Another non-game where the only satisfaction comes from grinding aimlessly. click the same 5 buttons over and over, that's the game. pay so you have to click the buttons less times for your numbers to go up. i will give it an extra 0.5 star credit for being kind of funny on occasion.

this is kind of in the same genre as Adventure Quest, but the difference is that Adventure Quest has a childlike sense of wonder and actually tries to have a story, memorable characters, unique settings, a level of depth to the combat, etc.

just play Adventure Quest instead

While Arc System Works did their best to make this game look as good as it possibly could, there's really not much saving a generic gacha mobile game setting. That said, this is probably the best looking generic thing I've ever seen. Fluid animations, flawless character models, beautiful levels, it's a shame the effort was used on a series with nonexistent art direction.

As far as the mechanics go, I'm going to be a bit of a boomer here. I entered training mode upon installing this game as is tradition for me, just to test out the controls and practice a little. I practiced for about 30 minutes before finding out that the game has "easy inputs" for many of the moves.

This means you can easily DP on reaction, you can shoot fireballs without a motion input, etc. since it's basically just a direction and a button. On its face, you wouldn't really think this would make a big difference, but it does. Motion inputs add a lot of extra layers of balance and technique to fighting games, it's what makes them so uniquely tactile. Some may enjoy this new-age change, but I'm personally disappointed that the next game is going to lean into it even more heavily by removing all downsides to using simple inputs.

The singleplayer is very boring for the most part. There's a decent boss or two and that's it. I'm not big on fighting games basically becoming a different game entirely in singleplayer, and Granblue is particularly egregious about this. There's this giant dragon boss that sort of lives in the stage, and you have to memorize its movements like a diet Dark Souls boss. Most of the levels require you to fight pitifully weak minions that are zero threat to you unless this is your first fighting game, also it's pretty frustrating that you switch direction from left to right depending on where you move ONLY in singleplayer. The story doesn't exactly make up for these shortcomings either.

Still, I enjoyed the game enough as is. It's cool to look at and there's a lot of impact to the combat. The visuals, while lacking in the art direction department, are still pretty stunning all things considered. I probably wouldn't bother with this game now since it's a little too late in its lifespan and it uses delay-based netcode, plus as of writing the next game in the series is coming out soon with rollback. Still, if you can get it for less than 10 bucks and you like Arc System Works then why not.

no sauce no movement unseasoned chicken content game

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I will go into detail for the uninitiated: those words accurately describe Valorant.

This game has no "sauce" in that it lacks anything to make it stand out from other games. It takes the general movement and gunplay of Counterstrike, but makes it glacially slow. It takes the heroes of Overwatch and gives them piddly, diet abilities that mean there isn't much distinguishing one hero from the next.

Valorant has no movement because your run speed is not only abysmal, but your jump sucks and shift walking is maddeningly slow too. In addition, the game heavily discourages running by making half the map hear you when you do so.

Valorant is unseasoned chicken because it has no soul. None of the characters have a lick of personality, which reflects this game's hardcore fanbase. Some of the characters look like a randomized Sims 3 citizen. The maps are painfully bland. Does this game even have music? I forgot.

And finally, Valorant is a content game because it has no artistic merit. At least Overwatch tries to have distinct heroes with some level of personality, backstory, etc. Not only that, but Overwatch shows artistry in the game design. So does Counter Strike, though it may be less obvious. Valorant is basically Riot saying "Wow, counterstrike and Overwatch are popular, let's do the same thing but worse!"

As an additional note, the community is atrocious. Genuinely. I was playing with this discord mod of a large server (he insisted on joining me and some friends...) and the guy was just a total moron. He was in his 30's and constantly calling everyone a cunt and a bitch. He kept telling me to change to a different weapon because my choice wasn't "optimal." Why are weird transphobic manchildren attracted to mind numbing mid? I'll let you be the judge of that.

Great example of why unreal engine is not the silver bullet gamers seem to think it is. Compare the system requirements of this game to the much superior (and generally better looking) Ion Fury and you'll see what I mean. Using this type of engine for a sprite-based shooter is like using a sledgehammer to pin your calendar to the wall. Only thing I'll admit is that they do some pretty complex geometry and effects that are difficult to replicate in Build, but whether that's worth the orders of magnitude higher system resources to accomplish is up for debate. Oh, and the sprites don't behave correctly, in a proper 2D sprite game the corpses won't turn to face you, but in this one they turn like they're saluting you when you pass by which is jarring and honestly pretty amateurish.

The gameplay is very much subpar for something branding itself as a "boomer shooter." This is much closer to DOOM 2016 down to the melee kills that get repetitive and weirdly unsatisfying halfway through the game. The guns do feel weighty in a way that you don't see in most other similar shooters, so I'll give it that. There are sparks of quality in some of the levels, mainly some of the arena sections that allow you use the terrain in interesting ways to avoid damage and fire back. That said, for every quality section, there's like five that seem uninspired.

The AI is also hilariously bad. Like, Build Engine games have better pathfinding. You could make an argument for Doom 1 and 2 having better AI too. In Boltgun, you will regularly see enemies stand in place and look stupid and maybe fire the occasional shot at you (mainly the cultists). There's a certain particularly frustrating enemy in the form of a berserker chaos space marine that is an absolute BULLET SPONGE that runs at you at a really fast speed. Worst part is if you kill him, half the time he resurrects with even more health. I found the best way to kill these guys was to jump off of a ledge and let them fall to their death. Otherwise I'd use like all of my ammo on them because holy shit why do they have so much health ??

It sucks because I really did give this game the benefit of the doubt. I really like Warhammer and enjoy boomer shooters, and the first few levels seemed promising even if they were very easy. It has some nice set pieces and vistas, but there seems to be a huge lack of thought put into the gameplay.

Everyone knows this is a fun game with friends. All of the Smash games are, that is their sole purpose. Fun with friends. There is no balance to be found here, no real quality control as far as glitches and mechanical failures are concerned, and it has a roster that's probably a lot larger than what the dev team could handle. Much like Mario Party, nobody minds because it's not meant to be balanced or leak-proof. It's meant to be fun with friends, and falcon punching people is just really satisfying.

Now I'm going to talk about the elephant in the room because why not. The melee community, with no reservations, is the worst fighting game community of all time. It's the equivalent of Hearts of Iron for grand strategy, or League of Legend for mobas. I will get into some of the reasons why.

Reason #1: eSports culture and how Melee fans formed and promoted the worst parts of it. Genuinely, especially during the game's heyday, the top players (of which was a small handful of what can, with some retrospection, be described as cult leaders) were awful human beings. Complete unwashed shit heads that had zero respect for anything that wasn't their precious Melee. The community, in turn, garnered a similar reputation. Rules about washing yourself before events became a trend. Being a fucking asshole was normalized to the extreme because it was a spectacle, something that was and is a very nice tool for corporate sponsors to rake in so much more cash than any player could. Leffen was banned from competing in his home country of Sweden because he was THAT bad. Melee's competitive "soul" is a fraud. When you dig into it, you come to understand that yes, these players were indeed being assholes on purpose for financial gain. Unfortunately that rubbed off on not only eSports, but your average fighting game player as well. I'll end this section with this: There is a reason why you rarely see women at fighting game events.

Reason #2: Busted controllers and the piss babies that use them. Back when Melee was on the EVO mainstage (thank god that's over) top players would use very specific original GameCube controllers with a rare set of malfunctions. When I say rare, I mean 1 in 50 controllers had it, and they could easily stop working at any time. There was a case where one of the top Melee players literally dropped out of a major tournament because their busted controller stopped working and they refused to use a normal one, in case you wanted to know how important these controllers were in competition. You see, in any other game event, that would be called cheating. Not only do these special piss baby controllers give an unfair advantage in the form of allowing what is considered basic movement tech, but they also did a looooot of gatekeeping. You see, if you want to pick up Street Fighter, you just get a still-manufactured controller and go. Whether that's an xbox controller or a fightstick, the barrier is relatively small. With Melee? Nah son, you have to shell out cash for a controller that has not been manufactured in over a decade, and you have to make sure it's this busted ass version which, let's be honest, is probably gonna jack up the price more. Add in the fact that you need an original GameCube or Wii plus a CRT, all of which are also no longer manufactured. Utterly deranged and shows how anti-competitive the top rung of the scene really was.

Reason #3: Entitlement. So, I hinted at this in the first section, but this is another issue that is both hilarious and aggravating. Remember what I said about the top Melee players not respecting other games? Melee had the most EVO runs of any game. You have to understand what this entails for the full scope of the problem. For Melee, old CRT's and original consoles had to be sourced, leading to a logistical nightmare for EVO staff. Not only that, but as a reminder, they were also hosting the Melee community. Imagine the smell. Imagine being a female employee. So despite these problems, Melee got more EVO runs than 3rd Strike. It got more runs than any Marvel vs Capcom game. It ran over Skullgirls as a main event, a game that is not only more well made but also desperately needed the limelight. What makes this even worse is the fact that the creator of the game thought this was fucking stupid. The evo slot would've been more useful if it was either filled with proper fighting game royalty or newer titles that needed the exposure. Instead, we got the same 5 players that showed up in every single Melee finals. Remember what I said about gatekeeping with the controller thing? Yeah, I wonder why there was such a lack of diversity in such a hugely popular game.

This culminated in what can only be described as the Piss Baby Olympics. The year Melee was finally removed from the EVO lineup and replaced with unist, Samurai Shodown, and Smash Ultimate. I will link a video in an edit later so you can enjoy it like I did. The reactions of top players genuinely made me giggle. They were furious about this. One of them called for Ultimate fans to boycott evo. All of them insulted the new games in the lineup, including fighting game royalty in Samurai Shodown. They looked at unist as some random anime game. Smash Ultimate, of course, was not taken seriously, because they could no longer use their busted ass 1 in 50 no longer manufactured controllers and the game was actually not built like a sack of rotting horse shit. And now, in the year of our Lord 2023, there is no possible way Melee will become another main event at EVO and quite possibly any other major either. Nintendo, in a rare positive example of their draconian ip grip, shut down a large Melee tournament that was being hosted on a modded emulated version of the game. Not only that, but Nintendo stated that their games will no longer appear at evo, instead opting for their own sanctioned event which will, naturally, include the latest Nintendo releases that are actually being sold. Play another game.

Link to Piss Baby Olympics: https://youtu.be/h7O4zOXALIY

Bought this game because manchildren were getting mad over their underage waifu or something, as is the case with gamers after like 2009. Long story short people do not know what censorship is and no actual content was removed. Mike Z, the director for a long time, was ousted (simplest way to put it) for... misconduct a few years ago. Do not take people who actually think a mild change in color to a piece of clothing on one character and removing some unnecessary story panels (like idk, 2 out of the 20 billion in this game) is removing content. The game is literally the same and I can guarantee you none of these people complaining would even notice if it wasn't explicitly announced.


I find it difficult to find many faults in Skullgirls. The movement is smooth as butter, the art is unique and appealing, the music is great, and it has this charm to it that no other game has. This game is like a high quality dish served with caviar. Combos feel limitless in a way that few fighting games have without being broke as shit (looking at you, Street Fighter Alpha 2...)

I think the only problem I could find is that the boss character at the end of the story and arcade modes is like the antithesis of what the game is. You basically have to play the game completely differently due to how that fight works, which I'm not really a fan of in fighting games.

All of the things that people complain about fighting games not having, is present in Skullgirls. A thorough tutorial, a robust story mode for all of the characters, long term support, and some of the BEST rollback netcode in the genre. I fail to find any real issues with the actual game, which is what you should be reviewing a game for anyway.

tbh only way to play this game and have fun is by not knowing what the objective is. my first few matches (this was many years ago) i played Amumu bc he looked funny, and i just piled on HP items until his health bar was basically just black lines visualizing HP segments. i would literally just run around and find enemy players, then headbutt htem until they died hahaha

then i learned what the objective was. Big Mistake....

Over time, I've drawn a line between art and content. I try not to gatekeep art, but while content may fit the technical definition of art, I find it increasingly difficult to call it that. While most (not all) games released are made partly for commercial reasons, I think it's important to acknowledge the balancing act between the commercial and the artistic.

Many games compromise a lot for the sake of sales, and some do not. Dwarf Fortress before the Steam release was the epitome of this. It was a free game with a donation system, so you could send the developer money if you liked the game. In addition, Dwarf Fortress was inaccessible to say the least. Out of all the critical darlings in the gaming space, it was (and arguably still is) the most difficult to get into. But that's what makes it unique, it's what gives the game its charm. Uncompromising in the extreme, and doing something that no other game has replicated to this day.

League is not one of those games. There is an argument to be made that the game may have started like that, and sure, the game is free, but make no mistake. The model is not the same as that of Dwarf Fortress in both philosophy and practice. The fact is, free to play makes more money than pay to play in the gaming market ever since at least the early 2010's. No, whereas a Dwarf Fortress player might drop the game due to its notoriously difficult but rewarding systems and controls, a League player will continue to play League despite hating every moment of it. This is due to the psychology of content games versus art games. If you become addicted to an art game, that's generally because you love the game and cherish it for what it does. If you get addicted to a content game like league, it's because these companies literally hire psychologists to design dark patterns into the core of their games. They are not the same.

I want to end this review with a message to the reader. Stop playing content games. Your life, physical and mental state, and general wellbeing will improve. Replace content games with art games, games that were made with passion. If you play League, you are falling into the same trap that has ensnared millions of people. The game is not free to play, the cost is in years of your lifespan, and I do not mean that lightly.

(rating will likely change as i put more time into this)

look at what they did to my boy Tam Tam... already kinda mid tier in samsho v special and they remove the few things he had going for him like his jumping heavy slash. Okay, so apparently he still has his heavy slash. This game is way different in controls and systems than the previous games so I actually missed it somehow. Maybe I'm capping...

last boss of arcade mode is mega bullshit. not THE hardest boss i've ever fought in a fighting game, but he's probably top 5 if you don't cheese him out like i did with Mina. i wanted to beat the arcade mode with Andrew, but ended up switching to Tam Tam on the second to last boss and still won despite his mega nerf cause i'm a sir ..

anyway if anyone wants to play this game with me sometime that would be cool. there's like nobody on this game in fightcade. it does have a really insane bigass roster with like every previous samsho character along with a bunch of new guys like anime Andrew Jackson (possibly my main? still need to figure him out lol...) Sieger life baby

IMPORTANT TIP: This game is listed as Samurai Spirits Tenkaichi Kenkakuden on fightcade. i had trouble finding it until i saw a reddit post talking about it.

This game made me feel like a dumbass. I was forced to take notes from level 6 onward. I had about 3 pages of notes for level 9, and i still had to look up the solution (i did get really close to be fair...)

The last boss is very stressful especially after getting through the rest of the game. Part puzzle, part reaction (you can sort of brute force it if you're fast enough) and frankly i was exasperated by the time i finished. All in all the actual game is a love hate relationship for me. I do enjoy the fact that i had to take notes in a game made in this decade but man. I feel like a longer series of moderately difficult puzzles would have been much more enjoyable to play through, rather than a limited amount of fuck off hard levels.

I'm giving this 6 stars because I value presentation and art direction, and yeah, while this game's existence could be called cheap, I think it's partly justified by the amount of love put into the designs and graphics. Pro tip: DO NOT play this game with a headache... also Zdrada is so bad... sorry...

Chuds will tell you Paradox went "woke." Casual fans will tell you this is the only Paradox game they're interested in. Hardcore fans, minus the chuds, (which are quite vocal) skew positive, with a not insignificant amount calling this the greatest thing Paradox has ever released.

I'm in the latter camp. I have over 1,000 hours in both Europa Universalis IV and Hearts of Iron IV respectively, and another half thousand minimum spread across their other games. The appeal to Paradox is that nobody else is really making games like them, and for good reason. These are massive games attempting to cover vast periods of complicated world history, all while giving the player a wealth of options for guiding a country through these eras. People often compare Paradox to Civilization, but really, that series is an abstraction only one tier above Risk. Paradox games are another simulationist beast entirely. Some have tried, most have failed, and only one has succeeded.

Crusader Kings III is the first grand strategy roleplaying game (I don't count CK2 because the base game is a demo that only lets you play as Christians with 1/5th the content of a DLC buyer, but that might count if you manage to get the full game). You can do just about anything in this game. On YouTube you'll likely see a bunch of streamers doing "incest" runs to see just how tainted their bloodline can get, but this is streamer bait. The most fun you'll have is scaring the absolute shit out of the Ethiopian lords under your magical albino dynasty by executing anyone remotely brave or strong enough to contest your rule. Or carving out a Hellenic paradise in the middle of the Mediterranean and slaughtering any Abrahamic who dares to invade by dumping all of your savings into fortifications and the fact that they have nowhere to run when they land. Or deciding you're going to single-handedly reverse the effects of the Northern Crusades through effective application of schizophrenic warlords.

All of this while being either a historical figure or custom character (let's be honest, the game is a lot more fun with the latter) that grows, learns, loves, and will likely die before they can witness the extent of their empire. Really, there are so many viable ways to build a character and play CK3. Even when you play as a lord with only a tiny sliver of land in the Balkans, there's always some sort of scheme or plot you can plan to claw your way up. Or maybe you're content with living modestly, and you just tend to your domain and serve your overlord loyally while assassinating that other micro-lord from across the way that insulted you at a wedding.

The craziest thing is that most of my experience is from the first month of release. Paradox, a company well-known for releasing unfinished games and putting the actual content in later updates and DLC's, actually made one of the most intriguing, indepth, and unique games in any genre remotely close to it ON RELEASE. You do not realize how unprecedented this is until you have almost 3,000 hours in their games.

This is a really weird game to review. On one hand, yes, the formula is there. It's obvious when you play it that Ion Fury is trying its best to emulate the likes of Duke Nukem and Shadow Warrior (Blood not so much imo). Super fast paced gameplay, levels bursting with verticality and secrets, and a quippy protagonist.

However, there are some issues that prevent Ion Fury from reaching the heights of the legendary Build trinity. First of all, and the most damning thing, is the writing and dialogue. I don't normally say things like this in reviews, as I generally respect most involved in game development, but whoever wrote the narrative and dialogue needs to be either fired or switched to another section of the team. I moderate a Dragon Ball roleplaying forum, and people who can barely type a coherent sentence could write more compelling and honest dialogue than whoever the fuck they got to write this shit.

From the first level to the last, Shelly says the most cringeworthy and (even worse) unimaginative bullshit you could possibly think of. Movie references that desperately scream "OMG I DON'T UNDERSTAND WHAT MAKES SOMETHING FEEL 90'S BUT I'LL TRY ANYWAY," comments on shit that basically amount to the most STRAIGHTFORWARD observation you could possibly make but in a voice that implies there's a joke somewhere. There is no joke. It's not funny, it's not witty, it's not interesting.

What made the Build trinity's dialogue good is how extreme it was. It didn't play it safe. Duke is such an insanely strong parody of 90's action heroes that he actually ends up being a GOOD action hero in his own right due to his many, many memorable quotables that are repeated to this day, in addition to unbelievably unique voice acting. Caleb is just so dastardly, vicious, and witty that you can't help but to love him. And Lo Wang... Alright, he's uh... Well, in an attempt to preserve my reputation I'm just gonna say at least he's memorable and extreme. Despite her solid voice acting, Shelly is not.

Now, regarding the gameplay. It does a lot of things right. The level design is some of the best in any Build game ever, I'd argue that much of this game's level design surpasses the quality of the trinity. The environments are insanely detailed and there's so much to see, it's really the only Build game i'd call "beautiful."

The guns are rock solid. I know some complain about the lack of weapon variety, but I seldom felt that way while playing. All of the weapons do a good job at filling a niche (with the exception of the crossbow... they probably should have fixed the aiming on that but i guess it does work in a pinch) and it's rare that you don't have the right tool for the job. The feedback on killing enemies is generally quite nice too, especially with explosions.

The enemies you face range from "solid" to "why the fuck did they put this in the game" tier. The "solid" enemies are the regular goons dressed in robes and the shotgun guys. I say solid because while they get the job done, they aren't the most stylistically interesting and they have no real dialogue other than basic tactical speak... Which is a far cry from the pig cops of Duke Nukem and the screaming cultists of Blood.

Now, on the other end of the spectrum... The fucking spider robots. Why God Why. I never had fun a single time dealing with these annoying motherfuckers. ESPECIALLY when the game decides to just spam them without any other enemies. At least there's an argument to be made that they er... make combat more tricky against a group? I don't know, I'm being too generous. Remove these fuckers and the game improves two fold.

Anyway, I think the primary issues with this game lay in the obvious lack of writing and style chops. The only thing I can really say has a ton of style in this is like... The music and environments. Shelly is terrible and the enemies are boring. Unfortunately, that's kinda like... the primary focus of the game, it goes without saying. The reason I'm still giving this a pretty good score is because fundamentally it's good, I found myself wanting to come back, and the level design is just too good to ignore.

while Duke Nukem isn't quite as "tactical" as other Build games like Blood, it makes up for it in style and pure fun. i always get a healthy rush of endorphins whenever anything explodes in this game and Duke says one of his one liners. he's one of the most raw protagonists ever conceived

admittedly, episode 1 beats out the other two episodes by a decent margin. that said, i still enjoy both episodes 2 and 3, with 3 being a little bit better than 2. there are a couple of enemies i'm not fond of, like the kamikaze flyers that the game spams in episode 2 and the big flying fat guys that sound like the ugly bastard tag on rule 34. otherwise, i think Duke Nukem has some great, solid level design and a very satisfying game loop. most everything FEELS good in this game, and that's half the battle in a shooter.

Played this not long after playing Metal Slug 2 to compare. To be honest, this is basically just the "definitive" version of Metal Slug 2. The only two differences I could spot were the much improved optimization (less slow downs and such) and maybe a few different enemy placements and entries that were slightly improved over 2.

That said, this is a great, classic run and gun game. Beautiful sprites and animations on some very impressive for the time hardware, and made by some of the most talented sprite artists ever.