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Played 57 hours of Fire Emblem: Three Hopes. I only completed Golden Wildfire but I may play the other 2 routes one day.
Me personally, I think this is a huge improvement from Three Houses from what I've played. For one, it helps a lot that the main protagonist, Shez is voiced and I feel like they have a lot of personality compared to Three Houses' protagonist Byleth that barely said anything and they was a silent character. And even when Byleth did speak and act in Three Hopes, they came off as very robotic and stiff.
There are a lot of similarities between the two games. Loads of supports (although I feel like Three Hopes have less than what you can get in a single playthrough) and I personally feel like the characters are far more likable and enjoyable. They still have thier flaws but it isn't as obnoxious or irritable compare to thier Three Houses counterparts. In fact, I like a few characters better now because of Three Hopes. The overall world-building, lore, and character writing are just as fantastic as it was in Three Houses. It's filled with plenty of political detail and depth.
You have a campbase that functions similarly to the Monastery but it's far more streamlined, smaller, and compressed. All of the services you can use such as training and cooking to boost support points, abilities, and class levels to a blacksmith to enchant weapons, and plenty of shops to buy items and trade resources to use to increase the functionality of these services. It's more focused without the fluff such as minigames or doing quests inside the campbase.
The huge difference is the gameplay since it functions like a Warrior game, you mainly do missions such as capture strongholds, defeat commanders and bosses, defend NPCs, and defeat a number of enemies within a certain time-limit. It can be repetitive but thanks to the game's class system and every character have thier own unique abilities and special attacks. There is some variation to the combat such as using different weapons and magic to attack. Not to mention you can still level up and increase stats just like any other Fire Emblem game. So while Three Hopes went from SRPG to musou action, it still retains the Fire Emblem DNA especially found in Three Houses.
My biggest complaint is very similar to one of my biggest complaint in Three Houses, the main story is incomplete and it ends in a cliffhanger, at least for Golden Wildfire but I will assume the same for the other two routes as well. I can easily say the plot is better well paced, there is a stronger focus on the epic political war drama between the nations and the routes drastically split off faster than in Three Houses. However, it is just unsatisfying to see how not all story beats presented does not get resolved or fulfilled.
Not to mention the game heavily assumed you played Three Houses since the game quickly breeze through the academy arc and many events that happened during that time are referred to a lot in conversations. So anyone that hasn't played Three Houses would be left out of the loop a lot despite the two games having separate timelines.
Overall, I can say while the action gameplay can be hit or miss for some people depending on your preference for Warrior games and it does improve on some of the flaws in Three Houses while retaining some of the same mistakes, I say Three Hopes is a worthy playthrough if you want more content within the world of Foldan.
Me personally, I think this is a huge improvement from Three Houses from what I've played. For one, it helps a lot that the main protagonist, Shez is voiced and I feel like they have a lot of personality compared to Three Houses' protagonist Byleth that barely said anything and they was a silent character. And even when Byleth did speak and act in Three Hopes, they came off as very robotic and stiff.
There are a lot of similarities between the two games. Loads of supports (although I feel like Three Hopes have less than what you can get in a single playthrough) and I personally feel like the characters are far more likable and enjoyable. They still have thier flaws but it isn't as obnoxious or irritable compare to thier Three Houses counterparts. In fact, I like a few characters better now because of Three Hopes. The overall world-building, lore, and character writing are just as fantastic as it was in Three Houses. It's filled with plenty of political detail and depth.
You have a campbase that functions similarly to the Monastery but it's far more streamlined, smaller, and compressed. All of the services you can use such as training and cooking to boost support points, abilities, and class levels to a blacksmith to enchant weapons, and plenty of shops to buy items and trade resources to use to increase the functionality of these services. It's more focused without the fluff such as minigames or doing quests inside the campbase.
The huge difference is the gameplay since it functions like a Warrior game, you mainly do missions such as capture strongholds, defeat commanders and bosses, defend NPCs, and defeat a number of enemies within a certain time-limit. It can be repetitive but thanks to the game's class system and every character have thier own unique abilities and special attacks. There is some variation to the combat such as using different weapons and magic to attack. Not to mention you can still level up and increase stats just like any other Fire Emblem game. So while Three Hopes went from SRPG to musou action, it still retains the Fire Emblem DNA especially found in Three Houses.
My biggest complaint is very similar to one of my biggest complaint in Three Houses, the main story is incomplete and it ends in a cliffhanger, at least for Golden Wildfire but I will assume the same for the other two routes as well. I can easily say the plot is better well paced, there is a stronger focus on the epic political war drama between the nations and the routes drastically split off faster than in Three Houses. However, it is just unsatisfying to see how not all story beats presented does not get resolved or fulfilled.
Not to mention the game heavily assumed you played Three Houses since the game quickly breeze through the academy arc and many events that happened during that time are referred to a lot in conversations. So anyone that hasn't played Three Houses would be left out of the loop a lot despite the two games having separate timelines.
Overall, I can say while the action gameplay can be hit or miss for some people depending on your preference for Warrior games and it does improve on some of the flaws in Three Houses while retaining some of the same mistakes, I say Three Hopes is a worthy playthrough if you want more content within the world of Foldan.
2019
Finished Ys IX at 62 hours. Sadly I didn't get the perfect 100% I wanted. I'm somehow missing a monster and character entry but otherwise, I completed all side quests, did all bonding events, got all collectibles and treasures, fully mapped out the game, and defeated the optional superboss.
I enjoyed Ys IX much more than I thought. It's the Trails-like story presentation that really sold it for me such as the world-building, updating NPC dialogue, intricate side quests involving the cast and I had a lot of fun parkouring Balduq with the different Monstrum abilities. Plus all of the references from past Ys games were cool as well.
The gameplay is pretty solid and fast ARPG as expected from Ys with the different skills and strong emphasis on timed dodges and guards. Although I do wish there were more RPG elements such as more stats beyond strength and defense but at least there are plenty of ways to create better gear and gather resources and healing items especially if you do the side quests since the Dandelion is a really good base. Filled with useful NPCs.
My only complaint is the main plot. While in the end it became really great full of unforeseen crazy plot twists and deep lore, a huge chunk of the plot was very formulaic and a lot of the early story beats were painfully predictable. I just wished there was more variation in the storytelling for the main plot.
Overall I had a blast with Ys IX since this is the closest we will get to action Trails and it retains many of the great elements from that series within a single game. Ys fans may not be a fan of the Trails presentation but I personally love it a lot since it was a great balance between action and story. So I'm pleased to say Monstrum Nox has surpassed my expectations.
I enjoyed Ys IX much more than I thought. It's the Trails-like story presentation that really sold it for me such as the world-building, updating NPC dialogue, intricate side quests involving the cast and I had a lot of fun parkouring Balduq with the different Monstrum abilities. Plus all of the references from past Ys games were cool as well.
The gameplay is pretty solid and fast ARPG as expected from Ys with the different skills and strong emphasis on timed dodges and guards. Although I do wish there were more RPG elements such as more stats beyond strength and defense but at least there are plenty of ways to create better gear and gather resources and healing items especially if you do the side quests since the Dandelion is a really good base. Filled with useful NPCs.
My only complaint is the main plot. While in the end it became really great full of unforeseen crazy plot twists and deep lore, a huge chunk of the plot was very formulaic and a lot of the early story beats were painfully predictable. I just wished there was more variation in the storytelling for the main plot.
Overall I had a blast with Ys IX since this is the closest we will get to action Trails and it retains many of the great elements from that series within a single game. Ys fans may not be a fan of the Trails presentation but I personally love it a lot since it was a great balance between action and story. So I'm pleased to say Monstrum Nox has surpassed my expectations.
2022
I finished Soul Hackers 2 today at 53 hours. Tbh I didn't attempt to go for a 100% run since I didn't enjoy the gameplay outside of combat too much, especially the dungeons. But I've completed all requests including the main DLC ones and completed everyone's soul matrix up to 4F, which led me to the good ending of the game.
I say this is a pretty solid game that I didn't really understand the hate for when it was released. The story is definitely the main highlight here. The plot is well-paced enough and never overstays its welcome and despite there being only just 4 playable characters (which is one of the smallest party RPGs I've played in terms of playable characters), they have so much personality and depth (quite litterally actually since a huge point of the game is diving deeper into thier soul).
The vast number of hangout events, food reviews when you eat a new meal at the hideout, and even quick comments when you receive a new ability just flesh them out so well on top of how everyone is related to the main plot just flesh them out so well. It's definitely a quality-over-quantity value with the overall character writing. Even the other characters receive a surprising amount of development toward the end that plays well into the cybernetic themes of human development and what consists of a soul. My expectations were certainly surpassed by the overall story.
As much as I like the story, unfortunately, it has so many hiccups with the gameplay and I think the small budget hurts it a lot. The combat is very typical to Megami Tensei with using demons to battle other demons and summoners and I think that's solid for the most part. I believe other games in the series handle combat better (like the series' staple press turn is missing and I suppose it's replaced by commander skills) but it's serviceable enough for the most part.
But nearly all of the dungeons are either boring, repetitive, and empty or confusing to travel. Not to mention there is a lot of backtracking even for the main plot, let alone side quests when you would be backtracking far more often due to there aren't a lot of open areas to travel. There are even only just a few places to travel in the city hub despite thier colorful and eye-candy visuals.
In the end, if you can handle the drab and lackluster gameplay and dungeon exploring, then I believe Soul Hackers 2 is a worthy game to play for the story alone. It's by far a masterpiece by any means but I personally think it's enjoyable enough at the end of the day and it definitely doesn't overstay its welcome if you don't engage in the gameplay elements for too long.
I say this is a pretty solid game that I didn't really understand the hate for when it was released. The story is definitely the main highlight here. The plot is well-paced enough and never overstays its welcome and despite there being only just 4 playable characters (which is one of the smallest party RPGs I've played in terms of playable characters), they have so much personality and depth (quite litterally actually since a huge point of the game is diving deeper into thier soul).
The vast number of hangout events, food reviews when you eat a new meal at the hideout, and even quick comments when you receive a new ability just flesh them out so well on top of how everyone is related to the main plot just flesh them out so well. It's definitely a quality-over-quantity value with the overall character writing. Even the other characters receive a surprising amount of development toward the end that plays well into the cybernetic themes of human development and what consists of a soul. My expectations were certainly surpassed by the overall story.
As much as I like the story, unfortunately, it has so many hiccups with the gameplay and I think the small budget hurts it a lot. The combat is very typical to Megami Tensei with using demons to battle other demons and summoners and I think that's solid for the most part. I believe other games in the series handle combat better (like the series' staple press turn is missing and I suppose it's replaced by commander skills) but it's serviceable enough for the most part.
But nearly all of the dungeons are either boring, repetitive, and empty or confusing to travel. Not to mention there is a lot of backtracking even for the main plot, let alone side quests when you would be backtracking far more often due to there aren't a lot of open areas to travel. There are even only just a few places to travel in the city hub despite thier colorful and eye-candy visuals.
In the end, if you can handle the drab and lackluster gameplay and dungeon exploring, then I believe Soul Hackers 2 is a worthy game to play for the story alone. It's by far a masterpiece by any means but I personally think it's enjoyable enough at the end of the day and it definitely doesn't overstay its welcome if you don't engage in the gameplay elements for too long.
I obviously won't spoil any story beats but it's a very nice way to wrap up the Klaus saga while paving the way to the story of the base game of Xenoblade 3. I absolutely do not recommend playing Future Redeemed if you haven't played Xenoblade 1 or 2 since it spoils both games heavily, especially Xenoblade 1.
I'm not really a fan of the gameplay changes like finding upgrades for arts, gems and accessories slots. It just made progression feel like a chore but it's Xenoblade. The OWE and combat is still fun and even more dynamic to explore than ever and there's a lot to do at every corner. Not to mention there's a lot of challenging optional fights like the UMs. Plus community is back and updating NPC text is kino.
I really love the callbacks and fanservice as well. Again no spoilers but there are a few parts that had me like "Yoooooooooooo" and "OMG no way!" It just felt very rewarding to play previous games.
Overall I say Future Redeemed is a nice way to close out Xenoblade since Takahashi finally achieved his dream of telling an epic story that spans across multiple games fully. I am very curious about where Xeno will go as a franchise now!
I'm not really a fan of the gameplay changes like finding upgrades for arts, gems and accessories slots. It just made progression feel like a chore but it's Xenoblade. The OWE and combat is still fun and even more dynamic to explore than ever and there's a lot to do at every corner. Not to mention there's a lot of challenging optional fights like the UMs. Plus community is back and updating NPC text is kino.
I really love the callbacks and fanservice as well. Again no spoilers but there are a few parts that had me like "Yoooooooooooo" and "OMG no way!" It just felt very rewarding to play previous games.
Overall I say Future Redeemed is a nice way to close out Xenoblade since Takahashi finally achieved his dream of telling an epic story that spans across multiple games fully. I am very curious about where Xeno will go as a franchise now!
2023
"The path ahead may be dangerous..and you may even feel like giving up when the night is long and dark. But remember, in those times...Especially in those times...You don't need to walk alone. No path is too perilous so long as friends are at your side. Walk astride to the dawn. I hope that your journey...and the dawn that awaits are filled with light."
Stay up all night long to finish Octopeak Traveler 2 and I went for the 100% run at 89 hours with all sidequests and dungeons cleared and I talked to all NPCs thoroughly.
This is one of the greatest games I have ever played in my life and easily one of my favorite games of all time now. The plots, the interconnection, the lore, the characters, the gameplay. I just couldn't get enough of it. GOAT, raw, fire, kino, godly, peak. I loved Octopath 1 a lot but Octopeak 2 went the extra mile with its improvements to create something so beautiful and lovely. I even shed a tear during the final scenes and got really emotional.
I know it's just April but Octopath Traveler 2 is my GOTY and I don't think any other game can possibly dethrone it from that title barring FFXVI. I just love the entire journey from beginning to end and I was so excited when it was announced, I just had to get pre-order the CE. And my expectations were surpassed. Octopath 2 just reminds me why I love RPGs so much in the first place. I think this will be a game that will live among me in the coming years.
Stay up all night long to finish Octopeak Traveler 2 and I went for the 100% run at 89 hours with all sidequests and dungeons cleared and I talked to all NPCs thoroughly.
This is one of the greatest games I have ever played in my life and easily one of my favorite games of all time now. The plots, the interconnection, the lore, the characters, the gameplay. I just couldn't get enough of it. GOAT, raw, fire, kino, godly, peak. I loved Octopath 1 a lot but Octopeak 2 went the extra mile with its improvements to create something so beautiful and lovely. I even shed a tear during the final scenes and got really emotional.
I know it's just April but Octopath Traveler 2 is my GOTY and I don't think any other game can possibly dethrone it from that title barring FFXVI. I just love the entire journey from beginning to end and I was so excited when it was announced, I just had to get pre-order the CE. And my expectations were surpassed. Octopath 2 just reminds me why I love RPGs so much in the first place. I think this will be a game that will live among me in the coming years.
2022
I think it's one of the best games I've played, and it's a massive improvement from God of War 2018 in every way. The graphics are stunning and beautiful with a fantastic art direction to make the environments of the Nine Realms pop out as vividly and colorful as possible, from lust jungles to chilly snowscapes. Honestly, it's one of the most visually appealing games I've ever played and I think I would say the same even if I played it on PS4.
The combat and gameplay are almost the same from 2018 but it helps a lot it gets going much faster since you can use the blade of chaos almost immediately when you start the game and you obtain another weapon 2/3 into the game. You get pseudo-RPG elements like crafting weapons and armor, skill trees, different runic abilities, and amulets slots to increase stats.
My only personal grip is I wish Kratos could get stronger overtime without relying on overall equipment quality, such as a level system that isn't just gear level. It's honestly the one thing that is preventing me from calling Ragnarok a full-on RPG and I wish they commit to it but overall the game is fine with its equipment system is honestly more in-depth than the average action game.
The story is easily the biggest improvement from 2018 and the strongest part of the game. Unlike 2018 when Kratos and Atreus have a clear goal at the start and it's just all about the journey rather than the destination. Ragnarok has a more focused plot and it's unpredictable since the stakes are higher and the scope is grander. The story manages to achieve this well by setting how dire the situation around Kratos and Atreus is from the very start and it slowly builds up more and more.
It just had me hooked and wanting to play more and more until the end, especially with the plot twists near the end that not even I saw coming. The dual protagonist system between Kratos and Atreus being able to showcase different perspectives of the story serves well. And it especially highlights character themes such as trust in familial relationships, wanting to protect each other even if it means lying to them, dealing with grief and forgiveness across various characters around the father and son duo. It definitely has so much emotional payoff, I almost cried twice myself during the story.
Ragonrok just masterfully explores these character themes while still keeping the overall plot intact.
Not to mention there is just so much lore and world-building beyond the main story. Every side quest adds to either the Nine Realms' lore or fleshes out the characters to some degree and it's never just busy work or filter. That is something a lot of games struggle with these days. Even random objects such as poems or artifacts or even idle chat during travel shine on a small part of the characters' interests and pasts. Ragnarok engages the player with so much story and detail in almost every possible moment beyond cutscenes.
If I do have some minor quips, my only complaints besides the gear level system are the number of puzzles and how restricted movement is. I am aware God of War always had puzzles in between combat sections and story but it just felt so abundance and cryptic, I felt like I was dealing with puzzles every 5 minutes and it just hurts the flow of the combat-to-story loop of Ragnarok. That is to say, the quality of the puzzles is overall good and clever, I just wish they were fewer of them. Maybe that will also free up how restrictive it is to move around the game because revisiting areas to clean up the game feels a bit of a chore.
Besides a few gameplay designs I'm not much of a fan of, I have absolutely no complaints with the story at all and that is extremely rare for me to say in any piece of fiction, not just in video games. God of War Ragnarok took the dramatic storytelling with huge stakes and epic scopes of God of War 3 while combining it with the overall game design and philosophy of God of War 2018 to create the definitive and greatest God of War experience yet.
I was skeptical of the hype and how awarded it was at first but after experiencing Ragnarok for myself, this is one of the few pieces of art that lives up to its reputation extremely well and I fully understand every piece of praise it gets. This is truly one of the greatest games of all time, it's even peak fiction as far as I am concerned and that is something I don't say lightly at all. It does require some commitment as playing God of War 2018 is the bare minimum (the recap does not do any justice at all) but in the end, it's one of the best payoffs I've experienced in a story and I can easily recommend it anyone to do the same if they just want a raw, fantastic and amazing story.
Took me roughly 27 hours to complete both the light and darkness routes in Witch Spring 3 as well as watching the one exclusive scene in the true route (since it's just a combination of both aforementioned routes) and complete nearly all of the post-game.
I won't go super into detail with my final review of Witch Spring 3 since I just already talk about a lot of my thoughts as I was going along. However, it's a really emotional and unique spin on a witch named Eirudy, who is actually a deity, that lived in solitude and loneliness due to the hunting and hatred of witches. However, she soon meets new friends, humans and deities alike, that help her put an end to the witch hunting.
The gameplay is turn-based and you get a lot of options from melee combat with your sword, magic combat, and summoning dolls. There is no level system, instead, the only way to get stronger is by training Eirudy and raising her stats. You can raise her stats based on what build you want and the higher certain stats are, the more abilities Eirudy will unlock. You can also level up dolls based on how much vitality you have and you gain vitality based on defeating enemies.
My only complaint is...crafting just seems to be there just to be there. I personally didn't find it all that useful during my playthrough and only use it if I happened to have the right materials or for story reasons.
The story is the main selling point with its excellent Japanese voice acting and solid OST (there are also Korean voices but I never tried it, no English dub though).
Based on which route you choose, the story beats can range from heartwarming and wholesome to heartbreaking and devastating since Eirudy's development as a character and forming new relationships with the overall cast elevates the thematic plots.
Overall I just found Eirudy to be very loveable and the supporting cast is overall great with various personalities and motivations. It's not incredibly deep or thought-provoking but the straightforward story works very well for the type of tale the game wanted to tell.
Not to mention, there is a surprising amount of world-building and lore, especially in the post-game. The main story of Witch Spring 3 is very stand alone but the post-game seems to connect the other games with returning characters, including games that didn't exist at the time, and hints there is a much bigger world beyond the scope of Witch Spring 3 within the series. It definitely made me more interested in the rest of the games if anything.
The biggest flaw of Witch Spring 3 is just a lack of overall polish and it just generally feels very amateur and cheaply made. There are constant spelling and grammar errors in the text. The UI can be confusing due to the lack of names and descriptions. It's just pictures and sometimes you can misclick on the wrong selection.
Which is rough to deal with, especially during combat. The map system is clunky and you can get lost easily despite the fairly small world in the game. And the UI elements are just very plain and generic with no unique flair.
While these issues are minor by themselves, they all add up to just overall bad graphic design and it just hinders the game more than it should. Since you spend a lot of time navigating menus and reading and it just feels very clunky and undefined. I just generally feel like it's the one overall element that prevents Witch Spring 3 is a really great game.
Despite not every gameplay element working as well and it needed much more polishing and refinement with its overall graphic design. Witch Spring 3 is a beautiful and soul-wrenching story about a witch choosing her path to either stay kind and sweet to humanity despite her hardships or to truly become hated by everyone and lose all empathy for humanity by killing them instead. If you can deal with the clunkiness of playing through the game, then I can definitely recommend one of the most emotional tales I've experienced in recent memory to anyone.
I won't go super into detail with my final review of Witch Spring 3 since I just already talk about a lot of my thoughts as I was going along. However, it's a really emotional and unique spin on a witch named Eirudy, who is actually a deity, that lived in solitude and loneliness due to the hunting and hatred of witches. However, she soon meets new friends, humans and deities alike, that help her put an end to the witch hunting.
The gameplay is turn-based and you get a lot of options from melee combat with your sword, magic combat, and summoning dolls. There is no level system, instead, the only way to get stronger is by training Eirudy and raising her stats. You can raise her stats based on what build you want and the higher certain stats are, the more abilities Eirudy will unlock. You can also level up dolls based on how much vitality you have and you gain vitality based on defeating enemies.
My only complaint is...crafting just seems to be there just to be there. I personally didn't find it all that useful during my playthrough and only use it if I happened to have the right materials or for story reasons.
The story is the main selling point with its excellent Japanese voice acting and solid OST (there are also Korean voices but I never tried it, no English dub though).
Based on which route you choose, the story beats can range from heartwarming and wholesome to heartbreaking and devastating since Eirudy's development as a character and forming new relationships with the overall cast elevates the thematic plots.
Overall I just found Eirudy to be very loveable and the supporting cast is overall great with various personalities and motivations. It's not incredibly deep or thought-provoking but the straightforward story works very well for the type of tale the game wanted to tell.
Not to mention, there is a surprising amount of world-building and lore, especially in the post-game. The main story of Witch Spring 3 is very stand alone but the post-game seems to connect the other games with returning characters, including games that didn't exist at the time, and hints there is a much bigger world beyond the scope of Witch Spring 3 within the series. It definitely made me more interested in the rest of the games if anything.
The biggest flaw of Witch Spring 3 is just a lack of overall polish and it just generally feels very amateur and cheaply made. There are constant spelling and grammar errors in the text. The UI can be confusing due to the lack of names and descriptions. It's just pictures and sometimes you can misclick on the wrong selection.
Which is rough to deal with, especially during combat. The map system is clunky and you can get lost easily despite the fairly small world in the game. And the UI elements are just very plain and generic with no unique flair.
While these issues are minor by themselves, they all add up to just overall bad graphic design and it just hinders the game more than it should. Since you spend a lot of time navigating menus and reading and it just feels very clunky and undefined. I just generally feel like it's the one overall element that prevents Witch Spring 3 is a really great game.
Despite not every gameplay element working as well and it needed much more polishing and refinement with its overall graphic design. Witch Spring 3 is a beautiful and soul-wrenching story about a witch choosing her path to either stay kind and sweet to humanity despite her hardships or to truly become hated by everyone and lose all empathy for humanity by killing them instead. If you can deal with the clunkiness of playing through the game, then I can definitely recommend one of the most emotional tales I've experienced in recent memory to anyone.
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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.
2022
Finished Valkyrie Elysium at 33 hours, obtaining all 4 endings, and completed every single side quest they have to offer. As well as the post-game mode Hilde's Vengeance.
I don't think it's honestly a bad game as people like to make out of it. It's a very solid linear action game resembling the PS2 era. The gameplay loop is pretty fun with a variety of weapons and magic you could use to input various combos and you can unlock more inputs as you upgrade each weapon.
You can also get stronger with three skill trees that increase your attack, defense, hp, arts and soul gauges as well as unlocking technical moves such as quick evade, perfect parrying, counter-attacking etc.
The addition of Einherjar and each one of them has thier own element and assist you in battle add depth to the game by attacking enemies based on thier elemental weakness.
The overall story is severable. The plot is quite simple, as essentially you're are a Valkyrie created by Odin to collect souls in Midgard in order to save the world but as you progress the game, there is more than what meets the eyes.
I say the highlight is how Valkyrie slowly develops over time as she encounters more Einherjar that was once human and still maintains thier humanity even after death. The Einherjar in general, while not very deep and developed characters, they have lively enough personalities that are severable enough to carry throughout the game.
The endings can range in satisfaction but I think the true ending, as intended, is the best ending since it's the only ending that wraps up every plot point that was ongoing in the game and has some pretty nice final bosses.
That said, the more I played Valkyrie Elysium, the more it become very apparent it's a game with a very limited budget. You're always revisiting areas in side quests and even during the main story, there is a lot of backtracking.
Plus the game is filled with some technical issues during cutscenes like the lip-syncing is off. I even experience some slowdowns during combat, quite a lot of the time the framerate would drop.
And while I did not mind this, it's worth noting some people may not like how linear and repetitive the game is by nature. The overall flow of the game is you're at Asgard selecting a mission or talking to the few people there, you battle your way through, you find souls that will give you a sidequest (to be completed after you're done with your current mission), you complete the mission and rinse and repeat.
My biggest complaint however is...the game just feels empty and dead. To my understanding, the Valkyrie Profile series and Norse mythology, in general, were never overly populated a huge point of the game is purifying a dying world. But considering there are only 10-11 people in total in the game, excluding wandering souls. The game feels like it missing a lot of needed life.
It just feels like more could be done with the game's story such as more people at Asgard to receive quests, for example, to counter the emptiness of Valkyrie Elysium.
For better or for worse, Valkyrie Elysium stays true to the heyday of low-budget Japanese action games from the sixth generation. Those that are looking for deep world and character interaction will be very disappointed but all and all, I appreciate Valkyrie Elysium for what it is, a fun action game with great combat with a solid enough story that doesn't overstay its welcome, even if I believe more could be done with the Norse setting in Elysium if the game was allowed a bigger budget.
I don't think it's honestly a bad game as people like to make out of it. It's a very solid linear action game resembling the PS2 era. The gameplay loop is pretty fun with a variety of weapons and magic you could use to input various combos and you can unlock more inputs as you upgrade each weapon.
You can also get stronger with three skill trees that increase your attack, defense, hp, arts and soul gauges as well as unlocking technical moves such as quick evade, perfect parrying, counter-attacking etc.
The addition of Einherjar and each one of them has thier own element and assist you in battle add depth to the game by attacking enemies based on thier elemental weakness.
The overall story is severable. The plot is quite simple, as essentially you're are a Valkyrie created by Odin to collect souls in Midgard in order to save the world but as you progress the game, there is more than what meets the eyes.
I say the highlight is how Valkyrie slowly develops over time as she encounters more Einherjar that was once human and still maintains thier humanity even after death. The Einherjar in general, while not very deep and developed characters, they have lively enough personalities that are severable enough to carry throughout the game.
The endings can range in satisfaction but I think the true ending, as intended, is the best ending since it's the only ending that wraps up every plot point that was ongoing in the game and has some pretty nice final bosses.
That said, the more I played Valkyrie Elysium, the more it become very apparent it's a game with a very limited budget. You're always revisiting areas in side quests and even during the main story, there is a lot of backtracking.
Plus the game is filled with some technical issues during cutscenes like the lip-syncing is off. I even experience some slowdowns during combat, quite a lot of the time the framerate would drop.
And while I did not mind this, it's worth noting some people may not like how linear and repetitive the game is by nature. The overall flow of the game is you're at Asgard selecting a mission or talking to the few people there, you battle your way through, you find souls that will give you a sidequest (to be completed after you're done with your current mission), you complete the mission and rinse and repeat.
My biggest complaint however is...the game just feels empty and dead. To my understanding, the Valkyrie Profile series and Norse mythology, in general, were never overly populated a huge point of the game is purifying a dying world. But considering there are only 10-11 people in total in the game, excluding wandering souls. The game feels like it missing a lot of needed life.
It just feels like more could be done with the game's story such as more people at Asgard to receive quests, for example, to counter the emptiness of Valkyrie Elysium.
For better or for worse, Valkyrie Elysium stays true to the heyday of low-budget Japanese action games from the sixth generation. Those that are looking for deep world and character interaction will be very disappointed but all and all, I appreciate Valkyrie Elysium for what it is, a fun action game with great combat with a solid enough story that doesn't overstay its welcome, even if I believe more could be done with the Norse setting in Elysium if the game was allowed a bigger budget.
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.
Finished Rhapsody A Musical Adventure at just 9 and a half hours. It's easily the shortest RPG I've ever played in my life. The story is cute and something you would see in a Disney princess movie. Not to mention it's filled with musical scores (as the name implies) it's nothing wow or amazing and the story isn't written super deeply but it's charming and it had a lot of funny dialogue too to keep things lighthearted and entertaining for the most part. Not to mention near the end of the game surprisingly have some really emotional tear-jerking moments. My only real complaint is due to the length of the game and there are only a few songs, it hardly felt like a musical most of the time.
However, the gameplay was just not that enjoyable. Rhapsody supposes to be an SRPG but it's so simple and easy, it just felt like a turn-based game with a grid slapped into it. The game is just so easy it's actually boring to play through. From my experience, I just one-shot all non-bosses most of the time. Not to mention the dungeons aren't good at all. It just basically the same dungeon design but in a different color for nearly all of them and some of them are really confusing to navigate. Not to mention, I just don't like how the game tells you nothing about what to do next but that is just standard for pre-PS2 RPGs. Also, there is a monster collecting element but it just feels like really tackled without much thought, considering you can easily get by the game by just using the same 3 puppets if you wanted to.
Overall, I just think Rhapsody would work better if it was just a 12-episode anime back in 1998. I have no real complaints about the story, it's cutesy, fun, funny, and told the tale it wanted to tell straight through without being convoluted. I just think the gameplay elements are just not really good if I have to be completely honest.
However, the gameplay was just not that enjoyable. Rhapsody supposes to be an SRPG but it's so simple and easy, it just felt like a turn-based game with a grid slapped into it. The game is just so easy it's actually boring to play through. From my experience, I just one-shot all non-bosses most of the time. Not to mention the dungeons aren't good at all. It just basically the same dungeon design but in a different color for nearly all of them and some of them are really confusing to navigate. Not to mention, I just don't like how the game tells you nothing about what to do next but that is just standard for pre-PS2 RPGs. Also, there is a monster collecting element but it just feels like really tackled without much thought, considering you can easily get by the game by just using the same 3 puppets if you wanted to.
Overall, I just think Rhapsody would work better if it was just a 12-episode anime back in 1998. I have no real complaints about the story, it's cutesy, fun, funny, and told the tale it wanted to tell straight through without being convoluted. I just think the gameplay elements are just not really good if I have to be completely honest.
2020
I finished Haven at just 15 and a half hours. Extremely short for my standards but honestly I needed a short game to change up the pace. I didn't expect much besides "Sci Fi couple game" but I ended up liking it much more than I thought. The game never felt stale at all despite there being only just two characters really. I enjoy Yu and Kay's interactions with the planet Source, finding all kinds of different things and talking about them while flowing around and enjoying each other's company with various activities. Plus they talk about thier past lives a lot, so that gives in a lot of lore with the setting and thier backgrounds.
Haven isn't really a plot-focused game at all since much of the time it's just about Yu and Kay exploring around and finding parts for thier ships to be repaired but I found it really cool towards the end of the game, the lore points and thier motivations start to form a plot to tie things up. The endings are very controversial from what I've read but I think the best ending possible to obtain in the game is a nice conclusion for Yu and Kay. Haven isn't a grand Sci-Fi epic with dozens of characters and deep world-building. It is all about the love and romance between Yu and Kay and how nothing can keep thier love apart and I personally think that was what the entire game was trying to emphasize and I think it did very well with delivering that theme, even if I can agree easily way more could be done with the lore points. But I appreciate the story Haven wanted to tell.
My only real complaint is the gameplay. The survival elements weren't too bad and I really really like how not a single living soul dies in the game because essentially every game have death in some sort of way. However, I just found the combat very...clunky? The ATB combat is simple and holding down the button to do commands just doesn't work for me sometimes? And trying to use items is just very clunky to perform. Plus while Haven gets called as an RPG, I just found so many essential RPG elements to be missing that I rather just call it an adventure game. Not to mention, exploration can be maze-like here and there because you have to find a certain flow thread to exit the area and those can be tricky to find. The gameplay isn't awful, in fact, I think it's passable for the most part, but I definitely thought it needed more fine-tuning and polish.
Minor gameplay complaints and false RPG advertisement aside. Haven is a very neat and comfy game and I overall really enjoy and got attached to the romance adventure. I recommend the game a lot if you want something quick, simple, and lighthearted that is still very character focused with the story.
Haven isn't really a plot-focused game at all since much of the time it's just about Yu and Kay exploring around and finding parts for thier ships to be repaired but I found it really cool towards the end of the game, the lore points and thier motivations start to form a plot to tie things up. The endings are very controversial from what I've read but I think the best ending possible to obtain in the game is a nice conclusion for Yu and Kay. Haven isn't a grand Sci-Fi epic with dozens of characters and deep world-building. It is all about the love and romance between Yu and Kay and how nothing can keep thier love apart and I personally think that was what the entire game was trying to emphasize and I think it did very well with delivering that theme, even if I can agree easily way more could be done with the lore points. But I appreciate the story Haven wanted to tell.
My only real complaint is the gameplay. The survival elements weren't too bad and I really really like how not a single living soul dies in the game because essentially every game have death in some sort of way. However, I just found the combat very...clunky? The ATB combat is simple and holding down the button to do commands just doesn't work for me sometimes? And trying to use items is just very clunky to perform. Plus while Haven gets called as an RPG, I just found so many essential RPG elements to be missing that I rather just call it an adventure game. Not to mention, exploration can be maze-like here and there because you have to find a certain flow thread to exit the area and those can be tricky to find. The gameplay isn't awful, in fact, I think it's passable for the most part, but I definitely thought it needed more fine-tuning and polish.
Minor gameplay complaints and false RPG advertisement aside. Haven is a very neat and comfy game and I overall really enjoy and got attached to the romance adventure. I recommend the game a lot if you want something quick, simple, and lighthearted that is still very character focused with the story.
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.