Rance it is not. It is unfair to bring up similar titles when discussing a game own merits but this one tried way too hard to be Rance to ignore its haughtiness.

Eiyuu Senki - the World Conquest is a turn-based strategy RPG visual novel type of game, a genre mixture of which many examples exist in Japan but it is still abundantly rare in the west. The Rance series has long been the most famous example in the western niche interested in this kind of games, but it is important to understand how influential this name has been for over 30 years in Japan and realize how many similar titles have been developed with mixed results.

Some like the Eushully games have tried to revamp the strategy RPG aspects of the games, other like Utawarerumono tried to focus on the narrative. Others like Koihime Musou and Eiyuu Senki just tried to the same exact thing without the distinctive gameplay, narrative or charisma of the aforementioned games. If the Steam version allowed to utilize the 18+ content of the game – and, in some way, it does, – I would say that this is just a costly masturbation simulator, with some boring cutscenes between erotic scenes. Since, at least on the paper, the players are supposed to enjoy the gameplay and the story, do they have any interesting feature to make worth the experience?

No, they do not.

The gameplay is so bare and pointless, there is no challenge or strategy involved in just clicking enemies and letting your overpowered heroes win the game, heroes you obtain since the start. There are some upgrades if you also want to make it easier, for some reason, but even if you beat all the main and side missions all you are treated to are unimpressive vignettes of banter between uninteresting characters. The protagonist is a blank slate for the players immersion but he hasn’t any substantial, role-defining choice to make him fit the role of the players’ avatar, the plot will stay the same no matter how you imagine him to sound and feel because he acts the same regardless. The heroines, which are supposed to be the meat of the game, are nicely drawn and colourful but they too lack any interesting personality or trait, the event in which they are protagonists are uneventful at best and trite at worst; each of them will sound the same after a certain point, so despite having different traits they hold the same unimportance to the game.

Eiyuu Senki is a game for those who will take absolutely everything as long as it is from Japan, is an eroge or in general just has a decent character design for its heroines. Those seeking something worth investing time and attention, as a video game experience, won’t find anything here.

Ethan Winters is the most unserious person to ever live, the James Sunderland of slapstick comedy. Compared to Chris Redfield punching a boulder inside a volcano, or whatever Leon Kennedy is up to anytime he’s on screen, Ethan’s storylines are always presented as very grave and down-to-earth, the tale of a family man trying to rescue his wife and daughter from unspeakable horrors. Then you get to the cutscene where he faces monsters the size of an apartment complex or psychotic murderers and he just looks them straight in the eyes, saying cliched, cringe one-liners, and telling them to fuck off. Chop one of his hands off, gouge his legs and arms with hooks, throw him off a building, and he just gets back up, he never cares, Ethan Winters always, always gets the tone of every scene he’s in wrong. I don’t know why he is like this, but I love him for that, he might not be the most compelling character in the Resident Evil franchise but damn is it entertaining watching him suffer and squirm in his own blood.

Whilst The Elder Scroll: Skyrim succeeds in putting the player inside an immersive, fabulous world, it fails at giving it any sort of depth or interesting content. I didn’t complete the game, I just stopped going around once I visited every location of the map.

I really think one couldn’t be blamed for doing so: the mods add some sort of fun content but not so much you’d stick with the wooden narration, the terrible combat and the general feeling that no one around you is acting like more than a few millions of soulless pixels put together.
The plot is abysmal, dull and predictable but without charismatic characters or an interesting lore to redeem it: you are given orders by random strangers with no reason or rhyme and almost every quest can in some sort boil down to “Fetch me this”, “Kill some of those”, without anything gripping enough to let the players feel like they are accomplishing something noteworthy. Even the Dragons, supposedly the main appeal of the game, after a while feel repetitive, predictable, lose their mysterious charm because you quickly realize where they usually nest and how to kill them since there are never new mechanics added to the fights.

Skyrim is a chore, and endless shopping list of tedious checks which expands in every new city full of cardboards giving you empty missions for empty rewards and empty felling of accomplishment. You’d better be playing Dragon Age Origins or The Witcher if you wanted both a more compelling narrative and a more interesting world to explore.

In a time where horror games are either first person jump scares fest or RPGmaker-made jump scares fest, it’s rare to find a game which gives a good example of the meaning of horror without the need of scaring the viewer. Taking the definition from the Oxford dictionary, horror refers to “an intense feeling of fear, shock, or disgust.” The reason most horror games and movies fail to me nowadays it’s because they all focus too much on the fear and shock part of the equation, forgetting the importance of that ‘intense feeling’. By that I’m not saying making a louder, piercing scream or a bigger monster but rather something that will stick with the players, that will haunt them during nights and waking hours, something strong enough to leave a mark even after the experience is passed, something that, in particular cases, might be realer and scarier than your average zombie or serial killer.

Detention is not scary because there are ghosts, sudden loud noises or because it puts the player at peril, rather these circumstances happen in very rare occasions during the game. It is scary because it presents a scenario far too real and common, based on real events moreover, and spins on it so that the player is forced to realize the reality of what is presented, the truth behind the shown atrocities and just how frightening human beings can be in certain environments.

It is not surface horror, it’s pervasive horror, which seeps into the mind and brings psychological consequences on one’s perception of reality, akin to what other more famous titles such as Silent Hill 2 or Rule of Rose managed to achieve. The horror is not something necessarily stranger or far from us, it might be near, behind you, or even inside of you.

In the midst of the ending of the warring states era of Japan, a time of intense struggles and conflicts, of subterfuges and heroes, where both history and myth were in the making, From Software and Hidetaka Miyazaki bring us another bleak depiction of the conclusion of such age. This is no surprise as, since the Souls series, they made their standard to work with stories set during, or shortly after, the demise of what was once a great and powerful entity, only to be now being ruined by excess, misfortune and human faults.

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice sets to portray the land of the Ashina clan, shortly after the end of a major conflict during the Sengoku jidai, the aforementioned Japan warring states era, but to anyone with a mild interest in the matter should be known that there was nothing left of the land nor the clan once the era was over. The game begins showing Isshin Ashina, the faction leader, obtaining a huge victory for himself and his clan, but as the player get control over the protagonist actions, we are immediately treated to a sad look over his domain. Despite, or probably because of, his victory, Isshin brought on himself the attention of the central government of Japan, always in fear of any daimyo gaining power as they might become exceptionally threatening in the power struggle going on at the time. Over the course of the game this situation will only exacerbate, as the conflict between the Ashina and the government will bring further ruin to the former clan, slowly erasing any of its member from history.

Thus, we are presented to one of the central themes of Sekiro: the cycling shifts in history, between one power to another, in a seemingly never ending spiral where everything comes full circle and begin anew, repeating itself over and over again. This is mostly and directly symbolized by the main character’s, known solely as Wolf, ability to resurrect after death, one of the main features of the game, but it is also shown by the many references to immortality, rebirth and ascension scattered thorough the story. As it is bursting with references and themes borrowed from the Buddhist mythos and Japanese folklore, it is only natural that Sekiro would tackle leitmotifs such as the cycle of death and rebirth, and the underlying essence of escape from the mortal coils and sins to achieve a higher state of being, of purification almost.

In the context of the story, the journey towards purification for the main character and his protégé and master, Kuro, last descendant of the extinct Hirata family, is filled with references to self-sacrifice and how to achieve liberation from their roles in the sad history of the Sengoku era by means of death. Directly in contrast with this view, there is Genichiro Ashina, heir to the clan name and willing to sink to any low possible to avoid the Ashina demise and save its land from ruin; and those lows will go very, very deep over the course of the game. What is this conflict between two opposed morality if not the same contrast between the inevitable conclusion of the Age of Fire, a time of deceit and conflict, and the eerie vision of an Age of Dark, which sure sounds undesirable in its bleakness representation of death, but is it really so much worse than a never-ending state of lies and suffering?

The players should decide for themselves, there are enough endings and viewpoints among all the different characters to develop a personal standpoint on the matter.

Gameplay-wise, Sekiro takes the quickness of Bloodborne and turns up the notch. A lot. Whilst Bloodborne incentivised the player to be constantly near enemies to attack, recover life and stagger for delicious critical hits, Sekiro gives the player one of the most intuitive and rewarding parry mechanic to ever be conceived. Just like in real sword fights between blade masters, Sekiro doesn’t play on the clunkier balance between hit and run, but rather block and counterattack. The enemies – particularly bosses – health bars are going to look massive and impossible to reduce to zero, if not for the possibility to play along with this mechanic of parry and counterattacking to reduce the enemies’ posture, so to strike a fatal blow. The genius behind this is how that can be achieved when the enemy still has over half of its health bar, with enough focus and precision in the movements. Sekiro highly rewards patience and perfect reflexes and, whilst the enemies hit hard, since the parrying is very lenient on the frames and the blocking can nullify almost all damages, it is far more accessible than a first blind run on Dark Souls.

The setting of the decayed Ashina and its environs are varied but beautifully interconnected, and it really looks like traveling through an organic territory which includes cities, castles, mountain paths, temples and so on. It is a very linear scenario, it rarely presents to the players tricky mazes or multiple choices as to where to go next, yet as it plays more as an action title than a dungeon crawler RPG it never feels like is lacking for content or variety. The enemy placing might be one of the best in the series, with the right balance between isolated opponents and large groups of mobs, which can both be dispatched with ease and intuition using both one’s prowess with the sword or with the engaging – albeit underdeveloped – stealth mechanic, which allows to act like a true shinobi, by striking deathly blows from the shadows, run away and instil fear and confusion in the enemies.

Bosses have, for the most part, anthropomorphic features, as to maximize the use of the sword mechanics and fit the setting, but there will be some interesting fantastic designs of folkloristic creatures to roam the land of Ashina. Most of these bosses will prove quite challenging and each of them presents in some way a new step to the learning curve, always fairly rising and requiring at each turn for the players to have mastered some aspect of the abilities and skills the game has to offer. These abilities may include passive boosts or actual techniques to utilize against enemies with particular movesets and resistances.

The musical score sees the return of Kitamura Yuka, already a veteran on previous From’s titles such as Bloodborne and Dark Souls 3, and it proves again a rightful choice as the atmosphere of the medieval Japan is perfectly conveyed by her tunes, played with traditional Japanese instruments, full of mystery and nostalgic melodies. The tracks are somewhat less noticeable and memorable than previous examples in other games, yet they will undoubtedly play the right atmosphere for the players immersion in the game.

Some of the downsides of the game can include the lack of real replay value, since there are not many different builds to experiment with, even considering all the different abilities at hands, since by the end of the first playthrough the players will have obtained almost all of them with enough care and the most overpowered and useful are clear the moment one tries them for the first time. Bayonetta it is not. The Dragonrot mechanic is also very downplayed and useless on the long run, except for being a somewhat hint that the player is sucking too much at the game all at once and various lore implications. The camera works better than in previous games but it will still lead the players to many moments where no possible divine help could have saved them from being brutally massacred in a corner with no escape.

Sekiro will certainly prove a delightful experience for any From fan in love with their style of show-don’t-tell storytelling and subtle worldbuilding, as well as the grim depiction of the dread of humankind. And if that won’t suit any personal preferences, the rewarding combat system is going to prove an immensely immersive and fun challenge for any who want to feel the thrill of handling a blade as it is meant to be handled.

War stories are powerful. Not because they necessarily depict strong men handling big guns, accomplishing heroic, almost suicidal deeds, or for the popular recent Call of Duty’s mentality of one-man-armies power fantasies. Much like horror, war isn’t a genre that manages to fully realize its potential on itself, rather they make for perfect settings for a plethora of themes which succeed thanks to the backgrounds portrayed by harsh situations. Silent Hill 2 worked so well as a story because it was first and foremost a tale about psychological distress and the descent of a man in the madness of his own guilt, and these themes married magnificently with the visual imagery of a decaying city, slowly turning into hell itself.

Likewise, Valiant Hearts thrives as a war story because its narration revolves around a cast of characters dealing with motivations to act, self-sacrifices, loss and regret, all of which could be found plenty during World War I. Other videogames like Spec Ops: The Line or Valkyria Chronicles might try to do something different with their genre, but there is still a mechanic of rewarding the players (by progressing the story or unlocking achievements) for committing un unbecoming number of killings. Meanwhile Valiant Hearts puts the players in side-scrolling, cartoon-ish levels, and actively gives them any sort of objective that has nothing to do, or never results, with murdering other people. More often than not, rather players will be asked to save others.

Valiant Hearts’s story is that of four different characters, a young German boy and his French father-in-law drafted under different flags, a nurse scouting the frontlines in search her father and an American volunteer looking for vengeance after his wife was killed in a German raid. Their paths intertwine on famous battlefields, deathly trenches, ravished cities, and they’ll have to cooperate to achieve the ultimate goal of every soldier: to survive and return home.

Such strong premise is certainly unusual in market filled with military shooters where violence is almost glorified and the feeling of repulsion and fear of guns and violence is removed, and for this exact reason Valiant Hearts is something war games needed. It is almost ironic how the most grounded take on the horrors of war comes from a game built with the UbiArt Framework engine and with a gameplay made of simple puzzles and platforming, easy collectibles and an art design that make the game look like an adventure title appropriate for children: which it kind of is and kind of isn’t.

Valiant Hearts arguably is as suited for children as movies such as Paths of Glory, Saving Private RYan and Letters from Iwo Jima are for children: all of them contain strong imagery and some of recent history’s most abhorrent events (one of Valiant Heart’s earlier levels is set during the first battle in which chloring gas was employed as a weapon) but eventually these are stories of capital importance that need to be known for what they signified and for what the characters in them stood for. As a matter of fact, the developer aim while releasing the game was probably more didactical than entertainment; an adult audience will probably be turned off by the bare minimum difficulty of the puzzles in each level, and the slight challenge might come only from the collectibles, which can’t be stressed enough how important are to find. They are a handful in each level and don’t serve any practical purpose, but all contain tiny details about the life of people in the early 20th century who found themselves thrown in the bloodiest conflict ever seen in history, left in disarray, disillusioned, and scared.

These are feeling often overlooked in war media, especially videogames, and why it is important to stress what actually is behind the glorification of action and heroism that military shooters depict. Even the beautiful soundtrack of Valiant Hearts wants to convey this message, just with some of the tracks’ titles, such as ‘evil’, ‘horror’, ‘loss’, ‘empty’, ‘sadness’, ‘no hope’, ‘hope for better’ and, the notorious and heart-breaking, ‘nurture’.

Valiant Hearts is not an uplifting story, it’s not a rewarding game and certainly won’t account as one of the most fun gaming experience, but it stands as a proof that some developers at Ubisoft cared to give their players something more, something to remember and understand, why so many people died, be it for nothing or for a reason, and why is it important for us nowadays to study history and never forget such sacrifices and mistakes.

This game is endless. Not in the sense that you’ll never finish a single playthrough (though the chances are pretty high considering its difficulty and unpredictability) but because the possibilities are limitless. In Crusader Kings II you play as whoever you want to be, count, duke, king, emperor, ruling your dynasty from scratch until you are uplifted to great power or until you fail miserably and get wiped out in a cleanse war or deathly plague.

I certainly never once finished a game, it was hard enough to grasp every little mechanic you could use in the first twenty to thirty hours and after that I mostly focused on exploring possibilities and the hidden events, role-playing as a wise king and caring father or a ruthless unforgiving tyrant that had everyone who even dared to look at my wife beheaded.

Hilarious combinations are daily occurrences, there are plenty of reviews, memes and threads about Satanists popes, centuries old inbreeding dynasties, dumb rulers being murdered by their own stupidity, comedic cuckoldry, disastrous wars, you name it. One might complain that it’s mostly a RNG game where every risk calculation is bound to be wrong, but that’s exactly the point. There is a reason why Ironman mode has only one automatic save slot, so that you can experience your campaign, your story, as a real medieval life simulator: you carefully planned the assassination that will lead you into a sure-win succession war for the reign of your brother? Too bad, the assassination failed, everyone knows it was you, rebels arise, vassals revolt and your brother calls his allies to wreck doom upon your sorry head. That’s life, not every thing plays the way we imagined or wanted it too and more often than not it screws you in the behind, hard.
Not like you couldn’t play in normal vanilla mod with a plethora of cheats, if you just wanted to chill and cause havoc all around the world with unlimited resources and armies, as I said the game possibilities are limitless.

Play this game if you want to experience the unpredictable, the unavoidable, the unexpected, the unsolvable and generally to have a great time in the most complete, complex and vast strategy and role-playing game ever conceived.

“Let’s go back, to a life worth living.”

Thematically speaking, it is hard not to be impressed by what Valkyria Chronicles wanted to achieve with its latest iteration. While proposing to their audience a new chapter after the success of the first Steam porting (because let’s face it, without that the franchise would be very well dead with Revolution being the nail in the coffin), SEGA also went heavy hand on hammering the antimilitarist theme of the series with a new fresh cast of characters in an imaginative brutal campaign set during the well-known Second Europan War.

As per usual, the characters are mostly anime tropes of hot-blooded rebels, humble quiet blokes and various shades of aggressive but cutesy women. The great difference this time is how the addition of side squad stories for the non-main characters helps to expand on each member of Squad E, to brush more detailed personalities and motivations for them to be enlisted and at odds with a war that ultimately none of them wants to be in, for no one likes to murder or to risk their own life if not driven by a greater personal drive.

Which, despite the obvious contradiction of giving the players achievements for killing a large number of enemies, it’s still a commendable effort. Many times, throughout the game, the war is not just painted as a fight for freedom from the Federation viewpoint anymore: by adding, with due reinterpretations, real war episodes such as the winter retreat from the Russian campaigns, human experimentation, suicide attacks and so on, the tone is definitely darker than is previous titles of the series. It is almost graceful to the players to keep the light-heartiness of the characters, in spite of most of everything, to counter the strong subjects at matter.

This does not mean that the characters are unable to perform according to the tone of the events, they all have their breaking points and harsh moments, there is a fair share of melodrama and idealism, but they fit well considering how real and painful some events might appear to those familiar with actual historical war scenarios. After all, it is better to draw a positive meaning from ruthless times rather than cynically accepting that there is no significance to suffering.

Aside from the differences in themes, the gameplay remains mostly untouched but still as strong as it was in the first game: the turn based strategic combat is more versatile now thanks to more Command Points (CP) provided each turn to perform more actions, the promotions to corporal for standard privates to add even more CP and how tanks now don’t cost 2 CP for each time they move. The new Grenadier class is brutal, hard to employ in every situation and extremely overpowered, but well balanced if considering how also enemies’ Grenadiers can give hell to the players’ troops in almost every mission they are present. Hard difficulty in side skirmishes is still as silly as it was before, with any actual challenge replaced by just adding more enemies to each map and leave the players to figure out how to not be wiped out in a couple turns, when the placement is not merely dumb: in one of the last skirmishes, an enemy camp was guarded by three snipers that weren’t blocking the players from capturing it, while also being put behind a cover that hindered their shooting; what was their point exactly?

Features in the headquarters, like the experience point boot camp, the R&D department to upgrade weapons and tanks, the mess hall taking the place of the cemetery for learning new orders, are pretty much left unchanged with maybe more possibilities for characters customization thanks to a larger arsenal of weapons and equippable accessories for extra stats. Orders mechanic are still as exploitable as before and, since the game actively rewards with more EXP and war funds finishing missions in the fewer possible turns, many will be tempted to avoid immersion in the strategical setting in favour of a more one-man-army, blitzkrieg approach for the added bonuses. Which is a shame, since Valkyria Chronicles is still the most similar experience available in the videogame industry to the splendid turn-based tactics of the latest XCOMs.

Valkyria Chronicles is a hard title to recommend, it is very unique to its own genre and since this fourth chapter is on every level, even graphics and game engine, the same as the first one, many players may as well stick to that. Or, they may happily gift SEGA with their money, buy this game and hope for more future development from this series. Certainly, Valkyria Chronicles 4 won’t give anyone something inherently new, notwithstanding the aforementioned differences in plot presentation and themes, but it is still a solid game with enormous potential and open to both a fast-paced and a more relaxed and strategical approach to war games.

The 2027 A.D. is a lovely year to live in. In the midst of the explosion of transhumanism and the resulting social and economic conflicts, there is a world to be discovered, in which to intervene to influence the fate of entire cities and massive corporations worth billions. This is the main objective of Adam Jensen, head of security at the Sarif Industries and at the centre of a plot involving industrial espionage and transhumanist philosophy.

Deus Ex Human Revolution (DEHR) is a delightful addition to the cyberpunk canon. It picks up for narrative and purpose from a lot of the genre milestones such as the novel Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson, mixing apparently anachronistic themes with the consequences of an ultra-technological world where the boundary between organic and machine life becomes thinner and thinner. In the case of DEHR, this union is presented as a visual and thematic Cyberpunk Renaissance, with the setting being a futuristic ambient but the fashion, arts and the sense of grandeur from the majestic times of the XV century.

The era the game is set is lends itself to describe the contradiction of a technology that does not cease to evolve and move forward, contrasting with the part of humanity scared by the moral consequences that this advancement means. DEHR is often thought of as a curious hybrid of stealth and RPG because, beyond the exploratory and infiltration part that constitutes the first genre, the players will be led to answer moral questions related to the issues of technological development, influencing with their decisions the outcome of missions, destinies of people and the conclusion of the game itself.

In addition to this, the roleplaying component can be also observed in the wide variety of personalization that Jensen may receive by obtaining experience points. The player can aim to improve his hacking skills to ensure quieter and more precise infiltrations or decide to increase stamina and physical strength for a more "brutal" and direct approach.

Despite how enthralling the narrative of the title is, the gem of the game is certainly the stealth gameplay: offering the player immense but perfectly connected, contained and full of secrets maps to explore, DEHR offers a vast experience suitable for any style of approach to achieve certain goals, even if they are, more often than not, simply "go from point A to point B" or "get some data from computer C". The presence of side missions, some presented to the player, others hidden between the urban layers, increases even more the sense of greatness of the plot and world-building.

Years ago, at launch, the game could be blamed for, despite the ability to play without ever triggering an alarm or ever facing an enemy, some unavoidable boss fights, which were both mandatory and made futile to customize the character as a non-lethal spectrum. The Director's Cut, however, has masterfully solved this problem, magnifying different aspects of the basic game as well as the arenas of the bosses, expanding them from simple and bare rings to larger puzzles which lend themselves to the most different approaches for solution.

The Missing Link DLC can also be seen in a slightly negative way, as it blocks the narrative right in the middle for several hours and forces the player into an obligatory scenario that adds little to nothing to the main storyline.

DEHR works very well on every level it tries to explore: as stealth it presents claustrophobic, dirty, ultra-technological and rich in possibilities environments, among the pinnacles that the genre has to offer; as an RPG it is dictated by customization, immersion, a very strong narrative and a system of choices and consequences which brings some really interesting questions to light, especially for the modern context we live in. The relative simplicity of the title, even at the highest difficulty levels, allows anyone who wants to give a chance to something new to feel welcomed in this exciting and thrilling cyberpunk world.

A game where a guild self-regulates the colonization of new lands, whilst both promoting scientific development and managing environmental balance as an independent, economic entity. Truly the capitalistic dream fully realized. Also, you whack dinosaurs with a big f- sword, or hammer or whatever.

What I appreciate the most about Monster Hunter World is that it is perfectly adequate to satisfy my every moods whenever I want to play: if I want an adrenaline rush through hunts and varied gameplay mechanics I can put myself against a Savage Deviljho and curse its’ and the Lord’s name; if I just want to progress I can almost always count on online help to dump– cough to carry me during harder fights; if I need to relax I can walk around the main hubs and talk to colourful, funny characters, or doing expeditions to fetch rare materials, discover rare or unique interactions in the wildlife (the sexual habits of lynians are so fascinating and they don’t even mind you recording every second of it), or simply walk around and soak in the beauty of the maps.

Of course, the vast majority of those who will play the game (and those who won’t the c•ckblocked by its godawful optimization and manage some workarounds, thanks nexusmod and steamforums) will mainly be interested in the ‘hunter’ part rather than the ‘world’ part, and it certainly does deliver. Every hunt is a glorious boss fight in and on itself. They are exciting, tense, fast paced, even strategic as you have to manage your resources, your positioning, the condition of your prey and the environments around you. Every new monster is a series of discoveries, to assimilate the monster moveset and work your reflexes on countermeasures, while also adjusting your playstyle to something that may very well be completely different from every fight you have had before. It is certainly difficult, yet the game does not gatekeep its progress, you can almost always find ways to ease the challenge by adequately equipping your palico companion (just give him paralysis or poison gear), other aids such as traps, lynians and minor monsters in the map, or calling for other players to join you. There are plenty of hunters out there always willing to lend a hand.

Crafting always offers new ways to play the game. Today you might see a particular weapon or armour and you will hunt the same monster multiple times, praying the random number god that it will drop the materials you need before the date of your wedding or of your grandchildren’s college diploma. There is a grand total of 14 different weapons to try out, I myself haven’t tried a couple of them yet, surely haven’t mastered more than two or three, and each play so differently it is like trying a new game every time you pick a different one. They all offer complex but accessible mechanics, various way to approach a challenge and a long list of moves and combo to learn. The game actively incentives to not button mash through your fights but carefully weight the timing and damage of each blow, the reaction times of the monsters and how best to utilize your knowledge to balance offence and defence. Of course, not that I am any good at it myself, I keep panicking and just spam heavy blows many times. The best suggestion one could receive upon beginning the game is to play it as a turn-based action game, rather than a real-time one.

Minor grips with the game, aside from the status of the actual PC port, include: 1. the time limit on missions, it sure adds tension but come on, despite having plenty of time to kill the same monster thrice I’d still like to not have a mental pressure if I want to explore the map a little during a hunt; 2. after every faint your stats reverse back to before you ate to gain the bonuses, which means if you have real troubles with a particular monster you’d have to wait every ten minute mark to buff again or waste a lot of consumables to regain those buffs (ancient potions are expensive to make, bloody hell); 3. as much as it is fun to witness monsters fighting each other (and it sure simplifies some of the hunts as they bite hundreds if not thousands of HP out of each other), some monsters such as the bazelgeuse could get a clue and stop intruding every second, attacking your prey but also, always, unavoidably hitting your character as well; 4. the monsters have presence, they sure feel like living dinosaurs walking around, and oftentimes they are so big the camera will commit seppuku altogether and a monster will occupy the full screen, while you won’t be able to figure out for many seconds where you are or what (or if) you are hitting; 5. hitboxes are not, uh, perfect: sometimes, many monsters are clearly coded so that the air they move around can still halve you HP while others can move around and, as long as you aren’t precisely where they are targeting, you won’t get hit. This last one may very well be intentional, but if it is so then it’s a weird design choice to artificially inflate difficulty, in a game that otherwise teaches you to value every space you and the monsters occupy.

MHW looks and sounds beautifully. Just like games such as the witcher 3, the souls series, MGSV and so on, there is an almost surreal and gripping ambience in every map, an absurd amount of secrets, trails and areas to discover, a rich palette of colours. It is just so satisfying to walk around, crawling in caves and climbing rock walls, and end up in a place where flying glowing jellyfishes abound, surrounded by rainbow-tinted corals, and you’d just be there for minutes and stare at this fantastically magnificent atmosphere, while immersing in the sounds of nature.

All in all, MHW is an experience I thoroughly recommend, as long as your computer specs allow it and it doesn’t systematically burn your CPU like, as I understand it, was a clear intentional joke on the behalf of capcom, undoubtedly in cahoots with the CPU manufactures industry. There is potentially endless fun to be had in the game, one of the best modern-day multiplayer experience to have with friends or newly met strangers online (just don’t accept any cough herbal remedy candy they offer you) and certainly a landmark for future looting-based action games. (Editor’s note: it’s been almost three years since MHW released and almost no game learned a thing from it. Game industry, what is wrong with you, you absolute fuc–

I think it is impossible to discuss the value of Little Busters! without focusing on how it achieves to be a successful emotional ride. Did I cry or was I moved? Yeah, I did, something like seven years ago when I first read it. This time around, after the Steam release, I found myself much less impressed by some portions of drama which, admittedly, oftentimes feel just thrown around for the sake of exasperating the melodrama. Also, the plot is mostly goofy and juvenile, some nice spins are given here and there, while the prose does its job it is largely mediocre, and if you won’t find the humour and the chemistry between the characters compelling you’re in for a tour de force rather than a pleasant tale about friendships.

However, the thing about the power of Little Busters! is how being aware of all of its shortcomings doesn’t affect my appreciation of the work Visual Art’s did here, at all. Maybe Little Busters! wouldn’t work magnificently as a story, but it sure is impressive as a visual novel: whilst many similar works would limit themselves to introduce characters and let you focus on a fixated path following which one interested you the most, Little Busters! add far more branch and choices, sometimes seemingly pointless, to let the player experience a bountiful of side contents, comedic or lore-related vignettes, and secrets hidden all over the place that just ask to be found. There’s also the gameplay, in the form of several quick mini-games which range from baseball practice to a fighting tournament, from hunting down mysterious creatures (which give a pretty hilarious insight on the character of Kyousuke) to serving in a cafeteria. And the impressive thing is how all of these are plot related, not because how the gameplay fits into the story but how because how much they reciprocally influence each other. I can’t emphasize enough how I adore the way this novel build around its theme by slightly changing, after each playthrough, some minor bits of it to give a more concrete idea of the characters changing and developing after major events, and the more obvious way to notice this would be, in fact, to check the protagonists’ stats at the beginning of each tournament.

As the story is in its surface state, I wouldn’t think much of it beside it being a heart-warming bildungsroman focused on friendship, but the care put into its every detail, from the immense content hidden in it to the game direction heavily helping the narrative with a pretty fitting musical score and spot-on CG events, raised it to being of my favourite product of its medium.