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As some may know, I have completed Star Ocean 6: The Divine Force within 87 hours and generally speaking, it feels like a return of form from the series' fan-favorite elements such as split routes and duel protagonists as seen from The Second Story/Second Evolution, the strong blend of sci-fi and fantasy and recruitable characters while improving from the instant blend of gameplay and story as seen from the previous game, Integrity and Faithlessness. Star Ocean 6 made a few changes that I don't like as much but overall, The Divine Force feels like the right direction in the series as the series celebrate its 25th anniversary.
First let's talk about the visuals since that is the very first thing that is notable, the game is gorgeous and lush from deep forests, massive kingdoms and high techno landscapes. The Divine Force's visuals pop extremely well especially on the PS5 version with higher textures and resolution. Tri-Ace was always cutting-edge with graphics so it's very pleasing to see them continue to excel.
This is more of a personal improvement for me but I think the series finally nail its artstyle down since the transition to full 3D. For a while, I always just felt so put off by how some of the characters (especially the younger girls) looked very "doll like", which added a lot of uncanny valley. The doll-like appearance get reduced with each entry but I feel like Star Ocean 6 finally managed to find a natural-looking balance with the series' artstyle.
The music...sadly it's a bit of a downgrade compared to past titles. While some of the tracks are fitting for the environments and the battle music isn't bad. composer Motoi Sakuraba just never reaches the progressive rock greatness he had achieved in Til the End of Time and The Last Hope. However, there are a few tracks I greatly enjoy such as the final boss theme which was very symphonic.
Of course, of the biggest defining points of Star Ocean is the combat. The areas are vast and combat is very fast, free form and fluid thanks to D.U.M.A and the new VA system. It allows characters to zip around and perform attacks. Mechanics from The Last Hope such as chain combos and blindsiding also make a return to give the player an advantage in combat.
Skill Points make a return as they are featured in the previous games. You can use SP to spend on each character's skill set, from new attacks to active and passive skills to other series outside of combat such as the series' well-renowned item creation (which I will get to later). However, despite the quicker approach to gameplay, I was not a fan of all of the combat changes.
There is an AP system that functions based on the more AP you have, the more attacks you can perform. This serves as a replacement for the series' MP system. However, I just found the AP system to be quite an annoyance and sometimes abruptly stop the flow of combat. You start off with 5AP and it can add or decrease between 5-15AP.
The issue is, for me at least, chain combos can eat up AP fast and the only way to recharge it is to wait for a few seconds instead of continuing to dish out attacks with no stopping. People may not have an issue with this and in the end, even I have gotten used to the AP system. However, it's a system I do not prefer at all.
Also, I found the cast to be very unbalanced gameplay-wise. The emphasis on Semiomancy (the Divine's Force version of the series Symbology) just felt unsatisfying. Midas is the only true caster and he's fine for the most part while Albaird and Malyka are hybrid fighters with a stronger focus on physical attacks.
However, the lack of healing options was a big complaint for me. Nina is the only capable character out of everyone that could heal and even then, she was more of a buffer than a pure healer. Therefore a lot of the series' healing spells were ultimately missing such as long-range simultaneous healing rather than the characters needing to be in range to get healed.
Also, performance issues during combat. I have experience frame drops on both PS4 and PS5 with the "favor resolution" mode. PS4 can drop as long as 15-20fps when you are battling multiple enemies. PS5 is much more consistent with staying around 60fps but I felt like the game has dropped around 45-50fps a few times. Thankfully the game runs at 60fps at all times on both consoles outside of combat.
Item Creation, another essential staple in the Star Ocean makes a return with the very charming Welch Vineyard teaching either Raymond or Laeticia the ways of the Vineyard family craftsmanship while trying to restore her family's name and wealth. I really enjoy this version of Welch since all of her past iterations of her just in general annoyed me. I really enjoy this more "himedere" version of Welch.
As for the Item Creation itself, it's a mechanic I enjoy a lot in past Star Ocean games. But I found it hard to really care for it save for a few times I needed it to complete side quests. Despite the number of items you could create with the 7 ways you can create an item. The lack of recipes that will guarantee the new item if you have every required material just made the process completely RNG and a time sucker if you want rare items. Even if you spend a lot of SP to increase the IC skills for a character, it's still quite the grind.
I'm sure Item Creation is a great tool in this game to obtain stronger weapons and armor beyond what you could buy in stores. But it just wasn't engaging to me, unfortunately. It had its usage early on but in the end, I just depended on stores to buy the equipment I needed.
Speaking of side quests, The Divine Force has quite a healthy amount of them and I am impressed every single NPC is fully voiced, a rarity for a JRPG! The quests themselves may be bland kill/fetch quests and they are never overly difficult as long you have a guide on hand. But the fact is there is a tiny bit of story attached to each side quest.
From the son that wanted to send a letter to his sick mother, to the umaibo-obsessed man who wanted to eat more of them, and of course, there is plenty of cat-finding mini adventures to discover. These side quests just make the in-game world much more livelier and vivid with personality. And personally, if there is even a bit of story to be experienced, it just gives me the motivation to complete these side quests.
While I have some quips about the combat and item creation, anyone that played a Star Ocean, or really any RPG, should know there's more to the games than combat and crafting and The Divine Force makes no exception.
Within the first hour of the game (so this shouldn't be considered spoilers), Raymond Lawrance, a transporter got his ship shot down by a Federation ship and ended up stranded on the plant Aster IV while getting separated by his crew. Then almost immediately he met Laeticia Aucerius, a princess on a mission to mend two countries on the verge of war.
As Raymond and Laeticia progress in thier journey for Raymond to leave Aster IV with his crew and Laeticia to find certain key members from her country, they met various people along the way. While I initially thought the sci-fi elements were fairly low and the plot points were seemingly unconnected with each other in the early parts.
Eventually, everything bonded together into an epic sci-fi-heavy story unraveling the cautions of forced evolution (a theme that was heavily explored in The Last Hope) and the potential dangers of share networking. The story goes through a lot of emotional moments as well as the thin line between hard sci-fi and medieval fantasy gets tipped toed multiple times.
Of course, what is a Star Ocean game without Private Actions, the series' defining character bonding element that will allow the protagonist to get closer to the cast. Private Actions was never bad in any Star Ocean game and it's always one of the strongest points of the games. From fun and silly ones like learning Albarid is a sugar addict, seeing how Marielle struggle with heat and Elena try her hardest to intimate other people's mannerism. From more serious ones that reflect on thier character development and changing viewpoints throughout the plot.
Private Actions add to the livelihood of each character with thier own personality, thoughts, and feelings. And the best part is each protagonist has thier own set of Private Actions. I haven't even seen nearly any of the Raymond PAs yet!
One thing that has been emphasized by Tri-Ace is how The Divine Force is the series' 25th anniversary. While I have caught on to some past nods from previous games, with the most explicit one is the game takes place 46 years after the previous game Integrity and Faithlessness and there are some direct references from that game. However, a very clear way the company is celebrating Star Ocean as a whole is the Es'owa strategy minigame.
Es'owa is somewhat of a mix between Othello and Chess when you use different types of pieces with various roles and each piece adds on damage to the player. Whoever gets rid of a player's HP wins. The cool part about this is the higher-level pieces are Star Ocean characters from past games and they are all fully modeled as if it's a digital figure. Plus you can use them as accessories to give characters stat boots during combat!
I wasn't a fan at first, I found it frustrating but by the end, I wanted more opponents to battle. I just found this to be a very neat minigame that plays tribute to the Star Ocean series over the last 25 years.
Star Ocean 6: The Divine Force may fumble a bit with some of its combat and item creation mechanics as well as performance issues but with an engaging sci-fi plot and likable, enjoyable, and well-thought-out characters in a vibrant and colorful world, and a very fun minigame that nodes into the Star Ocean franchise. The Divine Force is a great direction in the series and it did a lot of right ultimately. In the end, I can safely say this is one of the better games I have played in 2022, perhaps even top 5. All and all, whether you're a newcomer or a series veteran, The Divine Force captures the essence of Star Ocean well and it's a worthy game to play for any RPG fan, especally if you're a sci-fi and ARPG fan.
First let's talk about the visuals since that is the very first thing that is notable, the game is gorgeous and lush from deep forests, massive kingdoms and high techno landscapes. The Divine Force's visuals pop extremely well especially on the PS5 version with higher textures and resolution. Tri-Ace was always cutting-edge with graphics so it's very pleasing to see them continue to excel.
This is more of a personal improvement for me but I think the series finally nail its artstyle down since the transition to full 3D. For a while, I always just felt so put off by how some of the characters (especially the younger girls) looked very "doll like", which added a lot of uncanny valley. The doll-like appearance get reduced with each entry but I feel like Star Ocean 6 finally managed to find a natural-looking balance with the series' artstyle.
The music...sadly it's a bit of a downgrade compared to past titles. While some of the tracks are fitting for the environments and the battle music isn't bad. composer Motoi Sakuraba just never reaches the progressive rock greatness he had achieved in Til the End of Time and The Last Hope. However, there are a few tracks I greatly enjoy such as the final boss theme which was very symphonic.
Of course, of the biggest defining points of Star Ocean is the combat. The areas are vast and combat is very fast, free form and fluid thanks to D.U.M.A and the new VA system. It allows characters to zip around and perform attacks. Mechanics from The Last Hope such as chain combos and blindsiding also make a return to give the player an advantage in combat.
Skill Points make a return as they are featured in the previous games. You can use SP to spend on each character's skill set, from new attacks to active and passive skills to other series outside of combat such as the series' well-renowned item creation (which I will get to later). However, despite the quicker approach to gameplay, I was not a fan of all of the combat changes.
There is an AP system that functions based on the more AP you have, the more attacks you can perform. This serves as a replacement for the series' MP system. However, I just found the AP system to be quite an annoyance and sometimes abruptly stop the flow of combat. You start off with 5AP and it can add or decrease between 5-15AP.
The issue is, for me at least, chain combos can eat up AP fast and the only way to recharge it is to wait for a few seconds instead of continuing to dish out attacks with no stopping. People may not have an issue with this and in the end, even I have gotten used to the AP system. However, it's a system I do not prefer at all.
Also, I found the cast to be very unbalanced gameplay-wise. The emphasis on Semiomancy (the Divine's Force version of the series Symbology) just felt unsatisfying. Midas is the only true caster and he's fine for the most part while Albaird and Malyka are hybrid fighters with a stronger focus on physical attacks.
However, the lack of healing options was a big complaint for me. Nina is the only capable character out of everyone that could heal and even then, she was more of a buffer than a pure healer. Therefore a lot of the series' healing spells were ultimately missing such as long-range simultaneous healing rather than the characters needing to be in range to get healed.
Also, performance issues during combat. I have experience frame drops on both PS4 and PS5 with the "favor resolution" mode. PS4 can drop as long as 15-20fps when you are battling multiple enemies. PS5 is much more consistent with staying around 60fps but I felt like the game has dropped around 45-50fps a few times. Thankfully the game runs at 60fps at all times on both consoles outside of combat.
Item Creation, another essential staple in the Star Ocean makes a return with the very charming Welch Vineyard teaching either Raymond or Laeticia the ways of the Vineyard family craftsmanship while trying to restore her family's name and wealth. I really enjoy this version of Welch since all of her past iterations of her just in general annoyed me. I really enjoy this more "himedere" version of Welch.
As for the Item Creation itself, it's a mechanic I enjoy a lot in past Star Ocean games. But I found it hard to really care for it save for a few times I needed it to complete side quests. Despite the number of items you could create with the 7 ways you can create an item. The lack of recipes that will guarantee the new item if you have every required material just made the process completely RNG and a time sucker if you want rare items. Even if you spend a lot of SP to increase the IC skills for a character, it's still quite the grind.
I'm sure Item Creation is a great tool in this game to obtain stronger weapons and armor beyond what you could buy in stores. But it just wasn't engaging to me, unfortunately. It had its usage early on but in the end, I just depended on stores to buy the equipment I needed.
Speaking of side quests, The Divine Force has quite a healthy amount of them and I am impressed every single NPC is fully voiced, a rarity for a JRPG! The quests themselves may be bland kill/fetch quests and they are never overly difficult as long you have a guide on hand. But the fact is there is a tiny bit of story attached to each side quest.
From the son that wanted to send a letter to his sick mother, to the umaibo-obsessed man who wanted to eat more of them, and of course, there is plenty of cat-finding mini adventures to discover. These side quests just make the in-game world much more livelier and vivid with personality. And personally, if there is even a bit of story to be experienced, it just gives me the motivation to complete these side quests.
While I have some quips about the combat and item creation, anyone that played a Star Ocean, or really any RPG, should know there's more to the games than combat and crafting and The Divine Force makes no exception.
Within the first hour of the game (so this shouldn't be considered spoilers), Raymond Lawrance, a transporter got his ship shot down by a Federation ship and ended up stranded on the plant Aster IV while getting separated by his crew. Then almost immediately he met Laeticia Aucerius, a princess on a mission to mend two countries on the verge of war.
As Raymond and Laeticia progress in thier journey for Raymond to leave Aster IV with his crew and Laeticia to find certain key members from her country, they met various people along the way. While I initially thought the sci-fi elements were fairly low and the plot points were seemingly unconnected with each other in the early parts.
Eventually, everything bonded together into an epic sci-fi-heavy story unraveling the cautions of forced evolution (a theme that was heavily explored in The Last Hope) and the potential dangers of share networking. The story goes through a lot of emotional moments as well as the thin line between hard sci-fi and medieval fantasy gets tipped toed multiple times.
Of course, what is a Star Ocean game without Private Actions, the series' defining character bonding element that will allow the protagonist to get closer to the cast. Private Actions was never bad in any Star Ocean game and it's always one of the strongest points of the games. From fun and silly ones like learning Albarid is a sugar addict, seeing how Marielle struggle with heat and Elena try her hardest to intimate other people's mannerism. From more serious ones that reflect on thier character development and changing viewpoints throughout the plot.
Private Actions add to the livelihood of each character with thier own personality, thoughts, and feelings. And the best part is each protagonist has thier own set of Private Actions. I haven't even seen nearly any of the Raymond PAs yet!
One thing that has been emphasized by Tri-Ace is how The Divine Force is the series' 25th anniversary. While I have caught on to some past nods from previous games, with the most explicit one is the game takes place 46 years after the previous game Integrity and Faithlessness and there are some direct references from that game. However, a very clear way the company is celebrating Star Ocean as a whole is the Es'owa strategy minigame.
Es'owa is somewhat of a mix between Othello and Chess when you use different types of pieces with various roles and each piece adds on damage to the player. Whoever gets rid of a player's HP wins. The cool part about this is the higher-level pieces are Star Ocean characters from past games and they are all fully modeled as if it's a digital figure. Plus you can use them as accessories to give characters stat boots during combat!
I wasn't a fan at first, I found it frustrating but by the end, I wanted more opponents to battle. I just found this to be a very neat minigame that plays tribute to the Star Ocean series over the last 25 years.
Star Ocean 6: The Divine Force may fumble a bit with some of its combat and item creation mechanics as well as performance issues but with an engaging sci-fi plot and likable, enjoyable, and well-thought-out characters in a vibrant and colorful world, and a very fun minigame that nodes into the Star Ocean franchise. The Divine Force is a great direction in the series and it did a lot of right ultimately. In the end, I can safely say this is one of the better games I have played in 2022, perhaps even top 5. All and all, whether you're a newcomer or a series veteran, The Divine Force captures the essence of Star Ocean well and it's a worthy game to play for any RPG fan, especally if you're a sci-fi and ARPG fan.
2023
"The Hero Turns To Look Inside, Is Destroyed By What He Sees, And Is Redeemed."
Finished Alan Wake 2 last night and oh my, I absolutely get the praise for Alan Wake 2 now. It's an experience like no other game and not only does it greatly improve from the first game in every single aspect, but this is easily Redemy Entertainment's magnum opus with its unique multimedia method of storytelling and immersion.
The graphics are just astonishing, especially with how carefully Redemy has been crafting thier usage of lighting to the point there are many scenes when you could easily mistake the game for live-action. The audio design is one of the best I have experienced and it's incredibly immersive to hear sounds from all directions and angels from pouring rain, ringing phones, a conversation between people, and eerie monstrous sounds. From an aesthetic viewpoint, Alan Wake 2 does an excellent job of sending the message that this is a survival horror story.
Speaking of survival horror, Alan Wake 2 makes a drastic change in gameplay from the first game. No longer an action-adventure game shooting down dozens of Taken and dealing with frustrating combat sections. The gameplay emphasizes less action and more on slowly walking through nerve-wracking uncertainly.
While the survival horror combat itself is nothing groundbreaking, what helps make Alan Wake 2 stand out is how the duel protagonists, the titular character himself Alan Wake, and FBI agent Saga Anderson, solve their obstacles to resolve the issue at hand.
With Saga's mind place to help put together pieces she finds throughout the game to solve the surrounding mysteries and interrogate suspects. As well as Alan's plot board changes the surrounding environment around him as if he's rewriting "plot elements" for a story. It's a fresh and creative layer to prevent the gameplay from ever being stale.
The shining gem of Alan Wake 2 is the story and narrative and while it's very difficult to talk about its story without going into spoilers and details. What I can say is it masterfully presents its story like no other game I've played.
You have live-action segments of a short film, an operatic rock musical, video autobiographies, commercials, etc. As well as songs that play during and at the end of each chapter and scattered pages of incomplete manuscripts, all complimentary to the spiraling complex narrative that explores the psychological descent of the duel protagonists.
While each unique segment of Alan Wake 2 does sound disjointed and nonsensical on paper, it all comes together flawlessly in a meta manner of speaking to tell a story about a story and how these characters are trapped in a horror story coming to life.
Not to mention, the worldbuilding and easter eggs that Remedy have set up with thier previous games Quantum Break and Control help sell the overall dark surrealism and atmosphere that extends beyond the main focus and scope of Alan Wake 2. So it's very rewarding to play Redemy's previous games to appreciate these finer details that would be harder to pick up.
Truthfully, Alan Wake 2 is a near-flawless game. While I do think some of the enemies are a bit too health spongey and the checkpoint system could be more forgiving, those are just nothing more but minor nitpicks. It's otherwise masterfully executed in game design, narrative, and presentation with its creative multimedia approach.
I'm not a huge horror fan so I can't say with confidence it's one of the greatest horror stories of all time. But what I can say is it's a hallmark of visual and audio entertainment and sets a new standard of story presentation and game design. As far as I know, Alan Wake 2 is easily one of the greatest games of all time and that is something I do not say lightly.
Finished Alan Wake 2 last night and oh my, I absolutely get the praise for Alan Wake 2 now. It's an experience like no other game and not only does it greatly improve from the first game in every single aspect, but this is easily Redemy Entertainment's magnum opus with its unique multimedia method of storytelling and immersion.
The graphics are just astonishing, especially with how carefully Redemy has been crafting thier usage of lighting to the point there are many scenes when you could easily mistake the game for live-action. The audio design is one of the best I have experienced and it's incredibly immersive to hear sounds from all directions and angels from pouring rain, ringing phones, a conversation between people, and eerie monstrous sounds. From an aesthetic viewpoint, Alan Wake 2 does an excellent job of sending the message that this is a survival horror story.
Speaking of survival horror, Alan Wake 2 makes a drastic change in gameplay from the first game. No longer an action-adventure game shooting down dozens of Taken and dealing with frustrating combat sections. The gameplay emphasizes less action and more on slowly walking through nerve-wracking uncertainly.
While the survival horror combat itself is nothing groundbreaking, what helps make Alan Wake 2 stand out is how the duel protagonists, the titular character himself Alan Wake, and FBI agent Saga Anderson, solve their obstacles to resolve the issue at hand.
With Saga's mind place to help put together pieces she finds throughout the game to solve the surrounding mysteries and interrogate suspects. As well as Alan's plot board changes the surrounding environment around him as if he's rewriting "plot elements" for a story. It's a fresh and creative layer to prevent the gameplay from ever being stale.
The shining gem of Alan Wake 2 is the story and narrative and while it's very difficult to talk about its story without going into spoilers and details. What I can say is it masterfully presents its story like no other game I've played.
You have live-action segments of a short film, an operatic rock musical, video autobiographies, commercials, etc. As well as songs that play during and at the end of each chapter and scattered pages of incomplete manuscripts, all complimentary to the spiraling complex narrative that explores the psychological descent of the duel protagonists.
While each unique segment of Alan Wake 2 does sound disjointed and nonsensical on paper, it all comes together flawlessly in a meta manner of speaking to tell a story about a story and how these characters are trapped in a horror story coming to life.
Not to mention, the worldbuilding and easter eggs that Remedy have set up with thier previous games Quantum Break and Control help sell the overall dark surrealism and atmosphere that extends beyond the main focus and scope of Alan Wake 2. So it's very rewarding to play Redemy's previous games to appreciate these finer details that would be harder to pick up.
Truthfully, Alan Wake 2 is a near-flawless game. While I do think some of the enemies are a bit too health spongey and the checkpoint system could be more forgiving, those are just nothing more but minor nitpicks. It's otherwise masterfully executed in game design, narrative, and presentation with its creative multimedia approach.
I'm not a huge horror fan so I can't say with confidence it's one of the greatest horror stories of all time. But what I can say is it's a hallmark of visual and audio entertainment and sets a new standard of story presentation and game design. As far as I know, Alan Wake 2 is easily one of the greatest games of all time and that is something I do not say lightly.
Finally finished The Diofield Chronicle at 34 hours doing everything I could do in the game. I really wanted to like this game a lot. I was really impressed with the demo and the first chapter. The real-time SRPG blend was fresh and promising and it was really ambitious with its political scope and ensemble of characters. But unfortunately, the game just turn out to be a big disappointment since ultimately, The Diofield Chronicle is just a game with plenty of great ideas with bad executions.
The gameplay is the game's strongest suit. You command 4 units while you can assign another character to each unit to switch them out. Making it a total of 8 characters available to use in each battle. Each character falls into one of 4 main types. Melee, ranged, cavalry, and mage. Each main type is spilt into subtypes based on the weapon types such as range units can be either archery or gun units.
Furthermore the game allows a lot of upgrading, from weapon trees, and each weapon has different abilities the unit can use. There are also skill points you can spend to upgrade abilities such as status effect lasting longer and abilities doing more damage.
Plus you can apply skill points to each character to give them permanent boosts such as higher stat increases and doing more damage to certain types of enemy units. Not to mention you can also upgrade summons to assist you in battle such as increasing the range of Bahamut's attacks.
There is a lot of depth in upgrading your units for the real-time SRPG. It's a very nice idea that blends standard SRPG in games such as Fire Emblem and Final Fantasy Tactics while allowing free movement and the game is active at all times unless you pause the game to perform commands for your characters such as movement and attacking.
However, while the gameplay was entertaining up to the midpoint of the game. In the end, due to the various options the game gives you to get stronger and the abundant amount of quests the game supplies you for resources, especially if you complete each one of them with speed and none of your units get incapacitated. Ultimately, I found the game to be terribly off-balance.
By the ending points of The Diofield Chronicle, I found myself to be too strong, so strong that I eliminated any sense of challenge, and quite frankly, the game has gotten much more boring to play since nobody ever poses a true threat to my units. Not to mention certain abilities at this point of the game can one-shot enemies with ease.
This led to my biggest complaint about the game, the story. The Diofield Chronicle is a very messy and out-of-focus tale about the power struggle between the kingdom and the empire fighting for control of the Diofield island.
So the group of the main characters, The Blue Foxes, get dispatched everywhere around the island to deal with problems from rescuing church members to dealing with riots and demi-humans to pushing back the empire.
Initially, I noticed each main quest was directly unrelated to the previous quest but I believed the game was going for an episodic approach when each main quest was self contain enough, and eventually it will build up to something grand and everything will be neatly connected near the end of the game.
But the problem is there is plenty of plot points that remain unresolved by the time the credits roll. From the church to the Jade research to the personal philosophies of characters. It just felt very half-baked and not fully explored to its fullest potential. It just made the game's storytelling into a chunk of sloppy grand ambition that never feels truly satisfying.
One of my biggest criticism is the ending of the game. I won't spoil what happens but it was just very unsatisfying and the explanation for the huge twist at the very end just felt shoehorned with no build-up. Not to mention it was very hard to care for the final boss at all since he just appears out of thin air with nobody mentioning him at all until the final chapter.
Characters just overall felt flat and one-dimensional and not a single character develops in a positive matter. It's extremely hard for me to not love and care for a single character by the time I put down the controller for a game but The Diofield Chronicle achieves that extremely hard feat.
I felt like the game just went from a quantity-over-quality approach to the character. You will have more characters in The Blue Foxes that you know what to do with them from a gameplay perspective. And each character has thier own side quest to try to flesh them out, but it just feels like it wasn't enough. It's almost like they needed more interaction and involvement with the game's overall story. Plus some characters' side quests are incomplete with thier storylines.
Plus, it's a very common complaint that the main characters are generally unlikeable and I can understand that. It's not uncommon for main characters like Andrias to be cold and aloof. However, he just remains like that for the entirety of the game with no sign of changing. Then you have the bloodthirsty noblewoman Waltaquin who only cares for death and destruction and Freddrick, while started off as reasonable, ended up developing in a negative sense. And you have Iscarion, who remained level-headed despite his conflicting political views.
I won't spoil huge details of how the main characters panned out throughout the game and the different perspectives of each main character made the game interesting with how they approached different scenarios. But sadly, the lack of any character development or substantial writing just hurt how the overall story was laid out, especially after chapter 5.
The Diofield Chronice had a lot of promise with a lot of bright ideas. It introduces a setting with a lot of political clashes and conflict and the real-time SRPG is a fun concept on paper. However I just feel like the game ran out of money and time during development to truly realize these ideas to thier full potential and in the end, we just got a very abrupt ending with almost no build-up to that conclusion. It's almost like the game needed to be an extra 20-25 hours longer to flesh out thier promising ideas.
My final verdict is, if you want to play the game for its gameplay then go ahead, it's still generally good despite how unbalanced and overly easy it can get. The real-time SRPG is still a fresh concept but quite frankly, if you gonna play this for the story, then it just going to be a rushed disappointment in various ways and I can easily recommend other SRPGs that tell a much better political grand epic. The Diofield Chronicle makes Fire Emblem Three Houses a very coherent and focused story in comparison.
The gameplay is the game's strongest suit. You command 4 units while you can assign another character to each unit to switch them out. Making it a total of 8 characters available to use in each battle. Each character falls into one of 4 main types. Melee, ranged, cavalry, and mage. Each main type is spilt into subtypes based on the weapon types such as range units can be either archery or gun units.
Furthermore the game allows a lot of upgrading, from weapon trees, and each weapon has different abilities the unit can use. There are also skill points you can spend to upgrade abilities such as status effect lasting longer and abilities doing more damage.
Plus you can apply skill points to each character to give them permanent boosts such as higher stat increases and doing more damage to certain types of enemy units. Not to mention you can also upgrade summons to assist you in battle such as increasing the range of Bahamut's attacks.
There is a lot of depth in upgrading your units for the real-time SRPG. It's a very nice idea that blends standard SRPG in games such as Fire Emblem and Final Fantasy Tactics while allowing free movement and the game is active at all times unless you pause the game to perform commands for your characters such as movement and attacking.
However, while the gameplay was entertaining up to the midpoint of the game. In the end, due to the various options the game gives you to get stronger and the abundant amount of quests the game supplies you for resources, especially if you complete each one of them with speed and none of your units get incapacitated. Ultimately, I found the game to be terribly off-balance.
By the ending points of The Diofield Chronicle, I found myself to be too strong, so strong that I eliminated any sense of challenge, and quite frankly, the game has gotten much more boring to play since nobody ever poses a true threat to my units. Not to mention certain abilities at this point of the game can one-shot enemies with ease.
This led to my biggest complaint about the game, the story. The Diofield Chronicle is a very messy and out-of-focus tale about the power struggle between the kingdom and the empire fighting for control of the Diofield island.
So the group of the main characters, The Blue Foxes, get dispatched everywhere around the island to deal with problems from rescuing church members to dealing with riots and demi-humans to pushing back the empire.
Initially, I noticed each main quest was directly unrelated to the previous quest but I believed the game was going for an episodic approach when each main quest was self contain enough, and eventually it will build up to something grand and everything will be neatly connected near the end of the game.
But the problem is there is plenty of plot points that remain unresolved by the time the credits roll. From the church to the Jade research to the personal philosophies of characters. It just felt very half-baked and not fully explored to its fullest potential. It just made the game's storytelling into a chunk of sloppy grand ambition that never feels truly satisfying.
One of my biggest criticism is the ending of the game. I won't spoil what happens but it was just very unsatisfying and the explanation for the huge twist at the very end just felt shoehorned with no build-up. Not to mention it was very hard to care for the final boss at all since he just appears out of thin air with nobody mentioning him at all until the final chapter.
Characters just overall felt flat and one-dimensional and not a single character develops in a positive matter. It's extremely hard for me to not love and care for a single character by the time I put down the controller for a game but The Diofield Chronicle achieves that extremely hard feat.
I felt like the game just went from a quantity-over-quality approach to the character. You will have more characters in The Blue Foxes that you know what to do with them from a gameplay perspective. And each character has thier own side quest to try to flesh them out, but it just feels like it wasn't enough. It's almost like they needed more interaction and involvement with the game's overall story. Plus some characters' side quests are incomplete with thier storylines.
Plus, it's a very common complaint that the main characters are generally unlikeable and I can understand that. It's not uncommon for main characters like Andrias to be cold and aloof. However, he just remains like that for the entirety of the game with no sign of changing. Then you have the bloodthirsty noblewoman Waltaquin who only cares for death and destruction and Freddrick, while started off as reasonable, ended up developing in a negative sense. And you have Iscarion, who remained level-headed despite his conflicting political views.
I won't spoil huge details of how the main characters panned out throughout the game and the different perspectives of each main character made the game interesting with how they approached different scenarios. But sadly, the lack of any character development or substantial writing just hurt how the overall story was laid out, especially after chapter 5.
The Diofield Chronice had a lot of promise with a lot of bright ideas. It introduces a setting with a lot of political clashes and conflict and the real-time SRPG is a fun concept on paper. However I just feel like the game ran out of money and time during development to truly realize these ideas to thier full potential and in the end, we just got a very abrupt ending with almost no build-up to that conclusion. It's almost like the game needed to be an extra 20-25 hours longer to flesh out thier promising ideas.
My final verdict is, if you want to play the game for its gameplay then go ahead, it's still generally good despite how unbalanced and overly easy it can get. The real-time SRPG is still a fresh concept but quite frankly, if you gonna play this for the story, then it just going to be a rushed disappointment in various ways and I can easily recommend other SRPGs that tell a much better political grand epic. The Diofield Chronicle makes Fire Emblem Three Houses a very coherent and focused story in comparison.
2023
"And so you shunned the one thing that could made you stronger. Pushed away the hands that could raise you higher. And that's where we're different. I could not made it here on my own. I carry with me the hopes and dreams of my brothers, my sisters. And is it they who will give me the strength to end your reign."
Many people believed Final Fantasy XVI will be a far cry from the series’ origins based on all of the pre-release information. From the Devil May Cry-inspired action combat to the gritty, mature dark fantasy setting influenced by Game of Thrones. Fans of the series doubt the game’s integrity despite beloved Final Fantasy XIV director Yoshi-P serving as the producer of the game, but ultimately Final Fantasy XVI subverted all expectations and become the greatest love letter to the series’ roots in all of the best ways possible while still maintaining its’ own identity. Final Fantasy XVI is one of the greatest games that achieve its grand scope of blending cinematic narrative and gameplay to tell its tale of resisting the cruelty of the world with pure human willpower.
The first thing that can be noticed about Final Fantasy XVI is the game’s visuals. Square Enix has always been a game developer that pushes visual fidelity in the Final Fantasy series with each installment and Final Fantasy XVI is no expectation. From the detailed NPC models to the elemental special effects to the grandiose Eikon battles. Final Fantasy XVI felt like it was truly the first PlayStation 5 game that utilized the system’s capabilities to the fullest’s extent. There are the occasional slowdowns that dip below 30FPS even with the performance mode during the most intense moments of the game. However, Final Fantasy XVI is an incredible and beautiful game with gorgeous set pieces and a stunning art direction that is visualized.
Final Fantasy is also a series known for its iconic score and music with its talented composers and XVI follows the series’ tradition of having a range of soft emotional ballads to bombastic operatic orchestrated pieces during boss battles to ambient soundscapes that serve well as overworld background music. And of course, there are rearrangements to the series’ staples such as the prelude and main theme. The music within FFXVI elevates and heightens the impact of each scene and composer Masayoshi Soken captures the dark fantasy tonality of Final Fantasy XVI. Resulting in some of the best themes in the series’ collection that can rival classic songs.
Final Fantasy has always been a series that evolves and changes its gameplay. From the early action time-based combat to more experimental approaches to gameplay in the later titles. XVI is no different by introducing a new combat system within Final Fantasy. XVI has the typical elements of action RPG combat such as a standard melee and magic attack, precise dodging, and jumping. However, the most unique element with XVI’s combat compared to other Final Fantasy games and even other action RPGs is the Eikon system. Each Eikon is based on the series’ summons such as Ifrit, Garuda, and Titan. By equipping these Eikon, the playable character, Clive, gains a different element to use in battle according to the Eikon such as fire, aero, and stone.
The full potential of XVI’s combat system can be unlocked within the skill tree. By gaining ability points such as defeating enemies and completing side content, there can be different Eikon movesets to unlock, upgrade them to increase their attack potency, and eventually master them so the player can assign the ability to any Eikon, even if the element isn’t matching. As the story progress, more Eikons will be unlocked, giving the player a wider toolset to use to customize their Eikon loadout and experiment with different combos for optimized stagger and damage output. Not to mention, at some point in the game, the player gains a limit break gauge as well that makes Clive immune to death and increases his attack power and speed.
Beyond the combat, the only other gameplay aspect to XVI is stat increases every time Clive level ups as well as gaining new equipment such as swords and accessories to increase strength, defense, and stagger. The equipment can also be crafted and redefined for increased stats as well. While it’s quite shallow compared to other RPGs, it’s effective and easy to understand and does not overly complicate an already refined battle system that can be satisfying to play.
Final Fantasy is always evolving in gameplay for better or for worse, however, the gameplay does not define the series, but rather it’s the stories it tells in each entry. While at the start of Final Fantasy XVI, the tone is a far cry from the rest since the series’ first M rating in a mainline entry allows the game to be very violent, gritty, and mature to match the typical properties of the dark fantasy genre. XVI paints a grim view of the world of Valisthea, divided between six nations that have a magic system that uses crystals to perform magical abilities. And those that do not require crystals are enslaved as Bearers and treated as sub-human, As well as those that can transform into an Eikon, are referred to as Dominants.
Final Fantasy XVI starts off with the main protagonist, Clive Rosfield, that loses everything he once knew and his home of Rosaria due to a coup d'etat performed by the Holy Empire and spends the next 13 years of his life as a Bearer soldier for the Empire and filled with rage and hatred. And this is just the first 2 hours of a 35-hour main adventure with its unexpected twists and turns in every direction. The start of the game is very reminisced of Game of Thrones, but as the story progresses, it naturally evolves into a tale that is more than worthy of the title of “Final Fantasy”.
Final Fantasy tales is about warriors of lights defeating evil and darkness plaguing thier worlds to bring dawn for a better tomorrow and XVI is no different from the rest. Final Fantasy XVI becomes a beautiful tale about the sheer willpower of the human spirit even in a dying corrupted world and breaking the cycle of inhumane treatment and the burdens of magic, even if that means tearing down everything the people of Valisthea knew. Thus it marks the final cycle of a cruel, miserable fantasy. Between the subtle references from past Final Fantasy titles throughout Clive’s adventure and XVI sharing many themes from classic games, Final Fantasy XVI is a dear love letter for the series’ fans on what it means to be Final Fantasy while still having its own unique, modern spin.
Going from the hopeless despair found in dark fantasy at the start to themes of hope, change, and resistance is a massive leap in tonality and one could wonder how to achieve such a drastic change without being jarring and Final Fantasy XVI achieves this very naturally and organic thanks to the expansive world building and character development Cilve and his allies gain. They struggle and fight onwards through even the most daunting challenges. With each threat more sinister than the last, Clive and his allies continue to build strength to resist.
Final Fantasy XVI is also a very heartfelt and emotional tale about the love of Clive for his dearest companions and learning to accept himself for who he is and what he can do. Throughout XVI’s story, the player witness the strong bonds Clive forms and how he will do just about anything for them. Such love is so precious and tender, I’ve personally cried and shed tears in a handful of scenes and I almost never do that when I’m experiencing a story.
What can serve as the peak and cumulation of Final Fantasy XVI is the dramatic and cinematic Eikon battles that occur often in the main story and it blends together its gameplay and story into one interactive, immersive battle. With its intense visuals that push the PlayStation 5 to its limit and grandiose, triumph soundtrack. These battles create a powerful jaw-dropping impressive display of action and momentum that just manages to outdo itself every single time especially when the high stakes of the main story just increase more and more.
On top of its thrilling and epic main story, one of the greatest aspects of Final Fantasy XVI is the side quests. Each side quest expands on Valisthea and its six nations with details not found in the main story as well as personal quests with your allies that create a chance to bond with them stronger and get to know their history and motivations. The side quests can range from getting a clearer idea of the manmade horrors of Bearer treatment to giving children hope to pursue thier dreams to protecting a village from monsters.
However, as the game progress, the side quests become more involved and feature characters in the main story with their own trials and tribulations, they have their own mini-story in the span of a side quest chain. These stories match the overall grim state of the world and sometimes they can end tragically but they also reinforced the theme of unity and bringing people of all life of walks together to stand strong against the most immediate threats that will affect everyone. Not to mention the side quests flesh out and builds upon lore and world-building found across the game.
Final Fantasy XVI is a very dense and intricate tale with various terminology, characters and locations to follow through and sometimes it can be quite difficult to comprehend every detail the game throws at you. However one of the most brilliant inventions for narrative-heavy games is the active time lore system. Holding down the touchpad at almost any given moment will present the player with the most relevant information currently happening on screen. It’s a great way to refresh on certain topics and it’s always updating based on the events that occur and even lists small details that weren’t directly explained on screen. The ATL entries are also stored within an NPC in the hub location, so lore explanations are never missable and could be easily reviewed as well.
Another brilliant and excellent way Final Fantasy XVI hammers on with its complex world-building is The State of the Realm. By accessing this NPC, the player can view current relations with every major character across Clive’s allies and those that are under the six nations as well as the relations for each major story event that has occurred in the past. There is also a map that visualizes the movements of each major party across the continent and the events that occur at a certain location. Between the ATL and The State of the Realm, Final Fantasy XVI is one of the best games to educate and reinforce lore and world-building in a story with its dynamic tools to help the player understand the narrative from different angles and approaches.
Hunts are another side activity the player can eventually engage with by going to the hunt board and speaking to the Moogle next to it. These monsters rank from C to S based on strength and difficulty and the hunts test and challenge the player’s combat skill and how well they understand the fundamentals of the Eikon system. While it’s fairly easy to understand, the hunts prove it’s a hard system to master since it is very dependent on knowing what each Eikon ability you are equipped with what can the player exactly do, and how to chain them together in a specific way for optimization. The hunts are a great way to get the most out of Final Fantasy XVI’s gameplay. However, it would be ideal to access the hunt board on the main menu rather than just at the hub location since it can be difficult to memorize where each monster is approximately located.
For all of the greatness and amazingness Final Fantasy XVI achieves with its story, gameplay, and presentation, it is not free of flaws. Towards the end of the game, there are a number of plot holes that is unexplained or contradicts the game’s established logic. They are minor but notable enough. Also, quite a few main characters do not develop as much in comparison to others or had their character arc ended too soon and just stagnated as a character afterward. Not to mention the aforementioned occasional performance hiccups and the hunt board's lack of accessibility. However, for every flaw the game has, it’s easily overshadowed by how much Final Fantasy XVI does amazingly well with its theming and story execution.
Between the emotional, heartfelt main story about fighting for a better tomorrow in a harsh, violent dark fantasy by experiencing Clive’s journey, the well-executed and smooth battle system, and its deep lore and world-building expanded with its side quests. All while having some of the series' best scores and utilizing everything the PS5 is capable of to create these cinematic over- the-top Eikon battles that really capture the energy and spirit of Final Fantasy XVI. It just as well be one of the greatest games of all time and Square Enix’s best effort of displaying what it means to be a Final Fantasy game down to the core. Final Fantasy XVI is a generation-defining game that will have the same renowned legacy as Final Fantasy VII and X over time. Final Fantasy XVI is the reason why anyone should pick up a PS5 and experience such an epic and legendary tale of hopes and dreams that only Square Enix can visualize.
Many people believed Final Fantasy XVI will be a far cry from the series’ origins based on all of the pre-release information. From the Devil May Cry-inspired action combat to the gritty, mature dark fantasy setting influenced by Game of Thrones. Fans of the series doubt the game’s integrity despite beloved Final Fantasy XIV director Yoshi-P serving as the producer of the game, but ultimately Final Fantasy XVI subverted all expectations and become the greatest love letter to the series’ roots in all of the best ways possible while still maintaining its’ own identity. Final Fantasy XVI is one of the greatest games that achieve its grand scope of blending cinematic narrative and gameplay to tell its tale of resisting the cruelty of the world with pure human willpower.
The first thing that can be noticed about Final Fantasy XVI is the game’s visuals. Square Enix has always been a game developer that pushes visual fidelity in the Final Fantasy series with each installment and Final Fantasy XVI is no expectation. From the detailed NPC models to the elemental special effects to the grandiose Eikon battles. Final Fantasy XVI felt like it was truly the first PlayStation 5 game that utilized the system’s capabilities to the fullest’s extent. There are the occasional slowdowns that dip below 30FPS even with the performance mode during the most intense moments of the game. However, Final Fantasy XVI is an incredible and beautiful game with gorgeous set pieces and a stunning art direction that is visualized.
Final Fantasy is also a series known for its iconic score and music with its talented composers and XVI follows the series’ tradition of having a range of soft emotional ballads to bombastic operatic orchestrated pieces during boss battles to ambient soundscapes that serve well as overworld background music. And of course, there are rearrangements to the series’ staples such as the prelude and main theme. The music within FFXVI elevates and heightens the impact of each scene and composer Masayoshi Soken captures the dark fantasy tonality of Final Fantasy XVI. Resulting in some of the best themes in the series’ collection that can rival classic songs.
Final Fantasy has always been a series that evolves and changes its gameplay. From the early action time-based combat to more experimental approaches to gameplay in the later titles. XVI is no different by introducing a new combat system within Final Fantasy. XVI has the typical elements of action RPG combat such as a standard melee and magic attack, precise dodging, and jumping. However, the most unique element with XVI’s combat compared to other Final Fantasy games and even other action RPGs is the Eikon system. Each Eikon is based on the series’ summons such as Ifrit, Garuda, and Titan. By equipping these Eikon, the playable character, Clive, gains a different element to use in battle according to the Eikon such as fire, aero, and stone.
The full potential of XVI’s combat system can be unlocked within the skill tree. By gaining ability points such as defeating enemies and completing side content, there can be different Eikon movesets to unlock, upgrade them to increase their attack potency, and eventually master them so the player can assign the ability to any Eikon, even if the element isn’t matching. As the story progress, more Eikons will be unlocked, giving the player a wider toolset to use to customize their Eikon loadout and experiment with different combos for optimized stagger and damage output. Not to mention, at some point in the game, the player gains a limit break gauge as well that makes Clive immune to death and increases his attack power and speed.
Beyond the combat, the only other gameplay aspect to XVI is stat increases every time Clive level ups as well as gaining new equipment such as swords and accessories to increase strength, defense, and stagger. The equipment can also be crafted and redefined for increased stats as well. While it’s quite shallow compared to other RPGs, it’s effective and easy to understand and does not overly complicate an already refined battle system that can be satisfying to play.
Final Fantasy is always evolving in gameplay for better or for worse, however, the gameplay does not define the series, but rather it’s the stories it tells in each entry. While at the start of Final Fantasy XVI, the tone is a far cry from the rest since the series’ first M rating in a mainline entry allows the game to be very violent, gritty, and mature to match the typical properties of the dark fantasy genre. XVI paints a grim view of the world of Valisthea, divided between six nations that have a magic system that uses crystals to perform magical abilities. And those that do not require crystals are enslaved as Bearers and treated as sub-human, As well as those that can transform into an Eikon, are referred to as Dominants.
Final Fantasy XVI starts off with the main protagonist, Clive Rosfield, that loses everything he once knew and his home of Rosaria due to a coup d'etat performed by the Holy Empire and spends the next 13 years of his life as a Bearer soldier for the Empire and filled with rage and hatred. And this is just the first 2 hours of a 35-hour main adventure with its unexpected twists and turns in every direction. The start of the game is very reminisced of Game of Thrones, but as the story progresses, it naturally evolves into a tale that is more than worthy of the title of “Final Fantasy”.
Final Fantasy tales is about warriors of lights defeating evil and darkness plaguing thier worlds to bring dawn for a better tomorrow and XVI is no different from the rest. Final Fantasy XVI becomes a beautiful tale about the sheer willpower of the human spirit even in a dying corrupted world and breaking the cycle of inhumane treatment and the burdens of magic, even if that means tearing down everything the people of Valisthea knew. Thus it marks the final cycle of a cruel, miserable fantasy. Between the subtle references from past Final Fantasy titles throughout Clive’s adventure and XVI sharing many themes from classic games, Final Fantasy XVI is a dear love letter for the series’ fans on what it means to be Final Fantasy while still having its own unique, modern spin.
Going from the hopeless despair found in dark fantasy at the start to themes of hope, change, and resistance is a massive leap in tonality and one could wonder how to achieve such a drastic change without being jarring and Final Fantasy XVI achieves this very naturally and organic thanks to the expansive world building and character development Cilve and his allies gain. They struggle and fight onwards through even the most daunting challenges. With each threat more sinister than the last, Clive and his allies continue to build strength to resist.
Final Fantasy XVI is also a very heartfelt and emotional tale about the love of Clive for his dearest companions and learning to accept himself for who he is and what he can do. Throughout XVI’s story, the player witness the strong bonds Clive forms and how he will do just about anything for them. Such love is so precious and tender, I’ve personally cried and shed tears in a handful of scenes and I almost never do that when I’m experiencing a story.
What can serve as the peak and cumulation of Final Fantasy XVI is the dramatic and cinematic Eikon battles that occur often in the main story and it blends together its gameplay and story into one interactive, immersive battle. With its intense visuals that push the PlayStation 5 to its limit and grandiose, triumph soundtrack. These battles create a powerful jaw-dropping impressive display of action and momentum that just manages to outdo itself every single time especially when the high stakes of the main story just increase more and more.
On top of its thrilling and epic main story, one of the greatest aspects of Final Fantasy XVI is the side quests. Each side quest expands on Valisthea and its six nations with details not found in the main story as well as personal quests with your allies that create a chance to bond with them stronger and get to know their history and motivations. The side quests can range from getting a clearer idea of the manmade horrors of Bearer treatment to giving children hope to pursue thier dreams to protecting a village from monsters.
However, as the game progress, the side quests become more involved and feature characters in the main story with their own trials and tribulations, they have their own mini-story in the span of a side quest chain. These stories match the overall grim state of the world and sometimes they can end tragically but they also reinforced the theme of unity and bringing people of all life of walks together to stand strong against the most immediate threats that will affect everyone. Not to mention the side quests flesh out and builds upon lore and world-building found across the game.
Final Fantasy XVI is a very dense and intricate tale with various terminology, characters and locations to follow through and sometimes it can be quite difficult to comprehend every detail the game throws at you. However one of the most brilliant inventions for narrative-heavy games is the active time lore system. Holding down the touchpad at almost any given moment will present the player with the most relevant information currently happening on screen. It’s a great way to refresh on certain topics and it’s always updating based on the events that occur and even lists small details that weren’t directly explained on screen. The ATL entries are also stored within an NPC in the hub location, so lore explanations are never missable and could be easily reviewed as well.
Another brilliant and excellent way Final Fantasy XVI hammers on with its complex world-building is The State of the Realm. By accessing this NPC, the player can view current relations with every major character across Clive’s allies and those that are under the six nations as well as the relations for each major story event that has occurred in the past. There is also a map that visualizes the movements of each major party across the continent and the events that occur at a certain location. Between the ATL and The State of the Realm, Final Fantasy XVI is one of the best games to educate and reinforce lore and world-building in a story with its dynamic tools to help the player understand the narrative from different angles and approaches.
Hunts are another side activity the player can eventually engage with by going to the hunt board and speaking to the Moogle next to it. These monsters rank from C to S based on strength and difficulty and the hunts test and challenge the player’s combat skill and how well they understand the fundamentals of the Eikon system. While it’s fairly easy to understand, the hunts prove it’s a hard system to master since it is very dependent on knowing what each Eikon ability you are equipped with what can the player exactly do, and how to chain them together in a specific way for optimization. The hunts are a great way to get the most out of Final Fantasy XVI’s gameplay. However, it would be ideal to access the hunt board on the main menu rather than just at the hub location since it can be difficult to memorize where each monster is approximately located.
For all of the greatness and amazingness Final Fantasy XVI achieves with its story, gameplay, and presentation, it is not free of flaws. Towards the end of the game, there are a number of plot holes that is unexplained or contradicts the game’s established logic. They are minor but notable enough. Also, quite a few main characters do not develop as much in comparison to others or had their character arc ended too soon and just stagnated as a character afterward. Not to mention the aforementioned occasional performance hiccups and the hunt board's lack of accessibility. However, for every flaw the game has, it’s easily overshadowed by how much Final Fantasy XVI does amazingly well with its theming and story execution.
Between the emotional, heartfelt main story about fighting for a better tomorrow in a harsh, violent dark fantasy by experiencing Clive’s journey, the well-executed and smooth battle system, and its deep lore and world-building expanded with its side quests. All while having some of the series' best scores and utilizing everything the PS5 is capable of to create these cinematic over- the-top Eikon battles that really capture the energy and spirit of Final Fantasy XVI. It just as well be one of the greatest games of all time and Square Enix’s best effort of displaying what it means to be a Final Fantasy game down to the core. Final Fantasy XVI is a generation-defining game that will have the same renowned legacy as Final Fantasy VII and X over time. Final Fantasy XVI is the reason why anyone should pick up a PS5 and experience such an epic and legendary tale of hopes and dreams that only Square Enix can visualize.
2021
Tales of Arise is the 17th main entry in the Tales Of series. Featuring the narrative of Alphen, a Dahnan man that can not feel pain, and Shionne, a Renan woman that electrocutes anyone that touches her with her “thrones”. Together they travel around the region of Dahna with 4 other companions to overthrow the oppression of the Dahnan people from Renans. Initially announced in 2019 and it has been 5 years since the last mainline Tales Of game, the game was met with a lot of skepticism due to its changes from the series’ formula but ultimately I want to believe those changes were for the best while still maintaining the series’ structure with its gameplay and story. In the end, Tales of Arise delivers a vibrant world with its hyper-focus of characterization and themes and flashy but smooth and responsive combat. Making Arise not only my personal favorite Tales Of game but also one of my favorite games of all time.
(Barring the opening moments of Arise, this will be spoiler-free).
The very first notable thing when Arise begins is its graphics. Considering past Tales Of games have been criticized for its dull and plain environments, Arise utilizes Unreal Engine 4 with its gorgeous and beautiful landscapes. From lush green forests to frosty snowy hills to heated lava plains. The world of Dahna is full of vibrant colors with variations of climate and atmosphere that clearly set around each of the 5 main regions of Dahna and how it corresponds to their elemental value (a recurring plot element in the series). Cutscenes are fluidly animated and choreographed as well, giving a more cinematic and thrilling presentation during important plot threads of the game. On top of a score to accompany the mood at any given time (which is more memorable than past Tales Of games), Arise is filled with various amounts of aesthetics to even add substance to the story purely by visuals.
The gameplay saw plenty of technical changes from past Tales Of games. While core elements, such as using artes and going into overlimit to use Mystic Artes, remained. Arise’s combat-focused more on dodging and evading and replacing many of the series’ known functions. Such as replacing multiplayer with its Boost System feature, replacing technical points (TP) with cure points (CP) and the Arte Gauge (AG), a stronger difficulty to stun enemies, and the lack of a victory screen after defeating enemies. However, the addition of the Boost System adds new gameplay features such as Boost Attack and Boost Strike to exploit the enemies’ strength. With the new changes, the gameplay encourages the player to be more active and aggressive with movement and despite these new mechanics, they all function in harmony and work together to create frantic but yet smooth and fluid combat.
In addition to the standard level-up mechanics in Arise, there is also a skill panel tree for each character to unlock different arts or improve their skill sets such as making it easier to get a perfect evade, reduce the amount of time to cast an elemental arte or increase the potency of healing artes. Branching paths to obtain different skills always create a greater sense of customization and combat development for the character. Weapon and accessory creation are also available to increase the party’s stats, and more become available to forge as the story progresses. Arise does not have a huge amount of leveling elements compared to other games of its genre but it provides enough customization to build each character in different ways throughout the game.
Despite its gorgeous visuals and tight-knitted gameplay, what makes Arise truly shine and make the game playing is the story. The game wastes no time establishing the plot beats as soon the game starts. In just the first 30 minutes, the game’s protagonist, Alphen, break free from Rehan slavery during an intense and explosive train chase scene, meet Shionne and learn of her situation and join a Dahnan resistance group to free Calaglia, one of the main realms of Dahan from an oppressive Rehan lord. And that is just the first 30 minutes out of a 40-90 hour long tale. Arise’s plot grew in scale and scope with various plot twists during the second half and ultimately became a grand epic plot renaissance of older Tales games and even other JRPG series such as Star Ocean and Xeno. All while still maintaining its overall theme of unition and overcoming prejudices, explored in different topics such as freedom and slavery, not getting consumed by anger and hatred, coming to terms with one’s past and acceptance.
The characters especially embody these plot beats and topics as they are the shining gem of Arise and the best part of the game. While there are only 6 main characters, each character is some of the most deeply fleshed characters I have ever seen in a game with their own personality, circumstances, likes and dislikes, quirks, and their own issues to overcome. Initially, the characters had an overall sense of distrust with each other mainly due to the Rehan and Dahnan dynamic. But overtime the cast began to understand and support each other and the biggest wall they were facing inside of them. Within the course of the game’s journey, the 6 main characters went from being strangers that were just essentially there due to having a common goal to having a familial, caring and warm, and close bond with each other.
The interactions with the characters are incredibly natural and organic, full of depth and there’s extremely abundant during the game’s run. From the series’ staple skits (even though I do miss the 2D anime skits, the new comic skits grew on me), during and after combat and fighting, working and completing side quests, camping during the night, and even random events such as healing a random person. The topics always vary as well and they are not even related to the main plot. The casts tend to engage in discussions about cooking, food, artifacts and relics, training, owls, and even romance and that is just a very small sample size of the seemingly endless conversations between the cast. Between the main plot and the various side scenarios, Arise offers plenty of character growth and chances to witness their strong, heartwarming connections across the 6 main characters. Especially since the cast is divided into 3 pairs to bring out the most development from each pair with each other, in an intimate and even romantic way. In fact, the cast of Arise became one of my personal favorite casts in any piece of media I have experienced. I can go on with how well-written and great the cast is but that would essentially take spoiler-filled essays to explain in detail.
The cast shines a lot during the game’s various amounts of content and it’s enough to rank up to 90-100 hours on one playthrough. While some of the quests are hunt quests that allow the party to tackle powerful bosses and gain astral flowers, an item to increase CP, each side quest always gives context for the request and allows two of the main characters to investigate the quest, allowing even further bonds between the cast. The side quests can vary from monster hunting, finding lost items, clearing optional dungeons and bosses, talking to various people, or just watching the characters getting into random shenanigans. Not to mention the NPCs update their dialogue for every major plot event. Although it’s not as dense compared to a Trails game, updating NPC dialogue is always a plus since they add to the world-building and make Dahna more alive. There are also other collectibles to obtain such as the number of owls and artifacts to discover, catching boss fishes, and clearing solo and group training exercises. Along with the main plot, Arise offers plenty of side content to get the best out of the overall story. Especially since some of the side quests are supplemental to the main plot and add extra insight.
Arise however is not without its issues since it’s not a perfect or flawless game despite its strides with the story, visuals, and gameplay. While the gameplay changes can be argued as a negative, I personally did not have any issues with it. The biggest gripe I notice is the lack of villain development and writing. While the motives are passable enough considering the setting and the overall plot and do create enough conflict against the main cast, each villain isn’t memorable and even generic, since not a single villain stays in the picture for too long. Also while the second half of Arise creates a greater scale of its theme and explores its topics in new ventures, it can be argued as being too “over the top” and “shounen cliche” with its sudden shift of direction. It can be said to be a farcry for its stable, more grounded, and focused first half of the plot, which addresses the issues of the world more directly. However, this is a matter of personal taste at best since I personally think the second half elevated Arise’s story into a truly adventurous narrative with great impact.
Arise can also be argued for its lack of creativity with the plot. While it still works very well for the overall narrative, Arise borrows many of the past Tales games with its plot beats. I will not go into details to prevent spoilers but if you play a few Tales games, then Arise’s plot will begin to feel more and more similar to past Tales games. To the point, the plot will become a cliche in the JRPG genre overall. This may be seen as a positive or negative trait, but I personally love the homage to past JRPGs, especially with the scale and the relationships of the characters. Other nitpicks could be said such as not unlocking the second set of artes you can use until the entire cast joins up with Alphen and Shionne and the fishing minigame can be rather tedious.
With smooth, acrobatic gameplay and beautiful, vivid visuals combined with some of the deepest character writing I have ever seen within a race torned setting and a world-hopping plot, Tales of Arise delivers one of the best stories I have seen in gaming and clear any doubt or insecurity with the direction of the franchise. It managed to even surpass my own expectations. I never doubted Arise would be a bad game but I would never expect that it would be my favorite Tales Of game and one of my favorite games of all time. I highly recommend the game to anyone wanting to experience what I believe will be remembered as a classic JRPG 20 years from now since it took many of the great elements from Tales and evolved it into something purely amazing.
(Barring the opening moments of Arise, this will be spoiler-free).
The very first notable thing when Arise begins is its graphics. Considering past Tales Of games have been criticized for its dull and plain environments, Arise utilizes Unreal Engine 4 with its gorgeous and beautiful landscapes. From lush green forests to frosty snowy hills to heated lava plains. The world of Dahna is full of vibrant colors with variations of climate and atmosphere that clearly set around each of the 5 main regions of Dahna and how it corresponds to their elemental value (a recurring plot element in the series). Cutscenes are fluidly animated and choreographed as well, giving a more cinematic and thrilling presentation during important plot threads of the game. On top of a score to accompany the mood at any given time (which is more memorable than past Tales Of games), Arise is filled with various amounts of aesthetics to even add substance to the story purely by visuals.
The gameplay saw plenty of technical changes from past Tales Of games. While core elements, such as using artes and going into overlimit to use Mystic Artes, remained. Arise’s combat-focused more on dodging and evading and replacing many of the series’ known functions. Such as replacing multiplayer with its Boost System feature, replacing technical points (TP) with cure points (CP) and the Arte Gauge (AG), a stronger difficulty to stun enemies, and the lack of a victory screen after defeating enemies. However, the addition of the Boost System adds new gameplay features such as Boost Attack and Boost Strike to exploit the enemies’ strength. With the new changes, the gameplay encourages the player to be more active and aggressive with movement and despite these new mechanics, they all function in harmony and work together to create frantic but yet smooth and fluid combat.
In addition to the standard level-up mechanics in Arise, there is also a skill panel tree for each character to unlock different arts or improve their skill sets such as making it easier to get a perfect evade, reduce the amount of time to cast an elemental arte or increase the potency of healing artes. Branching paths to obtain different skills always create a greater sense of customization and combat development for the character. Weapon and accessory creation are also available to increase the party’s stats, and more become available to forge as the story progresses. Arise does not have a huge amount of leveling elements compared to other games of its genre but it provides enough customization to build each character in different ways throughout the game.
Despite its gorgeous visuals and tight-knitted gameplay, what makes Arise truly shine and make the game playing is the story. The game wastes no time establishing the plot beats as soon the game starts. In just the first 30 minutes, the game’s protagonist, Alphen, break free from Rehan slavery during an intense and explosive train chase scene, meet Shionne and learn of her situation and join a Dahnan resistance group to free Calaglia, one of the main realms of Dahan from an oppressive Rehan lord. And that is just the first 30 minutes out of a 40-90 hour long tale. Arise’s plot grew in scale and scope with various plot twists during the second half and ultimately became a grand epic plot renaissance of older Tales games and even other JRPG series such as Star Ocean and Xeno. All while still maintaining its overall theme of unition and overcoming prejudices, explored in different topics such as freedom and slavery, not getting consumed by anger and hatred, coming to terms with one’s past and acceptance.
The characters especially embody these plot beats and topics as they are the shining gem of Arise and the best part of the game. While there are only 6 main characters, each character is some of the most deeply fleshed characters I have ever seen in a game with their own personality, circumstances, likes and dislikes, quirks, and their own issues to overcome. Initially, the characters had an overall sense of distrust with each other mainly due to the Rehan and Dahnan dynamic. But overtime the cast began to understand and support each other and the biggest wall they were facing inside of them. Within the course of the game’s journey, the 6 main characters went from being strangers that were just essentially there due to having a common goal to having a familial, caring and warm, and close bond with each other.
The interactions with the characters are incredibly natural and organic, full of depth and there’s extremely abundant during the game’s run. From the series’ staple skits (even though I do miss the 2D anime skits, the new comic skits grew on me), during and after combat and fighting, working and completing side quests, camping during the night, and even random events such as healing a random person. The topics always vary as well and they are not even related to the main plot. The casts tend to engage in discussions about cooking, food, artifacts and relics, training, owls, and even romance and that is just a very small sample size of the seemingly endless conversations between the cast. Between the main plot and the various side scenarios, Arise offers plenty of character growth and chances to witness their strong, heartwarming connections across the 6 main characters. Especially since the cast is divided into 3 pairs to bring out the most development from each pair with each other, in an intimate and even romantic way. In fact, the cast of Arise became one of my personal favorite casts in any piece of media I have experienced. I can go on with how well-written and great the cast is but that would essentially take spoiler-filled essays to explain in detail.
The cast shines a lot during the game’s various amounts of content and it’s enough to rank up to 90-100 hours on one playthrough. While some of the quests are hunt quests that allow the party to tackle powerful bosses and gain astral flowers, an item to increase CP, each side quest always gives context for the request and allows two of the main characters to investigate the quest, allowing even further bonds between the cast. The side quests can vary from monster hunting, finding lost items, clearing optional dungeons and bosses, talking to various people, or just watching the characters getting into random shenanigans. Not to mention the NPCs update their dialogue for every major plot event. Although it’s not as dense compared to a Trails game, updating NPC dialogue is always a plus since they add to the world-building and make Dahna more alive. There are also other collectibles to obtain such as the number of owls and artifacts to discover, catching boss fishes, and clearing solo and group training exercises. Along with the main plot, Arise offers plenty of side content to get the best out of the overall story. Especially since some of the side quests are supplemental to the main plot and add extra insight.
Arise however is not without its issues since it’s not a perfect or flawless game despite its strides with the story, visuals, and gameplay. While the gameplay changes can be argued as a negative, I personally did not have any issues with it. The biggest gripe I notice is the lack of villain development and writing. While the motives are passable enough considering the setting and the overall plot and do create enough conflict against the main cast, each villain isn’t memorable and even generic, since not a single villain stays in the picture for too long. Also while the second half of Arise creates a greater scale of its theme and explores its topics in new ventures, it can be argued as being too “over the top” and “shounen cliche” with its sudden shift of direction. It can be said to be a farcry for its stable, more grounded, and focused first half of the plot, which addresses the issues of the world more directly. However, this is a matter of personal taste at best since I personally think the second half elevated Arise’s story into a truly adventurous narrative with great impact.
Arise can also be argued for its lack of creativity with the plot. While it still works very well for the overall narrative, Arise borrows many of the past Tales games with its plot beats. I will not go into details to prevent spoilers but if you play a few Tales games, then Arise’s plot will begin to feel more and more similar to past Tales games. To the point, the plot will become a cliche in the JRPG genre overall. This may be seen as a positive or negative trait, but I personally love the homage to past JRPGs, especially with the scale and the relationships of the characters. Other nitpicks could be said such as not unlocking the second set of artes you can use until the entire cast joins up with Alphen and Shionne and the fishing minigame can be rather tedious.
With smooth, acrobatic gameplay and beautiful, vivid visuals combined with some of the deepest character writing I have ever seen within a race torned setting and a world-hopping plot, Tales of Arise delivers one of the best stories I have seen in gaming and clear any doubt or insecurity with the direction of the franchise. It managed to even surpass my own expectations. I never doubted Arise would be a bad game but I would never expect that it would be my favorite Tales Of game and one of my favorite games of all time. I highly recommend the game to anyone wanting to experience what I believe will be remembered as a classic JRPG 20 years from now since it took many of the great elements from Tales and evolved it into something purely amazing.
(This is just a very short placeholder review until I feel like typing up something longer)
I think it's a very great game. It definitely got some issues with its game design and having so many questing hurts the pacing but the main story is pretty much spectacular from start to finish. It's not a masterpiece and I don't think it even broke into my top 10 games tbh but it's still very good.
I think it's a very great game. It definitely got some issues with its game design and having so many questing hurts the pacing but the main story is pretty much spectacular from start to finish. It's not a masterpiece and I don't think it even broke into my top 10 games tbh but it's still very good.
If I ever met a genie, one of my wishes would me undo the time I spent on this game
The theme song fr go hard tho
The theme song fr go hard tho
I have completed Majikoi and did all of the main and side routes including the final route after...I want to say 88 hours? With me removing any idle time. I have never reviewed a visual novel in great detail before so this will be new and challenging for me but just bare with me, I will try my best.
....................................................................................................
DISCLAIMER: I need to get the elephant out of the room before I continue and I feel like I need to be honest here. Majikoi is originally an eroge visual novel with porn scenes (all of the characters are stated to be at least 18 despite appearances and it's used as a plot device actually).
However, I played the Steam version of the game (with the full voice patch) that has removed all of the eroge scenes. From my research, quite frankly, some of the scenes are quite problematic and badly written for reasons I rather not go into detail.
But in short, the existence of those scenes just overall decreases the quality of the game. I will be speaking from my SFW experience of the game and will treat the scenes as if they never existed at all.
That said, if you're not put off by any of the information above, then feel free to keep reading.
...............................................................................................
So what is Majikoi? Majikoi is a visual novel that features a group of tightly knitted high school friends called The Kazama Family. You have the main character, Yamato Naoe, proclaimed tactician that is not afraid to use underhand methods and have a wide network of people, who surrounds himself with an assembled rainbow of characters in the city of Kawakami, Japan.
The main girls, who are considered as the samurai girls, each having their own full fledge route are Momoyo Kawakami, the strongest fighter in the world that is always seeking battle and those that are stronger than her. Yukie Mayuzumi, is a shy socially ill adapt girl who talks to her cell phone strap, Matsukaze; but is also a powerful sword saint.
Then you have Miyako Shiina, an archer that is normally quiet and cold but quite caring and open towards The Kazama Family, especially towards Yamato with her nonstop love and affection for him. Christiane Friedrich, who's a German exchange student who is fascinated with the land of Japan and has the heart and attitude of a samurai. And Kazuko Kawakami, who's treated like a happy go luck energetic dog girl, always hard working and always training to achieve her dreams.
Not to forget the males of the Kazuma family. With Shoichi Kazama, who's considered to be the captain and leader of the Kazama family and has a free spirit that always calls for adventure. Gakuto Shimazu, a muscular, thick-skinned overly arrogant man that always tries to woo a woman, only to fail every time. And Takuya Morooka, the straight man that is relatively normal compared to everyone else but also likes manga and games a lot.
And that is just the main 9 characters out of dozens and dozens. Majikoi has no shortage of colorful personalities with its vast amount of side characters, which is very impressive for a visual novel of its genre.
While some of them may be one-dimensional with only a few personality traits, nearly, if not all of them are highly entertaining, to say the least.
An important note is it's essential to install the full voice patch. Besides the lines that are Yamato or lines to narrate the events of the story, every single line was originally fully voiced in the Japanese release with over a hundred different voices.
However, JAST USA could not afford the licensing for the voices outside The Kazama Family. So the game was officially localized without the rest of the voices.
Playing Majikoi without the voice restoration patch is doing a massive disservice to the game. While a lot of the voice acting for the nameless and faceless characters that only appear a handful of times isn't great, to be honest.
The voice acting for characters that appears more often with portraits is fantastic with their voice acting and helps a lot with the delivery, engagement, and emotion with their lines that would otherwise be silent.
The beginning of Majikoi, which is also known as the common route is Yamato getting by day by day with his school life interacting with various people.
Not only from The Kazama Family but with the rest of his classmates at 2-F, their rival class, 2-S, various schoolmates from other classes, and well as plenty of people scattered around the city of Kawakami.
Very often, Majikoi is written like a comedy shounen slice of life and the game's humor is pretty slapstick, over the top, sexual and even meta fourth wall breaking. Due to the nature of the game being an eroge, Majikoi holds no barrels with every sexual joke, innuendo, and piece of dialogue you could imagine under the sun.
In fact, to give one example, one of the side characters earns the name "Yonpachi" because he memorized all 48 sex positions, given his constant horny and perverted nature.
The game also uses plenty of reference humor, the fact that pretty much everyone hits and beats up everyone when they do something silly and sometimes the characters just get put in unbelievable situations you just can't help but laugh at it. If anything, Majikoi is great at brightening up the player's mood with its funny antics.
Of course, Majikoi does have its serious moments as well since it's never just all fun and games, The Kazama Family often gets into serious problems that often test the strength of one's beliefs, ideas, and thier relationship with the person in conflict.
After passing the prologue, the game will open up to the player choosing a character and spending time with them to enter one of 5 main routes and 6 side routes with a final hidden route later on.
Spending the day with the character will get rid of a red bubble and you have to get rid of all of them to get locked into thier route. There will be quirks that interfere with the character selection such as one of them running away or appearing out of nowhere.
The other form of gameplay is making choices, which is standard for a VN. Some of the choices only affect a few lines before continuing forward with the story but other choices can lead to a bad ending, even if the results aren't immediate.
Majikoi is considered a harem VN, but I think it's very different from the majority of the genre. For starters, most harem protagonists tend to be as bland, boring, and generic as possible with not much of a personality.
However, Yamato has a set personality being a scheming tactician no matter what route the player select. Personally, I found it hard to self-insert into a character with such a redefined personality.
Not to mention it's extremely rare for male characters to receive routes in visual novels. While they just side routes, Majikoi has a greater focus on spotlighting male characters with 3 male routes. It's something I greatly appreciate, considering I was never fond of the overly female focus in the visual novel genre.
And it's important to note the number of battle shounen fights, duels, showdowns, and full-scale assaults Majikoi features, due to the nature of Kawakami being a city built on martial arts, it's nature many of the characters exhibit peak and even superhuman strength. Silmair abilities you may fight in other battle shounen series.
Now it's depending on the route in which the situation The Kazama Family gets involved and how huge the scales are. But Majikoi seamlessly combines action, romance, comedy and drama to make it a pretty engaging and gripping story to read no matter the mood.
The routes can vary in quality and I say this is the biggest and perhaps only weakness in the game if you decide to go with the non-porn route. I believe it comes down to subjective taste but it's clear not all routes are made equally.
For instance, I wasn't exactly a fan of some of the side routes since they felt undercooked and rushed because of the short length compared to the main routes, even if I enjoyed Capt's route a lot. Not to mention I'm just not as interested in some of the characters focused on the side routes.
All 5 main routes are good at least, but again the quality can range from good to amazing. For instance, I liked Momoyo's route the most because of the exciting hyper action and tactics that were going on and I enjoy the chemistry between Yamato and Momoyo and how Yamato strives to improve himself for Momoyo.
However, my least favorite was the Mikayo route. While it emphasizes a lot of personal development and still has some neat moments for the character, it was just far too melodramatic and high school drama is just something I don't seek out for my tastes.
Again, your mileage may vary for the routes but I can say with confidence, at least without the porn scenes that can potentially damage the reputation of the characters, that all 5 main routes are good at least and genuinely much better than the side routes.
However, I found the final route, which is unlocked after completing all 5 main routes, absolutely fantastic and nearly a masterpiece as far as shounen writing goes.
I won't spoil anything of course but it highlights the best of Majikoi in all of the right ways and I was deeply engaged and hooked the entire time from beginning to end. Easily the best part of the game and it's super rewarding after spending much time with the game.
All and all, regardless of which path the player takes, Majikoi has a heavy message about the joys of friendship and spending time together, enjoying life, and doing various activities together. And if enough friends come together, then anything can be overcome together.
As cheesy as that sounds, it's also heartwarming and feel-good to see close friends that deeply care for one another despite the fighting spats, teasing, and various personalities. Majikoi does an excellent job of making the Kazuma Family feel like a group of friends that loves each other no matter what.
Despite the route imbalance, if you don't mind the visual novel genre, the vulgar humor, and doing a bunch of reading. Majikoi is a delightful treat for those wants action, romance, comedy, and drama all in one with dozens of colorful and vivid personalities and the many exciting and larger-than-life ways Kawikama City can pan out over the course of one summer. Then Majikoi will be an excellent experience to see the unbreakable bonds of friendship.
....................................................................................................
DISCLAIMER: I need to get the elephant out of the room before I continue and I feel like I need to be honest here. Majikoi is originally an eroge visual novel with porn scenes (all of the characters are stated to be at least 18 despite appearances and it's used as a plot device actually).
However, I played the Steam version of the game (with the full voice patch) that has removed all of the eroge scenes. From my research, quite frankly, some of the scenes are quite problematic and badly written for reasons I rather not go into detail.
But in short, the existence of those scenes just overall decreases the quality of the game. I will be speaking from my SFW experience of the game and will treat the scenes as if they never existed at all.
That said, if you're not put off by any of the information above, then feel free to keep reading.
...............................................................................................
So what is Majikoi? Majikoi is a visual novel that features a group of tightly knitted high school friends called The Kazama Family. You have the main character, Yamato Naoe, proclaimed tactician that is not afraid to use underhand methods and have a wide network of people, who surrounds himself with an assembled rainbow of characters in the city of Kawakami, Japan.
The main girls, who are considered as the samurai girls, each having their own full fledge route are Momoyo Kawakami, the strongest fighter in the world that is always seeking battle and those that are stronger than her. Yukie Mayuzumi, is a shy socially ill adapt girl who talks to her cell phone strap, Matsukaze; but is also a powerful sword saint.
Then you have Miyako Shiina, an archer that is normally quiet and cold but quite caring and open towards The Kazama Family, especially towards Yamato with her nonstop love and affection for him. Christiane Friedrich, who's a German exchange student who is fascinated with the land of Japan and has the heart and attitude of a samurai. And Kazuko Kawakami, who's treated like a happy go luck energetic dog girl, always hard working and always training to achieve her dreams.
Not to forget the males of the Kazuma family. With Shoichi Kazama, who's considered to be the captain and leader of the Kazama family and has a free spirit that always calls for adventure. Gakuto Shimazu, a muscular, thick-skinned overly arrogant man that always tries to woo a woman, only to fail every time. And Takuya Morooka, the straight man that is relatively normal compared to everyone else but also likes manga and games a lot.
And that is just the main 9 characters out of dozens and dozens. Majikoi has no shortage of colorful personalities with its vast amount of side characters, which is very impressive for a visual novel of its genre.
While some of them may be one-dimensional with only a few personality traits, nearly, if not all of them are highly entertaining, to say the least.
An important note is it's essential to install the full voice patch. Besides the lines that are Yamato or lines to narrate the events of the story, every single line was originally fully voiced in the Japanese release with over a hundred different voices.
However, JAST USA could not afford the licensing for the voices outside The Kazama Family. So the game was officially localized without the rest of the voices.
Playing Majikoi without the voice restoration patch is doing a massive disservice to the game. While a lot of the voice acting for the nameless and faceless characters that only appear a handful of times isn't great, to be honest.
The voice acting for characters that appears more often with portraits is fantastic with their voice acting and helps a lot with the delivery, engagement, and emotion with their lines that would otherwise be silent.
The beginning of Majikoi, which is also known as the common route is Yamato getting by day by day with his school life interacting with various people.
Not only from The Kazama Family but with the rest of his classmates at 2-F, their rival class, 2-S, various schoolmates from other classes, and well as plenty of people scattered around the city of Kawakami.
Very often, Majikoi is written like a comedy shounen slice of life and the game's humor is pretty slapstick, over the top, sexual and even meta fourth wall breaking. Due to the nature of the game being an eroge, Majikoi holds no barrels with every sexual joke, innuendo, and piece of dialogue you could imagine under the sun.
In fact, to give one example, one of the side characters earns the name "Yonpachi" because he memorized all 48 sex positions, given his constant horny and perverted nature.
The game also uses plenty of reference humor, the fact that pretty much everyone hits and beats up everyone when they do something silly and sometimes the characters just get put in unbelievable situations you just can't help but laugh at it. If anything, Majikoi is great at brightening up the player's mood with its funny antics.
Of course, Majikoi does have its serious moments as well since it's never just all fun and games, The Kazama Family often gets into serious problems that often test the strength of one's beliefs, ideas, and thier relationship with the person in conflict.
After passing the prologue, the game will open up to the player choosing a character and spending time with them to enter one of 5 main routes and 6 side routes with a final hidden route later on.
Spending the day with the character will get rid of a red bubble and you have to get rid of all of them to get locked into thier route. There will be quirks that interfere with the character selection such as one of them running away or appearing out of nowhere.
The other form of gameplay is making choices, which is standard for a VN. Some of the choices only affect a few lines before continuing forward with the story but other choices can lead to a bad ending, even if the results aren't immediate.
Majikoi is considered a harem VN, but I think it's very different from the majority of the genre. For starters, most harem protagonists tend to be as bland, boring, and generic as possible with not much of a personality.
However, Yamato has a set personality being a scheming tactician no matter what route the player select. Personally, I found it hard to self-insert into a character with such a redefined personality.
Not to mention it's extremely rare for male characters to receive routes in visual novels. While they just side routes, Majikoi has a greater focus on spotlighting male characters with 3 male routes. It's something I greatly appreciate, considering I was never fond of the overly female focus in the visual novel genre.
And it's important to note the number of battle shounen fights, duels, showdowns, and full-scale assaults Majikoi features, due to the nature of Kawakami being a city built on martial arts, it's nature many of the characters exhibit peak and even superhuman strength. Silmair abilities you may fight in other battle shounen series.
Now it's depending on the route in which the situation The Kazama Family gets involved and how huge the scales are. But Majikoi seamlessly combines action, romance, comedy and drama to make it a pretty engaging and gripping story to read no matter the mood.
The routes can vary in quality and I say this is the biggest and perhaps only weakness in the game if you decide to go with the non-porn route. I believe it comes down to subjective taste but it's clear not all routes are made equally.
For instance, I wasn't exactly a fan of some of the side routes since they felt undercooked and rushed because of the short length compared to the main routes, even if I enjoyed Capt's route a lot. Not to mention I'm just not as interested in some of the characters focused on the side routes.
All 5 main routes are good at least, but again the quality can range from good to amazing. For instance, I liked Momoyo's route the most because of the exciting hyper action and tactics that were going on and I enjoy the chemistry between Yamato and Momoyo and how Yamato strives to improve himself for Momoyo.
However, my least favorite was the Mikayo route. While it emphasizes a lot of personal development and still has some neat moments for the character, it was just far too melodramatic and high school drama is just something I don't seek out for my tastes.
Again, your mileage may vary for the routes but I can say with confidence, at least without the porn scenes that can potentially damage the reputation of the characters, that all 5 main routes are good at least and genuinely much better than the side routes.
However, I found the final route, which is unlocked after completing all 5 main routes, absolutely fantastic and nearly a masterpiece as far as shounen writing goes.
I won't spoil anything of course but it highlights the best of Majikoi in all of the right ways and I was deeply engaged and hooked the entire time from beginning to end. Easily the best part of the game and it's super rewarding after spending much time with the game.
All and all, regardless of which path the player takes, Majikoi has a heavy message about the joys of friendship and spending time together, enjoying life, and doing various activities together. And if enough friends come together, then anything can be overcome together.
As cheesy as that sounds, it's also heartwarming and feel-good to see close friends that deeply care for one another despite the fighting spats, teasing, and various personalities. Majikoi does an excellent job of making the Kazuma Family feel like a group of friends that loves each other no matter what.
Despite the route imbalance, if you don't mind the visual novel genre, the vulgar humor, and doing a bunch of reading. Majikoi is a delightful treat for those wants action, romance, comedy, and drama all in one with dozens of colorful and vivid personalities and the many exciting and larger-than-life ways Kawikama City can pan out over the course of one summer. Then Majikoi will be an excellent experience to see the unbreakable bonds of friendship.
2021
Took nearly a year but I have finally completed Alan Wake Remastered including the two extra episodes that were originally DLC. The story is fantastic as it used the concept of light and darkness in both a literal and metaphorical sense as you have the titular character goes on a journey to save his wife from The Dark Place. However, I found the gameplay to be plain and average at best and painfully frustrating and horrid at worst, and the one major aspect that prevents Alan Wake from being a truly stellar game.
The overall premise of Alan Wake is the titular character is a best-selling author who decided to take a vacation to Bright Falls with his wife and best friend as a way to recover from writer's block for his next novel.
However, during the first night, his wife suddenly disappears and shadow figures called The Taken start to arise to kill him. As Alan proceeds onwards to uncover the mystery of his wife's disappearance, he starts to realize the events of a novel he yet to write was coming true in his reality.
Alan Wake is structured as a TV series, in which each level serves as a roughly two-hour-long episode with recaps at the start of each episode and the end of an episode featuring license music (which are really good bangers)! Alan Wake takes a dive into the character's psyche and mindset in this psychological thriller adventure.
The atmosphere of the overall game is unsettling but it's very fitting as well. You spend the majority of Bright Falls during nighttime when it's nearly dark.
From the ambient music, the feeling of being alone for the majority of the time in the dark, and the surprise presence of The Taken, Alan Wake emphasizes the haunting and mysterious place of Bright Falls.
Speaking of the town, Bright Falls has quite a lot of character and details as you progress into the game, such as reading signs to reveal the location's culture and history. As well as radio shows scatter across the game that features Bright Fall's citizens engaging in various conversations.
Not to mention there are brief live-action TV episodes called Night Springs that are akin to The Twilight Zone and serve as an eerie parallel to the game's own strange events unfolding around Alan Wake.
The story is just fantastic and a very creative horror as it uses Alan Wake's own imagination as his greatest nightmare comes true and it delves into a plot-twisting journey as he reveals the truth about a manuscript that serves as the key to ending the darkness around him and his wife.
I have 0 complaints about the story since it's so tightly written and gripping but unfortunately, all of my grievances come from the gameplay. Despite the interesting gameplay that works well from a narrative perspective, the gameplay just feels like an afterthought compared to the story.
The gameplay is a simple linear shooter. The main goal is to point A to point B while surviving against The Taken. Light is thier greatest weakness against these shadow figures, so Alan Wake is often equipped with a flashlight to shine on The Taken to weaken them as you use one of four guns to shoot at them to make them disappear.
The Taken can also form as birds or inanimated objects to shine light at to defeat. You also can use more rare weapons such as flares, flashbangs, and flare guns to assist Alan Wake to keep himself away from The Taken and even defeat multiple enemies in one shot.
The gameplay sounds fine and all on paper but it is just horribly executed. Controls can be chunky and awkward, especially dodge and run controls. I can not count the number of times I have died in the game all because of poor and slow dodges or slow running since all of the Taken can easily defeat Alan in close combat within a few hits and Alan have absolutely no way to defend himself in close combat beside a flare.
Also, there are just a number of very frustrating sections when you have to fend off waves of enemies to proceed onwards and the average Taker can easily outspeed and out-damage Alan and this is especially difficult if Alan is ill-equipped. It also does not help that some Taker enemies are health sponges and can consume a large number of your resources just to defeat a single one of them.
Overall Alan Wake is a brilliant story about a writer fighting against his own creations as well as his mind but...I feel like Alan Wake is one of those games that would be much better within a different medium such as a TV show since the game is structured that way anyways since I did not enjoy much of the gameplay to be completely honest. And sadly, the stiff and hair-pulling gameplay drags down what would otherwise be a near-flawless game.
That said, if you are willing to deal with the painstaking waves of combat and simple gameplay, then you're in a treat for one of the best psychological horror adventures I have seen in a story.
The overall premise of Alan Wake is the titular character is a best-selling author who decided to take a vacation to Bright Falls with his wife and best friend as a way to recover from writer's block for his next novel.
However, during the first night, his wife suddenly disappears and shadow figures called The Taken start to arise to kill him. As Alan proceeds onwards to uncover the mystery of his wife's disappearance, he starts to realize the events of a novel he yet to write was coming true in his reality.
Alan Wake is structured as a TV series, in which each level serves as a roughly two-hour-long episode with recaps at the start of each episode and the end of an episode featuring license music (which are really good bangers)! Alan Wake takes a dive into the character's psyche and mindset in this psychological thriller adventure.
The atmosphere of the overall game is unsettling but it's very fitting as well. You spend the majority of Bright Falls during nighttime when it's nearly dark.
From the ambient music, the feeling of being alone for the majority of the time in the dark, and the surprise presence of The Taken, Alan Wake emphasizes the haunting and mysterious place of Bright Falls.
Speaking of the town, Bright Falls has quite a lot of character and details as you progress into the game, such as reading signs to reveal the location's culture and history. As well as radio shows scatter across the game that features Bright Fall's citizens engaging in various conversations.
Not to mention there are brief live-action TV episodes called Night Springs that are akin to The Twilight Zone and serve as an eerie parallel to the game's own strange events unfolding around Alan Wake.
The story is just fantastic and a very creative horror as it uses Alan Wake's own imagination as his greatest nightmare comes true and it delves into a plot-twisting journey as he reveals the truth about a manuscript that serves as the key to ending the darkness around him and his wife.
I have 0 complaints about the story since it's so tightly written and gripping but unfortunately, all of my grievances come from the gameplay. Despite the interesting gameplay that works well from a narrative perspective, the gameplay just feels like an afterthought compared to the story.
The gameplay is a simple linear shooter. The main goal is to point A to point B while surviving against The Taken. Light is thier greatest weakness against these shadow figures, so Alan Wake is often equipped with a flashlight to shine on The Taken to weaken them as you use one of four guns to shoot at them to make them disappear.
The Taken can also form as birds or inanimated objects to shine light at to defeat. You also can use more rare weapons such as flares, flashbangs, and flare guns to assist Alan Wake to keep himself away from The Taken and even defeat multiple enemies in one shot.
The gameplay sounds fine and all on paper but it is just horribly executed. Controls can be chunky and awkward, especially dodge and run controls. I can not count the number of times I have died in the game all because of poor and slow dodges or slow running since all of the Taken can easily defeat Alan in close combat within a few hits and Alan have absolutely no way to defend himself in close combat beside a flare.
Also, there are just a number of very frustrating sections when you have to fend off waves of enemies to proceed onwards and the average Taker can easily outspeed and out-damage Alan and this is especially difficult if Alan is ill-equipped. It also does not help that some Taker enemies are health sponges and can consume a large number of your resources just to defeat a single one of them.
Overall Alan Wake is a brilliant story about a writer fighting against his own creations as well as his mind but...I feel like Alan Wake is one of those games that would be much better within a different medium such as a TV show since the game is structured that way anyways since I did not enjoy much of the gameplay to be completely honest. And sadly, the stiff and hair-pulling gameplay drags down what would otherwise be a near-flawless game.
That said, if you are willing to deal with the painstaking waves of combat and simple gameplay, then you're in a treat for one of the best psychological horror adventures I have seen in a story.
This review contains spoilers
-Written on November 28, 2020-
Cold Steel IV is the final game in the series and a cumulation of the Trails series at this point. It delivers a lot of conclusion points that have been going on since the first Cold Steel game and the game really up its stakes and for the most part, it did a fine job one uping Cold Steel III. That said I can't help but feel it hit a lot of bumps along the way when Class VII tries to end the war and the curse.
Cold Steel IV is essentially the same game as Cold Steel III in a lot of ways, with the biggest difference is you have much more freedom to travel around western Zemeria. There's still plenty of NPCs to talk to, even if a good chunk of them talk about the upcoming war, it's rather realistic. Side quests are ultimately more important in CSIV since at least half of them adds to the overall plot in some way (especially during the finale).
The gameplay is almost exactly the same as CSIII with the only difference is your Brave Orders are nerfed at the start to make the game more balanced. Doing Trails chests is fun challenge to make you overcome the enemies in certain parties and it's nice leveling up your Brave Orders for characters. Cryptids and Lost Arts from Cold Steel II also make a return and fighting these optional bosses to unlock some of the strongest arts in the game is very satisfying as well. On a small note, I enjoy the OST more in Cold Steel IV than III, considering how bad of a rep Singa gets. I especially love the boss and dungeon themes.
Cold Steel IV also relies on the previous games from Sky and Crossbell even more heavily since many more characters and story beats in past games have a bigger role in the story. In Cold Steel III, you might be okay keeping up with the story if you just played Cold Steel I and II but in Cold Steel IV, it's unthinkable to play IV without playing the Sky and Crossbell games. In the prologue alone, I counted nearly 50-60 references to past games, and huge chunks of the story of Sky SC and Ao no Kiseki get spoiled right from the get-go. Now whatever or not someone should spend like 900 hours in the series just for one game is debatable but that's a different discussion for a different day.
However, if you are fully caught up with the series, it's incredibly satisfying to know all of the references from past games and see past characters fully developed. Cold Steel IV rewards the player a lot for investing in the series with a very well pay off. It's easily one of the game biggest strengths.
That said despite many appearances from the Liberl team and the SSS, I must stress Cold Steel IV is Class's VII show and 90% of the story is centered around them. After the prologue, Cold Steel IV made it clear the main objective is to rescue Rean and end the war and that is divided into three acts and a finale.
Act I is a classic straightforward JRPG feel when you visit town to town on foot while still having a small hub world to come back to interact with the characters. One could stay it's just like Cold Steel III but without the school elements. Act I don't waste its time since there's plenty of events that go on to set up the main highlight later in the story. Act I also have a lot of good New Class VII moments and character development, even if I feel like the overall writing for New Class VII has decreased compared to Cold Steel III.
After the emotional but super shounen cheesy Fragments section, Act II offers more freedom but it's a very filtered act that could easily be cut down such as combining 2 of the 3 main missions or not making side quests required. The majority of Act II is rescuing girls that are trapped in a place. I get having a full cast of characters but it's an odd shift of priorities and pacing considering the bigger issues in play. However, the ending of Act II is what I personally think it's not only the best part of Cold Steel IV, but all of Trails as a whole. So the ending alone is definitely worth the patience, especially if you fully caught up in the series.
Act III is essentially just like Act II but the story and the pacing tighten up better and you have more characters to interact on the ship. Act III, as well as Act II to an extent, is also Old Class VII's show as some of the characters that are involved in the story start to get closure with their own character issues that have been ongoing since Cold Steel I. Because of this, I start to really like old Class VII more than I ever did. Even some of the villains became more likable around this act due to many plot and motive reveals.
After Act III, you get a fun interlude event, which is weird considering what going on in the game but whatever. This is where you get to choose who you want to romance and leading up to that is the bonding system, which is one of my biggest complaints in this game. Bonding systems existed since Zero no Kiseki and they have improved overtime. However, Cold Steel IV did a fatal flaw by locking between important character development and many personal character arcs come to an end with bonding events. It isn't like previous Cold Steel games when you just getting to know the character, no you are seeing story elements you won't get elsewhere in the game and the Crossbell games had that same issue. I know you can save and reload but considering you can't see every bonding event in one save, it's an iffy decision.
Related to the bonding system is the harem. I know harem existed since Sky and I already accepted the fact at least a few girls gonna like Rean throughout Cold Steel. However, 11 options are overkill even for harem standards. I especially hate how Rean's own students got included. The romance is especially more intense since most of the girls confess to him right from the start. However this just really ruins any sense of mature romance in the game and a huge part of me just wished Falcom never let the player have options from the start of Cold Steel.
After the interlude is the finale. There are several important quests to do that add to the story and once you start the ending of the game, which is pretty epic in scale. You will proceed to do 5 dungeons before doing the massive final one with many bosses await you. It's very similar to Liberl Ark in Sky SC, Azure Tree in Ao, Infernal Castle in Cold Steel 2, etc. I won't tell you how that goes but there are two endings in Cold Steel IV once you're done. A normal one that feels more realistic and bittersweet but betrays what Cold Steel really about and a true ending, while super duper shounen cheesy and overly happy, it couldn't be a better ending for Cold Steel and all of Trails to this point.
One thing I could not help but notice is how the morality is super black and white in Cold Steel IV and that's a bit disappointing considering past Trails games explored in grey morality. I can't explain this too much without spoilers but the way character actions are basically blamed on a single thing just feels really silly and immature. I don't like how characters are no longer accountable for their actions, save for one person. It's a really frustrating feeling that everyone that did wrong got away with it or was easily forgiven.
Trails of Cold Steel IV have plenty of amazing moments, fanservice of past games, large casts and many characters get their own conclusion for their arc.
As far as the stakes and the tension being high, and the scale being grand and epic, Cold Steel IV wins in that department in Trails. Cold Steel IV might have a lot of immature writing such as its morality and its romance and the pacing is weird at times but considering how much that was going on in the game, for the most part, Falcom kept it together. Cold Steel IV isn't my favorite in the series due to its issues but it's one of the better Trails games for sure and it's a strong ending to the saga. If you have been sticking with Trails long enough, then Cold Steel IV is a rewarding and satisfying conclusion.
Cold Steel IV is the final game in the series and a cumulation of the Trails series at this point. It delivers a lot of conclusion points that have been going on since the first Cold Steel game and the game really up its stakes and for the most part, it did a fine job one uping Cold Steel III. That said I can't help but feel it hit a lot of bumps along the way when Class VII tries to end the war and the curse.
Cold Steel IV is essentially the same game as Cold Steel III in a lot of ways, with the biggest difference is you have much more freedom to travel around western Zemeria. There's still plenty of NPCs to talk to, even if a good chunk of them talk about the upcoming war, it's rather realistic. Side quests are ultimately more important in CSIV since at least half of them adds to the overall plot in some way (especially during the finale).
The gameplay is almost exactly the same as CSIII with the only difference is your Brave Orders are nerfed at the start to make the game more balanced. Doing Trails chests is fun challenge to make you overcome the enemies in certain parties and it's nice leveling up your Brave Orders for characters. Cryptids and Lost Arts from Cold Steel II also make a return and fighting these optional bosses to unlock some of the strongest arts in the game is very satisfying as well. On a small note, I enjoy the OST more in Cold Steel IV than III, considering how bad of a rep Singa gets. I especially love the boss and dungeon themes.
Cold Steel IV also relies on the previous games from Sky and Crossbell even more heavily since many more characters and story beats in past games have a bigger role in the story. In Cold Steel III, you might be okay keeping up with the story if you just played Cold Steel I and II but in Cold Steel IV, it's unthinkable to play IV without playing the Sky and Crossbell games. In the prologue alone, I counted nearly 50-60 references to past games, and huge chunks of the story of Sky SC and Ao no Kiseki get spoiled right from the get-go. Now whatever or not someone should spend like 900 hours in the series just for one game is debatable but that's a different discussion for a different day.
However, if you are fully caught up with the series, it's incredibly satisfying to know all of the references from past games and see past characters fully developed. Cold Steel IV rewards the player a lot for investing in the series with a very well pay off. It's easily one of the game biggest strengths.
That said despite many appearances from the Liberl team and the SSS, I must stress Cold Steel IV is Class's VII show and 90% of the story is centered around them. After the prologue, Cold Steel IV made it clear the main objective is to rescue Rean and end the war and that is divided into three acts and a finale.
Act I is a classic straightforward JRPG feel when you visit town to town on foot while still having a small hub world to come back to interact with the characters. One could stay it's just like Cold Steel III but without the school elements. Act I don't waste its time since there's plenty of events that go on to set up the main highlight later in the story. Act I also have a lot of good New Class VII moments and character development, even if I feel like the overall writing for New Class VII has decreased compared to Cold Steel III.
After the emotional but super shounen cheesy Fragments section, Act II offers more freedom but it's a very filtered act that could easily be cut down such as combining 2 of the 3 main missions or not making side quests required. The majority of Act II is rescuing girls that are trapped in a place. I get having a full cast of characters but it's an odd shift of priorities and pacing considering the bigger issues in play. However, the ending of Act II is what I personally think it's not only the best part of Cold Steel IV, but all of Trails as a whole. So the ending alone is definitely worth the patience, especially if you fully caught up in the series.
Act III is essentially just like Act II but the story and the pacing tighten up better and you have more characters to interact on the ship. Act III, as well as Act II to an extent, is also Old Class VII's show as some of the characters that are involved in the story start to get closure with their own character issues that have been ongoing since Cold Steel I. Because of this, I start to really like old Class VII more than I ever did. Even some of the villains became more likable around this act due to many plot and motive reveals.
After Act III, you get a fun interlude event, which is weird considering what going on in the game but whatever. This is where you get to choose who you want to romance and leading up to that is the bonding system, which is one of my biggest complaints in this game. Bonding systems existed since Zero no Kiseki and they have improved overtime. However, Cold Steel IV did a fatal flaw by locking between important character development and many personal character arcs come to an end with bonding events. It isn't like previous Cold Steel games when you just getting to know the character, no you are seeing story elements you won't get elsewhere in the game and the Crossbell games had that same issue. I know you can save and reload but considering you can't see every bonding event in one save, it's an iffy decision.
Related to the bonding system is the harem. I know harem existed since Sky and I already accepted the fact at least a few girls gonna like Rean throughout Cold Steel. However, 11 options are overkill even for harem standards. I especially hate how Rean's own students got included. The romance is especially more intense since most of the girls confess to him right from the start. However this just really ruins any sense of mature romance in the game and a huge part of me just wished Falcom never let the player have options from the start of Cold Steel.
After the interlude is the finale. There are several important quests to do that add to the story and once you start the ending of the game, which is pretty epic in scale. You will proceed to do 5 dungeons before doing the massive final one with many bosses await you. It's very similar to Liberl Ark in Sky SC, Azure Tree in Ao, Infernal Castle in Cold Steel 2, etc. I won't tell you how that goes but there are two endings in Cold Steel IV once you're done. A normal one that feels more realistic and bittersweet but betrays what Cold Steel really about and a true ending, while super duper shounen cheesy and overly happy, it couldn't be a better ending for Cold Steel and all of Trails to this point.
One thing I could not help but notice is how the morality is super black and white in Cold Steel IV and that's a bit disappointing considering past Trails games explored in grey morality. I can't explain this too much without spoilers but the way character actions are basically blamed on a single thing just feels really silly and immature. I don't like how characters are no longer accountable for their actions, save for one person. It's a really frustrating feeling that everyone that did wrong got away with it or was easily forgiven.
Trails of Cold Steel IV have plenty of amazing moments, fanservice of past games, large casts and many characters get their own conclusion for their arc.
As far as the stakes and the tension being high, and the scale being grand and epic, Cold Steel IV wins in that department in Trails. Cold Steel IV might have a lot of immature writing such as its morality and its romance and the pacing is weird at times but considering how much that was going on in the game, for the most part, Falcom kept it together. Cold Steel IV isn't my favorite in the series due to its issues but it's one of the better Trails games for sure and it's a strong ending to the saga. If you have been sticking with Trails long enough, then Cold Steel IV is a rewarding and satisfying conclusion.
1998
Xenogears is a very ambitious game and it’s clear that Tetsuya Takahashi was aiming highly with his vision. Even 25 years later, Xenogears still have more nuanced story writing than most games that came after it. It’s a game filled with interesting and complex ideas that combine Analytical psychology, religious symbolism, and scientific theories wrapped in a war-torn science fiction, mecha-filled setting spanning across centuries. As ambitious as Xenogears is, there is quite a lot of stumbling as the game approached the finish line with questionable game design, plot inconsistencies, irrelevant characters, and a very patchworked disc 2. Despite the many issues Xenogears obtains, it still entertains its promising concept from start to finish and does what it can to share a fraction of the overall scope of Xenogears.
Gameplay-wise, Xenogears is very resemblance to the golden days of the PS1 RPG. Random encounters, action time-based combat, a world map to explore and discover towns, dungeons, and hidden places, etc. all with little to no clear guidance on where to go next to progress the story. However, that’s more of a testament to what was considered standard PS1 RPG design than an element specific to Xenogears. What set apart Xenogears from other Square games such as classic Final Fantasy and Chrono Trigger is the Deathblow system. Rather than having a basic attack command, there are three button inputs, square for a light attack, triangle for a heavy attack, and X for a fatal attack. Different combinations can create a Deathblow combo for more damage. In addition, there are ether attacks and abilities (or character-specific alternatives such as chi or arcane) that function similarly to the game’s magic system and the possibility to perform several Deathblows in one turn, known as “combos”, granted if the player has built enough action points (AP) to perform them.
Another major factor in Xenogears’ combat is mecha battles, which are known as Gears in the game. Considering Gears are an essential part of Xenogears’ story, there are several Gears battles to engage in. They share similarities to on-foot combat such as using regular and ether attacks. However, each attack requires fuel to perform and a certain attack level is required to perform Deathblows. The player can also engage in boosting, which will increase the characters’ speed in exchange for more fuel usage. In addition to “special options” that feature Gear-specific attacks or repairing damage granted the Gear has the correct part for the command.
Despite featuring both on-foot and Gear battles, there isn’t much to Xenogears’ battle system. In fact, besides unlocking more Deathblows and ether attacks, the player will see the full extent of its combat system within the ¼ mark of the game. Combat will eventually feel repetitive, especially with the high encounter rate in dungeons and in the world map. Not to mention, the party can only truly get stronger by grinding out battles for more EXP or obtaining better gears to increase stats such as attack and defense for both physical and ether attacks as well as agility to increase speed. However, considering its age and the period the game is from, it’s ultimately serviceable at least.
That said, one of the biggest flaws of the game is at times, the dungeon designs are atrocious and frustrating to deal with. I do not know whose idea it was to include platforming, but it’s some of the worst I’ve ever played in a game. In fact, platforming through Babel Tower was one of the most unenjoyable experiences I had in recent memory and I wanted to just give up on playing the game a few times, especially since it’s quite a time waster to redo certain areas of the dungeon and it have created so much stress and anxiety for me. Plus there are a few dungeons with confusing layouts that feel maze-like and very easy to get lost in without a map. On top of the high encounter rates….exploring dungeons is definitely one of the weakest areas for Xenogears.
Despite its gameplay, which is presented enough at least for the majority of the game, Xenogears biggest strength that often receives praise is the story. It’s a sprawling epic featuring protagonist Fei Fong Wong traveling across the Ignas content to discover the mysteries of the Aveh/Kislev war, the all-ruling Solaris nation, the floating country of Shevat, the religious deity of Ethos, and within himself alongside Elehayym Van Houten, Citan Uzuki, and others. Xenogears have a large scope between various countries, lore, and terminology covered across the game’s narrative and it’s especially impressive considering its age and its fellow contemporaries don’t even come close to the amount of detailed worldbuilding Xenogears contains. One aspect that I’ve particularly found impressive was the occasional updating of NPCs with different dialogue as the story progress. It’s not as text-heavy compared to say…the Trails series that would emerge a few years from now after Xenogears, but it was a pleasant surprise to see this feature in a PS1 game as it helps fleshes out the worldbuilding a tad bit more.
Xenogears starts off very promising with its scale, as the game quickly pushes the plot forward in a very dramatic execution that forces Fei to travel around begrudgingly. During his journey, the player sees Fei develops as a character and understands his role as a Gear pilot as he met key characters that would eventually join his party and understands the current state of each country. However, as the stakes increase all across the country, this means there is more ground to cover and focus for Xenogears. Meaning as the game progress, character motivations and purposes for half of the playable cast will be forgotten and plot points will be more inconsistent and rushed through quickly.
Xenogears serve very well for the protagonist, deuteragonist, and tritagonist. Which are respectively, Fei, Elly, and Citan. These three characters are introduced very early on in the story, within the first few hours, and remain a constant device to advance the narrative. Fei and Elly in particular are explored fully with their own psyche and how both of them play a critical role in the game’s themes of human existence and purpose throughout religious mythology, self-identity, and using technology to achieve the state of godhood and ascension. The two characters complement each other well beyond their surface relationship for each other, but also as the subtext of the role of Psychoanalysis and Metempsychosis. Citan also serves as a foil character to Fei with his calculated methodology approach and juxtaposition to Fei’s emotional and uncontrolled outbursts along with Citan’s own motivations.
While Fei, Elly, and Citan are overall excellent characters that embody the central message of Xenogears, unfortunately, I can not say the rest for the playable characters. It’s common for the PS1 era to let the player form their own three-person team and only the required characters have speaking lines during story moments while the rest are awkwardly silent as if they’re not there at all. However, I personally found that Xenogears mistreats a huge chunk of its characters even for PS1 standards. Besides, Fei, Elly, and Citan, Bart is the most important playable character and does have some significance throughout the game. However, Billy, Maria, and Rico all have a minor arc early in the game that is ultimately used just to spread insight into the game’s world, and beyond that, they have very few lines in the overall story, and if they were cut out from the game, hardly much of anything would be drastically changed. In fact, Chu Chu is merely nothing more than a cutesy mascot character and I’m sure Xenogears will almost be exactly the same game without her. Perhaps Emerlada is the most snubbed playable character. She is introduced right before the end of disc 2 and Emerlada is never a required character to use not once in the game. However, she has so much important lore behind her character that is easily missable and it’s only found at a hidden location right before the final dungeon of the game. It’s quite frustrating and even sad to see how the game eventually forgets about the importance of ⅔ of the playable cast.
Aurbably, a major reason why most of the cast become irreverent overtime is because of the dramatic change of story presentation in disc 2. disc 2, half of the time, is completely narrated by either Fei or Elly at a black void with one of the two sitting down in a chair with a backdrop of still images of them explaining what has occurred. In comparison to how the events of disc 1 unfold, disc 2 feels like a quick summary at times. From my understanding, some say budget cuts are the result of disc 2, while others have said Tetsuya Takahashi felt like he and his team could not fully complete Xenogears within 2 years and have to settle for a compromise. Either way, it’s very evident between the lack of dungeons, open map exploration, and detailed story writing, the development team at some point began to rush through Xenogears.
However, I personally believe not all of disc 2 is messy and incomplete. With how the story presentation is formatted, it serves well to gain and study an introspection of Fei’s psychology and mental state in a way that would be jarring and out of place to do during disc 1. Not to mention the heavy usage of backstory and flashbacks to conceive how much of Xenogears’ setting is built before the start of the game. Disc 2 is rather excellent to enforce the Psychoanalysis and Metempsychosis themes without disrupting the game’s pacing of the present state of events too much.
Xenogears, at a quick glance, is a sci-fi epic that has a lot to tell. Upon further inspection, however, there are some areas that are superior such as Fei and Elly being excellent character studies that enforce the core themes of the game. While other parts such as the rest of the cast slowly become forgotten and the rushed pacing of the plot near the end of the game, there’s still much to be desired as well on top of the awful dungeon design. Xenogears is very flawed but it uses its flaws the best it can to come to a conclusion no matter what, rather than leaving it incomplete, and it’s quite admiring that Tetsuya Takahashi does what he can to tell his vision. While it will be years from now until Takahashi can fully realize his ideas with the Xenoblade Chronicles series, Xenogears is the first example of the boundless potential Takahashi is capable of. As rough and unpolished as it is, there is a diamond underneath the psyche of Xenogears.
Gameplay-wise, Xenogears is very resemblance to the golden days of the PS1 RPG. Random encounters, action time-based combat, a world map to explore and discover towns, dungeons, and hidden places, etc. all with little to no clear guidance on where to go next to progress the story. However, that’s more of a testament to what was considered standard PS1 RPG design than an element specific to Xenogears. What set apart Xenogears from other Square games such as classic Final Fantasy and Chrono Trigger is the Deathblow system. Rather than having a basic attack command, there are three button inputs, square for a light attack, triangle for a heavy attack, and X for a fatal attack. Different combinations can create a Deathblow combo for more damage. In addition, there are ether attacks and abilities (or character-specific alternatives such as chi or arcane) that function similarly to the game’s magic system and the possibility to perform several Deathblows in one turn, known as “combos”, granted if the player has built enough action points (AP) to perform them.
Another major factor in Xenogears’ combat is mecha battles, which are known as Gears in the game. Considering Gears are an essential part of Xenogears’ story, there are several Gears battles to engage in. They share similarities to on-foot combat such as using regular and ether attacks. However, each attack requires fuel to perform and a certain attack level is required to perform Deathblows. The player can also engage in boosting, which will increase the characters’ speed in exchange for more fuel usage. In addition to “special options” that feature Gear-specific attacks or repairing damage granted the Gear has the correct part for the command.
Despite featuring both on-foot and Gear battles, there isn’t much to Xenogears’ battle system. In fact, besides unlocking more Deathblows and ether attacks, the player will see the full extent of its combat system within the ¼ mark of the game. Combat will eventually feel repetitive, especially with the high encounter rate in dungeons and in the world map. Not to mention, the party can only truly get stronger by grinding out battles for more EXP or obtaining better gears to increase stats such as attack and defense for both physical and ether attacks as well as agility to increase speed. However, considering its age and the period the game is from, it’s ultimately serviceable at least.
That said, one of the biggest flaws of the game is at times, the dungeon designs are atrocious and frustrating to deal with. I do not know whose idea it was to include platforming, but it’s some of the worst I’ve ever played in a game. In fact, platforming through Babel Tower was one of the most unenjoyable experiences I had in recent memory and I wanted to just give up on playing the game a few times, especially since it’s quite a time waster to redo certain areas of the dungeon and it have created so much stress and anxiety for me. Plus there are a few dungeons with confusing layouts that feel maze-like and very easy to get lost in without a map. On top of the high encounter rates….exploring dungeons is definitely one of the weakest areas for Xenogears.
Despite its gameplay, which is presented enough at least for the majority of the game, Xenogears biggest strength that often receives praise is the story. It’s a sprawling epic featuring protagonist Fei Fong Wong traveling across the Ignas content to discover the mysteries of the Aveh/Kislev war, the all-ruling Solaris nation, the floating country of Shevat, the religious deity of Ethos, and within himself alongside Elehayym Van Houten, Citan Uzuki, and others. Xenogears have a large scope between various countries, lore, and terminology covered across the game’s narrative and it’s especially impressive considering its age and its fellow contemporaries don’t even come close to the amount of detailed worldbuilding Xenogears contains. One aspect that I’ve particularly found impressive was the occasional updating of NPCs with different dialogue as the story progress. It’s not as text-heavy compared to say…the Trails series that would emerge a few years from now after Xenogears, but it was a pleasant surprise to see this feature in a PS1 game as it helps fleshes out the worldbuilding a tad bit more.
Xenogears starts off very promising with its scale, as the game quickly pushes the plot forward in a very dramatic execution that forces Fei to travel around begrudgingly. During his journey, the player sees Fei develops as a character and understands his role as a Gear pilot as he met key characters that would eventually join his party and understands the current state of each country. However, as the stakes increase all across the country, this means there is more ground to cover and focus for Xenogears. Meaning as the game progress, character motivations and purposes for half of the playable cast will be forgotten and plot points will be more inconsistent and rushed through quickly.
Xenogears serve very well for the protagonist, deuteragonist, and tritagonist. Which are respectively, Fei, Elly, and Citan. These three characters are introduced very early on in the story, within the first few hours, and remain a constant device to advance the narrative. Fei and Elly in particular are explored fully with their own psyche and how both of them play a critical role in the game’s themes of human existence and purpose throughout religious mythology, self-identity, and using technology to achieve the state of godhood and ascension. The two characters complement each other well beyond their surface relationship for each other, but also as the subtext of the role of Psychoanalysis and Metempsychosis. Citan also serves as a foil character to Fei with his calculated methodology approach and juxtaposition to Fei’s emotional and uncontrolled outbursts along with Citan’s own motivations.
While Fei, Elly, and Citan are overall excellent characters that embody the central message of Xenogears, unfortunately, I can not say the rest for the playable characters. It’s common for the PS1 era to let the player form their own three-person team and only the required characters have speaking lines during story moments while the rest are awkwardly silent as if they’re not there at all. However, I personally found that Xenogears mistreats a huge chunk of its characters even for PS1 standards. Besides, Fei, Elly, and Citan, Bart is the most important playable character and does have some significance throughout the game. However, Billy, Maria, and Rico all have a minor arc early in the game that is ultimately used just to spread insight into the game’s world, and beyond that, they have very few lines in the overall story, and if they were cut out from the game, hardly much of anything would be drastically changed. In fact, Chu Chu is merely nothing more than a cutesy mascot character and I’m sure Xenogears will almost be exactly the same game without her. Perhaps Emerlada is the most snubbed playable character. She is introduced right before the end of disc 2 and Emerlada is never a required character to use not once in the game. However, she has so much important lore behind her character that is easily missable and it’s only found at a hidden location right before the final dungeon of the game. It’s quite frustrating and even sad to see how the game eventually forgets about the importance of ⅔ of the playable cast.
Aurbably, a major reason why most of the cast become irreverent overtime is because of the dramatic change of story presentation in disc 2. disc 2, half of the time, is completely narrated by either Fei or Elly at a black void with one of the two sitting down in a chair with a backdrop of still images of them explaining what has occurred. In comparison to how the events of disc 1 unfold, disc 2 feels like a quick summary at times. From my understanding, some say budget cuts are the result of disc 2, while others have said Tetsuya Takahashi felt like he and his team could not fully complete Xenogears within 2 years and have to settle for a compromise. Either way, it’s very evident between the lack of dungeons, open map exploration, and detailed story writing, the development team at some point began to rush through Xenogears.
However, I personally believe not all of disc 2 is messy and incomplete. With how the story presentation is formatted, it serves well to gain and study an introspection of Fei’s psychology and mental state in a way that would be jarring and out of place to do during disc 1. Not to mention the heavy usage of backstory and flashbacks to conceive how much of Xenogears’ setting is built before the start of the game. Disc 2 is rather excellent to enforce the Psychoanalysis and Metempsychosis themes without disrupting the game’s pacing of the present state of events too much.
Xenogears, at a quick glance, is a sci-fi epic that has a lot to tell. Upon further inspection, however, there are some areas that are superior such as Fei and Elly being excellent character studies that enforce the core themes of the game. While other parts such as the rest of the cast slowly become forgotten and the rushed pacing of the plot near the end of the game, there’s still much to be desired as well on top of the awful dungeon design. Xenogears is very flawed but it uses its flaws the best it can to come to a conclusion no matter what, rather than leaving it incomplete, and it’s quite admiring that Tetsuya Takahashi does what he can to tell his vision. While it will be years from now until Takahashi can fully realize his ideas with the Xenoblade Chronicles series, Xenogears is the first example of the boundless potential Takahashi is capable of. As rough and unpolished as it is, there is a diamond underneath the psyche of Xenogears.
-Written on August 12, 2020-
The story in Azure has to be one of the tightest written tales I have seen in anything, not just in video games. Right from the get-go, Ao starts off by resolving a major plot point from Zero and it doesn't let up at all. There are tons of subplots sprinkled in the plot and it's all connected. Political tensions and the verge of war, the backstories of some characters begin to catch up, a mysterious powerful organization begins to act again, the Sept Terrions begin to spin out of control, the biggest secrets from Zero get revealed and there's just plenty of jaw-dropping dramatic events that occur near the end of the game. Not to mention there is just plot twist after plot twist to the point the game just gets insane with it but everything is explained so well. Everything subplot and character arc connect in the end as well. It's really hard to capture all of this without spoilers but Ao is a ride and it doesn't end. No not even the game's ending doesn't end the story since it directly led up to Cold Steel 3 at the very end.
The character writing is also expanded and really goes into a deep dive with the character's motives, beliefs, and even how they like when they are more relaxed. I love the SSS back in Zero but now they're hands down my favorite cast period. The main four characters are easily some of my favorite characters in any series but I certainly love the rest of the allies since they grow on you and they develop. Heck even the villains, I couldn't find myself disliking a single one of them despite they did plenty of things that aren't okay lol. But they're pretty charming and had a decent reason for their ideologies and executions. I just really enjoy the themes they beat over your head like getting over barriers, being there for your friends, and finding a new purpose. It really helps me overcome my own challenges and that is probably why I'm so attached to these characters. They are almost like real people that want to motivate you.
Azure isn't flawless of course but honestly so is every Trails game. The main issue I notice from Ao is how the game is a bit too haremy at times (Like 5-6 girls being all over Lloyd is a tad too much) plus the bonding system is honestly awful. There is no way you can unlock more than one final bonding event in a single playthrough without using a guide since the game doesn't explicitly keep track of that. Plus the finale is a bit draggy and kinda lose it super tight nonstop pacing the rest of the game had. I get why the finale is that long, but it kinda looses up a bit. I mean these are minor problems and Cold Steel as a whole is generally worse with all of this but people love to think the harem problem and weird pacing started at Cold Steel and the Crossbell games are flawless.
That said, Azure is easily one of my favorite video games, one of my favorite stories, and has my favorite cast period (and I never had a clear favorite for cast). It's tied with Cold Steel 3 for my favorite Trails game as well as my favorite JRPG. I love Azure that much and I can see why the Trails fanbase praises the game so much. There is so much I want to talk about with the story but it's so spoiler-heavy but huge props to Falcom for fixing my biggest gripe I had with Zero and building upon it so naturally and smoothly. Really if you do play the Crossbell duology, you're in a ride for some of the best story writing I have ever seen, since Azure works off from Zero that much. Like as far as stories go, I put it at the same level at 20th Century Boys, Radiant Historia, and Pandora Hearts and if you know me enough, you know I heavily praise those two a lot.
The story in Azure has to be one of the tightest written tales I have seen in anything, not just in video games. Right from the get-go, Ao starts off by resolving a major plot point from Zero and it doesn't let up at all. There are tons of subplots sprinkled in the plot and it's all connected. Political tensions and the verge of war, the backstories of some characters begin to catch up, a mysterious powerful organization begins to act again, the Sept Terrions begin to spin out of control, the biggest secrets from Zero get revealed and there's just plenty of jaw-dropping dramatic events that occur near the end of the game. Not to mention there is just plot twist after plot twist to the point the game just gets insane with it but everything is explained so well. Everything subplot and character arc connect in the end as well. It's really hard to capture all of this without spoilers but Ao is a ride and it doesn't end. No not even the game's ending doesn't end the story since it directly led up to Cold Steel 3 at the very end.
The character writing is also expanded and really goes into a deep dive with the character's motives, beliefs, and even how they like when they are more relaxed. I love the SSS back in Zero but now they're hands down my favorite cast period. The main four characters are easily some of my favorite characters in any series but I certainly love the rest of the allies since they grow on you and they develop. Heck even the villains, I couldn't find myself disliking a single one of them despite they did plenty of things that aren't okay lol. But they're pretty charming and had a decent reason for their ideologies and executions. I just really enjoy the themes they beat over your head like getting over barriers, being there for your friends, and finding a new purpose. It really helps me overcome my own challenges and that is probably why I'm so attached to these characters. They are almost like real people that want to motivate you.
Azure isn't flawless of course but honestly so is every Trails game. The main issue I notice from Ao is how the game is a bit too haremy at times (Like 5-6 girls being all over Lloyd is a tad too much) plus the bonding system is honestly awful. There is no way you can unlock more than one final bonding event in a single playthrough without using a guide since the game doesn't explicitly keep track of that. Plus the finale is a bit draggy and kinda lose it super tight nonstop pacing the rest of the game had. I get why the finale is that long, but it kinda looses up a bit. I mean these are minor problems and Cold Steel as a whole is generally worse with all of this but people love to think the harem problem and weird pacing started at Cold Steel and the Crossbell games are flawless.
That said, Azure is easily one of my favorite video games, one of my favorite stories, and has my favorite cast period (and I never had a clear favorite for cast). It's tied with Cold Steel 3 for my favorite Trails game as well as my favorite JRPG. I love Azure that much and I can see why the Trails fanbase praises the game so much. There is so much I want to talk about with the story but it's so spoiler-heavy but huge props to Falcom for fixing my biggest gripe I had with Zero and building upon it so naturally and smoothly. Really if you do play the Crossbell duology, you're in a ride for some of the best story writing I have ever seen, since Azure works off from Zero that much. Like as far as stories go, I put it at the same level at 20th Century Boys, Radiant Historia, and Pandora Hearts and if you know me enough, you know I heavily praise those two a lot.
-Written on December 12, 2020-
The story for this game is just pure insane, to put it in simple terms. You would think it's just gonna be another mecha game that you fight against kauji at the very beginning of the game, and it is for the most part. However there is just soooo much more that goes behind the scenes with the kauji invasion.
One of the coolest parts of the game is how you can go through the story and unravel the mystery in many different ways since you play through the story throughout the perspective of 13 characters and each character add a puzzle piece to the overall story. Since you can hop around the characters' stories at any given time, no two people going to have the exact same experience with the story. The way the story is even told like this and it still very coherent without falling apart is just honestly a testament to writing ability.
Things not going to make sense at all very early on and you probably won't get the overall picture until the very end of the game. In fact, if I told you the ending of the game when you start the game, you probably won't believe me since it seems like it's that far-fetched. The game is a constant plot-twisting adventure with a lot of mind-blowing reveals that you just wondering how that even makes sense. The most I will say without spoiling anything more than the first hour of the game masterfully incorporate nearly every major Sci-Fi subgenre and you wouldn't even realize it at first.
One of the things I really love is the aesthetics. The art is just gorgeous and well animated since it looked hand-painted and I actually appreciate the fact that the characters actually looked like Japanese people with dark eyes and realistic hair colors. It's honestly really refreshing considering so many Japanese games have a super colorful cast with appearances. So when I heard someone said 13 Sentinels was a "generic anime game" and I was ?????? since the game barely looks like something you would see from your everyday anime. The OST is great as well since it's a mix of electronic, ambient, and orchestral music and it adds a lot to the emotion with certain scenes.
Not to mention none of the characters don't act tropey as you see in anime. Rather most of them behave like believable teens in high school and there are no clear-cut black morality evil characters. A lot of these characters just trying to live their everyday life in high school rather than being this grand action hero until they're forced to do so. Nearly everyone in the game is mortally grey and their complex motivations add a lot of depth to the already expansive and puzzling story. Character relationships also done well since they add another dimension to their writing and their motivations. It is just nice to have a lot of flawed but believable characters that aren't overly exaggerated with their personality.
There is actual gameplay as well, the tower defense RTS mode. Overall it feels like a side game and it didn't really need it but it's still cool to actually fight against the kauji with the pilots. There is actually a surprising amount of depth with the gameplay since you can level up stats and abilities and there are 4 different types of Sentinels you can use for different situations and strategies. At first, it might seem like it's just a tackled-on mode but it gets challenging as you make progress and you got to actually think ahead with what you going to do with your Sentinels. Not to mention you can't use everyone all of the time, so there's that to consider as well. I can safely say there's a lot of decent effort put into the RTS mode. Plus you still get chunks of character interaction and info you don't get in the main story mode as well.
13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim is just a purely amazing game with very few flaws. It's my personal game of the year (yes I even love 13 Sentinels more than I love Cold Steel 4), It's very close to my all-time favorite game (just right behind Steins; Gate) and overall one of my favorite stories period, not just in games. In fact, I think this, Steins; Gate and 20th Century Boys is my holy trinity as far as my favorite Sci-Fi stories. I haven't experienced anything that mixes Sci-Fi, Mystery, and Psychological so well in a very long time and those are my favorite genres, so no surprise the game click with me so well. I don't care what The Game Awards say, The Last of Us part 2 didn't deserve to win Best Narrative, this game does right here. And it's so sad very few people didn't even hear about this game, let alone play it. If you love a good story, then please play this game. 13 Sentinels is going down as one of the things I will shill so more people can play it. It's a criminally underrated masterpiece.
The story for this game is just pure insane, to put it in simple terms. You would think it's just gonna be another mecha game that you fight against kauji at the very beginning of the game, and it is for the most part. However there is just soooo much more that goes behind the scenes with the kauji invasion.
One of the coolest parts of the game is how you can go through the story and unravel the mystery in many different ways since you play through the story throughout the perspective of 13 characters and each character add a puzzle piece to the overall story. Since you can hop around the characters' stories at any given time, no two people going to have the exact same experience with the story. The way the story is even told like this and it still very coherent without falling apart is just honestly a testament to writing ability.
Things not going to make sense at all very early on and you probably won't get the overall picture until the very end of the game. In fact, if I told you the ending of the game when you start the game, you probably won't believe me since it seems like it's that far-fetched. The game is a constant plot-twisting adventure with a lot of mind-blowing reveals that you just wondering how that even makes sense. The most I will say without spoiling anything more than the first hour of the game masterfully incorporate nearly every major Sci-Fi subgenre and you wouldn't even realize it at first.
One of the things I really love is the aesthetics. The art is just gorgeous and well animated since it looked hand-painted and I actually appreciate the fact that the characters actually looked like Japanese people with dark eyes and realistic hair colors. It's honestly really refreshing considering so many Japanese games have a super colorful cast with appearances. So when I heard someone said 13 Sentinels was a "generic anime game" and I was ?????? since the game barely looks like something you would see from your everyday anime. The OST is great as well since it's a mix of electronic, ambient, and orchestral music and it adds a lot to the emotion with certain scenes.
Not to mention none of the characters don't act tropey as you see in anime. Rather most of them behave like believable teens in high school and there are no clear-cut black morality evil characters. A lot of these characters just trying to live their everyday life in high school rather than being this grand action hero until they're forced to do so. Nearly everyone in the game is mortally grey and their complex motivations add a lot of depth to the already expansive and puzzling story. Character relationships also done well since they add another dimension to their writing and their motivations. It is just nice to have a lot of flawed but believable characters that aren't overly exaggerated with their personality.
There is actual gameplay as well, the tower defense RTS mode. Overall it feels like a side game and it didn't really need it but it's still cool to actually fight against the kauji with the pilots. There is actually a surprising amount of depth with the gameplay since you can level up stats and abilities and there are 4 different types of Sentinels you can use for different situations and strategies. At first, it might seem like it's just a tackled-on mode but it gets challenging as you make progress and you got to actually think ahead with what you going to do with your Sentinels. Not to mention you can't use everyone all of the time, so there's that to consider as well. I can safely say there's a lot of decent effort put into the RTS mode. Plus you still get chunks of character interaction and info you don't get in the main story mode as well.
13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim is just a purely amazing game with very few flaws. It's my personal game of the year (yes I even love 13 Sentinels more than I love Cold Steel 4), It's very close to my all-time favorite game (just right behind Steins; Gate) and overall one of my favorite stories period, not just in games. In fact, I think this, Steins; Gate and 20th Century Boys is my holy trinity as far as my favorite Sci-Fi stories. I haven't experienced anything that mixes Sci-Fi, Mystery, and Psychological so well in a very long time and those are my favorite genres, so no surprise the game click with me so well. I don't care what The Game Awards say, The Last of Us part 2 didn't deserve to win Best Narrative, this game does right here. And it's so sad very few people didn't even hear about this game, let alone play it. If you love a good story, then please play this game. 13 Sentinels is going down as one of the things I will shill so more people can play it. It's a criminally underrated masterpiece.
Ar Norsuge is the 5th game in the Exa Pico universe developed by Gust. the very start of the game establishes the last of humanity traveling in a spaceship for 5000 years in search of a new planet after the destruction of their previous homeland, Ra Ciela. During the search, Humanity also engages in a war with the Sharls inside the spaceship, fairy-like creatures made with song magic. Song Magic is the kind of magic that is executed through singing, which allows the singer to convert their emotions into energy that can be used for manifesting their fantasies in the real world in order to attack, support or heal. There are also humans that worship the Sharls as the new saviors of humanity and abduct them. However, there are also humans, cryogenically frozen from when Ra Ciela existed, who possess the ability to use and weave song magic to fight back against the Sharls.
And you know what, that introduction to Ar Norsuge is just the first 5 minutes of the game, even before the game’s first set of protagonists, Delta and Cass, get introduced in the game. And the second set of protagonists, Ion and Earthes, do not get introduced until later on. Ar Norsuge is an incredible story-focused game filled with exploring the complicated depths of human emotions and feelings buried inside all of us and how we communicate those emotions. Even if those emotions are hidden away because they’re dark, ugly, and generally feel that the person is afraid to express to others. Plus there are a lot of plot twists involving the war against humans and Sharls and who is manipulating both sides and how far someone will go to obtain their desires and wishes. Not to mention, the player themself participate in a major role in the game. As Ar Norsuge has an incredibly strong emphasis on player immersion and their emotions towards the story, creating a tale that can only function as a video game and would be impossible to adapt as any other medium.
There’s a much stronger sense in storytelling in Ar Norsuge, even for RPG standards as there is a minimum amount of focus in combat due to the lack of enemies to fight in each area. Instead, Ar Norsuge features multiple forms of storytelling and dialogue among the cast, alongside the main plot such as Genometrics and Soulscapes and synthesizing items.
First of all, the overall soundtrack and OST must be noted. Since the series is built around song magic and singing, music is an essential part of the game. It’s more than a passive element in games or sound to fill up a background. The songs often reflect the feelings of the user and since music is often a shell for different emotions, there are various genres at play. Such as metal to represent anger and aggression, to soft piano ballads to represent somber and melancholy. While fusing with the game’s overall genres of ambient electronic and intercultural world, to give a sense of the setting taking place in a sci-fi universe with uncharted unknowns within the spaceship and beyond. Music in Ar Norsuge is more than a passive element, it’s a direct interaction in the game.
Gameplay is incredibly unique with different fundamental mechanics standards in the gerne. Rather than fighting as a party in nearly every turn-based game, you only fight as one pair. Plus it will remain your turn until you run out of attacks to perform. One person (which is Delta or Earthes) directly attacks and engages with the enemies in waves while the other (Which is Cass or Ion) will sing their song magic to charge up the burst meter. The higher it’s charged up, the more power the song magic will have to wipe out enemies in waves and end the battle faster. At first, it may seem like a complicated battle system to understand but the depth of combat is quite simple. Once introduced, the gameplay remains the same barring new song magic and support attacks to unleash. It’s very shallow but Ar Norsuge is less focused on combat and grinding. So it would serve little purpose to create more complex gameplay.
Instead one of the biggest elements of gameplay is Soulscapes and diving into a person’s mind and heart using dive and wave technology, to simplify it a lot. These Soulscapes function as a visual novel and you must select the correct choices to complete their dive. Otherwise, the diver will be forced off the person’s mind. A person’s Soulscape is often, while comedic, exaggerated, and nonsensical, it’s ultimately an analogy of their deep-rooted issues within themselves, such as a war between the Tsun Kingdom and Dere Empire for the very first one (and I will assume everyone knows how is a tsundere is written). Completing these Soulscapes will grant new song magic to use. However, these Soulscapes will slowly merge more and more into reality and their surface feelings around their other peers.
Another element that features an abundance of dialogue is synthesis when the player gathers materials in areas and creates items and equipment for the player for combat. Although synthesis is nowhere as deep and complex as an Atelier game (Gust’s mainline series) that focuses on synthesis as the main gameplay element. However for its lack of gameplay mechanics, Ar Norsuge makes up for its huge amount of talk events after the first creation for every item crafted, there are nearly 380 talk events to discover between all 4 shops and each pair has different talk events for every item. These talk events humanize and give the characters far more authentic personalities and create organic relationships and with various interests and reactions to different topics and subjects. Not to mention each shopkeeper has their own personal story throughout the game that one of the two pairs assists with and creates further characterization between the pair and the shopkeeper.
Ar Norsuge places heavy emphasis on bonding and understanding each other for relationship development. Purification ceremonies help strengthen the bond of the pairs by placing crystals on each others’ bodies and talking in a relaxed atmosphere surrounded by pools of water. Although it may seem overly and unnecessary sexual for the characters to be half-naked during this process at first. It actually gives off a sense of vulnerability, intimacy, and revealing their true self to one other. Placing crystals can serve as stats boosts for combat while the majority of the talk topics are reflections and afterthoughts of what has happened elsewhere in the game. Humans often think back to past events and discuss them with a companion. Forging a sense of care, dependency, and reliability to build upon.
However, Ar Nosurge is not a flawless game by any means. There are some tired and even bothersome anime archetypes and tropes that insist on remaining present throughout the entire game regardless of the progress of a character’s development. It can reach a point when it can be counterproductive and ultimately hinder them due to a sense of reversal development. Also while the majority of the main plot is tightly written, there are a few plot beats near the end that are skimmed through or not explained well enough. Creating a few questions that could be possible plot holes in an otherwise spectacular epic that does not let up the entire time. To address a more neutral point, depending on how the player feels about sexuality. Ar Nosurge features plenty of sexual imagery and dialogue (Which I personally still don’t understand how it got away with a T rating). This can be seen as a good or bad thing depending on the player.
Despite the minimum flaws, Ar Nosurge excels as a story with its believable and organic characters, innovative and creative plot, and a sci-fi space opera (quite literally in ways) setting with its imaginative fantasy edges built around music and emotions. It’s one of the greatest games ever created due to the fact it completely utilizes the fact it’s a video game to the fullest extent beyond typical narrative structures and writing in RPGs, let alone all of gaming. It fluidly executes and explores multiple senses of moods and feelings, providing a grand sense of immersion. It is just simply a breathtaking experience that demands your presence and anyone that values storytelling and innovation need to play this game at least once. Very few games will offer a unique and fantastic adventure as Ar Nosurge does.
And you know what, that introduction to Ar Norsuge is just the first 5 minutes of the game, even before the game’s first set of protagonists, Delta and Cass, get introduced in the game. And the second set of protagonists, Ion and Earthes, do not get introduced until later on. Ar Norsuge is an incredible story-focused game filled with exploring the complicated depths of human emotions and feelings buried inside all of us and how we communicate those emotions. Even if those emotions are hidden away because they’re dark, ugly, and generally feel that the person is afraid to express to others. Plus there are a lot of plot twists involving the war against humans and Sharls and who is manipulating both sides and how far someone will go to obtain their desires and wishes. Not to mention, the player themself participate in a major role in the game. As Ar Norsuge has an incredibly strong emphasis on player immersion and their emotions towards the story, creating a tale that can only function as a video game and would be impossible to adapt as any other medium.
There’s a much stronger sense in storytelling in Ar Norsuge, even for RPG standards as there is a minimum amount of focus in combat due to the lack of enemies to fight in each area. Instead, Ar Norsuge features multiple forms of storytelling and dialogue among the cast, alongside the main plot such as Genometrics and Soulscapes and synthesizing items.
First of all, the overall soundtrack and OST must be noted. Since the series is built around song magic and singing, music is an essential part of the game. It’s more than a passive element in games or sound to fill up a background. The songs often reflect the feelings of the user and since music is often a shell for different emotions, there are various genres at play. Such as metal to represent anger and aggression, to soft piano ballads to represent somber and melancholy. While fusing with the game’s overall genres of ambient electronic and intercultural world, to give a sense of the setting taking place in a sci-fi universe with uncharted unknowns within the spaceship and beyond. Music in Ar Norsuge is more than a passive element, it’s a direct interaction in the game.
Gameplay is incredibly unique with different fundamental mechanics standards in the gerne. Rather than fighting as a party in nearly every turn-based game, you only fight as one pair. Plus it will remain your turn until you run out of attacks to perform. One person (which is Delta or Earthes) directly attacks and engages with the enemies in waves while the other (Which is Cass or Ion) will sing their song magic to charge up the burst meter. The higher it’s charged up, the more power the song magic will have to wipe out enemies in waves and end the battle faster. At first, it may seem like a complicated battle system to understand but the depth of combat is quite simple. Once introduced, the gameplay remains the same barring new song magic and support attacks to unleash. It’s very shallow but Ar Norsuge is less focused on combat and grinding. So it would serve little purpose to create more complex gameplay.
Instead one of the biggest elements of gameplay is Soulscapes and diving into a person’s mind and heart using dive and wave technology, to simplify it a lot. These Soulscapes function as a visual novel and you must select the correct choices to complete their dive. Otherwise, the diver will be forced off the person’s mind. A person’s Soulscape is often, while comedic, exaggerated, and nonsensical, it’s ultimately an analogy of their deep-rooted issues within themselves, such as a war between the Tsun Kingdom and Dere Empire for the very first one (and I will assume everyone knows how is a tsundere is written). Completing these Soulscapes will grant new song magic to use. However, these Soulscapes will slowly merge more and more into reality and their surface feelings around their other peers.
Another element that features an abundance of dialogue is synthesis when the player gathers materials in areas and creates items and equipment for the player for combat. Although synthesis is nowhere as deep and complex as an Atelier game (Gust’s mainline series) that focuses on synthesis as the main gameplay element. However for its lack of gameplay mechanics, Ar Norsuge makes up for its huge amount of talk events after the first creation for every item crafted, there are nearly 380 talk events to discover between all 4 shops and each pair has different talk events for every item. These talk events humanize and give the characters far more authentic personalities and create organic relationships and with various interests and reactions to different topics and subjects. Not to mention each shopkeeper has their own personal story throughout the game that one of the two pairs assists with and creates further characterization between the pair and the shopkeeper.
Ar Norsuge places heavy emphasis on bonding and understanding each other for relationship development. Purification ceremonies help strengthen the bond of the pairs by placing crystals on each others’ bodies and talking in a relaxed atmosphere surrounded by pools of water. Although it may seem overly and unnecessary sexual for the characters to be half-naked during this process at first. It actually gives off a sense of vulnerability, intimacy, and revealing their true self to one other. Placing crystals can serve as stats boosts for combat while the majority of the talk topics are reflections and afterthoughts of what has happened elsewhere in the game. Humans often think back to past events and discuss them with a companion. Forging a sense of care, dependency, and reliability to build upon.
However, Ar Nosurge is not a flawless game by any means. There are some tired and even bothersome anime archetypes and tropes that insist on remaining present throughout the entire game regardless of the progress of a character’s development. It can reach a point when it can be counterproductive and ultimately hinder them due to a sense of reversal development. Also while the majority of the main plot is tightly written, there are a few plot beats near the end that are skimmed through or not explained well enough. Creating a few questions that could be possible plot holes in an otherwise spectacular epic that does not let up the entire time. To address a more neutral point, depending on how the player feels about sexuality. Ar Nosurge features plenty of sexual imagery and dialogue (Which I personally still don’t understand how it got away with a T rating). This can be seen as a good or bad thing depending on the player.
Despite the minimum flaws, Ar Nosurge excels as a story with its believable and organic characters, innovative and creative plot, and a sci-fi space opera (quite literally in ways) setting with its imaginative fantasy edges built around music and emotions. It’s one of the greatest games ever created due to the fact it completely utilizes the fact it’s a video game to the fullest extent beyond typical narrative structures and writing in RPGs, let alone all of gaming. It fluidly executes and explores multiple senses of moods and feelings, providing a grand sense of immersion. It is just simply a breathtaking experience that demands your presence and anyone that values storytelling and innovation need to play this game at least once. Very few games will offer a unique and fantastic adventure as Ar Nosurge does.
Future Connected is 100% completed at just 14 hours, which is absolutely nothing to me. Did all side quests and quiet moments as well of course. Overall a big improvement from side questing and character writing from the main game even if I thought the plot was kinda weak and standard JRPG goofiness. Future Connected is basically almost like Xenoblade X with how it's written and I do not mind that at all.