2023
I was considering rewriting my Steam review, but knowing how Steam works with "updated" reviews - they won't be shown to people on the home page, so no one will know what I think of this game. So I'll use Backloggd to write a review instead.
I should preface this by saying that I've been playing Counter-Strike since I was a kid. I remember the days of me and my brother looking through pirate forums to download those "NOSTEAM" cracks of 1.6 to play together or on stuff like zombie servers and such.
I've always had an interest in Counter-Strike. In 2014, I decided to finally get CS:GO. That game...for better or worse, changed my life and who I am as a person. I don't wanna get too deep into it here, you can read my Steam review linked above to get an understanding of what I'm talking about.
Counter-Strike 2 itself...well...I like the game for what it's worth. It's still the same old CS:GO for the most part that I remember playing. And that was fully intentional - Valve was rather open with the fact that CS2 was meant to be the "same game", its whole purpose - update the engine and open up the framework to allow for bigger things for the game in the future. That was the whole point.
But Counter-Strike 2 launched far too early. I'm sure everyone's heard this saying, but it bares repeating and this is not something we should let Valve sweep under the rug. Counter-Strike 2 launched unfinished. Missing game modes, no new content, poorly thought out reworks to Competitive, the list goes on and on.
As of January 5th, 2024, we are still missing:
- All of the War Games (Arms Race / Demolition / Flying Scoutsman / Retakes)
- Danger Zone
- A whole bunch of maps
Say whatever you want about those modes "not being popular" or whatever else you want. I agree that stuff like Demolition was never played (you were barely ever able to find a match on CS:GO even when it was live) because of how poorly aged some of the modes were. That does not, however, excuse the removal of those modes without a formal explanation from Valve on their thought process behind them. I understand they revealed this in an interview later on, but why was a statement not provided ON LAUNCH?
Counter-Strike 2 launched with so little content that it's laughable. The "finished product" is practically identical to the Limited Test from March 2023. With egregious issues such as misaligned hitboxes and "elevator boosts" being a thing ON RELEASE. On what is supposed to be a "finished product". Yes, I understand they fixed these issues and are continuing to fix them with weekly updates, but that is not the point. They are fixing things that were not even broken to begin with in CS:GO.
There's more stuff to mention, like how MR12 hasn't had its economy modified to compensate. The current way the economy in CS2 is balanced is still towards MR15 (a.k.a. first to 16 wins). This genuinely makes matches in Counter-Strike 2 completely unbalanced towards the winning side.
Speaking of Competitive mode - Premier was straight up broken on release. To the point Valve had to recalibrate all of the Premier ranks for EVERYONE. My Premier rating went from 8000 to 15000 in one match when they finished it, which is like....what? So what's my actual rating?
And regular Competitive has just become the new Unranked. Several times I've queued into a match that was completely one-sided. Sometimes to my benefit and I do 28 kills in a single game and solo-carry my team, or my team has one good player and the enemy is a 5-stack who used to be Global Elite in CS:GO and played FACEIT at like 2k ELO. It's just not fun.
There is so much more I can go over that CS2 fundamentally broke, but there are dozens and dozens of Counter-Strike content creators saying this already all over the place, I'm sure you don't need me repeating it here.
As of January 2024, I still do not recommend Counter-Strike 2. This is such a bad release from Valve that I'm shocked they okay'ed this to begin with. I would still recommend people hold off on Counter-Strike 2 for at least another year and wait until Valve properly addresses the game's issues, at least until the game is feature-complete. Right now - it's not.
The worst part is that you cannot play CS:GO on the official servers anymore. Yes, Valve did give us the option to download the legacy CS:GO build through the Betas tab, but all that is good for is offline/workshop content or community servers. And good luck finding any actually good community servers, believe me - I tried.
It's so saddening to see the state Counter-Strike 2 is, especially as a long-time player of the game. I wanted to like Counter-Strike 2.
I should preface this by saying that I've been playing Counter-Strike since I was a kid. I remember the days of me and my brother looking through pirate forums to download those "NOSTEAM" cracks of 1.6 to play together or on stuff like zombie servers and such.
I've always had an interest in Counter-Strike. In 2014, I decided to finally get CS:GO. That game...for better or worse, changed my life and who I am as a person. I don't wanna get too deep into it here, you can read my Steam review linked above to get an understanding of what I'm talking about.
Counter-Strike 2 itself...well...I like the game for what it's worth. It's still the same old CS:GO for the most part that I remember playing. And that was fully intentional - Valve was rather open with the fact that CS2 was meant to be the "same game", its whole purpose - update the engine and open up the framework to allow for bigger things for the game in the future. That was the whole point.
But Counter-Strike 2 launched far too early. I'm sure everyone's heard this saying, but it bares repeating and this is not something we should let Valve sweep under the rug. Counter-Strike 2 launched unfinished. Missing game modes, no new content, poorly thought out reworks to Competitive, the list goes on and on.
As of January 5th, 2024, we are still missing:
- All of the War Games (Arms Race / Demolition / Flying Scoutsman / Retakes)
- Danger Zone
- A whole bunch of maps
Say whatever you want about those modes "not being popular" or whatever else you want. I agree that stuff like Demolition was never played (you were barely ever able to find a match on CS:GO even when it was live) because of how poorly aged some of the modes were. That does not, however, excuse the removal of those modes without a formal explanation from Valve on their thought process behind them. I understand they revealed this in an interview later on, but why was a statement not provided ON LAUNCH?
Counter-Strike 2 launched with so little content that it's laughable. The "finished product" is practically identical to the Limited Test from March 2023. With egregious issues such as misaligned hitboxes and "elevator boosts" being a thing ON RELEASE. On what is supposed to be a "finished product". Yes, I understand they fixed these issues and are continuing to fix them with weekly updates, but that is not the point. They are fixing things that were not even broken to begin with in CS:GO.
There's more stuff to mention, like how MR12 hasn't had its economy modified to compensate. The current way the economy in CS2 is balanced is still towards MR15 (a.k.a. first to 16 wins). This genuinely makes matches in Counter-Strike 2 completely unbalanced towards the winning side.
Speaking of Competitive mode - Premier was straight up broken on release. To the point Valve had to recalibrate all of the Premier ranks for EVERYONE. My Premier rating went from 8000 to 15000 in one match when they finished it, which is like....what? So what's my actual rating?
And regular Competitive has just become the new Unranked. Several times I've queued into a match that was completely one-sided. Sometimes to my benefit and I do 28 kills in a single game and solo-carry my team, or my team has one good player and the enemy is a 5-stack who used to be Global Elite in CS:GO and played FACEIT at like 2k ELO. It's just not fun.
There is so much more I can go over that CS2 fundamentally broke, but there are dozens and dozens of Counter-Strike content creators saying this already all over the place, I'm sure you don't need me repeating it here.
As of January 2024, I still do not recommend Counter-Strike 2. This is such a bad release from Valve that I'm shocked they okay'ed this to begin with. I would still recommend people hold off on Counter-Strike 2 for at least another year and wait until Valve properly addresses the game's issues, at least until the game is feature-complete. Right now - it's not.
The worst part is that you cannot play CS:GO on the official servers anymore. Yes, Valve did give us the option to download the legacy CS:GO build through the Betas tab, but all that is good for is offline/workshop content or community servers. And good luck finding any actually good community servers, believe me - I tried.
It's so saddening to see the state Counter-Strike 2 is, especially as a long-time player of the game. I wanted to like Counter-Strike 2.
Man, what a tragedy. In my old review for Underground, which was very brief, I mentioned that Underground was a great game for its era but felt horrible to revisit.
I had watched tons of videos on both Underground games and how time has not been kind to these games. Even making my own video back in 2014, stating why I don't like the Underground games. While I don't agree with that old video (I won't be linking it because it's honestly not very good), the sentiment I had formed 9 years ago about not liking these games has, unfortunately, stuck.
NFS Underground, especially in 2023, is quite a painful game to revisit. Its dated mechanics, its - at times - unfinished presentation, its brutal difficulty...let's get into it.
Story
Admittedly, I never cared for Underground's story. Even as a kid when I first played it in 2004 or 2005, I always skipped the cutscenes because I found them to be highly inconsequential. That sentiment has never really changed surrounding the story - it's weak, but at the same time - it's very clear that it's not something that the developers really wanted you to focus on, considering how for most of the game - it's really taking a back seat.
The writing is very "of its time", especially the slang you hear some of the characters speak, which, in 2023, honestly is funny to hear, and even charming at times. Much like later games in the series, such as Most Wanted & Carbon, the way the dialogue and cutscenes have aged almost make it endearing & funny to listen to. Cringy, yes, but endearing all the same.
Gameplay
Oh boy. This is the part of the game that really gets me about Underground, why I don't like it, and why I practically never revisit this game. For the record, as of writing this review, I had just finished an Underground playthrough on my stream. And the final 20 or so races, quite literally, had me straight up raging, yelling & throwing my controller at how frustrating the game gets. But lets take it one step at a time.
In terms of how the game feels to play - how it feels to drive the cars - it's actually good and still holds up. This 20 year old game actually has better driving mechanics than even some racing games releasing to this very day. Cars are, for the most part, really grippy and quick, and straight forward to pick up & drive. Genuinely, I think Underground has a fantastic driving model.
Where the gameplay begins to fall apart, however, is with two things - level design & difficulty.
Underground, unlike its sequel and many later releases in the series, does not have a free roam map to roam around. Instead, you have a small city map (and I really mean small) that the game gives you linear courses to race on. The big issue with the level design is how many times you'll find yourself randomly spinning your car out or hitting a brick wall completely stopping you dead in your tracks. Some of the tracks you drive in even have very sharp 90 degree, or even lower than that, turns where if you try to go at them with any amount of speed - you will find yourself firmly planted into the wall, whereas if you break to take the corner properly - the AI will make use of that opening and slaughter you. There are also a few instances where you go into a tunnel and the tunnel has a bunch of pillars with small gaps in them, requiring near pixel-perfect driving to avoid. In the early-game - this is not an issue. The car you drive at the start is really slow that you'll find them difficult to hit. This becomes an issue later on in the game as you upgrade your car or get faster & faster cars. At speeds of 270 km/h or higher at times, it becomes practically impossible to dodge and you'll find yourself spamming the reset button, while the AI zooms past you without a care in the world.
Speaking of AI, difficulty is another aspect of Underground that really shows its age and what some of my personal friends call the game the "dark souls of racing games", though it'd be more accurate to say that Dark Souls has the difficulty of NFS Underground. Needless to say - this game is tough. Really tough. But not for any fair reasons, at least not how I see it. The fundamental difference between Dark Souls & NFS Underground, is Dark Souls is a difficult game by design - everything is meticulously crafted to be very challenging, yet fair & rewarding to those willing to dedicate themselves to it long enough & master the game. NFS Underground, however - no matter how good you are at this game, this game is here to remind you that no you're not.
The game has you pick between three difficulties - Easy, Medium and Hard. But here's the thing. It doesn't matter. The only difference between the three difficulties is the amount of cash you earn. And if you complete the game on the Hard difficulty (and I mean all of the races), you get a few extra magazines. What do those do? Nothing. Magazines are purely cosmetic additions, which serve to be more funny than cool & rewarding.
Even if you play NFS Underground on the Easy difficulty, the AI will still kick your ass. They WILL take corners at quite literally impossible speeds. They WILL effortlessly dodge any and all traffic, they WILL catch up to you regardless of the kind of lead you have. The AI simply does not care how good you are at the game. They will CHEAT to catch up to you. It's hard to put it into words, you need to see it to believe what kind of voodoo magic the AI can pull off in this game.
Lastly, drag races. These are, by far, the absolute worst part of the game. If you struggle doing Circuits, Sprints & Knockouts against your opponents for the reasons mentioned above - drag races are here to kick you in the dick. They are BRUTALLY difficult, ESPECIALLY the drag race at the end of the game where you have to race against 3 RX-7s. That race genuinely made me think that no one at BlackBox play-tested that race to see if it's even remotely possible to beat. It took me 20+ attempts to do it, and even then I won by a very slim margin of 0.18s. Literally pure, dumb luck. What makes drag races especially challenging is the fact that the window to hit a Perfect Shift, which is what you want as that gives you the biggest benefit, is so absurdly tiny. It's so small, that it's easier to just listen to the car's engine noise rather than watching the indicator, and even with that it remains a complete crap-shoot.
Talking a little bit more positively about this game, I think car customization was handled pretty well. Unlike in its sequel, Underground doesn't require the car's star rating system for anything other than cosmetic upgrades for your car - vinyls, bumpers, window tints, etc. - you have the freedom to customize your car the way YOU want it, and that's genuinely something I think this game does much better than Underground 2.
Drift races also ended up being my favorite because it's the one mode where I felt like I could relax, and the one mode that actually corresponded to the difficulty that you choose. When I was doing a drift race, I honestly felt like I had some room to breathe and could relax from the chaos of the other modes.
The car list, while small featuring only 20 whole cars, feels very unique to this game. Some of the cars in this game, such as the Dodge Neon, Mitsubishi Lancer ES and Subaru Impreza 2.5 RS only ever appeared in this one game, while cars like the Peugeot 206, Nissan Sentra and Hyundai Tiburon Coupe only ever appeared in the Underground games. The car list of the first game in particular makes it stand out much more from Underground 2, as it's rather interesting to see cars that later games would replace for faster, fancier or newer versions of them. I personally think it's quite charming.
Graphics, optimization, sound
Graphically, for a 2003 game, NFS Underground looks really good. The visuals of the game I think are the one thing that has aged the best - Olympic City is striking & unique with its locales, such as the dam, Chinatown, the industrial complex, city center - everything has a very distinct feeling, the colors of each area pop & give them their own unique identity. Even after 20 years, Underground continues to look impressive for its time. The one thing I wish they didn't include, however, is the motion blur. On the PC version you can freely turn it off, but if you're playing on a console like me with the PS2 version - the motion blur is pretty distracting as it smears the screen and makes it rather difficult to see where you're going at times.
The one thing I cannot knock the game for is its style - it was trying to cash in on the hype the Fast & Furious movies generated, and it managed to do that splendidly. However, some of the presentation, particularly the way the menus are handled, really feel unfinished & unpolished. Stuff like needing to explicitly hit "Continue" and then confirming with a Yes/No prompt just serves to break the flow of the game, rather than just hitting X to continue.
Optimization-wise, even when playing on the PS2 - I have noticed & felt many, many times when the game's framerate struggles. Several times it's happened where the game, at times, was going so fast, that the framerate dipped from a stable 30 to somewhere around 15. Keep in mind I was playing on actual, real hardware (both Fat & Slim models of the PS2) and not using an emulator. Many of the later games are way better optimized for the console, although aside from a dipping framerate at times - I did not experience any issues with the PS2 version.
The soundtrack slaps. NFS Underground kickstarted the trend of NFS games having an absolute slapper of a licensed soundtrack, and it really delivers. While I really find it funny that the main theme of this game is Lil Jon's "Get Low" (albeit VERY heavily censored), a lot of the game has some genuinely great rock music that I listen to personally even to this day. Dare I say - this has one of the best soundtracks of any racing game to this day, period.
Conclusion
What a shame. When I finished my playthrough on-stream for the first time in 9 years (my previous playthrough was in 2014), I wanted to walk out of the whole experience feeling like I had always misunderstood Underground. That I'd end up really enjoying myself with the game. But sadly, I didn't.
The latter half of the game, with so many reused tracks, poor level design & frustrating rubberbanding AI that often loves to pull utterly impossible moves, smears the whole experience and makes Underground just an utterly frustrating game to revisit.
I wouldn't recommend this game in 2023. While I am nostalgic for this game, I appreciate this game being my gateway into the wider NFS franchise, as it was one of the first ever NFS games I played as a kid alongside Hot Pursuit 2, the game has, sadly, aged rather poorly, to the point where I couldn't have any fun with it.
Unless you are genuinely looking for a racing game to kick you in the balls and spit in your face with how difficult it gets & are willing to deal with antiquated design choices, I'd recommend steering far clear from NFS Underground.
This is one case of "never meet your heroes", and it's very safe to say that I am never revisiting Need for Speed: Underground ever again.
I had watched tons of videos on both Underground games and how time has not been kind to these games. Even making my own video back in 2014, stating why I don't like the Underground games. While I don't agree with that old video (I won't be linking it because it's honestly not very good), the sentiment I had formed 9 years ago about not liking these games has, unfortunately, stuck.
NFS Underground, especially in 2023, is quite a painful game to revisit. Its dated mechanics, its - at times - unfinished presentation, its brutal difficulty...let's get into it.
Story
Admittedly, I never cared for Underground's story. Even as a kid when I first played it in 2004 or 2005, I always skipped the cutscenes because I found them to be highly inconsequential. That sentiment has never really changed surrounding the story - it's weak, but at the same time - it's very clear that it's not something that the developers really wanted you to focus on, considering how for most of the game - it's really taking a back seat.
The writing is very "of its time", especially the slang you hear some of the characters speak, which, in 2023, honestly is funny to hear, and even charming at times. Much like later games in the series, such as Most Wanted & Carbon, the way the dialogue and cutscenes have aged almost make it endearing & funny to listen to. Cringy, yes, but endearing all the same.
Gameplay
Oh boy. This is the part of the game that really gets me about Underground, why I don't like it, and why I practically never revisit this game. For the record, as of writing this review, I had just finished an Underground playthrough on my stream. And the final 20 or so races, quite literally, had me straight up raging, yelling & throwing my controller at how frustrating the game gets. But lets take it one step at a time.
In terms of how the game feels to play - how it feels to drive the cars - it's actually good and still holds up. This 20 year old game actually has better driving mechanics than even some racing games releasing to this very day. Cars are, for the most part, really grippy and quick, and straight forward to pick up & drive. Genuinely, I think Underground has a fantastic driving model.
Where the gameplay begins to fall apart, however, is with two things - level design & difficulty.
Underground, unlike its sequel and many later releases in the series, does not have a free roam map to roam around. Instead, you have a small city map (and I really mean small) that the game gives you linear courses to race on. The big issue with the level design is how many times you'll find yourself randomly spinning your car out or hitting a brick wall completely stopping you dead in your tracks. Some of the tracks you drive in even have very sharp 90 degree, or even lower than that, turns where if you try to go at them with any amount of speed - you will find yourself firmly planted into the wall, whereas if you break to take the corner properly - the AI will make use of that opening and slaughter you. There are also a few instances where you go into a tunnel and the tunnel has a bunch of pillars with small gaps in them, requiring near pixel-perfect driving to avoid. In the early-game - this is not an issue. The car you drive at the start is really slow that you'll find them difficult to hit. This becomes an issue later on in the game as you upgrade your car or get faster & faster cars. At speeds of 270 km/h or higher at times, it becomes practically impossible to dodge and you'll find yourself spamming the reset button, while the AI zooms past you without a care in the world.
Speaking of AI, difficulty is another aspect of Underground that really shows its age and what some of my personal friends call the game the "dark souls of racing games", though it'd be more accurate to say that Dark Souls has the difficulty of NFS Underground. Needless to say - this game is tough. Really tough. But not for any fair reasons, at least not how I see it. The fundamental difference between Dark Souls & NFS Underground, is Dark Souls is a difficult game by design - everything is meticulously crafted to be very challenging, yet fair & rewarding to those willing to dedicate themselves to it long enough & master the game. NFS Underground, however - no matter how good you are at this game, this game is here to remind you that no you're not.
The game has you pick between three difficulties - Easy, Medium and Hard. But here's the thing. It doesn't matter. The only difference between the three difficulties is the amount of cash you earn. And if you complete the game on the Hard difficulty (and I mean all of the races), you get a few extra magazines. What do those do? Nothing. Magazines are purely cosmetic additions, which serve to be more funny than cool & rewarding.
Even if you play NFS Underground on the Easy difficulty, the AI will still kick your ass. They WILL take corners at quite literally impossible speeds. They WILL effortlessly dodge any and all traffic, they WILL catch up to you regardless of the kind of lead you have. The AI simply does not care how good you are at the game. They will CHEAT to catch up to you. It's hard to put it into words, you need to see it to believe what kind of voodoo magic the AI can pull off in this game.
Lastly, drag races. These are, by far, the absolute worst part of the game. If you struggle doing Circuits, Sprints & Knockouts against your opponents for the reasons mentioned above - drag races are here to kick you in the dick. They are BRUTALLY difficult, ESPECIALLY the drag race at the end of the game where you have to race against 3 RX-7s. That race genuinely made me think that no one at BlackBox play-tested that race to see if it's even remotely possible to beat. It took me 20+ attempts to do it, and even then I won by a very slim margin of 0.18s. Literally pure, dumb luck. What makes drag races especially challenging is the fact that the window to hit a Perfect Shift, which is what you want as that gives you the biggest benefit, is so absurdly tiny. It's so small, that it's easier to just listen to the car's engine noise rather than watching the indicator, and even with that it remains a complete crap-shoot.
Talking a little bit more positively about this game, I think car customization was handled pretty well. Unlike in its sequel, Underground doesn't require the car's star rating system for anything other than cosmetic upgrades for your car - vinyls, bumpers, window tints, etc. - you have the freedom to customize your car the way YOU want it, and that's genuinely something I think this game does much better than Underground 2.
Drift races also ended up being my favorite because it's the one mode where I felt like I could relax, and the one mode that actually corresponded to the difficulty that you choose. When I was doing a drift race, I honestly felt like I had some room to breathe and could relax from the chaos of the other modes.
The car list, while small featuring only 20 whole cars, feels very unique to this game. Some of the cars in this game, such as the Dodge Neon, Mitsubishi Lancer ES and Subaru Impreza 2.5 RS only ever appeared in this one game, while cars like the Peugeot 206, Nissan Sentra and Hyundai Tiburon Coupe only ever appeared in the Underground games. The car list of the first game in particular makes it stand out much more from Underground 2, as it's rather interesting to see cars that later games would replace for faster, fancier or newer versions of them. I personally think it's quite charming.
Graphics, optimization, sound
Graphically, for a 2003 game, NFS Underground looks really good. The visuals of the game I think are the one thing that has aged the best - Olympic City is striking & unique with its locales, such as the dam, Chinatown, the industrial complex, city center - everything has a very distinct feeling, the colors of each area pop & give them their own unique identity. Even after 20 years, Underground continues to look impressive for its time. The one thing I wish they didn't include, however, is the motion blur. On the PC version you can freely turn it off, but if you're playing on a console like me with the PS2 version - the motion blur is pretty distracting as it smears the screen and makes it rather difficult to see where you're going at times.
The one thing I cannot knock the game for is its style - it was trying to cash in on the hype the Fast & Furious movies generated, and it managed to do that splendidly. However, some of the presentation, particularly the way the menus are handled, really feel unfinished & unpolished. Stuff like needing to explicitly hit "Continue" and then confirming with a Yes/No prompt just serves to break the flow of the game, rather than just hitting X to continue.
Optimization-wise, even when playing on the PS2 - I have noticed & felt many, many times when the game's framerate struggles. Several times it's happened where the game, at times, was going so fast, that the framerate dipped from a stable 30 to somewhere around 15. Keep in mind I was playing on actual, real hardware (both Fat & Slim models of the PS2) and not using an emulator. Many of the later games are way better optimized for the console, although aside from a dipping framerate at times - I did not experience any issues with the PS2 version.
The soundtrack slaps. NFS Underground kickstarted the trend of NFS games having an absolute slapper of a licensed soundtrack, and it really delivers. While I really find it funny that the main theme of this game is Lil Jon's "Get Low" (albeit VERY heavily censored), a lot of the game has some genuinely great rock music that I listen to personally even to this day. Dare I say - this has one of the best soundtracks of any racing game to this day, period.
Conclusion
What a shame. When I finished my playthrough on-stream for the first time in 9 years (my previous playthrough was in 2014), I wanted to walk out of the whole experience feeling like I had always misunderstood Underground. That I'd end up really enjoying myself with the game. But sadly, I didn't.
The latter half of the game, with so many reused tracks, poor level design & frustrating rubberbanding AI that often loves to pull utterly impossible moves, smears the whole experience and makes Underground just an utterly frustrating game to revisit.
I wouldn't recommend this game in 2023. While I am nostalgic for this game, I appreciate this game being my gateway into the wider NFS franchise, as it was one of the first ever NFS games I played as a kid alongside Hot Pursuit 2, the game has, sadly, aged rather poorly, to the point where I couldn't have any fun with it.
Unless you are genuinely looking for a racing game to kick you in the balls and spit in your face with how difficult it gets & are willing to deal with antiquated design choices, I'd recommend steering far clear from NFS Underground.
This is one case of "never meet your heroes", and it's very safe to say that I am never revisiting Need for Speed: Underground ever again.
Unlike the rest of this website, I'm gonna be out here writing a positive review on this game. I am no stranger to expressing my disappointment with the Neptunia series for the last 6 or so years. I don't keep it a secret that I think the Neptunia series has been on a massive downwards trend after 2017's 4GO.
With the series starting out great, with tons of momentum generated not just by the first 3 games on the PS3, but with the Re;Birth series on the Vita & the Vita-exclusive spinoffs, which were eventually brought to PC, culminating with the release of VII back in 2015 - what I consider to be this series' best game overall, Neptunia looked like it was in a good spot. Decent games, tons of momentum and lots of fanfare from the diehard people following it along, myself included.
But ever since 2017, this series has been stagnant. The only things releasing for Neptunia were cash-grabby spinoff games that served to do nothing more than just to pad out the time. Neptunia stopped being treated as a series meant to parody the gaming industry, and instead turned to a series about being "nep = funny". As a hardcore Neptunia fan, it was heartbreaking to witness this firsthand, especially when the "secret 10 year anniversary project" ended up being a remake of a remaster of a remake of the first game for the PS5. It was genuinely heartbreaking to watch.
Out of nowhere, this game was announced. I didn't know what to think of it when I saw it. Another spinoff in the style of 4GO? Sure seemed like it based on the initial trailer of the game. But then I see the original Gamindustri from mk2, Victory & VII...but it wasn't that surprising, considering Neptunia U used the dimension from Re;Birth1 as the basis for its plot. But, "okay", I was thinking, "maybe we're finally getting a spinoff in the main timeline of Neptunia for once". The game comes out in Japan, and I start hearing whispers that the game is decent. And that the game is good. But I didn't pay it any mind because the Neptunia community loves doing things like giving a game a positive review because "has nep, nep funny" (wish that was a joke). I kept my hopes low and was expecting the worst either way.
So now the game is out in the West. I have the physical Calendar Edition for it. And I just came out of my first playthrough for the game. My emotions are all over the place for this game, and the high rating attached to the game might change over time, but...holy shit, I'm so happy to finally see a step in the right direction for the series. This game properly positively surprised me. It does so many things right for the series. And honestly - I wouldn't call this a spinoff title. I'd just call this a proper follow-up after VII, just with a different gameplay model. But either way, let's get into it.
Story
At first it was really difficult for me to pinpoint where the story takes place in relation to VII. Is it a sequel? Is it a prequel? Is it neither? Fortunately, rather early on the game does indeed establish that this game takes place after VII, as Uzume does get mentioned within the story...once. Yeah, once. So it at least establishes that the other characters are aware of Uzume, placing it firmly after the events of VII.
The story itself though...well, I thought the story overall was good. I genuinely enjoyed the story start to finish, with it basically catching Gamindustri up to the current gaming landscape from VII. The 2 new maker characters, who I won't spoil, were a genuine treat to see, especially since one of them is a direct reference to the publisher of another rather niche Japanese series. If you know, you know.
However, I do have some qualms with it. Namely the pacing of the story. For as good as the story is overall, I think its pacing is...bad. Each chapter of the game goes by stupidly fast, to the point it makes me wonder why they didn't combine several of the chapters into a few larger chapters. This game has 13 chapters overall, starting with Chapter 0 and ending with Chapter 12, yet some of the chapters genuinely last no longer than 40 minutes, and it just felt awkward. You talk to Histoire, get your next assignment, do one dungeon run and you're onto the next chapter, which was just...huh?
There was also another disappointing aspect of this game's story, which might sound silly, being the lack of many CGs throughout the entire game for key moments. Towards the end this was remedied, but throughout most of the game - there were actually very few "special" CGs for scenes which I would deem important, yet this game doesn't, apparently. I won't spoil anything, but you'll see what I mean if you play this game.
But aside from that, I appreciate the fact that the game has brought back a darker tone to the story, making it fall more in-line with the main games of the series of mk2, Victory and VII. The stakes are high and the risk all of the characters have to face is genuine, especially when it's revealed at the end what exactly it is they are dealing with. In a way, a lot of it reminds me of mk2 and its...infamous non-canon ending, which according to this game - could actually be canon in some fashion, which is an interesting thought experiment to have for those who have been around long enough.
Overall - good story for Neptunia, but poorly paced and structured. I still enjoyed it as a whole, but I'll admit it could have been better. Quality-wise and enjoyment-wise I would put it above mk2 but below VII in terms of how much I personally liked this game's story (with Victory being the best still for me).
Gameplay
Neptunia Sisters vs Sisters does, admittedly, feel like a huge downgrade in gameplay from 4 Goddesses Online, the previous hack & slash combat game that I played in the series. It took me a rather long time to get used to how this game's mechanics work and to have a decent time with its combat system, though I will admit I still think 4GO was much, much better in terms of gameplay.
Sisters vs Sisters feels like it's trying to find a happy medium of the JRPG entries of old and the combat mechanics established by this series' spinoff titles, such as Neptunia U, MegaTag & 4GO, yet the attempt here feels rather undercooked. There are many nitpicks about the gameplay that I disliked, but let's break them down one-by-one.
The combat was, initially, horribly clunky for me and it took me a few in-game chapters to actually get used to how fighting in this game worked. You traverse the dungeons of the game much like you would in any of the old JRPG entries - you are placed into a level with an "Event" marker showing you where your destination is and there are enemies around that you can Symbol Attack or just run into regularly that you fight. That much hasn't changed, however the main difference is that battles are no longer turn-based, rather - both you and your enemies attack each other at the same time. But the way the game flows & explains its combat mechanics is...unorthodox.
As an example, I did not know until halfway through the game that you can actually put up a shield to block attacks, or that you can dash out of the way to dodge attacks, however - I never ended up using this feature. On top of its mechanics being rather clunky, I didn't find them useful since once you're in a combo and attacking your foe - you cannot break out of it to put up a shield or to quickly dash away. You can do this if you equip a specific disc that you can develop, sure, but without it - once you're attacking, you're attacking, and if your enemy isn't stunlocked from your hits - good luck dodging anything coming your way. The implementation of these two mechanics just felt half-baked and not very intuitive, serving more to break the flow of gameplay rather than to engage me further in the combat. My strategy instead was to make my characters as tanky as possible and brute-force my way through everything.
Another thing I didn't end up using whatsoever throughout the entire game was the EXE drive. Yeah, not even once. I didn't really understand how it's even meant to be used, or how you charge the EXE meter to let you use it. Do you need to be in HDD mode to perform an EXE move? I don't know, the game never tells you. They show you that they exist, and there is a tutorial card explaining the EXE drive, but I didn't get how it works and ended up completely skipping it. It's been a trend that ever since they released Re;Birth3, Compile Heart has been needlessly changing around the EXE drive system for whatever reason, reducing its use with each subsequent release. The system was decent enough the way it was in mk2, Victory, Re;Birth1 and Re;Birth2, but the implementation was perfected in VII. Yet after that point, they sought out to fix what wasn't even broken to begin with, and that trend continues here too, sadly.
Lastly for my endless rant - I don't like most of the dungeons in this game. What doesn't help is that there are tons of reused dungeons and aesthetics. You see it was soon as chapter 1 of the game - you get 2 identical forest dungeons with the exact same layout, just with different entry/exit positions, different "safe zones" locations and different enemies. Otherwise, they're the same dungeon. And this happens throughout the whole game. Do you like Virtua Forest? Good, here's 5 more Virtua Forests, with some of them being at night to spice things up. Admittedly the old games did it too, especially the likes of mk2 & Victory, but it's just a shame that this is still a recurring issue.
With that out of the way, the gameplay otherwise I felt was fine. Without the clunky dashing & blocking mechanics, and completely ignoring the EXE system like I did for my playthrough, I found Neptunia Sisters vs Sisters overall to be a very comfortable experience. The combat, while repetitive and formulaic once you get the hang of it, is fast, frantic and fun. Difficulty-wise I had absolutely 0 issue with the game in any capacity. Dare I say that I found this game way too easy? To the point that I didn't "game over" even once. The closest I got was almost dying to one boss in Chapter 8, since 2 of my 3 party members just blindly ran into the boss and died, and here I was chipping away at the boss with Rom, who the boss for some reason never managed to land a hit on, no matter what I did. But while the mechanics were difficult to grasp at first, once I got the hang of it - no battles posed any real threat, which I don't know if this means the game is way too easy, or if I'm just good at the game. Probably the former rather than the latter.
Speaking of balance, I find it absolutely hilarious how some characters have been jacked up like crazy in terms of damage from the previous games. My party throughout 80% of the game consisted of Nepgear, Uni & Rom, mainly because I found these 3 to synergize perfectly with each other, as they all have combos that can directly lead into a follow-up attack from the other. But there's also one more thing - Rom. Rom is absolutely busted in this game. I don't know what kind of edibles Blanc fed her between VII and this game, but Rom is straight up the strongest character in this game, period, no questions asked. She used to be a dedicated support in the old games, with a limited health pool and limited offensive capability - they defined this as her role rather consistently in the older games. While she retains a few supportive abilities in SvS and her low health pool, her damage scaling has been jacked up to unbelievable degrees. Rom straight up shreds pretty much every single enemy in the game, there's nothing she wasn't able to handle. Remember when I mentioned 2 of my 3 characters dying in a boss battle during chapter 8? The one character that wasn't dead was Rom. Because I was able to effectively stunlock the boss as Rom and cheese my way to victory with her ridiculous magic attacks. Honestly I found this funny. By the endgame Nepgear can kinda rival Rom in terms of raw power, but Rom has the advantage of being a ranged character, whereas Nepgear is a melee-based character, meaning that Rom has a lower chance of getting stunlocked by the enemy.
Stepping away from the combat side of things, other parts of the game I think were handled well. Disc development is back in much of the same way as the older games, acting as a "choose your own stat buffs" thing, with you needing to develop discs in order to get what you're looking for. In this game, they sort of combined "Plans" and the scouting system into one universal system where you send out a Scout to develop a disc with a specific genre and bonus addon. I think the system here works fine enough and I did end up using it...until I realized all of my characters have everything they need, so once I got all the necessary discs for everyone - I kinda forgot about the disc system by the endgame.
The "Chirper" system replaces the Basilicom Quests system from the old games. And by "replaces", I mean it basically works the exact same way, just meant to look like it's a social media feed instead. And it's...fine? I never understood the point of the "Chirper" system when it comes to looking at a Twitter-esque feed of everything. I never understood the point of it - I thought it would have an effect on the in-game world, but no. It means...nothing, really. Otherwise, yeah, it's just how you do side-quests and how you earn characters for Disc Development.
Also, one more thing - getting to explore Planeptune for once was actually super duper neat. It gave a proper sense of scale as to how large a nation is. A few things that could've made it better though would've been a faster means of traveling around without using a menu to warp everywhere (such as maybe a bike? a scooter? a sprint button?), and being able to explore the other nations as well, since Planeptune is the only explorable nation in this game. Maybe in a future installment of the series we'll get to see Lastation, Leanbox and Lowee expanded upon in this way too, I hope.
Graphics, Sound & Optimization:
Yeah, well...this one was rough in these departments. On the PS4, graphically the game looks...rather mediocre. Lighting is pretty basic and baked-in (aka not real time) and aesthetically the game can look pretty ugly at times. Nowhere near as bad as how ugly VIIR can get at certain points, but the game certainly doesn't look very pretty a lot of the time. However, Neptunia wasn't ever really known for being "graphically impressive", so it didn't really bother me much how the game looked...rather bad in some places. Noticeable, yes, but never distracting.
Sound-wise...this game's sound design is a bit of a mess. Now, where it counts - it's good. Landing attacks feels satisfying and punchy, just how you want them to. Navigating menus - perfectly fine. Character voice acting? I played on the Japanese dub, but yeah - it's pretty good (except for Neptune, annoying as always). However in other areas - not so much. Some characters are notably quieter than others when they talk, some sound effects are stupidly loud to the point it could hurt your ears (I'm looking at you Rom), and the sound itself, at least for me, had its moments where it would just be very choppy.
Music-wise, it's alright. There are plenty of songs reused from the older games, but the game does include its fair share of original tracks as well. The brand new original tracks are properly good - they are very pleasant to listen to and don't actually get ear-grating or boring after a while, which is decent. The reused songs, however...hit & miss as with every other game. The one song that gets reused from VII is "The Code ~Noisy and Calm~" by Kenji Kaneko, and it's still a fantastic piece of music, but others are...well, I didn't like them in their original games they're from and I still don't like them now.
Optimization on the PS4 wasn't that good. I've noticed plenty of times when the game started to lag and chug. Both during gameplay and outside of gameplay. I already mentioned the choppy audio at random bits part, but particularly when smoke appears during a cutscene - I can hear the Unity Engine just screaming & begging for its life for some reason. It's inconsistent and it's a shame that this too remains a problem that wasn't ever properly addressed from the mainline games. But not entirely unexpected for Neptunia, I suppose. The game ran perfectly fine and smoothly about 70% of the time though, I didn't experience any hard-crashes or save corruptions, or anything like the sort, so that's a bonus. Sure beats Re;Birth3 which would randomly softlock you at certain points on PC.
Verdict:
Well, they've done it. They finally released a Neptunia game I finally enjoyed playing, despite its flaws.
Sisters vs SIsters is far from perfect. I think I made that clear with how much I was able to complain about every aspect of the game, from story to gameplay to misc. things. And to be honest, to the average player - I do not recommend this game. Unless you are willing to deal with the negatives I presented about the game, I recommend skipping this game and look for something else. Hell, even from the Neptunia series I'd direct you to VII or something like 4GO if you don't like JRPGs.
But for Neptunia fans like me - this game is such a breath of fresh air. Such a good step in the right direction. And such a massive win for the whole fandom after 8 years of mediocrity and ambiguity for the future of the series.
Sisters vs Sisters feels like an apology for those 8 years of stagnant, useless releases. It feels like an apology for the disappointment of the 10th anniversary of the series. And for that - I am so happy this game came out.
If you're a Neptunia fan like me - burned by the series' mediocre cash-grabby run for the last 8 years - give Sisters vs Sisters a shot. It's worth it.
With the series starting out great, with tons of momentum generated not just by the first 3 games on the PS3, but with the Re;Birth series on the Vita & the Vita-exclusive spinoffs, which were eventually brought to PC, culminating with the release of VII back in 2015 - what I consider to be this series' best game overall, Neptunia looked like it was in a good spot. Decent games, tons of momentum and lots of fanfare from the diehard people following it along, myself included.
But ever since 2017, this series has been stagnant. The only things releasing for Neptunia were cash-grabby spinoff games that served to do nothing more than just to pad out the time. Neptunia stopped being treated as a series meant to parody the gaming industry, and instead turned to a series about being "nep = funny". As a hardcore Neptunia fan, it was heartbreaking to witness this firsthand, especially when the "secret 10 year anniversary project" ended up being a remake of a remaster of a remake of the first game for the PS5. It was genuinely heartbreaking to watch.
Out of nowhere, this game was announced. I didn't know what to think of it when I saw it. Another spinoff in the style of 4GO? Sure seemed like it based on the initial trailer of the game. But then I see the original Gamindustri from mk2, Victory & VII...but it wasn't that surprising, considering Neptunia U used the dimension from Re;Birth1 as the basis for its plot. But, "okay", I was thinking, "maybe we're finally getting a spinoff in the main timeline of Neptunia for once". The game comes out in Japan, and I start hearing whispers that the game is decent. And that the game is good. But I didn't pay it any mind because the Neptunia community loves doing things like giving a game a positive review because "has nep, nep funny" (wish that was a joke). I kept my hopes low and was expecting the worst either way.
So now the game is out in the West. I have the physical Calendar Edition for it. And I just came out of my first playthrough for the game. My emotions are all over the place for this game, and the high rating attached to the game might change over time, but...holy shit, I'm so happy to finally see a step in the right direction for the series. This game properly positively surprised me. It does so many things right for the series. And honestly - I wouldn't call this a spinoff title. I'd just call this a proper follow-up after VII, just with a different gameplay model. But either way, let's get into it.
Story
At first it was really difficult for me to pinpoint where the story takes place in relation to VII. Is it a sequel? Is it a prequel? Is it neither? Fortunately, rather early on the game does indeed establish that this game takes place after VII, as Uzume does get mentioned within the story...once. Yeah, once. So it at least establishes that the other characters are aware of Uzume, placing it firmly after the events of VII.
The story itself though...well, I thought the story overall was good. I genuinely enjoyed the story start to finish, with it basically catching Gamindustri up to the current gaming landscape from VII. The 2 new maker characters, who I won't spoil, were a genuine treat to see, especially since one of them is a direct reference to the publisher of another rather niche Japanese series. If you know, you know.
However, I do have some qualms with it. Namely the pacing of the story. For as good as the story is overall, I think its pacing is...bad. Each chapter of the game goes by stupidly fast, to the point it makes me wonder why they didn't combine several of the chapters into a few larger chapters. This game has 13 chapters overall, starting with Chapter 0 and ending with Chapter 12, yet some of the chapters genuinely last no longer than 40 minutes, and it just felt awkward. You talk to Histoire, get your next assignment, do one dungeon run and you're onto the next chapter, which was just...huh?
There was also another disappointing aspect of this game's story, which might sound silly, being the lack of many CGs throughout the entire game for key moments. Towards the end this was remedied, but throughout most of the game - there were actually very few "special" CGs for scenes which I would deem important, yet this game doesn't, apparently. I won't spoil anything, but you'll see what I mean if you play this game.
But aside from that, I appreciate the fact that the game has brought back a darker tone to the story, making it fall more in-line with the main games of the series of mk2, Victory and VII. The stakes are high and the risk all of the characters have to face is genuine, especially when it's revealed at the end what exactly it is they are dealing with. In a way, a lot of it reminds me of mk2 and its...infamous non-canon ending, which according to this game - could actually be canon in some fashion, which is an interesting thought experiment to have for those who have been around long enough.
Overall - good story for Neptunia, but poorly paced and structured. I still enjoyed it as a whole, but I'll admit it could have been better. Quality-wise and enjoyment-wise I would put it above mk2 but below VII in terms of how much I personally liked this game's story (with Victory being the best still for me).
Gameplay
Neptunia Sisters vs Sisters does, admittedly, feel like a huge downgrade in gameplay from 4 Goddesses Online, the previous hack & slash combat game that I played in the series. It took me a rather long time to get used to how this game's mechanics work and to have a decent time with its combat system, though I will admit I still think 4GO was much, much better in terms of gameplay.
Sisters vs Sisters feels like it's trying to find a happy medium of the JRPG entries of old and the combat mechanics established by this series' spinoff titles, such as Neptunia U, MegaTag & 4GO, yet the attempt here feels rather undercooked. There are many nitpicks about the gameplay that I disliked, but let's break them down one-by-one.
The combat was, initially, horribly clunky for me and it took me a few in-game chapters to actually get used to how fighting in this game worked. You traverse the dungeons of the game much like you would in any of the old JRPG entries - you are placed into a level with an "Event" marker showing you where your destination is and there are enemies around that you can Symbol Attack or just run into regularly that you fight. That much hasn't changed, however the main difference is that battles are no longer turn-based, rather - both you and your enemies attack each other at the same time. But the way the game flows & explains its combat mechanics is...unorthodox.
As an example, I did not know until halfway through the game that you can actually put up a shield to block attacks, or that you can dash out of the way to dodge attacks, however - I never ended up using this feature. On top of its mechanics being rather clunky, I didn't find them useful since once you're in a combo and attacking your foe - you cannot break out of it to put up a shield or to quickly dash away. You can do this if you equip a specific disc that you can develop, sure, but without it - once you're attacking, you're attacking, and if your enemy isn't stunlocked from your hits - good luck dodging anything coming your way. The implementation of these two mechanics just felt half-baked and not very intuitive, serving more to break the flow of gameplay rather than to engage me further in the combat. My strategy instead was to make my characters as tanky as possible and brute-force my way through everything.
Another thing I didn't end up using whatsoever throughout the entire game was the EXE drive. Yeah, not even once. I didn't really understand how it's even meant to be used, or how you charge the EXE meter to let you use it. Do you need to be in HDD mode to perform an EXE move? I don't know, the game never tells you. They show you that they exist, and there is a tutorial card explaining the EXE drive, but I didn't get how it works and ended up completely skipping it. It's been a trend that ever since they released Re;Birth3, Compile Heart has been needlessly changing around the EXE drive system for whatever reason, reducing its use with each subsequent release. The system was decent enough the way it was in mk2, Victory, Re;Birth1 and Re;Birth2, but the implementation was perfected in VII. Yet after that point, they sought out to fix what wasn't even broken to begin with, and that trend continues here too, sadly.
Lastly for my endless rant - I don't like most of the dungeons in this game. What doesn't help is that there are tons of reused dungeons and aesthetics. You see it was soon as chapter 1 of the game - you get 2 identical forest dungeons with the exact same layout, just with different entry/exit positions, different "safe zones" locations and different enemies. Otherwise, they're the same dungeon. And this happens throughout the whole game. Do you like Virtua Forest? Good, here's 5 more Virtua Forests, with some of them being at night to spice things up. Admittedly the old games did it too, especially the likes of mk2 & Victory, but it's just a shame that this is still a recurring issue.
With that out of the way, the gameplay otherwise I felt was fine. Without the clunky dashing & blocking mechanics, and completely ignoring the EXE system like I did for my playthrough, I found Neptunia Sisters vs Sisters overall to be a very comfortable experience. The combat, while repetitive and formulaic once you get the hang of it, is fast, frantic and fun. Difficulty-wise I had absolutely 0 issue with the game in any capacity. Dare I say that I found this game way too easy? To the point that I didn't "game over" even once. The closest I got was almost dying to one boss in Chapter 8, since 2 of my 3 party members just blindly ran into the boss and died, and here I was chipping away at the boss with Rom, who the boss for some reason never managed to land a hit on, no matter what I did. But while the mechanics were difficult to grasp at first, once I got the hang of it - no battles posed any real threat, which I don't know if this means the game is way too easy, or if I'm just good at the game. Probably the former rather than the latter.
Speaking of balance, I find it absolutely hilarious how some characters have been jacked up like crazy in terms of damage from the previous games. My party throughout 80% of the game consisted of Nepgear, Uni & Rom, mainly because I found these 3 to synergize perfectly with each other, as they all have combos that can directly lead into a follow-up attack from the other. But there's also one more thing - Rom. Rom is absolutely busted in this game. I don't know what kind of edibles Blanc fed her between VII and this game, but Rom is straight up the strongest character in this game, period, no questions asked. She used to be a dedicated support in the old games, with a limited health pool and limited offensive capability - they defined this as her role rather consistently in the older games. While she retains a few supportive abilities in SvS and her low health pool, her damage scaling has been jacked up to unbelievable degrees. Rom straight up shreds pretty much every single enemy in the game, there's nothing she wasn't able to handle. Remember when I mentioned 2 of my 3 characters dying in a boss battle during chapter 8? The one character that wasn't dead was Rom. Because I was able to effectively stunlock the boss as Rom and cheese my way to victory with her ridiculous magic attacks. Honestly I found this funny. By the endgame Nepgear can kinda rival Rom in terms of raw power, but Rom has the advantage of being a ranged character, whereas Nepgear is a melee-based character, meaning that Rom has a lower chance of getting stunlocked by the enemy.
Stepping away from the combat side of things, other parts of the game I think were handled well. Disc development is back in much of the same way as the older games, acting as a "choose your own stat buffs" thing, with you needing to develop discs in order to get what you're looking for. In this game, they sort of combined "Plans" and the scouting system into one universal system where you send out a Scout to develop a disc with a specific genre and bonus addon. I think the system here works fine enough and I did end up using it...until I realized all of my characters have everything they need, so once I got all the necessary discs for everyone - I kinda forgot about the disc system by the endgame.
The "Chirper" system replaces the Basilicom Quests system from the old games. And by "replaces", I mean it basically works the exact same way, just meant to look like it's a social media feed instead. And it's...fine? I never understood the point of the "Chirper" system when it comes to looking at a Twitter-esque feed of everything. I never understood the point of it - I thought it would have an effect on the in-game world, but no. It means...nothing, really. Otherwise, yeah, it's just how you do side-quests and how you earn characters for Disc Development.
Also, one more thing - getting to explore Planeptune for once was actually super duper neat. It gave a proper sense of scale as to how large a nation is. A few things that could've made it better though would've been a faster means of traveling around without using a menu to warp everywhere (such as maybe a bike? a scooter? a sprint button?), and being able to explore the other nations as well, since Planeptune is the only explorable nation in this game. Maybe in a future installment of the series we'll get to see Lastation, Leanbox and Lowee expanded upon in this way too, I hope.
Graphics, Sound & Optimization:
Yeah, well...this one was rough in these departments. On the PS4, graphically the game looks...rather mediocre. Lighting is pretty basic and baked-in (aka not real time) and aesthetically the game can look pretty ugly at times. Nowhere near as bad as how ugly VIIR can get at certain points, but the game certainly doesn't look very pretty a lot of the time. However, Neptunia wasn't ever really known for being "graphically impressive", so it didn't really bother me much how the game looked...rather bad in some places. Noticeable, yes, but never distracting.
Sound-wise...this game's sound design is a bit of a mess. Now, where it counts - it's good. Landing attacks feels satisfying and punchy, just how you want them to. Navigating menus - perfectly fine. Character voice acting? I played on the Japanese dub, but yeah - it's pretty good (except for Neptune, annoying as always). However in other areas - not so much. Some characters are notably quieter than others when they talk, some sound effects are stupidly loud to the point it could hurt your ears (I'm looking at you Rom), and the sound itself, at least for me, had its moments where it would just be very choppy.
Music-wise, it's alright. There are plenty of songs reused from the older games, but the game does include its fair share of original tracks as well. The brand new original tracks are properly good - they are very pleasant to listen to and don't actually get ear-grating or boring after a while, which is decent. The reused songs, however...hit & miss as with every other game. The one song that gets reused from VII is "The Code ~Noisy and Calm~" by Kenji Kaneko, and it's still a fantastic piece of music, but others are...well, I didn't like them in their original games they're from and I still don't like them now.
Optimization on the PS4 wasn't that good. I've noticed plenty of times when the game started to lag and chug. Both during gameplay and outside of gameplay. I already mentioned the choppy audio at random bits part, but particularly when smoke appears during a cutscene - I can hear the Unity Engine just screaming & begging for its life for some reason. It's inconsistent and it's a shame that this too remains a problem that wasn't ever properly addressed from the mainline games. But not entirely unexpected for Neptunia, I suppose. The game ran perfectly fine and smoothly about 70% of the time though, I didn't experience any hard-crashes or save corruptions, or anything like the sort, so that's a bonus. Sure beats Re;Birth3 which would randomly softlock you at certain points on PC.
Verdict:
Well, they've done it. They finally released a Neptunia game I finally enjoyed playing, despite its flaws.
Sisters vs SIsters is far from perfect. I think I made that clear with how much I was able to complain about every aspect of the game, from story to gameplay to misc. things. And to be honest, to the average player - I do not recommend this game. Unless you are willing to deal with the negatives I presented about the game, I recommend skipping this game and look for something else. Hell, even from the Neptunia series I'd direct you to VII or something like 4GO if you don't like JRPGs.
But for Neptunia fans like me - this game is such a breath of fresh air. Such a good step in the right direction. And such a massive win for the whole fandom after 8 years of mediocrity and ambiguity for the future of the series.
Sisters vs Sisters feels like an apology for those 8 years of stagnant, useless releases. It feels like an apology for the disappointment of the 10th anniversary of the series. And for that - I am so happy this game came out.
If you're a Neptunia fan like me - burned by the series' mediocre cash-grabby run for the last 8 years - give Sisters vs Sisters a shot. It's worth it.
2020
I have trouble articulating my feelings towards Genshin Impact. It is, by far, the game that I've spent the most amount of hours in since picking the game up nearly 2 years ago as of writing this, clocking in at just about 2200 hours into the game. The only game that beats it out in terms of how many hours I've put into it would be CS:GO, but it's not a fair comparison considering I've been playing that since 2014.
There are a lot of aspects about Genshin Impact that I absolutely adore. I love the visuals, I love the characters, I love the gameplay, I really love the story, and I really love exploring the massive in-game world that keeps expanding with constant updates. Believe me, I really love Genshin Impact, else I wouldn't be playing this game or streaming it either.
However, there are so, so many things working against this game that the developers - HoYoverse - don't want to do anything to fix, which makes this game a very tough sell for any new player.
By now I'm sure you've heard it all. The gacha system is horrible. There's a lack of proper endgame content. Story quests for individual characters are lazy and non-sensical, the artifact system truly is horrendously awful, etc. - and the sad thing is that it's all true.
Over the last few months (since around September 2022), I've fallen out of love with Genshin Impact. I was already on the edge with the game, as I have been starting to get just slightly bored of things, but there was one catalyst, one particular event that lead me (and many of my friends) to lose interest in Genshin Impact, being how the developer essentially confirmed in an interview that they have no plans for any meaningful long-term content, or anything to work for to the dedicated players of this game (like me). And that's what gets me about this game. The developer basically said to the face of players like us that they don't care. You can read the mentioned interview here, trust me it's very infuriating to read.
HoYoverse's strategy with Genshin Impact is to constantly bring in new players to the game with its flashy characters, amazing-looking trailers, amazing production values and just overall great music. But they don't care about keeping those players interested in the game. They really don't care if those players end up sticking around or not. They just want the player numbers and the profit that comes from the 1 in 10 people that spend money on the game.
It's a sad state of affairs for this game. Credit where credit is due, I genuinely enjoy the gameplay of Genshin Impact. It's rather dynamic using all the 7 elements at your disposal and letting you experiment by building characters and putting them into different teams to see if they work with each other or not. The one Achilles' heel the gameplay for this game is the artifact system. It truly is awful, bringing RNG on top of RNG in order to get the build you want. I can't articulate it into words how bad it truly is, so I will let a Genshin Impact YouTuber known as Vars II explain it for me in great detail.
The story of Genshin Impact is also written rather well for the most part. And for the sake of things, I'm only really talking about the Archon Quests (aka "main story") of this game. There are many things that add to the "allure" of this game's story, enough small details sprinkled in that people have devoted hundreds, if not thousands of hours speculating and theorizing on small details of the story. And that, to me, is a sign of a healthy story with healthy writing. Except Chapter 2, which is, thus far - the worst chapter in the game, as the pacing for it is wildly inconsistent.
That's the one part I don't like about Genshin's storytelling - the pacing. The Prologue & Chapter 1 are really there to get you sorted and used to the game itself - to learn all the different mechanics, explore around the world, etc., thus their pacing is rather slow, which is good as you want to make the player feel comfortable and welcome throughout it all. Chapter 2, however, throws that all out the window. The first act is genuinely great, following a similar style and structure as the Prologue & Chapter 1, but it begins going downhill starting in Act 2 of the story. Starts out really good only to then wildly increase the pacing after the first cutscene and essentially bomb-rush the rest of the chapter afterwards, ending in the most underwhelming and rushed campaign I don't think I've experienced since playing NFS Carbon in 2006. Clearly they took that to heart, because in Chapter 3 (the latest chapter so far) - they slowed things down considerably again, making it super confusing to follow along with things at times. But hey, chapter 3 itself was genuinely great, so I'm glad they at least listened to feedback.
Outside of the Archon Quests however, the rest of the stories and side quests you can do are...awful. Some of them are dreadfully written even. But what bugs me about them is that there are some World Quests that can span easily about ~20 hours, and none of them are voiced in the least, nor have any special events (like special music, for example) placed in them, making them lack any impact or permanence in the player's memory. A few of them have some memorable moments, but for the life of me I cannot remember most of them after I complete them, unless a theory-crafter brings it up while discussing this game's plot. They're just so incredibly forgetful and, most of the time, meaningless.
If you can't tell, my feelings and thoughts on this game are incredibly mixed. I'll be honest - I do NOT recommend this game for new players. I really don't. Because once you exhaust all the content that this game has, I truthfully mean it in the most literal sense - there is nothing to do. I mean it, there is absolutely nothing to do once you complete the Archon Quest up to whatever point it is by the time you're reading this, and you've done all the Story + World Quests. Sure, this content is about 400-500 hours long, and that's great for those looking to get into this game on paper, but for a game of this style you will catch up with everything very quickly and be left in the exact same boat as everyone else. Starved for new content, wishing you had something to do in the game. You can see this with the handful of Genshin Impact YouTubers & streamers that are still out there. Most of them are just doing character challenge videos or doing misc. content, such as just building random teams and doing random things with said teams. It's all monotonous and boring content that doesn't have any permanence or long-term watchability.
I love Genshin Impact, I really do. I will continue playing it and I'll probably continue to stream & make content for it. But I will not be caught dead recommending this game to anyone. I'm really sorry to say.
There are a lot of aspects about Genshin Impact that I absolutely adore. I love the visuals, I love the characters, I love the gameplay, I really love the story, and I really love exploring the massive in-game world that keeps expanding with constant updates. Believe me, I really love Genshin Impact, else I wouldn't be playing this game or streaming it either.
However, there are so, so many things working against this game that the developers - HoYoverse - don't want to do anything to fix, which makes this game a very tough sell for any new player.
By now I'm sure you've heard it all. The gacha system is horrible. There's a lack of proper endgame content. Story quests for individual characters are lazy and non-sensical, the artifact system truly is horrendously awful, etc. - and the sad thing is that it's all true.
Over the last few months (since around September 2022), I've fallen out of love with Genshin Impact. I was already on the edge with the game, as I have been starting to get just slightly bored of things, but there was one catalyst, one particular event that lead me (and many of my friends) to lose interest in Genshin Impact, being how the developer essentially confirmed in an interview that they have no plans for any meaningful long-term content, or anything to work for to the dedicated players of this game (like me). And that's what gets me about this game. The developer basically said to the face of players like us that they don't care. You can read the mentioned interview here, trust me it's very infuriating to read.
HoYoverse's strategy with Genshin Impact is to constantly bring in new players to the game with its flashy characters, amazing-looking trailers, amazing production values and just overall great music. But they don't care about keeping those players interested in the game. They really don't care if those players end up sticking around or not. They just want the player numbers and the profit that comes from the 1 in 10 people that spend money on the game.
It's a sad state of affairs for this game. Credit where credit is due, I genuinely enjoy the gameplay of Genshin Impact. It's rather dynamic using all the 7 elements at your disposal and letting you experiment by building characters and putting them into different teams to see if they work with each other or not. The one Achilles' heel the gameplay for this game is the artifact system. It truly is awful, bringing RNG on top of RNG in order to get the build you want. I can't articulate it into words how bad it truly is, so I will let a Genshin Impact YouTuber known as Vars II explain it for me in great detail.
The story of Genshin Impact is also written rather well for the most part. And for the sake of things, I'm only really talking about the Archon Quests (aka "main story") of this game. There are many things that add to the "allure" of this game's story, enough small details sprinkled in that people have devoted hundreds, if not thousands of hours speculating and theorizing on small details of the story. And that, to me, is a sign of a healthy story with healthy writing. Except Chapter 2, which is, thus far - the worst chapter in the game, as the pacing for it is wildly inconsistent.
That's the one part I don't like about Genshin's storytelling - the pacing. The Prologue & Chapter 1 are really there to get you sorted and used to the game itself - to learn all the different mechanics, explore around the world, etc., thus their pacing is rather slow, which is good as you want to make the player feel comfortable and welcome throughout it all. Chapter 2, however, throws that all out the window. The first act is genuinely great, following a similar style and structure as the Prologue & Chapter 1, but it begins going downhill starting in Act 2 of the story. Starts out really good only to then wildly increase the pacing after the first cutscene and essentially bomb-rush the rest of the chapter afterwards, ending in the most underwhelming and rushed campaign I don't think I've experienced since playing NFS Carbon in 2006. Clearly they took that to heart, because in Chapter 3 (the latest chapter so far) - they slowed things down considerably again, making it super confusing to follow along with things at times. But hey, chapter 3 itself was genuinely great, so I'm glad they at least listened to feedback.
Outside of the Archon Quests however, the rest of the stories and side quests you can do are...awful. Some of them are dreadfully written even. But what bugs me about them is that there are some World Quests that can span easily about ~20 hours, and none of them are voiced in the least, nor have any special events (like special music, for example) placed in them, making them lack any impact or permanence in the player's memory. A few of them have some memorable moments, but for the life of me I cannot remember most of them after I complete them, unless a theory-crafter brings it up while discussing this game's plot. They're just so incredibly forgetful and, most of the time, meaningless.
If you can't tell, my feelings and thoughts on this game are incredibly mixed. I'll be honest - I do NOT recommend this game for new players. I really don't. Because once you exhaust all the content that this game has, I truthfully mean it in the most literal sense - there is nothing to do. I mean it, there is absolutely nothing to do once you complete the Archon Quest up to whatever point it is by the time you're reading this, and you've done all the Story + World Quests. Sure, this content is about 400-500 hours long, and that's great for those looking to get into this game on paper, but for a game of this style you will catch up with everything very quickly and be left in the exact same boat as everyone else. Starved for new content, wishing you had something to do in the game. You can see this with the handful of Genshin Impact YouTubers & streamers that are still out there. Most of them are just doing character challenge videos or doing misc. content, such as just building random teams and doing random things with said teams. It's all monotonous and boring content that doesn't have any permanence or long-term watchability.
I love Genshin Impact, I really do. I will continue playing it and I'll probably continue to stream & make content for it. But I will not be caught dead recommending this game to anyone. I'm really sorry to say.
2018
This is a repost of my Steam review for this game with changed formatting to match this website and some slight edits to remove redundant/unnecessary sentences. You can read the original Steam review here:
https://steamcommunity.com/id/huuishuu/recommended/774171/
This game is good. Jumping into it, I did not really know what to expect from it but I ended up being very pleasantly surprised. The tutorial was quick and to the point, and while it doesn't exactly explain that you can use 2 keys for both ground and air, it does its job at explaining how the game works.
The characters, while few, have interesting variations that spice up the gameplay with their own unique abilities, suggestiveness not withstanding.
But if I could draw any parallels to this game, it would be Taiko no Tatsujin. Believe me, if you've played that game, jumping into this will be no problem. You'll make yourself right at home.
There are gripes with the game I have though, such as some songs rhythmically feeling like they don't really highlight what the player expects, leading to me just mashing for the most part and hope I get it right, but so far - it's been a blast.
HOWEVER and I really must stress this point in particular - the base game you buy is very lackluster. While you get a pretty alright selection of songs and enough content to keep you playing (the game even gives you a selection of free "premium" songs every week), this game's base content is really a far cry from what it could (and, arguably, should) be.
Muse Dash, in my opinion, should be a free to play game with the "Just as Planned" DLC being a premium upgrade option. Because if you want any reason to go back to this game at any point in the future, you will not find much reason to replay this without the "Just as Planned" DLC. Sure, you could go for character unlocks and gallery illustrations by leveling up, but as a rhythm game - the base game does feel lacking in a lot of areas and you will dry up all the content within 15 hours of playing. Sounds like a lot but in rhythm game terms - that's absolutely nothing.
The funny thing is - this game is actually free on Android/iOS, so it confuses me why this game isn't also free on PC or other platforms, considering it's the same game with the same content for both.
So, take caution with this. If you're still not convinced otherwise by the big addendum I wrote there, then by all means - grab Muse Dash. It's a ton of fun and very accessible, especially to newbie rhythm game players.
But if you want any semblance of content and don't want to spend $30 on DLC to get more songs, then avoid Muse Dash and look for an alternative game to play, one of which I already mentioned in this very review.
https://steamcommunity.com/id/huuishuu/recommended/774171/
This game is good. Jumping into it, I did not really know what to expect from it but I ended up being very pleasantly surprised. The tutorial was quick and to the point, and while it doesn't exactly explain that you can use 2 keys for both ground and air, it does its job at explaining how the game works.
The characters, while few, have interesting variations that spice up the gameplay with their own unique abilities, suggestiveness not withstanding.
But if I could draw any parallels to this game, it would be Taiko no Tatsujin. Believe me, if you've played that game, jumping into this will be no problem. You'll make yourself right at home.
There are gripes with the game I have though, such as some songs rhythmically feeling like they don't really highlight what the player expects, leading to me just mashing for the most part and hope I get it right, but so far - it's been a blast.
HOWEVER and I really must stress this point in particular - the base game you buy is very lackluster. While you get a pretty alright selection of songs and enough content to keep you playing (the game even gives you a selection of free "premium" songs every week), this game's base content is really a far cry from what it could (and, arguably, should) be.
Muse Dash, in my opinion, should be a free to play game with the "Just as Planned" DLC being a premium upgrade option. Because if you want any reason to go back to this game at any point in the future, you will not find much reason to replay this without the "Just as Planned" DLC. Sure, you could go for character unlocks and gallery illustrations by leveling up, but as a rhythm game - the base game does feel lacking in a lot of areas and you will dry up all the content within 15 hours of playing. Sounds like a lot but in rhythm game terms - that's absolutely nothing.
The funny thing is - this game is actually free on Android/iOS, so it confuses me why this game isn't also free on PC or other platforms, considering it's the same game with the same content for both.
So, take caution with this. If you're still not convinced otherwise by the big addendum I wrote there, then by all means - grab Muse Dash. It's a ton of fun and very accessible, especially to newbie rhythm game players.
But if you want any semblance of content and don't want to spend $30 on DLC to get more songs, then avoid Muse Dash and look for an alternative game to play, one of which I already mentioned in this very review.
2019
This is a repost of my Steam review for this game with slight edits to match this website's formatting. You can read the original review here:
https://steamcommunity.com/id/huuishuu/recommended/1222680/
Need for Speed: Heat is a game I was skeptical of. For an entire decade leading up to this game's release, the Need for Speed series has been on a slippery slope of multiple identity crises, pandering to nostalgia and delivering subpar game, year on year.
2015 marked a turning point for Need for Speed with Ghost Games releasing their soft reboot of the series. 2015 was not very highly reviewed but it laid the foundations for a greater game, which I think culminated in Need for Speed: Heat.
However, my excitement for the game was admittedly muted when in 2019, I was looking at more and more reveals of this game. There was one thing that dampened my excitement for Heat when it was announced. But we'll get into that. You're here to see if I recommend Need for Speed: Heat, after all, so let's get on with the review.
Story:
Shockingly, I actually really enjoyed Heat's story. It's a huge step up compared to the previous installment with likeable, memorable characters and memorable events in the story. Several of which are still part of NFS meme culture even now, which is not something I can say for Rivals, 2015 or Payback.
Heat's story is very short and it doesn't take long to get to the point. And while I really like that, I do have some sour points with it. For example, I think certain characters are incredibly under-utilized and end up feeling like they make a big splash at the start of the story and then, after one particular event, they seem to disappear completely and is never brought up again. The game does this with several characters and it's honestly a shame.
I also don't particularly like the self-insert "Player" character, but the way the self-insert handled here is inoffensive at best, and a complete cringelord at worst.
But as a whole - despite being underdeveloped in a few aspects, Heat's story is admittedly enjoyable, albeit short.
Gameplay:
2015's handling & physics were received very poorly. Payback improved on them but left a lot to be desired with the off-road model. What about Heat? Heat's driving model is good. Properly good. For most of the game, I finally felt as though I was in total control of the car. Whatever mistakes happened were the result of me making genuine mistakes, and not because the game said so. There were a few instances where I had a physics oopsie, such as my jump being interrupted or my car bouncing off of nothing, so the car did have a tendency of feeling like it was made of Portal 2's bounce gel, but as a whole - a very good improvement on the driving & handling. Dare I say this is the best driving model from the entire decade of Need for Speed that we've had?
The gameplay does have one major Achilles' heel though - the damage system. This is the system that actually ended up with me not wanting to touch the game for a while and put it down after about 4-5 hours of playing initially. The damage system in this game is the worst aspect of it because it disincentivizes you from taking any risk during the night. Now, against traffic and most other general world structures - it's totally fine. You won't take damage by, say, hitting a traffic car at low speed, or by taking a jump and hitting a billboard, etc., however if you get rammed - you take damage. If you hit a wall - you take damage. And your health drains insanely quickly.
The damage system is what breaks the fun in any cop chases for me as well. Heat is the first Ghost entry since Rivals to finally have more aggressive cops in the game, however because of the damage system - their implementation here leaves a lot to be desired. The cops do a lot of damage, which at higher heat levels makes you feel like a glass cannon.
What made the pursuits in games like Most Wanted (2005) and Carbon so exciting is the fact that you are essentially a tank that can go through practically anything yet you weren't unstoppable - one wrong move and you're done. In Heat, they wanted to replicate this, as the police will be insanely aggressive towards you and do bring back tactics like roadblocks, spike strips, helicopters, etc., however their quantities are reduced. The most intense the chases here get would be comparable to, say, Heat Level 3 in Most Wanted '05.
The best way to play Heat, at least for me, was to install an Infinite Health mod. With that installed, Night Time racing became a whole lot more fun because I was no longer afraid of being a paperweight against the cops. And, dare I say, I actually had fun doing police pursuits. So much fun that, by the endgame I was actively seeking them out. With the mod installed, the game genuinely came alive and became a ton of fun for me.
Side note: If you're gonna use it, just remember to disable it for the final mission otherwise it's impossible to complete.
There was one sour spot for me aside from the damage model, that being the racing itself. All 3 Ghost era Need for Speed games share the same issue that doesn't seem like it was ever addressed - difficulty. Need for Speed: Heat, much like its predecessors, is way too easy. Even with the difficulty set to Hard, this game was an absolute joke in terms of racing. I don't even think I was playing particularly well either, this game's racing actively bored me and only served as a medium for me to either earn more money to buy upgrades/cars or earn more REP so I can actually continue the story. Seriously, the AI in this game is an absolute joke and the challenge they pose is trivial at best.
Graphics, Sound & Optimization
Need for Speed: Heat is neither a step up nor a step down from the previous entry. In fact, I think that 2015 during its night time looked way, way better than Heat does during its night time. The graphics are fine, passable even, however there's one unmistakable thing that Heat has that the previous three Ghost entries didn't - style. Heat is the first game in a long, long time that, to me, feels like it has its own identity, its own unique style and presentation, which makes the game stand out and pop. It's what lead the game to retain its popularity since 2019 and despite the release of Unbound. And for that - I cannot knock Heat. The game has a vibe to go for and it achieves it splendidly.
The soundtrack sucks. By the halfway point, I turned the OST off and just started listening to my own playlists on YouTube & Spotify, the soundtrack is legitimately horrendous, at times unlistenable garbage. But the sound design everywhere else? Top notch. Cop chatter has personality - the cops are corrupt, snarky and always eager to get you. The car engines sound amazing as well as accurate, and the sirens blaring through the night hunting you down make their presence known. It's great.
Optimization-wise, this game is a lot more stable than Payback was on my system. Runs a great deal better too. While I did encounter the occasional pop-in texture and such, there was absolutely nothing game-breaking happening like there was for Payback. The game kept a solid 60+ FPS throughout the entire playthrough, didn't crash even a single time and controller support was bang-on. Heat is pretty well optimized.
Oh and yes, this still requires Origin, much like every other Need for Speed game that's up for sale. Take that as you may.
Conclusion:
Do I recommend NFS Heat? Despite my qualms with the damage system and the pathetic AI, I will have to say yes. Need for Speed: Heat finally feels like a true return-to-form. While the story is nothing fantastic, the game shines in style, personality and great gameplay.
With memorable characters & moments, a great driving model and overall polish all around - I think you'll enjoy NFS Heat. Even with the points I mentioned regarding the damage model.
This game is definitely worth getting.
https://steamcommunity.com/id/huuishuu/recommended/1222680/
Need for Speed: Heat is a game I was skeptical of. For an entire decade leading up to this game's release, the Need for Speed series has been on a slippery slope of multiple identity crises, pandering to nostalgia and delivering subpar game, year on year.
2015 marked a turning point for Need for Speed with Ghost Games releasing their soft reboot of the series. 2015 was not very highly reviewed but it laid the foundations for a greater game, which I think culminated in Need for Speed: Heat.
However, my excitement for the game was admittedly muted when in 2019, I was looking at more and more reveals of this game. There was one thing that dampened my excitement for Heat when it was announced. But we'll get into that. You're here to see if I recommend Need for Speed: Heat, after all, so let's get on with the review.
Story:
Shockingly, I actually really enjoyed Heat's story. It's a huge step up compared to the previous installment with likeable, memorable characters and memorable events in the story. Several of which are still part of NFS meme culture even now, which is not something I can say for Rivals, 2015 or Payback.
Heat's story is very short and it doesn't take long to get to the point. And while I really like that, I do have some sour points with it. For example, I think certain characters are incredibly under-utilized and end up feeling like they make a big splash at the start of the story and then, after one particular event, they seem to disappear completely and is never brought up again. The game does this with several characters and it's honestly a shame.
I also don't particularly like the self-insert "Player" character, but the way the self-insert handled here is inoffensive at best, and a complete cringelord at worst.
But as a whole - despite being underdeveloped in a few aspects, Heat's story is admittedly enjoyable, albeit short.
Gameplay:
2015's handling & physics were received very poorly. Payback improved on them but left a lot to be desired with the off-road model. What about Heat? Heat's driving model is good. Properly good. For most of the game, I finally felt as though I was in total control of the car. Whatever mistakes happened were the result of me making genuine mistakes, and not because the game said so. There were a few instances where I had a physics oopsie, such as my jump being interrupted or my car bouncing off of nothing, so the car did have a tendency of feeling like it was made of Portal 2's bounce gel, but as a whole - a very good improvement on the driving & handling. Dare I say this is the best driving model from the entire decade of Need for Speed that we've had?
The gameplay does have one major Achilles' heel though - the damage system. This is the system that actually ended up with me not wanting to touch the game for a while and put it down after about 4-5 hours of playing initially. The damage system in this game is the worst aspect of it because it disincentivizes you from taking any risk during the night. Now, against traffic and most other general world structures - it's totally fine. You won't take damage by, say, hitting a traffic car at low speed, or by taking a jump and hitting a billboard, etc., however if you get rammed - you take damage. If you hit a wall - you take damage. And your health drains insanely quickly.
The damage system is what breaks the fun in any cop chases for me as well. Heat is the first Ghost entry since Rivals to finally have more aggressive cops in the game, however because of the damage system - their implementation here leaves a lot to be desired. The cops do a lot of damage, which at higher heat levels makes you feel like a glass cannon.
What made the pursuits in games like Most Wanted (2005) and Carbon so exciting is the fact that you are essentially a tank that can go through practically anything yet you weren't unstoppable - one wrong move and you're done. In Heat, they wanted to replicate this, as the police will be insanely aggressive towards you and do bring back tactics like roadblocks, spike strips, helicopters, etc., however their quantities are reduced. The most intense the chases here get would be comparable to, say, Heat Level 3 in Most Wanted '05.
The best way to play Heat, at least for me, was to install an Infinite Health mod. With that installed, Night Time racing became a whole lot more fun because I was no longer afraid of being a paperweight against the cops. And, dare I say, I actually had fun doing police pursuits. So much fun that, by the endgame I was actively seeking them out. With the mod installed, the game genuinely came alive and became a ton of fun for me.
Side note: If you're gonna use it, just remember to disable it for the final mission otherwise it's impossible to complete.
There was one sour spot for me aside from the damage model, that being the racing itself. All 3 Ghost era Need for Speed games share the same issue that doesn't seem like it was ever addressed - difficulty. Need for Speed: Heat, much like its predecessors, is way too easy. Even with the difficulty set to Hard, this game was an absolute joke in terms of racing. I don't even think I was playing particularly well either, this game's racing actively bored me and only served as a medium for me to either earn more money to buy upgrades/cars or earn more REP so I can actually continue the story. Seriously, the AI in this game is an absolute joke and the challenge they pose is trivial at best.
Graphics, Sound & Optimization
Need for Speed: Heat is neither a step up nor a step down from the previous entry. In fact, I think that 2015 during its night time looked way, way better than Heat does during its night time. The graphics are fine, passable even, however there's one unmistakable thing that Heat has that the previous three Ghost entries didn't - style. Heat is the first game in a long, long time that, to me, feels like it has its own identity, its own unique style and presentation, which makes the game stand out and pop. It's what lead the game to retain its popularity since 2019 and despite the release of Unbound. And for that - I cannot knock Heat. The game has a vibe to go for and it achieves it splendidly.
The soundtrack sucks. By the halfway point, I turned the OST off and just started listening to my own playlists on YouTube & Spotify, the soundtrack is legitimately horrendous, at times unlistenable garbage. But the sound design everywhere else? Top notch. Cop chatter has personality - the cops are corrupt, snarky and always eager to get you. The car engines sound amazing as well as accurate, and the sirens blaring through the night hunting you down make their presence known. It's great.
Optimization-wise, this game is a lot more stable than Payback was on my system. Runs a great deal better too. While I did encounter the occasional pop-in texture and such, there was absolutely nothing game-breaking happening like there was for Payback. The game kept a solid 60+ FPS throughout the entire playthrough, didn't crash even a single time and controller support was bang-on. Heat is pretty well optimized.
Oh and yes, this still requires Origin, much like every other Need for Speed game that's up for sale. Take that as you may.
Conclusion:
Do I recommend NFS Heat? Despite my qualms with the damage system and the pathetic AI, I will have to say yes. Need for Speed: Heat finally feels like a true return-to-form. While the story is nothing fantastic, the game shines in style, personality and great gameplay.
With memorable characters & moments, a great driving model and overall polish all around - I think you'll enjoy NFS Heat. Even with the points I mentioned regarding the damage model.
This game is definitely worth getting.
1991
(this is a modified version of my Steam review for this game. you can read the original here: https://steamcommunity.com/id/huuishuu/recommended/71113/)
Honestly...I'm not so sure if I do recommend the original Sonic 1 or not. If I ever go back to Sonic 1 - I usually do it to play the plethora of ROM hacks for this game, from simple changes like adding the spindash or huge changes like revamping the entire game, I'd be hard-pressed to tell you that I replay the original 1991 release very often. It's because this game feels dated to play.
Don't get me wrong - I acknowledge that this game was incredibly revolutionary for its time. This game birthed one of my favorite franchises of all-time and the influence it had on making Sega a powerhouse in the 90s can't be overstated enough. But when there are so many better Sonic games out there - Sonic 2, Sonic 3, Sonic Mania, heck even the Sonic Advance games - the only merit I'd see in playing Sonic 1 is either for the ROM hacks like I've mentioned (I highly recommend the spindash ROM hack or the Super/Hyper Sonic in Sonic 1 ROM hack) or for those seeking to see how the blue blur's humble beginnings looked like nearly 30 years ago.
There is a better version of this game out there, however it's stuck in Sonic Origins for $45. While Origins itself is not a good deal overall, the version there is objectively better than the original in so many ways that it makes it difficult to return to the original game.
But you know what's even better than the Sonic Origins version? Sonic 1 Forever. That is how you should play this original game.
Influential for its time, definitely, but has aged like milk. When your best zone is the first zone - you know you have a problem, in my opinion.
Honestly...I'm not so sure if I do recommend the original Sonic 1 or not. If I ever go back to Sonic 1 - I usually do it to play the plethora of ROM hacks for this game, from simple changes like adding the spindash or huge changes like revamping the entire game, I'd be hard-pressed to tell you that I replay the original 1991 release very often. It's because this game feels dated to play.
Don't get me wrong - I acknowledge that this game was incredibly revolutionary for its time. This game birthed one of my favorite franchises of all-time and the influence it had on making Sega a powerhouse in the 90s can't be overstated enough. But when there are so many better Sonic games out there - Sonic 2, Sonic 3, Sonic Mania, heck even the Sonic Advance games - the only merit I'd see in playing Sonic 1 is either for the ROM hacks like I've mentioned (I highly recommend the spindash ROM hack or the Super/Hyper Sonic in Sonic 1 ROM hack) or for those seeking to see how the blue blur's humble beginnings looked like nearly 30 years ago.
There is a better version of this game out there, however it's stuck in Sonic Origins for $45. While Origins itself is not a good deal overall, the version there is objectively better than the original in so many ways that it makes it difficult to return to the original game.
But you know what's even better than the Sonic Origins version? Sonic 1 Forever. That is how you should play this original game.
Influential for its time, definitely, but has aged like milk. When your best zone is the first zone - you know you have a problem, in my opinion.
1992
(this is a repost of my Steam review for this game with some slight modifications. you can read the original review here: https://steamcommunity.com/id/huuishuu/recommended/71163/)
Sonic the Hedgehog 2 builds upon what worked in the original game while improving upon or outright removing the things that didn't work in the original game. In every shape, way and form - Sonic 2 is the perfect sequel to Sonic 1.
Let's run it from the top. The entire game was designed around the same philosophy that Sonic 1's Green Hill Zone had, making every stage a frantic, fast paced rollercoaster with clever paths and goodies to explore. A couple of my own personal favorite zones include Aquatic Ruin Zone, Hill Top Zone and Chemical Plant Zone. On top of that - they trimmed unnecessary fat from Sonic 1 in almost every single zone, that being the fact that almost every zone in the game only lasts 2 acts! Although not every stage is perfect - I particularly dislike the likes of Casino Night and Oil Ocean, and especially Metropolis Zone, being the only zone with 3 acts in the entire game, hence why I said "most".
I could go on more about the things this game added - a second playable character, that being Tails, the addition of Super Sonic, the reworked special stages (which I actually kind of dislike), etc. but there isn't a whole lot that I can't say more about Sonic 2 that hasn't been said before.
Sonic the Hedgehog 2 builds upon what worked in the original game while improving upon or outright removing the things that didn't work in the original game. In every shape, way and form - Sonic 2 is the perfect sequel to Sonic 1.
Let's run it from the top. The entire game was designed around the same philosophy that Sonic 1's Green Hill Zone had, making every stage a frantic, fast paced rollercoaster with clever paths and goodies to explore. A couple of my own personal favorite zones include Aquatic Ruin Zone, Hill Top Zone and Chemical Plant Zone. On top of that - they trimmed unnecessary fat from Sonic 1 in almost every single zone, that being the fact that almost every zone in the game only lasts 2 acts! Although not every stage is perfect - I particularly dislike the likes of Casino Night and Oil Ocean, and especially Metropolis Zone, being the only zone with 3 acts in the entire game, hence why I said "most".
I could go on more about the things this game added - a second playable character, that being Tails, the addition of Super Sonic, the reworked special stages (which I actually kind of dislike), etc. but there isn't a whole lot that I can't say more about Sonic 2 that hasn't been said before.
2012
(this is a repost of my Steam review for this game with some slight modifications. you can read the original review here: https://steamcommunity.com/id/huuishuu/recommended/1113000/)
Frankly...I don't know what I could say about Persona 4 Golden that hasn't been echoed by so many folk during the game's time on the Vita. Persona 4 Golden is a great time. It's a great game with an interesting story and satisfying gameplay.
Although, since I had just finished Persona 5 Royal mere weeks before Persona 4 Golden came to Steam and had a chance to finally play it, I had a lot of things I really needed to readjust to. So if you've played Persona 5, the original or Royal, and are thinking of going back to Persona 4 Golden to see what this game was about, keep in mind that you may have a bit of a tough time re-adjusting to certain aspects of gameplay.
I'll actually start off things I disliked about the gameplay itself, which - excuse me if it'll sound like I'm just too spoiled by Persona 5 and Persona 5 Royal. But nevertheless, these are things that bothered me throughout my entire playthrough.
Things I didn't like:
- Dungeons
They felt...boring. The dungeons in this game were very very boring for me, as most of them were pretty much randomly generated sets of hallways covered with fog, teeming with shadows but also treasure. There have been countless times where going through the dungeons I genuinely felt like I was going to fall asleep. Thematically they are really good, I love the themes for dungeons that are presented here. I just wish navigating them was more fun than going through hallways, opening doors and grabbing treasure until you find the next staircase.
- Engaging shadows
Engaging shadows feels incredibly clunky. I had this same issue with Persona 3 Portable but the same issue persists here too. I didn't like how shadows could see you from any angle you approach them, making a stealthy approach impossible unless you draw the Avoid Encounters card during Shuffle Time. I got the hang of it by the time I entered the third dungeon of the game, as it's about making your move during the second the shadow notices you and the "!" appears. But even after figuring that out, I still feel it was very clunky.
- Lack of encouragement for most social links
There's not really much incentive to do social links in this game. Maxing out links with your party seems like a no-brainer - they get a bunch of awesome benefits as you level them, useful skills as you go through, the works. But maxing out non-party social links feels unsatisfying. If you don't care about earning additional money or raising your social stats, most of them feel pretty pointless. Of course 2 of them are required for story progression if you want to go forth to the true ending, but aside from them - there's not much point to social links aside from missing out on Arcana Bursts and money/social stats.
That's about it for the things I disliked about Persona 4 Golden. Now what about the things that I really liked about it?
Things I liked/loved:
- The story and characters
I still prefer Persona 5's story because it's a lot more relatable to me personally, but I really enjoyed Persona 4 Golden's story. Really! The murder mystery alongside a quiet town aesthetic, while a bit cliche, was very interesting to follow along. I honestly enjoyed how it continued to throw you for a loop, and some parts of the story actively made me jump out of my seat and go "woah what the hell?!". Of course it did have its low-points, but there's a lot of quotable lines from this game's story and it's overall very interesting to follow along. It knows how to pace itself, when the proper time to crack a joke, the works. Also screw Teddie. I found Teddie very annoying all the way through.
- The soundtrack
PERSONA 4'S MUSIC IS GOOD. REALLY GOOD. I prefer the PS2 opening of the game to Golden, but I won't deny at all that this game's soundtrack is a serious bop. The song that plays right before dungeons, known as "Studio Backlot", is seriously my favorite song from this game. It's just so good.
- The gameplay loop
Yeah, I mentioned that I thought the dungeons were boring and that engaging shadows was clunky, but to be perfectly honest - the gameplay loop itself is very good. A good variety of meaningful mechanics and enough time to learn about, adjust to and then abuse the hell out of your enemies. The gameplay, despite being jank in some aspects, does often feel incredibly rewarding.
Do I recommend Persona 4 Golden? As if you thought I was going to say "no". Persona 4 Golden is a great time to be had. And while it is a bit jank and the graphics haven't exactly aged gracefully, seeing as Persona 4 was originally a PlayStation 2 game made in 2008, neither of those facts change that this game is phenomenal. And you should totally give it a shot. There's at least 60 hours worth of fulfilling content in this, if not *way more.
Frankly...I don't know what I could say about Persona 4 Golden that hasn't been echoed by so many folk during the game's time on the Vita. Persona 4 Golden is a great time. It's a great game with an interesting story and satisfying gameplay.
Although, since I had just finished Persona 5 Royal mere weeks before Persona 4 Golden came to Steam and had a chance to finally play it, I had a lot of things I really needed to readjust to. So if you've played Persona 5, the original or Royal, and are thinking of going back to Persona 4 Golden to see what this game was about, keep in mind that you may have a bit of a tough time re-adjusting to certain aspects of gameplay.
I'll actually start off things I disliked about the gameplay itself, which - excuse me if it'll sound like I'm just too spoiled by Persona 5 and Persona 5 Royal. But nevertheless, these are things that bothered me throughout my entire playthrough.
Things I didn't like:
- Dungeons
They felt...boring. The dungeons in this game were very very boring for me, as most of them were pretty much randomly generated sets of hallways covered with fog, teeming with shadows but also treasure. There have been countless times where going through the dungeons I genuinely felt like I was going to fall asleep. Thematically they are really good, I love the themes for dungeons that are presented here. I just wish navigating them was more fun than going through hallways, opening doors and grabbing treasure until you find the next staircase.
- Engaging shadows
Engaging shadows feels incredibly clunky. I had this same issue with Persona 3 Portable but the same issue persists here too. I didn't like how shadows could see you from any angle you approach them, making a stealthy approach impossible unless you draw the Avoid Encounters card during Shuffle Time. I got the hang of it by the time I entered the third dungeon of the game, as it's about making your move during the second the shadow notices you and the "!" appears. But even after figuring that out, I still feel it was very clunky.
- Lack of encouragement for most social links
There's not really much incentive to do social links in this game. Maxing out links with your party seems like a no-brainer - they get a bunch of awesome benefits as you level them, useful skills as you go through, the works. But maxing out non-party social links feels unsatisfying. If you don't care about earning additional money or raising your social stats, most of them feel pretty pointless. Of course 2 of them are required for story progression if you want to go forth to the true ending, but aside from them - there's not much point to social links aside from missing out on Arcana Bursts and money/social stats.
That's about it for the things I disliked about Persona 4 Golden. Now what about the things that I really liked about it?
Things I liked/loved:
- The story and characters
I still prefer Persona 5's story because it's a lot more relatable to me personally, but I really enjoyed Persona 4 Golden's story. Really! The murder mystery alongside a quiet town aesthetic, while a bit cliche, was very interesting to follow along. I honestly enjoyed how it continued to throw you for a loop, and some parts of the story actively made me jump out of my seat and go "woah what the hell?!". Of course it did have its low-points, but there's a lot of quotable lines from this game's story and it's overall very interesting to follow along. It knows how to pace itself, when the proper time to crack a joke, the works. Also screw Teddie. I found Teddie very annoying all the way through.
- The soundtrack
PERSONA 4'S MUSIC IS GOOD. REALLY GOOD. I prefer the PS2 opening of the game to Golden, but I won't deny at all that this game's soundtrack is a serious bop. The song that plays right before dungeons, known as "Studio Backlot", is seriously my favorite song from this game. It's just so good.
- The gameplay loop
Yeah, I mentioned that I thought the dungeons were boring and that engaging shadows was clunky, but to be perfectly honest - the gameplay loop itself is very good. A good variety of meaningful mechanics and enough time to learn about, adjust to and then abuse the hell out of your enemies. The gameplay, despite being jank in some aspects, does often feel incredibly rewarding.
Do I recommend Persona 4 Golden? As if you thought I was going to say "no". Persona 4 Golden is a great time to be had. And while it is a bit jank and the graphics haven't exactly aged gracefully, seeing as Persona 4 was originally a PlayStation 2 game made in 2008, neither of those facts change that this game is phenomenal. And you should totally give it a shot. There's at least 60 hours worth of fulfilling content in this, if not *way more.
(this is a repost of my Steam review for this game with some slight modifications. you can read the original review here: https://steamcommunity.com/id/huuishuu/recommended/353270/)
Honestly...compared to the original game on the PS3 - Hyperdimension Neptunia Victory - I consider Re;Birth3 to be a step backwards. I'm truly not a big fan of Re;Birth3, despite how much it actually attempts to remix and improve upon what Victory did bad.
Here are areas where Re;Birth3 improves upon Victory:
- Reduced difficulty.
Victory was sort of infamous for being insanely tough and very grindy. I've counted many times on Victory where I was thrown into a boss battle, only to realize I was incredibly under-leveled and underprepared for it. A perfect example would be the first Blanc boss battle where I had to grind nearly 15 levels to actually stand a chance against her. Re;Birth3 solves this problem by not only reducing the difficulty overall, but also by essentially shoving overpowered characters into your party that make grinding pretty much a non-issue.
- Additional story content.
Re;Birth3 attempts to remix the story from Victory by adding additional supplementary material. You get to experience it as soon as you start the game as you are thrown into a VR-esque world as Neptune and navigate a mini-dungeon to escape it. Stuff like that is peppered throughout the game and it's a welcome addition.
- More maker characters.
Victory as a whole was only played with CPU characters. IF and Compa were not playable and it didn't have any other maker characters, at least not without DLC to my understanding. Re;Birth3 solves that problem by giving you more maker characters to use in battle and actually incorporates them into the story without drastically altering everything.
- Framerate.
Victory on PS3 is also infamous for running like absolute crap. The game can't even hold a steady 30 FPS most of the time and dips into the teens very frequently. For some - that makes the game absolutely unplayable and I can understand that. Thankfully, Re;Birth3 solves that issue with a silky smooth, uncapped framerate, or you can choose to manually cap it to 60 with VSync or something.
Here are areas where Re;Birth3 falls short compared to Victory:
- The PC port.
I had a lot of trouble with the PC port of Re;Birth3 in particular. From random softlocks, game crashes, black screens, etc., it was genuinely frustrating at times to deal with this poor port of the game. There are tons of community made patches for these issues, but unless you know where to look - the experience out of the box is not going to be a pleasant one.
- The gameplay.
Re;Birth1 and Re;Birth2 were heavily based upon Victory's gameplay. Heck, I'd argue those games are just reskins of Victory slapped onto Steam, which wouldn't exactly be inaccurate, but those games are superior because Victory's gameplay formula works. Re;Birth3 attempts to mix things up from the other Re;Birth games by changing one small yet crucial mechanic - the EXE drive. Short and to the point - it's annoying and cumbersome in this game, making it way less useful than it was in the previous games.
- No scouting system.
The scouting system in the original, while a bit annoying since it was required for the True Ending, was overall a fun side-mechanic to unlock optional dungeons you can use for grinding or getting useful items early on if you get lucky. That system is gone from Re;Birth3 and instead replaced with the much slower, much less useful Stella's Dungeon mechanic.
I'm sorry to say but I don't really recommend Re;Birth3. The additions and improvements are nice and all, but with a crappy PC port, inferior gameplay due to the gimped EXE system and the removal of the scouting system makes me prefer the original version of the game by a longshot. It sucks too because I think that Victory's story, despite being incredibly long and the cutscenes feeling like they take 60 years to complete, is the best in the series, considering it's the perfect chance to get to know a set of CPUs from a different dimension right down from their humble beginnings.
Victory/Re;Birth3 takes place in what's canonically known as the Ultradimension, and you begin the game in a very primitive version of Gamindustri with 2 nations, eventually expanding into 5 as you go on through the game. You get to see each CPU's humble beginnings and how they deal with hardships running their nations and all that stuff - it goes through a very Neptunia-esque story about competition, co-operation and then defeating some bigger villain in the picture. In Victory/Re;Birth3 - you get to experience every waking moment and, to me - that makes the story engaging and a lot more personal. I seriously prefer the Ultradimension CPUs to the Hyperdimension ones.
It's just a shame that Re;Birth3 is just not very good in my opinion. If you have a PS3 and don't mind the flaws I pointed out about Victory here - that version is the one you should get, should you want to experience it. But if you don't and are considering Re;Birth3 - at least consider looking into fixing the awful PC port yourself via community patches so the game doesn't freeze or softlock constantly for you.
Honestly...compared to the original game on the PS3 - Hyperdimension Neptunia Victory - I consider Re;Birth3 to be a step backwards. I'm truly not a big fan of Re;Birth3, despite how much it actually attempts to remix and improve upon what Victory did bad.
Here are areas where Re;Birth3 improves upon Victory:
- Reduced difficulty.
Victory was sort of infamous for being insanely tough and very grindy. I've counted many times on Victory where I was thrown into a boss battle, only to realize I was incredibly under-leveled and underprepared for it. A perfect example would be the first Blanc boss battle where I had to grind nearly 15 levels to actually stand a chance against her. Re;Birth3 solves this problem by not only reducing the difficulty overall, but also by essentially shoving overpowered characters into your party that make grinding pretty much a non-issue.
- Additional story content.
Re;Birth3 attempts to remix the story from Victory by adding additional supplementary material. You get to experience it as soon as you start the game as you are thrown into a VR-esque world as Neptune and navigate a mini-dungeon to escape it. Stuff like that is peppered throughout the game and it's a welcome addition.
- More maker characters.
Victory as a whole was only played with CPU characters. IF and Compa were not playable and it didn't have any other maker characters, at least not without DLC to my understanding. Re;Birth3 solves that problem by giving you more maker characters to use in battle and actually incorporates them into the story without drastically altering everything.
- Framerate.
Victory on PS3 is also infamous for running like absolute crap. The game can't even hold a steady 30 FPS most of the time and dips into the teens very frequently. For some - that makes the game absolutely unplayable and I can understand that. Thankfully, Re;Birth3 solves that issue with a silky smooth, uncapped framerate, or you can choose to manually cap it to 60 with VSync or something.
Here are areas where Re;Birth3 falls short compared to Victory:
- The PC port.
I had a lot of trouble with the PC port of Re;Birth3 in particular. From random softlocks, game crashes, black screens, etc., it was genuinely frustrating at times to deal with this poor port of the game. There are tons of community made patches for these issues, but unless you know where to look - the experience out of the box is not going to be a pleasant one.
- The gameplay.
Re;Birth1 and Re;Birth2 were heavily based upon Victory's gameplay. Heck, I'd argue those games are just reskins of Victory slapped onto Steam, which wouldn't exactly be inaccurate, but those games are superior because Victory's gameplay formula works. Re;Birth3 attempts to mix things up from the other Re;Birth games by changing one small yet crucial mechanic - the EXE drive. Short and to the point - it's annoying and cumbersome in this game, making it way less useful than it was in the previous games.
- No scouting system.
The scouting system in the original, while a bit annoying since it was required for the True Ending, was overall a fun side-mechanic to unlock optional dungeons you can use for grinding or getting useful items early on if you get lucky. That system is gone from Re;Birth3 and instead replaced with the much slower, much less useful Stella's Dungeon mechanic.
I'm sorry to say but I don't really recommend Re;Birth3. The additions and improvements are nice and all, but with a crappy PC port, inferior gameplay due to the gimped EXE system and the removal of the scouting system makes me prefer the original version of the game by a longshot. It sucks too because I think that Victory's story, despite being incredibly long and the cutscenes feeling like they take 60 years to complete, is the best in the series, considering it's the perfect chance to get to know a set of CPUs from a different dimension right down from their humble beginnings.
Victory/Re;Birth3 takes place in what's canonically known as the Ultradimension, and you begin the game in a very primitive version of Gamindustri with 2 nations, eventually expanding into 5 as you go on through the game. You get to see each CPU's humble beginnings and how they deal with hardships running their nations and all that stuff - it goes through a very Neptunia-esque story about competition, co-operation and then defeating some bigger villain in the picture. In Victory/Re;Birth3 - you get to experience every waking moment and, to me - that makes the story engaging and a lot more personal. I seriously prefer the Ultradimension CPUs to the Hyperdimension ones.
It's just a shame that Re;Birth3 is just not very good in my opinion. If you have a PS3 and don't mind the flaws I pointed out about Victory here - that version is the one you should get, should you want to experience it. But if you don't and are considering Re;Birth3 - at least consider looking into fixing the awful PC port yourself via community patches so the game doesn't freeze or softlock constantly for you.
(this is a repost of my Steam review. you can read the original here: https://steamcommunity.com/id/huuishuu/recommended/571530/)
Superdimension Neptune VS Sega Hard Girls is what I personally consider the best Neptunia spin-off. Gameplay-wise, it's the closest you'll ever get to the mainline or Re;Birth games as it uses that for it base gameplay. However, one cool thing about this game is that it actually tries something new with the standard Neptunia formula, stuff like platforming challenges, crawling, sprinting, fever mode, etc. - it feels like an actual remix!
Another cool thing about this game is that it has actual new areas. Not to say it doesn't reuse assets from Victory - in fact it reuses plenty from that game - but it still had enough effort and love put into it that it has areas that are unique to this game to explore, which, once again - gives a nice change of pace for Neptunia fans looking for something different.
Okay, so the gameplay is remixed and it has new dungeons alongside reused ones from older games. What else? I could talk about the story. I feel like this game could work as a standalone RPG, as it's not set within the Neptunia universe. This game, as you could guess by the title, is a collaboration game between Hyperdimension Neptunia and Sega Hard Girls, and because it doesn't take place in either universe - it's free to do whatever it wants with its story, making it accessible to people who have experience with one, but not the other.
Overall, a solid spin-off from the Neptunia series. If you're longing for a new Neptunia mainline entry after having finished VII, yet haven't tried this game - consider picking it up! It can get a bit repetitive with the whole time travel gimmick and it does get silly with Neptune turning into a bike in this game, but it retains the Neptunia charm the rest of the series is known for and throws fans into a familiar yet different experience!
Superdimension Neptune VS Sega Hard Girls is what I personally consider the best Neptunia spin-off. Gameplay-wise, it's the closest you'll ever get to the mainline or Re;Birth games as it uses that for it base gameplay. However, one cool thing about this game is that it actually tries something new with the standard Neptunia formula, stuff like platforming challenges, crawling, sprinting, fever mode, etc. - it feels like an actual remix!
Another cool thing about this game is that it has actual new areas. Not to say it doesn't reuse assets from Victory - in fact it reuses plenty from that game - but it still had enough effort and love put into it that it has areas that are unique to this game to explore, which, once again - gives a nice change of pace for Neptunia fans looking for something different.
Okay, so the gameplay is remixed and it has new dungeons alongside reused ones from older games. What else? I could talk about the story. I feel like this game could work as a standalone RPG, as it's not set within the Neptunia universe. This game, as you could guess by the title, is a collaboration game between Hyperdimension Neptunia and Sega Hard Girls, and because it doesn't take place in either universe - it's free to do whatever it wants with its story, making it accessible to people who have experience with one, but not the other.
Overall, a solid spin-off from the Neptunia series. If you're longing for a new Neptunia mainline entry after having finished VII, yet haven't tried this game - consider picking it up! It can get a bit repetitive with the whole time travel gimmick and it does get silly with Neptune turning into a bike in this game, but it retains the Neptunia charm the rest of the series is known for and throws fans into a familiar yet different experience!
2017
(this is a repost of my Steam review for this game. you can read the original review here: https://steamcommunity.com/id/huuishuu/recommended/253230/)
Short and to the point - I think A Hat In Time is one of the best 3D platformers I've ever played, and if you haven't tried it - you should. Was that enough to convince you? Good! Hope you enjoy this game as much as I did.
Still not convinced? Allow me to try to do that then. A Hat in Time is just a really fun game, period. Usually I'd go on to talk about a game's story mode, but for once - I don't think that's necessary. A Hat in Time's main focus isn't to tell a compelling narrative or to constantly break the fourth wall for some bigger picture - its focus is to take you on a fun yet silly adventure. And the game's design is representative of that.
I earnestly love the level design in this game. The levels encourage exploration and always have a reward for those looking to deviate a bit from the normal path. Be it pons, yarns for hats or even hourglasses (the main collectible) - there's always something waiting for everyone. Of course, one sentiment I share with a lot of people is that it's really easy to get lost in the game's forgettable locations - Subcon Forest is particularly awful with that and I ran around in circles trying to find my destination on a number of occasions - but it makes up for it in the end.
And while I did mention this game doesn't really care too much about the story, the humor in this game is compelling enough to keep you engaged throughout the whole adventure. Chapter 2 and the conductor is seriously my favorite part of the game with the whole detective murder story aesthetic. It's executed so well, it's written well and it just makes me smile all the way through each time I play through it.
As with every game - not everything is perfect. I mentioned Chapter 2 and the conductor, but I also wanna mention Chapter 2 and DJ Grooves - screw his parade. I hate the parade mission. It's needlessly difficult and infuriating given how it's basically littered with "bottomless pits". And need I mention how I think Subcon Forest makes you feel like you run around in circles because everything looks the same? Alpine Skyline too with the giant bird was also a bit irksome for me.
But despite that - I can't praise A Hat in Time enough. Do you love 3D platformers? Do you want one that primarily just wants to focus on making sure you have a good time? Are you in for a good soundtrack and witty humor with clever level design catering to all skill levels? A Hat in Time is the perfect game for you. If you haven't tried it yet - you should.
Short and to the point - I think A Hat In Time is one of the best 3D platformers I've ever played, and if you haven't tried it - you should. Was that enough to convince you? Good! Hope you enjoy this game as much as I did.
Still not convinced? Allow me to try to do that then. A Hat in Time is just a really fun game, period. Usually I'd go on to talk about a game's story mode, but for once - I don't think that's necessary. A Hat in Time's main focus isn't to tell a compelling narrative or to constantly break the fourth wall for some bigger picture - its focus is to take you on a fun yet silly adventure. And the game's design is representative of that.
I earnestly love the level design in this game. The levels encourage exploration and always have a reward for those looking to deviate a bit from the normal path. Be it pons, yarns for hats or even hourglasses (the main collectible) - there's always something waiting for everyone. Of course, one sentiment I share with a lot of people is that it's really easy to get lost in the game's forgettable locations - Subcon Forest is particularly awful with that and I ran around in circles trying to find my destination on a number of occasions - but it makes up for it in the end.
And while I did mention this game doesn't really care too much about the story, the humor in this game is compelling enough to keep you engaged throughout the whole adventure. Chapter 2 and the conductor is seriously my favorite part of the game with the whole detective murder story aesthetic. It's executed so well, it's written well and it just makes me smile all the way through each time I play through it.
As with every game - not everything is perfect. I mentioned Chapter 2 and the conductor, but I also wanna mention Chapter 2 and DJ Grooves - screw his parade. I hate the parade mission. It's needlessly difficult and infuriating given how it's basically littered with "bottomless pits". And need I mention how I think Subcon Forest makes you feel like you run around in circles because everything looks the same? Alpine Skyline too with the giant bird was also a bit irksome for me.
But despite that - I can't praise A Hat in Time enough. Do you love 3D platformers? Do you want one that primarily just wants to focus on making sure you have a good time? Are you in for a good soundtrack and witty humor with clever level design catering to all skill levels? A Hat in Time is the perfect game for you. If you haven't tried it yet - you should.
(this is a repost of my Steam review with some slight modifications. you can read the original here: https://steamcommunity.com/id/huuishuu/recommended/447530/)
VA-11 Hall-A is...special. It genuinely is. I first learned of this game's existence through Girls' Frontline, back when they held that collaboration event between the two games. I thought the character designs were interesting to say the least and my interest was piqued, but I never really gave it much thought until one of my friends gifted me the game. By the end of the game, I was honestly touched.
VA-11 Hall-A takes place in the future. Sometime after 2069, in a world where the economy is garbage, the streets are dangerous, dogs can talk and you have robot sex workers. I really have to give the game credit where it's due - it holds nothing back. If it decides it wants to talk about messed up stuff, be it societal or in peoples' personal lives - oh it will. It will delve into the uncanny valley at times. This is about as much as I wanna say because it's best to experience this game as blindly as possible, really.
VA-11 Hall-A is a great time. I don't like visual novels. But I make an exception for VA-11 Hall-A. If this game piques your interest even in the slightest - be it the art style, word of mouth or even the old Girls' Frontline collab event - pick it up. This is one story that it tells that will stick with you for a while to come.
VA-11 Hall-A is...special. It genuinely is. I first learned of this game's existence through Girls' Frontline, back when they held that collaboration event between the two games. I thought the character designs were interesting to say the least and my interest was piqued, but I never really gave it much thought until one of my friends gifted me the game. By the end of the game, I was honestly touched.
VA-11 Hall-A takes place in the future. Sometime after 2069, in a world where the economy is garbage, the streets are dangerous, dogs can talk and you have robot sex workers. I really have to give the game credit where it's due - it holds nothing back. If it decides it wants to talk about messed up stuff, be it societal or in peoples' personal lives - oh it will. It will delve into the uncanny valley at times. This is about as much as I wanna say because it's best to experience this game as blindly as possible, really.
VA-11 Hall-A is a great time. I don't like visual novels. But I make an exception for VA-11 Hall-A. If this game piques your interest even in the slightest - be it the art style, word of mouth or even the old Girls' Frontline collab event - pick it up. This is one story that it tells that will stick with you for a while to come.
(this is a repost of my Steam review with some slight modifications. you can read the original review here: https://steamcommunity.com/id/huuishuu/recommended/524580/)
ADF does to FFF what Persona 5 Royal did to Persona 5, if you want an example to compare it to. It took the base game and added in a bunch of additions and improvements to make it the definitive experience. Advent Dark Force introduces new routes with new endings, new dungeons, new playable characters, new characters just in general, and with that - way more incentive to replay the game if you've beaten it once.
I genuinely love how it pulls a twist on the original Fairy Fencer F story depending on which route you choose to take, which can genuinely throw off your perception on certain pre-established things in the universe.
Of course I have gripes with ADF, but in all accounts - this is definitely the definitive way to experience the best of what Compile Heart has to offer if Neptunia really isn't your thing.
Highly recommended, especially if Neptunia isn't your cup of tea, Fairy Fencer F: Advent Dark Force might just be by offering a more "traditional" experience.
ADF does to FFF what Persona 5 Royal did to Persona 5, if you want an example to compare it to. It took the base game and added in a bunch of additions and improvements to make it the definitive experience. Advent Dark Force introduces new routes with new endings, new dungeons, new playable characters, new characters just in general, and with that - way more incentive to replay the game if you've beaten it once.
I genuinely love how it pulls a twist on the original Fairy Fencer F story depending on which route you choose to take, which can genuinely throw off your perception on certain pre-established things in the universe.
Of course I have gripes with ADF, but in all accounts - this is definitely the definitive way to experience the best of what Compile Heart has to offer if Neptunia really isn't your thing.
Highly recommended, especially if Neptunia isn't your cup of tea, Fairy Fencer F: Advent Dark Force might just be by offering a more "traditional" experience.
2011
(this is a repost of my Steam review with some modifications. you can read the original review on Steam here: https://steamcommunity.com/id/huuishuu/recommended/71340/)
I can confidently say that Sonic Generations is a game that, almost 11 years later, has aged wonderfully. While the story itself is laughable and forgettable from a writing perspective, it serves as good fan-service for long-time fans of the series up until this game's release, with refreshing revisits to old stages.
Granted, some of it has been spoiled by later games (cough cough, Mania, Forces and Frontiers, cough cough) but that doesn't take away from the experience that is Sonic Generations itself. With surprisingly intricate level design for both Modern & Classic Sonic that gives you many paths to explore with neat goodies at the end of them, like Red Rings that actually mean a damn thing for unlocking cool extras and unlockables like artwork & music, to extra rings and the like. Sonic Generations' level design is really well done. I think that if Sonic Team will want to continue with the boost formula for Modern Sonic, they should look at the level design they managed to accomplish in this game.
I'm not a fan of everything in Generations though - I do not enjoy stages like Classic Seaside Hill, Classic Crisis City and both acts of Planet Wisp. Classic Seaside Hill feels very floaty and dreary, a bit dull perhaps, leading to a level that actively puts me to sleep with how slow you'll be going most of the time. Classic Crisis City feels very gimmicky with the tornado and all and the abundance of bottomless pits EVERYWHERE leads to a pretty frustrating level to play, double-so if you're like me and actively look for the Red Rings. And Planet Wisp...man, what a dull level it is. It's really long with many stop & go sections constantly breaking up the flow, tons of spikes and enemies that require you to wait before you can attack and need I mention the really dull factory aesthetic? Yeah I get what they're going for, but I wish the entire level was based more around the forest you get to run around in at the beginning. Classic Planet Wisp does it better than Modern, but both retain the problems.
Another gripe I have is with Classic Sonic. He feels pretty imprecise to me - his jump is really heavy and his acceleration is a bit too slow, leading to precise platforming being a proper exercise and a chore. Out of the 2 Sonics, he's my lesser favorite one. Modern Sonic isn't without his problems too though - control-wise, I don't really understand how the game handles changes in camera perspective with him. When it goes from a third-person "behind Sonic" view to a 2D view, I don't get whether the game wants me to continue holding up on the stick or start holding left - neither cause him to go anywhere unless I fully let go and then let the game re-adjust, which causes lots of frustration in some of the game's challenges it throws at you. Modern City Escape and Modern Rooftop Run are very guilty of this and I have my fair share of deaths thanks to this.
But where the game lacks in length, some of the levels and control, it makes up for in everything else. I'm a huge fan of a majority of the levels - Modern City Escape being my absolute favorite stage simply for how many concepts it revisits from Sonic Adventure 2 at once, being the snow-boarding and the G.U.N. truck chase and for overall how fun it is to play, the amount of things you can unlock and experience with the gallery and the like and tons of customizability with the skill shop, Generations is a game that feels replayable.
And I haven't even mentioned the modding scene for Generations PC. The community has done amazing things with the game, a few examples being the Unleashed Project, ports of levels from Forces into Generations and fan-interpretations of older games with the Generations game engine such as Sonic 06, if you want even more time sunk into this game - then modding has you covered.
I love Sonic Generations. I highly recommend it if you're a Sonic fan.
I can confidently say that Sonic Generations is a game that, almost 11 years later, has aged wonderfully. While the story itself is laughable and forgettable from a writing perspective, it serves as good fan-service for long-time fans of the series up until this game's release, with refreshing revisits to old stages.
Granted, some of it has been spoiled by later games (cough cough, Mania, Forces and Frontiers, cough cough) but that doesn't take away from the experience that is Sonic Generations itself. With surprisingly intricate level design for both Modern & Classic Sonic that gives you many paths to explore with neat goodies at the end of them, like Red Rings that actually mean a damn thing for unlocking cool extras and unlockables like artwork & music, to extra rings and the like. Sonic Generations' level design is really well done. I think that if Sonic Team will want to continue with the boost formula for Modern Sonic, they should look at the level design they managed to accomplish in this game.
I'm not a fan of everything in Generations though - I do not enjoy stages like Classic Seaside Hill, Classic Crisis City and both acts of Planet Wisp. Classic Seaside Hill feels very floaty and dreary, a bit dull perhaps, leading to a level that actively puts me to sleep with how slow you'll be going most of the time. Classic Crisis City feels very gimmicky with the tornado and all and the abundance of bottomless pits EVERYWHERE leads to a pretty frustrating level to play, double-so if you're like me and actively look for the Red Rings. And Planet Wisp...man, what a dull level it is. It's really long with many stop & go sections constantly breaking up the flow, tons of spikes and enemies that require you to wait before you can attack and need I mention the really dull factory aesthetic? Yeah I get what they're going for, but I wish the entire level was based more around the forest you get to run around in at the beginning. Classic Planet Wisp does it better than Modern, but both retain the problems.
Another gripe I have is with Classic Sonic. He feels pretty imprecise to me - his jump is really heavy and his acceleration is a bit too slow, leading to precise platforming being a proper exercise and a chore. Out of the 2 Sonics, he's my lesser favorite one. Modern Sonic isn't without his problems too though - control-wise, I don't really understand how the game handles changes in camera perspective with him. When it goes from a third-person "behind Sonic" view to a 2D view, I don't get whether the game wants me to continue holding up on the stick or start holding left - neither cause him to go anywhere unless I fully let go and then let the game re-adjust, which causes lots of frustration in some of the game's challenges it throws at you. Modern City Escape and Modern Rooftop Run are very guilty of this and I have my fair share of deaths thanks to this.
But where the game lacks in length, some of the levels and control, it makes up for in everything else. I'm a huge fan of a majority of the levels - Modern City Escape being my absolute favorite stage simply for how many concepts it revisits from Sonic Adventure 2 at once, being the snow-boarding and the G.U.N. truck chase and for overall how fun it is to play, the amount of things you can unlock and experience with the gallery and the like and tons of customizability with the skill shop, Generations is a game that feels replayable.
And I haven't even mentioned the modding scene for Generations PC. The community has done amazing things with the game, a few examples being the Unleashed Project, ports of levels from Forces into Generations and fan-interpretations of older games with the Generations game engine such as Sonic 06, if you want even more time sunk into this game - then modding has you covered.
I love Sonic Generations. I highly recommend it if you're a Sonic fan.