2023
This review contains spoilers
homo groundhog day gave me a headache
For a full hour after I finished this game, I looked through my game collection and my backloggery (my entries on this website are incomplete as of the time of writing). I have never played a game that I've felt this divided on. Throughout playing the game, I entered different ratings on here to gauge how I felt, and they went from 5 stars to half a star. In Stars and Time has some truly dreadful ideas that would tank any other game, ideas so bad that you question how the hell nobody during the lengthy development of this game didn't point out how bad they were. The first line of this review isn't a joke, I have a pounding headache after finishing this game.
With all of that typed out, you gotta understand how good the writing and characters are in this game. I adore the entire main cast unconditionally. In terms of my favorite party members in a RPG, they're all probably in the top ten. The game starts at the end of a long journey, there's character interactions and development that we clearly missed, and yet the characters were written well enough that I had a deep connection to everyone and would look forward to seeing new bits of dialogue around the main dungeon. I'm not generous towards this game at all, and I tried to look for specific lines or scenes that might not have sat well, and I couldn't find anything.
The presentation of the game is, again, way too good for how bad of an idea this game ended up being. Despite being in (mostly) black and white, I never had any visual confusion towards what I was looking at. The key pieces of art during specific cut-scenes were a highlight, and somehow augmented the already stellar dialogue. The music and its permutations, even if those permutations were bad, was fitting for each of the scenes. A ton of talent went into the AV sections of the game, time well spent.
It's a shame the game itself is such an awful waste of this talent. Waste might be going too far, because what we got was still fine, but the entire time I was playing this game, I just wished I was playing the previous 45 hours of this JRPG that we're never going to get. The time looping elements of the gameplay compare poorly to other games with time travel elements. The main dungeon gets monotonous by the second time you've played through all of the floors. The final boss fight is really fun and engaging the first time you go through it, and feels like a chore the 12th time. The game has limited ways of alleviating looping frustrations for the player, like being able to warp to higher up floors or having reminders of where items are, but they come off more as band-aid solutions for an underlying system that isn't fun to play through. Why do I have to grind random fights just to warp to higher up floors? There are times in the game where the only new piece of dialogue requires that you know exactly where to go in the dungeon, and that requires either playing through 20 min of content you've seen a hundred times already, or paying this limited currency to skip that monotony for two minutes of dialogue, after which you'll speedrun killing yourself.
That frustration's supposed to be the point, right? The player is supposed to feel the frustration that Siffrin has to deal with, going through the same events over and over. Mission accomplished, when I had to go through the semi-randomized version of the dungeon at the end of the game, I was not having a good time at all. There's reviews on this website that mention how much they like elements of the game, but dropped the game because it was too repetitive. If you set out to make a bad game, and succeed, you still made a bad game.
If the game itself was just kinda butt, and the rest of the narrative was a 10/10 I'd give this game a perfect score and move on with life. There are specific narrative directions that drove me up a wall. The king being irredeemably bad was such a missed opportunity. There's an attempt midway through the game to talk to and empathize with the main antagonist, and initially I thought this was going to go in the direction of "even if you try to choose peace, the main character is still trapped in this time loop for reasons that'll be explained later". A real gut punch that fits with the tone of the game. Instead, he'll backstab the party and crush a child in his bare hands, something that doesn't fit the vibe of the game and makes the character less interesting. I didn't give a single shit about the king after that scene, he was just a monster that had to be dealt with.
The endgame also left a sour taste in my mouth, to the point I almost dropped the game. There isn't a gradual degradation of Siffrin's mental state, after hitting a specific dead end they just snap and attempt to destroy all of the relationships the game had lovingly built up to that point. I think that the way he went about this was out of character and poorly done, flat out. I hated having to sit through each of the scenes. The final permutation of the dungeon and the character's inner battle didn't work for me at all, and again, even if that's the point, it's a stupid point. Act 5 is the nadir of the game. It feels like this otherwise touching, wonderful game got its shirt stuck on the "what if we made an earthbound like game but secretly it was really fucked up" current that needs to die and never come back. We've had enough of that trope for a lifetime. I thought whatever comment the game was trying to make on mental illness was flaccid and incoherent. This game was a 1/10 for me at this point.
My frustrations with this game have been made very clear, but how I feel about the main cast may not have been. They are all still some of my favorite characters I've seen in a video game in years. How they react to Siffrin at the end, and their not-parting dialogue made it worth it. In Stars and Time, despite being critically flawed, makes you feel every emotional beat that it wants you to. This game will play you like a damn fiddle, in ways that nothing else that came out this year can. Despite the game's many issues, In Stars and Time stuck the landing. It won.
For a full hour after I finished this game, I looked through my game collection and my backloggery (my entries on this website are incomplete as of the time of writing). I have never played a game that I've felt this divided on. Throughout playing the game, I entered different ratings on here to gauge how I felt, and they went from 5 stars to half a star. In Stars and Time has some truly dreadful ideas that would tank any other game, ideas so bad that you question how the hell nobody during the lengthy development of this game didn't point out how bad they were. The first line of this review isn't a joke, I have a pounding headache after finishing this game.
With all of that typed out, you gotta understand how good the writing and characters are in this game. I adore the entire main cast unconditionally. In terms of my favorite party members in a RPG, they're all probably in the top ten. The game starts at the end of a long journey, there's character interactions and development that we clearly missed, and yet the characters were written well enough that I had a deep connection to everyone and would look forward to seeing new bits of dialogue around the main dungeon. I'm not generous towards this game at all, and I tried to look for specific lines or scenes that might not have sat well, and I couldn't find anything.
The presentation of the game is, again, way too good for how bad of an idea this game ended up being. Despite being in (mostly) black and white, I never had any visual confusion towards what I was looking at. The key pieces of art during specific cut-scenes were a highlight, and somehow augmented the already stellar dialogue. The music and its permutations, even if those permutations were bad, was fitting for each of the scenes. A ton of talent went into the AV sections of the game, time well spent.
It's a shame the game itself is such an awful waste of this talent. Waste might be going too far, because what we got was still fine, but the entire time I was playing this game, I just wished I was playing the previous 45 hours of this JRPG that we're never going to get. The time looping elements of the gameplay compare poorly to other games with time travel elements. The main dungeon gets monotonous by the second time you've played through all of the floors. The final boss fight is really fun and engaging the first time you go through it, and feels like a chore the 12th time. The game has limited ways of alleviating looping frustrations for the player, like being able to warp to higher up floors or having reminders of where items are, but they come off more as band-aid solutions for an underlying system that isn't fun to play through. Why do I have to grind random fights just to warp to higher up floors? There are times in the game where the only new piece of dialogue requires that you know exactly where to go in the dungeon, and that requires either playing through 20 min of content you've seen a hundred times already, or paying this limited currency to skip that monotony for two minutes of dialogue, after which you'll speedrun killing yourself.
That frustration's supposed to be the point, right? The player is supposed to feel the frustration that Siffrin has to deal with, going through the same events over and over. Mission accomplished, when I had to go through the semi-randomized version of the dungeon at the end of the game, I was not having a good time at all. There's reviews on this website that mention how much they like elements of the game, but dropped the game because it was too repetitive. If you set out to make a bad game, and succeed, you still made a bad game.
If the game itself was just kinda butt, and the rest of the narrative was a 10/10 I'd give this game a perfect score and move on with life. There are specific narrative directions that drove me up a wall. The king being irredeemably bad was such a missed opportunity. There's an attempt midway through the game to talk to and empathize with the main antagonist, and initially I thought this was going to go in the direction of "even if you try to choose peace, the main character is still trapped in this time loop for reasons that'll be explained later". A real gut punch that fits with the tone of the game. Instead, he'll backstab the party and crush a child in his bare hands, something that doesn't fit the vibe of the game and makes the character less interesting. I didn't give a single shit about the king after that scene, he was just a monster that had to be dealt with.
The endgame also left a sour taste in my mouth, to the point I almost dropped the game. There isn't a gradual degradation of Siffrin's mental state, after hitting a specific dead end they just snap and attempt to destroy all of the relationships the game had lovingly built up to that point. I think that the way he went about this was out of character and poorly done, flat out. I hated having to sit through each of the scenes. The final permutation of the dungeon and the character's inner battle didn't work for me at all, and again, even if that's the point, it's a stupid point. Act 5 is the nadir of the game. It feels like this otherwise touching, wonderful game got its shirt stuck on the "what if we made an earthbound like game but secretly it was really fucked up" current that needs to die and never come back. We've had enough of that trope for a lifetime. I thought whatever comment the game was trying to make on mental illness was flaccid and incoherent. This game was a 1/10 for me at this point.
My frustrations with this game have been made very clear, but how I feel about the main cast may not have been. They are all still some of my favorite characters I've seen in a video game in years. How they react to Siffrin at the end, and their not-parting dialogue made it worth it. In Stars and Time, despite being critically flawed, makes you feel every emotional beat that it wants you to. This game will play you like a damn fiddle, in ways that nothing else that came out this year can. Despite the game's many issues, In Stars and Time stuck the landing. It won.
2023
Check in a year from now how the rating of this game drops like a rock. Friendless nerds need not apply.
In its current state, divorced from the social element around this game, Lethal Company is a failure that doesn't justify its low asking price of $10. The gameplay loop is repetitive. The graphics and lighting were designed in service of a horror element that the game mostly fails at conveying. The highlight of the game from a design standpoint is the proximity chat, and that only works in a social setting. The spooks are mostly obnoxious jumpscares. Performance issues and bugs are prevalent.
As a game, Lethal Company sucks. As an excuse to get discord buddies to shoot the shit for a few hours while the game's popping off, it works. I didn't regret my time with Among Us, or Fall Guys, or Overwatch and I doubt that I'll have any negative feelings towards my time in this game, despite its unacceptable flaws. And the proximity chat and how the game uses it is really fun! If you can get a group of 3-8 players together, even if it's just for a night, blow $10 for the social experience and enjoy the trend as an excuse to reconnect with people. You'll help an indie dev pay the bills and you'll get to hear your friends scream like a banshee for a month or two until everyone moves onto the next flavor of the month. That's more than I've gotten out of a lot of games.
In its current state, divorced from the social element around this game, Lethal Company is a failure that doesn't justify its low asking price of $10. The gameplay loop is repetitive. The graphics and lighting were designed in service of a horror element that the game mostly fails at conveying. The highlight of the game from a design standpoint is the proximity chat, and that only works in a social setting. The spooks are mostly obnoxious jumpscares. Performance issues and bugs are prevalent.
As a game, Lethal Company sucks. As an excuse to get discord buddies to shoot the shit for a few hours while the game's popping off, it works. I didn't regret my time with Among Us, or Fall Guys, or Overwatch and I doubt that I'll have any negative feelings towards my time in this game, despite its unacceptable flaws. And the proximity chat and how the game uses it is really fun! If you can get a group of 3-8 players together, even if it's just for a night, blow $10 for the social experience and enjoy the trend as an excuse to reconnect with people. You'll help an indie dev pay the bills and you'll get to hear your friends scream like a banshee for a month or two until everyone moves onto the next flavor of the month. That's more than I've gotten out of a lot of games.
2023
This game being $7 helps so much.
Death Must Die isn't a bad game, and before I hit the content wall I enjoyed what I played, but this is one of the most aesthetically derivative games I've seen sold on Steam that wasn't an asset flip. The Dark Souls dark fantasy trappings, divorced from the talented and fucking weird staff staff at Fromsoft doesn't leave much to hook onto. Halls of Torment's take on dark fantasy is an unfavorable comparison, having noticeably more personality despite early translation issues (and frankly, being a less interesting game than DmD). The Hadesesqe deities that pop up and give quips fall flat, their writing and designs are more mundane than Supergiant's pantheon, while still being hammy enough to clash with the rest of the game's overly serious setting.
The game fares better, with the huge caveat that there is a content drought that other games in this budding (bloated?) genre don't have to put up with. The highlight of the game is the gear system, allowing for meta-progression in the way you'd see in a ARPG like Grim Dawn that can synergize with specific builds that you could try to draft into. Again, hardly an original idea even within the context of the genre, but one that with more abilities and bolder application of modifiers could be an addicting reason to repeat runs.
I feel bad posting this review, because there is more content coming down the pipeline and despite how negative I've been, if you've exhausted Vampire/Soulstone survivors and you're looking for another game to scratch that itch, there's enough going on in DmD to justify a $7 buy in. There's just a lot of this game that comes off as cynical or unoriginal and it left enough of a bad taste in my mouth to bring down my opinion of the game.
Death Must Die isn't a bad game, and before I hit the content wall I enjoyed what I played, but this is one of the most aesthetically derivative games I've seen sold on Steam that wasn't an asset flip. The Dark Souls dark fantasy trappings, divorced from the talented and fucking weird staff staff at Fromsoft doesn't leave much to hook onto. Halls of Torment's take on dark fantasy is an unfavorable comparison, having noticeably more personality despite early translation issues (and frankly, being a less interesting game than DmD). The Hadesesqe deities that pop up and give quips fall flat, their writing and designs are more mundane than Supergiant's pantheon, while still being hammy enough to clash with the rest of the game's overly serious setting.
The game fares better, with the huge caveat that there is a content drought that other games in this budding (bloated?) genre don't have to put up with. The highlight of the game is the gear system, allowing for meta-progression in the way you'd see in a ARPG like Grim Dawn that can synergize with specific builds that you could try to draft into. Again, hardly an original idea even within the context of the genre, but one that with more abilities and bolder application of modifiers could be an addicting reason to repeat runs.
I feel bad posting this review, because there is more content coming down the pipeline and despite how negative I've been, if you've exhausted Vampire/Soulstone survivors and you're looking for another game to scratch that itch, there's enough going on in DmD to justify a $7 buy in. There's just a lot of this game that comes off as cynical or unoriginal and it left enough of a bad taste in my mouth to bring down my opinion of the game.
2014
The worst thing to happen to trading card games.
It's initial success came from how accessible it was and how well it played on mobile devices. The core rules were designed around these limitations. The interactions with different phases of a turn, or interacting on your opponent's turn that you would have seen in something like the WoWTCG were axed, and going forward other online TCGs would either neglect intricacies of how previous card games worked in a similar way (Shadowverse) or would add them in limited piecemeal amounts so the end result would still be lacking compared to how even previous cash-in TCGs played (Legends of Runeterra). These weren't frivolous additions to the game, they allowed more room for designers to create impactful cards in ways that wouldn't instantly inflate the power level of the game, and they allowed for greater player expression and, ironically, it makes entering the competitive scene much easier.
When the game did take advantage of its online format, it ended up being to the detriment of the game's design or it became hostile towards the user. Because the design space for new cards was relatively constrained and deck sizes were so small, as well as wanting to appeal to that casual crowd, cards with RNG elements became the norm. While this has long since been made irrelevant due to power creep, Dr. Boom was a famous example of how swingy games could get. Even if the other player didn't overcommit to the board, made smart trades, built their deck right, if the RNG decided that the player playing Dr. Boom was going to get good rolls, you were liable to lose. It's not even a loss in the sense of "oh, they played their boss monster/wincon", it could fizzle and be just as frustrating for the person playing this meta defining top end. It got people into the door because you could highroll better players in a way other card games didn't let you, but at the expense of feeling like any of your wins were satisfying. This design was carried over to Artifact, and was the biggest factor in what killed that game imo.
The economy of this game is brutal. Paper TCGs outside of Magic (which is an unforgivable mess) aren't reasonably priced (it is still cardboard), but putting together a meta deck in something like Pokemon could cost as little as $90 and last you a good year or so of something you could take to a tournament and reasonably expect to win. This price could even drop as staples are reprinted and more inventory hits the market. There is no factor that alleviates the cost of building meta defining decks in Hearthstone. If you're lucky, the card you're looking for might be in $15 mini sets, along with a bunch of other probably uplayable chaff. There are "catch up bundles", but they consist of paying $20 for 30 packs (and even at that rate, it's a bit insulting) and still praying that you crack enough of what you're looking for to build something decent. You can destroy your cards for dust and create whatever card you want, but that's at a financial loss overall outside of duplicates (why isn't there duplicate protection? Even MTGA gets this right). There is no secondary market to get cards cheaper or cash out if this hobby isn't right for you.
All of that isn't just to say "the game cost too damn much", but the financial barrier to entry hurts the competitive aspect of Hearthstone. If there's a popular deck that you can expect to see decent representation at a tournament, for the average player, switching to a deck that could counter it isn't financially feasible. Even if there's changes to your deck that could accommodate a shifting metagame, you better hope those cards are cheap or you have the cash to get enough dust to craft it. It's such a pit that attracts a wealthier (and because of that, much more toxic) playerbase to the mickey mouse tournament scene, which Blizzard doesn't properly support anyways. Again, not a problem exclusive to Hearthstone, but ones that the game exacerbated to an unacceptable extent.
There have been more engaging card games that have come out in the last couple of years. The Digimon/One Piece TCGs are a return to form after most of the 2010's being filled with games that wanted to chase after the Hearthstone model. MTGA, a predatory game itself, didn't remove core aspects of the game to appeal to a wider audience, and that game is propping up Hasbro. For a good part of the decade though, this game's long shadow was cast over a hobby I've held very close to my heart since I was 14. There's more flaws with Hearthstone that could be brought up, but this game doesn't deserve that much attention. I hope it collapses under its own weight, don't give Blizzard a cent for this garbage.
It's initial success came from how accessible it was and how well it played on mobile devices. The core rules were designed around these limitations. The interactions with different phases of a turn, or interacting on your opponent's turn that you would have seen in something like the WoWTCG were axed, and going forward other online TCGs would either neglect intricacies of how previous card games worked in a similar way (Shadowverse) or would add them in limited piecemeal amounts so the end result would still be lacking compared to how even previous cash-in TCGs played (Legends of Runeterra). These weren't frivolous additions to the game, they allowed more room for designers to create impactful cards in ways that wouldn't instantly inflate the power level of the game, and they allowed for greater player expression and, ironically, it makes entering the competitive scene much easier.
When the game did take advantage of its online format, it ended up being to the detriment of the game's design or it became hostile towards the user. Because the design space for new cards was relatively constrained and deck sizes were so small, as well as wanting to appeal to that casual crowd, cards with RNG elements became the norm. While this has long since been made irrelevant due to power creep, Dr. Boom was a famous example of how swingy games could get. Even if the other player didn't overcommit to the board, made smart trades, built their deck right, if the RNG decided that the player playing Dr. Boom was going to get good rolls, you were liable to lose. It's not even a loss in the sense of "oh, they played their boss monster/wincon", it could fizzle and be just as frustrating for the person playing this meta defining top end. It got people into the door because you could highroll better players in a way other card games didn't let you, but at the expense of feeling like any of your wins were satisfying. This design was carried over to Artifact, and was the biggest factor in what killed that game imo.
The economy of this game is brutal. Paper TCGs outside of Magic (which is an unforgivable mess) aren't reasonably priced (it is still cardboard), but putting together a meta deck in something like Pokemon could cost as little as $90 and last you a good year or so of something you could take to a tournament and reasonably expect to win. This price could even drop as staples are reprinted and more inventory hits the market. There is no factor that alleviates the cost of building meta defining decks in Hearthstone. If you're lucky, the card you're looking for might be in $15 mini sets, along with a bunch of other probably uplayable chaff. There are "catch up bundles", but they consist of paying $20 for 30 packs (and even at that rate, it's a bit insulting) and still praying that you crack enough of what you're looking for to build something decent. You can destroy your cards for dust and create whatever card you want, but that's at a financial loss overall outside of duplicates (why isn't there duplicate protection? Even MTGA gets this right). There is no secondary market to get cards cheaper or cash out if this hobby isn't right for you.
All of that isn't just to say "the game cost too damn much", but the financial barrier to entry hurts the competitive aspect of Hearthstone. If there's a popular deck that you can expect to see decent representation at a tournament, for the average player, switching to a deck that could counter it isn't financially feasible. Even if there's changes to your deck that could accommodate a shifting metagame, you better hope those cards are cheap or you have the cash to get enough dust to craft it. It's such a pit that attracts a wealthier (and because of that, much more toxic) playerbase to the mickey mouse tournament scene, which Blizzard doesn't properly support anyways. Again, not a problem exclusive to Hearthstone, but ones that the game exacerbated to an unacceptable extent.
There have been more engaging card games that have come out in the last couple of years. The Digimon/One Piece TCGs are a return to form after most of the 2010's being filled with games that wanted to chase after the Hearthstone model. MTGA, a predatory game itself, didn't remove core aspects of the game to appeal to a wider audience, and that game is propping up Hasbro. For a good part of the decade though, this game's long shadow was cast over a hobby I've held very close to my heart since I was 14. There's more flaws with Hearthstone that could be brought up, but this game doesn't deserve that much attention. I hope it collapses under its own weight, don't give Blizzard a cent for this garbage.
TBD
this developer has two gimmicks:
- asset flips without any marketing or presentation, which probably don't recoup their very low production costs
- "fuck none of my games sold, have you considered the Soviet Union killed 10 billion people and NOBODY talks about it"
As a Polack, I feel like there needs to be an international movement to prevent more games from coming out of that goddamn country until there's an actual denatizifcation. You shouldn't be allowed to download Unity until you can screw in a lightbulb with less than 10 people.
- asset flips without any marketing or presentation, which probably don't recoup their very low production costs
- "fuck none of my games sold, have you considered the Soviet Union killed 10 billion people and NOBODY talks about it"
As a Polack, I feel like there needs to be an international movement to prevent more games from coming out of that goddamn country until there's an actual denatizifcation. You shouldn't be allowed to download Unity until you can screw in a lightbulb with less than 10 people.
what if instead of Blue Skies it was Blow Guys
There's a mod on Nexus that replaces the default jump with a N64 Moon Jump cheat. Do not play this game without that mod.
The development story of the Dragon Age series, even if you're only aware of it from what you've heard on the periphery, sounds like Bioware forced their employees to conduct The Great March every time they wanted to ship a game. Dragon Age II turned out great, mostly because of the stellar writing, but the gameplay felt like they were obligated to include it, rather than it being an artistic choice. Dragon Age Inquisition is the point where it feels like Bioware completely collapsed under its own weight, possibly for good.
The game is pretty though. The art direction is my favorite of the three games by far. Even the PS3 port of this game looks like a full console generation ahead of DAO. Liliana and Cullen's changes from the previous games is a comparison point that I'd suggest focusing on, by comparison it looks like their original incarnations were Sims 2 recreations of the characters. The tarot card theme for the party selection menu (that changes based on actions in the game) is one of artistic elements in a game that doesn't really impact the overall experience but will stick with you. The areas look like they could have very interesting content in them, and there's even minor cosmetic customization. If you're just looking at screenshots of this game, you'd think this game wouldn't be a total mess.
Asking this game to move feels mean, like it wasn't meant to be played. The gameplay in the previous Dragon Age games wasn't good, but it felt superfluous enough to where it didn't get in the way. The open world exploration of this game is fucking awful. Maps are way too big and the amount of encounters and real scripted content that isn't "collect a bunch of clams like it's San Andreas, except plot's locked behind them" could fit into the maps from the previous games. The sidequests that you find don't meaningfully add to the story or development of the characters at all. You can't skip them either, if you want to move the plot along you gotta run to these encounters/radio towers and light them up. Good luck getting to them, the navigation in this game is worse than the uninspired destination. There aren't any novel ways to navigate the environment, you have fast travel nodes or you're riding a horse that's slightly faster than your default movement, can't climb up slight inclines, and dismounts you if a random mook so much as sneezes in your general direction.
Combat is slightly better than navigation. Don't get your hopes up, the combat has the same issues as Dragon Age II, except exacerbated because there's more of it. Enemies, even well into late game, feel spongy. There are fights that aren't hard, but feel like the game decides that you can't deal any more damage for a couple of seconds and drags out the encounter. The skill tree in DAII felt like a step back from the previous game's customization. It was designed in a way to prevent the player from breaking the combat over their knee, and it did that by homogenizing choices and values to where there weren't any "wrong" choices, and by that extension, no "right" choices. Damage output on the player's part is painfully consistent in Inquisition, end game builds feel a lot like each other and it didn't feel like my character at early levels played different than they did later on. The highwaymen that keep pushing you off your mount would be less annoying to deal with if, by late game, you could backhand them in a couple of seconds and be on your way, but even with the game's extensive gear customization, it never feels like you can get to that point. Fighting's boring and more of a focus.
The writing in this game is such a mixed bag. It's a Bioware game, obviously the main plot sucks and the main antagonist is such a nerd that I forgot what his name was moments after completing the game. I wouldn't even bump the game's score down over the plot at this point. The character writing isn't bad, but it is a step down from how good DAII was. There are highlights, like The Iron Bull, and Liliana's a real character now instead of being white ME1 Liara. The rest of the cast doesn't hold up as well. Varric, the best part of DAII comes back. They didn't want him to upstage the new characters (which is a good idea!) and they did that by both flanderizing and subduing his character. He acts like he's spent the last year recovering from a major stroke, there's just less zest in his lemon than there used to be. Characters like Sera or Cole have solid character concepts and highlights, but their dialogue gets grating and they have strange opinions on your story choices that seem out of character. And then there's Vivienne, who might be my least favorite Bioware character across any of their games. Just an insufferable and morally reprehensible asshole who, even if you kowtow to her disgusting worldview still treats you as inferior despite being entirely dependent on your approval to accomplish any of her long term goals. When Bioware announced Vivienne's voice actor, Indira Varma (who does a very good job with what she's given), they had her instigate a fake twitter war with Vivienne's writer, Mary Kirby. Only character in Bioware's collective works with X-Pac heat.
This game feels like an obligation to burn through. There's interesting concepts in this game and if you're invested in the overall plot of the Dragon Age universe (I'm sorry), it's still worth going through. The are good elements to this game. Having gone through this game and seen those elements, I have no desire to ever play this game again, and only suggest it to the most direhard fans of the series. Those people won't be disappointed, but they deserve better than this.
The development story of the Dragon Age series, even if you're only aware of it from what you've heard on the periphery, sounds like Bioware forced their employees to conduct The Great March every time they wanted to ship a game. Dragon Age II turned out great, mostly because of the stellar writing, but the gameplay felt like they were obligated to include it, rather than it being an artistic choice. Dragon Age Inquisition is the point where it feels like Bioware completely collapsed under its own weight, possibly for good.
The game is pretty though. The art direction is my favorite of the three games by far. Even the PS3 port of this game looks like a full console generation ahead of DAO. Liliana and Cullen's changes from the previous games is a comparison point that I'd suggest focusing on, by comparison it looks like their original incarnations were Sims 2 recreations of the characters. The tarot card theme for the party selection menu (that changes based on actions in the game) is one of artistic elements in a game that doesn't really impact the overall experience but will stick with you. The areas look like they could have very interesting content in them, and there's even minor cosmetic customization. If you're just looking at screenshots of this game, you'd think this game wouldn't be a total mess.
Asking this game to move feels mean, like it wasn't meant to be played. The gameplay in the previous Dragon Age games wasn't good, but it felt superfluous enough to where it didn't get in the way. The open world exploration of this game is fucking awful. Maps are way too big and the amount of encounters and real scripted content that isn't "collect a bunch of clams like it's San Andreas, except plot's locked behind them" could fit into the maps from the previous games. The sidequests that you find don't meaningfully add to the story or development of the characters at all. You can't skip them either, if you want to move the plot along you gotta run to these encounters/radio towers and light them up. Good luck getting to them, the navigation in this game is worse than the uninspired destination. There aren't any novel ways to navigate the environment, you have fast travel nodes or you're riding a horse that's slightly faster than your default movement, can't climb up slight inclines, and dismounts you if a random mook so much as sneezes in your general direction.
Combat is slightly better than navigation. Don't get your hopes up, the combat has the same issues as Dragon Age II, except exacerbated because there's more of it. Enemies, even well into late game, feel spongy. There are fights that aren't hard, but feel like the game decides that you can't deal any more damage for a couple of seconds and drags out the encounter. The skill tree in DAII felt like a step back from the previous game's customization. It was designed in a way to prevent the player from breaking the combat over their knee, and it did that by homogenizing choices and values to where there weren't any "wrong" choices, and by that extension, no "right" choices. Damage output on the player's part is painfully consistent in Inquisition, end game builds feel a lot like each other and it didn't feel like my character at early levels played different than they did later on. The highwaymen that keep pushing you off your mount would be less annoying to deal with if, by late game, you could backhand them in a couple of seconds and be on your way, but even with the game's extensive gear customization, it never feels like you can get to that point. Fighting's boring and more of a focus.
The writing in this game is such a mixed bag. It's a Bioware game, obviously the main plot sucks and the main antagonist is such a nerd that I forgot what his name was moments after completing the game. I wouldn't even bump the game's score down over the plot at this point. The character writing isn't bad, but it is a step down from how good DAII was. There are highlights, like The Iron Bull, and Liliana's a real character now instead of being white ME1 Liara. The rest of the cast doesn't hold up as well. Varric, the best part of DAII comes back. They didn't want him to upstage the new characters (which is a good idea!) and they did that by both flanderizing and subduing his character. He acts like he's spent the last year recovering from a major stroke, there's just less zest in his lemon than there used to be. Characters like Sera or Cole have solid character concepts and highlights, but their dialogue gets grating and they have strange opinions on your story choices that seem out of character. And then there's Vivienne, who might be my least favorite Bioware character across any of their games. Just an insufferable and morally reprehensible asshole who, even if you kowtow to her disgusting worldview still treats you as inferior despite being entirely dependent on your approval to accomplish any of her long term goals. When Bioware announced Vivienne's voice actor, Indira Varma (who does a very good job with what she's given), they had her instigate a fake twitter war with Vivienne's writer, Mary Kirby. Only character in Bioware's collective works with X-Pac heat.
This game feels like an obligation to burn through. There's interesting concepts in this game and if you're invested in the overall plot of the Dragon Age universe (I'm sorry), it's still worth going through. The are good elements to this game. Having gone through this game and seen those elements, I have no desire to ever play this game again, and only suggest it to the most direhard fans of the series. Those people won't be disappointed, but they deserve better than this.
2005
As good as the original games ever got, years after it could have mattered.
.Hack never got a proper MMO, and it's not accurate to call Fragment one. Even at the time of this game's release, if you just limited your options to consoles and wanted to pretend that there were no notable MMO releases that came out around this time, EverQuest Online Adventures and Final Fantasy XI had been out for years at this point. Phantasy Star Online, .hack's closest evolutionary cousin, was five years old. Monster Hunter was almost a year old at this game's release. If Fragment released a few years earlier, while the anime was still on TV and Infection's sales numbers were still decent, this could have found a niche.
It also could have found a niche if there were meaningful changes to the structure of the game, and there really wasn't. The combat of IMOQ is mostly unchanged, with the two main exceptions being that your party members are controlled by real players, and menuing doesn't pause the game. The combat's still balanced around digging through menus to use skills and spam items. The dungeons are structured mostly the exact same way as they were in the single player games, with encounters largely recycled. Most of the game screams "we had the assets lying around and wanted to see what we could do with as little time or money as possible".
If you just can't get enough .hack for whatever reason, this spinoff does have some things worth checking out conceptually. Important event fights that happened offscreen or in the past are available for the players to check out, but the consist of the same mechanics that every other fight in the game has. Character customization exists, although it's more limited than PSO. There are characters who you couldn't recruit in the main game, including tieins from the followup .hack anime series in the offline portion of the game. They don't have much to say, and their novelty begins and ends with being able to include them in the party so you can grind in the exact same fashion as the previous four games for no real goal. There's technically a main plot, but it's so threadbare and the final boss is such a Mickey Mouse whatever fight that you could be forgiven for forgetting it exists. All they had to do was write non-canon .hack sanctioned fanfiction, and they couldn't be bothered to do that.
It's cool that this game exists. There are diehard .hack stans out there, and I'm glad they got this fanservicey bonus disk with an online component added on. I think it's telling that, unlike something like PSOBB, there's currently zero players on any of the public Fragment servers. The core gameplay wasn't good enough to prop up four(ish) RPGs, and it doesn't hold up what little this game offers. It's one of those games that you probably won't get to play. You can download the game with a full english patch right now, and the staff that worked on the restoration did a great job. I just can't imagine finding two other people who'd want to play online IMOQ with you.
.Hack never got a proper MMO, and it's not accurate to call Fragment one. Even at the time of this game's release, if you just limited your options to consoles and wanted to pretend that there were no notable MMO releases that came out around this time, EverQuest Online Adventures and Final Fantasy XI had been out for years at this point. Phantasy Star Online, .hack's closest evolutionary cousin, was five years old. Monster Hunter was almost a year old at this game's release. If Fragment released a few years earlier, while the anime was still on TV and Infection's sales numbers were still decent, this could have found a niche.
It also could have found a niche if there were meaningful changes to the structure of the game, and there really wasn't. The combat of IMOQ is mostly unchanged, with the two main exceptions being that your party members are controlled by real players, and menuing doesn't pause the game. The combat's still balanced around digging through menus to use skills and spam items. The dungeons are structured mostly the exact same way as they were in the single player games, with encounters largely recycled. Most of the game screams "we had the assets lying around and wanted to see what we could do with as little time or money as possible".
If you just can't get enough .hack for whatever reason, this spinoff does have some things worth checking out conceptually. Important event fights that happened offscreen or in the past are available for the players to check out, but the consist of the same mechanics that every other fight in the game has. Character customization exists, although it's more limited than PSO. There are characters who you couldn't recruit in the main game, including tieins from the followup .hack anime series in the offline portion of the game. They don't have much to say, and their novelty begins and ends with being able to include them in the party so you can grind in the exact same fashion as the previous four games for no real goal. There's technically a main plot, but it's so threadbare and the final boss is such a Mickey Mouse whatever fight that you could be forgiven for forgetting it exists. All they had to do was write non-canon .hack sanctioned fanfiction, and they couldn't be bothered to do that.
It's cool that this game exists. There are diehard .hack stans out there, and I'm glad they got this fanservicey bonus disk with an online component added on. I think it's telling that, unlike something like PSOBB, there's currently zero players on any of the public Fragment servers. The core gameplay wasn't good enough to prop up four(ish) RPGs, and it doesn't hold up what little this game offers. It's one of those games that you probably won't get to play. You can download the game with a full english patch right now, and the staff that worked on the restoration did a great job. I just can't imagine finding two other people who'd want to play online IMOQ with you.
2003
Disrespectful to the player's time to such an egregious extent that I couldn't even suggest this game to people who have fully played through the previous three games and were still engaged enough to see how it ends.
The main selling point to Quarantine, other than wrapping up a hard to follow story that's best summed up with a promotional disk that would come with a much better RPG series, are the inclusions of AI replicas of the characters from Sign. The character development though the series was clumsy, but provided better storytelling than the convoluted and boring main plot. Being AI recreations, these new party members add nothing. There isn't even the childish excitement of pointing at the screen and exclaiming "Hey, I know that character!" because the character in question is Tsukasa from .hack//Sign. Not even the most anime-starved child in 2003 would have been excited to see an AI with Tsukasa's face over it.
Asking for more characters or development to the story wouldn't matter much, because getting to whatever plot elements the game has to offer is an unreasonable struggle due to the game's awful balance. Other reviews on here will point out how the dungeons, both in length and statistically what the require from the player, are way too much for people who have played three full (for this series) games and were able to import their progress accordingly. Technically, this could be your entry point into IMOQ, and with the amount of plot summaries and how much of the previous games were spent grinding out cores or going through filler dungeons, you wouldn't have missed much, but getting to your first bit of story content would take three or four full in real life days. There's still no new dungeon mechanics from the previous games outside of different tilesets. The numbers are just way too high, except for the drop rates of plot required cores, which are way too low. I played these games on an emulator with generous frame skip, and the pace of the game was still glacial.
The ending of the story consists of a 10 min cut scene, and an optional dungeon (see: slog) for an admittedly nice story moment with another party member. For how little content's on this disk, I expected a lot more interactions with your party members, or at least more of a substantial ending than what we got. The gist of .hack's storytelling, at least from what I gathered, was that the full story of what was going on was purposely spread across these various mediums, and by gorging yourself on this product, you could have a solid grasp of the events of the game and the importance of these fleeting thematic morsels sprinkled in between a bunch of fucking nothing outside of decent character designs and music way too good for this product rollout. As someone dumb enough to have watched every released anime, played through all seven of the mainline games (as well as the spinoff PSP/PS3 titles) and owns most of the first card game, it's just not worth your time.
The main selling point to Quarantine, other than wrapping up a hard to follow story that's best summed up with a promotional disk that would come with a much better RPG series, are the inclusions of AI replicas of the characters from Sign. The character development though the series was clumsy, but provided better storytelling than the convoluted and boring main plot. Being AI recreations, these new party members add nothing. There isn't even the childish excitement of pointing at the screen and exclaiming "Hey, I know that character!" because the character in question is Tsukasa from .hack//Sign. Not even the most anime-starved child in 2003 would have been excited to see an AI with Tsukasa's face over it.
Asking for more characters or development to the story wouldn't matter much, because getting to whatever plot elements the game has to offer is an unreasonable struggle due to the game's awful balance. Other reviews on here will point out how the dungeons, both in length and statistically what the require from the player, are way too much for people who have played three full (for this series) games and were able to import their progress accordingly. Technically, this could be your entry point into IMOQ, and with the amount of plot summaries and how much of the previous games were spent grinding out cores or going through filler dungeons, you wouldn't have missed much, but getting to your first bit of story content would take three or four full in real life days. There's still no new dungeon mechanics from the previous games outside of different tilesets. The numbers are just way too high, except for the drop rates of plot required cores, which are way too low. I played these games on an emulator with generous frame skip, and the pace of the game was still glacial.
The ending of the story consists of a 10 min cut scene, and an optional dungeon (see: slog) for an admittedly nice story moment with another party member. For how little content's on this disk, I expected a lot more interactions with your party members, or at least more of a substantial ending than what we got. The gist of .hack's storytelling, at least from what I gathered, was that the full story of what was going on was purposely spread across these various mediums, and by gorging yourself on this product, you could have a solid grasp of the events of the game and the importance of these fleeting thematic morsels sprinkled in between a bunch of fucking nothing outside of decent character designs and music way too good for this product rollout. As someone dumb enough to have watched every released anime, played through all seven of the mainline games (as well as the spinoff PSP/PS3 titles) and owns most of the first card game, it's just not worth your time.
2002
Don't listen to anything I have to say about //Outbreak, look at all the other reviews for this game. If you liked the previous two games, don't worry, the only change from the previous games is that there's slightly more plot sprinkled between the filler sections of the game, and the party AI was improved. However long you think you have to wait to play Outbreak after the previous game, double it because you're going to be burnt the fuck out. The core issues with the previous game, even things that could have been addressed without major rewrites to the engine like camera angles are just as bad as they were in the previous two games. Even with the increase in plot, the game does not justify being split into four different entries.
2002
I wanted to give //Infection the benefit of the doubt. It's a shorter game, and they didn't reveal much about the plot. It was rough around the edges, but it's a very early PS2 RPG, the sequel was sure to improve upon the original and the story could finally get going. I beat the optional boss of the previous game, got my save ready to import, took a small break, and threw this game in.
The first half of a hour of this game destroyed whatever goodwill that the first game built up. This wasn't a proper sequel. This wasn't even something like Shining Force III, where they used the same engine but provided a full narrative and enough changes to the formula to avoid burnout. They took what they had with //Infection, and cut the game in half. Zero visual improvements, most of the areas use the same tilesets. The combat, with its monotony, difficulty hitting enemies (due to movement and camera issues) and abundance of crowd control directed towards the player remains in tact. They sold this game as a sequel, and it should be looked at like a sequel.
The biggest addition to the game are Grunty Races. They're a mini-game that doesn't directly impact the plot, and rewards the player with permanent stat boosts. It's a welcome addition, even if it's half baked, but in no way justifies how padded and sparse this entry in the series is. There's so many "arcs" that are obviously not important to the overall story and are there to waste time. Even with a sizable break, playing more than one of these games starts to feel like eating flour.
The first half of a hour of this game destroyed whatever goodwill that the first game built up. This wasn't a proper sequel. This wasn't even something like Shining Force III, where they used the same engine but provided a full narrative and enough changes to the formula to avoid burnout. They took what they had with //Infection, and cut the game in half. Zero visual improvements, most of the areas use the same tilesets. The combat, with its monotony, difficulty hitting enemies (due to movement and camera issues) and abundance of crowd control directed towards the player remains in tact. They sold this game as a sequel, and it should be looked at like a sequel.
The biggest addition to the game are Grunty Races. They're a mini-game that doesn't directly impact the plot, and rewards the player with permanent stat boosts. It's a welcome addition, even if it's half baked, but in no way justifies how padded and sparse this entry in the series is. There's so many "arcs" that are obviously not important to the overall story and are there to waste time. Even with a sizable break, playing more than one of these games starts to feel like eating flour.
2002
Conceptually, this franchise was on borrowed time from the moment this game was released. A promising (?) start to a bloated multimedia disaster who's main selling points were "the music is really good" and "the card game tie in was underrated".
In a way, this game is more interesting as a time capsule of what people who vaguely knew what Ultima/Everquest/FFXI looked and played like. There isn't a large open world to explore. Getting to different locations in this game requires that you go to an accessible spot in a hub area, and select through menus to get to your destination, which sadly is more in line with where the MMO genre would go years later. The gimmick being that your location is based off of a combination of three words that determine the parameters of where you wind up. Outside of plot relevant/gimmick boss fight locations, these locations are barebones and come off as filler that at best could be used for grinding or gathering resources to trade to NPCs for equipment/consumables, which you will need to do. Unlike Disgaea's Item World, these pseudo-randomized grinding locations aren't engaging because the core combat of the game isn't engaging. You press X to swing, you sometimes cast a spell or two, spank and tank until the fight's over. The Data Drain system doesn't spice up combat enough to break up the monotony, and mostly acts as an execution attack when your opponent's health is low enough.
The three MMOs I listed above aren't fun solo RPGs, the genre was (and still is) propped up by the social interactions they encourage. Marriages have been formed through "we were grinding in a level 20 cave area for a couple of days and kept talking". The party banter in dungeons does not even attempt to emulate this outside of a few quips during combat specific events. The characters that join your party are fun to have around, the dynamic of "this is a game, and people either put on an online persona or talk like someone using AIM" has high points throughout the series, but the script isn't large enough to take advantage of this. There's an out of game forum system, which adds a bit of flavor to the experience, but it's hard not to feel like it's analogous to older RPGs where progress would be gated unless you talked to every NPC (or, in this case, checked every thread).
All that being said, the presentation for a 2002 PS2 game was pretty decent, with the final boss and its introduction being a high point. The only major audio issue I have other than lack of variety was piss poor implementation and direction (the voice actors themselves have done great work in other media, Steve Blum voices an eight year old in these games). The game was light on story, but this is the first game in the series, most of it was probably establishing characters and The World for people who weren't familiar with //Sign. If they flesh out the combat for the sequels and add on to the length, these games could be something neat.
In a way, this game is more interesting as a time capsule of what people who vaguely knew what Ultima/Everquest/FFXI looked and played like. There isn't a large open world to explore. Getting to different locations in this game requires that you go to an accessible spot in a hub area, and select through menus to get to your destination, which sadly is more in line with where the MMO genre would go years later. The gimmick being that your location is based off of a combination of three words that determine the parameters of where you wind up. Outside of plot relevant/gimmick boss fight locations, these locations are barebones and come off as filler that at best could be used for grinding or gathering resources to trade to NPCs for equipment/consumables, which you will need to do. Unlike Disgaea's Item World, these pseudo-randomized grinding locations aren't engaging because the core combat of the game isn't engaging. You press X to swing, you sometimes cast a spell or two, spank and tank until the fight's over. The Data Drain system doesn't spice up combat enough to break up the monotony, and mostly acts as an execution attack when your opponent's health is low enough.
The three MMOs I listed above aren't fun solo RPGs, the genre was (and still is) propped up by the social interactions they encourage. Marriages have been formed through "we were grinding in a level 20 cave area for a couple of days and kept talking". The party banter in dungeons does not even attempt to emulate this outside of a few quips during combat specific events. The characters that join your party are fun to have around, the dynamic of "this is a game, and people either put on an online persona or talk like someone using AIM" has high points throughout the series, but the script isn't large enough to take advantage of this. There's an out of game forum system, which adds a bit of flavor to the experience, but it's hard not to feel like it's analogous to older RPGs where progress would be gated unless you talked to every NPC (or, in this case, checked every thread).
All that being said, the presentation for a 2002 PS2 game was pretty decent, with the final boss and its introduction being a high point. The only major audio issue I have other than lack of variety was piss poor implementation and direction (the voice actors themselves have done great work in other media, Steve Blum voices an eight year old in these games). The game was light on story, but this is the first game in the series, most of it was probably establishing characters and The World for people who weren't familiar with //Sign. If they flesh out the combat for the sequels and add on to the length, these games could be something neat.
This game has some of the worst numbers you'll ever see.
Circle of the Moon isn't a bad game, and there's a lot that this very early GBA game gets right. The music, even among people who loathe the game, is commonly praised. The graphical direction in this game wasn't tailored for the GBA in the way that future entries would lead towards, but it also means that it's aged better visually than other game that rely on a saturated color pallet to make up for the GBA's lack of backlight. The plot isn't connected to the Belmont clan's exploits, but I see that as more of a strength than something worth condemning the game for. Castlevania lore shouldn't be sacrosanct, and the new characters fit well into the setting. The card system was a cool idea on paper, and one that's critical enough to your progress to where you won't want to ignore it. The map design isn't as complex as SOTM, but there were still interesting setpieces and plenty of Metroidvania games would come after with worse map design. As other reviews have pointed out, this was a B-team production, and there's enough high quality elements to COTM that I didn't even realize that was the case until 15+ years after I first played this game.
This game's numbers take all of that praise and toss it right into the trash for most people. The card system, something that should have allowed for player expression in how they wanted to overcome puzzles/combat challenges fails because of how low the drop rates for these cards are. It's not just that you have to grind for them aimlessly without a guide, the drop rates are way too low. The game's balanced around the card system, ignoring it makes most fights more of a slog than they already could be. They could have adjusted drop rates to what they'd be in future Castlevania games, or made it so they're nice additions to the game but aren't required to progress, both of which could be accomplished by messing around with a few numbers in a hex editor. The most I've ever enjoyed the card system was when I used an action replay as a kid to give myself all the cards, and exploring each of the effects was a lot of fun.
Movement in this game isn't bad, but it is too sluggish even with the dash/backdash feature. Again, tweak a few numbers and have the player move twice as fast by default, and you don't have to adjust anything about the core design of the game to rectify the issue of having to lug this white haired sloth around the castle.
Enemies in this game deal entirely too much damage and sponge damage, even with card support. It's not that the enemy/boss patterns feel that out of place with the rest of the series, even if further GBA games would improve upon them. The final boss fight with Dracula would be really fun, if bursts of high damage weren't constant. You can mostly keep that fight in tact, just tweak some health and damage values and the final fight goes from a low point in the series to a decent little challenge.
Beartank is playable in this game. Even as a novelty, he's worse than easier to get novelties. Nobody's done Beartank runs of this game because you deal so little damage that it isn't fun. You could have a new (and superior) way to play COTM if killing everything with Beartank didn't take twice as long as a default Nathan. Up his damage and make it so he doesn't die in one hit. When I think of "tanks" and "bears", getting one shot does not cross my mind at all.
Even with all of these issues, I still thought the overall experience was decent, there's still enough going on with this game (especially compared to other GBA platforms) to where I didn't feel like I wasted my time. That being said, if you want to give the game a go, on romhacking.net there are two patches, one that adds an auto-dash feature, and one that places cards around the castle in predetermined locations. I'm not sure if the two of them can be combined, but either would go far to relieve some of this game's headaches.
Circle of the Moon isn't a bad game, and there's a lot that this very early GBA game gets right. The music, even among people who loathe the game, is commonly praised. The graphical direction in this game wasn't tailored for the GBA in the way that future entries would lead towards, but it also means that it's aged better visually than other game that rely on a saturated color pallet to make up for the GBA's lack of backlight. The plot isn't connected to the Belmont clan's exploits, but I see that as more of a strength than something worth condemning the game for. Castlevania lore shouldn't be sacrosanct, and the new characters fit well into the setting. The card system was a cool idea on paper, and one that's critical enough to your progress to where you won't want to ignore it. The map design isn't as complex as SOTM, but there were still interesting setpieces and plenty of Metroidvania games would come after with worse map design. As other reviews have pointed out, this was a B-team production, and there's enough high quality elements to COTM that I didn't even realize that was the case until 15+ years after I first played this game.
This game's numbers take all of that praise and toss it right into the trash for most people. The card system, something that should have allowed for player expression in how they wanted to overcome puzzles/combat challenges fails because of how low the drop rates for these cards are. It's not just that you have to grind for them aimlessly without a guide, the drop rates are way too low. The game's balanced around the card system, ignoring it makes most fights more of a slog than they already could be. They could have adjusted drop rates to what they'd be in future Castlevania games, or made it so they're nice additions to the game but aren't required to progress, both of which could be accomplished by messing around with a few numbers in a hex editor. The most I've ever enjoyed the card system was when I used an action replay as a kid to give myself all the cards, and exploring each of the effects was a lot of fun.
Movement in this game isn't bad, but it is too sluggish even with the dash/backdash feature. Again, tweak a few numbers and have the player move twice as fast by default, and you don't have to adjust anything about the core design of the game to rectify the issue of having to lug this white haired sloth around the castle.
Enemies in this game deal entirely too much damage and sponge damage, even with card support. It's not that the enemy/boss patterns feel that out of place with the rest of the series, even if further GBA games would improve upon them. The final boss fight with Dracula would be really fun, if bursts of high damage weren't constant. You can mostly keep that fight in tact, just tweak some health and damage values and the final fight goes from a low point in the series to a decent little challenge.
Beartank is playable in this game. Even as a novelty, he's worse than easier to get novelties. Nobody's done Beartank runs of this game because you deal so little damage that it isn't fun. You could have a new (and superior) way to play COTM if killing everything with Beartank didn't take twice as long as a default Nathan. Up his damage and make it so he doesn't die in one hit. When I think of "tanks" and "bears", getting one shot does not cross my mind at all.
Even with all of these issues, I still thought the overall experience was decent, there's still enough going on with this game (especially compared to other GBA platforms) to where I didn't feel like I wasted my time. That being said, if you want to give the game a go, on romhacking.net there are two patches, one that adds an auto-dash feature, and one that places cards around the castle in predetermined locations. I'm not sure if the two of them can be combined, but either would go far to relieve some of this game's headaches.
1984
A death march of a port, quickly farmed out to Micronics. This game looks bad, even by early NES standards. The scrolling is sluggish, the graphics are repetitive and primitive, and the sound design is some of the worst that the console would see in terms of commercial releases. It doesn't have any music, much like the original arcade port, but the sound effects for shots are pitched so high up that the game gave me a headache after half a hour. The gameplay itself, considering the historical circumstance, isn't that bad for that initial half a hour. Deaths are unforgiving and checkpoints stingy, but many NES shmups have similar issues. The biggest issue with the gameplay is that the gameplay gets old once the headaches kick in, and there's about another hour left.
1997
The 2nd greatest cultural achievement of everyone's favorite apartheid state. If you make an unfun, obtuse game on purpose, it's still a pain to sit through, and I'm not sure if Armed & Delirious was trying to be bad in order to create a surreal atmosphere or if the developers were just that bad at their job.
Starting off with the game's most grave sin, the jokes don't land. I wasn't a fan of Psychonauts' "random and quirky" sense of humor, but this game seems like a mean spirited imitation of Psychonauts made by people who also didn't enjoy the game. Most of the humor comes from the nonsensical actions of the repulsive looking main character and her dementia-ridden worldview. Granny's character isn't defined enough to have decent jokes come from her bizarre reactions as some sort of psychotic break of character. Most of her bits involve "drinking" or referring to objects incorrectly, with random acts of violence sprinkled in. She's a Z-tier Peter Griffin, but the game also has too much restraint with what antics Granny will get up to, so her random outbursts come off as unsettling without the sort of shock that good Family Guy jokes have. This isn't an awful concept, you could either have her be a chaos demon interacting with the world like a violent, cruel Alzheimer's patient or have her be a sweet old woman, bumbling about a demented fever dream. They didn't bother to choose either.
She's easily the best part of the game, the rest of the characters are annoying and shallow, and the game lacks the wit to have them be interesting foils to Granny. Her family's characterization is equally unfocused and crude. Their main characteristics consist of "torture animals" and "are horny in a particularly greasy way". This doesn't make them stand out among the rest of the game's cast, as there are plenty of other NPCs who either hate animals or express their desire to bust to the player. The main antagonist feels detached from the game's events outside of specific plot dumps that go on for entirely way too long and kill whatever piss-poor pacing the game already had. The plot dumps are especially infuriating because the game lacks any consistent internal logical, which the game could have used to bounce off of and make a fucking joke.
The rest of the game's humor is dependent on how funny you find the unintuitive adventure game design and the solutions to puzzles that you wouldn't be able to find out the solution to without obscene pixel hunting/trial and error. Everything downstream from that is irrelevant, because it poisons the experience so fully that the rest of the game's faults don't look as bad. Granny, despite being able to do flips and other acrobatics in cut-scenes, apparently can't lift her hands above her head in almost all other situations and the player needs, on average, three to six different objects unrelated to a given puzzle in order to trigger a given plot flag. Inventory management is done with a visual basic window that's either way too small to read what the item is, or requires the player to resize the window every time you want to dig for the shovel so you can unlock a pizza or whatever stupid bullshit this game's on at that given time. There is zero deviation from the given path either, you have to perform these arcane steps in the exact order the game wants you to, even if """logically""" out of sequence actions should get you to the same destination. If you do know a puzzle's solution (you're following a guide for every step), context sensitive actions are entirely too picky and you'll have to attempt most actions multiple times for them to register. It's one thing to watch a longplay of this game, I did that years ago, but the actual process of having to disk swap constantly and mash on the same background object over and over again in the exact order to go to another disk swap sequence solidified just how wretched this game is to play on a moment to moment basis.
The presentation is awful, but not in similarly interesting ways. The game's early 3D models are ugly, but less in a "they were dealing with strict hardware limitations" sense, and more "the art direction in this game was bad, whoever worked on this game was a bad artist" ugly. The settings aren't strange enough to come off as totally alien or unsettling, if anything the worlds feel stock and forgettable outside of their use of weird camera angles. The characters fare slightly better, not in the sense that they had good direction, but in the sense that they're so revolting that they stick out in your mind (like the 3'9 Vectorman baby). I swear to god, there are renders of specific characters that look off model, like they outsourced animation for their own 3D rigs. The audio was poorly mixed, with important lines of dialogue being very hard to hear. Sound effects layer on top of each other at times, and I would have loved to mute the game but the game has no subtitle options. The music's my second favorite part of the game, because most of it sounds like it was pulled off of a royalty free music CD and is bland, but inoffensive unlike almost everything else in this game.
Most really bad games I've played haven't left me with any negative feelings towards the staff that worked on it. Dual Heroes is a game that's as bad as Armed & Delirious, but that's just an incompetent mess made by a team that primarily worked on RPGs and Bomberman ports, I hope everyone at Produce landed on their feet. The artistic choices that the staff at Makh-Shevet made reflect poorly on them as people, but not even in an interestingly offensive way, in the same way that David Cage's worldview poisons his games. This is a mean, ugly and unfunny game that compares poorly to its regional peers (which were also morally repugnant, being IDF flight sims), and it's for the best that the company folded shortly after this game's failure.
Starting off with the game's most grave sin, the jokes don't land. I wasn't a fan of Psychonauts' "random and quirky" sense of humor, but this game seems like a mean spirited imitation of Psychonauts made by people who also didn't enjoy the game. Most of the humor comes from the nonsensical actions of the repulsive looking main character and her dementia-ridden worldview. Granny's character isn't defined enough to have decent jokes come from her bizarre reactions as some sort of psychotic break of character. Most of her bits involve "drinking" or referring to objects incorrectly, with random acts of violence sprinkled in. She's a Z-tier Peter Griffin, but the game also has too much restraint with what antics Granny will get up to, so her random outbursts come off as unsettling without the sort of shock that good Family Guy jokes have. This isn't an awful concept, you could either have her be a chaos demon interacting with the world like a violent, cruel Alzheimer's patient or have her be a sweet old woman, bumbling about a demented fever dream. They didn't bother to choose either.
She's easily the best part of the game, the rest of the characters are annoying and shallow, and the game lacks the wit to have them be interesting foils to Granny. Her family's characterization is equally unfocused and crude. Their main characteristics consist of "torture animals" and "are horny in a particularly greasy way". This doesn't make them stand out among the rest of the game's cast, as there are plenty of other NPCs who either hate animals or express their desire to bust to the player. The main antagonist feels detached from the game's events outside of specific plot dumps that go on for entirely way too long and kill whatever piss-poor pacing the game already had. The plot dumps are especially infuriating because the game lacks any consistent internal logical, which the game could have used to bounce off of and make a fucking joke.
The rest of the game's humor is dependent on how funny you find the unintuitive adventure game design and the solutions to puzzles that you wouldn't be able to find out the solution to without obscene pixel hunting/trial and error. Everything downstream from that is irrelevant, because it poisons the experience so fully that the rest of the game's faults don't look as bad. Granny, despite being able to do flips and other acrobatics in cut-scenes, apparently can't lift her hands above her head in almost all other situations and the player needs, on average, three to six different objects unrelated to a given puzzle in order to trigger a given plot flag. Inventory management is done with a visual basic window that's either way too small to read what the item is, or requires the player to resize the window every time you want to dig for the shovel so you can unlock a pizza or whatever stupid bullshit this game's on at that given time. There is zero deviation from the given path either, you have to perform these arcane steps in the exact order the game wants you to, even if """logically""" out of sequence actions should get you to the same destination. If you do know a puzzle's solution (you're following a guide for every step), context sensitive actions are entirely too picky and you'll have to attempt most actions multiple times for them to register. It's one thing to watch a longplay of this game, I did that years ago, but the actual process of having to disk swap constantly and mash on the same background object over and over again in the exact order to go to another disk swap sequence solidified just how wretched this game is to play on a moment to moment basis.
The presentation is awful, but not in similarly interesting ways. The game's early 3D models are ugly, but less in a "they were dealing with strict hardware limitations" sense, and more "the art direction in this game was bad, whoever worked on this game was a bad artist" ugly. The settings aren't strange enough to come off as totally alien or unsettling, if anything the worlds feel stock and forgettable outside of their use of weird camera angles. The characters fare slightly better, not in the sense that they had good direction, but in the sense that they're so revolting that they stick out in your mind (like the 3'9 Vectorman baby). I swear to god, there are renders of specific characters that look off model, like they outsourced animation for their own 3D rigs. The audio was poorly mixed, with important lines of dialogue being very hard to hear. Sound effects layer on top of each other at times, and I would have loved to mute the game but the game has no subtitle options. The music's my second favorite part of the game, because most of it sounds like it was pulled off of a royalty free music CD and is bland, but inoffensive unlike almost everything else in this game.
Most really bad games I've played haven't left me with any negative feelings towards the staff that worked on it. Dual Heroes is a game that's as bad as Armed & Delirious, but that's just an incompetent mess made by a team that primarily worked on RPGs and Bomberman ports, I hope everyone at Produce landed on their feet. The artistic choices that the staff at Makh-Shevet made reflect poorly on them as people, but not even in an interestingly offensive way, in the same way that David Cage's worldview poisons his games. This is a mean, ugly and unfunny game that compares poorly to its regional peers (which were also morally repugnant, being IDF flight sims), and it's for the best that the company folded shortly after this game's failure.