I bought this game on whim while browsing the playstation summer sale. It was like 5 bucks and i thought the trailer looked interesting. I had no idea the history of the game about how the original dev's alpha was stolen and packaged and sold as this. I went in as a blind buy. I have to say the game was kinda of annoying to play. For one I feel like the story just drops you in the middle of something without much explanation. It wouldn't be so bad but the dialog boxes of text are constant and there are a lot of needless interuptions in the game. The actual combat is as basic as it gets and while it has a simplistic hot/cold attack system that you have to switch back and forth from using to prevent "burnout" gets old and stale fast. It literally has color coded enemies you need to do specific attacks on in order to have an advatage. Gives me nightmare flashback of DmC's heaven or hell weapon system. There really isn't much depth here and learning that this wasn't even a comeplete game with beta systems in place really makes sense. Even it's art which initially drew me in wore off really fast. While it can look cool in motion at a glance the constant frame drops in animation and the sluggish movement of the character really made this a chore to play. After about an hour and a half I had to turn it off. If the gameplay and story are this bad i don't wanna force myself. Heck blind buys can give you buyers remorse and this one was a total dud.

While I like this series they are not without their faults and the Devil in Me is no exception. While I do like the idea of a transforming murder house with a stalker killer the execution was a little underwhelming. My biggest problem with this entry is that I feel like my choices really didn't lead to any character deaths but more than naught it was a bad quick time event out of nowhere or a character death happened automaticlly where I feel like I didn't really factor into it. THat and also i feel like a lot of the clues were very misleading. Also the killer appears out of thin air so many times, even in illogical places that even Jason Vorhees is scratching his head. There was one mini game where you have to time the button press to stay quiet as to not get spotted. I think I failed this one everytime and I know i hit it right on the spot. I dunno if it's bugged but it sure felt like it. Which always led to something bad or straight up death. It feels cheap when it's by this instead of a bad call. That's the problem with this series a lot of events feel random instead of player choice or smart descion making. The other thing I think this game drops the ball on is it's pacing. There are long stretches of the game of forced slow walking moments and exploration that instead of feeling rewarding only feels frustrating. Movement in these games always feels stiff and akward. This was a big issue on Men of Medan which I felt the next two games improved on a bit but here it feels like regression. On top of that there are some spots of this game where it is so dark that I can't see where im going or what im supposed to interact with. It happens for so long I just say to myself "Can I just move the story forward a bit and make a choice already?" Despite all of this if you have liked the other games this one isn't much different. It just sucks because I feel like House of Ashes was much better and I had hoped this one would be just as good. Well there is always hope for the next one.

Remnant 2 is a big step up from the first game. Everything I liked about one is just better and polished. With three new worlds to explore with many different levels and sub levels that are generated at the start of each campaign nobody's first experiance with the game is the same. The amount of story and lore packed in these worlds is really engaging as you replay them again and again learning and seeing new stuff. But what I'm really here for is the stellar gameplay and Remnant 2 brings it in shades. There is a massive amount of weapon varity and customization to be had here. Learning one guns strenghts and customizing your character to it and experimenting with it's weapon abilities never gets old. Like the first game I liked the Hunter's starting rifle and it was my main throughout the whole game. That's what's great about Remant any gun and strat is viable so play to what you find fun. Collecting the endless amount of collectibles and gear making my character and choices that much more powerful never got old. Especially with the great enemy varity and shifting playthroughs. Bosses are again a highlight and there are so many of them just like in an souls like games. The gameplay just feels good and has the right amount of difficulty with endless replayability. Plus there is Co Op as well. Just add one survivor mode from the first game and we got a nearly perfect package. Can't recommend this one high enough.

Platinum #186

I like to consider myself a fan of the Final Fantasy franchise. I have great memories of playing all the single player games throughout the years. I like the idea that every entry is a fresh take with a new story and set of characters and for the most part I have enjoyed the vast majority of them. I think as the years go by the last few entries FF12-15 I have had rather sour experiances with but with each new entry I like to keep an open mind. However after so many mainline duds it was hard to get excited for FF16 and I told myself that this time I was going to wait and not buy into the hype and play this day 1. I had watched a few trailers the last couple of years and they really didn't do anything for me in any way. Neither a negative or positive reaction. I couldn't even tell much of what it was even about or how it would play. But like I said I've been burnt the last few years on the past entries that i decided to wait. After about a month after the release. I had an open slot to play something new and with a bunch of free time coming up. It has been awhile since playing a big RPG and despite me saying I wasn't gunna be suckered into playing this at full price, I ended up just doing that. I still have love for this franchise and I want this to be good. I know next to nothing about it but all the major outlets have been singing it's praises for the recently released demo and reviews.

Starting FF16 the setting depicts a classic FF midevel esque locale with a focus on struggling kingdoms in a magic filled world that is ruled and governed by magic giving crystals that fuel the kingdoms prosperity and ways of life. This also coupled with more realisticly designed characters (well for FF) compared to the last entries did inspire some confidence that I would like this direction. However I feared it was very similar to FF12, and I would get lost in all the names, subkingdoms and detailed lore that was so heavy with politacal intrigue. I can say FF16 was not like that and even though it wares it clear game of thrones inspirations well, it is a simple story and very easy to keep track of it's huge world and lore. One of the many things I despise about FF13 is how much story and lore is thrown in the datalogs baried in the menu. When I learned that FF16 had a active time lore feature, I feared it was going to be just like that game. Burying crucial plot details and information critical for understand whats going on and figuring out the world into packed away long text info dumps. I hated that so much. Missing context of scenes and details because I didn't pause the game to read a 15min info dump. So hearing that FF16 has a active time lore feature, I instantly groan. To my surprise however it's implementation is very well done. At anytime during a cutscene, you can pause the game and open up the active time lore and it will tell you at that moment who each character is, what faction they belong to, their relationship to you and everything that has happened to them at the current point in the story. Not only characters but locations, words and factions are displayed in detail. It's a very nice feature if you haven't played in awhile to catch you up on whats going one or who this is or if you forgoten what that word means. It doesn't lock away critical info you can only find there or explains things that happen offscreen. Catches you up in the moment. There is also a really well done family tree for all the characters and a world history map feature about how the world is reacting to the current point in the story. I think this is a fantastic implementation of a lore feature for a massive RPG such as this and worth highlighting.

As for the story and characters FF16 drew me in from the get go. I think the opening act of the phoenix gate is really well done and a great introduction to the characters and world. It's a good start for learning Clive and what his place in the world is and right away we know where his ideals and goals lie. I think for the most part I like all the characters in this game. I think there isn't a single design that I felt was awful or felt out of place. Everyone looks stylish but at the same time something a person of this world would wear. As far as personalities go almost all the characters have character and a connection to you and what's going one with the story. Which isn't always the case for these kinda games. This random ninja guy joins your party cause he's cool ect ect. My problem with FF16 is that I think the games nose dives hard after the opening chapters. Nearly every character in this game while I find to be likable to varing degrees never have any kind of arc, growth or anything interesting happen to them. The characters of FF16 are the definition of what you see is what you get. Which is a shame because I think there is a foundation here but everything is so one dimentional. I think the voice acting is good, except for CId I can not stand the preformance from that character. I know what they were going for and nothing against the actor but I can't understand so much of what he says because a lot of his dialog is mumbled and hard to hear or make out what he is saying. It's just the way he talks. I wanted subtitles on just for that character. Rant over. Like I was saying there isn't much to work with when it comes to the characters. I feel like Clive is the same person he was at the start of the game as he is at the end of the game. It's frustrating too because with so much inner connected drama that could and should happen everything fizzles out and I get nothing. Then when something does happen it's so over the top melodramtic that it's hard to take seriously, but more on that later.

The story is simple to follow and there is hardly any twists and turns. It's a simple we are doing this mission and the whole game is just that. SImple good kingdoms vs bad kingdoms controlled by evil. Look that's fine if that's what you wanna do. I'm totally cool with it but do some interesting things from point A to point B. Have some drama with the characters. Every main character is like connected but they treat each other just like their combat buddies. Everything feels so bland and one dimentional.

After the opening chapters when you meet up with Cid at the Hideway for the first time is when the game takes a real nose dive in quality. This is the point where FF16's problems become aparent to me. At this point there are long stretches of cutscenes and cutscenes of just characters talking back and forth back and forth. Some times to move the plot along but a lot of the times it's just Clive talking to every god damn person about mundane stuff and what they are doing ad nauseum. This would be fine if it was meaningful or interesting but it drags so hard. It feel it's longer and more drawn out than Metal Gear Solid 4 or some other heavy story game. Then after all that they finally introduce side missions. Yes finally, let me stab something with my sword now. Nope, they just consist of walking all the way over here and talking to this guy to go all the way over here to pick up some wooden planks and bring them back to the first guy. Okay that is some real time wasting shit mission design but fine whatever it's the first one CLEARLY they won't all be like this. HA HA nope 95% of sub missions is exactly this or go to this spot in the world map, kill this one jobber enemy group and come back. In the year of 2023 this is not acceptable mission design. Hearing 20 min of a sub mission set up for it only to devolve into that and most of the time not even be important or revelevant at all is madening . But the shit cherry on top of these terrible missions is that the reward for completing them is paltry crumbs that even a peasant wouldn't want.

So what makes them so bad? You are ever only rewarded in gold and crafting materials and a small amount of exp and ability points. Now I know what you must be thinking well that doesn't sound bad, heck that sounds quite good, well sorry to inform you but it's not. Gold for starters is so plentiful it's meaningless. What can you even buy with gold? You can restock up on potions and bottles and buy weapons and armor. What's wrong with that you say, well all the weapons and armor you can buy are always underpowered and weaker than what you can forge at the smithy so there is no reason to buy them. Well you can buy materials? Sure you can but battles earn you more materials that you can ever possibly need. There is no need to farm them or stockpile them. They are so plentiful it is counter intuitive to why they are even in the game to start with. So you can buy potions and bottles everytime you need to refill your limited inventory space. Great 4 hours into the game you probually have enough gold to buy them the rest of the game. The only other thing to buy with gold is super over priced juke box tracks you can play at your hideout. Great okay gold is meaningless. After my two playthroughs I had someting like 100,000,000
gold and nothing to spend it on. So materials and gold are useless. So doing sub missions has no point. Oh wait you do get exp and ability points for completing them. Outside big story fights the exp and ability points you get from doing sub missions is super small and is about the same as just doing a couple of battles in the wild. So again there is no point to taking on these long fetch quest missions that waste your time and pad out the story sections with "gameplay" missions. If there was some character or story to these missions like in the Yakuza games they would be worth it for that but the vast majority of them are piles of nothing. A lot of decent ones open up at the end of the game but that is no excuse for the majority being this way. Terrible.

Let's talk about the gameplay now. This is where a lot of people live or die by this game. Let me say this first. I am not a fan of the action direction the series has taken in the last few main line entries. However, I look at Final Fantasy games as individual experiances as fresh and open takes so I am not opposed to different directions. I do not have a problem if this game wants to be an action game and not a RPG. I don't want it to or prefer it to go that way but I don't hold it against it. I do however will hold it against having shallow boring meaningless action gameplay. The game play in FF16 is so bad it makes my head hurt. It's bad as an RPG it's bad as the action game it wants to be. It's like the goal was to create a combat system that literally any player at any level could complete and feel like they are doing relevant stuff and seeing it on the screen. This isn't a bad philosophy and I welcome the idea of inclusion for types of players but this is NOT the way to do it. FF16 feels like a combat engine that has all the accessiblity features of an action game turned on at the same time. So how does combat work, lets break it down. You have four buttons that each do a different action. Square is your meele attack button, Triangle is you long range magic attack button and Circle is a movement ability (we will call it that) and the X button is a jump. R1 is also a dodge button. That's your basics. So meele is a simple five or so hit combo and what you will be doing the majority of the time. Magic attacks are so weak and redundant there is reason to spam the rapid fire button presses to hurl weak element attacks. It's main function is if you hold the attack it is a bit more powerful and it launces the enemy up in the air so If you want you can jump up and strike with your sword and do a little air combo.

At several points throughout the game you get what are called eikon abilities which are essentially summon moves that do a special attack. You can equip two eikon abilities at one time and by the end of the game you can equip 3 different eikons at once giving you 6 special attacks. These can range from lightning bolts, magic missiles and fire attacks and so forth. These attacks do more damage than regualr attacks for sure but their main utility is they cause much more stagger damage.

So every enemy in the game has a stagger bar. This is a feature that has been in the last few FF games and I am not a fan of it at all. Essentially you do regular attacks and special to weaken an enemies stagger bar and when it's completly depleted they are stunned and in a down position and slowly recover their stagger before the bar fills back up. While they are in this state all attacks do 1.5x damage. And that is the basics of combat. That's it. Simplistic as it gets. Now im not daft to realize that past FF games and turn paced RPG's in general are simple as well. So why do I not like the combat in this game?

The one word that describes my entire feelings about FF16, it drags. Combat is so slow and slimplistic that it becomes a complete chore and I want it to be over the second it starts. What I like about the old FF games despite being slow and simple is that I feel like my actions having meaning and purpose a real strategy to them. Here every encounter operates the exact same way. Immeaditly use your eikon abilites in a rotating fasion and simply mash square until the enemy becomes staggered. Then use those whatever eikon abilities you have left and then just mash square until they get back up. Here's the thing i didn't mention earlier about the eikons abilities, they are all on a cool down timer. These aren't combat enhancing abilities or mechanics to give you extra strategy or change your approach. The majority of them are one hitting move that does more damage than your regular attack and then go on cooldown before you can use again. The cool down timer is obviously longer the stronger the attack so by the later half everything has long timers. It feels so restrictive and rudementry. Combat is the same everytime. Doesn't matter what the boss or enemy is the strat is the same. Use abilites and mash attack, use abilities and mash attack > stagger > repeat. It's so dull and unsatisfying it's maddening. Even i wanted to do something cool like do a ground combo, pop up a magic attack to launch the enemy and jump up to do an air attack and come crashing down to finish with a fire burst. Thats sounds so cool huh. Well guess what that is counter intutive to how the game wants you to play it. It says it's an action game but it's more of a masher that wants to you spam the same chained attacks to get the best levels of dagame per second so you can get the stagger faster and end the fight faster. Why would I wanna do that? Well beause fighters last forever in this game. There are two types of enemies in this game. Lights and heavies. Light enemies can be launched in the air and generally how lower amount of health. If every enemy in the game was like this than maybe combat wouldn't feel like such a slog but no. If there are light enemies on the field to counter act thier lightness the games throws dozens of enemies at one time at you. That's not the worst of it though.

Heavy enemies and bosses suck the big one. Heavy enemies are any non human or small creature. They don't react to your hit strikes and have a ton of health. I mean a ton of health. This is why this game feels like such a chore to play. They don't react to hardly anything and you are just constantly mashing attack, useing a cool down ability and mashing away again. It feels brainless. No thought. My finger cramp from mashing so much in such repition and I have to do it because I want this long fight to end faster. Evertime I see a group of enemies and two heavy enemies I just audibly groan becuase I know, know this is going to be a test of will power.

So offensive gameplay sucks. What about that dodge button? Is it useful. Well yes actually. The dodge is very good. It's quick and has a huge invinciblity window. It feels an eqaual amount of skill and precsion balanced with a healthy amount of leanency. Plus if you dodge and strike at the same time you get this cool animation of a precision strike. It feels good. Okay a positive to the combat. Where can we mess it up here. Well for one that cool dodge strike, yea well it does slightly more damage than a regular strike. Like if a regular attack does 100 damage then this does 130 damage. It's so small in the grand scheme of the fight it might as well not exist. Another problem i have in combat is that your walk speed is so slow. So imagine this scenario an attack sends me flying back and I wanna run up to the enemy to continue my assult. It's taking too long you know whats faster. Dodging. Let's spam dodge towards the boss to get up there quicker before he jumps away or teleports to the other side of the arena. Opps a projectile hit me because I dodged right into it. Well thats my fault. Guess I'll just walk to him. Meh screw this is way too slow. Continue to spam dodge as a movement.

There is also a limit burst mechanic as well. So in past Final Fantasy games a limit burst would normally be a characters special move or ultimate attack that is special and unique to them. Well FF16 only has one playable character. So the limit burst here is more like a devil trigger or power up state. Taking damage or dealing damage will fill the gauge up over time. Pretty standard stuff. Then at anytime when it's full you can activate it and cancel out of any animation to go into a powered up state. From what I can tell you don't get a significant defense boost and the damage boost is minimal at best. It does make your attacks faster and your attacks aren't interupted and your health slowly regens at a very small rate but that is essentially all there is to it. I think Clive looks cool during it but mechaniclly i don't see the point of this at all. It never made a significant difference in a fight. It's like they just wanted a frenzy attack mode to look cool but didn't give it anything to make you wanna use it. Strange.

The last thing I wanna say about the combat is dedicated to one eikon in piticular, the last one you get Odin. Odin is massively broken and overpowered system that it has to be talked about. The last 3/4 of the game is when you get this eikon but it's such a game changer it needs to be mentioned. It's mechanic is this, you replace your sword with another sword that does little to no damage but instead builds up a seperate meter called zanzetusken (FF thing) when this meter is maxed out you can unleash a screen filling single attack that will instantly kill all normal enemies and heavily damage big enemies. At this point this completly changes the way the game is played to an extenet because this is such a powerful tool that there is no reason NOT to use it. So then the game starts unloading 20+ enemies at a time because it knows you have this tool now. My problem with this is that this mechanic forces your play to be even more restrictive than what it already was before and it was very restritive to start with. Now it's all about landing this odin eikon ability named dancing sword. This slow starting attack when landed does a huge attack that lasts for 30 seconds that fills the meter up big time. Then you wail with your weak sword to fiill up the rest and repeat. So get used to seeing this long overly winded attack animation because you will start to see it every battle as it's the easies and quickest way to dispatch the massive fodder enemies the game now puts on you. But don't worry if you thought you thumb would get a break it doesn't cauase heavies and bosses can't be insta killed like this and most times it does like 10% damgage to them. So back to the mashing. I think this makes the last fourth a even bigger slog as the dungeons and boss guantlents are get more and more elaborate as the games go on. The pacing is down right terrible here.

Let's move on and talk about the highlight of the game as most would say. The story boss fights. The whole marketing of this game since the start was always highlighting the epic battles and struggles of those who can summon or turn into huge epic eikon monsters and the massive battles. Anyone who plays FF16 will tell you these are the best part of the game. These battles are built like giant godzilla vs king kong epics. Where the fight constantly shifts from Clive and turning into the beast Ifrit and taking on massive foes in epic fashion. To say the set pieces don't have any effort or thought put into them would be flat out wrong. Clearly a large amount of the budget went towards these multi-stage fights, with several pieces of music and over the top effects and graphic fidelty to show a very momumental moment in the game and leave a lasting impression. This is obvious. This is what fans of FF16 love. I get it. If you like it it's fine. I, however hated these segments so much.

Let me explain why these segments did nothing for me. Overall it's just way way too over the top. I get that why some like it but it's too much for me. Yes even in a Final Fantasy game some magic bullshit is just too much. It's such a drastic difference from the regualar battles and world the game has built up and then we take it to Dragon Ball Z levels of super beams and space schenangins. You can't have a game of thrones style epic and design and then throw in fast and furious feats then go back to being grounded again. It doesn't work for me at all. There has to be a level or wall were I can see or understand what the limit is. These set peices go on for so long and are already at a super high power level and nonsense on the first one. Each one gets longer and more dramatic as well. The best way to describe it is if a child had two monster toys and it's hand and he just constantly bashed them togather to make explosions. That's what it feels like to me. Constant stuff happening. Just particle effects everywhere. It looks stunning and you can tell they had fun making it but to me it's a visual throw up of stuff. There's just no end to it. Start as clive fight the boss > he morphs into a big monster > you morph in to a monster > you fight > he kicks your ass dramaticly > fight again as clive > slowly turn back into monster and get the edge > fight some more > Kill boss in epic fashion. The eikon fights play very simialr to how combat is as a human just with different visuals so same issues apply here . The big difference is that a lot of these fights are heavily scripted. So while the boss may have a huge health bar and visiably is taking damgage. It's scripted to the points to when the fights shifts to the next part. I feel like the small damage im doing doesn't even matter becuase im just waiting for the scripted part to end so I can do the real fight part. The complete over the top nature and contrast to the rest of the game just doesn't work for me. I love over the top stuff I do but It has to be grounded and I have to know how the rules work and where the ceiling is. One part Ifrit gets his arm cut off and so I would think oh man this is the dramatic part where he might lose here and this will effect the rest of the fight but 30 seconds later he just magically regrows it. There's no rules here. So when the fights finally do finish and you get that epic FF victory cheer I feel like it's unwaranted as I didn't feel like "I" did anything and just thinking oh I guess it's over now, kinda hard to tell until I here that jingle.

So what about the rest of the game? I can't go over everything and boy I could talk about my experiance more but I'll try to wrap it up a bit. Inbetween the eikon fights, the long dungeon crawls of repat enemies and tedious sub missions. We simply just skip from new town to new town on our quest to destroy the crystals. Oh that's right I didn't even get into the main quest. So in this world there are several mother crystals that grant a kingdom a eikon to defend it and magic bearers to spread magic to the kingdom. Thos who are born as a eikon to summon the big monsters are treated like royalty and those who are born with the innate ability of magic are called bearers. Everything in this world is sustained through magic. Drinking water, fire for light and cooking, wind for turnbines and aire ect ect. Its a fantasy world and magic is what makes their day to day life go round. However the people who can cast magic are not super powerful wizards or anything but can summon simple elements for use. This causes regular people to relay upon them and they treat them as slaves. As they think they are put on this earth to serves and make their lives easier. As god and the people intended. This is how it is in the story but I feel like it's kinda backwards like i get there are more regular people in this world and magics bearers are more limited. Why not rise up against your masters kinda thing you have magic and they don't. I dunno. Well so our heroes decided that if they destroy all the crystals and erase magic from the wolrd everybody would be free and the world more pure and less chaos fighting over things and so forth. That's the main crutch the the story. We just go from land to land doing just that and at the end we fight the big bad. Like I said at the start simple story. Just remember though this is spread through like an 80 hour campaign so I would have liked a lot more depth than what we got. The Dion character was built up so well but I feel like it ultimately lead to know where and a very unsatisfying end. Jill was mishandeled the entire game, giving nothing to do and be a complete poor romantic partner for Clive. She had so many oppurtunities for some cool moments and nada. Clive and Joshua are the highlights but I would have loved to see some more drama or disagreements from them and how they would react to each other but everything deloves into "he's my brother" "I"m his sheild" "we can do anything" "power of family" type stuff. That's what's frustrating to me there is such good foundation to these characters and designs but nothing meaningful happens to them. They are all one note. They don't grow or have memorable scenes outside the epic fights. It's not enough. That couple with the terrible combat. I just cant'. I fell asleep more times than I can count on this game. In the middle of fights even. Look I know I'm getting older and long working days and take a toll on you but games stimulate me and keep me engaged. This game did not. Not in combat, not in the long walk for fetch quests or the visual barf of the eikon battles. Even after completing the game and seeing I had just a few trophies left I even contemplated if I should play it again. And well....I did. I'm such a trophy whore.

On playthrough 2 I was just gonna play on the hard difficulty. Which isn't really harder it's just that enemies have more health. Great like they needed any more. The level cap is increased and new gear can be unlocked as the game goes on. You can upgrade your old great and items as well. Thats actually a really cool idea for a new game plus so I do give the game some regard there. I just wish I wanted to play it again. I reluctantly moved on. I was thinking if I skip all the cutscenes and just play the main story path surely it won't be too long of a play and then I feel I will get my completionist mental check and feel like I got my 70 bucks worth out of the game. Skipping cutscense really shows you just how much there are in this game. Just five min of pausing game, skipping scene, pausing game skipping scene ect. So for this play through I decided I was gonna use the cheat rings. Cheat rings you say? Well yes another feature of this game is that you start with a few cheat items to help players who can't play action games well. Like an auto dodge ring or a auto heal or auto combo ect. So your telling me that this dumbed down combat system was created not for accesibility but for regular players. Oh my god. Why the hell couldn't we have more freedom or depth in the combat from the start if we had these items for accessiblity or as an easy mode from the start. The game is already brain dead easy on the first play and not we can make it easier. I don't care anymore I put on the auto dodge ring. I just fights to end faster. Im speed running this playthrough and that was the mentality I had for my second run. The second go around just reinforce everything I felt about my first playthrough. How tedious the combat is and how much of a drag it was to play. Why am I even playing this again. Is this even worth it. Well im not playing anything else and I only have a few days before the next game I want comes out. Can't start a new game this soon so I was determined to finish. Watching that trophy title Final, Fantasy pop up was so releaving. Finally Fantasty 16 is done.

FF16 has a lot of problems so scoring it was a little hard because technically there is a lot of effort on show here especially the eikon fights. In the end though the drag of the submissions and terrible combat really kept my enjoyment down. I did like aspects of it though. I do like the characters and parts of the story. The big bad was hella stupid though. There was a strong foundation in the world. So thinking about it would I rather play this over the average action game? RPG? Or any other game? and the answer is no. So that's why I feel like a 4/10 is waranted. Still like this one more than FF13 and maybe more than FF15 though but those are low bars as well.

Platinum #184

Steel Assault was on my wishlist for long. I saw one trailer and i knew I wanted to eventualy play it. Now that it finally came to playstation I picked it up. Almost bite the bullet on switch a couple of times but never did. For one thing lets get this out of the way.

This game is gorgeous. The excellent sprite work and detailed backgrounds look incredible with a million different effects happening allwhile not being a total distraction. Also I wanna point out I think this game has the best CRT and retro filter i have ever seen in any modern retro game. Usually never use this feature cause it looks awful and doesn't ever gel with the art of the game but here it blends very well. Nothing but praise here.

The game play is also really solid. Levels feel the perfect length and the right amount of difficulty and bosses feel great when you get that edge to victory and trully learn their pattern. The only strong negative i have to the game is that it is really short. 5 stages and each stage is only about 7-10 min long. Once you know the game it can be completed in about 35-40 min. Which I believe is by design but I wish it was just a tad longer like 7 stages. So if your a person that likes to play games just once, this is not the game for you. The real intention here in everything in Steel Assault's design is to learn and master it and utterly destroy it. This game is meant to be a 1CC arcade clear game in a single sitting. I have nothing against this game design and I really enjoyed my first playthrough and starting my second harder play but then this is when the real issue of the game crept up on me.

THE PLAYSTATION version of this game is BROKEN. The game crashes a lot. Not only does it kick you out of the game constantly but it actually has a high chance of corrupting your save. Beating the stage 2 boss and getting into the scene transition to stage 3 crashes a great deal of times. My first playthrough it crashed for me like 5 times in a row and corrupted my save. Even backing my save to the cloud and redownloading it didn't save me much frustration. On my sixth time beating him it papssed successively and i finished the game no problem. Now starting my second hard run playthrough where there are no stage checkpoints the boss crashed on me no lie 10 times before i could advance. Then the game crashed three more times on stage 3 and at this point I had to throw the towel in. This really pisses me off because I was really enjoying mastering this game and i wanted to go for the platinum trophy and try to conquer the 1CC arcade mode but realizing this was never gonna work with this crash rate would only cause me frustration to get so far and lose to a stupid bug. It sucks the big one because this is a game that is meant for repaeted plays and mastering to get your money's worth and now i feel cheated of that. Well thats my experiance with it. Not sure if the switch or PC version fair any better but I can't advise buying this game in it's current state. Fucking sucks cause it kinda soured my experiance with an otherwise well designed game.

AKA Power Rangers Samurai Mega Man X. For a genesis style retro platformer Vengeful Guardian Moonrider plays just like a MMX game. You pick your stage, playthrough it, beat a boss and unlock a special move rinse and repeat. There are also hidden power ups throughout the stages you can equip as well. VGM is one of the easiest retro throwback titles that I can ever remember playing. It's not necessiarly a bad thing but if these kind of games usually frustrate you, I can promise you this one will not. There are no instakill pits or spikes and health drops are aplenty. I would say VGM isn't brainless though, you do have actually play it. Here's a pro tip for you beat the boss that gets you the tenticle special move. That things destroys bosses life like no other. It's pretty broken. Get that and the power up that lets you steal HP from slain enemies and you don't have to worry about the stages at all. VGM was a short but enjoyable romp. I platinum'ed this baby in under 5 hours. If you pick this up it will be a short but sweet experiance but there isn't much to want you to come back to it time and time again or even really get better at it but it's a nice one and done.

Platinum #182

I'm not a huge fan of point n click games but it's been so long since i've played one that I was kind of in the mood for one. Saw this on the playstation store and always thought it looked interesting. Had a notification it was on sale so i picked it up. It didn't really change my mind about the genre but I enjoyed my short time with it. I don't think it's necessarily good point n click game but I liked what they were going for and the graphics. I appreciated that it was fully voiced as well. I think it was a good premise but none of the jokes landed for me and the story was extremely basic. No real character growth at all. It's a hard title for me to recommened but at worst it's inoffensive. This game just reitorates my past feelings that i just don't like this genere of game.

I appreciate a AA game with jank if the core gameplay is good and refined and a mess everywhere else but Wanted: Dead is a mess everywhere from top to bottom.

I can not even remotely see why some like this gameplay. It feels stiff and restrictive. There is little combo variety and feels like a complete chore to play. I love the idea of a character action game mixed with third person shooter gameplay but the game doesn't do any of these two elements well.

Guns seem to be the easiest way to dispatch enemies. The problem is that, the zoom in so so bad in that you can't even see what your aiming at as the game moves so fast. Then when i get the cursor to be where i want the damn auto aim refuses to let me move to aim for a headshot. Fine I'll turn it off. Now it's incredibly hard to just move the reticle as it either moves too fast or super slow. Then to top it off enemies take an insane amount of bullets to take down. Some will take over two damn clips. So you would think you would have a massive amount of ammo but i constantly ran out when leaning on the shooting side of combat. And this is just the shooting mechanics, the sword combat isn't any better.

When engaging in sword combat. You instinctly want to go in to the enemy and slash away. This is counter intuitive to Wanted: Dead wants you to play it. Enemies take many slashes to take down. Almost comical levels. What the game wants you to do is stand next to an enemy and wait for him to attack and then counter it with either your sword or handgun depending on the attack. Then the enemy will instantly stagger where you can kill them instantly. This isn't very exciting or satisfying to pull off. Even when I successfuly parry and land a stun the follow up will just not register my button press and I'll just stand there. I'm a person who loves counter heavy games like Onimusha or Sekiro but there is a balance to it which Wanted does not get. Regualar attacks in those games are not worthless. Also the whole time there are a million enemies that are constantly spray and praying bullets that make many encounters feel like the cheaply chip away at my health little by little without much i can do. If you pull of a finisher you can regain some chip damage health back but again, the game is forcing me to play in this one style. It's bad.

Speaking of bad this game is badly optimized. Wanted: Dead crashed on me constantly on my PS5. Granted the game auto saves on checkpoints but it still doen't excuse it. Plus the game is quite tough and checkpoints are rather spaced out so going back to a previous one becuase the game crashed sucks big time. It's not even a preformance things. Even with a ton of enemies and slowdown a peak preformance it doesn't crash. It seems to just crash entirely randomly. Like in a cutscene or when your just standing there. It's weird.

As for the story and presentation of the game it might be even jankier than the gameplay. The voice acting is bad, like holy shit this is worse than RE1 or house of the dead bad. Heck I said Daymare was bad this might be just as bad if not worse. I swear some scenes, acting and lines are so muted and stiff with little sense it feels like a scene out of samurai cop. The main character is so bad with a voice so deep and dead pan it doesn't jive with the character at all. Is this intentional? I don't know but it's not good and not in so bad it's good kinda way. It's like the line reads were all one take and no one wanted to be there.

Scenes come and go with what seems like no connection to each other. I can't even tell what I'm supposed to be doing in missions or what my damn goal even is. Then after a stage it's like it never happened and the game moves on to something else that has little context or meaning. There are so many pointless scenes that do nothing. Add nothing to the characters or what's going on. The game has a certain style to it I'll give it that but they do not pull it off in anyway whatsoever. Like for example sometimes the cutscens will shit to straight up animation for no reason. Like there was a animated scene of a character staring at a mirror and looking around a room for like a minute and then it cuts to something else completly unrelated with in game visuals. WTF why put the effort in, I just don't understand. I did not finish this game but from what I read it doesn't get any better. I remember before I bought this game there was this mini trailer/short movie about the waitress in the diner the characters go to and I thought it was pretty charming but context or even this scene isn't even in the game as far as i know and the character was only in like one scene for a brief moment. I just don't get it.

The game also has a bunch of side minigames you can play inbetween stages to break up the tedium of the combat. They are actually decent with games like a crane game full of collectibles, a space shooter arcade game, kareoke and target practice and so forth. The kinda feel good with a decent amount of effort put into them. I wouldn't play them ever outside the game but it does help brake the pace and set the mood it's going for. Side note though FUCK that ramen eating music ddr style minigame. That shit is so hard and you tie an achievment to it that you can't miss a single beat. Shit a song is like 6-7 min long and not easy. I could never do that and it's really annoying to me becuase even if I loved this game to tie a trophy to perfecting guitar hero on the hard mode when the gameplay of the main game is a whole different genre is extremely grating. Rant over.

I struggle real hard to see want some people say about this game. The game didn't get great reviews but there was a small minority that said this game was a hidden gem and had great combat and that to me is as baffling of a thing is as crazy as this game thinks it is but is not. To think this launched at 50 bucks lol.

If there is one game that Bat boy is it's greatest inspiration for I gotta say it's Shovel Knight. It's moment to moment gameplay really feels just like that game. Which is a really good thing. There are a lot abilities and skills you unlock as you defeat bosses from stage to stage that make platforming or destroying enemies even easier. Plus the jumping attack where you bounce off enemies is such a heavily used mechanic for dispatching enemies and for traversal just like Shovel Knight. However, unlike Shovel Knight I feel Bat boy could have used more polish on it's metal bat.

There is a map with a stage selection where you go from level one to level 12 with shops and bonus stages sprinkled through out. While the game does look rather good for a throwback title i feel the art direction in the stages and character models outside the main character are rather lacking. The music is also rather forgettable overall and could be much better, which is a huge crime in these kind of retro inspired games. The plot and character interactions in it's light story is pretty bad and it doesn't have a robust world enough to flesh it's characters out and give it's world charm like in Shovel Kinght. There isn't much of anything to do outside of the level completions. As for the levels themselves I think they are mostly okay. I don't find them that memorable or uses the gameplay mechanics all that great outside of a stage or two. For the most part they are simple. Enemies are mostly one hit affairs and are typically feel like obsticles rather than adversaries. Which is fine. The bosses I expected to be more of a highlight are really easy. Heck the whole game is easy. Bosses have like one or two moves they spam and when you defeat them they get back up and add maybe one or two new moves and do the same thing again. So using one simple strategy usually works like stand over here and just jump attack when he gets close and rinse and repeat till he is dead. The final boss was really disapointing and easy as well.

I know it sounds like im being overly negative but Bat Boy isn't that bad of a game. It's just kind of disappointing because with some tweaks and changes it could have been a great one. It's foundation is there, and like I said the moment to moment game does feel good and Bat Boy moves at a very fast pace. You could easily 100% complete this game in one sitting or two and that's kinda my problem with it too. There just isn't enough stuff in Bat Boy. Outside of some health and magic upgrades there really isn't anything to do in the levels again or to collect in the world. There are no unlockables or extra difficulty modes. It really is a one and done affair and that sucks cause if there was more to do after an intial playthrough I would have been happy to oblige the game again.

Platinum # 181

Even though I dropped Street Fighter 5 quickly, I do admire the turnaround that Capcom has given that game. It convinced me that even if it stumbles out the gate they would support it for many years to come and for that I would be back to try the next one. It looks like they took that lesson to heart because Street Fighter 6 is the complete package. It's rare to see such a full featured fighting game on Day 1, and I'm not just talking about having an indepth story mode. SF6 has a ton of features ranging from quality of life stuff, to indepth tutorials, character walkthroughs, a wide varitey of match types, customization options, robust online modes all with fantastic implementation. It almost rivals Smash in sheer amount of content. Which is wonderful because it gives players of every skill level stuff to do and excell in, all while making their core fundementals better. I'll admit im not the best in this game but im having a blast. I could go on and on about the small things that make this great but we would be here all day. The world tour mode while not ground breaking or even that "good" is still a wonderfully fun single player mode that I found I liked it more than I thought I would. If you haven't played a traditonal fighting game in many years or are starting for the first time I think SF6 is the perfect starting point.

I have had Record of Lodoss War: Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth on my wishlist for quite some time. I've heard it's a pretty decent metroidvania/symphony of the night clone that while good is rather short. The whole game could be completed 100% in a single weekend. This is mainly why I had this one on my wishlist.

Graphically it looks like it came right out of a PS1 Castlevania game and has that look and charm to it. This would be the perfect new game to play if I only had a couple of days to play something new before a bigger title. Once it becomes cheap I am in.

So when it did, it was an wasy purchase. It's a fun albeit standard metroidvania game, with the classic map design and room completion look that many have copied from Castlevania. It's not hard by any means and completion feels like it moves at a brisk pace. There plenty of different enemy designs and bosses thrown throughout so I'm never fighting the same enemies again and again.

The story I didn't get anything out of. I think this game is based off an anime I"m not sure but no knowledge of it's source material is required. Heck it seems like it doesn't really add anything to it as far as I could tell.

I think if you go into this with the right expectations you can find some good short burst of fun. As long as the price is good. Record of Lodoss War was a tasty snack before I save room for a much bigger meal but in it's wait I'm not hungry.

Platinum Trophy #180

If you take Playstation's Flower's gameplay and atmosphere and mix it with a lite dating simulator with a sprinkle of resourse gathering you get Haven. Haven was a good change of pace game. It's a simple yet relaxing game. Challenge is nonexistant and it is a game that you almost play for the mood and vibes. It doesn't reinvent the wheel or have some amazing story but to me Haven is more than the sum of it's parts.

The gameplay of Haven is a simple exploration of a colorful alien world, as you zip and dash from island to island to gather resources and parts of your ship. From food, medical supplies and unexplored junk that you find. There is also purple goop spread among the planet that you can clean up by dashing over it. So what you get in a gameplay loop is basicly exploration, as you fly around cleaning terrain and collecting food and objects you find around the map. It's a simple loop but exploring the artiful world is more of a relaxing experiance. I can see a lot of people getting turned off by this game as there isn't that much to "do" in it and the gameplay loop can be repititve.

There is combat in this game as well but I struggle to come up with a reason as to why it's included. It's as simple of an RPG combat system could possibly be. It's not engaging or enjoyable at all. Everytime i got into a combat encounter I wish that it would just end. It's easily one of the worst battle systems I've ever played. There is no depth and nothing to it at all. It feels like it was implemented at a simple pace breaker to make your character do something more "actiony" but it comes off to me as a time waster in a game that is essentially a time waster game. So why even play this game then?

At it's core Haven is held up by the foundation of it's main characters Kay and Yu and their relationship. You are given the option of assigning the genders of both characters and they are all fully voiced. You can tell this game didn't have the biggest of budgets as the story is told organically from the characters point of view after the fact and told in drip feeds. It works better than it sounds. The story isn't anything to write home about but it does a good job of shaping the characters world and backstories. The crux of the game is on the relationship between the characters like I said earlier and this is one of the aspects the game does very very well on. Kay and Yu are one of the most realistic couples I've seen in a game like this. The chemistry of the characters through their actors and character quirks come off very genuine and rarely if ever feel artificial or cringey. They feel like real people going through a thing that are so in love with each other that they relish in the fact that they are the only two people on this planet and it's enough for them. You would think a two person cast would get old fast but I found them to be the highlight and the reason to keep playing. Plus I really liked the character design and outfits that they wore as well. Very cool looking. A lot of the games scenes are just the characters reacting to everyday stuff, getting into arguments over mudane things and growing their relationship. It's not something for everyone and I do feel the game is a tad longer than it needs to be, but I really enjoyed my time with it. It's a hard recomindation though. I'd say if your in the mood for a simple beatiful artsy game that you can turn your brain off and just zip around in, you might realize despite the fact the you are getting bored of the game that you do wanna keep going.

Platinum #179

Remnant: From the Ashes was a title that really crept past me. I had not even heard of this game until my brother told me that he really enjoyed it which piqued my interest and I checked out some gameplay on youtube. While not really mindblowing in anyway I could tell by the video that I would really like the shooting mechanic of the game. I put this game on the backburner of my mind for quite some time. Then a moment came where it was time to play something cheap for a couple of weeks before a bigger game comes out.

First impressions where really good. While I could tell I wasn't going to enjoy the story that was tucked away in a million computer logs and didn't really care. I was more in it for the gameplay. The shooting and mechanics of the basic gameplay I really like here. Creative weapons, enemy types and a good feeling of exploration and rewards. The thing I like the most about Remant is that while it is a rogue like, gear heavy and has a ton of customization choices it is extremely easy to play and micro manage. It was refresing to have one type of currency, one type of gear scrap for upgrading and not having to stock pile grind for items. This made this a very enjoyable experiance. Not all of these types of games have to have such complexity.

While the game is on the short side if you just wanna play the campaign, the real meat here is trying to see everything the game has to offer. Each campaign is scrambled up by different locations and even scenarios. You cant see and get everything in a single playthrough. So it's obvious to say the game has a ton of replay value. It was a blast upgrading my character and perfecting my weapons and getting all the skills, traits and customzation options. Plus the game is really fun in Co Op. Heck the game seems really designed for it but I honestly played it about 90% in single player. On top of that there is a plethora of DLC that extends the game time and adds plenty of new modes that even season players will have a hard time with. If I had played this when this originally came out I could see myself putting almost double the amount of time I put into it.

As for the thins I didn't like, I really didn't like the way the story was presented. It was a total nothing burger for a casul observer and trying to watch a lore video online put me to sleep. I hope they improve this aspect in the next one. Also there are some puzzles and stuff that i feel are very frustrating to get through or unlock without a guide or the internet. I really didn't care for the small amount of puzzles the game had and I can't even fathom getting like minded individulas on random matchmaking to even complete them. Also I wish there was a bit more stage varity. The four main areas are repeated so much and visually start to blend togather.

In the end while Remant doesn't really reinvent the genre, it is a fun single and even rarer co op experiance that I really enjoyed and makes me eagerly await the sequal coming later in the year. If they could iron out some of the common issues and bring in that level of gameplay and replayability I could see it getting a tremendous amount of play from me.

Platinum #178

Kena was was a game that took me by surprise. I really expected a PS2 era 3D platformer with a bunch of collectibles that would be an easy breezy kinda game. The more I played it the more that mentality washed away. Right away I was taken aback by the fact that this is a game that really doesn't hold your hand, like at all. No constant tutorial pop ups, explanations of what everything does and just drops you in. Go play and figure it out. It was kinda refreshing. It's not super hard to figure out what to do or where to go but unlike most modern games I did get the feeling I was the one solving puzzles and exploring to find the way through. No way points or yellow cliff paint here to signify the way.

The game's presentation is pretty great and graphiclly very pleasing especially for a smaller title from a new publisher. While the game does give off some cutesy vibes very simialr to the NGC and PS2 era, the game has more depth and difficulty that younger players most likely won't get far. The games combat and exploration methods are rather simple and basic but the game manages to do a lot of unique things with them. You have a basic light attack string, a heavy attack, a dodge roll, a parry, a bomb and a bow and arrow and that's pretty much it the whole game. The way the enemies are and how combat flows is pretty great. Aiming with the bow you can slow down time and take precsion shots, which is really nice as most enemies have weak points somewhere on them. You can also do prescion shots from a jump which can make some pretty cool shots that look stylish. With a mixture of meele and shots the moment to moment combat feels pretty good if a bit simplistic. Regular enemies are pretty easy but I was pleasantly surprised by how great the bosses were. The longer the game went on the better they got and became a real highlight. The hunter boss fight was such an intense fight and is easily one of the best I've played in a while.

The platfoming puzzles while basic are just hard enough to not be frustrating and does a pretty good job of mixing up your tools. The game does have pretty good exploration elements but i wish some of the rewards were a bit more useful and better. 70% of them are useless blue currency that is only used for buy little hats for your rot companions.

The story is very light and basic but it's okay. Not a highlight for me. If there was more going on and more cutscenes that showed off how great this game was it would have made more of an impression but it's fine.

Kena: Bride of Spirits was one of those games I really wanted to play when it got a bit cheaper and in the end I'm glad I played it. It was just the right amount where it held my interests and kept me engaged and left a satisfying enough taste. If it was any longer though it would have started to wear out it's welcome. It's a good game but I don't think it has the depth to really wanna make me get all of the collectibles in the game and play it again on a harder difficulty. I'd recommend one playthrough on the normal difficulty. Any more or any harder and it seems like the game would be super frustrating and dimminish the experiance.