This new chapter of fortnite brought on so many changes, and unfortunately, a majority of them were not that great. First and foremost, the new game modes: LEGO fortnite, fortnite festival, and rocket racing. This was all revealed during a pretty cool live event at the end of the prior season, but I guess the spectacle made them seem a lot cooler than they actually were. LEGO fortnite is just an open world survival game, I spent a bit of time in it but it's not all that fun. Rocket racing is the worst of them all, so bad, I refuse to touch it. I don't know WHY it's bad, but people say it's bad, and I trust the collective online consensus on this one. The only acceptable one is fortnite festival which is basically guitar hero. Cheap rhythm game, but it can be pretty fun. What sucks is you have to buy the songs you actually want to play, otherwise you're stuck with the daily rotation or the epic originals (most of which are ass). You can play part of a song in battle royale as well like an emote; killing someone then singing Buddy Holly is an INSANE power move.

As for the meat of the game, battle royale, it got noticeably worse. Snipers are broken. They've always been strong, which is kind of a necessary evil, but what made them so strong is the complete removal of hitscan on every kind of assault rifle and DMR. Utilizing hitscan was the best counter against snipers, but now the only way to counter a sniper is with a sniper of your own, which means by the final few circles, everyone is gonna be carrying a sniper. Sniping can be fun, and I won't get mad at it a lot of the time, but when most of your matches are instakills from sniper headshots or dying instantly to sniper headshots, it gets irritating really quickly.

Modding benches are cool but WAY too limited. This seemed to be a big selling point of the season based on the trailer, but in reality, you'll never be seeing one most games. There's only five on the map: 4 at the boss locations, requiring you to kill the boss beforehand, and one on the island which spawns in after the first few circles. Weapons have a chance to drop with a mod already on them based on rarity, but it's rarely going to be customized entirely to your liking without a bench. It's great when you do get a chance to modify your weapons, but most games, you're stuck with whatever you get.

Weapon pool and loot was subpar. Like I said, snipers were a huge problem, but there wasn't much you could really do about that. Ballistic shields were pretty annoying, as well. You technically could counter them by shooting the player's feet or in the eye hole, but that's hard to do with a gun that will inflict any meaningful damage because of bullet spread. The grapple blade was good for movement and countering ballistic shields, but because of how vital movement was for evading snipers and beating the shields, you basically lost without one on hand. Pump shotguns still either inflict zero damage or one shot, but I always get one shot while my opponents barely get grazed. Meanwhile, frenzy auto shotguns were so busted that you should never play this game again if you don't think of picking one up the moment you see it. DPS is insane and it has a large mag, only downside is the reload time (which you can decrease a hefty amount with mods). Medallions were neat, giving you regenerating shield in exchange for your spot on the map being revealed.

I don't want to say that cosmetics were bad this season, not at all, but I think anyone who survived the great item shop drought of December 2023 - February 2024 should be given a medal. There were some standout new skins, like the massive TMNT collab, Cell, Frieza, Raiden, Ernie the giant chicken, and some others that are decently cool. We even saw a return of John Wick to the shop after over 1,000 days of being gone, along with two new styles. However, aside from those, every other day, the item shop was absolute shit. Rick and Morty was in the shop three weeks in a row. Generic and boring skins returned every week as well, likely for the LEGO fortnite compatibility. Epic, please, I have money that I would LOVE to spend on you, all you have to do is put good items in your item shops. Even going into season 2, the shop is barely better. At least the battle pass was good, Peter and Snake are some of the best collab skins to date.

I don't know, this season had a lot of explosive moments, but overall, it had a LOT of problems. I still had fun with it, but man, snipers and ballistic shields made both long range and close range fights unbearable. Midrange fights were still good, but no hitscan sucks. The new game modes are mostly bad and I will never touch them again. Festival is fun, at least. This kind of felt like a filler season. I don't know why, but it kind of just... existed. I'll remember it for the cool collabs, but between the map and the weapon pool... I'd rather not remember the actual gameplay aspects of this season. Kinda fun while it lasted, I guess.

It's funny how nostalgia bait like this can be so good. The premise is very simple: it's the original season 5 map, with all the weapons and items from that seasons. The map will change with every week, adding on something from the season after. There are some minor differences, Tomato Town is now Tomato Temple, and the weapon loadout is slightly different, but yeah, it's season 5. This was one of my favorite seasons of fortnite overall, so I was obviously ecstatic to find out they were bringing it back. But this is where nostalgia gets tricky. When looking back on old things, like a video game, you need to consider if you actually miss the game itself for it's quality, or if you miss how it made you feel. It would've been horrendous if everyone clamored "bring back old fortnite!" only for them to bring it back followed by a simultaneous realization that old fortnite was not good. Thankfully, this is far from the case and old fortnite was actually very good.

Chapter 4 has been pretty rough. I haven't really been enjoying almost any of the weapons and the map is just terrible. I pray the jungle biome never comes back. Sharp Tooth shotgun is maybe the worst shotgun ever present in the history of this game. The best things about certain seasons were removed by the next one, like the kinetic blade and the heisted weapons. It was overall a miserable experience that I slogged through because anything can be fun with the right friends. The OG season completely resets everything and makes the game fun again.

The weapon loadout is solid. Not too bloated, but there's enough variety that makes you consider trade-offs with other weapons. Suppressed AR can have my firstborn child. The grapple gun is back, one of the most fun movement options to mess with because of how versatile it is. The old map is back, and while it is pretty big considering the size of the previous few maps, ATK's are placed EVERYWHERE. You will never be stuck in a far off area for too long because you can simply pick up a golf cart and get anywhere you need to go in a flash. Shopping carts are the best thing to ever grace this game and their initial removal shall be looked on in the history books as one of the cardinal sins of the human race.

This season proves that nostalgia bait isn't always a bad thing if done correctly. This old season of fortnite was simply good. Now, it's arguably even better. I don't have to worry about building (I suck at it) because no build exists. I don't have to worry about mobility because of the great mobility items and vehicles, plus they kept sprinting and mantling in. This may seem like a simple way to attract old players back to the game (when the season started they reached an all time player peak by a mile) but... yeah, it works. We shouldn't feel bad for enjoying old things when there was never anything wrong with them to begin with. The only thing wrong with this season I would say are the players themselves. None of them know how to have fun, they're all sweats. I'll approach them with a bush on and emote and they'll just shoot me. Fuck off. Can't really say that's the fault of the game much but it is annoying. Other than that, this season is fun and I'm glad to be with it the whole way through.

I've been playing too many anime games recently, which is only like two, which is more than enough for a lifetime. Not really sure why MHA got a battle royale of all things but now that it's here I was coerced into trying it out. Because nobody on this site actually likes diving into games and instead leaves a one sentence review to get the most amount of likes possible, I will try to provide as much detail as I can about this game while maintaining my sanity.

The menu UI is ungodly clunky. It's something I got used to after a while, but I don't think it's good design for me to have to get used to something this weird. I still sometimes have trouble navigating the main menu to find the roll shop or the special license. In an actual match, you have to open a menu to access your items. Luckily, this typically only ever amounts to healing items and cards you might wanna drop for teammates. I guess the fact that I don't have many problems with it now means it's overall fine, but still unintuitive.

As for the actual gameplay, it's fun. Every character has three attacks that you can level up by getting that character's corresponding color cards, i.e. Bakugo is a red character (meaning he has stronger attack power) so finding red cards will level up his moves. Some characters have special actions that can't be leveled up, and every character has a melee combo which similarly can't be leveled up. Every move has a set amount of times it can be used before going on cooldown. This cooldown meter goes up after every use, not just when it's empty, which means it's overall more useful to space out your attacks rather than spamming. However, in scrambles or melee fights, you'll probably find yourself spamming attacks. The cooldown does give incentive to play smarter, but you still need to find opportunities where it's best to go all out with your attacks.

These moves can range from a projectile, some type of movement option, a lunge punch/kick, etc. Every character is different, which means not every character is created equal. I've tried out most of the characters in the game, and there's two things I discovered that's universal for everyone. Firstly, not having a projectile sucks ass. Even projectiles that aren't super strong are still nice to have so you can engage from a distance. Mt. Lady's projectile is pretty mediocre, but she wants to conserve as much health as she can for when she grows big. Secondly, not having movement sucks even more ass. Too many times have I found myself in a fight I can't win only to be unable to retreat because I have no movement options while my opponents do. This is ESPECIALLY bad for Shigaraki, who is capable of shitting out damage up close, but has no projectile or movement option. I distinctly remember being chased across almost the entire map from a whole team at one point with no way to escape simply because I was playing Shigaraki. That distinct lack of movement and projectiles does play into team composition quite a bit. Although having three red characters will boost your overall attack power decently, you'll struggle leveling up since you'll all need red cards. If someone is Shigaraki, who is only good up close, you might benefit from a teammate playing Iida, another up close brawler, but with the movement speed to get in and out of tight situations in a moment's notice.

The character's themselves are all distinct enough. I say enough because there is a lot of overlap between moves. Many characters have a pretty standard projectile that flies forward incredibly fast, think Deku, Bakugo, and Todoroki. A few characters have a pretty similar ground pound area coverage move, like Dabi, Mt. Lady, and Kirishima. There are still enough distinct differences that make it worth playing most characters. Dabi's fireball is much slower than other projectiles and dissipates after traveling a decent distance, however, it tracks the opponent while it's active. This makes it much stronger at midrange, where you can overwhelm an opponent with fireballs that rarely miss up close. Shigaraki's ground pound gets bigger the more you level it up, and once active, it cripples the area affected with poison and does damage over time to opponents who stand in it. It lets him control space despite not having a strong projectile. However, there are some general balance issues that make it less worth playing certain characters. I swear Ochaco just doesn't function correctly. Kirishima is focused on linear, direction attacks that do big damage, but All Might has similar moves that do even more damage plus he has a strong projectile and movement option. This kind of balance is inevitable for any game with distinct character differences, but I would like to see the worse characters get some upgrades in the next seasons. This imbalance is very apparent at the start of each match. While I would say that most characters are on a somewhat level playing field when they max out their attacks, that is far from the case at the start of the match. If you are a Mt. Lady or a Shigaraki and you land next to a Bakugo, run. You probably can't make it far due to lack of mobility, but you're not winning that fight. Bakugo is one of several characters who is already so strong without upgrades that fighting him head on at match start is a death sentence. The upgrades make him stronger for sure, but he doesn't really need them to compete with the rest. Again, I would like to see this imbalance addressed, because waiting three minutes to get into a match just to die immediately with no way to fight back is not how I want to spend my night.

So while the gameplay is fun and team building does involve some nice strategy, the fighting can feel clunky at times. Lots of character movements are very stiff when you get hit by a move. A big thing about team building is the possible combo options you can use to do more damage at once, but sometimes that's not even needed. Sometimes I'll just be vibing and then get immediately robbed of my full health and shield by a random Bakugo in two hits. I don't even know what I got hit by, but I'll be dead. A nice aspect of this game is that teammates who get knocked down will automatically get back up after twenty seconds if they're not killed outright, which makes situations like those a bit less strenuous. If I get killed by a random Bakugo, my teammates can cover me while I hide in a bush and get back up. This doesn't address the problem of why I was two shot in the first place, which happens far too often for me to neglect it.

The last thing I think worth mentioning is all the in game currency. No game has even come close to fortnite in terms of how they handle their monetization. Fortnite has V-Bucks, and with V-Bucks, you can get everything. It's only one currency that is used on the shop items and the battle pass. And guess what, you can get V-Bucks by playing normally for free. It's not a lot, but that can eventually grow into more once you have enough for a battle pass, which will give you a total more amount of V-Bucks. Everything in that game is purely cosmetic, which means you're not missing out on potential top tier characters if you miss a skin in the shop.

MHA battle has gallery pieces, agency points, gold, roll tickets, hero souls, crystals… I think that's all of them. Gallery pieces are just used to unlock new loading screens, very inconsequential. Agency points can be put into your own hero agency to level it up, which then grants you an XP bonus after every match. Gold is used to buy banners and gallery pieces, again, inconsequential. Then you got roll tickets. This is an anime game, which means gacha is inevitable. It takes ten roll tickets to perform one roll, but you could also use a hundred to do ten at once. From these rolls you can get new voice lines, emotes, and costumes for characters. And, unfortunately, this is also the main way of unlocking new characters. Most characters are locked behind the annoying loot box system. Now, to be fair, the characters actually do have a higher drop rate than all the cosmetics. One of my friends got both Kirishima and Izawa early on with only a few ten rolls without spending a dime. Thankfully, not every character is locked behind this luck based method. Some characters are locked behind the special license, which you level up with XP after each match. It is a bit of a grind, but I'm not complaining because free characters are free characters. It's good compensation for playing the game for so long. For those characters that are locked behind roll tickets, well, it sucks, but hey, could be worse.

Hero souls are another currency used to get characters. When you get multiple of the same item through a roll ticket, it gets converted to hero souls. The amount of hero souls you get depends on the rarity of the item. One star items only get you one hero soul, which sucks and should be increased immediately in the next update. Two star items get you ten, which is far better. You can use these hero souls to buy character tickets because for some reason some characters are locked behind these exclusive character tickets. There's only about four, but have fun trying to get enough hero souls for a ticket to unlock them. Then there's crystals. This is kind of just the all encompassing currency. You can use it on almost anything, but you'll mainly want to use it on rolls or to upgrade your login bonus. I don't know why there's so many different currencies, it makes everything far more confusing. Getting characters is super annoying because of gacha mechanics and from rolls you'll more than likely just end up getting voice lines for characters you don't even own.

For a low effort anime battle royale cash grab, this honestly isn't that bad. I've been playing it a lot and enjoying myself. A lot of annoyances I have with the game are made easier with certain workarounds. Don't have enough roll tickets? Get the premium login bonus, it's always worth it, and then stock up. Work on dailies and weeklies for extra tickets, as well. Don't know what character to buy with a character ticket? The game gives you a character rental every four hours, which you can have up to three of, which lets you use any character in the game. That way, you aren't going in blind when purchasing a character. The gameplay is fun and requires enough strategy around getting better yourself and teambuilding to keep it engaging. I think this game could stand much taller as time passes with more characters and (hopefully) new maps. Also, they should fix the consistent crashing method of keeping the emote wheel open while loading into a match. As it is now, it's way better than people claiming it to be who just see "anime battle royale must be bad." It's far from perfect, but it's free and it's fun, which is the perfect combination for anything in life.