speckle
2024
Medium. No significant story or content spoilers. This review is content-accurate as of 5/17/24, this game is currently in early access. This review focuses more on technical details for those interested in playing. I did not progress past the Manufacturing sector whilst writing this review, but I won't touch on it in this review.
For anyone looking to play the game, I recommend looking at some settings to tinker with. First of all, the game defaults to using TSR at a 25% resolution scaling factor. This doesn't look terrible, but it can increase the frequency of visual artifacts that some players may find distracting. Turning this up should alleviate many issues you could get from scaling, but will reduce performance. I do recommend using TSR since it does look very, very good for an upscaler. I would not recommend FSR over TSR, and I do not believe DLSS is an option in this game as of now.
If you're running an older graphics card, or a graphics card that is a little weaker, I would recommend turning the Global Illumination, Shadows and Reflections settings down, as the "Epic" setting uses UE5's Lumen technology to produce an effect that is not much different from ray-tracing, only in software. I am unsure if this game uses any hardware accelerated ray-tracing, but I think it is a software implementation. Regardless, these settings should affect your performance the most, aside from resolution scaling. Some people have reported a method to help optimize lighting even further by tinkering with engine.ini files, but I did not do this.
On my setup, I can achieve a stable 120-165 frames per second using Epic on all settings at 75% (of 1440p) resolution scaling. I am using an RX 6800 and a Ryzen 9 5900x with 32gb of RAM. Some users have reported stutters occuring between some locations, but I have not experienced any. Overall, this game runs well, but older systems may struggle with some effects.
Review
Abiotic Factor defied my expectations, even knowing I was to expect a survival game within a setting that intentionally calls back to the Black Mesa facilities of Half-Life. Everything from the enemies, to the character design, and the setting which is an underground research facility within a red-colored rocky locale. Saying that Abiotic Factor is taking a lot of inspiration from Half-Life would be a significant understatement. This makes it incredibly fun for someone like me, someone who does quite enjoy the franchise, to play something like this, it has a sort of comfortable vibe despite everything going on. The visual makeup of the game retains a similar (albeit higher) level of detail that the original Half-Life games in terms of textures, but is otherwise using fairly advanced lighting technology that I think looks really good overall.
The game begins with you creating a character. Don't try to get it perfect! You can change your character's appearance any time you want after this tutorial, which sees you being driven to the facility, situated in the middle of nowhere. Once you talk to the security guard, and get your badge, you're then walked through basic mechanics, things you will essentially be doing for much of, if not, the entire game. This tutorial is nice and short, and I think covers enough ground to get you situated into the rest of the game.
Upon completion of the tutorial you're brought to the main menu, and are able to start a new game. There appear to be a lot of elements you can change to make it easier or harder or maybe just different, which is nice. Once making a new save, you are asked to select a "job" and then follow up with traits and points you can allocate for traits, much like Project Zomboid. This seems quite generous, and it is, but a couple of things is that you absolutely must take Wrinkly Brainmeat, which increases your XP gains by 20%, and if you're playing in multiplayer, I think specializing is good. 20% XP gain doesn't sound like much, but some traits that you want to level up as much as possible can take a very long time, and any time saved on that can be a lifesaver. You can have friends specialize in things such as cooking, or combat, so on and so forth, to make the experience more dynamic for everyone playing. It's best to do this with the jobs at your disposal. Dying in this game (at least with default settings)
Starting a game, you may notice a couple of red flags. Your very first task is to talk to a scientist and get your first objective. Why would an open-ended survival game have you getting objectives to complete? Thankfully, these objectives don't necessarily have to be completed within a linear fashion, and, although direct, I feel that this functions in a similar way to The Forest, in which these objectives are simply allowing the player to open the world up to them in segments, and are not the hallmarks of a linear story progression. Regardless, right around the time you craft your first Energy Brick, the game will open up quite substantially, allowing you the freedom to explore the facility, talk to more NPCs, discover new things, and set up your living space for the time being. As in any survival game, you must pay attention to your human needs. Many of these are straightforward, gotta eat, sleep, drink, and in this game you also occasionally need to use the restroom with a little minigame attached to it. Fun! Lastly, you are encouraged to enter the Portal Worlds (one time required, at least), which are worlds that have a complete setting change, and differs in many ways!
I do feel that, at the moment, some of these elements of the game feel more like an afterthought than a mechanic that is engaging. For example, the Strength stat gives you the bonus of being able to properly wield heavy weapons, by carrying over capacity. Grinding this stat was incredibly frustrating, forcing me to run around very encumbered, not being able to collect as many resources as I'd like, in order to use a few weapons. I think that having this upgrade would make more sense for a separate stat or a separate method of upgrading, but some of these bonuses feel somewhat random. Another aspect I feel wears the game down a bit is the awkward combat, a couple of enemies (notably the Peccary) almost have instant attacks that occur, and can be punishing without feeling like a player would have deserved it. This continues to occur with many later enemies, but I think it is at least helped by the fact that you can get much better defensive equipment.
Abiotic Factor is a really fun time. I fully expected this game to be a mostly-joke title, but I found myself a game that I am enjoying and will continue to do so until I have seeped out everything I can out of it. While this game does have a couple issues, I think they could get ironed out by release. Single player is fun, but multiplayer is even more fun. I recommend this game to anyone, or any group, looking for a silly little survival game where you roleplay as HL1 scientists doing... whatever it is they do.
For anyone looking to play the game, I recommend looking at some settings to tinker with. First of all, the game defaults to using TSR at a 25% resolution scaling factor. This doesn't look terrible, but it can increase the frequency of visual artifacts that some players may find distracting. Turning this up should alleviate many issues you could get from scaling, but will reduce performance. I do recommend using TSR since it does look very, very good for an upscaler. I would not recommend FSR over TSR, and I do not believe DLSS is an option in this game as of now.
If you're running an older graphics card, or a graphics card that is a little weaker, I would recommend turning the Global Illumination, Shadows and Reflections settings down, as the "Epic" setting uses UE5's Lumen technology to produce an effect that is not much different from ray-tracing, only in software. I am unsure if this game uses any hardware accelerated ray-tracing, but I think it is a software implementation. Regardless, these settings should affect your performance the most, aside from resolution scaling. Some people have reported a method to help optimize lighting even further by tinkering with engine.ini files, but I did not do this.
On my setup, I can achieve a stable 120-165 frames per second using Epic on all settings at 75% (of 1440p) resolution scaling. I am using an RX 6800 and a Ryzen 9 5900x with 32gb of RAM. Some users have reported stutters occuring between some locations, but I have not experienced any. Overall, this game runs well, but older systems may struggle with some effects.
Review
Abiotic Factor defied my expectations, even knowing I was to expect a survival game within a setting that intentionally calls back to the Black Mesa facilities of Half-Life. Everything from the enemies, to the character design, and the setting which is an underground research facility within a red-colored rocky locale. Saying that Abiotic Factor is taking a lot of inspiration from Half-Life would be a significant understatement. This makes it incredibly fun for someone like me, someone who does quite enjoy the franchise, to play something like this, it has a sort of comfortable vibe despite everything going on. The visual makeup of the game retains a similar (albeit higher) level of detail that the original Half-Life games in terms of textures, but is otherwise using fairly advanced lighting technology that I think looks really good overall.
The game begins with you creating a character. Don't try to get it perfect! You can change your character's appearance any time you want after this tutorial, which sees you being driven to the facility, situated in the middle of nowhere. Once you talk to the security guard, and get your badge, you're then walked through basic mechanics, things you will essentially be doing for much of, if not, the entire game. This tutorial is nice and short, and I think covers enough ground to get you situated into the rest of the game.
Upon completion of the tutorial you're brought to the main menu, and are able to start a new game. There appear to be a lot of elements you can change to make it easier or harder or maybe just different, which is nice. Once making a new save, you are asked to select a "job" and then follow up with traits and points you can allocate for traits, much like Project Zomboid. This seems quite generous, and it is, but a couple of things is that you absolutely must take Wrinkly Brainmeat, which increases your XP gains by 20%, and if you're playing in multiplayer, I think specializing is good. 20% XP gain doesn't sound like much, but some traits that you want to level up as much as possible can take a very long time, and any time saved on that can be a lifesaver. You can have friends specialize in things such as cooking, or combat, so on and so forth, to make the experience more dynamic for everyone playing. It's best to do this with the jobs at your disposal. Dying in this game (at least with default settings)
Starting a game, you may notice a couple of red flags. Your very first task is to talk to a scientist and get your first objective. Why would an open-ended survival game have you getting objectives to complete? Thankfully, these objectives don't necessarily have to be completed within a linear fashion, and, although direct, I feel that this functions in a similar way to The Forest, in which these objectives are simply allowing the player to open the world up to them in segments, and are not the hallmarks of a linear story progression. Regardless, right around the time you craft your first Energy Brick, the game will open up quite substantially, allowing you the freedom to explore the facility, talk to more NPCs, discover new things, and set up your living space for the time being. As in any survival game, you must pay attention to your human needs. Many of these are straightforward, gotta eat, sleep, drink, and in this game you also occasionally need to use the restroom with a little minigame attached to it. Fun! Lastly, you are encouraged to enter the Portal Worlds (one time required, at least), which are worlds that have a complete setting change, and differs in many ways!
I do feel that, at the moment, some of these elements of the game feel more like an afterthought than a mechanic that is engaging. For example, the Strength stat gives you the bonus of being able to properly wield heavy weapons, by carrying over capacity. Grinding this stat was incredibly frustrating, forcing me to run around very encumbered, not being able to collect as many resources as I'd like, in order to use a few weapons. I think that having this upgrade would make more sense for a separate stat or a separate method of upgrading, but some of these bonuses feel somewhat random. Another aspect I feel wears the game down a bit is the awkward combat, a couple of enemies (notably the Peccary) almost have instant attacks that occur, and can be punishing without feeling like a player would have deserved it. This continues to occur with many later enemies, but I think it is at least helped by the fact that you can get much better defensive equipment.
Abiotic Factor is a really fun time. I fully expected this game to be a mostly-joke title, but I found myself a game that I am enjoying and will continue to do so until I have seeped out everything I can out of it. While this game does have a couple issues, I think they could get ironed out by release. Single player is fun, but multiplayer is even more fun. I recommend this game to anyone, or any group, looking for a silly little survival game where you roleplay as HL1 scientists doing... whatever it is they do.
Medium. No story spoilers.
Kingdom Hearts 358/2 days, in a playable state, is only playable via the Nintendo DS, any systems with support for DS games, or via emulation of DS hardware. Alternatively, one could simply view the 358/2 days cutscene movie that is packaged with 1.5 remix. Ideally, one playing through the series should probably play the game on a DS of some sort, but the cutscene movie is fine too. Emulation is very possible and easy, but I feel that it's a little annoying to get feeling good, and it will never feel better than simply playing it on native hardware if possible. This game supports 2 player co-op, which I think makes the game more fun, but it is not a requirement.
Although in 1.5/2.5 remixes, it is positioned in between Re:Chain of Memories and Kingdom Hearts 2, you should not play or watch 358/2 days before playing 2! This game spoils many important aspects of KH2, and is also more enjoyable with the context of KH2.
Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days is the second major spin-off of the Kingdom Hearts franchise, and much like Chain of Memories, it is incredibly important and foundational for the plot. Functioning as a prequel to 2, and also taking place during the events of the first game and Chain of Memories, this game has a lot of importance to the extended plot. The game was exclusively released for the Nintendo DS, and has never received a remake or a remaster in the same way as Chain of Memories or Birth by Sleep. Instead, it was added to 1.5 Remix as a cutscene movie. While this covers most of the story beats, and is arguably more entertaining than the game itself, I do think it isn't quite as good as playing through the game itself despite its flaws. However, if you don't want to sink some teeth and time into this game, I would understand opting to watch the cutscene movie instead.
358/2 days follows Roxas, and as the name suggests, you follow nearly a year's worth of time as Roxas in the Organization XIII, performing and completing missions in order to further their goals. You team up with one other Organization XIII member, which can either be controlled by an AI or a player on another system, and fulfill the tasks to a manner you and the Organization may desire. These missions may vary in objectives, such as scouting out a location, defeating a powerful heartless enemy, etc. This mission structure is designed to allot for shorter play sessions that would be fitting for playing on the go, which differs from prior Kingdom Hearts titles which focused on lengthy exploration and longer challenges such as an Olympus Colosseum cup. This mission structure also has a narrative purpose, your role in the Organization is quite literally a job, and every day gets you new missions to do, and new events to follow in that chronological order.
And much like a job, this game is not necessarily entertaining. Out of all of the handheld releases, this gameplay system is most like the home console experiences, having the command list in which you can attack, use magic, and select an item to use. With the DS' limited buttons, however, this feels awkward at best. Combat in this game is incredibly simplistic, often boiling down to a DPS test with every enemy encounter. The only real dynamic element in action combat is the variable magic uses and the LIMIT system, which allows you to empower yourself once you reach a certain health threshold. You can change your equipment and magic, items and such using a cute little grid system, which expands as you get further in the game. You can trade off space for a weaker item, so that you can equip another potion, you can use differing levels of magic that may, in fact, not be strictly better as it goes from Fire to Firaga for example. You level up by adding, well, level tiles to this grid, which is a sweet little idea for a game like this. I actually do find this to be the most interesting element of gameplay, but in practice it often doesn't feel too good anyways, due to how simplistic the game itself is regardless.
Exploration is limited, both by the DS hardware itself, and the "barriers" sometimes put in place by the Organization so that you stay on target. This doesn't affect the gameplay too much though, as the environments are still nicely designed, and you can always revisit missions from prior days to get any items or bonuses you may have missed. So, while the game is shorter, and maybe doesn't have the same depth as other titles, the game still lets you take your time for completionism if you'd like. This all adds replay value into the game, if you desire to keep playing.
With all of this being said, why do I recommend playing this DS version of the game over watching the cutscene movie? In my opinion, 358/2 Days has one of the strongest narratives and overarching story in the franchise, and I feel that the cutscene movie doesn't convey all of that in a way I find as satisfactory. The significant bump in quality, and having higher quality voice acting is really good, and these are still some of the strongest scenes in the franchise, but the cutscene movie misses some small character details that I think adds up to a lot in the long run. Being able to see the attitude of many of the characters is really intriguing, and having to feel some of these character moments in gameplay is preferable to seeing them in a cutscene movie, at least in my opinion. While I may have a lot to criticize about 358/2 days, mostly just in the gameplay, I wouldn't prefer a 358/2 days without that gameplay, weirdly enough. Play (or watch) 358/2 days for what I think to be one of the strongest narratives the series has to offer, and as stated prior, play it after KH2.
Kingdom Hearts 358/2 days, in a playable state, is only playable via the Nintendo DS, any systems with support for DS games, or via emulation of DS hardware. Alternatively, one could simply view the 358/2 days cutscene movie that is packaged with 1.5 remix. Ideally, one playing through the series should probably play the game on a DS of some sort, but the cutscene movie is fine too. Emulation is very possible and easy, but I feel that it's a little annoying to get feeling good, and it will never feel better than simply playing it on native hardware if possible. This game supports 2 player co-op, which I think makes the game more fun, but it is not a requirement.
Although in 1.5/2.5 remixes, it is positioned in between Re:Chain of Memories and Kingdom Hearts 2, you should not play or watch 358/2 days before playing 2! This game spoils many important aspects of KH2, and is also more enjoyable with the context of KH2.
Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days is the second major spin-off of the Kingdom Hearts franchise, and much like Chain of Memories, it is incredibly important and foundational for the plot. Functioning as a prequel to 2, and also taking place during the events of the first game and Chain of Memories, this game has a lot of importance to the extended plot. The game was exclusively released for the Nintendo DS, and has never received a remake or a remaster in the same way as Chain of Memories or Birth by Sleep. Instead, it was added to 1.5 Remix as a cutscene movie. While this covers most of the story beats, and is arguably more entertaining than the game itself, I do think it isn't quite as good as playing through the game itself despite its flaws. However, if you don't want to sink some teeth and time into this game, I would understand opting to watch the cutscene movie instead.
358/2 days follows Roxas, and as the name suggests, you follow nearly a year's worth of time as Roxas in the Organization XIII, performing and completing missions in order to further their goals. You team up with one other Organization XIII member, which can either be controlled by an AI or a player on another system, and fulfill the tasks to a manner you and the Organization may desire. These missions may vary in objectives, such as scouting out a location, defeating a powerful heartless enemy, etc. This mission structure is designed to allot for shorter play sessions that would be fitting for playing on the go, which differs from prior Kingdom Hearts titles which focused on lengthy exploration and longer challenges such as an Olympus Colosseum cup. This mission structure also has a narrative purpose, your role in the Organization is quite literally a job, and every day gets you new missions to do, and new events to follow in that chronological order.
And much like a job, this game is not necessarily entertaining. Out of all of the handheld releases, this gameplay system is most like the home console experiences, having the command list in which you can attack, use magic, and select an item to use. With the DS' limited buttons, however, this feels awkward at best. Combat in this game is incredibly simplistic, often boiling down to a DPS test with every enemy encounter. The only real dynamic element in action combat is the variable magic uses and the LIMIT system, which allows you to empower yourself once you reach a certain health threshold. You can change your equipment and magic, items and such using a cute little grid system, which expands as you get further in the game. You can trade off space for a weaker item, so that you can equip another potion, you can use differing levels of magic that may, in fact, not be strictly better as it goes from Fire to Firaga for example. You level up by adding, well, level tiles to this grid, which is a sweet little idea for a game like this. I actually do find this to be the most interesting element of gameplay, but in practice it often doesn't feel too good anyways, due to how simplistic the game itself is regardless.
Exploration is limited, both by the DS hardware itself, and the "barriers" sometimes put in place by the Organization so that you stay on target. This doesn't affect the gameplay too much though, as the environments are still nicely designed, and you can always revisit missions from prior days to get any items or bonuses you may have missed. So, while the game is shorter, and maybe doesn't have the same depth as other titles, the game still lets you take your time for completionism if you'd like. This all adds replay value into the game, if you desire to keep playing.
With all of this being said, why do I recommend playing this DS version of the game over watching the cutscene movie? In my opinion, 358/2 Days has one of the strongest narratives and overarching story in the franchise, and I feel that the cutscene movie doesn't convey all of that in a way I find as satisfactory. The significant bump in quality, and having higher quality voice acting is really good, and these are still some of the strongest scenes in the franchise, but the cutscene movie misses some small character details that I think adds up to a lot in the long run. Being able to see the attitude of many of the characters is really intriguing, and having to feel some of these character moments in gameplay is preferable to seeing them in a cutscene movie, at least in my opinion. While I may have a lot to criticize about 358/2 days, mostly just in the gameplay, I wouldn't prefer a 358/2 days without that gameplay, weirdly enough. Play (or watch) 358/2 days for what I think to be one of the strongest narratives the series has to offer, and as stated prior, play it after KH2.
2013
Medium. No story spoilers.
Cry of Fear is a free-to-play standalone mod for Half-Life. Unlike its spiritual predecessor, Afraid of Monsters: Directors Cut, you do not need to install Half-Life to play this game. It is also available to download straight from Steam. Nothing to note regarding performance or fixes, but be wary of crashes.
Cry of Fear is a free-to-play survival horror game that is easy to pick up and play, although it is a larger time commitment than its predecessor. Simon Henriksson is a depressed teenager who is walking home, when a man who seems to have been attacked, gets his attention. Before Simon can call medical services, a car runs him over. While unconscious, you experience vivid nightmare in which you progress by using the camera flash on marked locations, culminating in a sudden scare. Simon comes to, and finds himself in an alleyway, with a text message from his mother asking him to come home. Since he seemed to have already been on the way to doing that, surely he is just on his way and the nightmare is over. Unfortunately for Simon, or the player, it's really just begun.
The systems introduced in this game help it greatly differ from other Half-Life mods including AoM. One feature that this game has and makes great use of is a limited inventory system. Simon can only hold 3 items in his pockets, and 3 more in his bag. This doesn't include ammunition, but this does include key items such as, well, keys, to progress. This can be annoying for some players who may feel they're juggling with limited space, but I think that this helps Cry of Fear a lot, forcing you to manage in a similar vein to a Resident Evil title. Speaking of Resident Evil, this game also has two more things, a somewhat interconnected world where you can revisit some areas to get items that you may want, and a reliance on manual saving at specific locations (in this game, a tape recorder). Both of these work great on paper, and mostly in practice, but it does unfortunately get significantly hampered by the crashes. You are likely to lose a good chunk of progress because the game decided to crash prior to entering an important room, or after a cutscene. This may he something that could be fixed by running the game in XP compatibility mode, but I cannot verify. Regardless, I won't hold this against the game.
Something I will hold against the game is other little frustrating segments. The most dangerous enemy in the game, the Sawrunner, is a sprinting creature with two chainsaws that will rapidly chase after you after you trigger an event, such as walking near a certain area, or picking up an item. This is a really cool way to introduce urgency for chase scenes, and the sound design is great! Unfortunately, I find that these chase sequences are incredibly trial-and-error. You often never have enough stamina to sprint away from them, and they may sometimes simply catch up to you and instantly kill you as a result. Most frustratingly, a later section forces you to run to a house and unlock a door while being chased by a Sawrunner. This is much worse than it sounds, because you have to open the inventory (which doesn't pause the game) while the sawrunner is already likely right on top of you. This segment alone took me about 5 minutes of 20 second tries because the sawrunner would usually catch up before I reach the house. These segments aren't completely frequent, but they're present enough where I find them annoying instead of anything else.
This game's visual elements are very reminiscent of Afraid of Monsters, which is reminiscent of Silent Hill. Since all of these games focus a lot on personal struggle, this works really well I feel. I do love the grimy aesthetic of all of these game's nightmare sequences, which there are several here. Graphically, Cry of Fear is actually quite amazing for what it is. The developers and artists who worked on this game really made the most out of an old engine to get this game to look the way it does. At times, it even looks comparable to a source engine video game, especially with the trickery involving the water effects, or the animations that play for "physics objects" in the environment. The attention to detail is great here.
Once again comparing to AoM, I think the enemy design is overall an improvement over them, but the "Twitchers" from AoM is still the scariest by far. I think my favorite design in this game are the Tallers or the Carcass. Something that is definitely notable about Cry of Fear's monster design is that it all has some direct relevance to Simon's condition, physical and mental. Unfortunately, some of these monster designs also just end up kind of goofy. I think the worst example of this game are the enemies that look like an older woman with spikes for appendages, their walking animation is a little silly and their death animation just feels too on-the-nose, even for a game as blunt in its portrayal as this. The environment and enemy design for the most part is a lot more grounded in a good way.
Cry of Fear also has a ton of jumpscares. While I am not someone who dislikes jumpscares much at all, I think a lot of this game's scares are quite weak. The best scare in the game is the introductory nightmare section. Not just the climax of it, but the flashes of imagery that make you second guess what you just saw. There are also a handful of segments that can be a little haunting, particularly a segment within claustrophobic tunnels, but they are few and far between.
Cry of Fear has four endings, not including a secret joke ending. Unlike AoM which has endings change based on things as small as making a wrong turn, this game has two deliberate choices a player has to make to achieve the endings, which makes seeing them all a lot easier in technicality (although replaying the whole game might be a chore). For a free survival horror game, Cry of Fear is packing lots for a player to dig into. While I think some aspects make the game feel a little weak, or downright frustrating, this is worth playing if you're a fan of Silent Hill especially. Once again, dispel the notion that you will be playing a game with any subtlety whatsoever, this game is very in-your-face, and it is okay for it to be precisely that.
Cry of Fear is a free-to-play standalone mod for Half-Life. Unlike its spiritual predecessor, Afraid of Monsters: Directors Cut, you do not need to install Half-Life to play this game. It is also available to download straight from Steam. Nothing to note regarding performance or fixes, but be wary of crashes.
Cry of Fear is a free-to-play survival horror game that is easy to pick up and play, although it is a larger time commitment than its predecessor. Simon Henriksson is a depressed teenager who is walking home, when a man who seems to have been attacked, gets his attention. Before Simon can call medical services, a car runs him over. While unconscious, you experience vivid nightmare in which you progress by using the camera flash on marked locations, culminating in a sudden scare. Simon comes to, and finds himself in an alleyway, with a text message from his mother asking him to come home. Since he seemed to have already been on the way to doing that, surely he is just on his way and the nightmare is over. Unfortunately for Simon, or the player, it's really just begun.
The systems introduced in this game help it greatly differ from other Half-Life mods including AoM. One feature that this game has and makes great use of is a limited inventory system. Simon can only hold 3 items in his pockets, and 3 more in his bag. This doesn't include ammunition, but this does include key items such as, well, keys, to progress. This can be annoying for some players who may feel they're juggling with limited space, but I think that this helps Cry of Fear a lot, forcing you to manage in a similar vein to a Resident Evil title. Speaking of Resident Evil, this game also has two more things, a somewhat interconnected world where you can revisit some areas to get items that you may want, and a reliance on manual saving at specific locations (in this game, a tape recorder). Both of these work great on paper, and mostly in practice, but it does unfortunately get significantly hampered by the crashes. You are likely to lose a good chunk of progress because the game decided to crash prior to entering an important room, or after a cutscene. This may he something that could be fixed by running the game in XP compatibility mode, but I cannot verify. Regardless, I won't hold this against the game.
Something I will hold against the game is other little frustrating segments. The most dangerous enemy in the game, the Sawrunner, is a sprinting creature with two chainsaws that will rapidly chase after you after you trigger an event, such as walking near a certain area, or picking up an item. This is a really cool way to introduce urgency for chase scenes, and the sound design is great! Unfortunately, I find that these chase sequences are incredibly trial-and-error. You often never have enough stamina to sprint away from them, and they may sometimes simply catch up to you and instantly kill you as a result. Most frustratingly, a later section forces you to run to a house and unlock a door while being chased by a Sawrunner. This is much worse than it sounds, because you have to open the inventory (which doesn't pause the game) while the sawrunner is already likely right on top of you. This segment alone took me about 5 minutes of 20 second tries because the sawrunner would usually catch up before I reach the house. These segments aren't completely frequent, but they're present enough where I find them annoying instead of anything else.
This game's visual elements are very reminiscent of Afraid of Monsters, which is reminiscent of Silent Hill. Since all of these games focus a lot on personal struggle, this works really well I feel. I do love the grimy aesthetic of all of these game's nightmare sequences, which there are several here. Graphically, Cry of Fear is actually quite amazing for what it is. The developers and artists who worked on this game really made the most out of an old engine to get this game to look the way it does. At times, it even looks comparable to a source engine video game, especially with the trickery involving the water effects, or the animations that play for "physics objects" in the environment. The attention to detail is great here.
Once again comparing to AoM, I think the enemy design is overall an improvement over them, but the "Twitchers" from AoM is still the scariest by far. I think my favorite design in this game are the Tallers or the Carcass. Something that is definitely notable about Cry of Fear's monster design is that it all has some direct relevance to Simon's condition, physical and mental. Unfortunately, some of these monster designs also just end up kind of goofy. I think the worst example of this game are the enemies that look like an older woman with spikes for appendages, their walking animation is a little silly and their death animation just feels too on-the-nose, even for a game as blunt in its portrayal as this. The environment and enemy design for the most part is a lot more grounded in a good way.
Cry of Fear also has a ton of jumpscares. While I am not someone who dislikes jumpscares much at all, I think a lot of this game's scares are quite weak. The best scare in the game is the introductory nightmare section. Not just the climax of it, but the flashes of imagery that make you second guess what you just saw. There are also a handful of segments that can be a little haunting, particularly a segment within claustrophobic tunnels, but they are few and far between.
Cry of Fear has four endings, not including a secret joke ending. Unlike AoM which has endings change based on things as small as making a wrong turn, this game has two deliberate choices a player has to make to achieve the endings, which makes seeing them all a lot easier in technicality (although replaying the whole game might be a chore). For a free survival horror game, Cry of Fear is packing lots for a player to dig into. While I think some aspects make the game feel a little weak, or downright frustrating, this is worth playing if you're a fan of Silent Hill especially. Once again, dispel the notion that you will be playing a game with any subtlety whatsoever, this game is very in-your-face, and it is okay for it to be precisely that.
Medium. No story spoilers.
This game is a mod for Half-Life, and is not able to be launched standalone unlike its spiritual successor, Cry of Fear. To install it grab the game from ModDB, you can simply dump the contents of AoMDC into the Half-Life folder (or use an installer it may have come with), restart Steam, and launch the game. As of the Anniversary release of Half-Life, this is fully (or mostly?) functional.
Afraid of Monsters: Directors Cut is a little horror mod that I recommend any fan of horror (especially Silent Hill), and Half-Life, check out. It has a lot of very cool locations to explore, and can be a fun little challenge, even if a little short. The game also unfortunately suffers from a lot of little jank, some of which can hinder player progression. I am not sure if some of this is due to the Half-Life anniversary update, but some of it was definitely in the version(s) prior, namely doors being annoying at times.
The premise of the game is simple. David Leatherhoff is a man in the hospital, presumably in rehabilitation for drug related problems. He enters the restroom to reflect, and finds a bottle of the exact pills he is trying to get clean from. He unfortunately loses his brief battle with himself, takes the pills, and blacks out in the bathroom. After waking up from a nightmare, he finds the hospital, seemingly completely abandoned. In order to get to wherever he wants to be for whatever reason, he must turn the power off to not get electrocuted. Once he does that, he eventually succumbs to the real nightmare, as figures with rapidly twitching heads begin pursuing him and attacking him violently. Your new objective, is to escape the hospital, and survive this onslaught, in search of a safe place.
Afraid of Monsters' opening, while incredibly simple, is the game at it's most effective. I could not pretend that the visual of a faint figure, rapidly twitching and running toward me in a near pitch-black room, didn't immediately terrify me. The kind-of shitty flashlight from Half-Life only really improves this factor to me, as it is very hard to see, and you can only often get glimpses of these enemies at a time.
The main resources the player is fighting for is pills (healing items), batteries for the flashlight, and weaponry or ammunition to fend off various creatures to progress. Most levels involve the player pressing buttons or picking up keys to unlock colored doors to escape their setting, as you will come across many various settings such as a city, a forest, an apartment complex, etc. I think that the hospital is the strongest setting in this game, and it ultimately peaks right at the beginning. Once you leave the hospital, you will find yourself in largely uninteresting areas with the same ultimate goal of escaping this nightmare. I find that these other areas, aside from a few short segments reminiscent of Silent Hill's otherworld, just don't scratch the horror itch in a way that I would like.
While the successor, Cry of Fear, could be interpreted as a survival horror game, Afraid of Monsters is most strictly an action-horror game. Resource management is largely limited to batteries, which don't necessarily have to be managed since the battery can "recharge" for a moment, and there are no real puzzles beyond grabbing an item to use another item. You must simply blast your way through these levels, and I sort of appreciate that on it's own, since it does make playing AoM pretty easy as a sort of "pick it up and finish it" ordeal. Both games are very bluntly portraying the character's personal struggles, and I think both games work that into the games themselves pretty decently.
As for more general cons of the game, I find that the potential for things to get you "stuck" is pretty significant. Most notably, elevators may cause your character to get stuck, and then take damage when the elevator moves again, forcing you to reload a save. I recommend saving often, but especially prior to using an elevator. I found that crouch-jumping just before the arrival of a new floor helped prevent getting stuck. There are other smaller things, such as doors continuously opening and closing, and some unintuitive interactive objects. This game really slows down just before you reach the end, and while it is incredibly short anyways (shorter if you use typical goldsrc movement tech), it can make one feel like they're burning out before they reach the end.
The game has 4 endings, and some endings being pursued can cause you to take a different path to the end, with some differing levels along the way. This does introduce replay value that a player may find valuable, and it also spices up things like Sven Co-Op playthroughs. All of the endings are incredibly predictable regarding this subject matter, but I do like the way they're presented. I encourage you to try this out if you enjoy Silent Hill and/or Half-Life, but don't expect a hidden horror gem, this is just a fun time, and be sure to check out Cry of Fear afterwards.
This game is a mod for Half-Life, and is not able to be launched standalone unlike its spiritual successor, Cry of Fear. To install it grab the game from ModDB, you can simply dump the contents of AoMDC into the Half-Life folder (or use an installer it may have come with), restart Steam, and launch the game. As of the Anniversary release of Half-Life, this is fully (or mostly?) functional.
Afraid of Monsters: Directors Cut is a little horror mod that I recommend any fan of horror (especially Silent Hill), and Half-Life, check out. It has a lot of very cool locations to explore, and can be a fun little challenge, even if a little short. The game also unfortunately suffers from a lot of little jank, some of which can hinder player progression. I am not sure if some of this is due to the Half-Life anniversary update, but some of it was definitely in the version(s) prior, namely doors being annoying at times.
The premise of the game is simple. David Leatherhoff is a man in the hospital, presumably in rehabilitation for drug related problems. He enters the restroom to reflect, and finds a bottle of the exact pills he is trying to get clean from. He unfortunately loses his brief battle with himself, takes the pills, and blacks out in the bathroom. After waking up from a nightmare, he finds the hospital, seemingly completely abandoned. In order to get to wherever he wants to be for whatever reason, he must turn the power off to not get electrocuted. Once he does that, he eventually succumbs to the real nightmare, as figures with rapidly twitching heads begin pursuing him and attacking him violently. Your new objective, is to escape the hospital, and survive this onslaught, in search of a safe place.
Afraid of Monsters' opening, while incredibly simple, is the game at it's most effective. I could not pretend that the visual of a faint figure, rapidly twitching and running toward me in a near pitch-black room, didn't immediately terrify me. The kind-of shitty flashlight from Half-Life only really improves this factor to me, as it is very hard to see, and you can only often get glimpses of these enemies at a time.
The main resources the player is fighting for is pills (healing items), batteries for the flashlight, and weaponry or ammunition to fend off various creatures to progress. Most levels involve the player pressing buttons or picking up keys to unlock colored doors to escape their setting, as you will come across many various settings such as a city, a forest, an apartment complex, etc. I think that the hospital is the strongest setting in this game, and it ultimately peaks right at the beginning. Once you leave the hospital, you will find yourself in largely uninteresting areas with the same ultimate goal of escaping this nightmare. I find that these other areas, aside from a few short segments reminiscent of Silent Hill's otherworld, just don't scratch the horror itch in a way that I would like.
While the successor, Cry of Fear, could be interpreted as a survival horror game, Afraid of Monsters is most strictly an action-horror game. Resource management is largely limited to batteries, which don't necessarily have to be managed since the battery can "recharge" for a moment, and there are no real puzzles beyond grabbing an item to use another item. You must simply blast your way through these levels, and I sort of appreciate that on it's own, since it does make playing AoM pretty easy as a sort of "pick it up and finish it" ordeal. Both games are very bluntly portraying the character's personal struggles, and I think both games work that into the games themselves pretty decently.
As for more general cons of the game, I find that the potential for things to get you "stuck" is pretty significant. Most notably, elevators may cause your character to get stuck, and then take damage when the elevator moves again, forcing you to reload a save. I recommend saving often, but especially prior to using an elevator. I found that crouch-jumping just before the arrival of a new floor helped prevent getting stuck. There are other smaller things, such as doors continuously opening and closing, and some unintuitive interactive objects. This game really slows down just before you reach the end, and while it is incredibly short anyways (shorter if you use typical goldsrc movement tech), it can make one feel like they're burning out before they reach the end.
The game has 4 endings, and some endings being pursued can cause you to take a different path to the end, with some differing levels along the way. This does introduce replay value that a player may find valuable, and it also spices up things like Sven Co-Op playthroughs. All of the endings are incredibly predictable regarding this subject matter, but I do like the way they're presented. I encourage you to try this out if you enjoy Silent Hill and/or Half-Life, but don't expect a hidden horror gem, this is just a fun time, and be sure to check out Cry of Fear afterwards.
2005
This review contains spoilers
Long. Significant, later-story spoilers marked after a certain point. This is a review of the original AND final mix versions.
My most recent playthrough of Kingdom Hearts 2 was via the 1.5/2.5 collection released on PC via EGS. I recommend that a new player plays the game using a PC or an 8th or 9th generation console (not including the Switch) for the best experience. Unfortunately, this is also one of the games in this collection that is, still to this day, somewhat broken on PC as it has persistent crashes and random little issues that may hinder play, but it is easy to fix using online patches such as Kingdom Hearts Re:Freshed or Re:Fined. I also used a mod to revert all enemy colors to their original color scheme from the non-Final Mix versions.
I played on the Critical difficulty, and this is the one time I recommend anyone, even new players, to do the same. The abilities and general progression of Critical can make the game feel better early on, and the challenge is most fun with stakes. If the difficulty is too much, or you're concerned that you can't do it, there is no shame in playing Beginner or Normal.
Kingdom Hearts 2 is the platonic ideal of a character-action RPG, with a sharp emphasis of a power fantasy and combat opportunities available to you in a pinch, and a speed that always feels just right. I still hold that, to this day, there has never been an action-focused RPG (not including fromsoft titles) that feels nearly as good as Kingdom Hearts 2 does at any moment.
In this game you start in Twilight Town as... Who the hell is Roxas? Did I miss something? Well, no, we didn't, and this confusing introduction is deliberate, and in my opinion, done very well. You start off as Roxas, enjoying his summer break, and learning that something in his typical life just seems off, eventually culminating into the player being reintroduced back into the body and control of Sora. Within this introduction, we are re-taught mechanics from the first game, such as locking on and jumping, and new ones, like having the Information tab that lets the player know of their objective, and most notably Reaction Commands, in which you press the button corresponding to the top of the command list in green, in order to interact with something. In the world, this is including things like chests, context sensitive locations, and more, while in combat these are time sensitive skills that are often, in some way, required to succeed in combat. While this may make the game seem like it is a "Press Triangle to Win" game, it does properly feel like you are given more options and opportunities to play with within combat, it works very well.
Much like Kingdom Hearts 1, you are given the option to choose a weapon within the Dive to the Heart, and a little bit prior to that. The first one simply gives you a permanent +1 stat to Strength, Magic or Defense, and this is up to the player's choice, but I personally like Strength here. As for the dive to the heart, unlike 1, you don't have to "discard" a weapon. Once again, I like the shield here the most, but magic is also a great option. This latter option changes the order in which you unlock abilities, and I personally like having access to defensive abilities earlier.
This game generally revolves around Sora, Donald and Goofy traversing a variety of worlds from Disney properties, but instead of one main visit to each world, you instead have two shorter visits to each disney world, more visits for other worlds. When visiting the world, instead of the same gummi mission in each instance of travel, you instead have the world "locked" by a gummi mission that necessitates completion before unlocking it, being able to warp freely to that world. Gummi missions in this game are also much more interesting as they have more going for it, there's more threats as well as some missions that have "bosses" that must be taken care of. Regardless, in all cases the game improves on gummi ship navigation by solely not forcing you to make every trip (in the early game) a mission.
Worlds in Kingdom Hearts 2 are much easier to traverse, given that you now move quite a bit faster and have more movement options. While many may point out that the worlds are a downgrade due to it being less reliant on exploration or platforming, I think that this also means that worlds in KH2 facilitate combat better, and are paced nicely with the rest of the game. As for the visits being split into two, this typically has the first visit be more Disney oriented, and the second visit more focused on main Kingdom Hearts enemies, with the exception of Agrabah; it is flipped. This works really nicely in my opinion, it allows the main villains of Kingdom Hearts 2 to more properly take a front seat when they are needed there, it feels like the main villains are more involved throughout 2 than they would have been before. Beyond that, worlds in Kingdom Hearts 2 also do not have the same variance in quality as 1, where I can't say there is any (required) world that I genuinely dislike as opposed to 1's Agrabah and Atlantica.
But enough about worlds, how does the gameplay stack up? It's completely stacked, that's for sure. There is much more of a variety of abilities that can really change the way you can fight, with combo initiators, finishers, extenders, and all of that yummy juicy stuff, it all flows really well. Unlike in 1, unlockable keyblades are no longer simple stat sticks of damage, MP, length and an invisible crit chance. In this game, they all have abilities that can make your combat much nicer. This can be as simple as extending your ground or air combo by 1 step, or as significant as increasing your damage depending on how many hits you can get in. Last, but certainly not least, KH2 introduces drive forms, and a drive gauge that allows you to expend drive points (and temporarily disables a combat partner or two) to transform into a form that makes you incredibly powerful for a short time. Valor form is a melee-focused form that can have you stick your enemies into long combos, Wisdom form prioritizes magic, and turns your keyblade into a little magical machine gun when you attack, and changes the properties of your magic spells. Master form does a little bit of both, and Final form does a lot of both. Final mix also introduces Limit form, which changes your magic into the KH1 limit abilities such as Ars Arcanum or Sonic Blade. In all forms except Wisdom and Limit form, you can equip another keyblade, with all of its stats and ability fully intact! The punishment for using these forms too much is Anti-Form, in which Sora transforms into a heartless-like being and can dish out incredibly long combos, but is weaker and can't perform many defensive actions. Aside from Anti-Form, all of these forms have XP to gain within them, and each level can give you an upgrade to Growth abilities, such as High Jump, Dodge Roll, or Glide. There is no shortage of things you can do with all of these things at your disposal.
Magic has changed quite a bit, too. Instead of having individual magic points, each spell using 1-2 points, you have an MP bar with a double-triple digit number, each spell costing 5-20(?) per cast. The exception is Cure, which will always use rest of the MP bar. When MP is emptied, it goes into "MP Recharge" where it slowly fills back up to full. Some spells like Fire also have an AOE spinning effect, and some spells such as Aero, Stop and Gravity are replaced by Magnet and the incredibly powerful Reflect. The change here is intended to punish players for using Cure too much, and it works, although spells like Reflect I feel are a little too cheap, as it is genuinely that powerful of a tool. I do think that this change overall is very nice.
The story in KH2, without shedding much detail, is awesome! A handful of new lore details are (re-)introduced and it eventually turns into an epic of gargantuan proportions, involving Sora traversing worlds to stop what is possibly his greatest foes yet.
Kingdom Hearts 2 is one of my favorite games ever made. It has everything I could have ever asked for in a sequel, and it does so much within its gameplay time, with lots of amazing post-game content to spare (in FM). I recommend anyone pick up 1.5/2.5 remix to play this game. Final mix is a huge step up in quality, the original game would be a 9/10 for simply not being FM.
Final Mix major differences:
This version of the game, previously locked to Japan, adds 14+ high quality bosses, an entirely new post-game area to explore, a puzzle system where you collect pieces around the worlds, a couple progression changes, the Critical difficulty mode, and new enemies! This is a ton of bonus content, most of which is the best of this game. There are quite a few new cutscenes, some of which may make no sense without further context in later games, but this is worth it. As stated prior, like KH1FM, this game also adds color palette swaps that I am not generally fond of, and cannot be reverted in the console versions unfortunately. Regardless, this is unmistakeably the definitive version of the game.
Story spoilers below!
One of the most interesting things in Kingdom Hearts 2 is the expansion of Nobodies as a concept. They were present in CoM (and 1FM), but they were not fully explored, as they were described as simply "not belonging to light or darkness" as opposed to being a fleshed out part of the universe, and instead are the bodies that are left behind by the heart. When the heart is removed from a body, it creates a Heartless, and leaves behind a Nobody. This also explains who the hell Roxas is, as when Sora turned the keyblade on himself, he turned into a heartless and this action also created Roxas and Namine with Kairi's freed heart.
With that, Organization XIII, a faction of high class nobodies lead by Xemnas, the nobody of Ansem, is my favorite villain faction in the franchise. Portraying a powerful group of emotionless people with the goal of recreating a Kingdom Hearts by relying on Sora to free multitudes of hearts from Emblem (manufactured) Heartless. I think that Kingdom Hearts 2 in turn feels more "epic" when facing off against these incredibly powerful foes across the game. Their presence in CoM is also great, and it explains why there aren't, well, 13 of them in 2's main quest. These boss fights against characters like Demyx, Xaldin, Xigbar, and most especially Xemnas, are some of the coolest boss fights ever, with the booming presence of Yoko Shimomura's soundtrack in each fight.
While I think I miss having the original Hollow Bastion from KH1, I love the original worlds in this game. Twilight town feels appropriately comfortable, and the stage setting using Roxas and his friends, while mysterious, makes it all feel worth playing. Hollow Bastion (or more accurately, Radiant Garden) is a huge sprawl of a mountainous town with a less warm color scheme to boot than Twilight Town. Both of these worlds are the equivalent of KH1's Traverse Town, in which you visit them often for new story elements and to discover more about the shady Organization that seems to be tugging on every string to their plan. Lastly, my favorite world in the franchise, The World that Never Was, is the final world of Kingdom Hearts 2. It's absolutely beautiful, you have a dark, almost cyberpunk-aesthetic city, teeming with heartless, with an eye-piercing castle in the horizon, a castle for Nobodies, the home of Organization XIII. The geometry of the castle representing a clan of nothingness simply makes no sense compared to the imposing, but structured city. One may complain that this location seems like a boss gauntlet, or where they really shove most of the plot of the game in the last 10% of the main quest, but I just absolutely love this setting, and having the game culminate here just makes absolute sense.
The game ends with you taking on the rest of the standing Organization XIII, but you still have business to settle with a kid, much like you, who just wanted his life back, as it now had meaning to him. Prior to reaching the castle, you face off against Roxas in a dive to the heart, a cutscene in the original turned into a full-fledged boss fight in Final Mix. While this fight takes place, Roxas' theme, The Other Promise, pulls at your heartstrings, this fight is sort of tragic in a way. The fight ends with Roxas not perishing, but accepting that Sora deserves his life too. This is arguably a scene that is just as iconic as the final fight vs. Xemnas, but one with great personal stakes as opposed to a potentially universe-ending event. This is a scene that, like Sora freeing his and Kairi's heart in the first game, becomes more and more important as the franchise goes on, and it absolutely deserves it.
Now, if you're playing the original version, you're left with one fairly simple superboss with Sephiroth, who I feel is much easier than in the first game, albeit much cooler. However, if you're playing Final Mix, you're treated with 14 superbosses and a whole new post-game area, found near the castle of Hollow Bastion, perhaps contained within it, is the Cave of Remembrance. You can fight significantly easier versions of a few of these superbosses by challenging the "Absent Silhouettes" you may find around a few worlds, but these are not the real deal. The Cavern of Remembrance can be quite challenging, you are expected to have all of your growth abilities leveled up to the maximum in order to traverse it, and the cave has a surfeit of high level enemies that can chop you up if you're not careful. At the end of this gauntlet is a terminal that can be activated to reveal all 13 members of Organization XIII in data, assumed to be when they were at their strongest. Some fights are more challenging than others, but none of them are a slouch, you have to be at your A-game to push yourself to victory. At last, you can find this game's ultimate challenge at Disney Castle, and once again this boss teases an important character in an upcoming game. Lingering Will is by far the most difficult boss in Kingdom Hearts 2, you can get harshly punished within seconds and this living armor has a strikingly huge variety of moves that must be memorized to some degree. You can cheese this boss using Fenrir, but I think you should keep your hands clean, this is a great boss that will feel incredibly rewarding to eventually best in combat, you can do it.
One more little note, unlike KH1, getting the Ultima Weapon in KH2 doesn't feel even half as painful, and I recommend trying to get it on your first playthrough. This does necessitate that you enter the Cavern of Remembrance, as you need at least 1 of every synthesis material to get the recipe, but it is that difficult, and it is worth it. Keep a guide handy for this task.
To cap off this segment, the final boss of Kingdom Hearts 2's main story is a multi-phase playable power fantasy where you're using reaction commands to perform crazy stunts and feats, leaping thousands of feet, cutting through buildings, just to fight One Guy. This entire segment just rules, and while some phases are kind of lame (the phase where you just hit Xemnas on his throne lasts 2 seconds), it is immediately made up for with all other fantastical phases, ending in Final Xemnas, where his suit takes a new silver form, and the backdrop seems ethereal. Sora and Riku take him on in a fight with a positively dramatic score. I cannot really easily use words to describe how this boss fight makes me feel, it just rules from start to finish, and it all ends to an incredibly satisfying conclusion to the series.
That is, until you (may have) unlocked the secret ending, titled "Birth by Sleep", showing a mysterious old man with a black knight beside him, facing off against three keyblade-wielding heroes. What's that, one of them looks like the Lingering Will! That is incredibly intriguing. This is one of my favorite game cinematics... ever. Fate of the Unknown plays throughout it, and the sheer amount of spectacle with this fight, a fight that seems so grand in scale, syncs really well with the music. This introduces many questions, who are these people? Why is (Roxas) there? Why are there so many keyblades? Why is Kingdom Hearts in this random desert? All of this will be answered by an upcoming title, many incorrectly believing to be Kingdom Hearts 3, but the title eventually presents itself as Birth by Sleep. This would take 4-5 more years to come out, but this immediately generated hype as soon as it was viewed. And how couldn't it? It's the coolest thing that people have ever seen!
I will review BBS at a later date, but this is all to say, if you're reading all of this and haven't played Kingdom Hearts 2, please do! It's so brilliant, and there are few games like it.
My most recent playthrough of Kingdom Hearts 2 was via the 1.5/2.5 collection released on PC via EGS. I recommend that a new player plays the game using a PC or an 8th or 9th generation console (not including the Switch) for the best experience. Unfortunately, this is also one of the games in this collection that is, still to this day, somewhat broken on PC as it has persistent crashes and random little issues that may hinder play, but it is easy to fix using online patches such as Kingdom Hearts Re:Freshed or Re:Fined. I also used a mod to revert all enemy colors to their original color scheme from the non-Final Mix versions.
I played on the Critical difficulty, and this is the one time I recommend anyone, even new players, to do the same. The abilities and general progression of Critical can make the game feel better early on, and the challenge is most fun with stakes. If the difficulty is too much, or you're concerned that you can't do it, there is no shame in playing Beginner or Normal.
Kingdom Hearts 2 is the platonic ideal of a character-action RPG, with a sharp emphasis of a power fantasy and combat opportunities available to you in a pinch, and a speed that always feels just right. I still hold that, to this day, there has never been an action-focused RPG (not including fromsoft titles) that feels nearly as good as Kingdom Hearts 2 does at any moment.
In this game you start in Twilight Town as... Who the hell is Roxas? Did I miss something? Well, no, we didn't, and this confusing introduction is deliberate, and in my opinion, done very well. You start off as Roxas, enjoying his summer break, and learning that something in his typical life just seems off, eventually culminating into the player being reintroduced back into the body and control of Sora. Within this introduction, we are re-taught mechanics from the first game, such as locking on and jumping, and new ones, like having the Information tab that lets the player know of their objective, and most notably Reaction Commands, in which you press the button corresponding to the top of the command list in green, in order to interact with something. In the world, this is including things like chests, context sensitive locations, and more, while in combat these are time sensitive skills that are often, in some way, required to succeed in combat. While this may make the game seem like it is a "Press Triangle to Win" game, it does properly feel like you are given more options and opportunities to play with within combat, it works very well.
Much like Kingdom Hearts 1, you are given the option to choose a weapon within the Dive to the Heart, and a little bit prior to that. The first one simply gives you a permanent +1 stat to Strength, Magic or Defense, and this is up to the player's choice, but I personally like Strength here. As for the dive to the heart, unlike 1, you don't have to "discard" a weapon. Once again, I like the shield here the most, but magic is also a great option. This latter option changes the order in which you unlock abilities, and I personally like having access to defensive abilities earlier.
This game generally revolves around Sora, Donald and Goofy traversing a variety of worlds from Disney properties, but instead of one main visit to each world, you instead have two shorter visits to each disney world, more visits for other worlds. When visiting the world, instead of the same gummi mission in each instance of travel, you instead have the world "locked" by a gummi mission that necessitates completion before unlocking it, being able to warp freely to that world. Gummi missions in this game are also much more interesting as they have more going for it, there's more threats as well as some missions that have "bosses" that must be taken care of. Regardless, in all cases the game improves on gummi ship navigation by solely not forcing you to make every trip (in the early game) a mission.
Worlds in Kingdom Hearts 2 are much easier to traverse, given that you now move quite a bit faster and have more movement options. While many may point out that the worlds are a downgrade due to it being less reliant on exploration or platforming, I think that this also means that worlds in KH2 facilitate combat better, and are paced nicely with the rest of the game. As for the visits being split into two, this typically has the first visit be more Disney oriented, and the second visit more focused on main Kingdom Hearts enemies, with the exception of Agrabah; it is flipped. This works really nicely in my opinion, it allows the main villains of Kingdom Hearts 2 to more properly take a front seat when they are needed there, it feels like the main villains are more involved throughout 2 than they would have been before. Beyond that, worlds in Kingdom Hearts 2 also do not have the same variance in quality as 1, where I can't say there is any (required) world that I genuinely dislike as opposed to 1's Agrabah and Atlantica.
But enough about worlds, how does the gameplay stack up? It's completely stacked, that's for sure. There is much more of a variety of abilities that can really change the way you can fight, with combo initiators, finishers, extenders, and all of that yummy juicy stuff, it all flows really well. Unlike in 1, unlockable keyblades are no longer simple stat sticks of damage, MP, length and an invisible crit chance. In this game, they all have abilities that can make your combat much nicer. This can be as simple as extending your ground or air combo by 1 step, or as significant as increasing your damage depending on how many hits you can get in. Last, but certainly not least, KH2 introduces drive forms, and a drive gauge that allows you to expend drive points (and temporarily disables a combat partner or two) to transform into a form that makes you incredibly powerful for a short time. Valor form is a melee-focused form that can have you stick your enemies into long combos, Wisdom form prioritizes magic, and turns your keyblade into a little magical machine gun when you attack, and changes the properties of your magic spells. Master form does a little bit of both, and Final form does a lot of both. Final mix also introduces Limit form, which changes your magic into the KH1 limit abilities such as Ars Arcanum or Sonic Blade. In all forms except Wisdom and Limit form, you can equip another keyblade, with all of its stats and ability fully intact! The punishment for using these forms too much is Anti-Form, in which Sora transforms into a heartless-like being and can dish out incredibly long combos, but is weaker and can't perform many defensive actions. Aside from Anti-Form, all of these forms have XP to gain within them, and each level can give you an upgrade to Growth abilities, such as High Jump, Dodge Roll, or Glide. There is no shortage of things you can do with all of these things at your disposal.
Magic has changed quite a bit, too. Instead of having individual magic points, each spell using 1-2 points, you have an MP bar with a double-triple digit number, each spell costing 5-20(?) per cast. The exception is Cure, which will always use rest of the MP bar. When MP is emptied, it goes into "MP Recharge" where it slowly fills back up to full. Some spells like Fire also have an AOE spinning effect, and some spells such as Aero, Stop and Gravity are replaced by Magnet and the incredibly powerful Reflect. The change here is intended to punish players for using Cure too much, and it works, although spells like Reflect I feel are a little too cheap, as it is genuinely that powerful of a tool. I do think that this change overall is very nice.
The story in KH2, without shedding much detail, is awesome! A handful of new lore details are (re-)introduced and it eventually turns into an epic of gargantuan proportions, involving Sora traversing worlds to stop what is possibly his greatest foes yet.
Kingdom Hearts 2 is one of my favorite games ever made. It has everything I could have ever asked for in a sequel, and it does so much within its gameplay time, with lots of amazing post-game content to spare (in FM). I recommend anyone pick up 1.5/2.5 remix to play this game. Final mix is a huge step up in quality, the original game would be a 9/10 for simply not being FM.
Final Mix major differences:
This version of the game, previously locked to Japan, adds 14+ high quality bosses, an entirely new post-game area to explore, a puzzle system where you collect pieces around the worlds, a couple progression changes, the Critical difficulty mode, and new enemies! This is a ton of bonus content, most of which is the best of this game. There are quite a few new cutscenes, some of which may make no sense without further context in later games, but this is worth it. As stated prior, like KH1FM, this game also adds color palette swaps that I am not generally fond of, and cannot be reverted in the console versions unfortunately. Regardless, this is unmistakeably the definitive version of the game.
Story spoilers below!
One of the most interesting things in Kingdom Hearts 2 is the expansion of Nobodies as a concept. They were present in CoM (and 1FM), but they were not fully explored, as they were described as simply "not belonging to light or darkness" as opposed to being a fleshed out part of the universe, and instead are the bodies that are left behind by the heart. When the heart is removed from a body, it creates a Heartless, and leaves behind a Nobody. This also explains who the hell Roxas is, as when Sora turned the keyblade on himself, he turned into a heartless and this action also created Roxas and Namine with Kairi's freed heart.
With that, Organization XIII, a faction of high class nobodies lead by Xemnas, the nobody of Ansem, is my favorite villain faction in the franchise. Portraying a powerful group of emotionless people with the goal of recreating a Kingdom Hearts by relying on Sora to free multitudes of hearts from Emblem (manufactured) Heartless. I think that Kingdom Hearts 2 in turn feels more "epic" when facing off against these incredibly powerful foes across the game. Their presence in CoM is also great, and it explains why there aren't, well, 13 of them in 2's main quest. These boss fights against characters like Demyx, Xaldin, Xigbar, and most especially Xemnas, are some of the coolest boss fights ever, with the booming presence of Yoko Shimomura's soundtrack in each fight.
While I think I miss having the original Hollow Bastion from KH1, I love the original worlds in this game. Twilight town feels appropriately comfortable, and the stage setting using Roxas and his friends, while mysterious, makes it all feel worth playing. Hollow Bastion (or more accurately, Radiant Garden) is a huge sprawl of a mountainous town with a less warm color scheme to boot than Twilight Town. Both of these worlds are the equivalent of KH1's Traverse Town, in which you visit them often for new story elements and to discover more about the shady Organization that seems to be tugging on every string to their plan. Lastly, my favorite world in the franchise, The World that Never Was, is the final world of Kingdom Hearts 2. It's absolutely beautiful, you have a dark, almost cyberpunk-aesthetic city, teeming with heartless, with an eye-piercing castle in the horizon, a castle for Nobodies, the home of Organization XIII. The geometry of the castle representing a clan of nothingness simply makes no sense compared to the imposing, but structured city. One may complain that this location seems like a boss gauntlet, or where they really shove most of the plot of the game in the last 10% of the main quest, but I just absolutely love this setting, and having the game culminate here just makes absolute sense.
The game ends with you taking on the rest of the standing Organization XIII, but you still have business to settle with a kid, much like you, who just wanted his life back, as it now had meaning to him. Prior to reaching the castle, you face off against Roxas in a dive to the heart, a cutscene in the original turned into a full-fledged boss fight in Final Mix. While this fight takes place, Roxas' theme, The Other Promise, pulls at your heartstrings, this fight is sort of tragic in a way. The fight ends with Roxas not perishing, but accepting that Sora deserves his life too. This is arguably a scene that is just as iconic as the final fight vs. Xemnas, but one with great personal stakes as opposed to a potentially universe-ending event. This is a scene that, like Sora freeing his and Kairi's heart in the first game, becomes more and more important as the franchise goes on, and it absolutely deserves it.
Now, if you're playing the original version, you're left with one fairly simple superboss with Sephiroth, who I feel is much easier than in the first game, albeit much cooler. However, if you're playing Final Mix, you're treated with 14 superbosses and a whole new post-game area, found near the castle of Hollow Bastion, perhaps contained within it, is the Cave of Remembrance. You can fight significantly easier versions of a few of these superbosses by challenging the "Absent Silhouettes" you may find around a few worlds, but these are not the real deal. The Cavern of Remembrance can be quite challenging, you are expected to have all of your growth abilities leveled up to the maximum in order to traverse it, and the cave has a surfeit of high level enemies that can chop you up if you're not careful. At the end of this gauntlet is a terminal that can be activated to reveal all 13 members of Organization XIII in data, assumed to be when they were at their strongest. Some fights are more challenging than others, but none of them are a slouch, you have to be at your A-game to push yourself to victory. At last, you can find this game's ultimate challenge at Disney Castle, and once again this boss teases an important character in an upcoming game. Lingering Will is by far the most difficult boss in Kingdom Hearts 2, you can get harshly punished within seconds and this living armor has a strikingly huge variety of moves that must be memorized to some degree. You can cheese this boss using Fenrir, but I think you should keep your hands clean, this is a great boss that will feel incredibly rewarding to eventually best in combat, you can do it.
One more little note, unlike KH1, getting the Ultima Weapon in KH2 doesn't feel even half as painful, and I recommend trying to get it on your first playthrough. This does necessitate that you enter the Cavern of Remembrance, as you need at least 1 of every synthesis material to get the recipe, but it is that difficult, and it is worth it. Keep a guide handy for this task.
To cap off this segment, the final boss of Kingdom Hearts 2's main story is a multi-phase playable power fantasy where you're using reaction commands to perform crazy stunts and feats, leaping thousands of feet, cutting through buildings, just to fight One Guy. This entire segment just rules, and while some phases are kind of lame (the phase where you just hit Xemnas on his throne lasts 2 seconds), it is immediately made up for with all other fantastical phases, ending in Final Xemnas, where his suit takes a new silver form, and the backdrop seems ethereal. Sora and Riku take him on in a fight with a positively dramatic score. I cannot really easily use words to describe how this boss fight makes me feel, it just rules from start to finish, and it all ends to an incredibly satisfying conclusion to the series.
That is, until you (may have) unlocked the secret ending, titled "Birth by Sleep", showing a mysterious old man with a black knight beside him, facing off against three keyblade-wielding heroes. What's that, one of them looks like the Lingering Will! That is incredibly intriguing. This is one of my favorite game cinematics... ever. Fate of the Unknown plays throughout it, and the sheer amount of spectacle with this fight, a fight that seems so grand in scale, syncs really well with the music. This introduces many questions, who are these people? Why is (Roxas) there? Why are there so many keyblades? Why is Kingdom Hearts in this random desert? All of this will be answered by an upcoming title, many incorrectly believing to be Kingdom Hearts 3, but the title eventually presents itself as Birth by Sleep. This would take 4-5 more years to come out, but this immediately generated hype as soon as it was viewed. And how couldn't it? It's the coolest thing that people have ever seen!
I will review BBS at a later date, but this is all to say, if you're reading all of this and haven't played Kingdom Hearts 2, please do! It's so brilliant, and there are few games like it.
Brief, no story spoilers.
My most recent playthrough of Kingdom Hearts (Re:)Chain of Memories was on the PC port via EGS. Any version of the game, but especially PC or an 8th/9th generation console version (except for Switch) will be the best way to play Re:Chain of Memories. As far as I know, the PC version is stable, unlike the unfortunate fate of the sequel. The 1.5/2.5 versions add bonus content to this game if you watch the 358/2 days cutscene movie built into the game, which I wouldn't recommend for first time players.
With all that being said, I most highly recommend that, for your first time, you ignore all of the above information, and instead play the original GBA version, Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories, in whatever way you fancy. Why?
To put it simply, Chain of Memories felt that it was tailor made for that 2D format, and the direct translation of the gameplay to 3D introduced a lot of awkwardness to the game, it often feels like it is also slowed down to accommodate for these changes in a way I don't necessarily like. Re:Chain of Memories, as a result of this, feels like it lasts a lot longer than it should, and in turn pads out a game that will likely get stale a bit before you reach the end. While a lot of the bonus content in Re:Chain are cool, they really feel like they only spice it up if you have already played the original game, which makes Re:Chain more suited to replaying after the first time, in my opinion.
With that being said, this game is quite significant in the story, and as many will remind a new kingdom hearts player, there is no such thing as a spin-off! One of the aspects that is the most obvious improvement over the GBA version is having much better cutscenes, since the Playstation 2 is obviously much more capable of storing video than the Gameboy Advance. It may be worth watching the cutscenes of this game in tandem with, or after, playing the GBA version. Alternatively, since you should be playing this in the eventual goal of playing Kingdom Hearts 2, it is worth watching the cutscenes alone if you don't enjoy the game.
One last thing, I will not spoil it, but Re:Chain of Memories ends with a bonus cutscene that I feel would be better suited to be ignored and/or skipped until after playing Kingdom Hearts 2.
Overall, Re:Chain of Memories is a middling remake of an okay game. I personally like the systems that these games have, but I feel that the brevity of the GBA original makes it worth playing more for a first time Kingdom Hearts player.
My most recent playthrough of Kingdom Hearts (Re:)Chain of Memories was on the PC port via EGS. Any version of the game, but especially PC or an 8th/9th generation console version (except for Switch) will be the best way to play Re:Chain of Memories. As far as I know, the PC version is stable, unlike the unfortunate fate of the sequel. The 1.5/2.5 versions add bonus content to this game if you watch the 358/2 days cutscene movie built into the game, which I wouldn't recommend for first time players.
With all that being said, I most highly recommend that, for your first time, you ignore all of the above information, and instead play the original GBA version, Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories, in whatever way you fancy. Why?
To put it simply, Chain of Memories felt that it was tailor made for that 2D format, and the direct translation of the gameplay to 3D introduced a lot of awkwardness to the game, it often feels like it is also slowed down to accommodate for these changes in a way I don't necessarily like. Re:Chain of Memories, as a result of this, feels like it lasts a lot longer than it should, and in turn pads out a game that will likely get stale a bit before you reach the end. While a lot of the bonus content in Re:Chain are cool, they really feel like they only spice it up if you have already played the original game, which makes Re:Chain more suited to replaying after the first time, in my opinion.
With that being said, this game is quite significant in the story, and as many will remind a new kingdom hearts player, there is no such thing as a spin-off! One of the aspects that is the most obvious improvement over the GBA version is having much better cutscenes, since the Playstation 2 is obviously much more capable of storing video than the Gameboy Advance. It may be worth watching the cutscenes of this game in tandem with, or after, playing the GBA version. Alternatively, since you should be playing this in the eventual goal of playing Kingdom Hearts 2, it is worth watching the cutscenes alone if you don't enjoy the game.
One last thing, I will not spoil it, but Re:Chain of Memories ends with a bonus cutscene that I feel would be better suited to be ignored and/or skipped until after playing Kingdom Hearts 2.
Overall, Re:Chain of Memories is a middling remake of an okay game. I personally like the systems that these games have, but I feel that the brevity of the GBA original makes it worth playing more for a first time Kingdom Hearts player.
2002
This review contains spoilers
Long. Story spoilers present after a certain section, will be marked.
My most recent playthrough of Kingdom Hearts was on PC using the port released on Epic Games, however I have played every playstation version of the game in the past. I recommend playing the game on 8th or 9th gen consoles (except for Switch) or on PC using their respective 1.5/2.5 remixes. The PC version may need a bit of tinkering, but 1 is generally stable. I used a mod that reverted the color palette of the Heartless enemies to their original color schemes. Keep a guide handy if you ever get stuck, or want to accelerate your time spent.
For a first time playthrough, I don't have a strong recommendation for any difficulty, and honestly, anything goes. I played on Proud mode for all playthroughs on modern systems, but I can't say it is a much better or worse experience than on Beginner or Standard.
Kingdom Hearts (1) is the humble beginnings of a frankly giant franchise, and one that has aged amazingly and poorly in a handful of areas. It's also a game cursed from always falling behind its much more attractive sequel(s) in terms of gameplay. For those unaware, Kingdom Hearts is a simple action RPG that is also a crossover between Final Fantasy and various Disney properties. Expect much of your time on this game to be spent on the backdrops of Disney worlds such as Tarzan's giant jungle, the spooky town from The Nightmare Before Christmas, the grand Olympus Colosseum from Hercules, and more, but there are also a few original worlds that you will step foot in on the bookends of your journey, and throughout.
This game opens up with the player character, Sora in a dream sequence atop a myriad of mosaic towers, in which the game gives you a general tutorial of controls, but also a very important couple of decisions. The game presents you with a sword, a shield, and a magical staff, and asks that you choose one and rid another. I always recommend that you drop the sword, and pick up either the shield or the staff. I personally prefer the staff. As for a following choice, the game doesn't give you much details at all, but each of the choices correspond to EXP gain in early, middle and late game. I recommend just picking the middle option for all of them, or maybe one first option if you're only planning on playing the main story. While the vague nature of the questions and answers are likely intentional, I do not find that the options being concealed will serve much help to the player. Once your decisions are made, the game has officially started, and you will battle against some foes, culminating into your "Darkside", the end of this face-off will wake you up.
Once you wake up, you're introduced to the main character's best friends, Kairi and Riku, on Destiny Islands. This area serves as an extended tutorial as well as presenting our main characters, and for that purpose it does a pretty decent job. It sort of shows how you can use certain strategies to defeat enemies, how you should explore the levels in order to get what you need. Unfortunately, I also find that, whether it is your first time or your eighth time, this section just feels like a drag. Exploration and resource gathering in this game always feels like it slows the game down a little too much, as well as the emphasis on awkward platforming on occasion, and Destiny Islands is a pretty clear warning for things to come.
Finishing the prologue of the game on Destiny Islands will end with your arrival to Traverse Town, a cute little world in which much more of the grand scale of the world is presented in cutscenes, and you get introduced to more of the main cast. From here on out, the game opens up quite a bit, as you eventually pair up with Donald and Goofy and attain the Gummi ship to travel to new worlds. Combat is thus also expanded by gaining access to your abilities, equipment, etc. While this game does have very simple beat-em-up style combat, it gets a lot better as you progress in the game and get a handle on the things that require more than pressing the attack button. Learning to weave magical attacks into your combos will feel infinitely more satisfying than just spamming your attack commands on the bad guys.
Before you are able to touch down on these other worlds though, you must complete their respective gummi-missions. These are very simple on-rail shooting mini games where you must shoot your obstacles, whether they be giant space rocks, or flying enemies. You are free to customize your gummi ship using a multitude of parts that will bump up your capabilities, whether it be speed, damage, health, or more. To be frank, while having the option is nice, I don't really like these missions. They are a good change of pace, but they're just too uninteresting, and I just want to get on with it on subsequent replays.
Every world is played through at least once (Original worlds and Olympus Colosseum are often visited more frequently), and are all fairly straightforward objectives in which you traverse a presented path to progress the story. With the exception of a few, these worlds are easy to progress, and for those few worlds that aren't, I recommend using a guide. I don't think it spoils the fun if you're stagnating on worlds that either have confusing event triggers or other aspects that detract from your entertainment. Those worlds, in my opinion, are Deep Jungle, Atlantica and Monstro. However, if you're struggling elsewhere, there is no harm in using a guide.
Speaking of using a guide, I also recommend using one for post-game content, especially farming for synthesis materials. You are able to use some enemy drops in this game to synthesize items that may help you on your journey. This is a very well done mechanic, only further improved in future installments, but I also feel that many of the late-game synthesis items can have materials that are very difficult to attain naturally. One such example is a special heartless that has a low chance to spawn, and requires that you cast stop and hit it up to 100 times before the timer goes out. This requires very specific strategies and little exploits to be able to pull off consistently. Most examples are not this egregious, but they're not as simple as killing a random enemy either.
Post-game content as a whole is brimming with things to do. Not only do you have special heartless as listed above, you also have multiple visits to Olympus Colosseum to fight in the arena, with 2 super-bosses at the end. Outside of that, you also have 3 more super-bosses, one with very significant importance to the sequel. All of them are great challenges, and force you to play on their rules, and not your own.
Overall, I think all of the little things in Kingdom Hearts adds up to a pretty sweet experience, I recommend this game if only to eventually play Kingdom Hearts 2, but that means that this game by default gets a high recommendation as well.
Spoilers past this point!
Many people online like to say that Kingdom Hearts is a convoluted, complex story. While the extended lore is up for debate, I personally just find that it just has a lot of information, this game is relatively simple and straightforward, especially since it is the first title in a franchise. I like the story of Kingdom Hearts (1), it blends the rule-of-cool and fantastical aspects of Final Fantasy with the wholesome touch of Disney storytelling. A core criticism for each game in the series is that the plot doesn't move much during the disney worlds, but it REALLY picks up towards the end once you reach, one of my favorite worlds in the franchise, Hollow Bastion. The reveal that Riku has officially turned against you in Monstro/Neverland culminates in you losing your keyblade, and conversely Donald and Goofy since they did not wish to disobey the king. Teaming up with Beast and helplessly finding your way back to your friends through an assortment of strange puzzles and transportation means is a great way to take control away from the player, as well as giving the player more of a chance to get a good look at their surroundings. Once you fight back for control of the Keyblade, the world opens up again, and the sheer size of this evil castle can be fully contextualized with its sprawling, almost maze-like qualities. This is the peak of Kingdom Hearts (1) in my opinion, its such a brilliant location filled with powerful enemies and a a frantic soundtrack playing in the background. The first visit of Hollow Bastion ends with an epic duel between Sora and Riku, and while the fight isn't that challenging, it has brilliant spectacle and an immediately memorable music track to go along with it. This boss is followed up by the reveal that Kairi's heart was residing within Sora, in which he frees it by turning the keyblade on himself, a moment I could only describe as incredibly surprising on my first playthrough, as by doing so he sacrifices himself and turns into a heartless, just for Kairi. This event also sets in motion many moving parts in future installments, so I think it's fair to say that not only is this one of the most important events to happen to Sora, but the extended lore as a whole.
At this climax, one would expect the game to really slow down, but it doesn't! After Kairi rescues Sora with her own powers, they get forced out of the castle and have to regroup in Traverse Town. Once they develop a plan and muster up the courage to make it back, they discover that their greatest foe, Ansem, the Seeker of Darkness, has relocated to the "End of the World", a place where all of the worlds that are falling or have fallen into darkness end up.
Unsurprisingly, this place has the most dangerous basic enemies in the game, and while some parts of this area feel kind of lame (spheres coming down for battle arenas instead of natural spawns), I love how climactic this whole area feels. You revisit parts of all of the worlds you've been to, the music really signifies this grand scale of Ansem's doing, its all just so well done, and it all culminates into the final boss, a 4 phase boss fight where you finally tackle Ansem after he discusses his affinity with darkness. These fights are super dope, and all serves to cap off the game perfectly.
All of this to say, Kingdom Hearts 1 can really be split down in a way, the parts where its generally alright, and the parts where it is brilliant every step of the way. The last two worlds are unmistakeably in the latter camp. The end-game of Kingdom Hearts is by far its greatest strength.
My most recent playthrough of Kingdom Hearts was on PC using the port released on Epic Games, however I have played every playstation version of the game in the past. I recommend playing the game on 8th or 9th gen consoles (except for Switch) or on PC using their respective 1.5/2.5 remixes. The PC version may need a bit of tinkering, but 1 is generally stable. I used a mod that reverted the color palette of the Heartless enemies to their original color schemes. Keep a guide handy if you ever get stuck, or want to accelerate your time spent.
For a first time playthrough, I don't have a strong recommendation for any difficulty, and honestly, anything goes. I played on Proud mode for all playthroughs on modern systems, but I can't say it is a much better or worse experience than on Beginner or Standard.
Kingdom Hearts (1) is the humble beginnings of a frankly giant franchise, and one that has aged amazingly and poorly in a handful of areas. It's also a game cursed from always falling behind its much more attractive sequel(s) in terms of gameplay. For those unaware, Kingdom Hearts is a simple action RPG that is also a crossover between Final Fantasy and various Disney properties. Expect much of your time on this game to be spent on the backdrops of Disney worlds such as Tarzan's giant jungle, the spooky town from The Nightmare Before Christmas, the grand Olympus Colosseum from Hercules, and more, but there are also a few original worlds that you will step foot in on the bookends of your journey, and throughout.
This game opens up with the player character, Sora in a dream sequence atop a myriad of mosaic towers, in which the game gives you a general tutorial of controls, but also a very important couple of decisions. The game presents you with a sword, a shield, and a magical staff, and asks that you choose one and rid another. I always recommend that you drop the sword, and pick up either the shield or the staff. I personally prefer the staff. As for a following choice, the game doesn't give you much details at all, but each of the choices correspond to EXP gain in early, middle and late game. I recommend just picking the middle option for all of them, or maybe one first option if you're only planning on playing the main story. While the vague nature of the questions and answers are likely intentional, I do not find that the options being concealed will serve much help to the player. Once your decisions are made, the game has officially started, and you will battle against some foes, culminating into your "Darkside", the end of this face-off will wake you up.
Once you wake up, you're introduced to the main character's best friends, Kairi and Riku, on Destiny Islands. This area serves as an extended tutorial as well as presenting our main characters, and for that purpose it does a pretty decent job. It sort of shows how you can use certain strategies to defeat enemies, how you should explore the levels in order to get what you need. Unfortunately, I also find that, whether it is your first time or your eighth time, this section just feels like a drag. Exploration and resource gathering in this game always feels like it slows the game down a little too much, as well as the emphasis on awkward platforming on occasion, and Destiny Islands is a pretty clear warning for things to come.
Finishing the prologue of the game on Destiny Islands will end with your arrival to Traverse Town, a cute little world in which much more of the grand scale of the world is presented in cutscenes, and you get introduced to more of the main cast. From here on out, the game opens up quite a bit, as you eventually pair up with Donald and Goofy and attain the Gummi ship to travel to new worlds. Combat is thus also expanded by gaining access to your abilities, equipment, etc. While this game does have very simple beat-em-up style combat, it gets a lot better as you progress in the game and get a handle on the things that require more than pressing the attack button. Learning to weave magical attacks into your combos will feel infinitely more satisfying than just spamming your attack commands on the bad guys.
Before you are able to touch down on these other worlds though, you must complete their respective gummi-missions. These are very simple on-rail shooting mini games where you must shoot your obstacles, whether they be giant space rocks, or flying enemies. You are free to customize your gummi ship using a multitude of parts that will bump up your capabilities, whether it be speed, damage, health, or more. To be frank, while having the option is nice, I don't really like these missions. They are a good change of pace, but they're just too uninteresting, and I just want to get on with it on subsequent replays.
Every world is played through at least once (Original worlds and Olympus Colosseum are often visited more frequently), and are all fairly straightforward objectives in which you traverse a presented path to progress the story. With the exception of a few, these worlds are easy to progress, and for those few worlds that aren't, I recommend using a guide. I don't think it spoils the fun if you're stagnating on worlds that either have confusing event triggers or other aspects that detract from your entertainment. Those worlds, in my opinion, are Deep Jungle, Atlantica and Monstro. However, if you're struggling elsewhere, there is no harm in using a guide.
Speaking of using a guide, I also recommend using one for post-game content, especially farming for synthesis materials. You are able to use some enemy drops in this game to synthesize items that may help you on your journey. This is a very well done mechanic, only further improved in future installments, but I also feel that many of the late-game synthesis items can have materials that are very difficult to attain naturally. One such example is a special heartless that has a low chance to spawn, and requires that you cast stop and hit it up to 100 times before the timer goes out. This requires very specific strategies and little exploits to be able to pull off consistently. Most examples are not this egregious, but they're not as simple as killing a random enemy either.
Post-game content as a whole is brimming with things to do. Not only do you have special heartless as listed above, you also have multiple visits to Olympus Colosseum to fight in the arena, with 2 super-bosses at the end. Outside of that, you also have 3 more super-bosses, one with very significant importance to the sequel. All of them are great challenges, and force you to play on their rules, and not your own.
Overall, I think all of the little things in Kingdom Hearts adds up to a pretty sweet experience, I recommend this game if only to eventually play Kingdom Hearts 2, but that means that this game by default gets a high recommendation as well.
Spoilers past this point!
Many people online like to say that Kingdom Hearts is a convoluted, complex story. While the extended lore is up for debate, I personally just find that it just has a lot of information, this game is relatively simple and straightforward, especially since it is the first title in a franchise. I like the story of Kingdom Hearts (1), it blends the rule-of-cool and fantastical aspects of Final Fantasy with the wholesome touch of Disney storytelling. A core criticism for each game in the series is that the plot doesn't move much during the disney worlds, but it REALLY picks up towards the end once you reach, one of my favorite worlds in the franchise, Hollow Bastion. The reveal that Riku has officially turned against you in Monstro/Neverland culminates in you losing your keyblade, and conversely Donald and Goofy since they did not wish to disobey the king. Teaming up with Beast and helplessly finding your way back to your friends through an assortment of strange puzzles and transportation means is a great way to take control away from the player, as well as giving the player more of a chance to get a good look at their surroundings. Once you fight back for control of the Keyblade, the world opens up again, and the sheer size of this evil castle can be fully contextualized with its sprawling, almost maze-like qualities. This is the peak of Kingdom Hearts (1) in my opinion, its such a brilliant location filled with powerful enemies and a a frantic soundtrack playing in the background. The first visit of Hollow Bastion ends with an epic duel between Sora and Riku, and while the fight isn't that challenging, it has brilliant spectacle and an immediately memorable music track to go along with it. This boss is followed up by the reveal that Kairi's heart was residing within Sora, in which he frees it by turning the keyblade on himself, a moment I could only describe as incredibly surprising on my first playthrough, as by doing so he sacrifices himself and turns into a heartless, just for Kairi. This event also sets in motion many moving parts in future installments, so I think it's fair to say that not only is this one of the most important events to happen to Sora, but the extended lore as a whole.
At this climax, one would expect the game to really slow down, but it doesn't! After Kairi rescues Sora with her own powers, they get forced out of the castle and have to regroup in Traverse Town. Once they develop a plan and muster up the courage to make it back, they discover that their greatest foe, Ansem, the Seeker of Darkness, has relocated to the "End of the World", a place where all of the worlds that are falling or have fallen into darkness end up.
Unsurprisingly, this place has the most dangerous basic enemies in the game, and while some parts of this area feel kind of lame (spheres coming down for battle arenas instead of natural spawns), I love how climactic this whole area feels. You revisit parts of all of the worlds you've been to, the music really signifies this grand scale of Ansem's doing, its all just so well done, and it all culminates into the final boss, a 4 phase boss fight where you finally tackle Ansem after he discusses his affinity with darkness. These fights are super dope, and all serves to cap off the game perfectly.
All of this to say, Kingdom Hearts 1 can really be split down in a way, the parts where its generally alright, and the parts where it is brilliant every step of the way. The last two worlds are unmistakeably in the latter camp. The end-game of Kingdom Hearts is by far its greatest strength.
Brief, unrated, purely informational. This information should be accurate as of 3/14/24
I played on PC for about an hour. I can, at the current moment, wholeheartedly say I do not recommend this release to any PC players, and i would wait on a drastic sale for console players. Also, the game somehow uses over 60gb of storage.
While the game runs and looks better for modern systems than the original releases, it isn't by much, or enough to warrant the price. Single player experience is good, but the multiplayer experience is non-existent. Considering the biggest reason to even buy this game is in hope of having functional online multiplayer, this is a huge slap in the face especially for the pricepoint. There isn't even cross-platform online. There are a total of three (3) PC servers at launch, which cannot hold nearly enough players, and from what I understand, they are laggy servers.
I will update or remove this review when the main issue of matchmaking servers are addressed, but otherwise, think before you spend over $35 on this title.
I played on PC for about an hour. I can, at the current moment, wholeheartedly say I do not recommend this release to any PC players, and i would wait on a drastic sale for console players. Also, the game somehow uses over 60gb of storage.
While the game runs and looks better for modern systems than the original releases, it isn't by much, or enough to warrant the price. Single player experience is good, but the multiplayer experience is non-existent. Considering the biggest reason to even buy this game is in hope of having functional online multiplayer, this is a huge slap in the face especially for the pricepoint. There isn't even cross-platform online. There are a total of three (3) PC servers at launch, which cannot hold nearly enough players, and from what I understand, they are laggy servers.
I will update or remove this review when the main issue of matchmaking servers are addressed, but otherwise, think before you spend over $35 on this title.
2024
Brief.
Progression wise I have unlocked over half of the stratagems, and am about level 24 as of writing this review. I have unlocked up to difficulty 8, and i have only unlocked a couple ship modules. For PC players, it does require a fairly beefy device to run comfortably, but the steam deck seems to work as well, but manage your expectations.
Helldivers 2 is probably the best live service game that I have ever played. The model is incredibly fair for player progression and, while microtransactions are present, they are not encouraged. The big package in the live service model is the galactic map, constantly updating upon player interaction. Missions can help turn the tide of a planetary conflict, albeit minimally, in a collaborative player effort to stop their enemies of great numbers from conquering the planets of Super Earth.
Gameplay wise, it is a bomb, perhaps a handful of missiles, maybe a rail cannon. Players drop into a large map with set primary objectives, but are free to do secondary objectives or collect spoils for greater rewards, although some missions only have a main objective. You have an arsenal of stratagems, which is a little throwable sphere that you input directions (ctrl+wasd, or the d-pad) and allows you to throw it for offensive or supportive reasons. It's a pretty typical third person shooter affair, but the way the game grants or takes away control makes it crazy fun. Friendly fire is always on, and it is not generous to mistakes that a player may make.
Without going into detail, the thematic parallels between this and the film Starship Troopers makes the aesthetic of the game a pretty entertaining meta-commentary on american imperialism and fascism.
Launch issues aside (should be alleviated by now), Helldivers 2 is a great game, and I highly recommend you get it while the oven's still hot. It's definitely a game you want to get with your friends, as playing alone is not great. Lastly, while I don't think it really bothers me or affects the game negatively, many stratagems and weapons can feel drastically weaker than other ones in any given situation, which may not feel great for some players.
Progression wise I have unlocked over half of the stratagems, and am about level 24 as of writing this review. I have unlocked up to difficulty 8, and i have only unlocked a couple ship modules. For PC players, it does require a fairly beefy device to run comfortably, but the steam deck seems to work as well, but manage your expectations.
Helldivers 2 is probably the best live service game that I have ever played. The model is incredibly fair for player progression and, while microtransactions are present, they are not encouraged. The big package in the live service model is the galactic map, constantly updating upon player interaction. Missions can help turn the tide of a planetary conflict, albeit minimally, in a collaborative player effort to stop their enemies of great numbers from conquering the planets of Super Earth.
Gameplay wise, it is a bomb, perhaps a handful of missiles, maybe a rail cannon. Players drop into a large map with set primary objectives, but are free to do secondary objectives or collect spoils for greater rewards, although some missions only have a main objective. You have an arsenal of stratagems, which is a little throwable sphere that you input directions (ctrl+wasd, or the d-pad) and allows you to throw it for offensive or supportive reasons. It's a pretty typical third person shooter affair, but the way the game grants or takes away control makes it crazy fun. Friendly fire is always on, and it is not generous to mistakes that a player may make.
Without going into detail, the thematic parallels between this and the film Starship Troopers makes the aesthetic of the game a pretty entertaining meta-commentary on american imperialism and fascism.
Launch issues aside (should be alleviated by now), Helldivers 2 is a great game, and I highly recommend you get it while the oven's still hot. It's definitely a game you want to get with your friends, as playing alone is not great. Lastly, while I don't think it really bothers me or affects the game negatively, many stratagems and weapons can feel drastically weaker than other ones in any given situation, which may not feel great for some players.
2012
Long.
I played the Definitive Edition of the game, but this review will largely apply to both versions of the game. I will not cover story spoilers beyond a typical synopsis. This is my 3rd time completing the game.
If you're playing on PC and using a high resolution, make sure you do not bump the anti-aliasing feature too high, as this game uses SSAA and will effectively increase the render resolution to a significant amount and tank your performance. If you prefer the original version's color grading, I recommend using a Reshade of your choosing to try and match the original version of the game.
Sleeping Dogs frankly surprised me, I went into this game expecting a silly, but forgettable little romp, but got a lot more than what I paid for. It's an open world beat-em-up game, often compared to GTA or Yakuza, but I think the best comparison would be to Batman: Arkham City, due to the gameplay and lack of sandbox or RPG elements present in the other games respectively.
Set in a detailed Hong Kong, you play as Wei Shen, a member of a dangerous triad named the Sun On Yee and... a cop? Specifically, you are an undercover cop, designated by your handlers to gather more info on the Sun On Yee and to eventually cripple them to the point of collapse. You seamlessly enter the role of a triad member due to being old friends with members of the Water Street faction, however this friendship and your mission are two fingers tugging a rubber band, at what point does the tension become too much, causing it to snap? What are the repercussions of this two-faced motivation? This is the core driving point of the story, and it works wonders here.
This game uses a pretty standard 2010s beat em up gameplay loop, you have light and heavy attacks, a quick counter button that you can use when enemies attempt to hit you, and a grapple. Compared to other games like it, this one is pretty lightweight in terms of gameplay variety, but it does stand out with the ability to use grisly environmental kills when grappling enemies. You will unlock combos by completing mainline missions and increasing your Cop and Triad score, and also by turning in collectible statues, and this can spice up the gameplay, although you may find that you're doing some of these by accident. This game also has guns, although they are less common due to the game taking place in Hong Kong, shooting is not the focus in this game, but all things considered it's fine.
The setting of Hong Kong is very beautiful, and it is all opened up to you essentially from the start, save for an introduction mission. There's a lot of clothing stores and food stands to shop at, both of which can give you stat bonuses, car dealerships to, well, buy new shiny cars (although on my most recent playthrough i went for the Bisai, a very low-,cost subcompact), a karaoke bar to work out your vocal chords for no one, and more. Littered around the place are also a lot of collectibles, which ranges from statues you turn in to learn new moves, money and clothes, or sometimes weapons. You will also often find health shrines which will increase your maximum health, although this isn't too important either.
Outside of collectibles, Hong Kong is a canvas for all of the missions you will find. While there is the main quest (your police cases and your missions with the Sun On Yee), you can also find side missions, highlighted in yellow. Most of these can be simply ignored if you'd like, but I highly recommend looking up the Calvin missions and prioritizing them as they're entertainingly wild. If anything, they tend to last less than 5 minutes. Many non-sidequest missions are exclusive to Definitive Edition, more on that later, and can be found similarly to the sidequests. Both versions of the game have dates, in which you can take some women on, the reward often allowing you to find collectibles easier, which is essential to make a 100% run easier.
Definitive Edition adds a lot of content to the game, all of the DLC released for the original is bundled in this one and more. In the main game, the most notable additions are the added quests (cop jobs, racing, and drug busts), and wild outfits, some licensed ones such as Agent 47. I recommend not engaging with the outfits on your first playthrough as they can trivialize many parts of the game, but the added quests could absolutely be done at your leisure, although they aren't often that fun. Drug busts in particular are pretty boring and time consuming as they require you to go back to your room and spot the dealer. There are two expansions, being Nightmare at North Point, and the other one taking place after the events of the main story. Both of these are, so-so, Nightmare's combat feels pretty bad, but I do like myself some ghostly encounters. The other one, Year of the Snake, is alright. Lastly, definitive edition does change the color grading of the game, which some people prefer, but I personally did not.
The game's main story is pretty short, and it doesn't overstay it's welcome if you go straight for the throat, but the game can feel very repetitive if you try for greater completion. I will also note that the game is quite buggy, a bug I encountered often involved my vault jumps bringing me backwards, even through floors, as if the game "forgot" i vaulted there before, and not now, which can be incredibly annoying since it does break the pacing of the level and took me out of it. My last minor critique of the game is that some of the missions around the middle of the story can get boring. Beyond that, Sleeping Dogs gets a pretty solid recommendation from me, especially if you have any interest in Chinese culture, or just like beating dudes up.
I played the Definitive Edition of the game, but this review will largely apply to both versions of the game. I will not cover story spoilers beyond a typical synopsis. This is my 3rd time completing the game.
If you're playing on PC and using a high resolution, make sure you do not bump the anti-aliasing feature too high, as this game uses SSAA and will effectively increase the render resolution to a significant amount and tank your performance. If you prefer the original version's color grading, I recommend using a Reshade of your choosing to try and match the original version of the game.
Sleeping Dogs frankly surprised me, I went into this game expecting a silly, but forgettable little romp, but got a lot more than what I paid for. It's an open world beat-em-up game, often compared to GTA or Yakuza, but I think the best comparison would be to Batman: Arkham City, due to the gameplay and lack of sandbox or RPG elements present in the other games respectively.
Set in a detailed Hong Kong, you play as Wei Shen, a member of a dangerous triad named the Sun On Yee and... a cop? Specifically, you are an undercover cop, designated by your handlers to gather more info on the Sun On Yee and to eventually cripple them to the point of collapse. You seamlessly enter the role of a triad member due to being old friends with members of the Water Street faction, however this friendship and your mission are two fingers tugging a rubber band, at what point does the tension become too much, causing it to snap? What are the repercussions of this two-faced motivation? This is the core driving point of the story, and it works wonders here.
This game uses a pretty standard 2010s beat em up gameplay loop, you have light and heavy attacks, a quick counter button that you can use when enemies attempt to hit you, and a grapple. Compared to other games like it, this one is pretty lightweight in terms of gameplay variety, but it does stand out with the ability to use grisly environmental kills when grappling enemies. You will unlock combos by completing mainline missions and increasing your Cop and Triad score, and also by turning in collectible statues, and this can spice up the gameplay, although you may find that you're doing some of these by accident. This game also has guns, although they are less common due to the game taking place in Hong Kong, shooting is not the focus in this game, but all things considered it's fine.
The setting of Hong Kong is very beautiful, and it is all opened up to you essentially from the start, save for an introduction mission. There's a lot of clothing stores and food stands to shop at, both of which can give you stat bonuses, car dealerships to, well, buy new shiny cars (although on my most recent playthrough i went for the Bisai, a very low-,cost subcompact), a karaoke bar to work out your vocal chords for no one, and more. Littered around the place are also a lot of collectibles, which ranges from statues you turn in to learn new moves, money and clothes, or sometimes weapons. You will also often find health shrines which will increase your maximum health, although this isn't too important either.
Outside of collectibles, Hong Kong is a canvas for all of the missions you will find. While there is the main quest (your police cases and your missions with the Sun On Yee), you can also find side missions, highlighted in yellow. Most of these can be simply ignored if you'd like, but I highly recommend looking up the Calvin missions and prioritizing them as they're entertainingly wild. If anything, they tend to last less than 5 minutes. Many non-sidequest missions are exclusive to Definitive Edition, more on that later, and can be found similarly to the sidequests. Both versions of the game have dates, in which you can take some women on, the reward often allowing you to find collectibles easier, which is essential to make a 100% run easier.
Definitive Edition adds a lot of content to the game, all of the DLC released for the original is bundled in this one and more. In the main game, the most notable additions are the added quests (cop jobs, racing, and drug busts), and wild outfits, some licensed ones such as Agent 47. I recommend not engaging with the outfits on your first playthrough as they can trivialize many parts of the game, but the added quests could absolutely be done at your leisure, although they aren't often that fun. Drug busts in particular are pretty boring and time consuming as they require you to go back to your room and spot the dealer. There are two expansions, being Nightmare at North Point, and the other one taking place after the events of the main story. Both of these are, so-so, Nightmare's combat feels pretty bad, but I do like myself some ghostly encounters. The other one, Year of the Snake, is alright. Lastly, definitive edition does change the color grading of the game, which some people prefer, but I personally did not.
The game's main story is pretty short, and it doesn't overstay it's welcome if you go straight for the throat, but the game can feel very repetitive if you try for greater completion. I will also note that the game is quite buggy, a bug I encountered often involved my vault jumps bringing me backwards, even through floors, as if the game "forgot" i vaulted there before, and not now, which can be incredibly annoying since it does break the pacing of the level and took me out of it. My last minor critique of the game is that some of the missions around the middle of the story can get boring. Beyond that, Sleeping Dogs gets a pretty solid recommendation from me, especially if you have any interest in Chinese culture, or just like beating dudes up.
1988
Brief.
Final Fantasy II does have the very important role of being what not to do in a turn based RPG, which helped Square in their later projects. Despite the overall plot being more interesting than the surrounding titles on the surface, the entire experience is hampered by the game's progression being, to put it simply, broken.
Instead of an across-the-board level system for characters, you instead prioritize levelling their weapon proficiency, and can evolve individual stats by participating in combat and taking certain actions such as dealing or receiving damage. This matters significantly less as the game goes on, but this makes trying to jumpstart the levelling of characters incredibly tedious. While I imagine this was intended to coerce the player into strategizing their battles to min-max character growth, it doesn't necessarily succeed at that in ways that at any point feel good.
This system may sound familiar to Elder Scrolls players in games such as Morrowind, which I feel incorporates this idea much more smoothly due to it being action oriented. FFII is a turn based game, with very few options to directly influence your growth, and many other factors that make the game nothing more than a chore.
Final Fantasy II does have the very important role of being what not to do in a turn based RPG, which helped Square in their later projects. Despite the overall plot being more interesting than the surrounding titles on the surface, the entire experience is hampered by the game's progression being, to put it simply, broken.
Instead of an across-the-board level system for characters, you instead prioritize levelling their weapon proficiency, and can evolve individual stats by participating in combat and taking certain actions such as dealing or receiving damage. This matters significantly less as the game goes on, but this makes trying to jumpstart the levelling of characters incredibly tedious. While I imagine this was intended to coerce the player into strategizing their battles to min-max character growth, it doesn't necessarily succeed at that in ways that at any point feel good.
This system may sound familiar to Elder Scrolls players in games such as Morrowind, which I feel incorporates this idea much more smoothly due to it being action oriented. FFII is a turn based game, with very few options to directly influence your growth, and many other factors that make the game nothing more than a chore.
2020
Brief.
Progression wise, I have completed many levels of "Reincarnation" and most character talent trees, including DLC.
While I can't say I hate Gunfire Reborn, I don't recommend it heavily for roguelikes or co-op first person shooters. Why?
1. I don't find the active gameplay incredibly engaging, even when you get a crazy combo of scrolls or weapons and whatnot. There is no impact or punchiness in the sound or visual design in the game that really make me feel like I am doing anything more than if I was playing a clicker game.
2. Tying into 1, I do personally love when I become incredibly powerful stats-wise in roguelikes, where each of my attacks do gargantuan numbers, but it feels wholly unsatisfying in Gunfire Reborn, and also seems to happen too often. It never feels special.
3. There's a lack of variability in how the game is played, even with enemies with modifiers and such.
I could chalk it up to saying the game is "too easy," but that isn't true, I still get challenged by this game. I think it just all has to do with presentation. The playable characters are very cute, but everything in this game just lacks punch, it's as animated and intriguing as a patch of stagnant water.
Progression wise, I have completed many levels of "Reincarnation" and most character talent trees, including DLC.
While I can't say I hate Gunfire Reborn, I don't recommend it heavily for roguelikes or co-op first person shooters. Why?
1. I don't find the active gameplay incredibly engaging, even when you get a crazy combo of scrolls or weapons and whatnot. There is no impact or punchiness in the sound or visual design in the game that really make me feel like I am doing anything more than if I was playing a clicker game.
2. Tying into 1, I do personally love when I become incredibly powerful stats-wise in roguelikes, where each of my attacks do gargantuan numbers, but it feels wholly unsatisfying in Gunfire Reborn, and also seems to happen too often. It never feels special.
3. There's a lack of variability in how the game is played, even with enemies with modifiers and such.
I could chalk it up to saying the game is "too easy," but that isn't true, I still get challenged by this game. I think it just all has to do with presentation. The playable characters are very cute, but everything in this game just lacks punch, it's as animated and intriguing as a patch of stagnant water.
1999
Long.
This doubles as a review for the original release and the gold release, except for when I mention exclusive missions. This review is story-spoiler free.
If you're interested in playing the game, it often goes on sale for less than a dollar on steam. I heavily recommend using TFix, installing OpenAL to restore surround sound, and changing the controls to your liking, I prefer loading the Unreal preset and tweaking. Play on Hard or Expert for the best balance in difficulty. Last thing to note is that, while excess wealth carries over to the next mission, it cannot be hoarded throughout the game. After buying for the mission, any gold you don't spend is gone.
Thief Gold is a brilliant stealth game, one that is decades ahead of its time, and a product of its time in the best ways possible. The game features sprawling levels with high levels of interactivity, and a gameplay loop in which many of your actions can have consequences that will affect how the entire mission plays out.
In Thief, you assume the role of Garrett, a petty thief who, while meticulous, is ordinary as a white sheep in terms of capability and in status. The start of the game illustrates that you are someone who simply steals from largely dimwitted lords and royalty to pay for his rent, as opposed to some grand scheme. This is further emphasized in the game, as your combat skills compared to most, if not all enemies you face, are subpar; you have to use the shadows and the environment to your advantage. This factor is probably one of my favorite aspects of Thief, a game that forces you to play on its own terms, but also gives you a variety of options to tackle your objective. You cannot, or at least should not, simply kill the guards with your sword and bow, because you are at a disadvantage at any time when doing so. You have a whole arsenal of tools to use that, while requiring a condition to be effective, is the greatest way to develop an advantage when addressing any situation you find yourself in.
As the story ramps up, one other major element that Garrett has is, as stated prior, his meticulous nature when approaching his missions. Despite this, he is not perfect or clairvoyant. Early missions will grant you a detailed map, hand drawn by the player character, or other diagrams scavenged prior to departure, but later missions can have drawings that are misleading, objectives that are inaccurate, so on and so forth, and it is up to the player to extrapolate information along the way, or to get a mental image of what you're dealing with. There are no map markers, or location markers, or anything of the sort. I love how the team developing Thief forces engagement from the player, requiring attention and planning, as opposed to handing you the directions as if you stopped by a tour guide. The game does help alleviate any frustration by allowing you to buy tips prior to a mission, and you can also find notes that can tell you where to find something important in the mission, but otherwise it's up to you to get the job done optimally.
Interactivity is arguably the strongest suit of the game, and that is best shown by the amount of tools you have by default. Your best friend is the Blackjack, which can instantly incapacitate any guard, as long as they are unaware of you, or flashbanged by consumable flash bombs. A bow and arrow can take down a target from a distance, but you can have a wide variety of arrows that can do multiple things, such as a water arrow to douse a torch, giving you more darkness, moss arrows to soften your footsteps, and noisemakers that can alert a group of guards. You don't technically have to use all of these things, but the options being all there creates a highly interactive sandbox in every mission for your exploitation, both in game mechanics and the spoils stolen from greedy lords.
Thief Gold adds 3 missions, placed in between missions from the original release of the game. The latter two are good missions, but the first Gold mission (6th in game) is pretty bad. Speaking of bad missions, the later missions in the game can be of middling quality for many players, there is no shame in skipping them using a cheat code if you ever feel that a mission is a slog. My only other complaint about the game is that the Normal difficulty often cuts out major parts of missions that I feel make them more enjoyable as a whole, which is why I recommend the Hard difficulty even for the first time.
I give Thief Gold (and Thief II) a hard recommendation for just about anyone who enjoys stealth games, or immersive sims. I feel that the game is simply monumental within that niche, and I don't think I could run out of words of praise within my lifetime.
This doubles as a review for the original release and the gold release, except for when I mention exclusive missions. This review is story-spoiler free.
If you're interested in playing the game, it often goes on sale for less than a dollar on steam. I heavily recommend using TFix, installing OpenAL to restore surround sound, and changing the controls to your liking, I prefer loading the Unreal preset and tweaking. Play on Hard or Expert for the best balance in difficulty. Last thing to note is that, while excess wealth carries over to the next mission, it cannot be hoarded throughout the game. After buying for the mission, any gold you don't spend is gone.
Thief Gold is a brilliant stealth game, one that is decades ahead of its time, and a product of its time in the best ways possible. The game features sprawling levels with high levels of interactivity, and a gameplay loop in which many of your actions can have consequences that will affect how the entire mission plays out.
In Thief, you assume the role of Garrett, a petty thief who, while meticulous, is ordinary as a white sheep in terms of capability and in status. The start of the game illustrates that you are someone who simply steals from largely dimwitted lords and royalty to pay for his rent, as opposed to some grand scheme. This is further emphasized in the game, as your combat skills compared to most, if not all enemies you face, are subpar; you have to use the shadows and the environment to your advantage. This factor is probably one of my favorite aspects of Thief, a game that forces you to play on its own terms, but also gives you a variety of options to tackle your objective. You cannot, or at least should not, simply kill the guards with your sword and bow, because you are at a disadvantage at any time when doing so. You have a whole arsenal of tools to use that, while requiring a condition to be effective, is the greatest way to develop an advantage when addressing any situation you find yourself in.
As the story ramps up, one other major element that Garrett has is, as stated prior, his meticulous nature when approaching his missions. Despite this, he is not perfect or clairvoyant. Early missions will grant you a detailed map, hand drawn by the player character, or other diagrams scavenged prior to departure, but later missions can have drawings that are misleading, objectives that are inaccurate, so on and so forth, and it is up to the player to extrapolate information along the way, or to get a mental image of what you're dealing with. There are no map markers, or location markers, or anything of the sort. I love how the team developing Thief forces engagement from the player, requiring attention and planning, as opposed to handing you the directions as if you stopped by a tour guide. The game does help alleviate any frustration by allowing you to buy tips prior to a mission, and you can also find notes that can tell you where to find something important in the mission, but otherwise it's up to you to get the job done optimally.
Interactivity is arguably the strongest suit of the game, and that is best shown by the amount of tools you have by default. Your best friend is the Blackjack, which can instantly incapacitate any guard, as long as they are unaware of you, or flashbanged by consumable flash bombs. A bow and arrow can take down a target from a distance, but you can have a wide variety of arrows that can do multiple things, such as a water arrow to douse a torch, giving you more darkness, moss arrows to soften your footsteps, and noisemakers that can alert a group of guards. You don't technically have to use all of these things, but the options being all there creates a highly interactive sandbox in every mission for your exploitation, both in game mechanics and the spoils stolen from greedy lords.
Thief Gold adds 3 missions, placed in between missions from the original release of the game. The latter two are good missions, but the first Gold mission (6th in game) is pretty bad. Speaking of bad missions, the later missions in the game can be of middling quality for many players, there is no shame in skipping them using a cheat code if you ever feel that a mission is a slog. My only other complaint about the game is that the Normal difficulty often cuts out major parts of missions that I feel make them more enjoyable as a whole, which is why I recommend the Hard difficulty even for the first time.
I give Thief Gold (and Thief II) a hard recommendation for just about anyone who enjoys stealth games, or immersive sims. I feel that the game is simply monumental within that niche, and I don't think I could run out of words of praise within my lifetime.