflect hits entirely, and although you're supposed to be able to influence their moods to get benefits, I found I had no more luck/success in trying to guess what response a monster might want from a comment than I would just mashing X and picking the first response available. Not a deal breaker, just not something making me go, "I really enjoy this feature," either.
The story is pretty much a nothingburger, although the explanation of why the protagonist is a Level 1 weakling is amusing enough.
The game feels largely like your basic dungeon crawler, but with a few varied mechanics thrown in to try and spice things up. None of the mechanics feel particularly unwelcome, though harvest points are obnoxious when they require you to buy or synthesize items with which to harvest them -- the latter being ironic, since you must harvest some materials in order to synthesize some items in the first place.
Leveling seems to be a slog, though the reward of skill points to distribute across a skill map as you see fit feels nice enough.
Equipment (whether purchased, synthesized, or found via rewards or combat or dungeon searching) feels mostly negligible early on in the benefits they provide. Equipping a new helmet and pants that give me an additional +3 defense to one of my characters just means that they're taking about 30 damage instead of 33 per hit, it seems like.
Not much else to say at the moment, as I'm only probably around four hours in and am navigating the first of several "Titan dungeons". It's not particularly inspiring as games go, but not a bad experience, either. Will come back to it at some point and continue the journey and see if the experience gets better, but for now, it's going back into the jaws of the backlog monster.
Edit: Since I forgot to mention it, the chaining system for acquiring monsters sounded neat at first, but it feels like the benefits from the monsters are largely random. You don't control them, they sometimes take hits for you or deflect hits entirely, and although you're supposed to be able to influence their moods to get benefits, I found I had no more luck/success in trying to guess what response a monster might want from a comment than I would just mashing X and picking the first response available. Not a deal breaker, just not something making me go, "I really enjoy this feature," either.