Video version: https://youtu.be/JU-gdUgNwAo
I’m a first time player of these games, but a fan of retro gaming in general and love it when companies release these big collections of older titles. The Cowabunga Collection seemed right up my alley, but now that I’ve played it, I can’t help but feel a little bit of disappointment despite the goods on offer.
The games themselves are all there and I have no doubt fans may be happy with them, but so many of them are just reskins and nearly all of them have some sort of technical issue bringing down the experience. I played both solo and local co-op with a friend and noticed a variety of issues including input delay, audio glitches, and the gameplay generally just feeling “off”, particularly with things like hitboxes that don’t feel right even as someone that has played a lot of similar games on the original hardware that these come from.
I also wasn’t a fan of the cumbersome UI and the bare minimum quality of life additions for what should be THE definitive collection of these games. We get the ability to save anywhere, filters, and a rewind feature, but miss out on things like per-game settings, speed-up options, and actually having more than one save slot...
Otherwise, the games themselves are fine. I don’t have nostalgia for these, so they play like any other side-scrolling beat ‘em up from the era for the most part. Not bad, not particularly good, just fine. If anything, I’m glad to finally have the ability to play them on a modern platform, but I also cannot deny I kinda expected a bit more.
So that’s kinda where I’m at with this collection and I unfortunately cannot see myself getting any further than I already have. Decent collection, plenty of issues, standard gameplay, expensive pricing - that’s pretty much it.
Follow my [b][url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/3215371]Steam Curator Page[/url][/b] for more reviews + videos!
I’m a first time player of these games, but a fan of retro gaming in general and love it when companies release these big collections of older titles. The Cowabunga Collection seemed right up my alley, but now that I’ve played it, I can’t help but feel a little bit of disappointment despite the goods on offer.
The games themselves are all there and I have no doubt fans may be happy with them, but so many of them are just reskins and nearly all of them have some sort of technical issue bringing down the experience. I played both solo and local co-op with a friend and noticed a variety of issues including input delay, audio glitches, and the gameplay generally just feeling “off”, particularly with things like hitboxes that don’t feel right even as someone that has played a lot of similar games on the original hardware that these come from.
I also wasn’t a fan of the cumbersome UI and the bare minimum quality of life additions for what should be THE definitive collection of these games. We get the ability to save anywhere, filters, and a rewind feature, but miss out on things like per-game settings, speed-up options, and actually having more than one save slot...
Otherwise, the games themselves are fine. I don’t have nostalgia for these, so they play like any other side-scrolling beat ‘em up from the era for the most part. Not bad, not particularly good, just fine. If anything, I’m glad to finally have the ability to play them on a modern platform, but I also cannot deny I kinda expected a bit more.
So that’s kinda where I’m at with this collection and I unfortunately cannot see myself getting any further than I already have. Decent collection, plenty of issues, standard gameplay, expensive pricing - that’s pretty much it.
Follow my [b][url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/3215371]Steam Curator Page[/url][/b] for more reviews + videos!
Video version: https://youtu.be/DxDA-V6_MOg
Another year, another Trails game - except we’re going in reverse since this game actually takes place before the Cold Steel subseries (great games by the way), but I’m glad we finally get an official release of this in the West.
Trails from Zero is the fourth entry in the Trails series, taking place after the Sky subseries. It takes place in Crossbell and introduces us to some important characters that then play a role in the larger story. Coming back from having played the Cold Steel games, it was nice to get a proper introduction to the characters here instead of them just being casually introduced like they were in Cold Steel. Granted, I guess that’s what I get for playing them out of order to begin with, but then again, this is the first official release of this game in the West so…
Gameplay
Zero plays just like any other Trails game. Fast-paced and fun turn-based JRPG combat with a few mechanics to set it aside from the norm, large open worlds to explore full of cool locations to visit and characters to meet, and perhaps the series’ largest draw, its expansive and extremely dialogue-heavy storyline full of politics, character relations, action - the full slate.
It’s JRPGs like this that exemplify what I love about the genre, because in spite of its relatively niche appeal, you can tell a lot of heart and effort went into crafting it and I hardly ever feel the time passing when playing these games.
Story
The story here is obviously designed as some sort of prequel or foundation for the following, still unreleased in the West game, Trails to Azure. A lot of the early game is just kinda random missions and even slice of life stuff that I will admit, are a bit slow to build up the cast. If anything, it felt like it was more so written as a way to introduce the location and the different factions and such rather than tell a meaningful story of its own.
Granted, I still have not completed the game but it’s been kinda laidback so far, which is disappointing in the way I just described, but also kinda refreshing given the literal info dumping that the last couple Cold Steel games turned out to be. It’s a double-edged sword of sorts, making it easy to get into the title as a newcomer, but not really offering much as a standalone package if isolated from the rest.
Gameplay cont.
That said, the gameplay is still some great stuff. Exploring the game world, taking on various quests that usually end in some sort of boss fight, building up your party’s loadout, and even partaking in the occasional side thing too, like fishing. It’s a bit formulaic, but again, it’s just nice to have a well-designed overall package even if it doesn't excel in one particular area this time around.
PC Port
I’ve played for about a dozen hours by this point and have had absolutely no issues. I ran the game at 4k 144fps with no drops, freezing, or anything of the sort. I played a lot of that time at 6x game speed too, and once again, I am forever grateful for the turbo mode feature.
That and the keyboard and mouse controls are actually pretty good. I would go from playing with a controller to playing with keyboard and mouse and have no issues transferring over. There is proper mouse support both in-game and in the menus and it isn’t just some tacked on thing. Very impressive port overall and bonus points for actually including the settings in-game this time instead of in some separate launcher.
Overall
Trails from Zero has been pretty good so far. I plan on finishing it up and maybe doing a full review, but we'll have to wait and see. Whatever the case, good game, good port, maybe not quite as interesting as other Trails games I have played, but worth a play for fans of the series if you have yet to do so already with the unofficial translations.
Another year, another Trails game - except we’re going in reverse since this game actually takes place before the Cold Steel subseries (great games by the way), but I’m glad we finally get an official release of this in the West.
Trails from Zero is the fourth entry in the Trails series, taking place after the Sky subseries. It takes place in Crossbell and introduces us to some important characters that then play a role in the larger story. Coming back from having played the Cold Steel games, it was nice to get a proper introduction to the characters here instead of them just being casually introduced like they were in Cold Steel. Granted, I guess that’s what I get for playing them out of order to begin with, but then again, this is the first official release of this game in the West so…
Gameplay
Zero plays just like any other Trails game. Fast-paced and fun turn-based JRPG combat with a few mechanics to set it aside from the norm, large open worlds to explore full of cool locations to visit and characters to meet, and perhaps the series’ largest draw, its expansive and extremely dialogue-heavy storyline full of politics, character relations, action - the full slate.
It’s JRPGs like this that exemplify what I love about the genre, because in spite of its relatively niche appeal, you can tell a lot of heart and effort went into crafting it and I hardly ever feel the time passing when playing these games.
Story
The story here is obviously designed as some sort of prequel or foundation for the following, still unreleased in the West game, Trails to Azure. A lot of the early game is just kinda random missions and even slice of life stuff that I will admit, are a bit slow to build up the cast. If anything, it felt like it was more so written as a way to introduce the location and the different factions and such rather than tell a meaningful story of its own.
Granted, I still have not completed the game but it’s been kinda laidback so far, which is disappointing in the way I just described, but also kinda refreshing given the literal info dumping that the last couple Cold Steel games turned out to be. It’s a double-edged sword of sorts, making it easy to get into the title as a newcomer, but not really offering much as a standalone package if isolated from the rest.
Gameplay cont.
That said, the gameplay is still some great stuff. Exploring the game world, taking on various quests that usually end in some sort of boss fight, building up your party’s loadout, and even partaking in the occasional side thing too, like fishing. It’s a bit formulaic, but again, it’s just nice to have a well-designed overall package even if it doesn't excel in one particular area this time around.
PC Port
I’ve played for about a dozen hours by this point and have had absolutely no issues. I ran the game at 4k 144fps with no drops, freezing, or anything of the sort. I played a lot of that time at 6x game speed too, and once again, I am forever grateful for the turbo mode feature.
That and the keyboard and mouse controls are actually pretty good. I would go from playing with a controller to playing with keyboard and mouse and have no issues transferring over. There is proper mouse support both in-game and in the menus and it isn’t just some tacked on thing. Very impressive port overall and bonus points for actually including the settings in-game this time instead of in some separate launcher.
Overall
Trails from Zero has been pretty good so far. I plan on finishing it up and maybe doing a full review, but we'll have to wait and see. Whatever the case, good game, good port, maybe not quite as interesting as other Trails games I have played, but worth a play for fans of the series if you have yet to do so already with the unofficial translations.
Full video review: https://youtu.be/dZXH3pqi4nY
This one has been on my radar since it was revealed at Summer Game Fest last year. It’s got a bright, poppy art style, some solid tunes, and targeted a niche that I’m generally a fan of. Now that all the episodes are out though, I’m left with just disappointment.
We Are OFK is an episodic adventure game centered around a group of friends trying to make a living in Los Angeles as musicians (the absolute classic). Of course, that is not an easy path, so a lot of the story is the little drama that pops up along the way towards this goal - my main complaint there being that a lot of it is just so predictable and not really all that interesting.
I will try to keep spoilers to a minimum. The producer character, for example, receives an offer from a big time musician to work full-time for him. Good pay, good benefits, but she will have to leave her friends behind and you bet the game makes the entire following arc about how “big music is soulless” and that it's the indies that truly shine. The bigshots are made out to be absolutely idiotic and even evil at times and the whole time I’m sitting there like - yeah, I could have written this in middle school, especially given how the characters fluctuate between acting that age and acting like adults.
I guess that comes with entering adulthood, but it also doesn’t help that the characters here all share very similar personality types - the “let’s go out and get some boba” every day type. As someone that used to live in Los Angeles, it’s actually impressive how overly “quirky” they made the characters here and the dialogue writing often makes it hard to take anything that’s going on seriously despite serious topics being discussed.
I started off relatively interested in the story after episode 1 and part of 2, but by the time 3 came around, it just wasn’t cutting it anymore and the following two episodes after that were just outright boring. I couldn’t escape this feeling that this game was made by an indie band that just wanted to get their music out and thought wrapping it up in an interactive movie would be a good approach.
Don’t get me wrong, the music absolutely slaps - both the insert songs and the soundtrack - but the rest of the experience pales in comparison. You do get the occasional bit of gameplay, but it’s limited to selecting choices that don’t matter and only change a line of dialogue or two, music videos that are a bit more interactive, but have clunky controls and offer no real reason to even interact with them in the first place, and a story that lasts five hours but feels like very little actually happens during that time.
This is the type of game that would have been better off as a 6 or 7/10 Netflix movie or series to digest and forget by next week, but instead it’s that in video game form and feels worse off as a result. I wanted to like this game, especially given the music, the visuals, the overall aesthetic, but it was honestly a struggle.
Overall
So no, I cannot recommend We Are OFK. It does some things right with regards to its visuals and music, but the story is just not interesting as a video game and the lack of anything else really to elevate it leaves this as an experience best left forgotten.
This one has been on my radar since it was revealed at Summer Game Fest last year. It’s got a bright, poppy art style, some solid tunes, and targeted a niche that I’m generally a fan of. Now that all the episodes are out though, I’m left with just disappointment.
We Are OFK is an episodic adventure game centered around a group of friends trying to make a living in Los Angeles as musicians (the absolute classic). Of course, that is not an easy path, so a lot of the story is the little drama that pops up along the way towards this goal - my main complaint there being that a lot of it is just so predictable and not really all that interesting.
I will try to keep spoilers to a minimum. The producer character, for example, receives an offer from a big time musician to work full-time for him. Good pay, good benefits, but she will have to leave her friends behind and you bet the game makes the entire following arc about how “big music is soulless” and that it's the indies that truly shine. The bigshots are made out to be absolutely idiotic and even evil at times and the whole time I’m sitting there like - yeah, I could have written this in middle school, especially given how the characters fluctuate between acting that age and acting like adults.
I guess that comes with entering adulthood, but it also doesn’t help that the characters here all share very similar personality types - the “let’s go out and get some boba” every day type. As someone that used to live in Los Angeles, it’s actually impressive how overly “quirky” they made the characters here and the dialogue writing often makes it hard to take anything that’s going on seriously despite serious topics being discussed.
I started off relatively interested in the story after episode 1 and part of 2, but by the time 3 came around, it just wasn’t cutting it anymore and the following two episodes after that were just outright boring. I couldn’t escape this feeling that this game was made by an indie band that just wanted to get their music out and thought wrapping it up in an interactive movie would be a good approach.
Don’t get me wrong, the music absolutely slaps - both the insert songs and the soundtrack - but the rest of the experience pales in comparison. You do get the occasional bit of gameplay, but it’s limited to selecting choices that don’t matter and only change a line of dialogue or two, music videos that are a bit more interactive, but have clunky controls and offer no real reason to even interact with them in the first place, and a story that lasts five hours but feels like very little actually happens during that time.
This is the type of game that would have been better off as a 6 or 7/10 Netflix movie or series to digest and forget by next week, but instead it’s that in video game form and feels worse off as a result. I wanted to like this game, especially given the music, the visuals, the overall aesthetic, but it was honestly a struggle.
Overall
So no, I cannot recommend We Are OFK. It does some things right with regards to its visuals and music, but the story is just not interesting as a video game and the lack of anything else really to elevate it leaves this as an experience best left forgotten.
Full review: https://youtu.be/90TRM-7j6s4
Made in Abyss is a fantastic anime, one of my recent favorites. So I was pleasantly surprised to see this pop up on Steam, the series has the potential for a fun video game.
Gameplay
Given the atrocity that was the Re:ZERO game developed by the same studio, I expected just another straightforward VN-adventure hybrid. Binary Star is much more than that though. There are still VN segments, but the gameplay takes priority here and there is a full slate of stuff to play around with.
Crafting food and equipment, using various tools to get around, taking in the many different areas of the Abyss, unlocking abilities on the skill tree, hunting down artifacts - it is a much higher-end production than I was anticipating and the studio has done a great job building a solid foundation.
Game Loop
Unfortunately though, that is just the foundation, because the game takes a massive dive in quality once you get to how the actual loop works. Instead of evoking that feeling of exploration and wonder that one would expect to come with diving into the Abyss, the overall feeling I had was one of monotony. This is because the vast majority of quests are simple fetch quests, “go here and kill this” quests, or “go here, talk to this person, and come back” quests.
You would think, “okay, but these fetch quests give you an opportunity to explore the Abyss” and yeah, you would be partially right. The problem there though is that once you’ve seen an area a few times, it becomes a bit boring to head back there for the fifth, sixth time to do something menial like collecting five bird eggs or fishing for material to craft a certain dish.
This becomes especially annoying later on when you have to trek through like four or five different areas just to get to your objective only to have to trek all the way back at the end. I quickly realized I was spending roughly 90% of my time just getting to where I needed to be and that most of that time was spent trekking through the same areas that I had already crossed through in the previous five quests. This is the bulk of the Binary Star experience and it is a massive disappointment given the great base that the game starts with.
Little things add to this disappointment too. Item weight, limited backpack size, equipment durability, and the fact that if you run out of stamina your character literally stops in place until the stamina bar regens to full. Sure, there’s an excuse for realism to be made there, but this is an anime game and a lot of these mechanics are blatantly anti-fun.
Combat
The combat is the most dead simple thing ever, with your one button attacks that only expand beyond that with the skill tree that just makes the combo string longer. The lock-on is a bit finicky, the hitboxes are usually way larger than they appear, and most fights boil down to simply hitting an enemy a couple times, rolling to the side, and repeating.
Story & Game Modes
The game is basically divided into two parts: “Hello Abyss” and “Deep In Abyss”. The former is the “proper” story mode that tells the story from the anime and allows you to play as Riko and Reg. That said, the entire thing only adapts up to the survival training with Ozen - episode eight from the first season - and it took me just three hours to clear. I found this mode to be a vastly inferior method of telling the Made in Abyss story for what it does adapt.
After completing that mode though, you unlock the full experience: Deep in Abyss - or the game mode that most of my earlier complaints come from. This mode allows you to create a custom character and tells an original story with said character. Sounds cool, but the story itself is just there to link things together and isn’t really a strong point. The rest of it is as I described earlier.
Graphics & Music
The graphics are what I would expect from an early PS4 or even PS3 game, with bland textures and boring world design. The music is a bit better, but honestly nothing can compare to Kevin Penkin’s work in the anime and I guess I’m just disappointed that we couldn’t get something that at least tries to be that good.
PC Performance
I ran the game at 4k 144fps, max settings on my RTX 3080 Ti with no performance-related issues. That said, there are some bugs worth mentioning, including voice playback randomly stopping after alt+tabbing and NPCs getting stuck in the terrain when moving. That latter one happened A LOT and it comes with an equally annoying sound effect of someone rapidly hitting the ground.
Overall
Made in Abyss: Binary Star Falling into Darkness is a decent game bogged down by some incredibly tedious quest design. Exploring the Abyss can be fun, but not when you have to do so dozens of times in the same areas just to complete simple fetch quests. It’s a shame, because the studio did a fairly good job building up a solid foundation. It’s just that they didn’t know what to do with said foundation and we get a filler-stuffed experience as a result. Maybe one day we’ll get something to build on this base, but for now, Binary Star is unfortunately an easy pass.
Made in Abyss is a fantastic anime, one of my recent favorites. So I was pleasantly surprised to see this pop up on Steam, the series has the potential for a fun video game.
Gameplay
Given the atrocity that was the Re:ZERO game developed by the same studio, I expected just another straightforward VN-adventure hybrid. Binary Star is much more than that though. There are still VN segments, but the gameplay takes priority here and there is a full slate of stuff to play around with.
Crafting food and equipment, using various tools to get around, taking in the many different areas of the Abyss, unlocking abilities on the skill tree, hunting down artifacts - it is a much higher-end production than I was anticipating and the studio has done a great job building a solid foundation.
Game Loop
Unfortunately though, that is just the foundation, because the game takes a massive dive in quality once you get to how the actual loop works. Instead of evoking that feeling of exploration and wonder that one would expect to come with diving into the Abyss, the overall feeling I had was one of monotony. This is because the vast majority of quests are simple fetch quests, “go here and kill this” quests, or “go here, talk to this person, and come back” quests.
You would think, “okay, but these fetch quests give you an opportunity to explore the Abyss” and yeah, you would be partially right. The problem there though is that once you’ve seen an area a few times, it becomes a bit boring to head back there for the fifth, sixth time to do something menial like collecting five bird eggs or fishing for material to craft a certain dish.
This becomes especially annoying later on when you have to trek through like four or five different areas just to get to your objective only to have to trek all the way back at the end. I quickly realized I was spending roughly 90% of my time just getting to where I needed to be and that most of that time was spent trekking through the same areas that I had already crossed through in the previous five quests. This is the bulk of the Binary Star experience and it is a massive disappointment given the great base that the game starts with.
Little things add to this disappointment too. Item weight, limited backpack size, equipment durability, and the fact that if you run out of stamina your character literally stops in place until the stamina bar regens to full. Sure, there’s an excuse for realism to be made there, but this is an anime game and a lot of these mechanics are blatantly anti-fun.
Combat
The combat is the most dead simple thing ever, with your one button attacks that only expand beyond that with the skill tree that just makes the combo string longer. The lock-on is a bit finicky, the hitboxes are usually way larger than they appear, and most fights boil down to simply hitting an enemy a couple times, rolling to the side, and repeating.
Story & Game Modes
The game is basically divided into two parts: “Hello Abyss” and “Deep In Abyss”. The former is the “proper” story mode that tells the story from the anime and allows you to play as Riko and Reg. That said, the entire thing only adapts up to the survival training with Ozen - episode eight from the first season - and it took me just three hours to clear. I found this mode to be a vastly inferior method of telling the Made in Abyss story for what it does adapt.
After completing that mode though, you unlock the full experience: Deep in Abyss - or the game mode that most of my earlier complaints come from. This mode allows you to create a custom character and tells an original story with said character. Sounds cool, but the story itself is just there to link things together and isn’t really a strong point. The rest of it is as I described earlier.
Graphics & Music
The graphics are what I would expect from an early PS4 or even PS3 game, with bland textures and boring world design. The music is a bit better, but honestly nothing can compare to Kevin Penkin’s work in the anime and I guess I’m just disappointed that we couldn’t get something that at least tries to be that good.
PC Performance
I ran the game at 4k 144fps, max settings on my RTX 3080 Ti with no performance-related issues. That said, there are some bugs worth mentioning, including voice playback randomly stopping after alt+tabbing and NPCs getting stuck in the terrain when moving. That latter one happened A LOT and it comes with an equally annoying sound effect of someone rapidly hitting the ground.
Overall
Made in Abyss: Binary Star Falling into Darkness is a decent game bogged down by some incredibly tedious quest design. Exploring the Abyss can be fun, but not when you have to do so dozens of times in the same areas just to complete simple fetch quests. It’s a shame, because the studio did a fairly good job building up a solid foundation. It’s just that they didn’t know what to do with said foundation and we get a filler-stuffed experience as a result. Maybe one day we’ll get something to build on this base, but for now, Binary Star is unfortunately an easy pass.
Full video review: https://youtu.be/ga4HOJGE-cY
Two years later and another remake is out. I had a good time playing through the first one in spite of its flaws, so I was lookng forward to giving the second a look.
Visuals & Map Design
The first thing I noticed this time around is how much better this game looks compared to its predecessor. I’m not talking the art style - that still maintains the same goofy, retro look - but more so the map density, the level of detail, the models - all of that. The studio has done a great job not only in faithfully recreating the look of the original 2006 game, but improving upon what they did just two years ago in the first remake. The environments were already pretty good in the first game, but in 2 they feel much less barren and WAY more varied.
Gameplay
Right at the start you already have access to a bunch of abilities, but that only grows as you progress and while not all of them land, the ones that do are very fun to use and the pacing is managed well enough that there’s always something new to look forward to.
The gameplay in general maintains that distinct mid-2000s vibe where the focus is on just having fun and not really worrying about little things like what equipment is the best to upgrade or “is this the best way to tackle this mission”? It’s very freeform and I honestly miss this kind of game design - it’s one of the reasons why I got into gaming in the first place.
Mission Design
Just like the first remake, the mission quality varies wildly here. You get the occasional really good mission that introduces a new ability and weaves it into the gameplay in a fun way followed by another three or so boring missions that alternate between simply “go here, destroy this, repeat” missions and the dreaded escort missions. There are so many escort missions that it kinda ends up feeling like the default, even if some alternate between walking and riding the saucer.
It really brings down the experience at times, makes it feel monotonous in spite of all the fun equipment and such you have access to. For an experience that is roughly seven or so hours long, it is very disappointing that they had to resort to such repetition to fill that time.
Story
In the first game, I found the story to be enjoyable enough. Here though? It’s kinda average. The same cheeky humor is here, but some of the jokes kept getting repeated over and over and it just wasn’t funny anymore. I don’t know, it just felt the first had a better handle on things and was more witty, less reliant on crude humor, making this one feel like an overall downgrade.
PC Performance
As a side effect of the visual upgrade, the game is definitely more taxing than the first. That’s fine, I far exceed those requirements anyways. However, that did not stop these absolutely wild fps fluctuations from the steady 90-100 or so down to 40. It was still playable and I definitely could have remedied the issue by lowering settings even further, but an fps fluctuation of 60 is quite a lot and more optimization would be very welcome here.
I also ran into a few bugs, including NPCs not moving at all, textures flickering during cutscenes, and micro freezes when opening certain game menus. I didn’t have anything else outside of those issues, but they felt worth mentioning regardless.
Overall
Destroy All Humans! 2 - Reprobed is a decent remaster of a decent game. Although not quite as refined as the first remake, it does have better environments, more weapons to play around with, and a larger scope. However, it also suffers from the same monotonous mission design as that first game along with having a subpar story and some technical issues too. Really, if you liked the first remake, then you’ll probably like this one and won’t need a review to tell you otherwise.
Two years later and another remake is out. I had a good time playing through the first one in spite of its flaws, so I was lookng forward to giving the second a look.
Visuals & Map Design
The first thing I noticed this time around is how much better this game looks compared to its predecessor. I’m not talking the art style - that still maintains the same goofy, retro look - but more so the map density, the level of detail, the models - all of that. The studio has done a great job not only in faithfully recreating the look of the original 2006 game, but improving upon what they did just two years ago in the first remake. The environments were already pretty good in the first game, but in 2 they feel much less barren and WAY more varied.
Gameplay
Right at the start you already have access to a bunch of abilities, but that only grows as you progress and while not all of them land, the ones that do are very fun to use and the pacing is managed well enough that there’s always something new to look forward to.
The gameplay in general maintains that distinct mid-2000s vibe where the focus is on just having fun and not really worrying about little things like what equipment is the best to upgrade or “is this the best way to tackle this mission”? It’s very freeform and I honestly miss this kind of game design - it’s one of the reasons why I got into gaming in the first place.
Mission Design
Just like the first remake, the mission quality varies wildly here. You get the occasional really good mission that introduces a new ability and weaves it into the gameplay in a fun way followed by another three or so boring missions that alternate between simply “go here, destroy this, repeat” missions and the dreaded escort missions. There are so many escort missions that it kinda ends up feeling like the default, even if some alternate between walking and riding the saucer.
It really brings down the experience at times, makes it feel monotonous in spite of all the fun equipment and such you have access to. For an experience that is roughly seven or so hours long, it is very disappointing that they had to resort to such repetition to fill that time.
Story
In the first game, I found the story to be enjoyable enough. Here though? It’s kinda average. The same cheeky humor is here, but some of the jokes kept getting repeated over and over and it just wasn’t funny anymore. I don’t know, it just felt the first had a better handle on things and was more witty, less reliant on crude humor, making this one feel like an overall downgrade.
PC Performance
As a side effect of the visual upgrade, the game is definitely more taxing than the first. That’s fine, I far exceed those requirements anyways. However, that did not stop these absolutely wild fps fluctuations from the steady 90-100 or so down to 40. It was still playable and I definitely could have remedied the issue by lowering settings even further, but an fps fluctuation of 60 is quite a lot and more optimization would be very welcome here.
I also ran into a few bugs, including NPCs not moving at all, textures flickering during cutscenes, and micro freezes when opening certain game menus. I didn’t have anything else outside of those issues, but they felt worth mentioning regardless.
Overall
Destroy All Humans! 2 - Reprobed is a decent remaster of a decent game. Although not quite as refined as the first remake, it does have better environments, more weapons to play around with, and a larger scope. However, it also suffers from the same monotonous mission design as that first game along with having a subpar story and some technical issues too. Really, if you liked the first remake, then you’ll probably like this one and won’t need a review to tell you otherwise.
2022
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.
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.
Full video review: https://youtu.be/QokxD7gn2pM
Yuzusoft produces some of the highest quality visual novels in the genre. All of their English releases have been solid, but this one? I’m not so sure.
Production
The character designs, the backgrounds, the animations, the UI, pretty much all the stuff that allows you to even get into the story in the first place is some top tier work. The backgrounds - while not the best I’ve seen from the studio - are fitting for the story being told without being overly generic. The character designs are equally well-done, with clean linework, great color and outfit choices, and a variety of facial expressions and other little animations to really bring them to life.
And as usual with Yuzusoft visual novels, the settings and customization are easily some of the best in the medium - going far beyond what is usually found with these games. Really, the only thing bringing down the production is the music. I wouldn’t say it is necessarily bad, but it’s just mediocre at best, being a bit too repetitive and only having a couple standout tracks out of like thirty or so total.
Story and Writing
I literally spent almost one hundred hours on this game not because it’s a long visual novel, but because the progress was so slow and boring that I frequently found myself having to stop and take small breaks just to avoid burning out on it. As a slice of life VN fan, this was quite the disappointment.
Take the common route for example. Its purpose is to introduce the characters and the cafe setting - which it actually does pretty well very early on. The rest of it though? It’s almost entirely filler. You get several chapters worth of character banter as they set up this cafe and an entire story arc dedicated to some forced drama where a father is struggling to find a cake that he likes and his daughter ends up serving as a sort of mediator with the cafe staff to produce that very cake. The daughter helps out in the actual making of the cake and it becomes this whole “made with love” kinda thing and the father finally enjoys a cake for once.
The purpose of this arc was to help push part of the fantasy plotline, but again, it’s simply way too long for its own good and is forgotten almost immediately after it takes place. Considering that this arc alone takes up like 25% of the common route, it really goes to show just how little this VN has to offer outside of back and forth character dialogue and slice of life moments.
The fantasy plot as well. It’s there, but not really. The main heroine is a reaper, but it’s such a moot point during the common route that it wouldn’t even be that surprising to forget that aspect of her character entirely. Unlike previous Yuzusoft releases which blend the fantasy elements seamlessly into the story, this one feels like it was tacked on simply because the studio seems unwilling to produce just a straightforward slice of life comedy.
What you are left with is a visual novel without a clear-cut direction. Does every visual novel need one? No, not necessarily. But then you better have some solid character writing and fun slice of life stuff to carry the thing and that is simply not the experience I had with Cafe Stella. For one, the characters are far too “samey” for that to really work. Literally every single heroine aside from one has the “teasing” trait and you bet the game won’t let you forget that.
And when the main character is not being teased by any of the heroines, the writing falls back on the typical eroge tropes that are just tiring at this point if you’ve played more than a few of these visual novels. I don’t know, maybe I’ve just played too many of these games, but this stuff detracts from the story more than it adds and when the slice of life stuff is already as basic as it is, you’re not really left with much.
Character Routes
While the heroines may not be all that different character-wise, the stories they tell are at least pretty varied. There’s the fantasy plotline of Kanna, the backstory-heavy plotline of Natsume, and a couple other surprises from the rest that make the experience more than just a straight slice of life comedy.
That said, they don't always land. Kanna’s route, for example, has the same problem as the common route where a lot of it is simply unnecessary - including an entire story chapter dedicated to some forced fantasy drama that sets up for a reasonable story development, but shoots itself in the foot at the end and reverses the whole thing like it never happened.
That and this game continues the Yuzusoft trend of being WAY too reliant on H-scenes in the latter half of each character route. You’ll start a route, go through the usual buildup to a relationship, and then BAM, suddenly they are going at it every other scene and the scenes in-between simply serve as filler which is noticeable even with the 18+ content disabled. It really makes it hard to take the romance elements seriously and I would definitely not recommend the game if you’re looking for decent romance.
Overall
Café Stella is a massive step down from Yuzusoft’s previous releases. While the production remains solid, the story and writing are anything but, with too much filler, forced romance, and an overreliance on typical eroge tropes bringing down the experience. It might be decent if you’re not already familiar with this medium and the studio specifically, but you’re much better off playing Sabbat of the Witch, Riddle Joker, or Senren Banka instead.
Yuzusoft produces some of the highest quality visual novels in the genre. All of their English releases have been solid, but this one? I’m not so sure.
Production
The character designs, the backgrounds, the animations, the UI, pretty much all the stuff that allows you to even get into the story in the first place is some top tier work. The backgrounds - while not the best I’ve seen from the studio - are fitting for the story being told without being overly generic. The character designs are equally well-done, with clean linework, great color and outfit choices, and a variety of facial expressions and other little animations to really bring them to life.
And as usual with Yuzusoft visual novels, the settings and customization are easily some of the best in the medium - going far beyond what is usually found with these games. Really, the only thing bringing down the production is the music. I wouldn’t say it is necessarily bad, but it’s just mediocre at best, being a bit too repetitive and only having a couple standout tracks out of like thirty or so total.
Story and Writing
I literally spent almost one hundred hours on this game not because it’s a long visual novel, but because the progress was so slow and boring that I frequently found myself having to stop and take small breaks just to avoid burning out on it. As a slice of life VN fan, this was quite the disappointment.
Take the common route for example. Its purpose is to introduce the characters and the cafe setting - which it actually does pretty well very early on. The rest of it though? It’s almost entirely filler. You get several chapters worth of character banter as they set up this cafe and an entire story arc dedicated to some forced drama where a father is struggling to find a cake that he likes and his daughter ends up serving as a sort of mediator with the cafe staff to produce that very cake. The daughter helps out in the actual making of the cake and it becomes this whole “made with love” kinda thing and the father finally enjoys a cake for once.
The purpose of this arc was to help push part of the fantasy plotline, but again, it’s simply way too long for its own good and is forgotten almost immediately after it takes place. Considering that this arc alone takes up like 25% of the common route, it really goes to show just how little this VN has to offer outside of back and forth character dialogue and slice of life moments.
The fantasy plot as well. It’s there, but not really. The main heroine is a reaper, but it’s such a moot point during the common route that it wouldn’t even be that surprising to forget that aspect of her character entirely. Unlike previous Yuzusoft releases which blend the fantasy elements seamlessly into the story, this one feels like it was tacked on simply because the studio seems unwilling to produce just a straightforward slice of life comedy.
What you are left with is a visual novel without a clear-cut direction. Does every visual novel need one? No, not necessarily. But then you better have some solid character writing and fun slice of life stuff to carry the thing and that is simply not the experience I had with Cafe Stella. For one, the characters are far too “samey” for that to really work. Literally every single heroine aside from one has the “teasing” trait and you bet the game won’t let you forget that.
And when the main character is not being teased by any of the heroines, the writing falls back on the typical eroge tropes that are just tiring at this point if you’ve played more than a few of these visual novels. I don’t know, maybe I’ve just played too many of these games, but this stuff detracts from the story more than it adds and when the slice of life stuff is already as basic as it is, you’re not really left with much.
Character Routes
While the heroines may not be all that different character-wise, the stories they tell are at least pretty varied. There’s the fantasy plotline of Kanna, the backstory-heavy plotline of Natsume, and a couple other surprises from the rest that make the experience more than just a straight slice of life comedy.
That said, they don't always land. Kanna’s route, for example, has the same problem as the common route where a lot of it is simply unnecessary - including an entire story chapter dedicated to some forced fantasy drama that sets up for a reasonable story development, but shoots itself in the foot at the end and reverses the whole thing like it never happened.
That and this game continues the Yuzusoft trend of being WAY too reliant on H-scenes in the latter half of each character route. You’ll start a route, go through the usual buildup to a relationship, and then BAM, suddenly they are going at it every other scene and the scenes in-between simply serve as filler which is noticeable even with the 18+ content disabled. It really makes it hard to take the romance elements seriously and I would definitely not recommend the game if you’re looking for decent romance.
Overall
Café Stella is a massive step down from Yuzusoft’s previous releases. While the production remains solid, the story and writing are anything but, with too much filler, forced romance, and an overreliance on typical eroge tropes bringing down the experience. It might be decent if you’re not already familiar with this medium and the studio specifically, but you’re much better off playing Sabbat of the Witch, Riddle Joker, or Senren Banka instead.
2022
Full video review: https://youtu.be/cJao46W95W0
It's here! One of the most anticipated indie games of the year that simultaneously also happens to be one of the cutest and most deadly too. Having now completed the game - there are some things I need to talk about.
Gameplay
So Cult of the Lamb is effectively a combo of two genres: action roguelike and colony management. You complete dungeon runs to earn materials and followers to then power your colony and other ventures. The dungeon runs themselves are not that long - usually around 5-10 minutes - but they’re fun for what they are. The combat is simple, yet fast and effective, the enemy designs are varied and offer up plenty of different attack patterns to keep things interesting, the boss fights are plentiful and also fun, and the movement is both responsive and intuitive.
That said, the dungeons themselves I did find to be lacking. They may look great and have all the varied enemies and such, but the actual rooms and overall layout are the most basic thing ever. You get just a handful of different room types and each dungeon is small enough that it becomes easy to predict what the general layout will be.
Base Building
I imagine many people are under the impression that the roguelike stuff takes priority over the colony management stuff, but it’s actually the reverse - I spent more time building my base and managing my followers than exploring dungeons.
You’ll complete a dungeon run, come back, and then have to go through a checklist of different things: feed the villagers, collect devotion, give a sermon, perform rituals, clean up after your followers, harvest crops, collect materials gathered by your followers, etc. This process takes easily double or triple the time of a dungeon run and it can be tedious.
My biggest complaint would be the lack of quality of life features to lessen this busy work. Small stuff like having to hold A in front of the shrine to collect devotion instead of just picking it all up at once, not being able to see at a glance which job tasks members are assigned to, and - my least favorite task of the bunch - having to bless followers individually to raise their loyalty and have to go through that same animation twenty something times every single in-game day.
It’s not like the base building element is bad either - I enjoyed unlocking the different buildings, experimenting with what they do, and decorating my cult - but the upkeep can really drag down that experience and I hope that future patches can add some quality of life features.
Length and Replayability
It took me just over eight hours to clear the game while doing a bit of the side stuff on top of that. After beating the game you can simply keep playing the same save if you want to further complete all the side stuff and maybe unlock all of the extra decorations and such, but beyond that, there isn’t much else to work towards. I already had all the weapon upgrades, all the rituals unlocked, and all of the buildings that I wanted to use.
The experience has a rather linear structure to it and the roguelike stuff is not varied enough to warrant too much replay value. It’s still very fun as a one and done kind of experience, but I felt this was still worth noting for those expecting high replay values here.
Graphics and Sound
The stylistic and “cutesy” art makes for a cool dynamic with the game’s darker and more mature themes, but in a way that doesn’t come off as forced or there simply for shock value. The designs and animations genuinely look good and the studio did a great job with all the minor touches across the board. I didn’t find the music to be as good as the graphics, but it’s also not bad - just not something I would listen to outside of the game.
Performance
As a whole, Cult of the Lamb runs well, but not completely without issue. For example, while I had no problem running the game at 4k 144fps at max settings, there were numerous occasions where I ran into bugs that forced game restarts. Whether that be my lamb dude running off through walls and getting stuck when entering the temple or getting the dreaded infinite loading screen when exiting an area, it became a bit annoying.
Otherwise, the PC performance is fine. No fps drops or stuttering, plenty of graphical options to change if you need to further optimize the experience, and the default controls are fine on both controller and keyboard and mouse.
Steam Deck
Performance is a bit iffy on the Steam Deck. In dungeons and in most areas, it hovers around 60 fps when playing on medium settings at the Steam Deck’s native resolution. When in my cult though, it frequently dropped to 30 and struggled with all the stuff going on on-screen. A trade-off for sure, but I can’t say I ever saw it drop below 30.
Overall
Cult of the Lamb combines two genres to great effect, with fast and fun roguelike gameplay and plenty of colony sim mechanics to play around with. That said, each does have its fair share of problems, especially when taken independently of the dynamic they form. The roguelike stuff isn’t varied enough and the colony sim is gravely lacking in quality of life features, for example. Still a fun experience overall, but once that could be improved.
It's here! One of the most anticipated indie games of the year that simultaneously also happens to be one of the cutest and most deadly too. Having now completed the game - there are some things I need to talk about.
Gameplay
So Cult of the Lamb is effectively a combo of two genres: action roguelike and colony management. You complete dungeon runs to earn materials and followers to then power your colony and other ventures. The dungeon runs themselves are not that long - usually around 5-10 minutes - but they’re fun for what they are. The combat is simple, yet fast and effective, the enemy designs are varied and offer up plenty of different attack patterns to keep things interesting, the boss fights are plentiful and also fun, and the movement is both responsive and intuitive.
That said, the dungeons themselves I did find to be lacking. They may look great and have all the varied enemies and such, but the actual rooms and overall layout are the most basic thing ever. You get just a handful of different room types and each dungeon is small enough that it becomes easy to predict what the general layout will be.
Base Building
I imagine many people are under the impression that the roguelike stuff takes priority over the colony management stuff, but it’s actually the reverse - I spent more time building my base and managing my followers than exploring dungeons.
You’ll complete a dungeon run, come back, and then have to go through a checklist of different things: feed the villagers, collect devotion, give a sermon, perform rituals, clean up after your followers, harvest crops, collect materials gathered by your followers, etc. This process takes easily double or triple the time of a dungeon run and it can be tedious.
My biggest complaint would be the lack of quality of life features to lessen this busy work. Small stuff like having to hold A in front of the shrine to collect devotion instead of just picking it all up at once, not being able to see at a glance which job tasks members are assigned to, and - my least favorite task of the bunch - having to bless followers individually to raise their loyalty and have to go through that same animation twenty something times every single in-game day.
It’s not like the base building element is bad either - I enjoyed unlocking the different buildings, experimenting with what they do, and decorating my cult - but the upkeep can really drag down that experience and I hope that future patches can add some quality of life features.
Length and Replayability
It took me just over eight hours to clear the game while doing a bit of the side stuff on top of that. After beating the game you can simply keep playing the same save if you want to further complete all the side stuff and maybe unlock all of the extra decorations and such, but beyond that, there isn’t much else to work towards. I already had all the weapon upgrades, all the rituals unlocked, and all of the buildings that I wanted to use.
The experience has a rather linear structure to it and the roguelike stuff is not varied enough to warrant too much replay value. It’s still very fun as a one and done kind of experience, but I felt this was still worth noting for those expecting high replay values here.
Graphics and Sound
The stylistic and “cutesy” art makes for a cool dynamic with the game’s darker and more mature themes, but in a way that doesn’t come off as forced or there simply for shock value. The designs and animations genuinely look good and the studio did a great job with all the minor touches across the board. I didn’t find the music to be as good as the graphics, but it’s also not bad - just not something I would listen to outside of the game.
Performance
As a whole, Cult of the Lamb runs well, but not completely without issue. For example, while I had no problem running the game at 4k 144fps at max settings, there were numerous occasions where I ran into bugs that forced game restarts. Whether that be my lamb dude running off through walls and getting stuck when entering the temple or getting the dreaded infinite loading screen when exiting an area, it became a bit annoying.
Otherwise, the PC performance is fine. No fps drops or stuttering, plenty of graphical options to change if you need to further optimize the experience, and the default controls are fine on both controller and keyboard and mouse.
Steam Deck
Performance is a bit iffy on the Steam Deck. In dungeons and in most areas, it hovers around 60 fps when playing on medium settings at the Steam Deck’s native resolution. When in my cult though, it frequently dropped to 30 and struggled with all the stuff going on on-screen. A trade-off for sure, but I can’t say I ever saw it drop below 30.
Overall
Cult of the Lamb combines two genres to great effect, with fast and fun roguelike gameplay and plenty of colony sim mechanics to play around with. That said, each does have its fair share of problems, especially when taken independently of the dynamic they form. The roguelike stuff isn’t varied enough and the colony sim is gravely lacking in quality of life features, for example. Still a fun experience overall, but once that could be improved.
Quick video review: https://youtu.be/UlSroK6kh14
I’ve played a lot of Musou games - some good, some bad, most mediocre, but this one might just be the worst yet.
Overview
Touken Ranbu Warriors is another one of those spin-off Musou games like Persona 5 Strikers, Hyrule Warriors, etc. This time though, it’s based on the Touken Ranbu series, a free to play browser game VERY popular with the female demographic. I have never played the original game, but I have seen both anime adaptations, so I was already familiar going into this one.
Gameplay
What I was met is the worst Musou experience I have had yet and I had originally planned to give this game a full review, but honestly, it was a struggle to even play as far as I did, so I gave up on that idea.
It’s not even like the combat was that bad. I mean, Musou games aren’t known for their revolutionary combat, but the combat here is at least par for the course. It’s more so the egregious level design, mission structure, and repetition that brought this one down.
For example, the first handful of missions - you’re just fighting skeletons. An hour later? More skeletons. A few hours later? Skeletons, but with some humanoid ones too. What makes this worse is that each level is the most small and linear thing ever. Gone are the usual large, open, or interconnected environments of most Musou games and here we get maybe a few open areas connected by short paths. You can walk across most levels in seconds and this extends into the actual playtime of those missions as well.
The vast majority of the missions have you go to an area, take down a strong enemy, go to the next area, take down the same enemy, and repeat until it is over. It takes maybe a few minutes max to do this, but sometimes the game purposefully blocks you from completing the missions that fast and forces you to use your animal sidekick to “analyze” the environment. This usually requires you to wait around for that to complete or to plow through another ten or so waves of identical enemy types before the analysis reaches 100% and you can finally finish the mission.
The entire thing just lacks substance, more so than the usual for this series and it’s not helped here by the fact that you spend more time looking at menus and loading animations than actual gameplay. In-between missions you get the boring, lengthy dialogue scenes too, not helped by how “samey” a lot of the Touken Ranbu characters come off as here.
Overall
So I can’t say I had a good time with this one. Granted, maybe it improves later on, but I am hours into it and it’s hardly done anything at all to hold my interest enough to finish it for a full review. Maybe if you’re a diehard Touken Ranbu fan, but even then, this is a tough one to recommend at all.
I’ve played a lot of Musou games - some good, some bad, most mediocre, but this one might just be the worst yet.
Overview
Touken Ranbu Warriors is another one of those spin-off Musou games like Persona 5 Strikers, Hyrule Warriors, etc. This time though, it’s based on the Touken Ranbu series, a free to play browser game VERY popular with the female demographic. I have never played the original game, but I have seen both anime adaptations, so I was already familiar going into this one.
Gameplay
What I was met is the worst Musou experience I have had yet and I had originally planned to give this game a full review, but honestly, it was a struggle to even play as far as I did, so I gave up on that idea.
It’s not even like the combat was that bad. I mean, Musou games aren’t known for their revolutionary combat, but the combat here is at least par for the course. It’s more so the egregious level design, mission structure, and repetition that brought this one down.
For example, the first handful of missions - you’re just fighting skeletons. An hour later? More skeletons. A few hours later? Skeletons, but with some humanoid ones too. What makes this worse is that each level is the most small and linear thing ever. Gone are the usual large, open, or interconnected environments of most Musou games and here we get maybe a few open areas connected by short paths. You can walk across most levels in seconds and this extends into the actual playtime of those missions as well.
The vast majority of the missions have you go to an area, take down a strong enemy, go to the next area, take down the same enemy, and repeat until it is over. It takes maybe a few minutes max to do this, but sometimes the game purposefully blocks you from completing the missions that fast and forces you to use your animal sidekick to “analyze” the environment. This usually requires you to wait around for that to complete or to plow through another ten or so waves of identical enemy types before the analysis reaches 100% and you can finally finish the mission.
The entire thing just lacks substance, more so than the usual for this series and it’s not helped here by the fact that you spend more time looking at menus and loading animations than actual gameplay. In-between missions you get the boring, lengthy dialogue scenes too, not helped by how “samey” a lot of the Touken Ranbu characters come off as here.
Overall
So I can’t say I had a good time with this one. Granted, maybe it improves later on, but I am hours into it and it’s hardly done anything at all to hold my interest enough to finish it for a full review. Maybe if you’re a diehard Touken Ranbu fan, but even then, this is a tough one to recommend at all.
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.
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.
2022
Video review: https://youtu.be/AzEqzpClEM0
Sonic is back, but this time as a collection of older titles instead of something brand new. New Sonic games tend to have all sorts of issues, so surely a straight remaster of older ones would not? Well...
Gameplay
Sonic Origins is a collection of four games: Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic the Hedgehog 2, Sonic 3 & Knuckles, and Sonic CD. Each is presented in two formats: Classic Mode, which plays like the games were on their original platforms and then Anniversary Mode, which adds widescreen support and removes lives. Both have their merits, but the widescreen support added by Anniversary Mode absolutely elevates the experience and is easily one of the game’s best features.
And yes, the games themselves are great. Fast and fun gameplay with a great mix of platforming, diverse level design with all sorts of interesting stuff to find, and just the right amount of challenge. I’ve always liked how freeform Sonic’s gameplay is and how open the levels were and these four games are no exception.
The original game is perhaps the roughest of the bunch, but easily has some of the most memorable stages. The second game is the most difficult of the bunch, but has some of the best music. The third game has the most balanced gameplay of the bunch and honestly might be my favorite. CD is a bit of a weird one, combining some of the good aspects of the others, but I was not a fan of the time travel mechanic and boss fights; it’s probably my least favorite of the bunch.
Remaster Content
The question is then - do the changes made to these classics make the collection worth it? That’s a bit of an iffy one. On one hand, the package is a bit more expensive than I was expecting for a collection of four old games. With a $40 price tag, I wish the game had included even more classic Sonic games. For starters, Knuckles' Chaotix would have been an excellent addition, but Sonic Chaos, Sonic Triple Trouble, and the Sonic Advance games would have been great too.
Quality of life is also an issue. These are old classics ported to modern platforms without the usual features we get with such releases, such as save states or the ability to rewind. I can do without the latter, but save states would have been super cool to have here and that is something that straight emulation does better than this collection.
I also was not the biggest fan of whatever filter was used to scale these games up. It looks a bit blurry and nowhere near as crisp as I would have liked - even when messing around with settings like resolution and anti-aliasing (which I recommend you keep disabled). As it stands, it does take some getting used to.
The collection does do good in its addition of new game modes though, including boss rush, mirror mode, and a mission mode that adds a bunch of new objectives. Not all of those missions land, but it’s a nice addition regardless. The museum mode is a nice touch too, allowing access to artwork, music, and videos.
Bugs
Perhaps the biggest issue with this collection though is how buggy it is, particularly on the audio front. In every game, I had audio cutting out too early, audio repeatedly playing even when not doing anything, muffled music, and in a few cases - the audio completely bugging out and playing nonstop loud and annoying sounds. And while I have not noticed any collision or physics issues - that also appears to be a common complaint.
The collection is obviously a rushed job and you need look no further than the very devs that worked on it stating as such. Apparently there was some sort of disconnect there between the remaster devs and the actual finished product, leading to many strange bugs.
Overall
I cannot give Sonic Origins a straight positive recommendation, but I also cannot say that it’s entirely negative either - this is why I wish Steam had something in the middle. On one hand, these are some absolutely solid classics and I am glad they are available on modern platforms, but on the other, the collection itself is lacking and there are quite a few technical issues on top of that.
Sonic is back, but this time as a collection of older titles instead of something brand new. New Sonic games tend to have all sorts of issues, so surely a straight remaster of older ones would not? Well...
Gameplay
Sonic Origins is a collection of four games: Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic the Hedgehog 2, Sonic 3 & Knuckles, and Sonic CD. Each is presented in two formats: Classic Mode, which plays like the games were on their original platforms and then Anniversary Mode, which adds widescreen support and removes lives. Both have their merits, but the widescreen support added by Anniversary Mode absolutely elevates the experience and is easily one of the game’s best features.
And yes, the games themselves are great. Fast and fun gameplay with a great mix of platforming, diverse level design with all sorts of interesting stuff to find, and just the right amount of challenge. I’ve always liked how freeform Sonic’s gameplay is and how open the levels were and these four games are no exception.
The original game is perhaps the roughest of the bunch, but easily has some of the most memorable stages. The second game is the most difficult of the bunch, but has some of the best music. The third game has the most balanced gameplay of the bunch and honestly might be my favorite. CD is a bit of a weird one, combining some of the good aspects of the others, but I was not a fan of the time travel mechanic and boss fights; it’s probably my least favorite of the bunch.
Remaster Content
The question is then - do the changes made to these classics make the collection worth it? That’s a bit of an iffy one. On one hand, the package is a bit more expensive than I was expecting for a collection of four old games. With a $40 price tag, I wish the game had included even more classic Sonic games. For starters, Knuckles' Chaotix would have been an excellent addition, but Sonic Chaos, Sonic Triple Trouble, and the Sonic Advance games would have been great too.
Quality of life is also an issue. These are old classics ported to modern platforms without the usual features we get with such releases, such as save states or the ability to rewind. I can do without the latter, but save states would have been super cool to have here and that is something that straight emulation does better than this collection.
I also was not the biggest fan of whatever filter was used to scale these games up. It looks a bit blurry and nowhere near as crisp as I would have liked - even when messing around with settings like resolution and anti-aliasing (which I recommend you keep disabled). As it stands, it does take some getting used to.
The collection does do good in its addition of new game modes though, including boss rush, mirror mode, and a mission mode that adds a bunch of new objectives. Not all of those missions land, but it’s a nice addition regardless. The museum mode is a nice touch too, allowing access to artwork, music, and videos.
Bugs
Perhaps the biggest issue with this collection though is how buggy it is, particularly on the audio front. In every game, I had audio cutting out too early, audio repeatedly playing even when not doing anything, muffled music, and in a few cases - the audio completely bugging out and playing nonstop loud and annoying sounds. And while I have not noticed any collision or physics issues - that also appears to be a common complaint.
The collection is obviously a rushed job and you need look no further than the very devs that worked on it stating as such. Apparently there was some sort of disconnect there between the remaster devs and the actual finished product, leading to many strange bugs.
Overall
I cannot give Sonic Origins a straight positive recommendation, but I also cannot say that it’s entirely negative either - this is why I wish Steam had something in the middle. On one hand, these are some absolutely solid classics and I am glad they are available on modern platforms, but on the other, the collection itself is lacking and there are quite a few technical issues on top of that.
Full video review: https://youtu.be/5rwvTochc5M
Okay so I just finished this game and I have to admit, I am very confused. Not as to what happened in the game - that part I got down - but rather, what exactly this game was setting out to do.
Gameplay
Yurukill is basically a hybrid of two genres: visual novel and shoot ‘em up. You’re probably thinking “wow, what a cool combination, how does it work?” and the answer is simply “it doesn’t”. Or rather, the genre combination itself is fine, it’s just that it is entirely unnecessary. I went through the entire game thinking that these shoot ‘em up segments would have some sort of deeper meaning or bigger story payoff rather than being a shoot ‘em up minigame tacked on to a visual novel, but nope, it is literally just that.
Not to say that that shoot ‘em up stuff was entirely bad though. I mean, it wasn’t good, but it at least wasn’t terrible. The movement is fine, the models are… okay I guess, and the bullet patterns are at least challenging at times. You get a handful of different ships and a bunch of different bosses to take down, so content-wise the variety isn’t that bad either given the game’s length.
Each chapter of the game has one of these shoot ‘em up sequences at the end and they all follow the same pattern: shoot down a bunch of enemies, take down a boss, answer a question regarding the case at hand, take down boss again, repeat until the end where you have to answer questions about that story chapter in a Danganronpa-style minigame. The answers are almost always obvious and oftentimes feel like an insult to my intelligence though, which, when combined with other aspects of the game, give me the impression that this was a game designed for a much younger audience - younger so than the Danganronpa series that it blatantly tries to emulate.
Story
Just like the shoot ‘em up gameplay, the story is not terrible, but it’s even further from good than that gameplay is. It started out fine: you’re thrown into this death game scenario where each character has some sort of crime they were falsely accused of and winning the game allows them the opportunity to clear their name. Each story chapter follows one of these individual mysteries, giving you time to process each as they come before becoming this larger thing towards the end of the game.
It’s methodical, but not in a good way. The game’s pacing during each of these is a bit too quick to really give the characters the development they need and I often found myself disappointed at how simple the mysteries turned out to be. Oftentimes, I would go into a case with a vague guess of what happened and the result wouldn’t even be that far off - it isn’t like Ace Attorney or Danganronpa where there’s so much more to it and you’re constantly left guessing right up to the end.
There just isn’t a lot of depth here and this is best exemplified with the ending. Yeah, I mean it does wrap things up, but it just goes straight to the point and there’s nothing really special about it to set itself apart from the rest of the genre. Maybe I was setting myself up for disappointment here by hoping that the ending would pull some massive twist or development to really elevate the whole experience beyond the mediocrity that was the rest of the story, but nope, it does not stray from the formula at all.
Choices
There is no branching plot here and usually if you pick the “wrong” choice, you get a line of dialogue saying “no, that can’t be right” before the game throws you back to the decision screen to pick the correct one. Illusion of choice is a common problem with visual novels, so this is expected to a degree, but when it is literally every decision you can make, it does become a bit annoying.
Length
The game took me around 14-ish hours to clear. Not long by VN standards for sure, but at least not insultingly short. Granted, the game could have definitely used maybe double that length to flesh out the characters a bit more and make the mysteries more than these surface level things.
Puzzles
There is some additional gameplay through point-and-click-style puzzles, like what you would expect from an escape room. Whether that be some sort of riddle, cypher, sliding puzzle, or matching puzzle - the game covers a lot of ground there and these do help in making the experience a bit more immersive in a way.
Granted, at the same time, I can’t say that any of these puzzles are particularly difficult and I only ever needed to use the hint feature for two of them across the entire experience - so again, this leads me back to my belief that this game is aimed at a much younger audience.
Options
This is a visual novel that completely lacks any sort of skip button, a text speed option, and an auto mode speed option. It is extremely light on the settings and missing some key options I would consider essential in any visual novel.
Art and Music
I almost got all the way through this review without mentioning the art and music - two areas that the game does a decent job at, the art specifically. I liked the character models and the unique art style that the game goes for outside of that anime norm - which is especially noticeable in the eyes. The music, while not quite as good, at least is not bad and escapes that VN pitfall of being overly repetitive and obnoxious.
Overall
Yurukill: The Calumniation Games is both not a good visual novel and not a good shoot ‘em up game. The combination of these two feels forced and leaves me wondering what the game was trying to be. While the art may be good and the point-and-click stuff is fine, the entirety of the story just falls flat and feels like a watered down version of Danganronpa and the like. The genre has far better options than this, so I cannot in good faith recommend it and only hope that the studio can deliver us something even cooler in the future - they clearly have a unique style, they just need to match that with a good story.
Okay so I just finished this game and I have to admit, I am very confused. Not as to what happened in the game - that part I got down - but rather, what exactly this game was setting out to do.
Gameplay
Yurukill is basically a hybrid of two genres: visual novel and shoot ‘em up. You’re probably thinking “wow, what a cool combination, how does it work?” and the answer is simply “it doesn’t”. Or rather, the genre combination itself is fine, it’s just that it is entirely unnecessary. I went through the entire game thinking that these shoot ‘em up segments would have some sort of deeper meaning or bigger story payoff rather than being a shoot ‘em up minigame tacked on to a visual novel, but nope, it is literally just that.
Not to say that that shoot ‘em up stuff was entirely bad though. I mean, it wasn’t good, but it at least wasn’t terrible. The movement is fine, the models are… okay I guess, and the bullet patterns are at least challenging at times. You get a handful of different ships and a bunch of different bosses to take down, so content-wise the variety isn’t that bad either given the game’s length.
Each chapter of the game has one of these shoot ‘em up sequences at the end and they all follow the same pattern: shoot down a bunch of enemies, take down a boss, answer a question regarding the case at hand, take down boss again, repeat until the end where you have to answer questions about that story chapter in a Danganronpa-style minigame. The answers are almost always obvious and oftentimes feel like an insult to my intelligence though, which, when combined with other aspects of the game, give me the impression that this was a game designed for a much younger audience - younger so than the Danganronpa series that it blatantly tries to emulate.
Story
Just like the shoot ‘em up gameplay, the story is not terrible, but it’s even further from good than that gameplay is. It started out fine: you’re thrown into this death game scenario where each character has some sort of crime they were falsely accused of and winning the game allows them the opportunity to clear their name. Each story chapter follows one of these individual mysteries, giving you time to process each as they come before becoming this larger thing towards the end of the game.
It’s methodical, but not in a good way. The game’s pacing during each of these is a bit too quick to really give the characters the development they need and I often found myself disappointed at how simple the mysteries turned out to be. Oftentimes, I would go into a case with a vague guess of what happened and the result wouldn’t even be that far off - it isn’t like Ace Attorney or Danganronpa where there’s so much more to it and you’re constantly left guessing right up to the end.
There just isn’t a lot of depth here and this is best exemplified with the ending. Yeah, I mean it does wrap things up, but it just goes straight to the point and there’s nothing really special about it to set itself apart from the rest of the genre. Maybe I was setting myself up for disappointment here by hoping that the ending would pull some massive twist or development to really elevate the whole experience beyond the mediocrity that was the rest of the story, but nope, it does not stray from the formula at all.
Choices
There is no branching plot here and usually if you pick the “wrong” choice, you get a line of dialogue saying “no, that can’t be right” before the game throws you back to the decision screen to pick the correct one. Illusion of choice is a common problem with visual novels, so this is expected to a degree, but when it is literally every decision you can make, it does become a bit annoying.
Length
The game took me around 14-ish hours to clear. Not long by VN standards for sure, but at least not insultingly short. Granted, the game could have definitely used maybe double that length to flesh out the characters a bit more and make the mysteries more than these surface level things.
Puzzles
There is some additional gameplay through point-and-click-style puzzles, like what you would expect from an escape room. Whether that be some sort of riddle, cypher, sliding puzzle, or matching puzzle - the game covers a lot of ground there and these do help in making the experience a bit more immersive in a way.
Granted, at the same time, I can’t say that any of these puzzles are particularly difficult and I only ever needed to use the hint feature for two of them across the entire experience - so again, this leads me back to my belief that this game is aimed at a much younger audience.
Options
This is a visual novel that completely lacks any sort of skip button, a text speed option, and an auto mode speed option. It is extremely light on the settings and missing some key options I would consider essential in any visual novel.
Art and Music
I almost got all the way through this review without mentioning the art and music - two areas that the game does a decent job at, the art specifically. I liked the character models and the unique art style that the game goes for outside of that anime norm - which is especially noticeable in the eyes. The music, while not quite as good, at least is not bad and escapes that VN pitfall of being overly repetitive and obnoxious.
Overall
Yurukill: The Calumniation Games is both not a good visual novel and not a good shoot ‘em up game. The combination of these two feels forced and leaves me wondering what the game was trying to be. While the art may be good and the point-and-click stuff is fine, the entirety of the story just falls flat and feels like a watered down version of Danganronpa and the like. The genre has far better options than this, so I cannot in good faith recommend it and only hope that the studio can deliver us something even cooler in the future - they clearly have a unique style, they just need to match that with a good story.
2022
Full video review: https://youtu.be/_r5xU9xSkLs
Nearly twenty years ago, I had this fun little Gameboy game called Pac-Man Collection. It was a bundle of four different Pac-Man games that allowed someone like myself - who didn’t get to really experience the arcade era - a chance to get into the Pac-Man series proper. Now here we are in 2022 with an exponentially better version of that game.
Overview & Customization
Basically, this is a collection of a bunch of different Pac-Man games with this cool “arcade” customization feature thrown on top of it. As you play more games, you unlock tokens which you can use to play other games as well as roll in a gashapon machine to unlock statues that you can then use to deck out your arcade.
Each game has a bunch of different “missions” to complete and these too unlock more cosmetic things to place, whether that be flags, figures, benches, tables, or even new wallpapers. Overall, the whole arcade customization thing is kinda basic, but it’s a fun enough distraction and definitely a better alternative than just a menu listing the different games you can play.
Games
That Gameboy game I mentioned earlier? It has just four Pac-Man games. This collection? It has fourteen, including everything from the original 1980 arcade game to lesser-known ones like the 2005 DS game Pac 'n Roll or the 1995 SNES game Pac-In-Time. Most of the games take up the traditional Pac-Man style gameplay, but those two examples, along with others, offer up a bit more variety - mostly in the way of platforming.
Not to say that they are all good though - I wasn’t really a fan of Pac-In-Time and Pac-Man Battle Royale is pretty much the worst thing ever if you don’t have others to play it with. It’s mostly balanced out though - a bit of good, a bit of bad, a lot of just okay. My personal favorite was probably Championship Edition.
Missing Games
That said, the collection is missing a few key Pac-Man games I would have liked to see. The major one of course being Ms. Pac-Man, although that is likely because the game was not developed by Namco directly. But then you’re missing stuff like Championship Edition 2, which is very surprising seeing as how the first one is included and Championship Edition 2 is perhaps the most definitive Pac-Man experience yet and would have likely been my favorite game in the pack if it were included.
There are others of course - the Pac-Man World series definitely deserves its own collection - but overall, it’s a solid collection and covers a lot of Pac-Man’s history. In fact, it is by far the most definitive collection of Pac-Man games yet and I would have no trouble calling it the best.
Overall
The collection plays well, runs just fine, looks great at 4k, and has just enough customization to make it more than just another collection of Pac-Man games. That and it even works right out of the box on the Steam Deck - where I had fun jumping from game to game.
So yes, PAC-MAN MUSEUM+ a pretty easy recommendation to make, not just for Pac-Man fans, but for fans of retro gaming in general. It’s got a fun batch of games to play through, some nice bonus features by way of leaderboards and arcade customization, and I am honestly struggling to find anything negative to say here - it’s just an all-around solid release and a great way to get into one of the medium’s most important series.
Nearly twenty years ago, I had this fun little Gameboy game called Pac-Man Collection. It was a bundle of four different Pac-Man games that allowed someone like myself - who didn’t get to really experience the arcade era - a chance to get into the Pac-Man series proper. Now here we are in 2022 with an exponentially better version of that game.
Overview & Customization
Basically, this is a collection of a bunch of different Pac-Man games with this cool “arcade” customization feature thrown on top of it. As you play more games, you unlock tokens which you can use to play other games as well as roll in a gashapon machine to unlock statues that you can then use to deck out your arcade.
Each game has a bunch of different “missions” to complete and these too unlock more cosmetic things to place, whether that be flags, figures, benches, tables, or even new wallpapers. Overall, the whole arcade customization thing is kinda basic, but it’s a fun enough distraction and definitely a better alternative than just a menu listing the different games you can play.
Games
That Gameboy game I mentioned earlier? It has just four Pac-Man games. This collection? It has fourteen, including everything from the original 1980 arcade game to lesser-known ones like the 2005 DS game Pac 'n Roll or the 1995 SNES game Pac-In-Time. Most of the games take up the traditional Pac-Man style gameplay, but those two examples, along with others, offer up a bit more variety - mostly in the way of platforming.
Not to say that they are all good though - I wasn’t really a fan of Pac-In-Time and Pac-Man Battle Royale is pretty much the worst thing ever if you don’t have others to play it with. It’s mostly balanced out though - a bit of good, a bit of bad, a lot of just okay. My personal favorite was probably Championship Edition.
Missing Games
That said, the collection is missing a few key Pac-Man games I would have liked to see. The major one of course being Ms. Pac-Man, although that is likely because the game was not developed by Namco directly. But then you’re missing stuff like Championship Edition 2, which is very surprising seeing as how the first one is included and Championship Edition 2 is perhaps the most definitive Pac-Man experience yet and would have likely been my favorite game in the pack if it were included.
There are others of course - the Pac-Man World series definitely deserves its own collection - but overall, it’s a solid collection and covers a lot of Pac-Man’s history. In fact, it is by far the most definitive collection of Pac-Man games yet and I would have no trouble calling it the best.
Overall
The collection plays well, runs just fine, looks great at 4k, and has just enough customization to make it more than just another collection of Pac-Man games. That and it even works right out of the box on the Steam Deck - where I had fun jumping from game to game.
So yes, PAC-MAN MUSEUM+ a pretty easy recommendation to make, not just for Pac-Man fans, but for fans of retro gaming in general. It’s got a fun batch of games to play through, some nice bonus features by way of leaderboards and arcade customization, and I am honestly struggling to find anything negative to say here - it’s just an all-around solid release and a great way to get into one of the medium’s most important series.
Quick video review: https://youtu.be/vKI6NNpISmU
The long-running post-apocalyptic RPG series finally makes an appearance on PC and unfortunately, it isn’t looking too good.
Gameplay
Even speaking as a fan of turn-based strategy games - the combat here is just outright painful. It is far too slow, far too cumbersome, and has too many menus for its own good. Here you have a game where you’re rolling around in a tank and have to pause every single time you want to attack, select the weapon to attack with, slowly line up your aim, and then shoot it off only to repeat this whole process for each and every enemy in the area.
It becomes this process of move, pause, menu, shoot, move, pause, menu shoot - it doesn’t flow well and is really just an odd fit for a game like this. The combat is far too simplistic to warrant needing the extra depth offered by a turn-based system, so I have to wonder what the goal was here. Because even when you do get in an extended fight, it really just boils down to sitting there and waiting until you’re able to shoot again.
There is an auto-shoot function, but it can only be toggled once you are actually in combat, so it’s effectively useless because most of the time you’re just taking out enemies one by one or in small groups where usually one or two shots finishes the job. Really, the most depth you’ll get is from character skills and tank customization which allows you to equip weapons of different categories and elemental types, but the end result hardly feels any different.
Balancing
The normal enemies take like one shot to kill, but then bosses are these massive sponges that can easily two-shot you and have so much health that I’m hardly even sure if I am damaging them. A lot of the time, I would simply roll past them and move on to the next area where enemies became manageable again.
To take down bosses, you got to do a good bit of grinding, both for XP and for materials to upgrade your stuff and honestly, the combat is so barebones and boring that the idea of doing that just is not appealing.
Environments & Graphics
I understand this is not a AAA title, but it’s also being sold for $40 and looks like a mobile game, with low-res textures across the board and the most static of environments. Yeah, it’s supposed to be some post-apocalyptic setting, but I personally don’t think that should excuse such lazy level design - it’s like something we would get from a Compile Heart game, complete with invisible walls everywhere.
Story
The story is there, but not a super big thing - and it is honestly better off this way because what is there may be even more barebones than the gameplay. Writing this review, I cannot name any character off the top of my head that isn’t the protagonist that I myself named - they are just that forgettable and hardly receive the development needed to make the story in any way interesting.
PC Port
I will give PQube - the publisher - some credit, it is better than some of their other PC ports, but still below satisfactory. For one, the keyboard and mouse controls. The Steam store page actually lists the game as having none, but keyboard controls do exist (and that’s just keyboard, no mouse). None of the buttons can be rebound though, so you’re stuck holding shift and the arrow keys to rotate the camera - so don’t even think of picking this one up if you don’t have a controller.
There are also only three graphical settings: brightness, resolution choice between 720p/1080p, and fullscreen/window toggle. That’s it - it is the most barebones of ports and unfortunately comes with some technical issues on top of that. During my first two hours with the game, I had it freeze completely on me on two separate occasions. I didn’t have the issue past that two hour mark, but it’s worth mentioning regardless.
Overall
A disappointing first showing for the series on PC, METAL MAX Xeno Reborn brings some good ideas to the table, but is bogged down by its numerous bizarre design choices and technical issues. The gameplay is slow and monotonous, the level design and graphics are mobile-game level, and the game freezing and lack of proper controls are not a good look either. It’s just a low effort port all around and unfortunate to see as a series I was excited to check out for the first time.
The long-running post-apocalyptic RPG series finally makes an appearance on PC and unfortunately, it isn’t looking too good.
Gameplay
Even speaking as a fan of turn-based strategy games - the combat here is just outright painful. It is far too slow, far too cumbersome, and has too many menus for its own good. Here you have a game where you’re rolling around in a tank and have to pause every single time you want to attack, select the weapon to attack with, slowly line up your aim, and then shoot it off only to repeat this whole process for each and every enemy in the area.
It becomes this process of move, pause, menu, shoot, move, pause, menu shoot - it doesn’t flow well and is really just an odd fit for a game like this. The combat is far too simplistic to warrant needing the extra depth offered by a turn-based system, so I have to wonder what the goal was here. Because even when you do get in an extended fight, it really just boils down to sitting there and waiting until you’re able to shoot again.
There is an auto-shoot function, but it can only be toggled once you are actually in combat, so it’s effectively useless because most of the time you’re just taking out enemies one by one or in small groups where usually one or two shots finishes the job. Really, the most depth you’ll get is from character skills and tank customization which allows you to equip weapons of different categories and elemental types, but the end result hardly feels any different.
Balancing
The normal enemies take like one shot to kill, but then bosses are these massive sponges that can easily two-shot you and have so much health that I’m hardly even sure if I am damaging them. A lot of the time, I would simply roll past them and move on to the next area where enemies became manageable again.
To take down bosses, you got to do a good bit of grinding, both for XP and for materials to upgrade your stuff and honestly, the combat is so barebones and boring that the idea of doing that just is not appealing.
Environments & Graphics
I understand this is not a AAA title, but it’s also being sold for $40 and looks like a mobile game, with low-res textures across the board and the most static of environments. Yeah, it’s supposed to be some post-apocalyptic setting, but I personally don’t think that should excuse such lazy level design - it’s like something we would get from a Compile Heart game, complete with invisible walls everywhere.
Story
The story is there, but not a super big thing - and it is honestly better off this way because what is there may be even more barebones than the gameplay. Writing this review, I cannot name any character off the top of my head that isn’t the protagonist that I myself named - they are just that forgettable and hardly receive the development needed to make the story in any way interesting.
PC Port
I will give PQube - the publisher - some credit, it is better than some of their other PC ports, but still below satisfactory. For one, the keyboard and mouse controls. The Steam store page actually lists the game as having none, but keyboard controls do exist (and that’s just keyboard, no mouse). None of the buttons can be rebound though, so you’re stuck holding shift and the arrow keys to rotate the camera - so don’t even think of picking this one up if you don’t have a controller.
There are also only three graphical settings: brightness, resolution choice between 720p/1080p, and fullscreen/window toggle. That’s it - it is the most barebones of ports and unfortunately comes with some technical issues on top of that. During my first two hours with the game, I had it freeze completely on me on two separate occasions. I didn’t have the issue past that two hour mark, but it’s worth mentioning regardless.
Overall
A disappointing first showing for the series on PC, METAL MAX Xeno Reborn brings some good ideas to the table, but is bogged down by its numerous bizarre design choices and technical issues. The gameplay is slow and monotonous, the level design and graphics are mobile-game level, and the game freezing and lack of proper controls are not a good look either. It’s just a low effort port all around and unfortunate to see as a series I was excited to check out for the first time.
2022
Full video review: https://youtu.be/v4mKfgSBkRo
So we get a lot of card games on Steam, but I’m pretty sure this is the first one where the actual card game itself does not matter - and in the most brilliant way possible.
Gameplay
Having not played the demo prior, I was under the impression the game was going to be some sort of deckbuilder with a unique art style. That latter part is still true, but the game itself is actually about cheating in a card game. In fact, throughout the entire experience, you never get to learn what card game is being played - just how to cheat at it.
This takes the focus off of mechanics you may already know from existing card games and instead places all emphasis on learning and executing various sleight of hand and other tricks. You’ll be shuffling decks while maintaining cards in a specific order, using multiple decks while keeping track of potential duplicates, signaling to your partner using a variety of creative signs, and using the smallest of marks to know which card is which from the back.
Difficulty
The difficulty does not come from how good your opponents are, but rather your ability to keep up with the numerous tricks introduced as the game progresses. You’ll learn one, and then in a few matches learn an evolution of that trick and so on until it is this very complex thing with a bunch of steps you’ll need to have memorized.
This is a double-edged sword. The complexity and depth of the tricks when layered on one another is cool and very satisfying when pulled off successfully, but it’s also very frustrating to pull off all the tricks correctly and then make one small mistake or even misclick in the final round that costs you the whole thing. All the animations, dialogue scenes, and stuff really gets old when you’ve seen it more than twice.
Controls
This is obviously a game developed for controller and it unfortunately shows in some ways when using keyboard and mouse. A lot of the inputs are just joystick movements mapped to mouse which don’t always feel right and I frequently found myself misinputting despite how few actions there are in the game.
Gameplay cont.
Once you do get the hang of it though - there’s a lot to like here. Bunch of cool tricks to learn, places to visit, and the game does a good job diversifying its gameplay over the course of its runtime. You’re not just cheating at a card game, but also learning how to flick cards into a hat, how to flip a coin and guarantee the result, and even how to duel with swords.
When it is just card cheats though, it’s still some good stuff, although not quite perfect. While evolving previously learned tricks is cool, the game treats them as entirely new tricks each time, so of the 28 you learn, only a handful are entirely unique on their own. The rest are simply combinations of other tricks into one or a previous trick with one small change. Honestly, it’s a little bit disappointing.
Length
It took me about five hours to clear the game and get each ending. Granted, I am still missing 19 of the achievements so there is a bit more there to do for completionists, but nothing to really flesh out the experience after you’ve given it a good playthrough - it is mostly linear with just a handful of different endings that you can simply reload to achieve.
Story & Art
The story is a bit basic, sure, but engaging enough to keep the experience going. There’s not a whole lot of filler here, it’s straight to the point, hits all the main story beats, and nothing more outside of the occasional bit of comedy. Great effort all around there and similar things can be said about the art. It’s incredibly stylized, colorful, and looks great at 4k.
Performance
4k 144fps, no drops, no crashes, no freezing, none of that. I did have an issue where I managed to softlock myself and prevent further progress, but I notified the devs and they were able to quickly fix the issue.
Overall
Card Shark is one of the most unique indie games of the year. Taking the focus off of the card game itself and placing it all on cheating in said card game makes for some very cool gameplay, with a bunch of neat tricks to learn, minigames to partake in, and a story to experience that is surprisingly not bad. It’s not perfect and suffers from some disappointing design choices, but I can’t deny I had a good time with it and would recommend it.
So we get a lot of card games on Steam, but I’m pretty sure this is the first one where the actual card game itself does not matter - and in the most brilliant way possible.
Gameplay
Having not played the demo prior, I was under the impression the game was going to be some sort of deckbuilder with a unique art style. That latter part is still true, but the game itself is actually about cheating in a card game. In fact, throughout the entire experience, you never get to learn what card game is being played - just how to cheat at it.
This takes the focus off of mechanics you may already know from existing card games and instead places all emphasis on learning and executing various sleight of hand and other tricks. You’ll be shuffling decks while maintaining cards in a specific order, using multiple decks while keeping track of potential duplicates, signaling to your partner using a variety of creative signs, and using the smallest of marks to know which card is which from the back.
Difficulty
The difficulty does not come from how good your opponents are, but rather your ability to keep up with the numerous tricks introduced as the game progresses. You’ll learn one, and then in a few matches learn an evolution of that trick and so on until it is this very complex thing with a bunch of steps you’ll need to have memorized.
This is a double-edged sword. The complexity and depth of the tricks when layered on one another is cool and very satisfying when pulled off successfully, but it’s also very frustrating to pull off all the tricks correctly and then make one small mistake or even misclick in the final round that costs you the whole thing. All the animations, dialogue scenes, and stuff really gets old when you’ve seen it more than twice.
Controls
This is obviously a game developed for controller and it unfortunately shows in some ways when using keyboard and mouse. A lot of the inputs are just joystick movements mapped to mouse which don’t always feel right and I frequently found myself misinputting despite how few actions there are in the game.
Gameplay cont.
Once you do get the hang of it though - there’s a lot to like here. Bunch of cool tricks to learn, places to visit, and the game does a good job diversifying its gameplay over the course of its runtime. You’re not just cheating at a card game, but also learning how to flick cards into a hat, how to flip a coin and guarantee the result, and even how to duel with swords.
When it is just card cheats though, it’s still some good stuff, although not quite perfect. While evolving previously learned tricks is cool, the game treats them as entirely new tricks each time, so of the 28 you learn, only a handful are entirely unique on their own. The rest are simply combinations of other tricks into one or a previous trick with one small change. Honestly, it’s a little bit disappointing.
Length
It took me about five hours to clear the game and get each ending. Granted, I am still missing 19 of the achievements so there is a bit more there to do for completionists, but nothing to really flesh out the experience after you’ve given it a good playthrough - it is mostly linear with just a handful of different endings that you can simply reload to achieve.
Story & Art
The story is a bit basic, sure, but engaging enough to keep the experience going. There’s not a whole lot of filler here, it’s straight to the point, hits all the main story beats, and nothing more outside of the occasional bit of comedy. Great effort all around there and similar things can be said about the art. It’s incredibly stylized, colorful, and looks great at 4k.
Performance
4k 144fps, no drops, no crashes, no freezing, none of that. I did have an issue where I managed to softlock myself and prevent further progress, but I notified the devs and they were able to quickly fix the issue.
Overall
Card Shark is one of the most unique indie games of the year. Taking the focus off of the card game itself and placing it all on cheating in said card game makes for some very cool gameplay, with a bunch of neat tricks to learn, minigames to partake in, and a story to experience that is surprisingly not bad. It’s not perfect and suffers from some disappointing design choices, but I can’t deny I had a good time with it and would recommend it.