Video version: https://youtu.be/3ZUPOpEEyt4

I’m a big MegaTen fan, but I just couldn’t do this one. Soul Hackers 2 has some good ideas and has some of the aspects that I love from this series, but ultimately, I was unable to finish the game and it felt like a chore to get as far as I did.

The game starts with an almost forty minute cutscene sequence and that kinda sets the tone for the pacing here. It is slow, monotonous, and one of the laziest JRPGs I have played in a while which really hurts to say given the studio that it’s coming from.

Level Design
The dungeons are quite literally just connected hallways and small rooms, there is VERY little actual variety there and the devs couldn’t even be bothered to include chests or other physical treasure to find. The exploration is limited to dead ends that sometimes have one of your demons standing by to hand you an item.

It doesn’t even take that long to get that bad, because by the second dungeon you are literally walking on floating hallways and rooms in cyberspace. It is the most basic of JRPG dungeon designs and is something I would expect from a student project, not a full-fledged AAA production from a respected studio.

Story
I wouldn’t say the story has been terrible so far, but it has hardly done anything to hold my interest. It’s your typical JRPG sci-fi with just a bit of edge to it, kinda reminiscent of Scarlet Nexus, but a bit more narrow in its focus. This is good in some ways, but given the already slow pacing, it’s a bit of a pain as you wait for things to build up and the sheer number of cutscenes included here does not do it any favors.

Combat
The only thing I outright enjoyed here would be the combat. It’s your usual turn-based combat, elemental attack types, strengths, weaknesses, bunch of items to use and upgrades to equip, and my favorite element from this series - the ability to recruit demons and fuse them together into stronger ones.

All of that is some good stuff. Granted, it doesn’t really do much to elevate it further than that, but at this point I will take what I can get from this game.

Overall
Outside of that, there’s nothing else really to note here. It’s a roughly 30 hour JRPG with okay graphics, okay music, and fun combat, but absolutely awful dungeon design, a monotonous gameplay loop, and a story that leans more towards boring than interesting. I had planned to finish this one up for a full review, but honestly, I just can’t see myself burning any more time than I already have here.

Video review: https://youtu.be/TMbcl_T5pxE

Klonoa has made a grand return with not just one, but two remasters. I’m a big platformer fan, especially for games from this era, so I was excited to give it a shot.

Gameplay
The games play as 2.5D platformers, although the second game does feature a lot more 3D stuff. Both are good at what they set out to do: straightforward, yet fun platforming. The game mechanics are introduced at a steady rate, the environments are easily some of the best I have seen in this genre in years, and I was a really big fan of the dual purpose that enemies serve. One one hand, they are enemies and can cause you damage, but on the other, most have some sort of unique ability that can be activated only after you grab them.

It’s a lot like Kirby in this way and it works really well with the level design, hiding just enough secrets to keep exploration interesting, but without going overboard to the point of tedium. There’s always something new to find, some new boss to take down, some new environment to explore - it’s pretty good at keeping up the variety, although it is also important to note that both games combined take roughly eight hours to clear. Sounds short, but honestly, it’s perfectly fine and might even be a bit longer than it needs to.

I say that because the second game does resort to a bit of backtracking with some of its levels. A bit disappointing to see in place of entirely new stuff, but again, it doesn’t go overboard there.

What it does go overboard on - at least in the second game’s case - is the story. There is easily like six or seven times more dialogue in the second game compared to the first and honestly, a lot of it is not necessary. Not to say that the story is bad, but maybe half of it could have been done away with and nothing of value would be lost.

So while the second game may be a massive upgrade in terms of general gameplay and level design, it does have some faults of its own and I’m still struggling to decide which of the two was my favorite with this in mind. Regardless, I had a great time with both and the good vastly outweighs the bad in both games.

Remaster
On the remaster front, the game is solid. There's updated graphics, high resolution support, uncapped frame rates, customizable controls, and some new additions like difficulty options and a local co-op mode. I played it without any sort of technical issues at 4k 144fps and the controls are simple enough that it’s fine on both controller and keyboard and mouse.

A few things to note though. The anti-aliasing option appears to be broken as switching it between off and 16x does not produce any noticeable difference, even when zoomed in. I was also not a fan of how aggressive the bloom setting was and ended up keeping that toggled off. Otherwise, the settings are fine.

Overall
Klonoa Phantasy Reverie Series is a great remaster of two fun games. Solid platforming, fantastic level design, great music, and the remaster does a nice job touching things up for modern platforms. It’s a nostalgic experience for sure and one I would recommend to platforming fans.

Full video version: https://youtu.be/az-aW-iwSlY

Cities: Skylines 2 should not be released. It pains me to say as a big fan of the original game, but the sequel here is simply not in an acceptable state.

So basically, Paradox sent me a copy of the game - thanks to the for that by the way - and given how many hours I have poured into the original, I went into this one super excited. I booted up the game and was immediately met by a 5 fps main menu. Not 60, not 30, but just 5. I figured, okay, I’ll change some settings around to see what I can get to work. The devs sent me their recommended graphics settings, so I swapped to those and managed to get the main menu to roughly 70 fps.

This was great, until I hopped into the actual game and it wasn’t. After just an hour of gameplay, that 70 fps deteriorated all the way down to 30. After two hours, it was down to 15-20 with my population not even hitting 10,000 yet. I was playing at 1440p on a mix of mostly low and some medium settings. My system specs are above the recommended requirements, even after they were raised a few weeks ago (which was already a massive red flag to begin with).

The performance is just abysmal. I can see maybe 30 fps being fine, but the fact that the game frequently dips to half of that on almost the lowest settings is just unacceptable. It makes the experience feel slow, choppy, and frustrating. It’s not even like the game itself is bad. From what I have played, it has been a solid upgrade to what I loved about the first game. It’s just that those upgrades are marred by some of the worst performance I have seen from a PC release all year.

I’ve seen others concerned with the change of modding platforms - from Steam Workshop to Paradox’s own mod platform - but honestly, that doesn’t bother me so much. The performance is all that really matters at this point and I cannot in good faith give the game a proper review until it is optimized. That might take months. Maybe longer.

Overall
I cannot recommend Cities: Skylines 2. It’s almost unplayable in its current state and the fact that it is being released anyways is really just sad. The publisher knows the game isn’t ready and that really just rubs me the wrong way. Maybe good for business, but bad for the consumer and that is ultimately who I always will side with.

Full video review: https://youtu.be/VaLxvyMRXBc

Somehow five years have already passed since the last Yomawari release and besides the time passing too quickly, I enjoyed that game a good bit. Super atmospheric, a large world to explore, and some decent puzzles too. This one though? Ehhhh....

Atmosphere
The atmosphere is easily the game’s best point. It is quite literally the same as it was five years ago: limited lighting, grainy world design, absolutely creepy yokai roaming about, and ambient sound design in place of a traditional soundtrack. For the type of story being told here, all of this works in the game’s favor.

That said, I was a bit disappointed that there’s really nothing “new” to differentiate the feel from the last release. It uses the same audio and graphical assets, has a very similar world design, and somehow feels a bit more empty.

Game World
One of the things I praised in the last release was that large world with plenty of stuff to find. This game has some of that, but it doesn’t quite match the extent of the former and honestly, it became boring to have to trek across identical, empty areas just to get to the next story objective.

Gameplay
I won’t make the case that Midnight Shadows was super involved gameplay-wise, but I can’t help but feel that Lost in the Dark took it even further down. Most of the gameplay involves running around, picking up items to get you to the next area, and then repeating. In fact, the first two “dungeons” or whatever were literally me searching however many rooms for a key or other item, picking it up and bringing it to unlock or activate something, and then repeating that in the newly unlocked area.

It’s back and forth busywork and maybe I’ve become less tolerant of such gameplay over the years, but the last one had a bit of this too, it just didn’t feel like to this extent. When you do get to a cool part - the boss encounters - those last maybe a few minutes before you have to cycle through the next hour or so of searching and pressing your one button to interact with things.

Performance
I ran the game at 4k 60 fps with no issues to speak of, although the settings are limited to just simple window and resolution options. Controls are simple enough that you can get away with doing keyboard and mouse, but it plays way better on controller and that is what I opted to use for my playthrough.

Overall
I cannot in good faith recommend Yomawari: Lost in the Dark. The last game - Midnight Shadows - may have been fun enough, but this is somehow worse while adding nothing really new. Great atmosphere, but with the same assets. A large open world to explore, but nothing really rewarding to find. A decently interesting story, but matched with some seriously tedious gameplay that left me bored after just a couple hours. Maybe in a bundle or on deep sale - but for now it’s not worth it.

Full video review: https://youtu.be/wV6-3ozOKkU

It’s important to set expectations here. This may be a crossover, but this is ultimately just another Neptunia spin-off and it brings pretty much all the usuals associated with that label. The gameplay that has a good base, but some flaws on top of it, the story that takes up around 75% of the game’s play time, and the overall “not really taking itself seriously”-kind of attitude. This doesn’t make it a bad game though – just a Neptunia game.

Gameplay
Ninja Wars is a full-blown action-based combo brawler that is kind of reminiscent of the Ys games. You have your one basic attack string per character, but then a handful of character abilities that can be comboed together in different ways. The core to the combat here is fine – there’s a good amount of feedback and it’s not as weightless as it appears.

That said, the flow can be a bit iffy. The basic strings feel great to use and the character abilities too, but I was not a fan of how the game is effectively paused when you’re selecting which ability to use. That and I also did not like the fact that these abilities cannot be canceled mid-animation.

I guess it’s a way of balancing difficulty, but most of them have so much ending lag that it’s like the game is actively encouraging you not to combo them together. The entire combo system is effectively useless against bosses anyways since they do not stagger like regular enemies and you only ever have enough time to really get off one ability before the boss starts attacking again.

Bosses/Difficulty
And on the topic of those bosses – they’re actually pretty good. Multiple unique attacks, cool designs, and some surprisingly high difficulty. I won’t deny, some of the bosses took me multiple attempts, but it never reached the point of outright frustration. What started off as a relatively easy game became less so as it went on – granted, I also was a bit of a pro gamer taking on dungeons that were higher level than my characters.

Level Design
The dungeons are just okay. It is a Neptunia game, so I can’t say I was expecting much, but it’s pretty much just the usual long hallways, bigger rooms to accommodate enemy fights, and only a couple branching paths along the way. The loot you find is mostly healing items and the occasional weapon upgrade – beyond that the exploration is extremely limited.

Content
This can be seen in the overall game loop as well. You basically: enter level, watch cutscene, kill some enemies, take on a mid-boss, kill some more enemies, take on dungeon boss, and then watch another cutscene. Repeat this for about ten hours and you’ve completed Neptunia x Senran Kagura: Ninja Wars. It’s a fairly barebones overall package and the extra stuff on top of that isn’t really all that exciting either.

Customization
You can’t change character appearance and the only customization you gave is with your two equipped ranged weapons and your two charms per character – basically passive upgrades. The most advanced it gets is with the spirit gem feature, which allows you to align spirit gems on a board, each providing some passive buff that is only increased depending on how you lay them out on the spirit board. It’s a nice feature to have, but again, nothing too major here.

Story
At least the main story is fine. I wouldn’t say it’s… great, but if you like the usual Neptunia comedy-adventure duo, that is on full display here – just with the Senran Kagura girls as a bonus. The setting is this neat mix of Japanese history, but with that classic Neptunia sci-fi/video game twist and it kinda reminded me of Cyberdimension Neptunia. Par for the series – the story does not take itself seriously and you will get the usual bad guys turning good and other predictable plot developments.

Overall
Ninja Wars takes elements that make both series great and combines them into something just… okay. The combat is pretty involved as far as those two series go, but it doesn’t flow all that well. The boss fights are cool, but the aren’t enough of them and the game is over in just 10 hours – of which roughly only 2-3 were actual gameplay. The story, which makes up the rest of those hours, is also nothing special beyond the typical Neptunia fare. It’s not bad, just average.

Full video review: https://youtu.be/KPxtWCd0g3k

Dōkyūsei - one of the most important visual novels ever released. It came out all the way back in 1992 and is generally considered to be one of the biggest dating sims of the time and part of the reason why that genre took off. Now here we are thirty years later with a remaster of that very game. Does it hold up? Kinda.

Story and Gameplay
There is practically no real “story” here. You’re just some dude spending the rest of his summer break messing around and trying to pick up some girls. No major drama, no twists, none of that - just constant dates with girls and maybe a little bit of character building for each, especially towards the end.

I found this approach to be both good and bad. It’s good in that this lends to a lot of interactivity. You don’t just sit there and spam enter a bunch, but instead are constantly moving around, interacting with the environment and different CGs, and picking which characters you want to talk to by the in-game minute. As someone that plays a ton of visual novels, it was refreshing to have this sense of control.

That said - it does come with one major downside: a lackluster main story. If you’re not a fan of whatever character’s story? Well, there’s really nothing else to do other than pursue some other character. They are hardly tied together and even the individual characters themselves don’t have that going for them. Some characters only have a few events and, as such, have really poorly developed personalities, backstories, all that. This leads to the relationship coming off as forced, cheap, and there just to fill a specific archetype.

Then you get a few other characters that have a lot of events and even some conflicts to overcome - which in turn develops their character. I found these to be the most satisfying personally. Maybe I just like a well-written character or maybe I’m playing the game wrong by looking for something like that. But again, it is a dating sim, so I would hope that such a game could at least deliver a bit on that front.

Even then though, the character stories themselves are the most surface level thing - those conflicts that come up are resolved just as quickly and often left me disappointed with what could have been. Again, some are better than others, but I have now finished the game multiple times and really only liked maybe two or three characters max out of the fourteen total.

So I guess it all comes down to what you want. For a dating sim? It’s got pretty much all the bases covered. Don’t go in looking for deeper character writing and you are set. There are a ton of choices to make, tons of places to visit, tons of character events to unlock - the game does an absolutely solid job there. Actually caring for said characters and remembering them weeks after beating the game? Maybe not so much.

Writing
The writing is VERY comedy-heavy and VERY 90s. Stupid one-liners, characters acting completely ridiculous, and an overemphasis on perverted jokes. The protagonist definitely fits that last one and pretty much every character has some sort of tripping, falling, or being above the protagonist CG and he happily partakes in the view. I can’t say I’m the biggest fan of that part of the comedy, but the rest at least makes up for it a bit.

Difficulty and Route Structure
Back in the day, you would have wanted a walkthrough for this one. You need to know which characters to meet at which locations at which times to actually advance along their route and score hearts with them. In classic mode, this information is entirely up to you to figure out, but fortunately, with this remake, comes the now default “easy mode”.

This mode just straight up gives you a calendar plotting all of the key dating events and it is super helpful to have as someone that did not want to waste time mapping out this web of character interactions. That and it even tells you what choices earn or lose you hearts - again negating the need for a walkthrough which I usually end up using for most visual novels anyways. A nice addition that makes the game far more playable than it was thirty years ago.

Length
I was not able to get all of the characters in my first playthrough, but for those I did (maybe half of them), it took me around eight or so hours. Future playthroughs were even easier because I could just ignore the characters I already completed and just skip directly to the character events I missed. So it’s not that long a VN, but also not too short.

Art and Music
Although a part of me wishes they had some sort of toggle to enable the old art - I also cannot deny that the new art is completely fine and somehow manages to maintain a newish look while also being somewhat nostalgic. The music, on the other hand, I honestly cannot recall at all now that I’m writing this review. I don’t remember it being terrible though - so let’s just leave it as “okay, but forgettable”.

Overall
Dōkyūsei: Bangin' Summer is a bit of a mixed bag by modern standards. What it lacks in quality writing it makes up for with its solid dating sim mechanics and nostalgic art. That said, I can’t say any of the characters are that memorable and the experience is more so just fun in the moment - the dated humor actually adds to this too. So I wouldn’t say it’s an instabuy, but maybe worth a look if you want to play through a piece of VN and dating sim history. Otherwise, it’s just okay.

Full video review: https://youtu.be/W6iV6ZsM0iw

Over 20 years since the original Alien Hominid released and we’re getting not just a port of the HD version for modern platforms, but a full-blown sequel on top of that.

Despite this one appearing as a sequel to the original game, it plays entirely different from it. We went from a level-based side-scrolling shooter to an arcade action roguelike with an emphasis on multiplayer. It’s a drastic change, but it’s not necessarily a bad one, even if it comes with some major faults.

Instead of straightforward levels, you get missions, which are a collection of randomly generated maps that you can progress in any way you want. These maps are then full of individual levels that contain randomly generated objectives, ranging from “collect intel from downed FBI agents” to “destroy five purple enemies” and even “observe this guy eat a snack”. And that’s kinda where my first complaint lies. It feels like there are maybe 10 of these objective types total and they just keep recycling over and over on maps that don’t feel all that different from one another.

This is only held up by the gameplay, which has seen numerous improvements over the original game. Mainly, the shooting feels much better, dodging is far more responsive and actually gives you iframes, and the weapon selection is far more expansive. You get a bunch of different weapon types to use, including lasers, miniguns, energy blades, shotguns, and flamethrowers just to name some. A lot of the fun was simply finding a new weapon and trying it out. That coupled with the improved movement made for some fun gameplay.

The multiplayer focus does add a bit of chaos into the mix though. Even with just two players (the game allows up to four), we still occasionally lost where we were on screen due to the sheer insanity that the gameplay can devolve into. Bullets, enemies, and aliens flying all over. It is like 10x more chaotic than the original game which can be either a good or bad thing depending on what you’re looking for. I personally found it to be very engaging, even if it was a bit much at times.

Overall
I would say Alien Hominid Invasion is worthy of a light recommendation. It's a fun evolution on the original formula and comes with vastly improved gameplay, but does suffer from its lack of mission variety and occasionally overly chaotic combat. Might not be an immediate buy, but worth a look if you can catch either on sale or if you’re just a big fan of the genre.

Full video review: https://youtu.be/iqwEVZNC0w4

I may like this series and there are some good elements, but honestly, my experience with Fate/Samurai Remnant was just painful.

Combat
I will start with the good. For one, the core combat mechanics are actually pretty good, great even. You get a handful of stances to swap between and are actually encouraged to do so depending on your HP level, how many enemies you are fighting, and what stats you want to prioritize. It adds a good bit of depth to the otherwise mashfest that is Musou-style gameplay. There is still a bit of mashing, but I liked the extra layers added here.

Gameplay Loop & Difficulty
It is just unfortunate that this combat is stuck with some incredibly repetitive and tedious mission design. The game literally opens with you helping a guy collect debts from random people around town. That’s how bad it is.

When you are not running random errands as main story quests, you are dealing with this absolutely tedious turn-based board game style travel system. You have to travel between nodes to get to your destination and if you run into an enemy along the way, jump into a copy-paste arena to fight them in.

And the enemies are copy-paste too. You will be fighting the same type of samurai and a handful of monsters the entire game. You occasionally get some new, interesting ones, but it just becomes tiring spamming buttons against the same enemies battle after battle. Especially so given how this game manages its difficulty level: by simply raising enemy HP. Bosses especially, since they get an extra armor meter that just takes forever to break before you actually do damage. It’s not like the bosses are even hard, just boring and time-consuming.

Story
The gameplay is only about half of the experience, maybe just 30-40% of it. The rest is visual novel style storytelling, which I honestly don’t mind as a VN fan, but not so when it is as wordy and full of fluff like it is here. You get one cool fight cutscene and then a 30 minute dinner dialogue scene to follow. One cool character reveal, and then an info dump where a character explains a simple concept to death as if I was five years old.

It’s just frustrating. Boring and frustrating. I know the Fate franchise is full of lengthy stories, but I don’t recall ever being as bored with them as I was here. The pacing is just far too slow.

Performance / PC Port
I had no issues playing at 4k 120fps, although it was a bit weird that the game is divided into performance and quality modes on PC, the latter of which listed a 60fps limit. The game still looked fine in performance mode - at least, for this developer’s standard - so I can’t say I minded all that much. There are a bunch of video settings to change too, so props to the devs for that instead of just leaving it as one slider as they have definitely done in the past.

Overall
I cannot recommend Fate/Samurai Remnant. There are obviously some good ideas here, especially with the combat mechanics, but the gameplay loop, the mission design, and the story full of filler really sour the experience. The Fate/Extella games may have their issues, but they are at least better than this.

Full video review: https://youtu.be/i4SMtORbZrE

So the founder of Arkane Studios - the devs behind the popular Dishonored series - decided to leave and form a new company a few years ago and this game is the result of that. I liked Dishonored and I like Westerns, so why not?

Overview
Weird West is basically a top-down CRPG set in a western-dark fantasy world. The combat is done in real-time, but there are abilities and such that can slow that down. The game world is large and there is plenty to explore, a bunch of side quests to complete, and a lot of perks to unlock too. The game loop revolves around completing “journeys” which are basically campaigns that let you play as one of five characters. These are played in an enforced order and are tied together by an overall story.

Combat and Controls
Weird West is a bit... weird in some ways. For example - the combat. Ranged weapons? Completely fine. Melee weapons though? Absolute pain to use. You have to hold a key to prime the melee weapon and then just spam left click as fast as possible, missing about half the time due to a combination of evasion chance and the game just straight up not connecting hits.

The controls in general never quite clicked with me - and this is with me playing on mouse and keyboard. I made some adjustments to attempt to make them more intuitive, but frequently found myself not activating the abilities I wanted to, pulling out the wrong weapon, and crouching when I did not want to. Yeah, some of that may be me, but I play a ton of games like this and generally don’t have these issues, so I’m not really sure what’s going on here.

When the combat works though - it’s some great stuff. The different guns are simple, yet fun to use, the difficulty is well-balanced on normal, and I always love games that include good stealth mechanics. I’m the type of guy that always plays the sneaky, pickpocketing thief - the one that knocks out enemies, drags off their body to some hiding spot, and finds a way in without anyone ever knowing. All of that is possible here and then some.

Exploration and Loot
As the guy that likes to sneak around and steal stuff - I like me some good loot, and unfortunately, Weird West is not the most accommodating there. I mean, there are a bunch of buildings and containers TO loot, but about 90% of that loot is just some flavor of junk - whether that be a pack of cigarettes, a sheriff’s badge, or a pocket watch - so it is a bit disappointing to spend all this time looting and walking away with maybe one or two cool things out of 100 or so.

Sneaking around and exploring was way more rewarding when you came across side content, of which there is a good bit. Sometimes my sneaking would lead me into a trap door in which I find an imprisoned gunslinger who, if freed by me, will be in my debt and come help me during future shootouts at random. Sometimes I found little notes or other letters that added to the lore and sometimes these contained instructions on where to find even better loot. There’s usually a couple of these things per area, so exploring is almost always worth it even if the loot may not be the best.

Story
It’s not the most involved story, but what is there is somewhat weak. The main thing is this supernatural mystery binding five characters together, but the actual character writing itself isn’t that strong. The first character, for example, is a former bounty hunter whose husband gets killed and - many hours later after completing that journey - I still knew little about this husband or felt any sort of attachment to what was going on. To me, it felt more like a driving force for the gameplay - which may not even be a bad thing for most.

Overall
I have some more minor complaints - like the iffy graphics, but that pretty much sums up my experience with Weird West. I may have gotten sucked in early on and dumped hours into it, but I also cannot deny it does have numerous faults, such as the melee combat and the loot system.

So while I recommend the game, I’d say it’s only a light recommendation. If you’re into this genre? Well worth a look. However, there are better picks out there and this is probably one best left for a sale. That or give it a shot on Game Pass - it’s pretty much the perfect Game Pass kind of game.

Full video review: https://youtu.be/wRoXRy2AfcY

Overview and Game Loop
So the entire thing plays as a very structured turn-based JRPG. You’re thrown into this mysterious school setting with a main character that has amnesia and a “mist” that causes other students to go insane. The general game loop is extremely linear and follows the same pattern all the way through. You get some story dialogue, search a floor of some building within the school for a phone call, answer that phone call to engage in a battle in another realm, another story dialogue to close out that section, and then repeat this process over and over.

That’s the entirety of Monark and honestly, it’s a bit too structured for my tastes. I don’t have anything against linear games, but I also like JRPGs that don’t just recycle the same pattern to completion.

Exploration and Puzzles
In Monark, the most exploration you get is maybe entering a classroom and picking up a healing item before moving to your actual objective. That’s it. Otherwise, you simply need to solve a small puzzle to find the source of the mist for that given floor.

And I say puzzle, but that’s pushing it a bit given that most of the time you just need to memorize a small number or word sequence and enter it elsewhere - like the combination for a safe that you find on a sticky note in another room. The vast majority of the “puzzles” feel more like obstacles than something I enjoy doing.

Combat
None of the combat actually takes place in the school setting, instead being set entirely in this “other realm” that you have to dial into. Upon doing so, you select which units to deploy, where to deploy them, and then go at it in a neat mashup of different combat systems. It’s turn-based, but you have freedom of movement and can shuffle around your units as you please. Positioning is key as there are things like back attacks and assisting other units based on their proximity to a given enemy.

I liked the overall approach here. It’s not as strict as your regular turn-based JRPG, but still stays true to that experience without going full action-based. And there’s a good bit of depth too. You get entire skill trees per unit, the ability to outright defer your turn to any other unit, a full slate of status effects, buffs, and debuffs, and this cool madness and ascension system on top of it. These mechanics build on each other in cool ways, allowing you to set up combos with a bunch of assists flying everywhere or even situations where it becomes beneficial to let a unit go mad.

Ultimately though, this all comes with one major flaw: you hardly ever need or get to use these mechanics. About 90% of fights you can finish simply by using basic attacks and a lot of the time, you have to go out of your way to actually use the more complex mechanics. Boss fights are really the only time I ever got to see units go mad, use ascension, or ever felt the need to inflict status effects and debuffs.

Difficulty and Grinding
There are two difficulties: normal and casual, with the latter simply reducing damage taken by 30% in exchange for a decreased item drop rate. Both difficulties, however, are subject to the game’s absolutely insane difficulty spikes. I thought I was doing completely fine up until the second boss, which one-shot me numerous times until I dropped the difficulty to casual, which simply made it a two-shot instead.

Monark is a game that purposely keeps you underleveled and I found myself repeatedly grinding the optional fights over and over just to stay up to par with the bosses - there are no "normal" encounters. In most JRPGs, you can get by by simply fighting all encounters you run into or even dropping the difficulty if you want to play more leisurely, but Monark throws out both of those options. What you are left with is an incredibly grindy, repetitive, and unfulfilling game loop. And the fact that skeletons are the only enemies you fight does not help either.

Story
I feel it’s important to note that the dialogue and cutscenes take up probably about 50% of the game’s playtime, so it’s pretty beefy in that regard. That unfortunately doesn’t make it good though, and that’s ultimately the impression I got here. Mainly, I couldn’t shake this feeling that the story was trying to be too much and lacked focus.

I understand what is going on, but not what the writers are trying to convey with the story. It’s like a mess of ideas all cobbled together that sounds cool on paper, but lack the depth and direction to really work. The entire first act, for example, works like a series of short stories about individual student’s psychological problems and a slight dive into each of their backgrounds. Each gets expanded on later, but I should note that the first act alone is like 15 hours of gameplay so you will be waiting a while for the story to really kick into gear.

And it’s incredibly tropey too - to the point where it was hard to tell if I was playing a parody, but no, the game is actually taking itself seriously. This is the kind of anime story I would expect to appeal to 13 or 14 year olds, with so much edge I am surprised my controller didn’t cut me.

Graphics and Music
Monark looks about what I would expect from an early PS4 or late PS3 JRPG. It’s not outright terrible, but not good either - just bland. The music though might be my second favorite thing under the combat. The vocal tracks that play during boss fights absolutely slap and the regular background music isn’t that bad either.

PC Port
You get a small set of graphical options to change and the game ran flawlessly at 1440p, 60 fps on my 1070 Ti so I guess I can’t complain. I had no issues with the controls on controller and the default keyboard and mouse layout isn’t that bad either. You do not get a cursor on screen though, so the mouse is just used for its buttons.

Overall
Monark is a bit of a mess of ideas - some good, some bad, but most leaning a bit towards the latter. You get some nice combat, but coupled with some very grindy progression and lackluster gameplay outside of that combat. You get a story with some nice themes, but little coherence between all of these themes and filled with so many anime tropes that it’s hard to take seriously. A disappointment overall as a big JRPG fan.

Full video review: https://youtu.be/8ys_JQg299s
Written review below![/h1][/quote]

I have watched way too many black and white samurai movies for my own good, so you could say I was a bit excited for this one.

Aesthetic
Trek to Yomi absolutely bleeds style, with authentic, detailed environments, perfectly placed camera angles, and the studio went so far as to even have the voice actors deliver their lines in the same manner as an older Japanese samurai movie. If you thought the black and white filter in Ghosts of Tsushima was something - this is like an entirely different level and I am absolutely here for it.

Even disregarding that authenticity, the game itself still looks great. The models look good, the use of lighting is expertly done, and I really liked all the weather effects in particular. It’s just good-looking all around and the atmospheric sound design only adds to this.

Gameplay and combat
The combat, at least on the surface, looks simple, but once you start playing, you quickly find that the handful of base moves you start with combo into a variety of different strings. Upward slashes, downward, thrusting attacks, heavy attacks - the full slate can then be made into something like down, down, heavy for a stun or back light, light, light for a spin attack string that does massive damage to enemies behind you.

You are constantly unlocking new combos as you play and the game does a good job presenting them at a consistent pace to give you something to look forward to. Granted, if I am being honest, the basic strings worked well enough for me way into the experience that I oftentimes had to actively force myself to use some of the fancier stuff.

There are also ranged attacks courtesy of a few ranged weapons, such as the bow and arrow. The ammo for these are limited and must be found hidden away in the environment, but they are great options when you have an annoying ranged enemy farther away and are another nice addition to some already solid combat.

Overall though, the combat works. It feels great to play, looks great in action, and has intuitive enough controls that you get this nice sense of fluidity from it. It took me maybe twenty minutes and I was completely into it, slashing down enemies, parrying, and rolling around with ease. The parry is very forgiving, so that’s definitely something I would recommend using.

Content and length
Trek to Yomi is not a long game. It took me just under four hours to clear and if you shave away all of my deaths that settles to just under three hours. That doesn’t make it a bad game though - the studio intentionally crafted an experience to be authentic to the samurai movies of old and pacing was a part of that.

However, this is also one of my main complaints. Not that it is too short, but that the pacing itself becomes a bit rocky towards the end. You get some really solid first few levels and then the last couple it felt like they kinda lost their way. You get environments that aren’t as cool and repetitive enemy encounters that have you fighting like five or six at a time just to get to the next little segment which will have you repeat this. A lot of the game was like this, but the balance was WAY better early on with the exploration, the enemy encounters, the story bits.

Story
Otherwise, the length is fine. If anything, the story lacks the depth for anything longer than it already is. Not to bash the story by the way, it’s fine for what it is, but it can be boiled down to a simple revenge story at its core that also happens to touch on more personal elements like morality and honor. So nothing too crazy there, but also not boring - I think the studio did a decent job maintaining a good story-gameplay balance even if I can’t say that this is a story I’ll remember after maybe a week.

Replayability
There is not a whole lot of exploration and the game itself is mostly linear outside of different story endings you get based on certain key dialogue decisions (there are only a few of these). However, to make a different decision, you have to literally play through the entire game again - there’s no chapter select despite the experience being divided into distinct chapters.

I will say though that the difficulty unlocked after clearing the game once is cool. It’s called Kensei and it basically makes everything one-hit kill, including yourself. Doesn’t apply to bosses unfortunately, but a cool hardcore take that honestly would have been fun to have from the start.

Performance
I ran the game at 1440p, 144fps on my RTX 3080 Ti and didn’t have any technical issues outside of one instance where I fell off the map and had to reload to a checkpoint not even ten seconds prior. Controls are great on a controller (although not rebindable) and are also fine on keyboard and mouse (which are rebindable). Granted, I still recommend controller.

Overall
Trek to Yomi is about as authentic as they come. The lighting, the camera angles, the graininess - the aesthetic is all there and is matched with some equally nice combat that has a surprising amount of depth to it. It may falter later on with its pacing and lackluster enemy variety, but it’s an experience well had and I am definitely satisfied as someone that watches a ton of the movies for which this is based on. Even if you’re not into the movies though - it’s good enough on its own to warrant a look.

Full video review: https://youtu.be/J2k1uSdH8Hw

Been a while since I covered an otome game, but this one looked pretty cool and I finally finished it after a month of playing.

Art:
Starting with the art, since that’s what put this one on my radar. You got these super-detailed character designs, backgrounds that really sell the setting, and an overall look that just fits perfectly with the Japanese fantasy mythology theme. That and the game has a lot of good CGs, really emphasizing the strengths of the character designs. It’s not the most animated visual novel, but the rest of the art is fine and there’s some nice music to back it up. On the aesthetic front, Olympia Soirée does great.

Story:
The setup here is not really something I’ve seen done before in the medium and, on the surface, might actually raise a few eyebrows for its parallels to modern society. You’re basically thrown into this society where everyone is born into and raised as a specific “color”, which their hair color represents.

The protagonist has just turned 18 and you’re presented with the otome game classic: she must find a husband of any other color class and continue the white bloodline (since white can marry outside of their color). The ultimate goal is simple, but we rarely ever get visual novels that cover topics like racism and classism and it was really cool to see such topics tackled in an otome game way. It may not go super in-depth like we see in many modern movies and such, but for a visual novel it’s pretty good.

Otherwise, the structure is pretty similar to other otome visual novels. You get your cast of pretty boys, each with their own route, and a couple routes that are only unlocked after every other route is cleared. The game follows an overall “multiple route mystery” theme, with each route covering some aspect of this society along with the usual romance stuff.

The common route is fairly short and is used mostly to introduce the cast so I’m gonna run through each character’s route in order from my least to most favorite and try to explain why.

Tokisada:
Tokisada is the youngest character of the bunch. He’s 17 – only one year younger than our protagonist – but acts much younger than that and that is ultimately what brought his route down for me. He has one of the most interesting backstories – even if it does go a bit overboard and melodramatic towards the end – but the entire time I was like “dude, you’re like 12” and I just could not take the romance seriously.

Himuka:
Himuka's route is only unlocked after you clear the main four routes and for good reason – a lot of the “big” story stuff happens here. The pacing is handled much better than Tokisada, but, just like that route, the romance comes across as forced and just doesn’t flow well. Himuka also goes through an absolutely jarring character shift a ways into this route that left me wondering if perhaps the route was planned to be longer. It’s not slow, but it lacks the buildup that some of the other routes got.

Kuroba:
Kuroba's route explored the concept of the black color group, which was interesting, but also tacked on this whole “tug of war” romance thing where our protagonist acts out of character compared to literally every other route and Kuroba himself constantly flip flops between two character states in a seemingly random way. And I don’t want to spoil anything, but I will say this route uses a certain plot device that is just completely uncalled for and serves no purpose other than to drastically raise the stakes when things aren’t progressing all that much. Overall: good character, poor route.

Yosuga:
Whereas Kuroba had a bunch going on in his route – Yosuga doesn’t have nearly as much. This is good in that it avoids some of the problems I just described with Kuroba, but bad in that it does not leave the route feeling memorable – it felt more like your standard otome romance route with just a bit of story dabbled on top of it. I guess every otome game has to have a route like this, so it at least serves its purpose.

Akaza:
Akaza is next and is by far the most story-packed of the routes. Unlike Himuka’s though, the romance stuff on top of it actually comes across as natural AND with good pacing. The buildup was done well, the beginning was not overly slow, and the major reveals towards the end actually felt like such. Granted, it’s a bit unfair to other routes because this one you cannot play until the very end of the game and by that point, you’ll have already become familiar with everything and the route won’t need to spend so much time info dumping.

Riku:
My favorite route of the bunch and also the second one I played. What we got here was an excellent introduction to the world of Olympia Soirée that manages to hit all of the game’s good points: well-paced romance, just the right amount of conflict, and a good dose of worldbuilding without feeling like an info dump. It was probably that last point that really sold the route for me, but the character himself was solid too.

Protagonist:
Unlike other otome game protagonists, Olympia is not the pushover type. She sticks to her ideals and actually works towards getting stuff done. She is not afraid of putting herself out there, yet is not this brick wall of stubbornness either. It is super refreshing for an otome game and, while she may be tempted by food a bit too easily, that just makes her all the more likeable – easily my favorite character in the game.

Overall:
Olympia Soirée is a bit of good, a bit of bad, and a bunch of just “okay”. Some routes are a chore to get through with their slow pacing and all, but then you get these really good routes that kinda level it all out. I started the game off not really liking it and kinda growing to appreciate it – even through its low points. It’s definitely not bad – although it’s also not a shining example of the genre.

Full video review: https://youtu.be/o7cz8Asam4g

Despite being a sequel to 2017's Blue Reflection, Second Light hardly feels like the same game - but not in a bad way.

Do I need to play the first game?
The short answer is “no, but it’s still recommended if you want the full experience”. Second Light features an entirely new main cast of characters and the story is mostly told without being too reliant on the first. I say mostly because the cast from the first do eventually make their way into this story, but it’s done in a manner that you would be able to understand even without being familiar with them.

This extends to the anime adaptation as well: Blue Reflection Ray. I myself did not actually finish that anime yet I had no trouble getting to know the characters from it in the game – so again, you can just start from Second Light and be completely fine.

Combat
Despite how simple the combat in the first game was, I kinda liked it. It was effective and perfectly matched the game’s laidback, slice of life feel. Second Light, on the other hand, completely throws that combat system out the window for an active-time battle system – similar to what we got in the recent Atelier Ryza games.

Battles are far faster as a result and with the changes to the ether system, they only get faster the longer you’re in a battle. The MP system is removed entirely and now attacks, skills, and items all consume ether, which is regenerated at different rates per character depending on their stats. That said, I am a bit torn on this system. It is a completely different feel from the previous game and, while cool in theory, it does come with some problems.

Mainly, it’s that it takes away a lot of the variety that the first game had with regards to its skills. Whereas in the first game, I was constantly scrolling through my different attacks and figuring out which best to use in a given fight – this game it is 95% of the time just going to be one of my basic attacks. I would enter a fight, spam A throughout the entire thing, and call it a day.

Difficulty
Hard difficulty is not unlocked until you fully clear the game once, so you have to do your first playthrough on normal and I found it to be a bit too easy. Even after I intentionally kept myself underleveled by avoiding a lot of the enemies on the map, I still had no trouble clearing each and every encounter I ran into.

Around halfway into the game, I stopped caring to even figure out the best party composition, which skills to unlock, and even what moves I was using – it hardly mattered with how easy it is and with how the ether mechanic is designed. Just keep spamming those basic attacks and you’ll build up your combo quickly, which in turn allows you to do more damage with your next basic attack and so on.

Finishing up the game, I couldn’t escape this feeling that the battle system was just underutilized. It has all these cool mechanics, but the low difficulty and emphasis on building up combo quickly leave it feeling a bit repetitive.

Level Design
In the first game, the level design was some hot garbage – mostly small groups of pathways and platforms. In Second Light, they went all out. Now there are multiple areas per biome, movement options outside of just… walking, and some actual exploration elements, even if on the lighter side. The new areas are also far more dense, with more detail put into individual buildings and the overall geography being much more varied.

Side Quests
Having to do fetch quest after fetch quest just to get to the next chapter in the first game was some incredibly boring stuff, so I was very happy to see that done away with entirely in Second Light. Now, side quests are just that – optional side quests. That said, they’re also more varied. Aside from the usual “craft this for me” or “kill this enemy for me”, a lot of them now have you build unique school development stuff – stuff that you actually can use outside of that individual side quest.

There are even some side quests that straight up expand on individual characters by having you explore different areas with them to unlock their memories. You sometimes have to do some boring stealth missions, but it’s at least much better off than the filler that the first game had.

Story
It still has the same overall school-magical girl theme told across different character arcs, but there is FAR more focus placed on a larger, more connected story instead of just rushing things right at the end like the last game. Character arcs are almost immediately tied into this bigger story and the game does a great job balancing out character development with this larger mystery.

The game as a whole takes a darker tone than the original and the pacing starts off slow, but ramps up around the halfway point once you start realizing the truth behind this world. It doesn’t go completely overboard either – in fact, it might actually be a bit too slow. Perhaps this is just because the game is longer (this one took me just over 30 hours whereas the first took just 20), but I felt like they could have shaved off a bit towards the end to make it flow better.

Still an interesting story for sure (and definitely better than the first game), but not quite at the level that I would call it anything more than just “good”.

Aesthetic
I am a huge fan of the urban fantasy magical girl aesthetic and Second Light only expands on the first game in this regard with the improved world detail and upgraded visuals that bring it more in line with the recent Atelier games. It’s definitely not a shining example as far as actual graphical quality, but the setting, character designs, and overall theme are solid. The music on the other hand, while still good, I did not find to be quite as good as the first game.

PC Port
The first game somehow used 100% of my RTX 3080 Ti even with the fps capped to my monitor’s refresh rate, but this one ran just fine at 155 fps without turning my computer into a jet engine. There are far more graphical options to change this time too, so there is ample room to finetune settings if you need to.

One recommendation I will make – do disable the game’s depth of field setting, it is WAY more aggressive than it needs to be. Otherwise, the only other problems I had were with the game always launching in windowed (which you can solve by hitting F9) and a game crash about two hours in. I didn’t lose much progress due to the new auto save feature, but any crash is worth mentioning.

And surprisingly, the keyboard and mouse controls are actually NOT garbage this time around. There’s actual mouse support in the menus, on the field, and it doesn’t feel like it’s just emulating a controller. I still used a controller myself, but it’s one of the few Koei Tecmo PC ports where the keyboard and mouse controls would be a viable alternative – I had no problems with them during my testing and they are rebindable too.

Overall
Blue Reflection: Second Light is an overall improvement over the first game in almost every regard. A more fleshed out story, a bunch of useful quality of life features, much better visuals, vastly improved level design, a decent PC port – it’s got a lot going for it. Unfortunately, the combat is a bit of a mess and the game is far too easy, making a lot of the new combat additions redundant. That, and while the story itself is interesting, it doesn’t come without its problems. Still, I had a good time with it in spite of these faults and would recommend it if you like Gust JRPGs.

Full video review: https://youtu.be/9EKIHS4j-tI
I was a bit iffy going into this one. Harvest Moon type games have always been a bit hit or miss for me, but with Rune Factory 5 coming out soon, I figured I’d give this one a shot.

Gameplay
Despite the simple graphics here - RF4S is a bit of a beast in terms of content. Not only is there the farming stuff, but you’ve got dungeon exploring, this extensive crafting system, a large map to explore, and a dating and marriage system on top of that. Up front, it seemed like I would get lost in all of this, but the game actually does a really good job easing you into it through its request system.

You start off small and eventually work your way up to this big field of crops, tamed animals taking care of it, and an arsenal of cool weapons and runes to take down dungeons with. There’s a lot of freedom too. Some days I would just completely ignore the storyline and try to maximize my farm’s space or go hunting for a certain animal to tame and some days I would work towards getting more prince points to bring a new festival to town or upgrade a local shop.

It’s something I didn’t think I would catch on to as quickly as I did and honestly, it made me kinda nostalgic for how DS games like this were designed back in the day. The overall gameplay is just incredibly relaxing and it is exactly for this type of game that I’m excited to get my Steam Deck in just a few months.

Still, I can’t deny that there is a bit of repetition involved. This is ultimately a Harvest Moon type game, so you will be doing the usual tasks over and over, especially early on before you can tame animals to do some of it for you. It can be a bit tedious, so you gotta have a bit of tolerance for it. Once I got past that point though, I found myself experimenting more with the crafting, cooking, and dating mechanics.

Story
The "Special" edition of RF4 adds a “Newlywed Mode”, which is a bonus mode that basically adds extra scenes for each character unlocked once you wed them. There’s also a mode titled “Another Episode” which acts as a sort of epilogue for each character taking place after the main story (which itself is like a 50+ hour thing on its own).

The writing may not be all that impressive, but the story elements that are there aren’t that bad either. If anything, it reminded me a lot of an Atelier game, where it can be serious at times, but it’s ultimately there to serve a more relaxed gameplay style.

PC Port
I may not have run into any crashes, fps drops, freezes, bugs, or really anything like that, but it does carry the problem of being hardlocked to 90 fps and being unplayable at that framerate because the game speed is tied to it. Fortunately you can fix this problem simply by toggling the game’s VSync option on. Beyond that, I don’t really have any other complaints.

The game runs flawlessly at 1440p 60 fps and plays fine on both controller AND keyboard and mouse. The latter actually feels good to use and is fully rebindable too - I would have no problems recommending that playstyle if you don’t have a controller.

Overall
Rune Factory 4 Special is a really easy recommendation. Fun and laidback gameplay, tons of depth, plenty of character interaction, and a nice PC port too. If you’re a fan of games like Harvest Moon or Stardew Valley - this one is definitely worth a play and I myself am already looking forward to the 5th one coming out next year.

Full video review: https://youtu.be/hnjo41l7oH0

From the same studio that brought you Guacamelee! comes a bit of a unique one. It’s a top-down action RPG hack and slash adventure with a very cool form-swapping mechanic.

Gameplay
So an immediate comparison I would make here is to that of Shantae. The core mechanic in Nobody Saves the World is that you’re able to freely swap between different “forms”. There are over 15 of these different forms and they each have a full slate of unique abilities to use in combat on top of their base traits like some being able to travel in water and some being able to go through tight spaces.

It’s a very cool mechanic and is made only better by the sheer variety and detail behind it all. Some forms are faster, some forms are tankier, some are ranged, some are melee, some are a mix of both - there are plenty to choose from and they fit all sorts of play styles.

That’s not all though, because shortly into the experience you’re granted the ability to customize each form further by equipping abilities from any of the other forms. You can get stuff like a horse with the poison traits of the rat or a ghost with the water spray ability of the turtle. Because each form levels up individually, you’re encouraged to hop around and not stick with just one form, but at the same time, this customization allows you to take some of your favorite abilities from one form and apply them to another - a very cool combo.

The combat was already fun enough on its own with most of the base forms, but the addition of ability swapping really elevates it and especially so later on once you have most of the abilities unlocked and come up with some crazy synergies. And it’s not just the combat - the quests and puzzles build off of this mechanic too. One quest, for example, has you destroy a bunch of targets using specific damage types in a limited amount of time and you’ll need to come up with some sort of form combo with just the right abilities to complete that task in time.

Maps & Aesthetic
The maps are a good mix of environments with cool designs, cool characters to meet, and fun quests to complete. Unlocking more forms gradually opens up more of the map, so exploration is encouraged too. And of course, the map greatly benefits from the game’s colorful art style. Great coloring, plenty of world detailing - it’s just an all-around good looking game and with some nice music to match too.

Quality of Life
My main complaints are mostly with the quality of life side of things. For example, the “quick select” wheel that allows you to change between forms is a bit finicky once you have enough forms to fill it up. In the event that you want to swap to a form that is not on the wheel, you have to pause the game, pull up the form menu, select that form, and hope that it does not replace another form that you also would like to swap to. I don’t know if my friend and I were missing something, but it seemed that the form would be put on the quick select wheel randomly, so it became a bit of a pain once we had to juggle all of these forms.

I also wasn’t the biggest fan of how quests are tracked and submitted. To do so, you have to pull up a menu manually and submit them before progress can be made on the next part of that quest. This is a bit of an annoyance because sometimes you’ll complete one in the middle of combat and have to pause right then to submit it or waste the next several kills not getting tracked towards your next quest.

Technical Issues & Performance
I did run into a few issues with the multiplayer. Whether that be the occasional lag spike that lasts a while or the random disconnect forcing me back to the main menu - both were annoying. The latter could easily be solved by keeping at least one player in the game instead of booting both, but as it stands that is not the case.

Otherwise, the game plays fine. I ran it at 1440p and 120 fps without any performance issues. The game lacks mouse controls but does have rebindable keyboard controls. They are a bit obtuse, but at least doable if you do not have a controller on hand.

Overall
I went into Nobody Saves the World thinking - okay, basically top-down Shantae, but it’s a lot more than just that. Fun combat with plenty of depth, quests that actually do something unique and don’t just have you running to and from, solid music and colorful art with plenty of detail - it’s got a lot going for it in spite of some technical and design flaws. It’s fun enough as a singleplayer title, but an absolutely easy recommendation if you have a friend to do online co-op with.