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–

The long awaited third chapter to the Zero Escape series, which for a long time almost didn’t exist if it wasn’t for the continuous support of a devoted and invested fanbase. Zero Time Dilemma is many things: it’s the overarching conclusion to a cult sci-fi thriller series, it’s an attempt to square every thread left unwind during the previous games, it is an experiment of how far will people passively accept faux-science in lieu of common sense; it’s a thriller devoid of real suspense, a conspiracy story where the conspirators never show up, a sci-fi with so much fiction and so little science, a character driven drama where the characters are almost non-existent and lack any sort of humanity and coherent development. Zero Time Dilemma is many things, hardly any of them is good, well developed or new to the general audience.

The story itself won’t require many spoilers as it is more of a giant meme than a serious narrative by this point. Uchikoshi Koutarou came back and decided to strip everything that made previous game enjoyable and memorable – the style, the characters, the mystery, the sci-fi implications – and instead decided to bring everything the players had previously know from the series to a climax consisting solely of SNAILS, of ANCIENT ALIENS and COMPLEX MOTIVES.

Characters still are probably the worst offenders of this game, even more so than the dumbed down puzzles and idiotic narrative: new characters are either disconnected completely from the plot or have one very specific role that is either fix the holes in the narrative or being a hole in the narrative; old characters are unrecognizable from their former selves and probably fit into the story even worse than their new counterparts. You would’ve loved to see some of your favourite come back with their wits and humour to spice things up and get their deserved good ending? Too bad, instead everyone is now a massive unlikeable c-nt and they will gladly leave the centre stage to some lame bugger, like the kid with Yoko Taro’s mask or Carlos.

The graphics are also at their lowest ever. The rigid models in Virtue’s Last Reward were an offense to the eye but at least they stayed put and pretended to be sprites, now instead someone woke up and decided to try a full-fledged cinematographic approach by adding camera movements and panning over the models, probably just to show off their immense ugliness. The facial expressions are more comically rigid than ever, movements just robotically stiff and there is an impossible amount of time lost between unskippable idle animations during replays.

More often than not the game actively punishes you for thinking ahead about the possible solutions, as the most predictable and inconsequential answers will almost always be the correct ones, leaving one without the feeling of reward for actively solving the mystery but more like an accomplice to the huge joke that is the storytelling in this game.

Do you feel the unsurmountable urge to complete each and everything you ever begin, have a fetish for train wrecks and C O M P L E X M O T I V E S, or generally like to enjoy your own anger? By all mean, this game was made with you in mind as the target audience.

Uchikoshi Koutarou is a weird author: he has a knack for writing some engaging character driven dialogues and a vast knowledge about physics and philosophy that he loves to implement in his games, although he tends to recycle a good deal of its own ideas and tropes. And by that, I mean all of them. Always.
Yet it is rare to found an author with a knowledge so vast and so little clue as to what to use it for.

The Zero Escape series is probably one of the better examples of this duality.

As for the gameplay, each one plays like a classic point and click adventure with minigames, investigation and logic to be used to solve progressively challenging rooms to find clues to solve the immediate puzzles and the overall mystery. Be aware though Monkey Island it is not, and every enigma in each game will prove less challenging the more the players are proficient at remembering easy details and checking the in-game encyclopaedia. It feels rewarding solving these puzzle rooms on your own but the challenge bar is set very low and accessible for everyone who doesn’t like being stuck thinking too much.

What really buggers these games although is the absurdity extremes to which the plot and the characters are being constantly driven to, often writing themselves into a corner that progressively gets narrower at each game. The premise isn’t even that bad, without spoiling anything the first title, 9 Hours 9 People 9 Doors, is very engaging, the outset might be silly and cliched – group of people trapped in a death or life situation and restrained in a close environment surrounded by the sea, the Infinity series is calling and wants their synopsis back – but still it presents a serious life or death situations with different colourful and charismatic characters. They are memorable and the banter is great between some of them, you are invested and want to discover what they hide under the surface: why they were kidnapped and brought here?, how come they know so much about complex scientific and philosophical topics?, is one of them secretly helping the mastermind villain and if so why?, what are the ultimate motives to bring some apparently unrelated people together and constantly try to murder them but always leaving a fair chance to escape unscathed? The finale is silly but it revolves around these same characters the players have grown attached to, so even if the story leaves some holes, unfinished plotlines, weird narratives and cliff-hangers, there isn’t any real feel that any of these questions need to be answered to feel a proper closure.


Then Virtue’s Last Reward happens. It seemingly starts in a very similar vein to 999 but despite some more challenging puzzles and complex multi-layered plot structure, it goes where the story shouldn’t have never gone: focusing on the sci-fi mumbo jumbos rather than the likable characters. There is still some hilarious banter and relatable moments thorough the story but, rather than with the purpose of escaping and survive, everything is now done for the sake of playing with a straight face through absurd plot twists and world-threatening menaces that never feel real or immediate, as the characters are still trapped in a locked environment with only newspapers and some scattered info about what has happened outside, far from them.

The recurring characters are underused or completely different from what they were in 999, most of the cast is either expendable or plain useless to the story, being there just for the sake of being there, and the unlikeable ♥♥♥♥ that looks like the villain since the beginning of the game is, in fact, the villain. At a certain point it is clear that all seemingly importance given to the characters is being replaced by the exaggerated need to surprise the players but the punchline is akin to having someone set up a surprise birthday party so meticulous and contrived that they eventually get the date wrong.

Moreover, VLR also throws away a great deal of the charm from 999 by replacing simple but detailed 2D sprites with horrendous 3D models with comically hilarious and stiff expressions and stock movements that resemble more underproduced robots than animated characters. You can turn off the voice acting, which is amazing in both games, but you can’t turn off those models from showing at every turn and being still in idle animations with an unconcerned face about their death or life situation.

I still recommend both games because the immersion is equally strong in both of them – until the latter stages of Virtue’s Last Reward at least – and, even if it doesn’t mean much as a compliment, in no part of that game they will sunk as low as in the third instalment, Zero Time Dilemma.

The big one, the video game that defined them all, the magnus opus that created a standard still used today and inspired almost every good survival horror to come. The controls, the setting, the atmosphere, the annoying but carefully placed jump scares. It wasn’t the first of its genre but the original Resident Evil implemented what every horror game had to show at the time – from previous Capcom titles such as Sweet Home to the western Alone in the Dark – along with the movie culture from the 80s, from Shining to Romero’s movies. All of these inspirations combined created a frightful journey of horror but with an over-the-top plot worthy of the worst, best American B-movie. Despite the low budget, they utilized whichever mean they had to craft the most immersive experience as possible, the pre-rendered backgrounds and the doors opening that create tension but are ultimately there to hide the loading times are two examples of this.

What came was a revolutionary game that set the bar and defined its medium, and still today this HD iteration, an upgrade over the Nintendo Gamecube remake of the game, of the first Resident Evil still holds as solid as ever. The tank controls might be unfamiliar for some but it is a deliberate and necessary choice to truly delve into the narrow and unsettling hallways of the mansion, where at every corner a disturbing sound or a tough enemy could be in wait to eat the players’ necks and immediate response is required without feeling confused over where to turn. The fixed camera all the more reinforces this feeling of dread and helplessness because, despite being fully armed and distant from the enemies, there will be many times where the players won’t be able to immediately see the zombies, nor realise how far and safe they are from danger.

The enemies’ placement, the puzzles and the difficulty spikes are all still highly accessible and rewarding to overcome today as they were over 20 years ago, the game has only ever improved and it still plays beautifully on every system blessed enough to have a port of its own. The series might have had its ups and downs and many old fans might be only pleased with the second remake of the series now since it’s the only game in years that tried to replicate the original feeling instead of fully committing to action set pieces, camp entertainment or the reboot RE7 tried to do, but this first chapter is still a milestone under every department, and it won’t yield its throne anytime soon.

Spawned from the depth of a convent full of dead brothers, armed with a sword which impaled a guilty god-fearing woman, set out to crash the Church ruling over Cvstodia by dismembering its minions in graphically brutal ways, so the Penitent One rises and begins his blasphemous crusade.

Produced by the Spanish team of The Game Kitchen, Blasphemous was developed utilizing all of the studio’s knowledge about their historical heritage, from the catholic domination and the holy inquisition to recreate a game that would feel as grim, corrupted and uncomfortable as living during the medieval times of witch hunts and executions might have felt. Relics, equipment and collectibles depict with their lore a frightening picture of a world where religion has taken over not only people lives but also their minds, in the name of a faith that should give hope but at what price. All around the game map people are living in penance and fear of God, seeking atonement for their sins, whichever they might be, and being punished both by the environment and by themselves.

Even enemies and bosses are curiously shown to use flog and other torture instruments both on the player’s character and on themselves, so the theme runs deeply within the game. As per why they do this, the plot is complex and multi-layered but simple on the surface: stylistically it heavily borrows its narrative from the tradition of games more interested in building a setting and letting its characters, item descriptions and visual clues to do the narration, rather than having a clear cut and linear narrative. There is no need to spoil anything, as the general premise of the game as well as its synopsis are enough to know what to expect. Everything else, from the symbolism to the themes of the game, is better to discover for themselves.

Another huge inspiration for the game is obvious, the old school metroidvania style of interconnected areas with secrets, mobs, recurring enemies, checkpoints and impressive bosses that block the players path. A huge difference, coming instead from the souls-like inspirations of the game, is how there is no linear path to follow, nor areas blocked by a lack of abilities, keys or requirements. At any given time, since the beginning of the game, the map would sprawl to multiple areas, some arguably easier than others, but each identically opened to the players’ decision as per where to explore.

Technically speaking, Blasphemous is very impressive in its depiction of a fantastical and eerie medieval European setting. The pixel art is detailed and charming to look at, there are many details both in the platforming areas, in the enemies and the backgrounds to look at, so to discern what their story and lore are. Aside from a few non-game breaking glitches and rare hitboxes fault it also plays very responsively to the players inputs. The soundtrack also relies on music fitting for the Spanish and religious environment, with sacred choirs, classic guitars and other tunes to accompany a horrific journey toward a paradise that looks more like a hell.

A license game that plays it safe and somehow manages to succeed even without putting anything new to the table. Mad Max isn’t an easy game to recommend, it doesn’t do anything of note and those who would love it are probably two distinct categories: the fan of its setting, especially of the latest film – Fury Road, – and those who indiscriminately like open world sandboxes with nothing much to do except repeat the same chores and find the same meaningless collectibles over and over again. If you are familiar with any recent UbiSoft titles, that’s basically it.

This time tho you get a sick sport car and also the option to pimp it as you see fit. That is quite fun.

No really, the best part of the game is in its car. You can modify basically every part of it, it rides magnificently and sounds even better. You feel invested in upgrading it and it is a pure joy to ride it everywhere, inside sandstorms, on empty roads, during battles and as a battering ram during sieges on enemy bases. The world is a huge barren wasteland that perfectly reflects the setting of the original movies, but both the characters and the plot lack the insightful mind of the original author, George Miller, and the enjoyable and trash punchline of the 80s. Players are going to do quests and side quests more for the heck of it and a urge to complete everything rather than for any sort of attachment to the titular main character – a huge downgrade both from Mel Gibson and Tom Hardy tbh – or any other character for that matter.

Nevertheless, the game is engaging if played in small doses so not to feel loaded by its monotony and sameness. Avalanche studio certainly made it looks beautiful and it is significantly optimised for PC performances. If you just like strolling around in your ride and punch the everliving sh-t out of mobs with a combat system akin to the Batman Arkham series – because that was the combat system which was ‘in’ at the time – then this game will provide tens of hours of pure enjoyment and thrill.

I am helplessly biased toward this game. It was one of the first games I was shown on the PlayStation from a dear friend of mine, it opened me to the concept of games so huge – for the time – that they could sprawl over four discs. Its first opening hours are still some of the most variegated – for all its contents, secrets and minigames – and narratively engaging a JRPGs has ever conceived. The cast of characters is diverse, huge, memorable, sympathetic, lovable, funny, miserable. The narrative is something few games have topped to this day – Nier and its sequel come to mind – as it deals with the usual grand adventure of saving the world from the great evil but with the more subtle themes of existentialism, of finding one’s own purpose in life and accepting when you can’t, of dealing with the inevitability of death, of losing those dears to you, of the importance of the future but to always cherish your roots for they have made you the person you are today, for better or worse. Final Fantasy IX taught me to love steampunk, a genre which is basically dead aside from video games and some Japanese comics. Forever, willingly or not, this will be my benchmark for fantasy narrative in games and so on.

Final Fantasy IX was the return to a more classic approach to the series fantastical and magical roots after the more sci-fi oriented ones that preceded it – the ones so popular they are still referenced in Kingdom Hearts – and it is a grandiose return. Sakaguchi Hironobu created what he would later call his favourite game of the series, what encapsulates the most the concept behind the words ‘Final Fantasy’ and its roots as a series based on Medieval Europe and its mythology. The result is a product clearly influenced by Northern European and Norse myths but still quintessentially Japanese in how it plays out and blends sci-fi and fantasy to craft something inherently new and idiosyncratic, for its time at least.

The gameplay was streamlined from the previous iteration but the simplicity didn’t make it any less enjoyable and cunning. Levelling up is as easy as it was in the first games of the series, whilst abilities are tied to equipment and can be permanently learnt the more fights one characters wins with a particular item equipped. Some abilities are secretly tied to in-game mechanic, such as how many dragons have the party defeated, how many ores and minerals are in the inventory and how many steals were successfully achieved during battles. The trance mechanic could use some improvement, especially in the remaster, if not for the option, always felt needed, to activate it at any given time instead of automatically triggering whenever the corresponding bar is full. Still, as the combat is rewarding and presents many possible approaches to defeat particular enemies, after many hours no one will care if they can’t activate the trance during a precise phase of a difficult super boss. Also, the eidolons are as pleasant to summon as ever, they pack a megaton punch and are accompanied by some of the most inspired and impressive cutscene available during the PSX era.

Nevertheless, what it really matters, the soundtrack, is still as beautiful and outstanding as it has always been. Uematsu Nobuo is one of the greatest masters for video games music and this chapter of Final Fantasy has proved itself to be another badge of pride in his curriculum. The tunes are nostalgic, adventurous, romantic and melancholic at the same time. There are multiple versions of Melodies of life that plays at different times, each one perfectly in tune with the mood of the scene. The Place I'll Return to Someday is striking as the opening menu theme and all the more once put into context for what its title mean, both during the various events in the game and during its final climax. There could be many things to say about each track and how well put into the environment they are, but it’d take a whole review on the music alone.

Final Fantasy IX is a trip back to a time of nostalgia and discover, when young kids found themselves engaged by a thrilling fantasy adventure and had to deal with the first realization that in life many things more than simply games and story have to end. Today the script might be cheesy and simplistic at times, but the importance and value of its moral, as well as the passion its developers put into the realization of this game, are something that, alas, we rarely get to see in the industry.

Atelier Rorona encapsulates many of the greatest aspect from the franchise. The alchemy is intriguing and makes you invest and experiment for hours in your laboratory; the characters are simple yet engaging in their daily life; the plot tells a simple tale about commitment and growth in a capitalistic society where you are asked to deliver what is basically your tax form to the central government every three months. I find this game very relatable.

The charm of the Atelier series has always been in its depiction of a quieter, more down to earth reality than the usual JRPGs focused on parties of heroes going on world adventures to defeat the raging evil that threatens the peace and ordinary life. The Atelier series focus exactly on that peace and ordinary life, showing the ordinary occurrences of people dealing with significant life events – as much as a fantasy world can prove relatable. All of this revolving around the titular character, Rorona, a young but dreamy girl – as per the series standard – caught in an unpleasant debacle, due to her unreliable master, with the local government trying to shut down the atelier she works in as an alchemist. Compared to the later iterations of the series, Rorona will have to struggle against a time limit to fulfil the periodical requests and keep the atelier in business, with the help of a delightful cast of side characters who will help Rorona in her growth from an insecure and apprehensive girl to a confident and capable alchemist.

The narrative is certainly not anything to call masterful or insightful, but it works nicely considering that the game is all about feeling the immersion of working as an alchemist, and that is why the world built around this concept has to grow cosy and comfortable to the players, so to think that it’s worth coming back to the city Arland, to help its people and find that quiet, daily respite. The endings are also influenced by the amount of care and commitment put to fulfil each major request, so if one were to grow attached to the characters and Rorona herself the game will reward that care by showing every possible finale related to each character’s scenario.

Unfortunately, another recurring standard for the series is having both the town and the world hugely uninspired and lacking interactivity or any deeper narrative to further strengthen that feeling of attachment and importance behind the role of alchemist. There is no interesting hidden flavour text like the Legend of Heroes series, nor quests that require your full attention and devotion to explore each nook and cranny of the map at large. There is Rorona, some good side characters with nice stories and colourful personalities – Gio, Cornelia, Lionela, Esty to name a few – but that’s about it, most of the town of Arland will always be filled with characters’ models that speak when prompted but don’t necessarily say anything to make you feel like they are fellow citizens.

The adventurer gameplay is also quite standard, even though, being the debut chapter on PlayStation 3, it revamped some old mechanics from the previous games in the series. The battle system is standard turn-based combat with combo attacks and defence, whilst gathering material is entirely based on which area you are exploring, regardless of the time of the day, the level of your characters and so on. Some side bonuses will raise the quality of items but by the endgame there will be some areas easily more compelling to use as gathering points than others.

Once again, the meat of the game lies in the alchemy system. Those familiar with the Fushigi trilogy will be probably disappointed by how bare the crafting is in this game, it doesn’t have any complex grid over the cauldron and the chance to get particular good traits solely depends on mixing the right components of high enough value. Yet, considering the sheer amount of effects and traits achievable and the vast quantity of items and equipment available for crafting, one will spend tens of hours experimenting between possible combinations to achieve that perfect healing item, that perfect bomb or that perfect armours and weapons.

Graphically the DX version also presents the improved characters models from the Plus edition of the game, rather than the more simplistic and meagre ones from the original PS3 release. The sprites are wonderfully expressive and beautifully drawn to show the best of the character designer, Kishida Mel, abilities. Alas, the world and the enemies lack a general care put into making them look diverse of interesting to look at, the dungeons are mostly linear with very few details and aesthetic values and many monsters are reskins from previous weaker mobs. The secret super bosses are somewhat interesting to look at and challenging, a lot of care will be put in crafting equipment just to defeat them, but there are very few of them and with the right set of items their fights will play as precise and uneventfully mechanical as a clockwork.

Atelier Rorona began a new era for its series, the era where, from being only renowned in Japan, the series went big on console in the west and became a niche product for the foreign audience. To have the whole trilogy at disposal on Steam, and also considering the numerous porting and remasters these particular titles received, is yet again a sign that proves how Koei Tecmo is fully aware of the huge popularity of the Arland games, particularly for nostalgic fans but also to make them accessible to newer players, who’d love to try a quieter approach to JRPGs.

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.

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided received at launch many negative reviews for its lack of a clear cut conclusion to a plotline that definitely couldn’t end with this game – as the first Deus Ex in 2000 still exist apparently – and because of Square Enix egregious policy of shipping the game with an online mode nobody asked for, which turned out to be another cash grab for people with money spending disorders. Also, the onetime use only DLCs. These two latter are probably the worst offenders, as the lack of definitive conclusion could either be justified on the developer part as an intentional choice to respect the series canon or to make Mankind Divided work as a middle chapter much like Mass Effect 2 did already for its own saga. Sure, there are enough reasons to call out on Square Enix for being a greedy company that preys on its brands’ legacy, let’s not push too much stress on the guys at Eidos.

I digress.

Mankind Divided works as a direct sequel to Human Revolution, more or less. What happened in the two years gap between the games is never fully explained, and suddenly the series shifted from being a cyberpunk spy story about mega corps and their wrongdoings to a tale about the problem of racism and social acceptance in the modern and futuristic society. Considering the sci-fi setting, this new premise works beautifully intertwined with renowned cyberpunk thematic, especially in our modern times where it is apparently important to remind people what bring racism to arise and why it is important to actively argument against it. Or maybe, more simply, Square Enix ordered Eidos to remove any reference to massive corporations being evil and all since they have become one themselves in the last decade.

I digress again.

The plotline is more of the same from previous games and the characters aren’t much different or interesting either, they are actually quantifiably less memorable than any previous major titles of the series since there is a lack of significant development for any of them, nor the charisma previous casts had. The gameplay also is almost identical to Human Revolution, except for some new augmentations which are funny to play with but rarely really useful on the long run if the players liked the series for its stealth approach rather than the ability to use a massive plasma cannon or firing explosive blades. Especially since the game actually rewards players the less they raise alarms and kill anyone, so it would be counterproductive to use most of these new destructive gadgets. Shame tho.

What makes the game shine and be worth the purchase, especially now since the prolonged negative responses to it made it terrific cheap to buy, is the magnificent and vast hub of Prague City, full of secrets, quests to be discovered and it generally makes the game into a glorious cyberpunk sandbox stealth game. That’s where hours will be spent, choosing different routes to same objectives, trying to unlock everything before the player is even able to reach that point and just getting lost in the massively and detailed world of the Czech’s futuristic capital. If you think this kind of freedom united with the renowned stealth mechanics are enough to interest you, then the game will be a blast, albeit the replay value will probably be mostly lost if the challenge of higher difficulties or the storyline aren’t of interest, since doing everything from the top again will prove to be quite tedious without the incentive of interesting collectibles, aside from lore related e-books and scarce achievements from doing random stuff and side quests.

These side quests are often times smartly written and integrated with the setting, but many times are either completely disjointed from the plot or feel pointless and just a massive waste of time considering the backtrack involved. They are however a nice distraction and incentive to further explore what might have been missed in the giant hub.

Mankind Divided is on many levels a great upgrade to its previous iteration, for what concerns the technical department – graphic, music, some gameplay mechanic, – but on many others it feels surely incomplete and missing the gripping storytelling the series is famous for. It is still one of the best and rare examples of a modern well-done cyberpunk video game, or a first-person hybrid RPG-stealth video game for that matter.

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.

Years past its PlayStation3 debut, Vanquish is still the highest realization of third person shooters videogames. It implements the easy, familiar and stale cover mechanics made mainstream by Gears of War, Uncharted and Mass Effect, then shatters them by evolving the system to new and still today unreached heights. Cover mechanics are usually built to make the players feel protected during gunfights, safe spots that restrict movements, making the game akin to a less explicit tower defence; they feel derivative and rarely rewarding since, aside adding maybe different weapons thorough the playthrough or forcing incentives to move from one cover to another, once you played a cover shooter the general gameplay will always be identical.

Then along came Platinum Games, they decided that staying put picking out enemies from safe spots was slow and bollocks and crafted an eight-hour long joyride in outer space, with augmented movesets, faster combats in larger arenas and their signature excessive aesthetic of B-movie camp dialogues and relentless action. Vanquish major gameplay’s accomplishments are in its implementation of the Augmented Reaction (AR) suit and its versatility: this AR suit allows the utilization of boosters to rapidly traverse the game areas, ram into enemies, change covers, as a vast and more powerful sprint mechanic. Not so rare for cover shooters is also the dedicated dodge button, but unlike other more – tentatively – ‘realistic’ videogames, in Vanquish there is no input or animation delay, the dodge is omnidirectional and with immediate, if none, recovery time, thus guaranteeing quick means of evasion and closing in on enemies.

Another Platinum’s well-known gadget is the AR mode, a device to slow time, reminiscent of Bayonetta’s Witch Time, that enhances precise aim and favours more calculated movements. AR mode however has to be triggered via players’ movement of the character, be it a dodge, a boost sprint, a drop kick against an enemy, vaulting out of cover, thus incentivising the players to actively leave covers and experiment with the versatile combat. Alternatively, receiving too much damage and being put in critical condition will automatically trigger the AR mode, yet also deplete its charge completely, as would an abuse of boost and AR mode. The ingenious thing is, once the AR suit is overheating and the players temporarily lose the ability too boost and slow time, it doesn’t immediately equate to a death sentence, there always is the safe having of taking cover and letting both the suit and health points regenerate: meaning, the game’s ‘punishment’ for lacking resources management is to play a standard cover shooter. How lovely.

Vanquish though failed to find strong public recognition in its lifetime, because aside from its revolutionary, immensely fun and hard to master gameplay, and for the high-quality production in cutscenes and graphic, the rest of the package is rather bland. Sound design does its job, but there is nothing impressive in both soundtrack and gunplay, which are hardly distinguishable from other products of the same genre. Enemies design lack variety and interesting mechanic to counter, will all of them, small and big, playing the same with annoying long-range distractions and close quarter devastating one-hit kills. Visually speaking there also isn’t much to look at, even bosses are devoid of the usual Platinum’s intentionally grandiose scale, with intricated mechanical designs and diverse battles, as they were, for example, in Binary Domain.


Speaking of Binary Domain, the screenwriter could’ve also used some more inspiration from better science-fiction sources. While the latter videogame could offer a compelling narrative, with clear developed characters, in Vanquish things seem to happen mostly just because: the story’s premise revolves around a terror attack and a war declaration to the US from a Russian space colony, which is promptly invaded and made theatre of mayhem. All in all there are about five or six recurring characters and none of them seems to have strong motivations to achieve anything; there is a mission to accomplish, but it is as empty as generic as the quest mark on the minimap, with no personal struggle in between nor certainly any social commentary about terrorism and the dark side of politics. Most of the time something happens just so stuff can blow up, a la Michael Bay but with even less pretence of seriousness.

It is a mess, but indeed a beautiful mess to look at, and even more beautiful and engaging to play.

What does make a good platform and puzzle videogame? Is it the unresponsive controls? Or maybe the luck-based stages with instant deaths? Probably it’s how abilities’ lag may cause losing time and many more deaths. Some may argue it is the long backtracking from checkpoints to the actual puzzles, with slow sections in between where control is taken from the players, thus making the videogame a glorified slide show. Others will say “No, it’s how control inputs overlap with each other, so every move is always a shot in the dark”. But then again, can we forget the huge importance of having slow characters during segments that require perfect, immediate reflex to achieve success? As well as how important is to have precise movements nullified because the characters’ idle animations, like breathing and floating, still lead to death as they are out of the players control? My favourite though has to be having controls mirrored for an entire chapter but the camera still functioning as normal, so that the players cannot see where they are going and move in that direction at the same time. Priceless.

So, really, what does make a good platform and puzzle videogame? Because I don’t know anymore.

What I do know is that blind trial and error does not equate to a balanced learning curve, just as banging the head against a door does not equate to finding the key to open it. Putting aside how highly impractical that is, most importantly it can’t be described, by no means, as a fun experience.

“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.

“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.