Yono
this was a free game that was barely over an hour long and i still feel offended i wasted my time with it
2020
This review contains spoilers
played this after Persona 5 and it really made me wish I had a PS2 growing up so I could have played it when it was new. I grew up in an isolated suburb where seeing anyone without a car wasn't possible and I don't think anything has captured the atmosphere of that kind of environment as well as this game. When I played Persona 3 FES one thing I noticed is how the game felt really isolated due to the PS2's limitations with how many characters could be on-screen at once, this game decides to use a setting that took advantage of that and it works really well. Especially with the murder mystery plot there's a constant melancholy and somewhat creepy atmosphere, the teenagers seem existentially bored and really all they have is each other since there's nothing to do in the town. This even reflects in their personalities, I see lots of younger people complaining about the "cringe" of this game but the scenes are cringe because the story is revolving around characters that never had enough opportunity to socialize, making the protagonists notably more socially awkward than the other games in the series.
Thankfully this game never risks becoming boring despite the setting due to the main plot revolving around a supernatural murder mystery. I think these days everyone knows who the killer is but even going into it spoiled it still managed to make it interesting with the way its built up.
This game also tackles dark and/or progressive topics in a way that was way ahead of its time and tasteful considering it was released in 2008. Kanji, Rise, and Naota all have plotlines tackling their own issues regarding sexuality and gender, and that was just not something you saw in media in general back then, let alone a video game. I think in the current political climate its easy to look back at it as outdated, which it definitely is, but you can admire what it did at the time. Probably my favorite social link in the entire game exists outside of this political sphere though and is the Death arcana, centering around an old woman's conflicting feelings after her husband developed dimentia, putting her into the role of his caretaker until his death. Again a very sensitive topic to tackle but one done extremely well here.
The one thing keeping this game from a perfect score for me is having to deal with the dungeons after having played 5. 5 has amazing, deliberately designed dungeons that reminded me of Zelda dungeons a lot of the time in a great way, but this game was still using the randomly generated dungeons which really hampers the gameplay, although it's not nearly as bad as tartarus from Persona 3 since there's much less floors to grind through thankfully. But this ends up making the actual "game" part of this game probably less than 1/3rd of the experience with the rest of the game being a visual novel, albeit a fantastic visual novel. Writing and atmosphere wise this is definitely my favorite in the Hashino-directed series.
Thankfully this game never risks becoming boring despite the setting due to the main plot revolving around a supernatural murder mystery. I think these days everyone knows who the killer is but even going into it spoiled it still managed to make it interesting with the way its built up.
This game also tackles dark and/or progressive topics in a way that was way ahead of its time and tasteful considering it was released in 2008. Kanji, Rise, and Naota all have plotlines tackling their own issues regarding sexuality and gender, and that was just not something you saw in media in general back then, let alone a video game. I think in the current political climate its easy to look back at it as outdated, which it definitely is, but you can admire what it did at the time. Probably my favorite social link in the entire game exists outside of this political sphere though and is the Death arcana, centering around an old woman's conflicting feelings after her husband developed dimentia, putting her into the role of his caretaker until his death. Again a very sensitive topic to tackle but one done extremely well here.
The one thing keeping this game from a perfect score for me is having to deal with the dungeons after having played 5. 5 has amazing, deliberately designed dungeons that reminded me of Zelda dungeons a lot of the time in a great way, but this game was still using the randomly generated dungeons which really hampers the gameplay, although it's not nearly as bad as tartarus from Persona 3 since there's much less floors to grind through thankfully. But this ends up making the actual "game" part of this game probably less than 1/3rd of the experience with the rest of the game being a visual novel, albeit a fantastic visual novel. Writing and atmosphere wise this is definitely my favorite in the Hashino-directed series.
Let this be a warning to people who persist because the fans of this game keep telling you "it gets better, just stick with it".
It does not. If you don't like the game in the first 20 hours, you're not going to like the rest of it. I wanted to test this for myself and I stuck with it until the end of "An End to the Song" quest in Heavensward 3.3 since a lot of people told me that's the peak of the story. Here is how the game's main quest story is structured, and even though the Heavensward writing was definitely better than ARR's writing, this structure persisted.
-You get a quest
-The quest is talking to a political figure in a room for half an hour explaining to you what's happening in the world.
-you run to go talk to another person
-every single character has to explain to you how they feel about what just happened, in detail
-you repeat this for 10 quests
-finally you see something interesting happens
-there are another 10 quests where you have to hear every character plan out their next move and explain how they feel about what just happened to each other
-you queue up for a dungeon/trial and see a resolution
-the next 10 quests are characters talking about how they feel
-repeat
The story has high moments but they are drawn out and the rest of the story is poorly paced filler that detracts from the good parts. This game has no idea of the concept of "show, don't tell". I don't WANT to hear how characters feel about something, I would much rather try to insinuate it through their expressions, mood, tone, and personality. I took a break from the game after completing Heavensward and I forgot nearly the entire story in that time because it offers you nothing to think about at all, nothing is up to interpretation, it just spends an excruciating amount of time sitting you down in a room telling you how you should think and feel about everything rather than just letting you experience it.
Additionally this structure creates a gigantic disjoint between the story and gameplay. The NPCs you are experiencing the story with are not the people who you are running the dungeons/trials with, those are other players who are also supposedly extremely special powerful chosen ones just like you. When characters died I didn't feel sad because even though the game TOLD me they were traveling and fighting with me, when I actually was playing the game that is not what was happening, I was running around alone and fighting with random people in a matchmaking system. This game's story could be a visual novel with static JPGs and it would functionally be the same. None of the quests have any worthwhile objectives, most of them are literally running and teleporting back and forth between the same extremely small areas of the map and talking to people. There is almost no non-instanced content to do, there is very little reason to have a giant world to explore with other players. You read the massive exposition dumps, you use the duty finder to queue up for group content, you actually get to play a video game for a small amount of time, and you repeat. Every expansion takes about 40 hours and I am extremely burnt out already so I can't really see myself catching up to the current one.
It is a shame because I really like a lot about this game. I loved the first alliance raid with its FF3 references, I love the idea of an open-world Final Fantasy MMO since I grew up playing the older games. I love the world and music, I like the raids and dungeons. It's just that the bits of content that make the game worth it isn't worth enduring the grueling slog that is the MSQ. Unfortunately everything I have read online indicates the MSQ is the main draw of playing the game.
However, if you are enjoying the MSQ and you do like this game's writing, as I'm sure many people will given its popularity, then absolutely stick with it. Just don't let the game become a sunk cost fallacy if you aren't having fun. I spent 130 hours playing this but I could have realized it wasn't for me about 30 hours in.
It does not. If you don't like the game in the first 20 hours, you're not going to like the rest of it. I wanted to test this for myself and I stuck with it until the end of "An End to the Song" quest in Heavensward 3.3 since a lot of people told me that's the peak of the story. Here is how the game's main quest story is structured, and even though the Heavensward writing was definitely better than ARR's writing, this structure persisted.
-You get a quest
-The quest is talking to a political figure in a room for half an hour explaining to you what's happening in the world.
-you run to go talk to another person
-every single character has to explain to you how they feel about what just happened, in detail
-you repeat this for 10 quests
-finally you see something interesting happens
-there are another 10 quests where you have to hear every character plan out their next move and explain how they feel about what just happened to each other
-you queue up for a dungeon/trial and see a resolution
-the next 10 quests are characters talking about how they feel
-repeat
The story has high moments but they are drawn out and the rest of the story is poorly paced filler that detracts from the good parts. This game has no idea of the concept of "show, don't tell". I don't WANT to hear how characters feel about something, I would much rather try to insinuate it through their expressions, mood, tone, and personality. I took a break from the game after completing Heavensward and I forgot nearly the entire story in that time because it offers you nothing to think about at all, nothing is up to interpretation, it just spends an excruciating amount of time sitting you down in a room telling you how you should think and feel about everything rather than just letting you experience it.
Additionally this structure creates a gigantic disjoint between the story and gameplay. The NPCs you are experiencing the story with are not the people who you are running the dungeons/trials with, those are other players who are also supposedly extremely special powerful chosen ones just like you. When characters died I didn't feel sad because even though the game TOLD me they were traveling and fighting with me, when I actually was playing the game that is not what was happening, I was running around alone and fighting with random people in a matchmaking system. This game's story could be a visual novel with static JPGs and it would functionally be the same. None of the quests have any worthwhile objectives, most of them are literally running and teleporting back and forth between the same extremely small areas of the map and talking to people. There is almost no non-instanced content to do, there is very little reason to have a giant world to explore with other players. You read the massive exposition dumps, you use the duty finder to queue up for group content, you actually get to play a video game for a small amount of time, and you repeat. Every expansion takes about 40 hours and I am extremely burnt out already so I can't really see myself catching up to the current one.
It is a shame because I really like a lot about this game. I loved the first alliance raid with its FF3 references, I love the idea of an open-world Final Fantasy MMO since I grew up playing the older games. I love the world and music, I like the raids and dungeons. It's just that the bits of content that make the game worth it isn't worth enduring the grueling slog that is the MSQ. Unfortunately everything I have read online indicates the MSQ is the main draw of playing the game.
However, if you are enjoying the MSQ and you do like this game's writing, as I'm sure many people will given its popularity, then absolutely stick with it. Just don't let the game become a sunk cost fallacy if you aren't having fun. I spent 130 hours playing this but I could have realized it wasn't for me about 30 hours in.
2013
this is objectively a time waster and I can't even quantify it with a score. However the way I played it was mostly afk while doing work in a second monitor and the slow grinding of skills really helped me focus and make my work a lot more tolerable, so that's the value this game gave me. There are a lot of activities in this game that allow you to only have to click once or twice every minute so its a perfect game for that kind of thing.
I've spent time doing things that aren't afk but I don't really enjoy those activities but at this point I am a little addicted in progressing my account. At time of writing I have 91 days or about 2200 hours played which does seem a little absurd but I don't feel too bad about it due to how many of those were spent AFK.
This game really doesn't value your time or life and there are people who are addicted with a concerning amount of time in it who play probably 12-14 hours a day who are doing endgame PvM and aren't doing AFK stuff, so I can't recommend it to anyone in good faith, but I do really like it.
I've spent time doing things that aren't afk but I don't really enjoy those activities but at this point I am a little addicted in progressing my account. At time of writing I have 91 days or about 2200 hours played which does seem a little absurd but I don't feel too bad about it due to how many of those were spent AFK.
This game really doesn't value your time or life and there are people who are addicted with a concerning amount of time in it who play probably 12-14 hours a day who are doing endgame PvM and aren't doing AFK stuff, so I can't recommend it to anyone in good faith, but I do really like it.
like most people I've never played an Armored Core game and picked this one up for the FromSoft development. It is a pretty good game and I do love the amount of mecha customization, I definitely spent almost as much time making builds as I did actually playing.
This game however is a pretty uneven experience due to the absurd difficulty spikes the bosses provide. The majority of the game is extremely easy, you are able to effortlessly blow up everything in your path and even enemy Armored Cores go down in seconds. I think I beat the final boss of the Arena in under 3 seconds. This game however incorporates a few bosses that are very Souls style and I don't think this game's combat is right for fighting them: you don't have invincibility frames while dodging and whether your weapons hit or not is determined by your stats rather than your aim. There were 2 bosses in particular that felt so difficult to hit and moved so fast that it was a struggle even keeping the camera facing them as they darted around the screen. This game has a very battlebots feeling where your success feels just as dependent on making a good build as it does your mechanical skill. I honestly wouldn't mind that for this kind of game, but that's hindered by the fact that the weapon balancing is very poor. You would think there would be a good tradeoff between weight and damage but there isn't, DPS of weapons seems all over the place and some weapons just feel arbitrarily way worse than others in nearly every way. Most playthroughs I see people using the same types of broken tank builds and there's good reason for that, the easiest way to get past a boss you're stuck on is to just find an extremely good build and use it. If you're the type of person to just make one build and stick with it forever you might not like this game, because once you find the "broken" build you'll effortlessly cruise through most of the game with it.
I think they should have refined this game's combat system a lot more if they wanted to add these types of bosses to the series, but they decided to keep it more similar to the old games, so it ends up being this mesh that doesn't work and makes these difficulty spikes more frustrating than fun.
That being said despite my complaints I do really like this game and I'm already replaying it, it's just too fun playing around with different builds since the movement is so well done. I just wish the combat had a little more substance and mechanical skill to it.
This game however is a pretty uneven experience due to the absurd difficulty spikes the bosses provide. The majority of the game is extremely easy, you are able to effortlessly blow up everything in your path and even enemy Armored Cores go down in seconds. I think I beat the final boss of the Arena in under 3 seconds. This game however incorporates a few bosses that are very Souls style and I don't think this game's combat is right for fighting them: you don't have invincibility frames while dodging and whether your weapons hit or not is determined by your stats rather than your aim. There were 2 bosses in particular that felt so difficult to hit and moved so fast that it was a struggle even keeping the camera facing them as they darted around the screen. This game has a very battlebots feeling where your success feels just as dependent on making a good build as it does your mechanical skill. I honestly wouldn't mind that for this kind of game, but that's hindered by the fact that the weapon balancing is very poor. You would think there would be a good tradeoff between weight and damage but there isn't, DPS of weapons seems all over the place and some weapons just feel arbitrarily way worse than others in nearly every way. Most playthroughs I see people using the same types of broken tank builds and there's good reason for that, the easiest way to get past a boss you're stuck on is to just find an extremely good build and use it. If you're the type of person to just make one build and stick with it forever you might not like this game, because once you find the "broken" build you'll effortlessly cruise through most of the game with it.
I think they should have refined this game's combat system a lot more if they wanted to add these types of bosses to the series, but they decided to keep it more similar to the old games, so it ends up being this mesh that doesn't work and makes these difficulty spikes more frustrating than fun.
That being said despite my complaints I do really like this game and I'm already replaying it, it's just too fun playing around with different builds since the movement is so well done. I just wish the combat had a little more substance and mechanical skill to it.
2017
I don't see what everyone else sees in this game or really the NieR series at all for that matter. It's a repetitive slog with shallow and unbalanced combat. On normal mode it's nearly impossible to die, on hard mode I was getting one-shot from full health so much I found the game unplayable, so there was no "balanced" difficulty where the game actually provided a fair challenge. The combat does not offer a lot of diversity since you fight every enemy by doing a precision dodge and then attacking it with an overly simplistic system that doesn't offer enough options compared to other character-action games. The story is good but it makes me think this game is hitting a very young target audience because it's giving an existential message in an extremely on-the-nose and melodramatic way. People talk about this game's story like they have never seen or read any decent piece of media about the apocalypse before. This game has a lot of opportunity for environmental storytelling due to its post-apocalyptic setting, but it instead decides to not take that to its advantage at all and tell the entire story through cutscenes and the setting is mostly a drab backdrop.
The OST I think is the only part of the game I loved as much as everyone else, but I can just listen to that by itself without actually playing the game.
The OST I think is the only part of the game I loved as much as everyone else, but I can just listen to that by itself without actually playing the game.
bought this to play with my friends. This was the first CoD I played since the original MW2 back in 2009, and at first it was decent but a year goes by and this turns out to be one of the biggest scams in gaming history. Not only do they change the UI to be filled with microtransactions and an online store constantly to the point where I stopped playing the game because they had a "press X to pay 20 dollars for battle pass" right when the game booted that I came close to accidentally clicking on and spending more money against my will, but the next CoD is a full $70 expansion pass to this one (that I know people will buy anyways).
complete garbage skinnerbox designed to extract as much money as possible from people. Really a shame.
complete garbage skinnerbox designed to extract as much money as possible from people. Really a shame.
I can't overstate the impact this game had on me. One of the best worlds and some of the most engaging worldbuilding I've ever seen, the concept that you're traveling through parts of a massive living continent is amazing. There's so much attention to detail in how you can see all the anatomy of the Bionis where it belongs.
The story is one of the best in any JRPG, it could be converted into a TV show and it would be one of my favorites. It doesn't suffer from the stilted pacing issues many other JRPGs have, every moment feels important and engaging and the ending was beautiful and perfectly reflected on the story's message.
The characters are really likable and well voice acted in English. Shulk, Reyn, and Melia especially stand out as some of the most memorable JRPG party members I've had. The bonds between characters feel so real and genuine here.
The music is fantastic and the world is amazing to take part in and explore. This is a great, relaxed game that you can lose yourself in for hours and hours.
The Switch version is for sure the better version since it fixes annoying issues with the Wii version's sidequests and makes them a lot more leisurely and straightforward to complete.
I think despite my high rating there are some people who will find a certain aspect of the game disappointing: namely, the gameplay loop of this game is very similar to MMOs like WoW or FF14 with how you explore the world and engage with sidequests, the FF14 comparison is especially relevant (even though this came before ARR) since you engage with the story a lot in a simialr way, although I think the quests here are much more interesting than that game and most MMOs. However the combat is very simplistic compared to an MMO: you pick one of three characters and you get 8 abilities on individual cooldowns + 1 extra special ability. There is some added depth on top of that with chain attacks, Shulk's Monado arts, break/topple/daze status, etc - but if youre used to the complex rotations of MMOs it might feel a little barebones at first. However for the game's length I think it's servicable and I found the combat pretty enjoyable, it is worth giving a chance.
The story is one of the best in any JRPG, it could be converted into a TV show and it would be one of my favorites. It doesn't suffer from the stilted pacing issues many other JRPGs have, every moment feels important and engaging and the ending was beautiful and perfectly reflected on the story's message.
The characters are really likable and well voice acted in English. Shulk, Reyn, and Melia especially stand out as some of the most memorable JRPG party members I've had. The bonds between characters feel so real and genuine here.
The music is fantastic and the world is amazing to take part in and explore. This is a great, relaxed game that you can lose yourself in for hours and hours.
The Switch version is for sure the better version since it fixes annoying issues with the Wii version's sidequests and makes them a lot more leisurely and straightforward to complete.
I think despite my high rating there are some people who will find a certain aspect of the game disappointing: namely, the gameplay loop of this game is very similar to MMOs like WoW or FF14 with how you explore the world and engage with sidequests, the FF14 comparison is especially relevant (even though this came before ARR) since you engage with the story a lot in a simialr way, although I think the quests here are much more interesting than that game and most MMOs. However the combat is very simplistic compared to an MMO: you pick one of three characters and you get 8 abilities on individual cooldowns + 1 extra special ability. There is some added depth on top of that with chain attacks, Shulk's Monado arts, break/topple/daze status, etc - but if youre used to the complex rotations of MMOs it might feel a little barebones at first. However for the game's length I think it's servicable and I found the combat pretty enjoyable, it is worth giving a chance.
2018
I can't really give this a score because the nature of this game makes it so hard to consistently rate but it's very unique and the best game at what it does, its a great concept and one of the only multiplayer games that actually feels like a "grand adventure". Every time you log in something different happens and the game unfolds in a really organic way, all while offering lots of freedom and a comparatively non-predatory live service experience.
However I've only played this with friends and I don't think this game would work if you don't have friends to play it with. Part of why its great with friends is there's lots of downtime when you're just sailing and its plenty of time to chat and get immersed. I can't imagine that being anywhere near as enjoyable with a group of randoms, although you never know.
However I've only played this with friends and I don't think this game would work if you don't have friends to play it with. Part of why its great with friends is there's lots of downtime when you're just sailing and its plenty of time to chat and get immersed. I can't imagine that being anywhere near as enjoyable with a group of randoms, although you never know.
i bought this game because it got really hyped up by Nintendo Power back in the day but it controls like complete dick and really wasn't fun. This game is a really good example of how the Wii's motion controls failed, if the Wii launched with MotionPlus this could have been really good but there's lots of times when the controls barely work at all which hindered the game's playability.
2016
This had so much potential at launch but it turns out this game was actually a social experiment to see the maximum amount of agony a video game could inflict on its player
2023
Its really hard to review fighting games but this is probably the best launch experience ive had with any fighting game and id recommend to beginners too
2023
This review contains spoilers
not done with it yet (edit: finished it and my opinion is unchanged so I'll leave this review up) but this game probably has the highest highs and lowest lows of nearly any game I've played. I'm stopping for a moment to write this review because I just completed the Bahamut boss fight which was one of the coolest things I have experienced in any game in general, and then the game follows it up with nearly an hour of very boring exposition cutscenes and a poorly done attempt at ripping off Game of Thrones.
It was initially advertised as an open world but it's really not, it's an open world game in the same sense that Witcher 2 or Ocarina of Time are open world games, but even with the smaller world size the world feels very empty. There is almost no incentive to explore or do anything other than follow the quest markers - no chests with useful items, no reason to fight world enemies, no secrets, not nearly enough crafting to make the materials you can find useful, the game gives you way too much money so no reason to look for that, just absolutely nothing. The only content in the open world are the sidequests and hunts. I like the idea that the hunts are the only thing in the game that don't give you quest markers, however this doesn't add value in a game where exploring isn't interesting or worthwhile, as there's no reason to not just run straight to your objectives. The sidequests are very hit or miss as they all consist of "talk to random people and fight an enemy encounter or two", some of them have great stories behind them that make them worth doing, others are just boring. Your party members also don't interact with the sidequests at all which makes them feel very detached from the rest of the game, they have no dialog and don't even show up in the cutscenes despite showing up for the fights.
However once you are in the linear segments this game becomes one of the most fun action games I have played thanks to its tight combat, diversity of abilities, and really great setpiece moments. You can replay all of these portions in the "arcade" section of the game and I realized that if you stripped away all the fluff - the empty open world segments, the poorly done worldbuilding trying to copy the complexity of Game of Thrones and just like Game of Thrones failing at the end by ditching the story about political intrigue and making a story about an evil blue guy who wants to kill everyone, the intrusive 14 hours of cutscenes with many that really did not need to be there. You strip this away and this game is a fantastic Devil May Cry spinoff.
I'm not exaggerating when I say Devil May Cry as this game shares its combat director Itsuno and his influence is clear - this game has jump cancels, helm breaker, stinger, Nero's devil bringer, nero's gun and charged shots, and tons and tons of other moves taken straight from Devil May Cry presented in a more simplified and easy to control package, which isn't necessarily a bad thing.
This game didn't need to be Final Fantasy 16, it has too many ideas conflicting at once that don't go well with each other. But when it's good, it's really really good.
It was initially advertised as an open world but it's really not, it's an open world game in the same sense that Witcher 2 or Ocarina of Time are open world games, but even with the smaller world size the world feels very empty. There is almost no incentive to explore or do anything other than follow the quest markers - no chests with useful items, no reason to fight world enemies, no secrets, not nearly enough crafting to make the materials you can find useful, the game gives you way too much money so no reason to look for that, just absolutely nothing. The only content in the open world are the sidequests and hunts. I like the idea that the hunts are the only thing in the game that don't give you quest markers, however this doesn't add value in a game where exploring isn't interesting or worthwhile, as there's no reason to not just run straight to your objectives. The sidequests are very hit or miss as they all consist of "talk to random people and fight an enemy encounter or two", some of them have great stories behind them that make them worth doing, others are just boring. Your party members also don't interact with the sidequests at all which makes them feel very detached from the rest of the game, they have no dialog and don't even show up in the cutscenes despite showing up for the fights.
However once you are in the linear segments this game becomes one of the most fun action games I have played thanks to its tight combat, diversity of abilities, and really great setpiece moments. You can replay all of these portions in the "arcade" section of the game and I realized that if you stripped away all the fluff - the empty open world segments, the poorly done worldbuilding trying to copy the complexity of Game of Thrones and just like Game of Thrones failing at the end by ditching the story about political intrigue and making a story about an evil blue guy who wants to kill everyone, the intrusive 14 hours of cutscenes with many that really did not need to be there. You strip this away and this game is a fantastic Devil May Cry spinoff.
I'm not exaggerating when I say Devil May Cry as this game shares its combat director Itsuno and his influence is clear - this game has jump cancels, helm breaker, stinger, Nero's devil bringer, nero's gun and charged shots, and tons and tons of other moves taken straight from Devil May Cry presented in a more simplified and easy to control package, which isn't necessarily a bad thing.
This game didn't need to be Final Fantasy 16, it has too many ideas conflicting at once that don't go well with each other. But when it's good, it's really really good.
This felt like a really earnest effort so it's hard to be angry about it but it's definitely not good. I feel like this game kind of misunderstood the original Yume Nikki as being a horror game and tried to emulate that by putting its aesthetic into an environment similar to a game like Little Nightmares or Inside, but any attempt at understanding the original Yume Nikki was likely to be wrong.
The original Yume Nikki was made by a person who we know almost nothing about and was described by its creator Kikiyama as a game about "a NEET who dreams" and nothing more. It's my belief that, similar to the game LSD Dream Emulator that inspired it, the game was a deeply personal work and an actual dream diary of Kikiyama's with no deeper meaning intended at all, that they never intended to see success with. While I have no proof of this the game's highly experimental nature, free release on an isolated website, and Kikiyama's reclusion and total haltage of updates after its surprise blowout popularity all support this. There's also a lot of things in Yume Nikki that you can tell was the creator messing around with RPG Maker trying to learn things, mostly a lot of the effects.
Because of this someone who isn't Kikiyama trying to re-create the mood or atmosphere of the original game at all is impossible. So instead of a game that feels like an actual dream like Yume Nikki, what you get is a very mediocre attempt at a horror game. I think the "horror game" part is what people get so hung up about because I think it was made into this in part so it had a niche to market to since this is a paid game unlike the original, which couldn't really be described as any popular genre of game, but its most famous elements were the horror elements like the Uboa scene. Deram Diary isn't terrible and it's not offensive, but its bland and forgettable. Seeing tribute paid to Kikiyama's original art and ideas was really nice though.
The original Yume Nikki was made by a person who we know almost nothing about and was described by its creator Kikiyama as a game about "a NEET who dreams" and nothing more. It's my belief that, similar to the game LSD Dream Emulator that inspired it, the game was a deeply personal work and an actual dream diary of Kikiyama's with no deeper meaning intended at all, that they never intended to see success with. While I have no proof of this the game's highly experimental nature, free release on an isolated website, and Kikiyama's reclusion and total haltage of updates after its surprise blowout popularity all support this. There's also a lot of things in Yume Nikki that you can tell was the creator messing around with RPG Maker trying to learn things, mostly a lot of the effects.
Because of this someone who isn't Kikiyama trying to re-create the mood or atmosphere of the original game at all is impossible. So instead of a game that feels like an actual dream like Yume Nikki, what you get is a very mediocre attempt at a horror game. I think the "horror game" part is what people get so hung up about because I think it was made into this in part so it had a niche to market to since this is a paid game unlike the original, which couldn't really be described as any popular genre of game, but its most famous elements were the horror elements like the Uboa scene. Deram Diary isn't terrible and it's not offensive, but its bland and forgettable. Seeing tribute paid to Kikiyama's original art and ideas was really nice though.
2018
Underrated and overlooked