This has always been a game I have had interest in but never played. I played all the devil may cry games around the time 5 was about to come out and enjoyed them a lot. I have also played some of Platinum Games other titles such as Metal Gear Rising, Astral Chain and Nier Automata and enjoyed all of them greatly so it was only a matter of time until I got to this game too. So I decided to play it about a year ago and dropped it around chapter 3, I wasn’t really feeling it at the time. The reason I dropped in then was probably because I wasn’t feeling the hype to play an action title at the time. I came back now a year later and honestly thought this game was amazing, this is definitely one of the best action games I have ever played.

So to start with the gameplay I greatly enjoyed the weapons in this game, almost all of them were fun to experiment with and try to find the most fun ones to combo with and use overall. The sword was definitely my favorite to use as I just thought it felt really satisfying to use but the other weapons were fun too. I could definitely tell that this game has a lot of depth and it would probably be very fun to replay the game and try to get better at it and get the platinum ratings. The witch time mechanic was a great inclusion, it feels great to execute and it makes you play as aggressive as possible which is very fun and satisfying. One thing that I thought was a bit iffy in this overall fantastic combat system is the torture attacks. I think the torture attacks slows the combat down way to much and it gets annoying to mash buttons that much. I think these torture attacks works as a finisher on larger enemies and bosses but otherwise it just gets annoying. There was also one section where you’re riding a rocket that I thought was pretty bad, but otherwise I don’t have any big complaints about the combat, it just is great. The enemies I thought were overall very well designed and I enjoyed fighting most of them and there were a good variety of them. The bosses were fantastic throughout, the spectacle in these fights is great to see and it elevates the bosses to greater levels. It makes bosses go from good to great, it is just so impressive to witness. The bosses in the last few chapters especially were so good, some of the best in any game. The final part of the game is also one of the most insane I have ever seen in a game and I loved it, it is such a great way to end the game. The music in this game is also pretty good and fits the bosses very well.

So as a gameplay experience this game is amazing but how is the story and characters? Bayonetta I thought was a great protagonist, very memorable, but other than her I don’t think the characters are that great. Luka was more annoying to me than a fun companion to have around. Jeanne was a good rival I guess but as a character I thought she wasn’t that interesting and her story was strange I thought. That’s how I feel about much of the story in this game, strange with some interesting moments and lore that is decent. A lot of the game's story feels like it exists for the purpose of creating exciting moments and fun combat scenarios but the actual story suffers because of it. At the end of the game I think it gets very complicated and I have a hard time following the main villain's plan and what he was trying to accomplish. So in the end I think the story is just there, nothing that bad but nothing that good either, the story was fine.

So overall I think, as a game, this is amazing with a few small hiccups here and there. The story doesn’t bring the game down, I had fun following it throughout but it was only fine in the end. With a few tweaks this game could be the best action game ever but as it is now it is still amazing and I give it a 9/10.

This wasn’t my first experience with Fire Emblem as I played Three Houses earlier this year and I thought it was good. I would probably give it a 7/10, but I definitely didn’t get the massive praise that game got. I just didn’t like the Garreg Mach sections that much at all, they got boring fast and you end up spending so much time there that I got bored of the game around the time skip. I did really enjoy the traditional Fire Emblem gameplay though so I was excited to try out another Fire Emblem that didn’t have that section that I didn't like in Three Houses, and that brings us to Echoes. Recently I, and a couple of friends, started to buy the 3DS Fire Emblem games because Nintendo is closing down the eshop which will probably increase the prices of 3DS titles, we wanted to own the games before that happened essentially. So I got all of them and then we decided to play Echoes at the same time as we all now owned it. There wasn’t really any reason why we chose Echoes over the other ones, it just happened.

So now onto the game, how was Echoes? I thought it was great with a couple of weak points and a section which I thought sucked. This game is split into two main protagonists, Alm and Celica, and you experience both of their journeys at the same time. It is a really cool way to structure a story and I thought it worked great in the game. I liked how they had to help out each other at certain points to progress, a smart way to make sure you were caught up with both at certain points. Now onto the gameplay, I enjoyed it a lot. I don’t think it is better than Three Houses because I thought the maps in that game were slightly more interesting to play even if it reused the maps all the time. The maps in Echoes are overall pretty basic and I guess it is understandable, the game is a remake of a Famicom game after all. There were some maps in Act 4 which I thought was shit however. The shit maps were swamps and I hated them, you just move so slowly in them and you also take damage every turn. The first swamp map I thought was the worst one as you had to traverse a big swamp to even get to the enemies and it took like 7 turns which just sucks. Then you get to the other side and there are now so many enemies to kill, it just felt unfair and not fun. That was my experience of most of Celicas side of Act 4. I just didn’t enjoy her side that much in act 4. Otherwise I really enjoyed the gameplay. The dungeons were great and fun to explore and I want to see them in more Fire Emblem games. I don’t like how enemies respawn if you switch rooms but that was more of a minor problem.

The music in this game is so good it’s insane. This is one of the best gaming soundtracks I have heard, it’s that good. I actually enjoyed the music more here than in Three Houses and I thought that game had great music too, it’s just amazing. The voice acting is also great, all of them did a great job. Special mention to Berkut which I thought did the best out of all of them.

Now onto the characters, they were great also. Not as good as Three Houses but that was like the best part of that game so it’s understandable, it’s a very high bar to reach. Alm and Celica were both great protagonists and they were fun to follow throughout the game. I enjoyed their relationship quite a bit too. Most of the other side characters were good too and it was fun to see them interact with each other. There were some characters that didn’t do much and were just there and some that I didn’t find that interesting but that’s bound to happen with so many characters to recruit, they did an overall good job with the characters. The villains I enjoyed also. My favorite villain and favorite character in the game was probably Berkut. I enjoyed his presence a lot and I thought his character was very well written and interesting to see throughout the game. His relationship with Rinea was good too. The ending to their characters were handled so well I thought, had a great arc. The other villains are pretty basic but they work for the story I think.

So to the story, I thought it was pretty good but not amazing. The biggest problem is that some of the twists were really obvious but I don’t think the writers realized how obvious they were because they have these big dramatic scenes to reveal something so obvious to the player. Some characters feel like they could reveal things but they just don’t for some reason. All the twists of the game weren’t like this, it was just some of them. The story is also a pretty basic war story that turns into a save the world story but it is well done overall even if it has been done a lot before.

So overall a very solid game that I enjoyed a lot. Biggest problem is the maps but most of the games maps are fine enough that it doesn’t bring down the game too much. I overall enjoyed it more than Three Houses and I give this game a 8/10.

This is the first tales of game that i have finished. I did try symphonia and beseria but i dropped them because i wanted to play other things at the time, but i did enjoy what i played of both. And i thought the game was great overall but the story and characters were lacking a little.

So to start of with the combat. It was fantastic and one of the most fun jrpg combat systems that i have used. I love the combo system this game has and all the moves you can use feel really satisfying to combo into each other. It all just felt really smooth to use and i was very impressed. The combat is the main reason i think this game is great but that isn´t to say that it doesn´t have problems that i think the next game should adress. The enemy veriaty isn´t the greatest, there are maybe 15 enemy types that get reskinned over and over which is dissapointing. I think the enemies are well designed overall but there are just too few of them. I also think some enemies and bosses have a little too much health, they can kinda drag out a little too long. I think the bosses are well designed in their mechanics and very fun to fight but are just slightly too long. It can get kinda repititive also but it isn´t that big of a problem. So, like i said the combat is amazing it just needs a few tweaks here and there to make it my favorite combat in a game.

The Voice acting is fantastic in this game, some of the best i have heard. I was impressed by basically everybody but especially Ray Chase as Alphen, he was incredibly good. And i also want to mention the music which i thought was alright, there were some good tracks but most of it was kinda forgettable imo.

The story was enjoyable i guess but it just feels lazily put together with a lot of unexplained things and not that many satisfying moments. But the biggest problem with this story is how the villains are handeled. They are all just really evil with basically no depth what so ever but that could be fine for some of the villains i guess but the problem is that every villain is poorly developed and are basically just evil just for the sake of being evil. The main villain is one of the worst i have seen and they try to give a reason for why its doing what its doing but that´s right before the final boss so by that point it´s already too late and i didn´t care at all. There were some good twists i guess but this villain problem is such a big problem that it brings down the stoy a lot, especially when the game starts questioning if killing these villains is even right but at the same time the villains literally have killed thousands and act like the most evil people in history, kinda ruins that whole part of the story. And i also think the game mishandled the final area, i was excited to explore this location the entire game but it just ends up being a long dungeon with a bunch of enemies to fight and very little story.

And then we get to the characters. I don´t think the main characters are bad (except for maybe Law) but they definitely feel underdeveloped despite how much they talk with each other. I think Alphen and Shionne are the exceptions though and i liked them both quite a bit. The relationship those two had i also thought was very well done and shows that these writers can write interesting characters that develop interesting relationships with others but it´s only those two. The other ones just feels so basic. The game just seems to think that if the characters have a lot of dialogue they are suddenly deep but a lot of that dialogue in this game is just the characters reapeting the same information over and over and over again. It also doesn´t help that about 90% of the skits are either repeat infomation from what was already stated in the main story or just don´t add anything at all to the characters. I was surprised how little the skits in this game actually added to the characters, i don´t know why i even listened to so many as i did, it just felt like a waste of time.

So overall, as a gameplay experience i loved this game a lot and it´s one of the best jrpg gameplay experiences i have ever had. At the same time though i only thought the characters and story was ok. I think game is still great however, that´s how good i thought the gameplay actually was, saves the entire game.