sleeping0dragon
2020
Buried Stars is the first Korean VN I've played. If I didn't know any better, I would've thought it was another JP one since the mechanics and presentation aren't particularly different than many JP ones. Of course, the game deals with Korean characters in Korea so that's different.
The story deals with a few young B-Tier celebrities on some sort of music talent reality show. In the middle of the finals stage, the ceiling begins to collapse. The contestants soon find themselves alone and trapped within the venue building along with one staff member. From there, they try to get in contact with the outside world while finding a way to escape. A person later winds up dead setting up a murder mystery.
Despite the murder mystery, that element doesn't get much focus. A large portion of the game has the survivors stand around and chat about various topics relating to the current situation inside, the in-game twitter chats and their prior histories and backgrounds. A major theme of the game deals with Korean celebrities, the reality shows and the dark side of the entertainment industry there.
These segments do reveal a lot about the characters and gives them quite a bit of depth by the end of the game. They are written pretty well overall. Getting a look into what does on in the industry is also interesting.
The murder mystery elements are also solid despite not having a lot of time focusing on it. The circumstances of the death would be explored throughout the game instead of in one moment. The setup works well and is fairly grounded in the genre so that it's very reasonable to figure out how a character died.
Figuring out the culprit is another question however. The game throws a lot of red herrings at you and it took me pretty much right before the reveal to get the complete picture.
The character art looks great as well as the few CGs in the game. The backgrounds looks decent, but there isn't much variety. The whole game takes place in the building, but there are very few rooms that the characters visit.
The music has some rock elements, but otherwise has a lot of oppressive songs to reflect the tension filled atmosphere.
The gameplay is mostly split into two segments. The main story segments are pretty much linear with little player control. Other than a few dialogue options, you're just watching a lot of people talk here. In between those, there's the investigation segments which gives you a lot more control over what to do. You gather topics from the various "twitter" posts during a moment and discuss them with the other characters along with any other story relevant topic at the time. At the minimum, you need to gather all of the keywords for this part before you can advance. In some cases, you need to use every topic for every character to get all of the keywords.
Some of the topics can adjust the trust the characters has in the MC. Some of them gives you a dialogue choice which can also alter the trust. The MC himself has an insanity gauge which gets adjusted throughout the game and from the topics he has with the characters. You get a game over if the gauge hits 0.
Other than these investigation moments, there isn't much else for gameplay.
The story route structure is a bit strange at first. You're forced to go down a linear route and reached the first ending regardless of the choices you make. You then have access to the story split on a subsequent playthrough, but unless you have a save just right before the split that occurs pretty close to the first ending, you'll have to replay that segment again.
The game essentially has 3 story routes (A, B and C). A is pretty good overall. While B provides the additional information that A didn't have, it was generally a disappointing one. C is short and not really a full route, but an amusing one.
Overall, the mystery is decent and it did leave me guessing until pretty much the end. I enjoyed the exploration of the characters and focus on the characters as well. I did wished that there were more major story events since it just feels like there isn't that much that happens.
There isn't an in-game timer, but I figure it takes about 15-20 hours to complete all of the story routes.
The story deals with a few young B-Tier celebrities on some sort of music talent reality show. In the middle of the finals stage, the ceiling begins to collapse. The contestants soon find themselves alone and trapped within the venue building along with one staff member. From there, they try to get in contact with the outside world while finding a way to escape. A person later winds up dead setting up a murder mystery.
Despite the murder mystery, that element doesn't get much focus. A large portion of the game has the survivors stand around and chat about various topics relating to the current situation inside, the in-game twitter chats and their prior histories and backgrounds. A major theme of the game deals with Korean celebrities, the reality shows and the dark side of the entertainment industry there.
These segments do reveal a lot about the characters and gives them quite a bit of depth by the end of the game. They are written pretty well overall. Getting a look into what does on in the industry is also interesting.
The murder mystery elements are also solid despite not having a lot of time focusing on it. The circumstances of the death would be explored throughout the game instead of in one moment. The setup works well and is fairly grounded in the genre so that it's very reasonable to figure out how a character died.
Figuring out the culprit is another question however. The game throws a lot of red herrings at you and it took me pretty much right before the reveal to get the complete picture.
The character art looks great as well as the few CGs in the game. The backgrounds looks decent, but there isn't much variety. The whole game takes place in the building, but there are very few rooms that the characters visit.
The music has some rock elements, but otherwise has a lot of oppressive songs to reflect the tension filled atmosphere.
The gameplay is mostly split into two segments. The main story segments are pretty much linear with little player control. Other than a few dialogue options, you're just watching a lot of people talk here. In between those, there's the investigation segments which gives you a lot more control over what to do. You gather topics from the various "twitter" posts during a moment and discuss them with the other characters along with any other story relevant topic at the time. At the minimum, you need to gather all of the keywords for this part before you can advance. In some cases, you need to use every topic for every character to get all of the keywords.
Some of the topics can adjust the trust the characters has in the MC. Some of them gives you a dialogue choice which can also alter the trust. The MC himself has an insanity gauge which gets adjusted throughout the game and from the topics he has with the characters. You get a game over if the gauge hits 0.
Other than these investigation moments, there isn't much else for gameplay.
The story route structure is a bit strange at first. You're forced to go down a linear route and reached the first ending regardless of the choices you make. You then have access to the story split on a subsequent playthrough, but unless you have a save just right before the split that occurs pretty close to the first ending, you'll have to replay that segment again.
The game essentially has 3 story routes (A, B and C). A is pretty good overall. While B provides the additional information that A didn't have, it was generally a disappointing one. C is short and not really a full route, but an amusing one.
Overall, the mystery is decent and it did leave me guessing until pretty much the end. I enjoyed the exploration of the characters and focus on the characters as well. I did wished that there were more major story events since it just feels like there isn't that much that happens.
There isn't an in-game timer, but I figure it takes about 15-20 hours to complete all of the story routes.
There aren't many games that can emotionally move me as much as this game does. It starts off as a slice of life story between a high school couple and a simple date to the movies. The story then quickly spirals into a mystery where strange occurrences appear throughout the town. Lots of supernatural and fantasy elements here.
The story deals with some serious and mature themes and even starts off with a warning of such nature. Despite the colorful tone and atmosphere early in the game, there are a lot of dark heavy moments hiding beneath it that left me uncomfortable at times. The emotional journey does end with a satisfying conclusion albeit leaving some plot points up to interpretation.
Other than the main characters, there's a lot of NPCs to interact with and a decent chunk of them are involved in the main story. Their personal stories are decently developed despite their small screentime. The writing as a whole is well executed.
The art direction and the pixelated graphics looks great with a decent range of animation.
The music is on the pleasant side with many well composed piano pieces. There are a few vocal tracks that help supplement the emotional moments.
The gameplay is similar to point and click adventure games. You move a character on a 2D plane and enter different rooms or areas on the side. There's a large amount of NPCs roaming the area that you can talk to. Puzzles are placed throughout the game and range from incredibly simple to more complex ones. The latter are not very common.
There's a mechanic that allows the player to dive within the mind/soul of a character to help resolve issues. All of these involve solving puzzles in some form.
Despite how it seems, there are actual combat moments which mostly involve inputting QTEs. These aren't difficult in general fortunately.
There are collectibles and a few optional sidequests in the game. However, getting all of these collectibles can be a hassle if you want to view a bonus scene at the end of the game. Many of the collectibles are chapter locked so there's no way to go back and get them if you missed out the first time other than do a completely new playthrough. Fortunately, Youtube exists.
Overall, the gameplay is decent and relaxing most of the time. Just a few frustrating moments on some of the QTEs and puzzles. The gameplay is actually very similar to 13 Sentinels' story portion of the game for those that are familiar with it.
The game takes about 10 hours to complete on a blind playthrough and recommended for those that want to experience a strong emotional story.
The story deals with some serious and mature themes and even starts off with a warning of such nature. Despite the colorful tone and atmosphere early in the game, there are a lot of dark heavy moments hiding beneath it that left me uncomfortable at times. The emotional journey does end with a satisfying conclusion albeit leaving some plot points up to interpretation.
Other than the main characters, there's a lot of NPCs to interact with and a decent chunk of them are involved in the main story. Their personal stories are decently developed despite their small screentime. The writing as a whole is well executed.
The art direction and the pixelated graphics looks great with a decent range of animation.
The music is on the pleasant side with many well composed piano pieces. There are a few vocal tracks that help supplement the emotional moments.
The gameplay is similar to point and click adventure games. You move a character on a 2D plane and enter different rooms or areas on the side. There's a large amount of NPCs roaming the area that you can talk to. Puzzles are placed throughout the game and range from incredibly simple to more complex ones. The latter are not very common.
There's a mechanic that allows the player to dive within the mind/soul of a character to help resolve issues. All of these involve solving puzzles in some form.
Despite how it seems, there are actual combat moments which mostly involve inputting QTEs. These aren't difficult in general fortunately.
There are collectibles and a few optional sidequests in the game. However, getting all of these collectibles can be a hassle if you want to view a bonus scene at the end of the game. Many of the collectibles are chapter locked so there's no way to go back and get them if you missed out the first time other than do a completely new playthrough. Fortunately, Youtube exists.
Overall, the gameplay is decent and relaxing most of the time. Just a few frustrating moments on some of the QTEs and puzzles. The gameplay is actually very similar to 13 Sentinels' story portion of the game for those that are familiar with it.
The game takes about 10 hours to complete on a blind playthrough and recommended for those that want to experience a strong emotional story.
2024
I played on the Twilight difficulty (hard) and it was a challenging game for me, but rarely did I feel frustrated at a situation or fight. I died a lot, but most of them were due to careless error. Checkpoints were generous so even deaths didn't lead to much loss of progress which would be my biggest issue with these type of games.
All boss fights are against other humans and many of their fights can get pretty intense. Some feel unfair at first, but it feels great to learn their attack patterns after a while and successfully parry stuff. In regards to the parry mechanic in general, it's not really needed against the mob enemies. Their health aren't very high in general so simple combos can quickly dispatch them. Boss fights on the other hand really emphasize the need to parry. Their attack chains are very long and deal heavy ki damage (stamina) even if you block them. Even a successful parry however doesn't necessary turn the situation around since they recover fast and can quickly continue another attack chain. Oftentimes, it takes multiple parries to deplete their ki and leave them exposed to a critical attack as opposed to the grunts which just need 1-2 parries.
My main issues with the combat is that too much of the actions are tied into ki. Blocking damage and dodging can quickly deplete the ki gauge which makes parrying more important than I'd liked. Fortunately, less of an issue for mobs. Camera can also be a pain to deal with. Being pinned against a wall or object will make the opponent invisible so you can't even see the attacks to properly respond.
I did enjoyed the open world stuff, but it has those types of maps where you’re not really exploring for hidden secrets. Nearly everything of importance are shown on the map. Even then, I just enjoy going through the scenery and seeing some parts of Japan’s locations recreated in the game. Kyoto in particular has a lot of pretty sights. Gliding around is fun as well. The maps aren’t too big and the collectibles never feel overwhelming either. This segment reminds me a lot of Ghost of Tsushima which had open world elements that I found relaxing to complete.
There's a ton of loot scattered throughout the game just like in Nioh. It was annoying at first, but I learned to just ignore them for the most part. I only upgraded my main weapons if I get a new legendary one. I only bothered checking the armor if I find myself dying multiple times to the same boss. Having an auto-sell function and being able to filter out specific rarities to sell is a nice QoL though.
What did surprise me though was that I found the story to be very intriguing. Taking place during the Bakumatsu period, the game did a good job reflecting a lot of the political issues and developments during this time. You can make key decisions at various points to change the timeline and create some what-if scenarios compared to actual history so that’s also interesting. You get perspectives on both sides of the two major factions and both have likable characters so it's not a clear cut answer of who is in the right.
Character missions are entertaining in general. I liked the story behind them and many of them could fit very well into the main story due to the content. While most of them are of the serious nature, there a few amusing ones as well.
One issue with the story though is that there’s a strange disconnect with what goes on in the main story and the side stories. Due to the game’s structure, you can shift alliance frequently and do missions on behalf of the “other” side which puts allies as enemies. They might say something about it afterward, but the characters still continue to act as allies of sorts. It's best to think that the player character is a Ronin that plays both sides and while characters might be frustrated with that, they'd understand.
Overall, had a really fun time. Finished the game at about 70ish hours and not going to bother with the post game Midnight difficulty stuff. I only did one mission for the trophy and while it wasn't incredibly difficult compared to Twilight, the boss had become a damage sponge annoyingly. More parries are required to deplete the ki gauge as well.
All boss fights are against other humans and many of their fights can get pretty intense. Some feel unfair at first, but it feels great to learn their attack patterns after a while and successfully parry stuff. In regards to the parry mechanic in general, it's not really needed against the mob enemies. Their health aren't very high in general so simple combos can quickly dispatch them. Boss fights on the other hand really emphasize the need to parry. Their attack chains are very long and deal heavy ki damage (stamina) even if you block them. Even a successful parry however doesn't necessary turn the situation around since they recover fast and can quickly continue another attack chain. Oftentimes, it takes multiple parries to deplete their ki and leave them exposed to a critical attack as opposed to the grunts which just need 1-2 parries.
My main issues with the combat is that too much of the actions are tied into ki. Blocking damage and dodging can quickly deplete the ki gauge which makes parrying more important than I'd liked. Fortunately, less of an issue for mobs. Camera can also be a pain to deal with. Being pinned against a wall or object will make the opponent invisible so you can't even see the attacks to properly respond.
I did enjoyed the open world stuff, but it has those types of maps where you’re not really exploring for hidden secrets. Nearly everything of importance are shown on the map. Even then, I just enjoy going through the scenery and seeing some parts of Japan’s locations recreated in the game. Kyoto in particular has a lot of pretty sights. Gliding around is fun as well. The maps aren’t too big and the collectibles never feel overwhelming either. This segment reminds me a lot of Ghost of Tsushima which had open world elements that I found relaxing to complete.
There's a ton of loot scattered throughout the game just like in Nioh. It was annoying at first, but I learned to just ignore them for the most part. I only upgraded my main weapons if I get a new legendary one. I only bothered checking the armor if I find myself dying multiple times to the same boss. Having an auto-sell function and being able to filter out specific rarities to sell is a nice QoL though.
What did surprise me though was that I found the story to be very intriguing. Taking place during the Bakumatsu period, the game did a good job reflecting a lot of the political issues and developments during this time. You can make key decisions at various points to change the timeline and create some what-if scenarios compared to actual history so that’s also interesting. You get perspectives on both sides of the two major factions and both have likable characters so it's not a clear cut answer of who is in the right.
Character missions are entertaining in general. I liked the story behind them and many of them could fit very well into the main story due to the content. While most of them are of the serious nature, there a few amusing ones as well.
One issue with the story though is that there’s a strange disconnect with what goes on in the main story and the side stories. Due to the game’s structure, you can shift alliance frequently and do missions on behalf of the “other” side which puts allies as enemies. They might say something about it afterward, but the characters still continue to act as allies of sorts. It's best to think that the player character is a Ronin that plays both sides and while characters might be frustrated with that, they'd understand.
Overall, had a really fun time. Finished the game at about 70ish hours and not going to bother with the post game Midnight difficulty stuff. I only did one mission for the trophy and while it wasn't incredibly difficult compared to Twilight, the boss had become a damage sponge annoyingly. More parries are required to deplete the ki gauge as well.
I'm not very experienced with the Under Night games with the only prior game I played was Late[cl-r]. From my casual perspective, UN2 is very similar to to the previous game, but with some new additions.
The combat is fast paced with a lot of depth to it. The mechanics can be quite overwhelming at times though. There's just so many of them and the obscure terminology for them doesn't make things any easier.
Combos can range from simple to very long and technical. Watching them in motion is a treat for the eyes. Overall, the combat is just very fun and almost fills my GGX2 void.
The character sprites haven't changed much from what I noticed, but they still look as great as ever. Background environment and scenery could still use some work since they are uninspiring compared to the other big 2D fighters out now.
Character themes have been remixed, but they still sound great.
The game modes from the previous games have returned so there's a decent amount of single player content. I am disappointed that there's no Chronicle mode or a major dedicated story mode. The story is told through the standard arcade mode which feels like a step backwards.
As for the story, the lore is interesting and reminds me of Type-Moon stuff. Lots of organizations and heavy use of terminology. The execution of the story however could be better since there's only a few cutscenes in each character's arcade mode.
I didn't play online too much, but the connections had been great. Although, the online community appears to be mostly dead for the PS5 at this point.
The combat is fast paced with a lot of depth to it. The mechanics can be quite overwhelming at times though. There's just so many of them and the obscure terminology for them doesn't make things any easier.
Combos can range from simple to very long and technical. Watching them in motion is a treat for the eyes. Overall, the combat is just very fun and almost fills my GGX2 void.
The character sprites haven't changed much from what I noticed, but they still look as great as ever. Background environment and scenery could still use some work since they are uninspiring compared to the other big 2D fighters out now.
Character themes have been remixed, but they still sound great.
The game modes from the previous games have returned so there's a decent amount of single player content. I am disappointed that there's no Chronicle mode or a major dedicated story mode. The story is told through the standard arcade mode which feels like a step backwards.
As for the story, the lore is interesting and reminds me of Type-Moon stuff. Lots of organizations and heavy use of terminology. The execution of the story however could be better since there's only a few cutscenes in each character's arcade mode.
I didn't play online too much, but the connections had been great. Although, the online community appears to be mostly dead for the PS5 at this point.
2024
Unicorn Overlord is sort of the reverse of 13 Sentinels where instead of the strong emphasis on story and weak gameplay, Unicorn emphasizes the gameplay and less elsewhere.
The gameplay loop was quite addicting to me. There's a lot of freedom in being able to go wherever you want unless it's simple gated by a main story battle which isn't all that many. You can pretty much explore entire regions when you first enter assuming you're strong enough to "win" the fights against the wandering enemies in the overworld.
Repairing and developing towns are pretty simple, but oddly satisfying. Being able to see visual changes after you repair them is a nice touch.
The combat is different from typical SRPGs where you're fighting on grids and strictly turn-based. Unicorn has essentially 2 phases during combat. The first is very similar to RTS (with pause) games where selecting locations where to move the units. As they slowly make their way across the map, the battle timer and enemy units will continue to move. Going to the various menu will pause the game however so it's not too stressful.
Once a unit gets into contact with an enemy unit, the screen transitions to the actual combat scene where you'll see the two units duke it out. Their actions are based on the A.I. tactics you set for them. The fight ends when they have depleted all of the Passive and Active points regardless if both sides are still alive.
Most of the strategy during battle involves who to send out and where to send them out. You can adjust tactics and unit formation just before you initiate a fight. A preview of the results is handy to show if you need to make any adjustments. Despite allied unit actions are based on the tactics A.I., the tactics in Unicorn has decent depth to it so that there's a lot of flexibility and control over what the characters can do. It has a similar complexity and depth to FFXII's gambits.
The main victory condition for 99% of the battle is just to claim the enemy base. Along the way, you can claim smaller bases to establish different deployment locations. There's are terrain issues that needs to be considered as well as traps on the ground. Most maps aren't too complex, but are varied enough that I'm pretty satisfied.
A good chunk of the game time is in the preparation stage outside of the battle. Fine tuning tactics and unit formation including equipment is fun, but also takes up a lot of time.
Graphics is standard Vanillaware which is good. The 5 main regions have varied environments and are nice to see.
The soundtrack is similar to Basiscape's other works. They do sound good in-game, but there's only a few that were memorable to me outside of the game.
The story is one of the weakest parts of the game. It's simple, straightforward, predicable and isn't all that special. It kept my attention, but that's pretty much it. It doesn't really get much better after the early hours. Disappointing, but also expected based on the game structure.
I did enjoy the sidequest stories a little more since they are more character driven, but largely not that remarkable either. Many of the stories get resolved in just one battle and feels very isolated from the main conflict outside of the obvious connections.
The character bloat has left me with mixed feelings. I like nearly all of them, but they have little depth or character development. Rapport side conversations between the characters does help flesh them out more, but not enough for me. It's very much the quantity over quality when it comes to the character.
Despite my issues with the game, it is very fun and the emphasis on unit and character setups over complex battles is something I enjoy.
It's a pretty long game too since it took me 70 hours on Expert to clear every quest in the game.
For those wondering, the demo that covers the first 7 hours of the game is a very good indicator of what to expect for the remaining game. From the gameplay mechanics to the story beats.
The gameplay loop was quite addicting to me. There's a lot of freedom in being able to go wherever you want unless it's simple gated by a main story battle which isn't all that many. You can pretty much explore entire regions when you first enter assuming you're strong enough to "win" the fights against the wandering enemies in the overworld.
Repairing and developing towns are pretty simple, but oddly satisfying. Being able to see visual changes after you repair them is a nice touch.
The combat is different from typical SRPGs where you're fighting on grids and strictly turn-based. Unicorn has essentially 2 phases during combat. The first is very similar to RTS (with pause) games where selecting locations where to move the units. As they slowly make their way across the map, the battle timer and enemy units will continue to move. Going to the various menu will pause the game however so it's not too stressful.
Once a unit gets into contact with an enemy unit, the screen transitions to the actual combat scene where you'll see the two units duke it out. Their actions are based on the A.I. tactics you set for them. The fight ends when they have depleted all of the Passive and Active points regardless if both sides are still alive.
Most of the strategy during battle involves who to send out and where to send them out. You can adjust tactics and unit formation just before you initiate a fight. A preview of the results is handy to show if you need to make any adjustments. Despite allied unit actions are based on the tactics A.I., the tactics in Unicorn has decent depth to it so that there's a lot of flexibility and control over what the characters can do. It has a similar complexity and depth to FFXII's gambits.
The main victory condition for 99% of the battle is just to claim the enemy base. Along the way, you can claim smaller bases to establish different deployment locations. There's are terrain issues that needs to be considered as well as traps on the ground. Most maps aren't too complex, but are varied enough that I'm pretty satisfied.
A good chunk of the game time is in the preparation stage outside of the battle. Fine tuning tactics and unit formation including equipment is fun, but also takes up a lot of time.
Graphics is standard Vanillaware which is good. The 5 main regions have varied environments and are nice to see.
The soundtrack is similar to Basiscape's other works. They do sound good in-game, but there's only a few that were memorable to me outside of the game.
The story is one of the weakest parts of the game. It's simple, straightforward, predicable and isn't all that special. It kept my attention, but that's pretty much it. It doesn't really get much better after the early hours. Disappointing, but also expected based on the game structure.
I did enjoy the sidequest stories a little more since they are more character driven, but largely not that remarkable either. Many of the stories get resolved in just one battle and feels very isolated from the main conflict outside of the obvious connections.
The character bloat has left me with mixed feelings. I like nearly all of them, but they have little depth or character development. Rapport side conversations between the characters does help flesh them out more, but not enough for me. It's very much the quantity over quality when it comes to the character.
Despite my issues with the game, it is very fun and the emphasis on unit and character setups over complex battles is something I enjoy.
It's a pretty long game too since it took me 70 hours on Expert to clear every quest in the game.
For those wondering, the demo that covers the first 7 hours of the game is a very good indicator of what to expect for the remaining game. From the gameplay mechanics to the story beats.
2021
The Good Life was a Kickstarter title headed by Swery. The story follows Naomi, a journalist deep in massive debt. She was sent to investigate the mystery of a small British countryside town dubbed, "The Happiest Place on Earth." Early on in her snooping, she stumbles into a murder mystery and then from there, proceeds to solve the the mysteries of the murder and the town.
Unlike some of Swery's past games like the Deadly Premonition series, the murder mystery element isn't a strong focus. It's not even a serial killer on the lose either and it's just that one murder. The tone is also a lot more lighthearted too. In typical Swery fashion, the story gets crazy at times, but overall, it's not that fascinating. The climax in particular was weak.
The graphics aren't very good. Despite the cartoonish art direction, the character models look like they came out of a PS2/PS3 era game. The same goes for the environment textures.
The gameplay has left me a lot of mixed feelings. There's some interesting ideas like taking pictures and uploading to an Instagram-esque website to earn Likes and money.
Like Deadly Premonition, the townspeople live on a life schedule so they will do certain things on certain times/days. However, I don't think their schedules are as dynamic enough since it's fixed for most of the time with very little variation. It's not interesting enough to follow characters' lives.
One thing I'll mention though is that the townspeople can be pretty quirky, but fortunately, it's not all of them. It was an issue I had with Deadly Premonition 2 where everybody seems to have some quirk that's dialed to 10.
The map is fairly large with a lot of space, but it's not very condensed with unique content. The town's center is where most of the activity occurs and it's somewhat small. The outskirts consists of mostly open fields, random houses and unnamed NPCs.
For reasons I don't know why, Swery took Deadly Premonition's character health status conditions and added even more of them. Things like catching cold, throwing your back out or getting a toothache can be randomly inflicted and will last forever unless treated at the medical center or ingest the proper medication. Realism aside, this just isn't very fun to deal with.
The core gameplay involves completing main and sidequests which feels excessive at times. Most of them fall within the categories of taking specific pictures or crafting certain items. They get boring after a while especially crafting. The world has a ton of items and you need large quantities to make quest related items. Most of the rewards just consists of money and aren't worth the hassle.
The main standout gameplay is the ability to transform into a dog or cat. Dogs can dig up treasure in the ground and dig through trash for item. Most importantly is the ability to track people and item scents. It's annoyingly the only way to track people in this game since only one scent can be memorized at a given time. Dogs can also defeat medium size animals, but combat is clunky here.
Cats are mostly known for jumping higher than the dog and being able to climb certain walls. They can also instant kill small rodents and animals.
The Good Life has some nice novelty to it especially with the countryside setting and the life-sim schedules for the NPCs. You even get to transform into animals and ride a sheep as a mount, but the overall gameplay feels clunky and dated. There's also too many things padded out which makes completing quests a chore to do. The story is serviceable, but not really a hidden of gem of sorts.
Unlike some of Swery's past games like the Deadly Premonition series, the murder mystery element isn't a strong focus. It's not even a serial killer on the lose either and it's just that one murder. The tone is also a lot more lighthearted too. In typical Swery fashion, the story gets crazy at times, but overall, it's not that fascinating. The climax in particular was weak.
The graphics aren't very good. Despite the cartoonish art direction, the character models look like they came out of a PS2/PS3 era game. The same goes for the environment textures.
The gameplay has left me a lot of mixed feelings. There's some interesting ideas like taking pictures and uploading to an Instagram-esque website to earn Likes and money.
Like Deadly Premonition, the townspeople live on a life schedule so they will do certain things on certain times/days. However, I don't think their schedules are as dynamic enough since it's fixed for most of the time with very little variation. It's not interesting enough to follow characters' lives.
One thing I'll mention though is that the townspeople can be pretty quirky, but fortunately, it's not all of them. It was an issue I had with Deadly Premonition 2 where everybody seems to have some quirk that's dialed to 10.
The map is fairly large with a lot of space, but it's not very condensed with unique content. The town's center is where most of the activity occurs and it's somewhat small. The outskirts consists of mostly open fields, random houses and unnamed NPCs.
For reasons I don't know why, Swery took Deadly Premonition's character health status conditions and added even more of them. Things like catching cold, throwing your back out or getting a toothache can be randomly inflicted and will last forever unless treated at the medical center or ingest the proper medication. Realism aside, this just isn't very fun to deal with.
The core gameplay involves completing main and sidequests which feels excessive at times. Most of them fall within the categories of taking specific pictures or crafting certain items. They get boring after a while especially crafting. The world has a ton of items and you need large quantities to make quest related items. Most of the rewards just consists of money and aren't worth the hassle.
The main standout gameplay is the ability to transform into a dog or cat. Dogs can dig up treasure in the ground and dig through trash for item. Most importantly is the ability to track people and item scents. It's annoyingly the only way to track people in this game since only one scent can be memorized at a given time. Dogs can also defeat medium size animals, but combat is clunky here.
Cats are mostly known for jumping higher than the dog and being able to climb certain walls. They can also instant kill small rodents and animals.
The Good Life has some nice novelty to it especially with the countryside setting and the life-sim schedules for the NPCs. You even get to transform into animals and ride a sheep as a mount, but the overall gameplay feels clunky and dated. There's also too many things padded out which makes completing quests a chore to do. The story is serviceable, but not really a hidden of gem of sorts.
I don't play many music rhythm games at all. I do enjoy my time with the various minigames in the Yakuza series though, but not really as a full game until I played P3D.
The actual rhythm gameplay is quite good. Multiple difficulty levels and they get noticeably harder as you go up. I found Normal to be a pretty decent difficulty for my abilities. I can pass Hard and to some extent the All Night Difficulty tracks if I used support modifiers. Hard and above can get pretty crazy with how fast the beats are and the different patterns. The challenge modifiers are just insane and I have to applaud those that can clear tracks using these and end on a high rating.
The songs themselves have left me with mixed feelings. Most are remixes and many of them aren't as good as the original. Some are pretty different from the original song altogether. That said, I did enjoyed some of the remixes as well and actually prefer them to the original.
I do think the song list is lacking in quantity. DLC nearly doubles the list, but that's DLC.
There isn't any other notable gameplay modes other than the dancing part. There are social cutscenes with the characters which are pretty nice. They help further develop characters and often have other people appearing with them. The actual story and premise is basic. Other than the opening scene, there isn't much story until the end. The social cutscenes pretty much fill in the gap.
The graphics look great as well as the character models. Even though I think Reload looks good overall, I think the character models in P3D is even better. There is a ton of body movement with them though during the cutscene. It's nice to see a lot of activity in one hand, but it can pretty jarring another time when they make very exaggerated movements that's not really called for.
Overall, a great game for those that want more P3 and to see more character interactions. The gameplay is good, but I don't know if non-P3 fans will enjoy it as much.
The actual rhythm gameplay is quite good. Multiple difficulty levels and they get noticeably harder as you go up. I found Normal to be a pretty decent difficulty for my abilities. I can pass Hard and to some extent the All Night Difficulty tracks if I used support modifiers. Hard and above can get pretty crazy with how fast the beats are and the different patterns. The challenge modifiers are just insane and I have to applaud those that can clear tracks using these and end on a high rating.
The songs themselves have left me with mixed feelings. Most are remixes and many of them aren't as good as the original. Some are pretty different from the original song altogether. That said, I did enjoyed some of the remixes as well and actually prefer them to the original.
I do think the song list is lacking in quantity. DLC nearly doubles the list, but that's DLC.
There isn't any other notable gameplay modes other than the dancing part. There are social cutscenes with the characters which are pretty nice. They help further develop characters and often have other people appearing with them. The actual story and premise is basic. Other than the opening scene, there isn't much story until the end. The social cutscenes pretty much fill in the gap.
The graphics look great as well as the character models. Even though I think Reload looks good overall, I think the character models in P3D is even better. There is a ton of body movement with them though during the cutscene. It's nice to see a lot of activity in one hand, but it can pretty jarring another time when they make very exaggerated movements that's not really called for.
Overall, a great game for those that want more P3 and to see more character interactions. The gameplay is good, but I don't know if non-P3 fans will enjoy it as much.
2022
KEY NOTES:
-SRPG Tactical Gameplay
-Unique Playable Characters Only
-Job/Class System
-ENG/JP Dual Audio Voiced Options
-30-40 hours to clear main story + lengthy post game
Relayer is a SRPG developed by Dragami Games. The developers were originally part of the Kadokawa Games team that had also developed other games like Natural Doctrine and God Wars so they are no stranger to strategy games.
STORY
Taking place in the middle of the 21st Century, mankind had advanced into space after uncovering an artifact on the moon that dates back millions of years ago. That artifact takes the form of a humanoid mech dubbed the Original One and with it, mankind had dramatically increased their technological advancement within a short time period and were able to develop spaceships, mechs and space colonies. However, the discovery of the Original One also revealed the impending alien threat called the Relayers and their goal to end all life in the universe.
To combat the threat, spirits of the celestial bodies confer special abilities to certain individuals. These abilities include control over gravity particles and allows them to pilot special modified mechs called Stellar Gears that make great use of such particles. These humans who have the Will of the Stars are called Starchildren.
The story opens with Terra, the Starchild of Earth as she gets dragged into a battle involving some Relayers attacking the moon colony. Her younger sister, Luna suddenly steals the Original One and escapes the battlefield. Hoping to unite with her younger sister, Terra joins the Asterism crew on their mission to retrieve the stolen Original One and defeat the Relayers.
Relayer's story is a space opera with many different factions in play, but it's not a particularly deep or complex one as some would expect from the genre. The politics between the factions don't have much nuance to them and their motives are very clear and plain. Alliances and relationships are fortunately dynamic so they shift often and help keep developments somewhat interesting. The pacing isn't particularly slow either and reasonably paced throughout.
The worldbuilding isn't explored in great detail during the course of the story, but there are a number of terminology scattered throughout. Relayer's world doesn't have much originality within the genre, but it's still an interesting one. Further details are provided in the in-game glossary which makes for a fun read.
The sci-fi plot itself is rather straightforward and easy to understand without significant plot twists. Despite that, there is a lot of focus on it with some surprisingly lengthy cutscenes and dialogue. It has a good balance of relaxing slice of life moments and serious ones. Much like the worldbuilding, the story doesn't really do anything new that hasn't been done before. Even then, it was still interesting enough to keep me invested and see where the story was heading. Relayer may not have started off particularly strong, but it did ended on an emotionally high note making the story a highlight of the game.
CHARACTERS
Relayer's cast of characters is on the large side. From the NPCs in the different factions to the playable characters, there's a lot of characters to keep track of. Fortunately, nearly all major characters have sufficient screentime to leave an impression. While a few of the main playable character's development are lacking, most of them have decent to good development with sufficiently explored backstories.
There are a number of emotional character moments that took me by surprised. The game did a good job in getting me emotionally attached to many of the characters. The writing execution on these moments were well done in general. It helps that the group's chemistry is great and they are generally fun characters to watch.
The character storylines helped carry and move the story at various points making it a very character driven story overall.
The antagonists however are a mixed bag. Most of them are very cookie cutter one-note with shallow motives and goals. They lack any real depth or complexity. The saving grace with these ones are that the game does a good job in making you dislike or outright hate them.
VISUAL PRESENTATION AND DESIGN
Most of the game's story is told through Visual Novel style cutscenes. It is quite standard in that style, but there are often a lot of character sprite portraits on screen surprisingly. Each character sprite have a decent amount of different expressions and poses to help keep things more engaging. There are also times when they tried to be creative by shifting the sprites around the screen to indicate movement. These are mostly used during comedic moments.
The Stellar Gear designs look pretty nice overall and were very appealing to me, but they lack variety within the same Class types. All of the Sniper Class Gears for example have the same structure and the only aspects that distinguishes them from one another are the different paint jobs. On the positive side, the Gears do look noticeably different when compared to other Classes.
Enemy mech units are unfortunately very plain and generic looking. They don't really get custom designs and it's very hard to distinguish them from one another at a glance.
If there is one visual design that Relayer does well is the use of battle cutscenes. When initiating an attack against an enemy unit or on the receiving end, the game switches to a short cutscene of a few seconds. Counterattacks and evasions are done within the same cutscene as well which makes it flow very well. The cutscene use very dynamic camera angles to simulate the actions which results in some dramatic moments. The highlights are the duels between same weapon types so there's more going on then a one sided assault. Overall, it's like watching an anime mech fight scene. There isn't a lot of variety however, but I never got tired from watching them. For those that do get tired of them, there are options to speed them up or outright skip them.
MUSIC
Relayer's soundtrack was composed by Shuichiro Fukuhiro and Kensuke Inage. The former only did a few tracks including the Title Screen track and the ending theme. Kensuke Inage did the majority of the soundtrack. The soundtrack as a whole doesn't have many tracks. At roughly 15 tracks, there are many repeated songs played throughout. Most of the songs aren't amazing, but they sound nice and fit the sci-fi theme of the game especially the battle themes. The main highlight is the ending theme song which sounds like something from the Ar Tonelico series.
GAMEPLAY
The gameplay loop is simple. You advance the main story from a list. Story battles are not repeatable in a single playthrough, but nearly all of them have a repeatable skirmish battle with the same enemy placements. There's just isn't any story dialogue in these skirmishes.
When not moving the story along, you spend most of the time at the Asterism ship hub. Other than the typical tinkering with character equipment and abilities, you can view optional side events with characters. These events are a nice to way for further development of characters and see how they interact with the characters they don't normally interact with during the main story. Many of them are on the humorous and comedic side.
There aren't any sidequests or side content other than these optional events.
COMBAT
Battles are fought on a large grid map and the fundamentals to the combat are simple. There isn't anything particularly complex in its mechanics and not a whole lot to keep in mind either.
Relayer makes use of character turns instead of player's turns. On a character's turn, they can move and then perform an action, but they can't move after an action. A key aspect of the combat revolves around good positioning and taking advantage of attack ranges.
Not exactly like a triangle weapon system seen in some other SRPGs, Relayer's weapon advantage system is more about whether the weapon ranges are different or the same. After receiving an attack, a unit will counterattack if it's within their range. The use of range is also not typical either. Using the machine gun as an example, it has a range of two spaces. It can attack any unit from two spaces away, but it cannot attack anything within one space. So if it receives damage from a sword attack which has one space range, the machine gun unit cannot counterattack. The logic applies to the other ranged weapons in the game like the Sniper Rifles and Bits. The weapon range setup essentially gives a large advantage to units initiating an attack with a different weapon type.
One mechanic that further emphasis positioning is Back Stab. After finishing an attack on an enemy, if there's an allied unit placed directly behind the enemy, then the ally can initiate a subsequent followup attack which cannot be countered. While useful overall, this only works with other sword users so the conditions are stricter than I'd liked. Enemies can also use Back Stab as well.
Another key element of the combat is the Aggro system which isn't too common in these types of games. Aggro builds up on every action and the higher it is, the higher an enemy unit will likely target them over others. Many characters have abilities and effects that make use of Aggro one way or another. Whether it's a Tank that has buffs that can increase its Aggro, Assault's skills that get stronger as its Aggro rises or a Sniper's ability to drain its Aggro to remain hidden, Aggro as a whole affects many character's roles.
While not a unique or original mechanic in anyway, buffs and debuffs in the game are very effective. Nearly every unit in the game has some variation of buffs in their arsenal.
The enemy A.I. is somewhat decent, but they aren't aggressive enough at times. Enemy forces on the other side of the map won't charge forward or engage until an allied unit is within nearly within striking range. They do make good use of buffs, debuffs and inflicting status ailments though.
Battle objectives are very ordinary here and without much variety. Nearly all of them requires defeating every enemy unit while some allow defeat of specific units only. A Game Over is usually when all allied units are defeated, but there are a few where the defeat of a guest unit is an automatic Game Over too.
A neat aspect about battles are the large deployment capacity. You can eventually deploy up to 10 units per battle so you can use favorites more often.
As a whole, the game's difficulty isn't that challenging. Although the higher difficulties have enemies with stat advantages over your characters at similar levels, good use of positioning and fundamentals of the system can get you far. It's worth noting that defeated allied units cannot be revived in the same battle whether by using consumable items or from a character skill. There aren't any permadeath in the game fortunately.
BATTLE MAPS
One of the biggest and common complaint with Relayer are the battle maps. They are pretty much nearly identical from one another and consist of large, but flat battlefields. There's no elevation to hinder you or special terrain that decreases how far a unit can move through. They are very empty and a lot of tactical strategy potential are lost from them.
At around the halfway point of the game though, you do start seeing obstacles in the terrain. They can't be broken or climbed over. Weapons and attacks can't bypass them either with the exception of the Bits weapons. Depending on the map, these obstacles can either provide limited issues or a bigger hindrance as they force characters down narrow paths. It's worth pointing out that these obstacles only exists on maps where there's solid ground.
WEAPONS AND UPGRADES
Another issue with Relayer is the lack of weapon variety. There's just six types in the game. Two of them includes the one-handed sword and the two-handed sword which are mostly similar to each other (they have the same attack range). The game also treats the Shield as a separate weapon type although it's not used in attacking.
Some weapons can be obtained in loot boxes or from enemy drops, but the majority of them are obtained from the ship's shop. Weapons can be upgraded too by expending money. Each weapon can be upgraded three times, but a few of them can be changed into a new one.
Armors and accessories in the form of Chips cannot be upgraded unfortunately.
CLASSES AND JOBS
Surprisingly, Relayer makes use of a class and job system. It is however not like other popular SRPG titles like Final Fantasy Tactics, Tactics Ogre or even Dragami's own God Wars where characters can switch to a large number of jobs. The system in Relayer is a lot more restrictive and limited in comparison.
Each character belong to one of the four classes (Assault, Sniper, Tank, and Scout) and there's no changing their core class. Instead, the characters have jobs that can be changed within the class that are similar yet different to one another. For example, Terra is part of the Assault class that emphasizes close ranged combat. The initial job in the Assault class is the Fighter Job. From there, it can branch to either the Vanguard or Shinobi Job. The former specializes in fighting on the front lines and tanking hits while making use of high Aggro. The latter specializes in keeping Aggro low while fighting on the front lines undetected.
The mid level jobs have an expert job that they can branch off too which are similar in style to their mid level job counterparts. Despite having the option to choose which job branch to go down, the reality is that each class only has two branches. With only four core classes and a very large playable roster size, there's going to be many similarities between the characters.
STAR CUBE
The Star Cube is where most of the character's skills and abilities are unlocked. Very similar to a skill tree, you can unlock active skills, passive abilities, and fixed stat upgrades in the Cube using JP (Job Points). The Star Cube is linear to some degree since you have a starting node and can only unlock subsequent nodes that are adjacent to them. The Cube does have branching paths so you have some control over what to prioritize. Once you unlock all of the nodes in the Job, you can unlock and advance to the next Job tier in its branch.
Picking a new job in the mid tier level shouldn't be taken lightly since you're locked into that job path. Picking mid tier Job A will essentially prevent you from unlocking nodes in mid tier Job B for example. It's not permanent however since unlocking all of the nodes in the Expert Job will open up the other mid tier job. Just don't expect to do this until end game when playing the game normally.
It's important to note that not everything carries over between Jobs. Stat upgrades and passive abilities do, but Active Skills do not. This leads to an issue I had with the game where I often don't switch to a new Job right when I unlock them. Active Skills don't carry over so it's often better to wait and unlock some new Active Skills before actually switching over. The one positive note is that Character Exclusive Active Skills are usable in any job.
CUSTOMIZATION
Despite the use of mechs in Relayer, it doesn't have the same level of customization from the general mech genre. Such as specific parts cannot be replaced and changed. Instead, the customization is mostly standard for the JRPG genre. Weapons in the same category type are mostly differentiated by just stats and they usually don't have any additional effects (with some exceptions). Some Chips do have special passives attached to them which helps in creating customized builds.
You can upgrade the Stellar Gear's stats directly by expending money to improve specific parts like its frame. The max amount of upgrades allowed per part is 10. Once every part is fully upgraded, the Stellar Gear undergoes a visual change which mostly consists of additional wings, more trinkets and glowing lights. The overall visual change does look nice and the Stellar Gear's name then includes "FF" to indicate its Final Form. Most importantly though is that all Stellar Gears gets a new permanent passive ability attached to it when upgraded to its Final Form. The passives are different from each other to help make them more unique.
Most of the customization however are from the passive abilities that are acquired from the Star Cube. Each character can equip up to four at a time. Overall, Relayer's customization isn't incredibly deep, but the number of passive abilities the characters can acquire does provide some room to do so. The type of skills obtained from the Star Cube does limit the effectiveness of certain builds however. The Character exclusive Skills and Abilities does tend to lean towards one type of build than another.
POST GAME
After clearing the main story, a series of battle stages are unlocked. They are repeatable and are surprisingly numerous. Altogether, there are just about as many stages as in the main story itself. Each post game battle stage does have story and cutscenes leading up to the battle as well.
The post game storyline provides some answers to questions that were never completely resolved in the main story. Along with the serious parts of it, there are a number of slice of life comedic cutscenes that further develop characters and their relationships with each other.
Other than the story, the post game stages are where you can farm ultimate weapons and armors. The battles are mostly of the same difficulty as the main game, but the last few battles are surprisingly very challenging.
Overall, they are worth playing for those that enjoyed the main story and wanted more from the game.
NEW GAME PLUS
The New Game Plus option unlocks once the main story is cleared and can be started at anytime in the post game. Relayer offers a very customizable New Game Plus option to suit your interest. You can choose to carry over nearly everything, nothing or just a few select things. The new Very Hard difficulty option is also unlocked for use on a new game cycle.
FINAL REMARKS
Relayer has a number of issues including general variety and somewhat average strategy and tactical gameplay options, it's still a fun game with an interesting story and characters. The customization is fun despite the limited jobs and weapons. Being a space mech game makes it a niche within the overall SRPG genre. While I wished it dove more into heavier space politics and themes, the story was still an enjoyable one with great emotional moments.
For those that are interested, but still on the fence, Relayer does have a demo that covers the first two chapters of the game and save data carries over to the main game. Most of the mechanics are available for it so you get a good picture of what to expect for the whole game.
-SRPG Tactical Gameplay
-Unique Playable Characters Only
-Job/Class System
-ENG/JP Dual Audio Voiced Options
-30-40 hours to clear main story + lengthy post game
Relayer is a SRPG developed by Dragami Games. The developers were originally part of the Kadokawa Games team that had also developed other games like Natural Doctrine and God Wars so they are no stranger to strategy games.
STORY
Taking place in the middle of the 21st Century, mankind had advanced into space after uncovering an artifact on the moon that dates back millions of years ago. That artifact takes the form of a humanoid mech dubbed the Original One and with it, mankind had dramatically increased their technological advancement within a short time period and were able to develop spaceships, mechs and space colonies. However, the discovery of the Original One also revealed the impending alien threat called the Relayers and their goal to end all life in the universe.
To combat the threat, spirits of the celestial bodies confer special abilities to certain individuals. These abilities include control over gravity particles and allows them to pilot special modified mechs called Stellar Gears that make great use of such particles. These humans who have the Will of the Stars are called Starchildren.
The story opens with Terra, the Starchild of Earth as she gets dragged into a battle involving some Relayers attacking the moon colony. Her younger sister, Luna suddenly steals the Original One and escapes the battlefield. Hoping to unite with her younger sister, Terra joins the Asterism crew on their mission to retrieve the stolen Original One and defeat the Relayers.
Relayer's story is a space opera with many different factions in play, but it's not a particularly deep or complex one as some would expect from the genre. The politics between the factions don't have much nuance to them and their motives are very clear and plain. Alliances and relationships are fortunately dynamic so they shift often and help keep developments somewhat interesting. The pacing isn't particularly slow either and reasonably paced throughout.
The worldbuilding isn't explored in great detail during the course of the story, but there are a number of terminology scattered throughout. Relayer's world doesn't have much originality within the genre, but it's still an interesting one. Further details are provided in the in-game glossary which makes for a fun read.
The sci-fi plot itself is rather straightforward and easy to understand without significant plot twists. Despite that, there is a lot of focus on it with some surprisingly lengthy cutscenes and dialogue. It has a good balance of relaxing slice of life moments and serious ones. Much like the worldbuilding, the story doesn't really do anything new that hasn't been done before. Even then, it was still interesting enough to keep me invested and see where the story was heading. Relayer may not have started off particularly strong, but it did ended on an emotionally high note making the story a highlight of the game.
CHARACTERS
Relayer's cast of characters is on the large side. From the NPCs in the different factions to the playable characters, there's a lot of characters to keep track of. Fortunately, nearly all major characters have sufficient screentime to leave an impression. While a few of the main playable character's development are lacking, most of them have decent to good development with sufficiently explored backstories.
There are a number of emotional character moments that took me by surprised. The game did a good job in getting me emotionally attached to many of the characters. The writing execution on these moments were well done in general. It helps that the group's chemistry is great and they are generally fun characters to watch.
The character storylines helped carry and move the story at various points making it a very character driven story overall.
The antagonists however are a mixed bag. Most of them are very cookie cutter one-note with shallow motives and goals. They lack any real depth or complexity. The saving grace with these ones are that the game does a good job in making you dislike or outright hate them.
VISUAL PRESENTATION AND DESIGN
Most of the game's story is told through Visual Novel style cutscenes. It is quite standard in that style, but there are often a lot of character sprite portraits on screen surprisingly. Each character sprite have a decent amount of different expressions and poses to help keep things more engaging. There are also times when they tried to be creative by shifting the sprites around the screen to indicate movement. These are mostly used during comedic moments.
The Stellar Gear designs look pretty nice overall and were very appealing to me, but they lack variety within the same Class types. All of the Sniper Class Gears for example have the same structure and the only aspects that distinguishes them from one another are the different paint jobs. On the positive side, the Gears do look noticeably different when compared to other Classes.
Enemy mech units are unfortunately very plain and generic looking. They don't really get custom designs and it's very hard to distinguish them from one another at a glance.
If there is one visual design that Relayer does well is the use of battle cutscenes. When initiating an attack against an enemy unit or on the receiving end, the game switches to a short cutscene of a few seconds. Counterattacks and evasions are done within the same cutscene as well which makes it flow very well. The cutscene use very dynamic camera angles to simulate the actions which results in some dramatic moments. The highlights are the duels between same weapon types so there's more going on then a one sided assault. Overall, it's like watching an anime mech fight scene. There isn't a lot of variety however, but I never got tired from watching them. For those that do get tired of them, there are options to speed them up or outright skip them.
MUSIC
Relayer's soundtrack was composed by Shuichiro Fukuhiro and Kensuke Inage. The former only did a few tracks including the Title Screen track and the ending theme. Kensuke Inage did the majority of the soundtrack. The soundtrack as a whole doesn't have many tracks. At roughly 15 tracks, there are many repeated songs played throughout. Most of the songs aren't amazing, but they sound nice and fit the sci-fi theme of the game especially the battle themes. The main highlight is the ending theme song which sounds like something from the Ar Tonelico series.
GAMEPLAY
The gameplay loop is simple. You advance the main story from a list. Story battles are not repeatable in a single playthrough, but nearly all of them have a repeatable skirmish battle with the same enemy placements. There's just isn't any story dialogue in these skirmishes.
When not moving the story along, you spend most of the time at the Asterism ship hub. Other than the typical tinkering with character equipment and abilities, you can view optional side events with characters. These events are a nice to way for further development of characters and see how they interact with the characters they don't normally interact with during the main story. Many of them are on the humorous and comedic side.
There aren't any sidequests or side content other than these optional events.
COMBAT
Battles are fought on a large grid map and the fundamentals to the combat are simple. There isn't anything particularly complex in its mechanics and not a whole lot to keep in mind either.
Relayer makes use of character turns instead of player's turns. On a character's turn, they can move and then perform an action, but they can't move after an action. A key aspect of the combat revolves around good positioning and taking advantage of attack ranges.
Not exactly like a triangle weapon system seen in some other SRPGs, Relayer's weapon advantage system is more about whether the weapon ranges are different or the same. After receiving an attack, a unit will counterattack if it's within their range. The use of range is also not typical either. Using the machine gun as an example, it has a range of two spaces. It can attack any unit from two spaces away, but it cannot attack anything within one space. So if it receives damage from a sword attack which has one space range, the machine gun unit cannot counterattack. The logic applies to the other ranged weapons in the game like the Sniper Rifles and Bits. The weapon range setup essentially gives a large advantage to units initiating an attack with a different weapon type.
One mechanic that further emphasis positioning is Back Stab. After finishing an attack on an enemy, if there's an allied unit placed directly behind the enemy, then the ally can initiate a subsequent followup attack which cannot be countered. While useful overall, this only works with other sword users so the conditions are stricter than I'd liked. Enemies can also use Back Stab as well.
Another key element of the combat is the Aggro system which isn't too common in these types of games. Aggro builds up on every action and the higher it is, the higher an enemy unit will likely target them over others. Many characters have abilities and effects that make use of Aggro one way or another. Whether it's a Tank that has buffs that can increase its Aggro, Assault's skills that get stronger as its Aggro rises or a Sniper's ability to drain its Aggro to remain hidden, Aggro as a whole affects many character's roles.
While not a unique or original mechanic in anyway, buffs and debuffs in the game are very effective. Nearly every unit in the game has some variation of buffs in their arsenal.
The enemy A.I. is somewhat decent, but they aren't aggressive enough at times. Enemy forces on the other side of the map won't charge forward or engage until an allied unit is within nearly within striking range. They do make good use of buffs, debuffs and inflicting status ailments though.
Battle objectives are very ordinary here and without much variety. Nearly all of them requires defeating every enemy unit while some allow defeat of specific units only. A Game Over is usually when all allied units are defeated, but there are a few where the defeat of a guest unit is an automatic Game Over too.
A neat aspect about battles are the large deployment capacity. You can eventually deploy up to 10 units per battle so you can use favorites more often.
As a whole, the game's difficulty isn't that challenging. Although the higher difficulties have enemies with stat advantages over your characters at similar levels, good use of positioning and fundamentals of the system can get you far. It's worth noting that defeated allied units cannot be revived in the same battle whether by using consumable items or from a character skill. There aren't any permadeath in the game fortunately.
BATTLE MAPS
One of the biggest and common complaint with Relayer are the battle maps. They are pretty much nearly identical from one another and consist of large, but flat battlefields. There's no elevation to hinder you or special terrain that decreases how far a unit can move through. They are very empty and a lot of tactical strategy potential are lost from them.
At around the halfway point of the game though, you do start seeing obstacles in the terrain. They can't be broken or climbed over. Weapons and attacks can't bypass them either with the exception of the Bits weapons. Depending on the map, these obstacles can either provide limited issues or a bigger hindrance as they force characters down narrow paths. It's worth pointing out that these obstacles only exists on maps where there's solid ground.
WEAPONS AND UPGRADES
Another issue with Relayer is the lack of weapon variety. There's just six types in the game. Two of them includes the one-handed sword and the two-handed sword which are mostly similar to each other (they have the same attack range). The game also treats the Shield as a separate weapon type although it's not used in attacking.
Some weapons can be obtained in loot boxes or from enemy drops, but the majority of them are obtained from the ship's shop. Weapons can be upgraded too by expending money. Each weapon can be upgraded three times, but a few of them can be changed into a new one.
Armors and accessories in the form of Chips cannot be upgraded unfortunately.
CLASSES AND JOBS
Surprisingly, Relayer makes use of a class and job system. It is however not like other popular SRPG titles like Final Fantasy Tactics, Tactics Ogre or even Dragami's own God Wars where characters can switch to a large number of jobs. The system in Relayer is a lot more restrictive and limited in comparison.
Each character belong to one of the four classes (Assault, Sniper, Tank, and Scout) and there's no changing their core class. Instead, the characters have jobs that can be changed within the class that are similar yet different to one another. For example, Terra is part of the Assault class that emphasizes close ranged combat. The initial job in the Assault class is the Fighter Job. From there, it can branch to either the Vanguard or Shinobi Job. The former specializes in fighting on the front lines and tanking hits while making use of high Aggro. The latter specializes in keeping Aggro low while fighting on the front lines undetected.
The mid level jobs have an expert job that they can branch off too which are similar in style to their mid level job counterparts. Despite having the option to choose which job branch to go down, the reality is that each class only has two branches. With only four core classes and a very large playable roster size, there's going to be many similarities between the characters.
STAR CUBE
The Star Cube is where most of the character's skills and abilities are unlocked. Very similar to a skill tree, you can unlock active skills, passive abilities, and fixed stat upgrades in the Cube using JP (Job Points). The Star Cube is linear to some degree since you have a starting node and can only unlock subsequent nodes that are adjacent to them. The Cube does have branching paths so you have some control over what to prioritize. Once you unlock all of the nodes in the Job, you can unlock and advance to the next Job tier in its branch.
Picking a new job in the mid tier level shouldn't be taken lightly since you're locked into that job path. Picking mid tier Job A will essentially prevent you from unlocking nodes in mid tier Job B for example. It's not permanent however since unlocking all of the nodes in the Expert Job will open up the other mid tier job. Just don't expect to do this until end game when playing the game normally.
It's important to note that not everything carries over between Jobs. Stat upgrades and passive abilities do, but Active Skills do not. This leads to an issue I had with the game where I often don't switch to a new Job right when I unlock them. Active Skills don't carry over so it's often better to wait and unlock some new Active Skills before actually switching over. The one positive note is that Character Exclusive Active Skills are usable in any job.
CUSTOMIZATION
Despite the use of mechs in Relayer, it doesn't have the same level of customization from the general mech genre. Such as specific parts cannot be replaced and changed. Instead, the customization is mostly standard for the JRPG genre. Weapons in the same category type are mostly differentiated by just stats and they usually don't have any additional effects (with some exceptions). Some Chips do have special passives attached to them which helps in creating customized builds.
You can upgrade the Stellar Gear's stats directly by expending money to improve specific parts like its frame. The max amount of upgrades allowed per part is 10. Once every part is fully upgraded, the Stellar Gear undergoes a visual change which mostly consists of additional wings, more trinkets and glowing lights. The overall visual change does look nice and the Stellar Gear's name then includes "FF" to indicate its Final Form. Most importantly though is that all Stellar Gears gets a new permanent passive ability attached to it when upgraded to its Final Form. The passives are different from each other to help make them more unique.
Most of the customization however are from the passive abilities that are acquired from the Star Cube. Each character can equip up to four at a time. Overall, Relayer's customization isn't incredibly deep, but the number of passive abilities the characters can acquire does provide some room to do so. The type of skills obtained from the Star Cube does limit the effectiveness of certain builds however. The Character exclusive Skills and Abilities does tend to lean towards one type of build than another.
POST GAME
After clearing the main story, a series of battle stages are unlocked. They are repeatable and are surprisingly numerous. Altogether, there are just about as many stages as in the main story itself. Each post game battle stage does have story and cutscenes leading up to the battle as well.
The post game storyline provides some answers to questions that were never completely resolved in the main story. Along with the serious parts of it, there are a number of slice of life comedic cutscenes that further develop characters and their relationships with each other.
Other than the story, the post game stages are where you can farm ultimate weapons and armors. The battles are mostly of the same difficulty as the main game, but the last few battles are surprisingly very challenging.
Overall, they are worth playing for those that enjoyed the main story and wanted more from the game.
NEW GAME PLUS
The New Game Plus option unlocks once the main story is cleared and can be started at anytime in the post game. Relayer offers a very customizable New Game Plus option to suit your interest. You can choose to carry over nearly everything, nothing or just a few select things. The new Very Hard difficulty option is also unlocked for use on a new game cycle.
FINAL REMARKS
Relayer has a number of issues including general variety and somewhat average strategy and tactical gameplay options, it's still a fun game with an interesting story and characters. The customization is fun despite the limited jobs and weapons. Being a space mech game makes it a niche within the overall SRPG genre. While I wished it dove more into heavier space politics and themes, the story was still an enjoyable one with great emotional moments.
For those that are interested, but still on the fence, Relayer does have a demo that covers the first two chapters of the game and save data carries over to the main game. Most of the mechanics are available for it so you get a good picture of what to expect for the whole game.
2014
Going into the game, I wasn't familiar with the developer, World Wide Software at all. They don't appear to have develop many games in the first place and no longer exist.
Ixtona is pretty generic across the board, but there's some aspects that could've been pretty interesting had they developed it more. The story left me disappointed the most. It starts with a sudden coup by the MC's older brother (who is a prince) and their father is killed in the process. From there, the story could've gone to some interesting places even if it went the typical MC gathers his own army and overthrow his own brother route. But it doesn't and the story never really gets more interesting than that.
Although, the story direction is a bit surprising and comes out of left field, there's not much development on that end either. Just when I felt like the story was finally moving and seemingly at a 25% mark of the story, the story basically skips to the rushed ending in a matter of a handful of battles.
It's a shame how the story just ends so quickly considering I did liked the characters in the game. They were fun and amusing. On that note, none of them get any real character development either.
The tactical gameplay is pretty standard. Competent overall even if there isn't much of a standout. The job system was decent too.
Overall, a way too short game that could be cleared in just under 9 hours on Normal. I feel like it could be a much better game if they spent more time on it, but alas, this is the result.
Ixtona is pretty generic across the board, but there's some aspects that could've been pretty interesting had they developed it more. The story left me disappointed the most. It starts with a sudden coup by the MC's older brother (who is a prince) and their father is killed in the process. From there, the story could've gone to some interesting places even if it went the typical MC gathers his own army and overthrow his own brother route. But it doesn't and the story never really gets more interesting than that.
Although, the story direction is a bit surprising and comes out of left field, there's not much development on that end either. Just when I felt like the story was finally moving and seemingly at a 25% mark of the story, the story basically skips to the rushed ending in a matter of a handful of battles.
It's a shame how the story just ends so quickly considering I did liked the characters in the game. They were fun and amusing. On that note, none of them get any real character development either.
The tactical gameplay is pretty standard. Competent overall even if there isn't much of a standout. The job system was decent too.
Overall, a way too short game that could be cleared in just under 9 hours on Normal. I feel like it could be a much better game if they spent more time on it, but alas, this is the result.
2023
At about 20 hours with very little repeating of Skirmish battles for grinding, Redemption Reapers is fairly short for a SRPG game. The story is unusual since most of the focus is on the mercenary squad as a group and their familial bonds. There's the constant threat by the Mort race, but the story never develops much more than that.
The worldbuilding as a whole is surprisingly lacking which may be intentional. Despite being the main threat in the game, I never learned more about the Mort than what was shown at the beginning of the game. They are simply an enemy force that kills everything in their path.
Other than the some references of fallen kingdoms, there isn't much else to the worldbuilding. You can find journals and documents on battle stages which reveals some information about the people that had lived in the area. While some of the entries are interesting to read, it's hard to connect with characters you never see or meet. The main characters don't interact with anybody else outside of their group other than a handful of NPCs.
The main characters have interesting personalities and while they also have interesting backstories too, the execution isn't all that great. Their backstories are often revealed in short conversations with greater detail later provided in their bio texts. In short, their backstory never felt like it made any difference in the actual story.
The gameplay and combat is pretty fun however. On the Normal difficulty (Hard is unlocked on NG+), the game is quite punishing at times. Careful positioning and team work is needed to clear battles. The margin of error is small with just one mishap can quickly cause the team to fall like dominos. Other than one character, nobody else can actually tank a lot of hits, most often dying in just 2-3 hits. Enemy reinforcements occurs nearly every battle which keeps me on my toes. The enemy A.I. overall is fairly smart. They will target the most fragile party members within range. Oftentimes, the enemy would just send overwhelming numbers towards your location. Overall, very few battles were a cakewalk for me and many were on the challenging side.
There isn't any real character customization. Each of the 5 character's have fixed roles and unlocking new passives and abilities just reinforces their roles. Fortunately, the way their character roles are built does make them interesting to use especially in conjunction with the other members.
The use of AP for each individual action does allow further consideration on what skills to use and whether remaining AP should be used for an additional attack or not. A fixed 7 AP is recovered each turn.
While the game's mechanics can be punishing, there isn't any permadeath. Fallen allies however can't be revived during battle whatsoever. The only healing at the start is a potion that everybody carries and is one time use per battle. Some characters get healing skills later, but at a high AP cost per use and can't be used on the user.
The game's soundtrack is a highlight. There's a lot of somber and melancholic melodies which reflected the bleak world and situation the characters are in. The battle themes are not overly bombastic, but with decent intensity to match the battle conditions.
Overall, the combat and battles were fun and challenging, but the story leaves a lot to be desired.
The worldbuilding as a whole is surprisingly lacking which may be intentional. Despite being the main threat in the game, I never learned more about the Mort than what was shown at the beginning of the game. They are simply an enemy force that kills everything in their path.
Other than the some references of fallen kingdoms, there isn't much else to the worldbuilding. You can find journals and documents on battle stages which reveals some information about the people that had lived in the area. While some of the entries are interesting to read, it's hard to connect with characters you never see or meet. The main characters don't interact with anybody else outside of their group other than a handful of NPCs.
The main characters have interesting personalities and while they also have interesting backstories too, the execution isn't all that great. Their backstories are often revealed in short conversations with greater detail later provided in their bio texts. In short, their backstory never felt like it made any difference in the actual story.
The gameplay and combat is pretty fun however. On the Normal difficulty (Hard is unlocked on NG+), the game is quite punishing at times. Careful positioning and team work is needed to clear battles. The margin of error is small with just one mishap can quickly cause the team to fall like dominos. Other than one character, nobody else can actually tank a lot of hits, most often dying in just 2-3 hits. Enemy reinforcements occurs nearly every battle which keeps me on my toes. The enemy A.I. overall is fairly smart. They will target the most fragile party members within range. Oftentimes, the enemy would just send overwhelming numbers towards your location. Overall, very few battles were a cakewalk for me and many were on the challenging side.
There isn't any real character customization. Each of the 5 character's have fixed roles and unlocking new passives and abilities just reinforces their roles. Fortunately, the way their character roles are built does make them interesting to use especially in conjunction with the other members.
The use of AP for each individual action does allow further consideration on what skills to use and whether remaining AP should be used for an additional attack or not. A fixed 7 AP is recovered each turn.
While the game's mechanics can be punishing, there isn't any permadeath. Fallen allies however can't be revived during battle whatsoever. The only healing at the start is a potion that everybody carries and is one time use per battle. Some characters get healing skills later, but at a high AP cost per use and can't be used on the user.
The game's soundtrack is a highlight. There's a lot of somber and melancholic melodies which reflected the bleak world and situation the characters are in. The battle themes are not overly bombastic, but with decent intensity to match the battle conditions.
Overall, the combat and battles were fun and challenging, but the story leaves a lot to be desired.
2021
Mayhem Brawler is a solid beat em up game. It's definitely on the short side with each stage taking roughly about 5-10 minutes to complete assuming no game overs. There's 7 stages in the game so the whole playthrough will run just a little over an hour which is on par with other similar games in the genre.
The comic book art direction looks gorgeous.
The combat is somewhat basic with a one button combo system. There's also a button for the Power ability which varies between characters.
Boss fights are surprisingly easy. It's mostly the mobs that appear with the boss that provides additional challenge.
Story is okay. I'm not sure if this was an already existing IP or it's because the story is told too quickly without properly developing characters and other name dropped events, but I didn't follow the story too well.
Gameplay structure is nice though. Each stage other than the first and last have an alternate stage. After clearing the prior stage, you can choose between two actions which will lead you down a different story path and stage. The final stage actually consists of three alternates and your decisions leading up to it will determine which stage you get. So there's decent replay value overall.
The comic book art direction looks gorgeous.
The combat is somewhat basic with a one button combo system. There's also a button for the Power ability which varies between characters.
Boss fights are surprisingly easy. It's mostly the mobs that appear with the boss that provides additional challenge.
Story is okay. I'm not sure if this was an already existing IP or it's because the story is told too quickly without properly developing characters and other name dropped events, but I didn't follow the story too well.
Gameplay structure is nice though. Each stage other than the first and last have an alternate stage. After clearing the prior stage, you can choose between two actions which will lead you down a different story path and stage. The final stage actually consists of three alternates and your decisions leading up to it will determine which stage you get. So there's decent replay value overall.
2019
I'm not familiar with the River City franchise prior to playing RCG, but RCG turned out quite enjoyable.
The pixelated graphics have a lot of charm. The character portraits looks great and the manga cutscene panels used mostly for the boss encounters were very well done.
The whole game is filled with humor from the premise to the dialogue. I got a good laugh out of some of the dialogue that came up. The story is decent and a lot of the humor kept me invested.
The gameplay is actually less like an arcade beat em up game than I expected. It's fairly long for a playthrough at about 5 hours. Part of it is because there's a lot of backtracking and extra side missions to incentivize exploring every area.
There is a RPG system where you can gain exp from defeating enemies and level up. Bonus exp is also awarded from clearing some side missions. The concept is nice here, but I didn't feel I ever got much stronger after leveling up. The stat boost just seems very minor overall.
There's also an equipment mechanic for accessories. Just two slots so there's not a lot of interesting mix and matching. Most of the accessories aren't particularly great either since their effects are low in numbers. Like an increased 5% damage to male enemies. Then there's ones like a 1% of receiving no damage. I guess it's better than nothing, but the overall effect doesn't seem to make much difference for many of them.
I liked how all of the areas are connected which makes it less like an arcade brawler.
One of the highlights is the OST which was surprisingly great. Some of the vocal tracks really stood out.
Overall, pretty fun game and has more content than many beat em up games. There's a NG+ mode with stronger enemies and two secret unlockable characters after beating the game.
The pixelated graphics have a lot of charm. The character portraits looks great and the manga cutscene panels used mostly for the boss encounters were very well done.
The whole game is filled with humor from the premise to the dialogue. I got a good laugh out of some of the dialogue that came up. The story is decent and a lot of the humor kept me invested.
The gameplay is actually less like an arcade beat em up game than I expected. It's fairly long for a playthrough at about 5 hours. Part of it is because there's a lot of backtracking and extra side missions to incentivize exploring every area.
There is a RPG system where you can gain exp from defeating enemies and level up. Bonus exp is also awarded from clearing some side missions. The concept is nice here, but I didn't feel I ever got much stronger after leveling up. The stat boost just seems very minor overall.
There's also an equipment mechanic for accessories. Just two slots so there's not a lot of interesting mix and matching. Most of the accessories aren't particularly great either since their effects are low in numbers. Like an increased 5% damage to male enemies. Then there's ones like a 1% of receiving no damage. I guess it's better than nothing, but the overall effect doesn't seem to make much difference for many of them.
I liked how all of the areas are connected which makes it less like an arcade brawler.
One of the highlights is the OST which was surprisingly great. Some of the vocal tracks really stood out.
Overall, pretty fun game and has more content than many beat em up games. There's a NG+ mode with stronger enemies and two secret unlockable characters after beating the game.
2019
Despite the title, Ambition Record doesn't exude a lot of ambition. Developed by Exe-Create, they opted to move to 3D graphics and character models instead of their usual 2D Sprites. I do think the chibi character models are charming as if they came from some kind of 3DS game, but they have very limited animation so that action scenes don't look good at all.
The backgrounds and environment similarly don't look good and extremely dated.
Story is straightforward without any interesting plot twist. Each of the main characters have nice backstories, but as characters, aren't really developed much so they come off as very one-note.
The combat is standard Exe-Create with an okay turn based system. They still make use of the dynamic turn order gauge. The Dragon armor system where a character can transform and gain Dragon armor similar to Legend of Dragoon is probably the standout feature, but it's underutilize. The main gimmick is to use it's super move after transformation and that's probably about it.
Ambition Record does have a similar job system to Exe-Create's other game, Dragon Prana. Although, the jobs here aren't as interesting and if I remember right, less overall.
Budget and presentation is really lacking even for Exe-Create's usual standard. There isn't a world map and every area is selectable from a list. Liege Dragon was very similar in that regards and coincidentally or not, I didn't think of that game highly either.
Overall, a very standard game without much that stood out. The game is quite short though and you can complete all of the main story, the post game and the sidequests in just about 10 hours.
The backgrounds and environment similarly don't look good and extremely dated.
Story is straightforward without any interesting plot twist. Each of the main characters have nice backstories, but as characters, aren't really developed much so they come off as very one-note.
The combat is standard Exe-Create with an okay turn based system. They still make use of the dynamic turn order gauge. The Dragon armor system where a character can transform and gain Dragon armor similar to Legend of Dragoon is probably the standout feature, but it's underutilize. The main gimmick is to use it's super move after transformation and that's probably about it.
Ambition Record does have a similar job system to Exe-Create's other game, Dragon Prana. Although, the jobs here aren't as interesting and if I remember right, less overall.
Budget and presentation is really lacking even for Exe-Create's usual standard. There isn't a world map and every area is selectable from a list. Liege Dragon was very similar in that regards and coincidentally or not, I didn't think of that game highly either.
Overall, a very standard game without much that stood out. The game is quite short though and you can complete all of the main story, the post game and the sidequests in just about 10 hours.
Gaiden has a lot of great things going for it despite being a "Gaiden" game. The story is definitely on the shorter side of the series, but it's pretty much 10-15 hours if you focus on it which is roughly similar to some of the older entries.
The story is overall interesting and had a very strong start and finish, but I think the middle parts weren't nearly as good.
I just thought that many of it felt like filler that could've been avoided because of certain character actions. The story doesn't have much in the way of really epic moments outside of the final sequence. I wasn't a fan of how so much of it tied into Y7's story as well and would've greatly prefer that it was more of a standalone story. I say that while understanding the Gaiden nature and it being a side story to Y7.
Kiryu is great here and despite getting on in age, still has the energy of a man in his 30s. Akame is a surprisingly great supporting character. She exudes a lot of charm and her development in the side moments were great to see. It's a real shame that this might be her only appearance in the series. I do wished that she was more involved in the story though.
There's roughly 2 antagonists in the game and one of the is pretty underwhelming. The other one is a solid one with a lot of buildup and depth. Doesn't really rank that high in my Yakuza series villain list, but that's a testament to how much I really enjoyed the others. This one at least has been better than a few recent Kiryu antagonists.
For a Gaiden game, it has a lot of side activities. Many of the signature legacy ones are here like karaoke, billiards, arcade games, golf, hostess events and the colosseum. Pocket Circuit returns in its full glory. I had hoped that Gaiden would have a major original side activity, but it's not too bad.
The substories are fewer than the main entries, but at a little over 30, there's still a lot to go through. Quality for most is pretty much what you expect from the series at this point. Lots of callbacks from the older games as well so that's nice to see.
Combat is pretty much peak Kiryu beat em up for me. Dragon/Yakuza style has been noticeably changed to a more slower, but harder hitting style with charged moves. Still quite strong here though. The second style showcases a lot of finesse and technical moves that looks quite impressive and like something that Judgment's Yagami would do. The tech stuff that comes along with that style are interesting to use as well. I'd still put Lost Judgment's beat em up combat at my favorite in the series, but the combat here is a close 2nd.
While Sotenbori is a good city with a lot of content, it's a shame that it's basically the only city you go to.
Overall, a pretty fun game with a lot of content even if it's on the shorter side compared to recent main entries. Still 20+ hours worth of content with a lot of things to do. Story could be better, but has its moments. Definitely not a game to play before Y7 since it spoils a lot of it.
The story is overall interesting and had a very strong start and finish, but I think the middle parts weren't nearly as good.
I just thought that many of it felt like filler that could've been avoided because of certain character actions. The story doesn't have much in the way of really epic moments outside of the final sequence. I wasn't a fan of how so much of it tied into Y7's story as well and would've greatly prefer that it was more of a standalone story. I say that while understanding the Gaiden nature and it being a side story to Y7.
Kiryu is great here and despite getting on in age, still has the energy of a man in his 30s. Akame is a surprisingly great supporting character. She exudes a lot of charm and her development in the side moments were great to see. It's a real shame that this might be her only appearance in the series. I do wished that she was more involved in the story though.
There's roughly 2 antagonists in the game and one of the is pretty underwhelming. The other one is a solid one with a lot of buildup and depth. Doesn't really rank that high in my Yakuza series villain list, but that's a testament to how much I really enjoyed the others. This one at least has been better than a few recent Kiryu antagonists.
For a Gaiden game, it has a lot of side activities. Many of the signature legacy ones are here like karaoke, billiards, arcade games, golf, hostess events and the colosseum. Pocket Circuit returns in its full glory. I had hoped that Gaiden would have a major original side activity, but it's not too bad.
The substories are fewer than the main entries, but at a little over 30, there's still a lot to go through. Quality for most is pretty much what you expect from the series at this point. Lots of callbacks from the older games as well so that's nice to see.
Combat is pretty much peak Kiryu beat em up for me. Dragon/Yakuza style has been noticeably changed to a more slower, but harder hitting style with charged moves. Still quite strong here though. The second style showcases a lot of finesse and technical moves that looks quite impressive and like something that Judgment's Yagami would do. The tech stuff that comes along with that style are interesting to use as well. I'd still put Lost Judgment's beat em up combat at my favorite in the series, but the combat here is a close 2nd.
While Sotenbori is a good city with a lot of content, it's a shame that it's basically the only city you go to.
Overall, a pretty fun game with a lot of content even if it's on the shorter side compared to recent main entries. Still 20+ hours worth of content with a lot of things to do. Story could be better, but has its moments. Definitely not a game to play before Y7 since it spoils a lot of it.
It's been a while since I last played a Warriors Orochi game and I never played the original version of WO4 either. I heard a lot of negative opinions on the base game so I was pleasantly surprised to enjoy WO4U as much as I did.
The Warriors games have always been fun casual plays for me as far as the combat and gameplay goes. I'm usually invested in the stories too and WO4U pretty much delivered in these aspects.
If I would really simplify the game, it's basically another Warriors Orochi game, but with the biggest roster to date. The graphics are decent and the character models are pretty nice to look at.
The gameplay is mostly the same, but the R1 Specials have been removed. Considering I never bothered much with those before, this removal didn't really affect me. The weapon upgrade system has been changes so that you can't increase the weapon's base damage by fusing with other weapons anymore. Some of the Weapon "Elements" seem to have been removed too. That part did disappointed me.
Content-wise, there's still quite a lot of things to do here although they cut off a lot of the fat from WO3U. Depending on who you ask, that might be a good or bad thing. Some like to spend hundreds of hours grinding stuff in that game while others just want to complete most stuff well under 100 hours. I fall into the latter camp so I liked how less grindy the game felt. Unique weapons are easier to get based on their objectives and you can easily get up to 3 of them per battle stage. There's no more "treasures" to unlock. Bond levels increase quickly in general with multiple ways to passively increase it.
The new Camp upgrades are nice which add permanent benefits that applies to nearly every character for every stage.
The biggest change in the combat is probably the Magic system. I was iffy on it at the start, but have grown to enjoy it. It allowed additional attacks for the characters and some are quite good to use. The magic is based on the Sacred Treasure that is currently equipped allowing different customization.
Originally, the base game had 5 chapters which is pretty lengthy already, but Ultimate added 3 additional chapters. It's still a long game.
The story is somewhat different than the previous ones. It's still an Orochi game in the sense where there's some random reason the Dynasty and Samurai Warriors are transported to alternate world and the characters work together to get home. The big difference here though is that Orochi's role is surprisingly small. There's a large emphasis on the Greek and Norse Mythology theme so the character focused is strongly on them here. I personally think it's a nice breath of fresh air in the series which helped that I enjoyed the new characters as well.
Overall, a fun game with a massive 177 character roster. The story was enjoyable even it's nothing amazing.
The Warriors games have always been fun casual plays for me as far as the combat and gameplay goes. I'm usually invested in the stories too and WO4U pretty much delivered in these aspects.
If I would really simplify the game, it's basically another Warriors Orochi game, but with the biggest roster to date. The graphics are decent and the character models are pretty nice to look at.
The gameplay is mostly the same, but the R1 Specials have been removed. Considering I never bothered much with those before, this removal didn't really affect me. The weapon upgrade system has been changes so that you can't increase the weapon's base damage by fusing with other weapons anymore. Some of the Weapon "Elements" seem to have been removed too. That part did disappointed me.
Content-wise, there's still quite a lot of things to do here although they cut off a lot of the fat from WO3U. Depending on who you ask, that might be a good or bad thing. Some like to spend hundreds of hours grinding stuff in that game while others just want to complete most stuff well under 100 hours. I fall into the latter camp so I liked how less grindy the game felt. Unique weapons are easier to get based on their objectives and you can easily get up to 3 of them per battle stage. There's no more "treasures" to unlock. Bond levels increase quickly in general with multiple ways to passively increase it.
The new Camp upgrades are nice which add permanent benefits that applies to nearly every character for every stage.
The biggest change in the combat is probably the Magic system. I was iffy on it at the start, but have grown to enjoy it. It allowed additional attacks for the characters and some are quite good to use. The magic is based on the Sacred Treasure that is currently equipped allowing different customization.
Originally, the base game had 5 chapters which is pretty lengthy already, but Ultimate added 3 additional chapters. It's still a long game.
The story is somewhat different than the previous ones. It's still an Orochi game in the sense where there's some random reason the Dynasty and Samurai Warriors are transported to alternate world and the characters work together to get home. The big difference here though is that Orochi's role is surprisingly small. There's a large emphasis on the Greek and Norse Mythology theme so the character focused is strongly on them here. I personally think it's a nice breath of fresh air in the series which helped that I enjoyed the new characters as well.
Overall, a fun game with a massive 177 character roster. The story was enjoyable even it's nothing amazing.