stovetop
1997
That was a fun little game. It was a bit clunky at times, especially when trying to run and gun around an enemy but nothing too unwieldy otherwise. I really liked how the faces were animated, they were basically gifs on the models but it allowed them to be a lot more expressive than I'm used to in a ps1 game with a human type cast without being polygon monsters.
2022
I can see why I barely heard anything about this game, its nothing special. Being a PS5 exclusive at launch, as well as releasing the same day as Kirby and the Forgotten Land didn't help I'm sure.
Graphically its fine to pretty good but I found it to be quite dull style wise. Realistic Tokyo with some ghostly happenings. I have no problem with the designs of the enemies, it was nice to see how many I recognized. Majority of the traversal options were given to you very close to the beginning which was the smartest move the game did, with only one new ability being locked behind the skill tree.
This game has an absurd amount of collectables as well. The main collectable is over 200,000 but each are collected between a 90-600 batch and then the other 566 are a range of things tied to either upgrades or character and world backstory/building. Getting all of the collectables, which the game puts you back before the point of no return once you beat it so don't worry about missing anything, didn't seem to change anything about the ending other than the rewards which, while good, are now pointless cuz I've already 100% the game. They at least made it mostly easy to find most of the collectables, lots of ways to either get markers straight up added to the map or things to point you in the direction every time you activate your detective mode pulse.
Combat was pretty one note, monotonous and dragged on. Despite having a handful of different tools alongside your 3 main attacks, on normal there was rarely a time I had to use anything but the green and red shots. The talismans might as well be worthless in my opinion cuz the enemies you actually want the effects for are not effected by them. The only other thing worth its salt was the bow due to its power. Just about everything has a resource but its all so abundant its barely an afterthought.
As I said above I have no problem with the design of the enemies, but I do have a problem with the variety. Excluding bosses you'll be fighting the same 7 enemies, 4 of which have 1-2 reskins with little to no differences in attacks. This is the main reason for the combat being so boring to me.
Didn't give a damn about the story, its generally milquetoast and the music is forgettable. I'm not gonna remember any of these characters come tomorrow morning.
TLDR. The very definition of a mid game, combat gets old fast but traversing the open world isn't a chore. Its nothing special and unless you like Tango Gameworks, Shinji Mikami, or see this on sale for like $20 or less, you have better games to spend your time on.
Graphically its fine to pretty good but I found it to be quite dull style wise. Realistic Tokyo with some ghostly happenings. I have no problem with the designs of the enemies, it was nice to see how many I recognized. Majority of the traversal options were given to you very close to the beginning which was the smartest move the game did, with only one new ability being locked behind the skill tree.
This game has an absurd amount of collectables as well. The main collectable is over 200,000 but each are collected between a 90-600 batch and then the other 566 are a range of things tied to either upgrades or character and world backstory/building. Getting all of the collectables, which the game puts you back before the point of no return once you beat it so don't worry about missing anything, didn't seem to change anything about the ending other than the rewards which, while good, are now pointless cuz I've already 100% the game. They at least made it mostly easy to find most of the collectables, lots of ways to either get markers straight up added to the map or things to point you in the direction every time you activate your detective mode pulse.
Combat was pretty one note, monotonous and dragged on. Despite having a handful of different tools alongside your 3 main attacks, on normal there was rarely a time I had to use anything but the green and red shots. The talismans might as well be worthless in my opinion cuz the enemies you actually want the effects for are not effected by them. The only other thing worth its salt was the bow due to its power. Just about everything has a resource but its all so abundant its barely an afterthought.
As I said above I have no problem with the design of the enemies, but I do have a problem with the variety. Excluding bosses you'll be fighting the same 7 enemies, 4 of which have 1-2 reskins with little to no differences in attacks. This is the main reason for the combat being so boring to me.
Didn't give a damn about the story, its generally milquetoast and the music is forgettable. I'm not gonna remember any of these characters come tomorrow morning.
TLDR. The very definition of a mid game, combat gets old fast but traversing the open world isn't a chore. Its nothing special and unless you like Tango Gameworks, Shinji Mikami, or see this on sale for like $20 or less, you have better games to spend your time on.
This game is not the affront to god I always heard it was.
Gameplay wise I think its great, one of the best ATB systems I've used. The Dressphere and grid system, while a bit more limiting than I would have liked at times, were fun to mess around with. I like that each girl, despite using the same dresses, has different weapons, animations, transformations, battle quotes and victory screens.
Story wise I can't say I enjoyed it and ended up with 90% completion. I found the story to be mostly dull but I think a lot of that has to do with how it presents itself in its mission like structure. Lead to more swift tonal shifts and out of place moments than not.
This isn't the Yuna you know from Final Fantasy X and Rikku is more comedic in comparison than I remember as well. I wouldn't call it character assassination but if the plot wasn't so directly tied to FFX, having new characters taking over the whole thing might have went over better.
In terms of music I think it was mostly forgettable. One or two tracks I liked and a few I really disliked such what might be the worst chocobo theme I have ever heard in a FF game.
In the end its decent but the gameplay does 99% of the carrying, especially if you like job systems.
Gameplay wise I think its great, one of the best ATB systems I've used. The Dressphere and grid system, while a bit more limiting than I would have liked at times, were fun to mess around with. I like that each girl, despite using the same dresses, has different weapons, animations, transformations, battle quotes and victory screens.
Story wise I can't say I enjoyed it and ended up with 90% completion. I found the story to be mostly dull but I think a lot of that has to do with how it presents itself in its mission like structure. Lead to more swift tonal shifts and out of place moments than not.
This isn't the Yuna you know from Final Fantasy X and Rikku is more comedic in comparison than I remember as well. I wouldn't call it character assassination but if the plot wasn't so directly tied to FFX, having new characters taking over the whole thing might have went over better.
In terms of music I think it was mostly forgettable. One or two tracks I liked and a few I really disliked such what might be the worst chocobo theme I have ever heard in a FF game.
In the end its decent but the gameplay does 99% of the carrying, especially if you like job systems.
2022
I only bought this game for the Godzilla dlc.
This harkens back to the old ps2 atari pipeworks games and War of the Monsters, a game type we've been severely lacking in recent time. Simple but fun, don't expect anything deep.
This harkens back to the old ps2 atari pipeworks games and War of the Monsters, a game type we've been severely lacking in recent time. Simple but fun, don't expect anything deep.
2022
Repetitive as all sin. All enemies are reskins of 4 types, theres 4 minibosses who are also reskins and you'll fight them 10 times each, and 3 different bosses who you'll fight 2-3 times each. All bosses summon adds whenever they can, its annoying and makes the fights a chore. Thats where all the challenge in this game comes from.
If there's the ability to dodge of guard cancel I never unlocked it but I doubt they exist. The move list isn't anything to write home about, its your basic character action fair. Lights and heavies, a dodge roll, parry etc and then a couple more involved moves like million stabs and a judgement cut.
Story is so basic I can't be bothered to write about it but at least the girls have decent interactions with each other. Also Nobunaga is voiced by Takuya Kuroda, the voice of Kazuma Kiryu, so theres that.
AA/B game/Kusoge, whatever you want to call it, thats this game
If there's the ability to dodge of guard cancel I never unlocked it but I doubt they exist. The move list isn't anything to write home about, its your basic character action fair. Lights and heavies, a dodge roll, parry etc and then a couple more involved moves like million stabs and a judgement cut.
Story is so basic I can't be bothered to write about it but at least the girls have decent interactions with each other. Also Nobunaga is voiced by Takuya Kuroda, the voice of Kazuma Kiryu, so theres that.
AA/B game/Kusoge, whatever you want to call it, thats this game
This review contains spoilers
Spoiler warning
Gonna start this off by saying two things. First. I tried my best to not compare this game to Dead Space while I was playing it but the game really made it hard to do. Second, this game wasn't scary at all and considering how I'm easily scared, that's a BIG problem.
Going in I had heard about the dodge system and I thought that was going to be my biggest issue, it wasn't. The dodge for the most part was fine, if you were only fighting one enemy. If you were unlucky enough to be toe to toe with multiple enemies then just accept your incoming damage. If anything the biggest issue was Jacob doing a 180 to attack the enemy I wasn't JUST ATTACKING which would allow it to mutate into a stronger enemy. The combat in of itself was repetitive. Even as a melee preferred player it was incredible basic. Hit them three times, shoot them until the blue icon goes away, rinse and repeat. This was on maximum security btw, the hardest difficulty and this still worked. Enemies couldn't be knocked out of an attack most of the time though, so mashing would get you punished and I'm unsure if that happens on the lower difficulties.
The designs of these enemies I thought were pretty generic body horror. They're forgettable and odds are if you like horror you've seen these exact designs before. There was 6 or 7 enemy types but one was just the normal guy with a different outfit. Hope you like the Two Head boss cuz you're gonna be fighting him 4 times. And I don't mean in the "it flees from battle and comes back rival style", no I mean you fight four different Two Heads in the last three chapters of this game and tow of those boss fights have adds! The cardinal sin! The final boss has them too! STOP THAT! The guns aren't interesting either they might as well be normal guns. You got the hand cannon, riot shotgun, assault rifle, and 2 other pistol types I didn't make. Half the game you only have the hand cannon but at least the guns don't take up inventory. ITs great they don't cuz you would have no space. You are Chris from Resident Evil 1 with 6 inventory slots and you cannot upgrade it by choice. You'll get the inventory upgrade to 12 and a health upgrade 2/3 of the way through the damn game. The shops did not seem plentiful enough to warrant such a small inventory with how many sell only items you can find. The health item is a single level only so once you get the upgrade it takes multiple to full heal from low, and it takes a little bit to heal as its a whole animation that needs to be done which you can be hit out of. No healing in combat unless you can put 15 miles between you and the boss.
The story is a big nothing, if you have played Dead Space you know the plot. Felt like I was missing a chunk of the story despite finding all audio logs. Oh speaking of audio logs, you have to remain in the menu to listen to them. No walking around. Sure they aren't long, the longest was probably barely a minute but still, you never know when you'd get jumped by something.
As I said in the beginning I didn't find this game scary despite being as easily scared as a rabbit, but its the truth. Its atmosphere was fine, it just couldn't deliver. Every scare they did was predictable and some were directly taken from Dead Space such as its end stinger. Speaking of Dead Space this game is the definition of "legally distinct". Yes same creator, that's the whole reason I was even interested, but even the features it takes form Dead Space were undercooked both in plot and mechanics right down the "the cult did this" reveal.
Performance wise I can be mostly positive. I played on the PS5 and in performance mode it was stable the whole time and I only had one bug and crash. A prompt wouldn't resolve so I had to reload a checkpoint. The state of the industry were a single crash is considered "good" when a game shouldn't be crashing at all.
I can't recommend this game to anybody, at least not until bargain bin. You'll get about 10 hours out of it, or at least I did. I wanted to like this game, I really did. I tried to not endlessly compare it to its predecessor during play but its hard not to. I'm mad that it couldn't deliver and sad that it wasn't just wasn't fun the whole way through. In my opinion the worst thing a game can do is make you want to play another one, even if its on purpose, and this game does that in stride. Just play Dead Space
Gonna start this off by saying two things. First. I tried my best to not compare this game to Dead Space while I was playing it but the game really made it hard to do. Second, this game wasn't scary at all and considering how I'm easily scared, that's a BIG problem.
Going in I had heard about the dodge system and I thought that was going to be my biggest issue, it wasn't. The dodge for the most part was fine, if you were only fighting one enemy. If you were unlucky enough to be toe to toe with multiple enemies then just accept your incoming damage. If anything the biggest issue was Jacob doing a 180 to attack the enemy I wasn't JUST ATTACKING which would allow it to mutate into a stronger enemy. The combat in of itself was repetitive. Even as a melee preferred player it was incredible basic. Hit them three times, shoot them until the blue icon goes away, rinse and repeat. This was on maximum security btw, the hardest difficulty and this still worked. Enemies couldn't be knocked out of an attack most of the time though, so mashing would get you punished and I'm unsure if that happens on the lower difficulties.
The designs of these enemies I thought were pretty generic body horror. They're forgettable and odds are if you like horror you've seen these exact designs before. There was 6 or 7 enemy types but one was just the normal guy with a different outfit. Hope you like the Two Head boss cuz you're gonna be fighting him 4 times. And I don't mean in the "it flees from battle and comes back rival style", no I mean you fight four different Two Heads in the last three chapters of this game and tow of those boss fights have adds! The cardinal sin! The final boss has them too! STOP THAT! The guns aren't interesting either they might as well be normal guns. You got the hand cannon, riot shotgun, assault rifle, and 2 other pistol types I didn't make. Half the game you only have the hand cannon but at least the guns don't take up inventory. ITs great they don't cuz you would have no space. You are Chris from Resident Evil 1 with 6 inventory slots and you cannot upgrade it by choice. You'll get the inventory upgrade to 12 and a health upgrade 2/3 of the way through the damn game. The shops did not seem plentiful enough to warrant such a small inventory with how many sell only items you can find. The health item is a single level only so once you get the upgrade it takes multiple to full heal from low, and it takes a little bit to heal as its a whole animation that needs to be done which you can be hit out of. No healing in combat unless you can put 15 miles between you and the boss.
The story is a big nothing, if you have played Dead Space you know the plot. Felt like I was missing a chunk of the story despite finding all audio logs. Oh speaking of audio logs, you have to remain in the menu to listen to them. No walking around. Sure they aren't long, the longest was probably barely a minute but still, you never know when you'd get jumped by something.
As I said in the beginning I didn't find this game scary despite being as easily scared as a rabbit, but its the truth. Its atmosphere was fine, it just couldn't deliver. Every scare they did was predictable and some were directly taken from Dead Space such as its end stinger. Speaking of Dead Space this game is the definition of "legally distinct". Yes same creator, that's the whole reason I was even interested, but even the features it takes form Dead Space were undercooked both in plot and mechanics right down the "the cult did this" reveal.
Performance wise I can be mostly positive. I played on the PS5 and in performance mode it was stable the whole time and I only had one bug and crash. A prompt wouldn't resolve so I had to reload a checkpoint. The state of the industry were a single crash is considered "good" when a game shouldn't be crashing at all.
I can't recommend this game to anybody, at least not until bargain bin. You'll get about 10 hours out of it, or at least I did. I wanted to like this game, I really did. I tried to not endlessly compare it to its predecessor during play but its hard not to. I'm mad that it couldn't deliver and sad that it wasn't just wasn't fun the whole way through. In my opinion the worst thing a game can do is make you want to play another one, even if its on purpose, and this game does that in stride. Just play Dead Space