An okay game that sadly falls short of being great. It's cyberpunk aesthetic is pretty well realized, though if you are at all familiar with the genre you kinda know exactly what to expect in the visuals, the music and maybe even the story. There's nothing wrong with wearing your influences in your sleeve, but at the same time I feel like the game doesn't do anything in particular to stand out besides its very liberal use of the color red. Even if all these aspects aren't that remarkable, this game is one of those that lives or dies on the combat. Said combat can be loads of fun here, but I struggle to put it into words why it doesn't feel quite right. Its like it needed some extra months in development to have its proverbial screws tightened up. Guns do have a nice kick to them, the sound design is punchy and the resulting explosions of blood and funny ragdolls flying away when you shotgun a poor bastard point blank or vaporize someone into a skeleton with electric guns are very fun to watch if you can spot them in the chaos and really sell their lethality. Melee is not quite as satisfying, none of the weapons have enough impact and the range feels shorter than it should be. However I am weak to ragdolls, and seeing the bottom half of a goon fly away when I bisect him with a katana folded a billion times never stopped being funny so it gets pity points. To add flavor to the combat, you get a series of skill trees full of abilities and passives and enough skill points at a quick enough pace to be able to try out a lot of things. You can even refund any skill acquired and get all of the points back to respec into whatever else you want at any time which is very welcome. These skills didn't all feel very useful, and I felt obligated to spend into the tree that gave me more health and energy to use on abilities and the one that improved my dash. This game feels built with you dashing like a lunatic in mind, so handicapping yourself by not investing into it probably makes several sections a lot harder.

Finally done with this game. This was a months long odyssey for me, and while it only clocked out at 58 hours, it really felt like at least double that at times. This game was sold and indeed is a fairly traditional JRPG, an old school Final Fantasy in everything but name, but with a modern touch and features meant to showcase what the 3DS could do. Some are really cool and very welcome, like the one handed control setup and the option to tweak random encounter frequency down to none at all which is a godsend for when the game gets very repetitive. Unfortunately, some other features kinda really date the game in a way I haven't seen often. The game really wants you to have friends playing the game, or find people that play it with Streetpass. You need them to do the town rebuilding side quest that gives you some of the best items in the game, and for summoning in combat or to share their progress on jobs. Now, to be fair, the game does give you bot friends that do a good job at filling in if you don't have friends. They're basically useless for summoning, but they do help rebuilding the town. Still though, you need to go online to get them and lord knows how much longer any kind of online servers for the 3DS have left seeing as how the eshop closed not too long ago, which would make a very integral part of this game worthless and actively hamper the rest of your experience. Not only that, but the focus on community has an actual ingame explanation and having only bots as friends makes the ending funnier.

As for the actual game, I was enjoying it a fair bit up to a point. Graphics are lovely, all the towns in the game have a hand painted, layered look that for once looks even better with the 3ds, there's a decent amount of enemy variety, and the music is sublime. There's not one bad track in this game, and I love how each character has a theme that starts playing when you do a special move in combat, which gives you a buff depending on the move that lasts until the song ends, it's so fucking hype every time to hear Tiz's theme start playing. The combat is quite fun, the job system is pretty much lifted straight from Final Fantasy and you have quite a lot of build possibilities since you can use skills from two classes at once and choose up to 4 perks that all do a lot of different stuff, some can almost completely change how you play that character. I am also a big fan of the whole bravely/default system, which is basically borrowing turns from the future or saving them in advance by defending to act several times in one turn. It adds an extra layer of tactics that spices up the gameplay in a way only things like the ATB system on FF games or the press turn system on Megami Tensei have achieved. Unlike those two systems though, I feel like enemies in this game don't use brave or default a lot. Perhaps it is a blessing in disguise, as that could've been too annoying. I also liked the story, even if it was quite simple. The main characters and their interaction had enough charm to carry the plot.

But then, it all takes a turn. Because of said story, you are groundhog day'd into playing the game again. The first time this happened, I was confused but intrigued. You basically play through a condensed version of the game that's almost a boss rush, and I had fun beating every boss again with my stronger party. But then it happened again. And then again. And then one more time for good measure. Every time this happened again I seriously considered just dropping the game, but every time the sunken cost fallacy won. By the third time I just turned off random battles completely which did help a lot with the tedium, and I never even felt underleveled. Each human boss does change their tactics a little each run, and they even start grouping together near the end for very challenging fights that were also pretty fun, but it was a massive fuckin slog. There is actually two endings, and having done both I think the true ending is okay, but the tedium it takes to get there was borderline deal breaker for me and I only got through with sheer willpower.

Still feels weird to review a mobile game like this but frankly it kinda deserves it seeing as how before Zelda this was pretty much all I played for 2 months. This recent one happened to be my most mentally draining, busy college semester so in some of my free time when I wasn't just staring at a wall I started playing this cause a friend made it sound interesting. I also play Arknights every now and then, and while it is probably better (I'd be willing to say it is the best gacha out there period and the only one I might even try to recommend to non gacha players) AK requires an amount of brain power and time I could not afford if I wanted to make it through the semester alive. Blue Archive was exactly what I needed, fun and snappy game that I could play fairly quickly despite my brain being fried. From the very moment I downloaded this game it has this very nice, chill atmosphere. Kivotos, the city the game takes place on, is a massive, shining and pretty metropolis populated almost exclusively by underage anime girls. Very questionable detail aside, the game has a very lighthearted tone that I found really appealing during a stressful time. Even on the main story it rarely loses its metaphorical smile, though it knows when to be serious and even pretty interesting, and I found myself smiling along quite a bit. It can be pretty funny (dare I say cute too) when it wants to be. The cast of characters is pretty varied, and while they all take from the same trope basket anime has been sucking dry for 20 years, I never found a character I didn't like, and was fun to see them all interact with each other in events or with the player character even if that got pretty questionable at times. I think the game is pretty nice to look at, all characters are really expressive and their chibi 3D versions during combat have a lot of detail that give them personality. UI was fairly simple and usable which is something that you don't always see on a gacha, though I have some issues like when selecting a formation to use during a mission. Great presentation overall, feels really modern and thought out and it makes FGO look horribly ancient (and honestly in gacha game time it really is). I even quite enjoyed the music despite the genre not being my favorite. There's lots of memorable and catchy tunes that aren't too overbearing and are a great companion to whatever you're doing. The combat is quite simple, you don't directly control your squad of students and instead just choose when to use one of the skills of your squad. Each student has 1 active skill you can use, and you can pick between 3 at a time. You barely have to think for a lot of the missions, but a couple, particularly the very well made raid bosses, can require a little strategy and team building. Main issue of said team building, however, is the horrible cancer every gacha game carries with it: the gacha. For what its worth, I don't think it is that horrendous on this game. The rates are somewhat reasonable, the pity system isn't designed exclusively for whales, the game drip feeds you pretty reasonable amounts of currency (in fact, the global server of this game gets considerably more free currency overall than the original Japanese server) and there are ways to grind for a lot of characters just by playing. This doesn't shake off the bad taste in my mouth it leaves, but there are a lot of games that do gacha in a lot more predatory and insidious way. Overall, I really do enjoy this game despite its many flaws, and I can't deny I appreciate how it helped me get through a difficult period without going insane. It does a lot of things right for a gacha, and things like the sweep function that make it as easy as possible to grind stages or the really quick dailies you can finish in about 5 minutes are great quality of life features that more of this kind of game should adopt, and make me a lot less apprehensive about logging in each day to play at least a little bit.

Its been almost 2 months since I beat this game again and I just didn't add it here because I am a lazy cunt. Man, this game almost feels like it came from a different era. This kind of AAA experience of a single player, linear mission/chapter/level based campaign coming with a very separated multiplayer with tons of modes and different unlockables and shit is something you just don't see much these days with the increasingly braindead push for live service games. I feel like only Call of Duty keeps doing that, and even then they do it while maintaining their shitty battle royale live service on the side. I firmly believe we are going to start seeing a lot of that kind of game announce their EoS in the not too far away future. There is just not enough time, customers or money for all of them to keep an audience grinding forever. Fortunately, Titanfall 2 is not a live service, and what it does have on its current and final state is very fun. I replayed the campaign on hard and it was a great experience, with Cause and Effect being one of the most standout moments. Just a great mission all around with a great gimmick that sticks around just long enough to never feel stale. I can say the same thing about pretty much every mission to be honest, there is a lot of variety that kept me very entertained despite already knowing what was going to happen. The game plays amazing too, but I particularly enjoy playing as the pilot. You are stupidly nimble but easy to control and the game does a good job on selling the speed you're moving at. I hate to say it but I enjoyed playing as a titan considerably less despite how cool they are and how starved we are of mecha games. The campaign has a couple titan combat focused parts, and the duels against bosses on your titan can be fun, but I really didn't like how weak and slow it feels. The multiplayer is unfortunately pretty dead and the servers are kinda fucked. Most of the time I just wasn't able to find matches, and when I could 4 out of 5 times it was frontier defense. Which is fun enough but not quite what I wanted. In conclusion, fuck Respawn for cancelling Titanfall 3 in order to focus on Apex Legends, I will never forgive them

I stumbled into this game kinda by accident and was instantly curious. The Adventure Player is a "game" for the psp From Software released that is basically a VN maker program where everyone can design their own games and then post them online. Kaikiken, which seems to translate to The Haunted Zone is one of the three games Fromsoft included with the Adventure Player to show what it could do and inspire users. Unfortunately I don't think this game is particularly interesting. It is a collection of 3 really short ghost stories, and none of them were remarkable. The vibes were actually not bad since the accompanying soundtrack and sound effects were effective in making me feel tense and the backgrounds are decently spooky, but each story ended so fast there was barely any time to feel scared or disturbed. Each of the 3 stories has 2 different endings based on a single choice you get on each of the stories near the end, and the changes are minimal. The stories themselves are pretty cliché stuff, if you've seen The Grudge or even had a semblance of the story drunkenly explained to you by a passing hobo you can pretty easily guess what its gonna happen here.

Incredibly charming bite sized rpg slice of life card battler type thing that I enjoyed a lot. After Liberation Maiden I'd say this is the second most well known game of the Guild series. The small town summer vacation vibe really hits right from the start with the well done small town sound effects and the hand painted backgrounds which are a joy to look at, and that very relaxed atmosphere is there the whole game, which is short enough I was left wanting a bit more even if the gameplay is nothing to write home about. You pretty much just run around town looking for people to talk to and collecting little shiny things off the ground called glims. Once you have enough you can make a card, and once you have 5 cards you can fight the other kids in a minigame that is essentially overcomplicated rock paper scissors. There is actually a bit of strategy especially once you start unlocking some of the more interesting cards, like ones wtih two different symbols on it or that show you more of the opponent's hand, but a lot of the time its just rng.The game is structured in kinda non linear episodes, which are disparate storylines around the little town that you keep advancing by talking to people. There is only one ending though, and while the story is very simple it has an appealing element of magical realism. The titular friday monsters show up to beat the shit out of each other and no one is completely sure if they're real or not. A lot of what's happening can conceivably be just Sohta having a very active imagination, but the game never outright denies any of it. There is a tiny, tiny amount of postgame stuff once you finish the main story that exists in the form of a horrible web of talking to the right people in the right order to get different topics of conversation with which to talk to other people and get even more topics. It's almost completely pointless and I wasted like 3 hours of my life on it when there is no reward for doing any of it because I wanted to finish the last episode I was missing by getting every single card. I was only missing 1 glim to complete the last card I was missing, and it turned out to just be in a random part of town I hadn't explored properly. It was all a massive pain in the ass but besides that I think my experience with this game was fairly positive despite its simplicity.

A very short but charming rpg with some interesting ideas. I particularly enjoy the idea of limited healing consumables. You start with 40 and have to make those last the whole game as you never get more. It is horrendously stressful and adds a lot to the sense of having a dangerous adventure that you probably shouldn't be having. However, by the end of the game I still had about 14 left and that was only because if you don't grind right before the final boss there's a considerable difficulty spike. Also, for most of the game there is an easily reachable medic character in short distance that will heal and revive any character in your party for free and as many times as you want, which does undermine a bit of the tension. Besides that there's also character permadeath, if you don't save some characters they just fuckin die and the story continues without them and obviously they can't help you in combat. Though for most of the game you go alone regardless because sometimes the others just refuse to help you for no reason. This game is unfortunately too short to really make use of all of its cool ideas, but there is still something to be enjoyed here, and it is especially impressive with how it came out in1998, way before indie games were as common as they are now and made with kinda shitty tools, especially by today's standards.

I absolutely loved this. Right now, this is only a free prologue that lasted me about an hour, but what's here is so fucking cool and striking that I'm very excited for the full release, whenever that ends up happening. This game believes its the sickest motherfucker ever born, just like one of the protagonists, and by god does it end up actually kinda selling that idea. The music was excellent and memorable for such a short experience, and the awful dump of a city the protagonists are stuck in is full of weirdos to talk to and murder, and I enjoyed a lot just exploring the small section available in this prologue. The combat feels pretty messy, but it can be quite fun and even challenging on one of the bosses present here, though I do hope they keep refining it for Episode 1. This is the kind of game that really reminds me why video games are the coolest medium out there, and jesus christ the industry really needs more like it.

Nice little game. Lovely pixel art, nice music, and the story went in a very interesting direction that while a bit predictable, did leave me thinking. The few characters are well realized and written. The Spanish translation is also excellent, which is something that doesn't always happen in games, perhaps thanks to the developer being an argie. Solving the puzzles was also a good time, though I feel like for most I solved them without even really trying. The few that did take me a second were pretty satisfying to figure out, and I do appreciate that you have to option to skip every single one of them, but since the character you play as is canonically very bored and stubborn it just made sense to solve them all. I just like it when games integrate gameplay concepts and mechanics into the narrative.

Wonderfully engaging games that I ended up beating in a single sitting today. I was not expecting to enjoy this as much as I did, but on reflection it is understandable because I really loved 80 Days, another inkle game. This is a series of choose your own adventure book turned video game, and the sheer amount of different choices you can make is staggering. There's a lot of paths to take which adds a lot of replayability. Part 2 even has a built in time travel mechanic that allows you to take different paths while keeping your items and clues to solve the mystery. And I noticed many of the decisions I took in part 1 affected me a lot during 2. I look forward to seeing how all the dumb shit I did comes back to bite me in the ass on Sorcery 3. Presentation is nice, I liked the maps and the drawings every now and then that illustrated different locations and characters, they have a very unique style that is very striking. My biggest complaint is that part 2 kinda drags. I wanted to solve the mystery, so I had to fuck around the city about 4 times, and see a lot of the same stuff more than once. I appreciate how different it feels from part 1, and there was a lot of cool stuff to see in Khare. Maybe I wouldn't have felt it as bad if I hadn't played through both games in one sitting, but oh well. Also the combat isn't great, but very tolerable. It's mostly a guessing game but there's enough clues to kinda know what you're doing.

I was fairly interested on this game, but having now played it I think I get why it never got too much attention or even left Japan. It's a pretty mediocre "horror" puzzle game with a serious backtracking problem. For real, I think that the game would only be like 2 hours instead of 5 if you took out all of the stupid ass trips back and forth across the whole school you are forced to do. The backtracking is particularly annoying because the next step for a lot of puzzles does not trigger until you go talk to someone or walk to some specific part of the school. The school is not actually that big, but your character is slow, and there's a lot of rooms of dubious interest because your next step is not always clear. The vibes on the school are decently tense, but I wouldn't call this game scary. You quickly learn you are almost never in danger, except for very specific scripted moments when you are being pursued and have to hide. And even then, the single possible hiding place each time is really obvious. Even when you see monsters around the school, you have to deliberately get closer to die and the game gives you a lot of warning. Speaking of, the death animations are all lame except for 1, which is a shame.

So what does the game have if isn't scary? A fuckton of Lovecraft references, I guess. I'm not the greatest fan out there, but I enjoyed some of the references and I think people more into the Cthulhu mythos will get a kick out of pointing and doing the soyjak face at all the things they recognize. There's a bit of replayability in seeing a slightly different story depending on your choices, that allow you to learn more about different characters, but I feel like you'd need a guide to really figure out which one you're doing. Besides that there's 3 endings with a very convenient save point at the final zone to easily do all 3. Each of them are all right, if not too special. I like how even the true ending doesn't end in a completely happy note, which really fits with the whole tone of most Lovecraft stories.

I forgot to add my replay of this here, oops. I replayed it but this time I included the dlc, The Old Hunters. A lot of games would kill for atmosphere this thick and well done, especially in an action game that plays this well. This game is a pleasure to play, even if a couple enemies are annoying, especially bosses. Fuck Lawrence in particular, asshole took me longer than even The Orphan. The dlc has jaw dropping areas with really cool visuals and lots of new fights to be had, it's definitely worth the price.