wavebeem
In many ways this game completely blows its predecessor (Reverie Under the Moonlight, aka RUTM) out of the water.
The pixel art is gorgeous. The animation is fluid. The lighting and 3D effects are subtle and go so well with the visuals. The music is fantastic.
I loved exploring the map and collecting stuff. I got 110% completion. I might go back to finish off the 111% completion, but it just involves some less interesting content I don't feel like playing.
The difficulty is overall pretty low, especially if you actually equip all the good sigils you find. Unfortunately the new companion system feels very weak. They don't do enough to really warrant being more than a pretty little sprite following you around.
I'm not sure the game really benefited from having a stamina meter, and the later game transformation you receive wasn't around long enough for me to get much use out of it.
Most of the game was pretty easy, but the last two areas had enemies that could blitz down your health in a jiffy if you messed up. Not too hard, just weirdly had more deaths exploring than I did fighting bosses in this game.
All of the multi-phase boss fights are really fun and cool. Only one boss fight was a bummer for me (the blob).
Sometimes the cool graphical effects and pretty sprite overlays were hard to see and I took damage because I couldn't tell what was happening.
The story and characters felt a bit more involved and interesting than the previous title.
The game also very much feels like the farewell in its name. You can tell Bombservice really wanted to make the biggest and best Momodora game. Even if I'm not sure that actually makes me like it more than RUTM, it's a very impressive game.
Also, if you avoided Minoria, I think you should go back and give it a shot. I liked it more than most, but I think it certainly didn't deserve the hate that it got.
The pixel art is gorgeous. The animation is fluid. The lighting and 3D effects are subtle and go so well with the visuals. The music is fantastic.
I loved exploring the map and collecting stuff. I got 110% completion. I might go back to finish off the 111% completion, but it just involves some less interesting content I don't feel like playing.
The difficulty is overall pretty low, especially if you actually equip all the good sigils you find. Unfortunately the new companion system feels very weak. They don't do enough to really warrant being more than a pretty little sprite following you around.
I'm not sure the game really benefited from having a stamina meter, and the later game transformation you receive wasn't around long enough for me to get much use out of it.
Most of the game was pretty easy, but the last two areas had enemies that could blitz down your health in a jiffy if you messed up. Not too hard, just weirdly had more deaths exploring than I did fighting bosses in this game.
All of the multi-phase boss fights are really fun and cool. Only one boss fight was a bummer for me (the blob).
Sometimes the cool graphical effects and pretty sprite overlays were hard to see and I took damage because I couldn't tell what was happening.
The story and characters felt a bit more involved and interesting than the previous title.
The game also very much feels like the farewell in its name. You can tell Bombservice really wanted to make the biggest and best Momodora game. Even if I'm not sure that actually makes me like it more than RUTM, it's a very impressive game.
Also, if you avoided Minoria, I think you should go back and give it a shot. I liked it more than most, but I think it certainly didn't deserve the hate that it got.
2016
[I played Titanfall 1's multiplayer but never Titanfall 2]
The campaign is quite good. The story isn't anything amazing from like an overall perspective, but the relationship of the Pilot with BT is fantastic.
I also love how they made all the pilot interactions with BT optional, in case you find them "too much" and wanted to cut off the conversation (though I enjoyed most of them and wanted to explore all the options).
The Titan battles themselves feel a bit frustrating, especially because it seems like the different Titan loadouts are not balanced very well for single player.
The prefab housing level was incredible, and the time travel level was also pretty interesting. Wall running feels just as good as in Titanfall 1, but you don't have to worry about getting blasted in multiplayer while you figure it out.
Pretty cool game.
The campaign is quite good. The story isn't anything amazing from like an overall perspective, but the relationship of the Pilot with BT is fantastic.
I also love how they made all the pilot interactions with BT optional, in case you find them "too much" and wanted to cut off the conversation (though I enjoyed most of them and wanted to explore all the options).
The Titan battles themselves feel a bit frustrating, especially because it seems like the different Titan loadouts are not balanced very well for single player.
The prefab housing level was incredible, and the time travel level was also pretty interesting. Wall running feels just as good as in Titanfall 1, but you don't have to worry about getting blasted in multiplayer while you figure it out.
Pretty cool game.
Great romhack for one of my favorite games of all time.
2020
I wish I liked this game more.
The Game Boy Color is my favorite gaming device and the 2D Zelda games are massively important to me.
Sadly, the game is a lot less like Zelda than I expected. The game gives you all 3 items very quickly (like in Breath of the Wild) and then everything after that is just about making the puzzles more annoying and littered with distractions and enemies and traps, rather than building on top of things or challenging you to solve new types of puzzles.
The combat is nothing special, but that's par for the course with a topdown Zelda-like.
Weirdly this game has a marriage mechanic. I married the bunny girl, but it all felt very sudden. It's not a visual novel, so there's not a lot of time to develop characters. That being said, it does way better at that than you'd expect given that it looks like a GBC Zelda game.
Difficulty was really weird. It's mostly not that hard, but the game never lets you heal inside of dungeons. Not potions or heart pickups or anything. You can buy an item that resurrects you once, for 100g. Money is plentiful since nothing else drops in this game, but it's tedious having to go back and buy that constantly, or use the teleporter to go home and get your HP back before a boss.
I managed to get the credits to roll, but the post-credits game is very uh, "self directed". The game appears to be full to the brim with secrets and bonus dungeons and stuff, but it's all a bit obtuse for me and I was losing steam on the puzzle/dungoen design, so I decided to skip most of the post credits stuff.
The Game Boy Color is my favorite gaming device and the 2D Zelda games are massively important to me.
Sadly, the game is a lot less like Zelda than I expected. The game gives you all 3 items very quickly (like in Breath of the Wild) and then everything after that is just about making the puzzles more annoying and littered with distractions and enemies and traps, rather than building on top of things or challenging you to solve new types of puzzles.
The combat is nothing special, but that's par for the course with a topdown Zelda-like.
Weirdly this game has a marriage mechanic. I married the bunny girl, but it all felt very sudden. It's not a visual novel, so there's not a lot of time to develop characters. That being said, it does way better at that than you'd expect given that it looks like a GBC Zelda game.
Difficulty was really weird. It's mostly not that hard, but the game never lets you heal inside of dungeons. Not potions or heart pickups or anything. You can buy an item that resurrects you once, for 100g. Money is plentiful since nothing else drops in this game, but it's tedious having to go back and buy that constantly, or use the teleporter to go home and get your HP back before a boss.
I managed to get the credits to roll, but the post-credits game is very uh, "self directed". The game appears to be full to the brim with secrets and bonus dungeons and stuff, but it's all a bit obtuse for me and I was losing steam on the puzzle/dungoen design, so I decided to skip most of the post credits stuff.
2022
What a strange game. The story has some obvious twists and some wilder ones. I didn't even expect much of any story.
Sadly, the writing clearly needs some editing. There's a lot of reptitive / throwaway dialogue. Also, the English localization is pretty stiff / unnatural sounding, and there's quite a few grammar mistakes.
I did tear up a bit at the ending though, so there's some merit to the story.
I wish the gameplay was a bit more engaging though. Grapple swinging is really fun, but the game feels really drawn out. Too many levels and they all go on a little too long. Boss fights are quite un-fun to me.
Personally I'd say put the game on easy so you don't have to respawn when taking too much damage. There's enough "reset to checkpoint" instant things anyway that this just makes the game a bit smoother. I turned it on for the final boss and left it on for the bit of game after that just to speed things up.
The game has some weird pacing with lots and lots of dialogue and flashbacks, as well as the padded feeling levels. I legitimately thought I was almost done with this game probably 2 or 3 times. I spent close to 15 hours when I thought this was gonna be more of a 6 hour game. And frankly I think the game would be better that way.
[EDIT] oh i forgot to mention, there's some parts that are very visually difficult to look at. many instances of flashing lights and screen fading to white. definitely eye-watering at times.
Sadly, the writing clearly needs some editing. There's a lot of reptitive / throwaway dialogue. Also, the English localization is pretty stiff / unnatural sounding, and there's quite a few grammar mistakes.
I did tear up a bit at the ending though, so there's some merit to the story.
I wish the gameplay was a bit more engaging though. Grapple swinging is really fun, but the game feels really drawn out. Too many levels and they all go on a little too long. Boss fights are quite un-fun to me.
Personally I'd say put the game on easy so you don't have to respawn when taking too much damage. There's enough "reset to checkpoint" instant things anyway that this just makes the game a bit smoother. I turned it on for the final boss and left it on for the bit of game after that just to speed things up.
The game has some weird pacing with lots and lots of dialogue and flashbacks, as well as the padded feeling levels. I legitimately thought I was almost done with this game probably 2 or 3 times. I spent close to 15 hours when I thought this was gonna be more of a 6 hour game. And frankly I think the game would be better that way.
[EDIT] oh i forgot to mention, there's some parts that are very visually difficult to look at. many instances of flashing lights and screen fading to white. definitely eye-watering at times.
2023
Lightfall itself was highly disappointing. Neomuna was not fun as a patrol zone, drop rates for weapons were awful. The story. God, the story. Congrats for adding the first(?) nonbinary character to Destiny, but the writing for them was truly atrocious. Caiatl should've been way more important in the story than she was, too. Sadly, this whole campaign is a filler arc from an anime. One big training montage while old man Osiris yells at us.
The complete revamp of buildcrafting is godsend.
The seasonal content hasn't excited me as much this year, but it's still solid enough.
The soundtrack is great but I do prefer the music from The Witch Queen.
Dungeons this year have been pretty good. Ghosts of the Deep is unfortunately a bit of a slog to me, but I still think it's gorgeous and interesting. Warlord's Ruin is genuinely extremely cool and gives me some great Grasp of Avarice vibes. My only complaint is that the final boss mechanics for standing in circles while transferring hex is quite finicky in practice, especially when the AI is so unpredictable, and it really pushes your team super hard on add clear to stay alive. Otherwise two incredible boss fights and just a super original design.
I don't raid much any more, but frankly I didn't like Root of Nightmares. I know it's derided as being too easy, especially compared to Vow, but I just wasn't feeling this one mechanically. The jumping puzzle with the death mechanic especially was an absolute fucking slog. The visuals are great, though, and I love the concept, but it just wasn't as fun as RoN to me.
PvP is still pretty fun. Still too many abilities in PvP I think.
Loot is getting really out of hand and I feel like we're due for another round of sunsetting. Idk we've just got ridiculous power creep in the game but whatever.
Also fuck the layoffs.
I still love playing Destiny, but this year my interest dwindled a lot.
The complete revamp of buildcrafting is godsend.
The seasonal content hasn't excited me as much this year, but it's still solid enough.
The soundtrack is great but I do prefer the music from The Witch Queen.
Dungeons this year have been pretty good. Ghosts of the Deep is unfortunately a bit of a slog to me, but I still think it's gorgeous and interesting. Warlord's Ruin is genuinely extremely cool and gives me some great Grasp of Avarice vibes. My only complaint is that the final boss mechanics for standing in circles while transferring hex is quite finicky in practice, especially when the AI is so unpredictable, and it really pushes your team super hard on add clear to stay alive. Otherwise two incredible boss fights and just a super original design.
I don't raid much any more, but frankly I didn't like Root of Nightmares. I know it's derided as being too easy, especially compared to Vow, but I just wasn't feeling this one mechanically. The jumping puzzle with the death mechanic especially was an absolute fucking slog. The visuals are great, though, and I love the concept, but it just wasn't as fun as RoN to me.
PvP is still pretty fun. Still too many abilities in PvP I think.
Loot is getting really out of hand and I feel like we're due for another round of sunsetting. Idk we've just got ridiculous power creep in the game but whatever.
Also fuck the layoffs.
I still love playing Destiny, but this year my interest dwindled a lot.
2023
Gorgeous art and beautiful music
It's a Metroidvania
The difficulty level of boss fights is frustrating even less than 3 hours into the game. The gameplay system where you have more "energy" than health, which powers your shields and also your gun (your strongest weapon), makes this game lean extremely hard into the high risk high reward playstyle. You literally have 2 HP besides your shields.
When your energy depletes, you have to do a weird QTE minigame to get half of it back, or fail that QTE and waste like 2 whole seconds standing still and probably getting destroyed by the boss. And when they interrupt you have to start completely over on getting your shield back.
The hydra boss has a "horizontal or vertical" attack you have to dodge in its 3rd phase and the timing is like maybe 0.5 seconds at best, leading to a lot of "unfair" hits due to it being hard to react quickly enough to dodge the appropriate direction.
I stumbled into another boss shortly after that, quite a ways away from a save point, and he jumps around the screen at lightning speed while also having twilring swords chase you around. Game just honestly needs to chill a bit more on the boss design especially around speed.
IDK this game is almost really cool but it's tuned way too hard for me and the shield/HP playstyle thing is too frustrating for me.
It's a Metroidvania
The difficulty level of boss fights is frustrating even less than 3 hours into the game. The gameplay system where you have more "energy" than health, which powers your shields and also your gun (your strongest weapon), makes this game lean extremely hard into the high risk high reward playstyle. You literally have 2 HP besides your shields.
When your energy depletes, you have to do a weird QTE minigame to get half of it back, or fail that QTE and waste like 2 whole seconds standing still and probably getting destroyed by the boss. And when they interrupt you have to start completely over on getting your shield back.
The hydra boss has a "horizontal or vertical" attack you have to dodge in its 3rd phase and the timing is like maybe 0.5 seconds at best, leading to a lot of "unfair" hits due to it being hard to react quickly enough to dodge the appropriate direction.
I stumbled into another boss shortly after that, quite a ways away from a save point, and he jumps around the screen at lightning speed while also having twilring swords chase you around. Game just honestly needs to chill a bit more on the boss design especially around speed.
IDK this game is almost really cool but it's tuned way too hard for me and the shield/HP playstyle thing is too frustrating for me.
It's fine.
Some of the puzzles are fun. Others are really frustrating. Gamepad controls aren't very good. Still don't like the combat in these games. Boss fights didn't feel great.
Some of the puzzles are fun. Others are really frustrating. Gamepad controls aren't very good. Still don't like the combat in these games. Boss fights didn't feel great.
### Stopped playing after a couple chapters ###
+ Great music
+ Good art
+ Weird murder puzzles
- Writing is soooo boring
- Pacing is awful
- Framerate is distractingly low
- Literally none of the suspects are even named characters; the stakes are so low
- Everyone from ch.0 goes away and the new cast is even less interesting with less setup
- ch.2 is just the same gimmick so many times
- Shinigami is soooo fucking annoying she needs to talk like 75% less
- Main character is overly stupid in a way that feels annoying rather than just being a stand-in for the player not knowing answers
- Amnesiac MC is so overdone and really doesn't do anything to endear me to him
+ Great music
+ Good art
+ Weird murder puzzles
- Writing is soooo boring
- Pacing is awful
- Framerate is distractingly low
- Literally none of the suspects are even named characters; the stakes are so low
- Everyone from ch.0 goes away and the new cast is even less interesting with less setup
- ch.2 is just the same gimmick so many times
- Shinigami is soooo fucking annoying she needs to talk like 75% less
- Main character is overly stupid in a way that feels annoying rather than just being a stand-in for the player not knowing answers
- Amnesiac MC is so overdone and really doesn't do anything to endear me to him
I love the new protagonist. Kiryu's stoic personality is so much less interesting than Ichiban's stubborn straightforward nature. The party members are fun. The story starts off really good. It kinda meanders for a while, but it massively picks up steam again for the final arc. Over the top cheesy drama like you'd hope from the series. Music is pretty good.
OK BUT. I don't hate JRPG combat, and I even love lots of JRPGs. This one is mediocre at best. Painfully slow combat animations. Extremely punishing job system. Horribly balanced classes. Later chapters need massive grinding. Enemies and bosses become massive health sponges. The 6 attack types are horribly distributed, with most attacks just being physical, and certain bosses resist that in order to ruin your fun. The dungeons are basically completely linear and you can't save in them. Fortunately I only died to a boss once. You can retry a boss by sacrificing half of the money you carry, or retry the entire dungeon. Luckily you can store excess money in an ATM before doing a dungeon.
I don't think Ijincho was as cool as Kamurocho, but it was cool that we visit Kamurocho, Ijincho, and Sotenbori all in one game.
BTW give the English voices a shot, I think the voice acting is great. My only complaint about English voices is a lot of random voice clips are not localized, so during battle you often get a mix of languages at once.
OH and. OK so how did I not mention yet? I want to shake the person who calibrated the SFX spawn rate. Battles are like a nonstop stream of every single character saying some 1-liner quip. It's infuriating. In addition to the combat not being fun, I frequently had the game on mute during the fights. It's absurd.
As usual for a Yakuza/LAD game, very few women, and the ones who do exist are generally sex workers / hostess club hostesses / moms. I think Saeko is great though. Eri is technically a party member but because she's optional she has no story presence outside of her silly capitalism simulator side quest.
OK BUT. I don't hate JRPG combat, and I even love lots of JRPGs. This one is mediocre at best. Painfully slow combat animations. Extremely punishing job system. Horribly balanced classes. Later chapters need massive grinding. Enemies and bosses become massive health sponges. The 6 attack types are horribly distributed, with most attacks just being physical, and certain bosses resist that in order to ruin your fun. The dungeons are basically completely linear and you can't save in them. Fortunately I only died to a boss once. You can retry a boss by sacrificing half of the money you carry, or retry the entire dungeon. Luckily you can store excess money in an ATM before doing a dungeon.
I don't think Ijincho was as cool as Kamurocho, but it was cool that we visit Kamurocho, Ijincho, and Sotenbori all in one game.
BTW give the English voices a shot, I think the voice acting is great. My only complaint about English voices is a lot of random voice clips are not localized, so during battle you often get a mix of languages at once.
OH and. OK so how did I not mention yet? I want to shake the person who calibrated the SFX spawn rate. Battles are like a nonstop stream of every single character saying some 1-liner quip. It's infuriating. In addition to the combat not being fun, I frequently had the game on mute during the fights. It's absurd.
As usual for a Yakuza/LAD game, very few women, and the ones who do exist are generally sex workers / hostess club hostesses / moms. I think Saeko is great though. Eri is technically a party member but because she's optional she has no story presence outside of her silly capitalism simulator side quest.
2020
A gorgeous mess of high production value game with buggy quests and boring combat
## Combat
I hope you like D&D 5th edition combat! Because there's a shitload of it. And unlike a tabletop game session, you have to control four entire characters. The game is fully turn based like D&D, and by Act 3 the game compensates for your power levels by throwing massive amounts of minions at you.
Take a wizard. I didn't like Gale and I didn't keep him around most of the time because of that. But damn, wizards are good. Sleep, Blind, Hold Person, Tasha's Hideous Laughter, and the completely OP Otto's Irresistible Dance are complete game changers in combat.
I played the entire game on easy, but there were still quite a few fights in late Act 2 and most of Act 3 that had many characters near death. I've played D&D many times and the combat is absolutely the worst part of it to me, so I picked up this game probably against my better judgment because I was looking to fill that Bioware-shaped hole in my heart.
## Companions
There's decent selection of them (but no monk? and nobody who's a "small" race? pft). I romanced Shadowheart because she's a goth girl after my own heart. Her arc was decently interesting though not really surprising. I ditched Lae'zel once I got Karlach, but once I did the Githyanki Creche I realized that Lae'zel is way more involved in the game story than Karlach, and I swapped them back. Wyll is dreadfully boring to me.
## Immersion
Virtually everything is voice acted and mo-capped, and the graphics are beautiful. This game is a treat to look at. The music rarely blew me away, but it enhanced the experience. The game maybe tries a little too hard to be a sandbox in an "organic" way. I was constantly running into missions where any other game would just have you click a dialogue option to unlock a door, but in this game you have to right click the door and select lockpick. Same sort of thing with getting a captive out of chains, or rescuing someone who's on the ground. Rather than going with reducing friction, the game makes you think in the sandbox context a lot more than I personally care for.
In Act 1 it felt like the game had so much promise, and Act 2 almost kept it going, but Act 3 it felt like everything about the encounter design, combat system, quest log, map, the whole game felt like it was buckling under the weight of what they were trying to do. I went from excitedly launching the game every night to "alright, let's wrap this shit up", sadly.
Also, the game is constantly throwing extremely vague warnings about "better finish up what you were doing" when you go to new areas, with no detail about what will/won't be available after you go there. Be warned that Act 3 completely cuts of all areas from Act 1 and Act 2, so you need to finish up whatever you want there before leaving.
## Story
The main story was fine. That being said, a lot of really critical information is stuck in side quests you could easily skip. The ending won't blow you away, and the final fight is insufferable.
## The Hells
Make sure you do the quest line that has you go to the hells, but be sure to keep a save before you go. A poor party configuration won't succeed even on easy there. I was lucky in that I had a scroll in my back pocket that trivialized the fight. Everything about that mission blew my mind, especially the song in the boss room. "Here come the claws" is a phrase that's been living in my head ever since. Just incredible.
## Conclusion
This game started off really strong, but Act 3 soured me on the game. I played for about 110 hours and did most side quests in the game. This was probably a mistake. I definitely had more than my fill of this game and got sick of it by the end. I certainly had a lot of fun, but the game's combat encouter design was soul crushing to me, and numerous quest bugs almost ruined my experience throughout the game. Shout out to everyone posting workarounds on Reddit.
## Combat
I hope you like D&D 5th edition combat! Because there's a shitload of it. And unlike a tabletop game session, you have to control four entire characters. The game is fully turn based like D&D, and by Act 3 the game compensates for your power levels by throwing massive amounts of minions at you.
Take a wizard. I didn't like Gale and I didn't keep him around most of the time because of that. But damn, wizards are good. Sleep, Blind, Hold Person, Tasha's Hideous Laughter, and the completely OP Otto's Irresistible Dance are complete game changers in combat.
I played the entire game on easy, but there were still quite a few fights in late Act 2 and most of Act 3 that had many characters near death. I've played D&D many times and the combat is absolutely the worst part of it to me, so I picked up this game probably against my better judgment because I was looking to fill that Bioware-shaped hole in my heart.
## Companions
There's decent selection of them (but no monk? and nobody who's a "small" race? pft). I romanced Shadowheart because she's a goth girl after my own heart. Her arc was decently interesting though not really surprising. I ditched Lae'zel once I got Karlach, but once I did the Githyanki Creche I realized that Lae'zel is way more involved in the game story than Karlach, and I swapped them back. Wyll is dreadfully boring to me.
## Immersion
Virtually everything is voice acted and mo-capped, and the graphics are beautiful. This game is a treat to look at. The music rarely blew me away, but it enhanced the experience. The game maybe tries a little too hard to be a sandbox in an "organic" way. I was constantly running into missions where any other game would just have you click a dialogue option to unlock a door, but in this game you have to right click the door and select lockpick. Same sort of thing with getting a captive out of chains, or rescuing someone who's on the ground. Rather than going with reducing friction, the game makes you think in the sandbox context a lot more than I personally care for.
In Act 1 it felt like the game had so much promise, and Act 2 almost kept it going, but Act 3 it felt like everything about the encounter design, combat system, quest log, map, the whole game felt like it was buckling under the weight of what they were trying to do. I went from excitedly launching the game every night to "alright, let's wrap this shit up", sadly.
Also, the game is constantly throwing extremely vague warnings about "better finish up what you were doing" when you go to new areas, with no detail about what will/won't be available after you go there. Be warned that Act 3 completely cuts of all areas from Act 1 and Act 2, so you need to finish up whatever you want there before leaving.
## Story
The main story was fine. That being said, a lot of really critical information is stuck in side quests you could easily skip. The ending won't blow you away, and the final fight is insufferable.
## The Hells
Make sure you do the quest line that has you go to the hells, but be sure to keep a save before you go. A poor party configuration won't succeed even on easy there. I was lucky in that I had a scroll in my back pocket that trivialized the fight. Everything about that mission blew my mind, especially the song in the boss room. "Here come the claws" is a phrase that's been living in my head ever since. Just incredible.
## Conclusion
This game started off really strong, but Act 3 soured me on the game. I played for about 110 hours and did most side quests in the game. This was probably a mistake. I definitely had more than my fill of this game and got sick of it by the end. I certainly had a lot of fun, but the game's combat encouter design was soul crushing to me, and numerous quest bugs almost ruined my experience throughout the game. Shout out to everyone posting workarounds on Reddit.
2023
wall kick mechanic is really obnoxious. it's like wall jumping but you do it way early or else you won't go as far.
getting super lost about where to go with no map to reference.
not enough save points.
quit after 90 minutes.
getting super lost about where to go with no map to reference.
not enough save points.
quit after 90 minutes.
2015
Very strange alternate universe. A story about queer kids at summer camp & Christianity or something. Freaky music and nice art. Starts a bit slow but the endings are interesting. Dialogue can be boring. I don't regret playing it, but I think maybe my hopes for this were too high.
2023
A lovely tribute to Jet Set Radio! My main complaint is I just wish the game was longer. I had a lot of fun.
Incredible soundtrack, beautiful art direction, lovely graphics, pixel art textures and cel shading... Level design is pretty good, though I wish they were a bit bigger. It could use a world map to help you find your way between zones.
The scoring system for combos is a bit weird and emphasizes extreme map knowledge over thumb skill.
Story was actually surprisingly interesting and bit confusing to explain.
There's apparently quite a few extra unlockable characters, though the game doesn't do much to hint at that to you. I don't have most of them right now, and I'm not sure if I'll make the time to go back and get them.
My main complaint is the weird emphasis on combat in this game. The boss fights are not very good, and one in particular completely changes the formula with 0 explanation and repeatedly insta-kills you until you magically deduce (read online) how to beat the boss. Also once you get high "rep" in an area (do lots of graffiti), cops show up absurdly fast any time you do graffiti. This doesn't change after beating the game, and it makes tracking down the final missing graffitis a drag. I didn't enjoy the "run from the cops to find a bathroom to change clothes" as a game mechanic, and the combat is underdeveloped and uninteresting. I think they could make a better game by scrapping the combat entirely and giving you timed escape sequences from cops as part of the story mode only.
Lovely game and I'm hoping for some cool DLC and maybe a sequel eventually.
Incredible soundtrack, beautiful art direction, lovely graphics, pixel art textures and cel shading... Level design is pretty good, though I wish they were a bit bigger. It could use a world map to help you find your way between zones.
The scoring system for combos is a bit weird and emphasizes extreme map knowledge over thumb skill.
Story was actually surprisingly interesting and bit confusing to explain.
There's apparently quite a few extra unlockable characters, though the game doesn't do much to hint at that to you. I don't have most of them right now, and I'm not sure if I'll make the time to go back and get them.
My main complaint is the weird emphasis on combat in this game. The boss fights are not very good, and one in particular completely changes the formula with 0 explanation and repeatedly insta-kills you until you magically deduce (read online) how to beat the boss. Also once you get high "rep" in an area (do lots of graffiti), cops show up absurdly fast any time you do graffiti. This doesn't change after beating the game, and it makes tracking down the final missing graffitis a drag. I didn't enjoy the "run from the cops to find a bathroom to change clothes" as a game mechanic, and the combat is underdeveloped and uninteresting. I think they could make a better game by scrapping the combat entirely and giving you timed escape sequences from cops as part of the story mode only.
Lovely game and I'm hoping for some cool DLC and maybe a sequel eventually.
2023
Played the entire game co-op except for the final boss, then did like half of another co-op campaign. I also beat the final boss solo.
I liked the first Remnant game, but based on initial reactions I thought Remnant II would be noticeably better. It really doesn't feel any better than the first game to me.
The randomized nature of the game is still awful imo. Extremely boring environments to walk around in as connective tissue for mediocre dungeons and roll-of-the-dice boss fights. Because each area has so many bosses, and each zone can appear in any order randomly, the entirety of difficulty is based on damage scaling, and frankly I think it doesn't feel good.
Especially in co-op the bosses get massively more health, and reviving your teammates requires several seconds of uninterrupted action. Many bosses can repeatedly attack you and move quickly, making it very hard to actually play this game co-op.
The medic class at least gets an ability to "shout" your teammates awake instantly, but it's got a long cooldown and so if your teammates fall repeatedly you're kinda stuck.
The loot is kinda laughable. Most stuff is absurdly buried in this game, and the trinkets you keep picking up give extremely meager upgrades most of the time.
The main character is written like they're in a Marvel film smiling at the camera as they spew snark... but everyone else is taking it very seriously.
The goat people are still cool btw.
Frankly I hated the final boss. Its second phase involves sooooo many flashing red lights and impossible to discern attacks, plus it employs intentionally glitched visuals and repeatedly teleports you along with changing forms. It's difficulty through extreme visual distress, rather than being about learning patterns and punishing you for being too bold. It's nearly impossible to resurrect your team in this fight, so if anyone goes down you're kinda screwed because the boss has an absurdly massive health pool in 3 player mode.
Also man do all the characters talk too much and just infodump weird shit at you.
Some of the puzzles were cool! Bit of a mixed bag though.
I liked the first Remnant game, but based on initial reactions I thought Remnant II would be noticeably better. It really doesn't feel any better than the first game to me.
The randomized nature of the game is still awful imo. Extremely boring environments to walk around in as connective tissue for mediocre dungeons and roll-of-the-dice boss fights. Because each area has so many bosses, and each zone can appear in any order randomly, the entirety of difficulty is based on damage scaling, and frankly I think it doesn't feel good.
Especially in co-op the bosses get massively more health, and reviving your teammates requires several seconds of uninterrupted action. Many bosses can repeatedly attack you and move quickly, making it very hard to actually play this game co-op.
The medic class at least gets an ability to "shout" your teammates awake instantly, but it's got a long cooldown and so if your teammates fall repeatedly you're kinda stuck.
The loot is kinda laughable. Most stuff is absurdly buried in this game, and the trinkets you keep picking up give extremely meager upgrades most of the time.
The main character is written like they're in a Marvel film smiling at the camera as they spew snark... but everyone else is taking it very seriously.
The goat people are still cool btw.
Frankly I hated the final boss. Its second phase involves sooooo many flashing red lights and impossible to discern attacks, plus it employs intentionally glitched visuals and repeatedly teleports you along with changing forms. It's difficulty through extreme visual distress, rather than being about learning patterns and punishing you for being too bold. It's nearly impossible to resurrect your team in this fight, so if anyone goes down you're kinda screwed because the boss has an absurdly massive health pool in 3 player mode.
Also man do all the characters talk too much and just infodump weird shit at you.
Some of the puzzles were cool! Bit of a mixed bag though.