Incredibly frustrating game. The core combat here is a ton of fun, and going through dungeons is a blast. The combat system really makes mowing down dozens of mobs at a time addicting.

The issue, however, is that these combat opportunities are drip fed to you over the course of the most generic, trite fantasy story possible that gets bogged down even further by the virtue of wanting to be an MMO. I just handled 40+ enemies at once in this dungeon, why is the next quest objective "Kill 4 bandits" or "Pick 3 flowers?"

I hear end game is where this games shines, and I'd believe it. When you can just do all the fun stuff without 90% filler? Yeah, that sounds great. But I won't see it because I can't imagine wasting anymore time delivering apples or some garbage.

2/24 EDIT: I wanted to add an update to my feelings of this game as I'm revisiting it, something I never thought I would do, but the press about the DLC has me hopeful that I'll actually REALLY enjoy that, but because of how bad the PC port was I played on PS5 and need to get a character up to speed on PC. Anyway, my feelings remain the same. Such dissonance between the field design and legacy dungeons. If anything, I actually feel worse playing this game again because I forgot how much cool stuff IS in here but I only remember the vast swathes of boring, bland, repetitive catacombs and ruins. The one positive is all the stuff I said about the PC port is fixed, game no longer stutters and is buttery smooth, so that's good I guess. I still stand by DS2 being a better version of this game, and Lies of P is superior to this AND DS3. Trying to be optimistic for Shadow of the Erdtree.

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Alright, I know since I didn't give the game 5 stars that no one is actually going to pay attention to this review because this is the god game to save all video games, but that's fine. There's a lot of critique going around right now that is completely superficial or outright racist ("Japanese video games are bad wow when will they learn I hate anime and their culture and history and they should conform to our Western standards that we made and abandon anything they have accomplished!!") and I wanted to give critique that isn't any of that. This is a game I should love, but was ultimately disappointed by.

I guess I'll talk about the bad first. The PC performance is awful. It isn't a hardware issue, it is a software issue, DX12 takes a lot of the responsibility of performance off of the hardware driver and places it on the software using it. This is a double edged sword because while it can be very powerful, it has to be utilized correctly. Elden Ring does not accomplish this and is riddled with stuttering and loading lag as new assets get loaded in and compiled in real time. This is happening whether you notice it or not, so don't try and say "Well it's fine for me!" because it isn't, you just aren't sensitive to the frame hitching. I've seen footage of people who said it was fine and it was hitching. I've seen footage of speedrunners using autosplit and their time lagged as the game hitched. It's an issue, it exists, and if you are sensitive to framerates, as I am, it was unplayable.
So I already had a sour taste in my mouth for the game, but hey, I have a PS5, I picked it up there, and running the PS4 version ran at an incredibly smooth 60 FPS with no issues whatsoever (I guess this is a positive but it make more sense to include it here.)

Gameplay-wise, it's Dark Souls 3 again. This is kind of a bummer since I found DS3's combat to be a little too simple and every fight inevitably winds up being spamming R1 and rolling. Never really had to question my tactics, and anytime I tried using R2 or even power stancing and throwing in L1 and weapon arts, I would leave the encounter going "That would've been half as long if I just spammed R1." Balance-wise, it's kind of rough right now as well. Arcane, my initial build, is completely bugged and doesn't scale correctly so I was banging my head against the wall for the first 40 hours wondering why everything was so spongy. I unlocked respeccing and switched to a Dexterity build, which then wound up becoming nothing but R1 spam and later Hoarfrost Stomp spam because it was so overtuned.

Maybe my biggest gripe with the gameplay was the complete trivialization of multiplayer. I love the multiplayer aspect of these games. I love the tension of getting invaded while exploring a big, scary new area just as much as I love the thrill of invading someone else once I'm confident with my knowledge of the zone. I never got invaded once. It was only when I started invading for an NPC questline that I realized you only ever get invaded if you have other players co-op with you. Every invasion was 1v3 and invaders never get backup either. After about a dozen or so failures I promptly ignored the NPC and went on with the game. A complete waste of time to even have that feature in the game, and a true disappointment. PVP is the one time that R1 spam fails, and with so many fun and unique spells and weapons, I was crafting all these builds in my head only to realize that there was no point.

The open world is probably my biggest point of contention. It keeps getting so much praise as being wholly unique and vast, but it really isn't. Every catacombs is the same, every cave is the same, the same ruins are scattered throughout the entire map, the same enemies get used everywhere, etc. This in turn hurts the game's lore, as I really can't find myself getting invested when over half of the things I'm finding are just reused fights. The Crucible Knight Evergaol was the first fight where I really went "Wow okay this is gonna be good!" but after running into the 20th knight I just got so tired of it. It wasn't fun anymore and just felt like a chore. The constant reuse of fights and factions really made it hard for me to get invested in the game's lore, which is one of my favorite parts of Fromsoft's games. It's especially frustrating voicing this complaint when everyone just yells "The lore doesn't even matter you're just gonna watch it all in a YouTube video anyway!" because no, I'm not. I've never watched a Souls lore video, I just play the games and pay attention. They do such a good job writing these worlds and building up situations and stages that tell the story if you just explore and look around. This game simply feels like it was written by 2 people who didn't collaborate at all so they could just market a well-known name (🤔)

I don't have much else to say in terms of audio, but the music is really lackluster. For having the most tracks of any of Fromsoft's games, there were like, 3 that I can even remember. Most tracks are completely incidental or generic. Most of the voicework is also pretty weak (Rykard's VA was super sick though.)

Transitioning into the (few) things I legitimately enjoyed, the set pieces dungeons (Stormveil Castle, Raya Lucaria, Leyndell, a couple more that I won't spoil) were where the game truly shined. This was the world building I was talking about. They are some of my favorite stages in all of the Soulsborne titles. The game also has such a well realized aesthetic. The vistas are awe-inspiring and some of the creature design is top-notch.

I wasn't super hyped for this game so it's not like it just didn't meet any lofty ambitions that I set for it in my mind. I went in having only seen the reveal trailer from last year and the knowledge that I like Fromsoft's dark fantasy games. It's ironic that the game being touted as "too Japanese" is maybe the most Western game they've made and I think that it suffers greatly because of that. I clocked in at around 107 hours, with over half of that time spend running along cliff edges, going through cookie-cutter Skyrim dungeons, getting to the end and saying "Well, I'm sure the next one will be cool."

At the end of a Soulsborne game, I immediately fire up a new game to play it a totally different way with my knowledge of what is where and how to get it as fast as possible. But as the credits ran on Elden Ring, the only thing I was thinking of was installing a different game.

This is a hard 2 to give, but Tunic was an experience that was much more than I expected only to be brought down by being exactly what I expected.

I don't tend to watch trailers or follow pre-release footage outside of an initial reveal, so I had no clue about the instruction manual aspect of this game or the fact that it was all in a fantasy language. I loved this part of Tunic. The manual artwork was superb and really nailed the feeling of the old Zelda chibi art. The way information is dealt out was very nostalgic, and just as a concept, I love it so much. 5 star stuff. I grew up with a bunch of floppy drives with a ton of NES and SNES roms and combing through the JP releases was one of my favorite things to do. I don't speak this language, and I don't know what is going on, but I play a lot of games so I should be fine, right? And after some trial and error, yeah, I could pick up on that stuff with context clues and intuition. Tunic does such an amazing job of recreating this feeling.

Visually, the game is amazing. Soft shadows and lighting combined with a super strong art design goes a long way. I was in awe of some of the locations in this game (Blue Key area especially.) Likewise, the music also shines. Lifeforced is such a strong composer with Dustforce being one of my favorite game OSTs ever. The track that plays in the East Forest is so reminiscent of an alternate reality "Secret of the Forest" it gave me goosebumps. Every track did such a good job of setting a mood without being too ambient.

The puzzles are so clever. I was filling out a notebook in a way I haven't done since I played Fez and this completely caught me off guard. I had no idea the game was going to go this way and I was so for it. I don't want to spoil too much, but there is one mechanic that gave me the same feeling cracking the Rosetta Stone did all those years ago. I solved the obvious ones then found one of the secret ones, and then I was hooked. I had to 100% this, I had to solve every riddle, I had to complete this.

But I didn't. And that's because I have not talked about, well, playing the game. This game takes heavily from Souls games, more-so than Zelda, honestly. Block, parry, rolling i-frames, stamina, Estus, corpse runs, punishing combat encounters, the works. And okay, cool, I like those games a lot too. The issue is that Tunic..... just doesn't fit that style of gameplay. The controls are very loose... It's hard to describe, moving around feels tank-ish? Like you have a pretty substantial turning radius, so moving about in precise combat just never felt good. I'd constantly find myself dying due to get stuck on geometry or just trying to run past an encounter just to overshoot the path and then be stuck in a corner. Enemy AI at points is relentless and sometimes outright broken, and I mean in the sense that it wasn't functioning correctly, not that it was too hard or something. There's one encounter in West Garden where a bunch of flying enemies come swarming in from halfway across the map, even though I had never even been near them. Like I knew where they became active, it wasn't even remotely close to where I was, and yet the AI would become active and just flyover at hyperspeed like they're trying to catch up. Also, for those particular flying enemies, you aren't really equipped to handle them at that point. The game does a pretty good job about giving you items and consumables, but you don't get a projectile weapon until the end of that area. They weren't hard or anything, so why even have them? They were just annoying, having to wait for 20 seconds for this thing to get it's pathing right and not get stuck somewhere for you to just kill it in 2 hits.

The camera was another big issue for me. The game is pretty cheeky and hides paths that you can't see due to a static isometric angle. And then it does it 50 more times, like it's being clever. It got tiring very quickly and the annoyance was only exacerbated by how often I found myself clipping into the geometry. I constantly found myself asking, "Is this a hidden path or am I just stuck in a cliff again?" I don't even need like a free camera, but just a simple 90 degree rotation would have made things so much less frustrating.

I have a bunch of other minor grievances like the stamina system sucks, the rules the game sets seem inconsistent and it breaks them at seemingly random times, the lack of (good) fast travel in a game about exploration is frustrating, and they all just came culminating to a point where I didn't want to play anymore. I'm missing 2 pieces to the Mountain Door puzzle and maybe half a dozen secret puzzles left and I am super curious about what I left unfinished. But I'll probably just look up a longplay and see if I can solve them without having to actually play the game. This is a game I should be gushing about non-stop to people and honestly I probably still will, just with a big fat asterisk at the end.

I definitely understand why Tokimeki is the titan of dating sims that it is today. Art and presentation is fantastic and all of the girls are super fun and full of personality. They each have such charm that I really want to see them all to completion.

That being said, in the modern time, the game kind of sucks. Gameplay loop is super repetitive and dull. Mechanics are obfuscated seemingly just to be frustrating. Basic actions take forever to complete (calling Yoshio sticks out as being so unnecessarily time consuming) and it feels very unfulfilling to play. Definitely a series that I will go back to appreciating from a distance.

Also, Yoshio, why the hell do you know your little sisters BWH?

despite backing this game, it took me until now to complete it (look, the website isn't called frontloggd)

overall i really enjoyed it! a super fun igavania that takes from all his previous titles. lots of fun mechanics and movement abilities, and an expansive, varied castle to explore. fantastic soundtrack too.

biggest qualms with the game were the crowdfunded content and graphics. walking through a gothic castle seeing a bunch of stupid youtubers doing meme faces really took me out of it and had me cringing. and i understand the necessity of having to go 3d. it's cheaper and easier and quicker than doing traditional sprite art. and the environments looked good! but the characters, cutscenes, and most of the enemy models were all atrocious and looks super stilted and cheap

looking past the aesthetics though, the game was a blast, and all the extra modes will keep me happy for a long while, maybe until a more polished bloodstained 2?

i want to preface this by saying that my knowledge of shmups is pretty marginal. i've never beaten one (until now) and only know the classics and a select few recent ones, but not in depth at all. i mention this because the only other review currently seems to make a lot of valid criticisms, but they also seem much more knowledgable about the genre! this is my opinion as a team ladybug fan, not a shmup head.

i get it now! i had a blast playing this. visually it's a delight, which is to be expected from team ladybug. it does feel a little cluttered at times, though i feel it's largely due to inexperience. i think attacks are largely choreographed well enough, i was just mistiming things. the sprites and models are all super sharp and crisp. the soundtrack is also a banger, high-octane and adrenaline pumping. what was most surprising was the story honestly. i didn't expect much from a retro style shmup story, but it definitely had me interested and popping off at moments, though it is a tad trope-y.

i played on normal and struggled a lot, largely towards the end of the first half and most of the second half, but it was never frustrating due to the generous checkpoints. a 1cc is probably not in my future lmao. i could definitely see a more experienced player breezing though it, as the absorb mechanic does seem super powerful if used well.

the game definitely has me wanting to finally dive into the classics i've seen and heard so much about. maybe then, after i'm a 1cc god i'll look back and think it's a little lacking, but it also got me started on the path to tackle an entire genre, so i have to give it props.

i love diablo and arpgs, but when they announced a mobile game, i was not interested. i don't like phone games. i was gonna pass. then they said it was coming to pc, and i got interested again. but it's still a phone game, but on a big screen.

my biggest issue is honestly them advertising "controller support" when the game is completely unplayable on pad. using the menus is impossible. the joystick drifts and frequently goes in the complete wrong direction. there are also several menus that literally do not accept any form of pad input and have to be navigated with a mouse. nothing is controlled like you would think with a pad. they do not do any work to make it usable, just throw a cursor on screen and require you to press and hold a button while you mimic finger swiping with an analogue stick. absolutely miserable.

when it comes to gameplay, it's not diablo. it's lost ark. the exact issues i had with lost ark i have with this. it's a series of going from quest marker to quest marker with no combat in between. you never face more than 4-5 mobs at a time and you don't spam skills because cooldowns are all so high. this is verbatim the review i wrote for lost ark. you actually get to play the game in dungeons, and higher difficulties require multiplayer play. i don't play diablo in parties. i like playing solo. this game doesn't facilitate that.

the monetization is obviously gross and egregious but it's a mobile game designed to milk money from people with predatory timed offers. beat a dungeon? congrats, here's your reward: the ability to buy a chest. i bit and wound up buying the first of these chests they offered for 1 USD. the game crashed 4 times trying to spend money in it. i should have taken it as a sign.

the things i like about diablo 3 (pushing greater rifts) are present, and very similar, with one change. the resource you use to run these rifts? yeah you just buy them.

i honestly wasn't expecting much. i was at least expecting a diablo game. but i got a half baked mobile mmo. i bet it'll do gangbusters overseas. but it's not for me. i'll wait for 4.

my gut reaction to this game was just average. seemed solidly put together but didn't capture what i liked about guilty gear. after letting it breathe some and giving it more time, it's definitely grown on me. it's definitely different from old gear, but the dna is still there. it's still a blast to play. i think this is a sentiment more fgc players need to adapt. if you enjoy the old game, play the old game, and try to see the new as something new. if you still don't like it, well, the old games aren't going away and plenty of people will stick with the game that really hits for them, so you can keep playing what you do like.

the music truly is abysmal though. most of the character in the songs comes purely through the lyrics, with the instrumentation taking a backseat and largely sounding very samey, and naoki's performance is almost satirical, sounding like a theater kid playing the role of a metal musician in a high school play. a lot of the song structures just don't fit a high intensity fighting game either, with too many tracks having odd low energy interludes. i really like the themes of faust, baiken, and hc, but all of them just have terrible sections that completely kill the momentum during a round. i wish they had been chopped and edited so the in-game versions would've flowed better in a match, and left the full versions for the ost album. i love the lyrics as a lore fiend and think they do well at displaying the character they represent, i just wish they were performed better, or there were optional instrumental versions just due to my disdain of naoki's performance. i will admit that (most of) aisha's performances were really nice and shine through the sludge that is the majority of the soundtrack.

honestly pretty bummed with this one. new switch skills and switch skill swap feel pretty worthless and almost every weapon i play just feels better the way i played it in vanilla. new content was doled out much too slowly and hearing that postgame content is at 50 and 100 is baffling to me. already feels thin on content so to put things at such extreme ranks feels like padding. jungle map is a mess and not really fun.

i liked the characters and cinematics and the citadel is maybe my favorite mh map of all time. malzeno owns hard and so does the last boss. maybe my expectations were just set too high from iceborne? i dunno. hopefully patches add more.

had a lot of fun with this one. not as good as the original, but honestly i'm shocked and happy it exists at all.

story wasn't too crazy honestly, i felt like i was 2 steps ahead at every reveal which was surprising from uchikoshi. a couple bits really felt like they were just in there because they were "memey" from the first game and those got tiring. but at the same time some of them had me hootin' and hollerin' so it's a mixed bag. had some minor gameplay annoyances too that i don't remember having in the first either, but it's been a long 3 years so maybe i'm just not recalling everything.

still, it was a lot of fun to revisit these characters and i enjoyed my time.