Catsopalle
50 Reviews liked by Catsopalle
Armored Core V
2012
Everyone knows gen 5 (or at least this game, i'm not quite sure about Verdict Day) is mostly a multiplayer experience, and it shows. the single player campaign is not only boring, but even the customization that's a literal staple of the series is almost non existent if you're not willing to grind boring side missions, because shop components get unlocked in the shop as your team level progress, and the only way to do that is to play missions, whether it's the 9 story missions (yep, not a lot of them) or order missions which are just "kill those enemy units/AC"
Thankfully it doesn't really matter, as the game is piss easy. Enemies usually do chip damage to you, and as long as you get one (good) weapon of each type (there's of them and you got 5 weapons on you), you're kinda good to go. Sometimes harder enemies do appear, but the missions have multiple checkpoints (thankfully, as they're pretty long), and even garages allowing you to get back to full HP/ammo and change parts if needed, so unless you really did not go out with a good enough build it's just a matter of retrying.
The base gameplay is interesting on paper, but never really clicks here. You're way slower than in previous games (especially coming from gen 4), there's no more flying around, movement is closer to gen 1 and 2 but even more slow and grounded. However, you can use bursts of energy to dodge in each direction, and also wall jump, and i think it's sick on paper, you can really gain some cool speed and height this way, the maps are even built around that since they're mostly city streets. sadly few are the moments where the game throws anything at you that showcases the potential of the system.
Scan mode is terrible tho. Having a mode where you can't shoot but can analyze enemies to find their weakness (and also get your energy back faster) is neat on concept, but, and that's one of the biggest issue with this game, that mode is damn near unreadable. Your screen gets a blue filter that makes everything look terrible, the scan UI is unreadable in the middle of action, and everything in this game is like that. The HUD is terrible, and every time you get hit your screen "glitches", the game already has a pretty terrible esthetic (it's the classic 7th gen gray look) but the on hit effect makes it worse
The music is absolutely phenomenal tho, everything else is kinda just ass
Thankfully it doesn't really matter, as the game is piss easy. Enemies usually do chip damage to you, and as long as you get one (good) weapon of each type (there's of them and you got 5 weapons on you), you're kinda good to go. Sometimes harder enemies do appear, but the missions have multiple checkpoints (thankfully, as they're pretty long), and even garages allowing you to get back to full HP/ammo and change parts if needed, so unless you really did not go out with a good enough build it's just a matter of retrying.
The base gameplay is interesting on paper, but never really clicks here. You're way slower than in previous games (especially coming from gen 4), there's no more flying around, movement is closer to gen 1 and 2 but even more slow and grounded. However, you can use bursts of energy to dodge in each direction, and also wall jump, and i think it's sick on paper, you can really gain some cool speed and height this way, the maps are even built around that since they're mostly city streets. sadly few are the moments where the game throws anything at you that showcases the potential of the system.
Scan mode is terrible tho. Having a mode where you can't shoot but can analyze enemies to find their weakness (and also get your energy back faster) is neat on concept, but, and that's one of the biggest issue with this game, that mode is damn near unreadable. Your screen gets a blue filter that makes everything look terrible, the scan UI is unreadable in the middle of action, and everything in this game is like that. The HUD is terrible, and every time you get hit your screen "glitches", the game already has a pretty terrible esthetic (it's the classic 7th gen gray look) but the on hit effect makes it worse
The music is absolutely phenomenal tho, everything else is kinda just ass
This review contains spoilers
Old King is so fucking useless. You have to step up and handle the ambush yourself
It's incredibly hard for me to talk about this game because on one hand it tries to balance what Nexus did in terms of gameplay...but still it carries over what Nexus did, and what Nexus did is that essentially your AC sucks complete dick now and the power fantasy you may have now is history compared to previous generations. It's light work to think how Last Raven is the hardest game if your missions are Silent Line difficult and you play with Nexus ACs.
This might be an extremely personal take here, but I think your AC being way weaker in Last Raven actually conveys the feeling of dread and despair way better, every single mission it's you fighting for your life because now you don't just "defeat" your enemies, but straight up kill them with "DEAD" written aside. And that puts me on the other hand of why I loved Last Raven so much.
The way the game portrays the feeling of everything coming to an end in a very dark and eerie way is incredibly impactful, the "main characters" are way more fleshed out than any other in the franchise (until now) and every choice you make actively impacts how the story goes, who dies and who doesn't and every single time you take part on a mission the clock is ticking; Last Raven's story takes place in 24 hours, and every single one of them counts. And it's not because the game said so, YOU make them count and the main characters in the game are making them count with their own actions that also change on what choices you made.
Last Raven is a game where there's no compromise, there's no "next time I'm gonna get you!", because there's no tomorrow. Everyone, you included, is on a last stand. And the game conveys that in such a good way that I don't think I'll see another videogame telling this so well very soon. Corporations made tons of mistakes for the sake of power and money, they fucked up so bad but the ones being put on the line for this are soldiers, Ravens and innocents all over the world.
Kino
This might be an extremely personal take here, but I think your AC being way weaker in Last Raven actually conveys the feeling of dread and despair way better, every single mission it's you fighting for your life because now you don't just "defeat" your enemies, but straight up kill them with "DEAD" written aside. And that puts me on the other hand of why I loved Last Raven so much.
The way the game portrays the feeling of everything coming to an end in a very dark and eerie way is incredibly impactful, the "main characters" are way more fleshed out than any other in the franchise (until now) and every choice you make actively impacts how the story goes, who dies and who doesn't and every single time you take part on a mission the clock is ticking; Last Raven's story takes place in 24 hours, and every single one of them counts. And it's not because the game said so, YOU make them count and the main characters in the game are making them count with their own actions that also change on what choices you made.
Last Raven is a game where there's no compromise, there's no "next time I'm gonna get you!", because there's no tomorrow. Everyone, you included, is on a last stand. And the game conveys that in such a good way that I don't think I'll see another videogame telling this so well very soon. Corporations made tons of mistakes for the sake of power and money, they fucked up so bad but the ones being put on the line for this are soldiers, Ravens and innocents all over the world.
Kino
In terms of gameplay is for far the peak of the PSx trilogy, they learned from their mistakes at the previous game and improve every single aspects of it. Only lacks in history because is too generic and it doesn't have the magic of the first one, BUT WHO CARES, THE GIANT ROBOT MAKES PIUM PIUM AND IT FEELS GOOD
The industrial revolution and its consequences but you get to be the disaster for the human race
Ys IV Part II : The Dawn of Peak Fiction
In the 80’s there were few developers who actually knew what they were doing more than Hudson Soft, these guys are probably single handedly responsible for Nintendo opening itself to third party developers to make the NES/Famicom the legendary console we know today. Hudson Soft first and foremost were people who didn’t just like video games as a way to make money on a newly expanding market, these guys were very passionate about new technology and the wonders of gaming as a whole.
But eventually, when you enjoy making games so much, you start to become ambitious and soon Hudson Soft will partner with NEC the prime micro-computer manufacturer (and creator of the famous “porn game machine” known as the PC-98) under a share common interest of building the game console of the future : The PC-Engine otherwise known as the Turbografx 16 outside of Japan. The PCE was a really impressive machine for the time and even today, I’m still kind of blown away by the technical capabilities of the console which only has an 8 bit processor but packs a lot of punch otherwise especially with the CD Add-on that they’ve adopted earlier than many other companies at the time.
However, they were releasing a new console on an highly competitive market, Sega and Nintendo were fiercely competing for domination and other companies who dared venture on hardware territory knew that it was complicated to stand out amongst the crowd and that’s when Hudson had a brilliant idea, they will partner with Falcom to port their classic Ys title to their console. Ys 1 and Ys 2 were already considered classic of NEC micro-computers system and they have already existed many ports of the game to pretty much all available platforms at the time including the NES and the Master System but Hudson’s version on their PC-Engine was going to be different, it wasn’t just going to be a port, it was going to be a full-on REMAKE !
Ys Book 1&2 took the first two games in the series and combined them together into a single one like it was originally planned for the first time and the game will receive the most premium treatment imaginable ! A graphical overhaul which put new life into the game, touched up gameplay that made the experience smoother to play, smoother leveling curves which mitigated the grinding, new tracks to accompany certain important moment with new remixes on the absurdly insane sounding PCE soundchip which was able to make freaking miracle happened, it had animated cutscenes and full fucking voice-acting for a game released in 1989 and they did it both in Japanese and in English as this was the first game in the series to be shipped internationally (not counting the weird European port of Ys 1 on the Master System) !
Everyone’s mind was freaking blown away by how much love and care was put into this new iteration, gamers who were alive to see it happen before their very eyes as children couldn’t believe their eyes ! It was a true epic adventure with all the proper care put into its presentation to heightened that sense of wonder. It’s clear that probably the reason why Ys even got so popular in the first place and managed to stay relevant was because of this port right there, the game was well received pretty much everywhere and magazines sang the tales of how Hudson made Ys 1 & 2 a legendary game going beyond its simple ambition !
And all of this before Zelda or any other company was able to release their next-gen titles !
The PC-Engine version of Ys 1&2 was a massive success and single-handedly was enough of a reason for people to even buy a PC-Engine in the first place. It was clear that Hudson Soft didn’t just enjoy Ys, they didn’t just like Ys heck they didn’t even love Ys ! THEY WERE TRULY PASSIONATE ABOUT YS ! So much so that Hudson was allowed to port Ys III for the PC-Engine too with the same level of care and polish as what they did for Ys 1&2 even tho no amount of polish managed to make the game any good in the end and they botched the localization of it but oh well…
So when Falcom couldn’t make Ys IV themselves, Hudson seemed like the obvious choice to direct and create a new entry in their series ! But making a game from scratch with only a design document full of concept arts, a few guidelines and no lines of code or any prototype was a vastly different task than just taking an already existing game and polishing it to completion but unlike Tonkin House who was this small no-name company playing with their turds trying to make a barely playable game to satisfy the guideline, Hudson had something that they didn’t, they had experiences with making successful cult classic games but most importantly they had PASSION
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCmsS8eD_XY
From the moment you boot up the game you understand that the level of production value here is through the fucking roof ! You ain’t playing some dinky ass, poopy ass, budget ass, Tonkin Ass, Cold Steel Era Falcom ass “product” ! YOU ARE PLAYING A REAL VIDEOGAME ! MADE BY REAL DEVELOPERS ! WITH REAL TALENT ! REAL PASSION AND A REAL BUDGET TO GIVE THEM THE MEAN TO PRODUCE A MASTERPIECE AND YOU BET YOUR ASS THEY WERE GONNA TAKE THE CHANCE ! THERE IS NO BRAKE ON THIS TRAIN ! DAWN OF YS IS A GAME THAT’S GOING TO SHOW MODERN FALCOM PLAYERS HOW WE USED TO DO IT BACK IN THE 9 TO THE TIES ! A PRODUCT MOLD IN THE VOLCANO OF LOVE AND FORGED BY THE FINEST SOUL-MAKER IN THE INDUSTRY !
What made Ys 1&2 so legendary already was the visual presentation of it all, it made the original script of those games popped even more than they originally did in spite of the limited presentation and the added animated character portrait, voice acting and even cutscenes really added a lot of flair to the original two games. But Ys 1&2 Hudson was merely adding on top of the original game. With Dawn of Ys, they had full control over the game's presentation and how it would fit inside of the game ! And I’m happy to report they did a phenomenal job on just the visual presentation and scene direction level !
The first few minutes of Dawn of Ys already introduce the game in a much better way than Tonkin's version did. After coming back from one of their travels, Adol and Dogi stop by Esteria. It's been 2 years since the event of their adventure there and everyone is waiting for them ! A lot of things have changed already, Goban has opened a shop, Lilia now lives among the people of Esteria and is constantly waiting for Adol’s return and her health got better too ! Sarah is alive and managed to survive the assault of Dark Fact and his army after mysteriously disappearing in Ys 1 ! As you walk toward the city, the title of the game fades on top of the screen, everyone is celebrating Adol’s return ! This section feels like a genuine victory lap and a great way to welcome us back to the world of Ys after so long and I love every single minute of it and it’s all done really well !
One thing that’s clear from the game’s visual presentation is that the game will put more of an emphasis on its narration and especially how it’s going to be told through its visuals, you have much more scripted events the likes of other RPGs at the time where you lose control of Adol’s character for a moment to witness dialogues and scenes ! The general artstyle of the game oozes of that timeless 90’s anime charm, the character design is pretty damn excellent and on par with the striking designs of the original game, many characters from the first two games even got a face lift for the occasion, each of the game’s portrait and cutscenes are superbly animated and full of details ! That recreation of Ys II final battle is only a technical flex before the game bombards you with an avalanche of colors which pops out of your screen and invites you to live the adventure of a lifetime !
While the in-game graphics might be less impressive than the anime style portrait, cg’s and animation I just love how colorful the game looks which complimented by the extremely varied environments the game make you go through from lush forest to snowy mountains to a creepy abandoned mansion and even more, the visuals manage sometimes to pull off some really cool things with the environment and it definitely make the journey feel more alive than ever !
One particularly impressive thing about Dawn of Ys is that while text boxes are still the norm for dialogues with regular NPC’s most of the big story scene are entirely dubbed with animated character portraits popping on the screen and sometimes even CG’s much like in visual novel to highlight some of the more important moments, the original Japanese performance is honestly pretty stellar and I’m still shocked at how cleanly the voice acting sound on such an old hardware.
However this raised an issue when it came to the availability of the game for the longest time as much like Mask of the Sun, Dawn of Ys remained a Japanese exclusive and in the case of Dawn while an english fan translation already existed for a while most of the important dialogue remained untranslated simply because they couldn’t display subtitles during the game numerous voiced only segments. Thankfully nowadays this is no longer an issue thanks to a group of talented but amateurish voice actors who banded together with the goal to bring a fandub of the entire game !
While it’s not quite as professionally well made as the official dub of Ys 1&2 with the only professional voice actor here being Alan Oppenheimer, third cousin of THE Oppenheimer and voice of Skeletor in the He-Man series giving his voice to Darm in the intro of the game. That doesn’t mean that the rest of the crew delivered a hack job and I think that on average, they did manage to at least capture the feel of that era of voice-acting. I think it was probably something the dubbing team wanted to transmit with their performance, something that sound like it was recorded by a bunch of voice actors going off way too much in a at times goofy, at times overly serious and badass tone and I just think it works really well and definitely feel like the game actually did came out in the west. The only issue with the English Dub however is that the general audio mixing is rather poor, you can feel each member of the team had different mike quality and the voice acting can sometimes be a bit muffled by the music or sound effect playing in the background and with no option to arrange the audio mixing yourself in the settings you’ll have to sometimes open your ear wide to understand what the hell are they saying. Be sure to check their website at : https://www.ysutopia.net/downloads/ys4/Ys%20IV%20Dub%20Readme/readme.html
But back to the story, as Adol is celebrating with his friends, Sara the local fortune teller tells him about the distant land of Celceta. While she was escaping the forces of Dark Fact she discovered a connection between the black pearl and some ruins recently found on the mainland and she asked Adol to investigate it ! Without losing a single minute, Adol answered the call to adventure and in the dark of night set out to Celceta the mysteries of this ancient land ! But in the shadows, a sinister group of individual are trying to perform a dark ritual shown in a metal as fuck way too fucking gory for this franchise animated cutscenes before the game starts off with this absolute BANGER !
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tK9JTh0gAXs
GODDAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMN MY DUDE THESE SAXOPHONES ARE MAKING MY ASS WETTER THAN A FOUNTAIN ON A SUNDAY AFTERNOON JESUS CHRIST !
One of the strongest aspect of the Ys series ever since its infancy has always been its amazing soundtrack, baring some exceptions, you know that an Ys game is going to own several asses just going by the soundtrack alone and I must report that the soundtrack for Dawn of Ys is once again completely out of this world ! For the first time in the history of the franchise, it’s the Falcom Sound JDK team handling the soundtrack. The Falcom JDK team is Falcom's very own personal rock-band. Composed of many prominent members joining in and out as the company evolve with time, the JDK team was originally founded to make CD quality audio version of Falcom’s soundtrack to sell them as promotional material but eventually, the JDK team took a more prominent role in development and as the advent of technology and sound quality went on, the JDK team now started actually composing for Ys as well as other Falcom titles.
Ys IV soundtrack was composed before the game ever began development and most of the music were made on CD’s that were later released as the “Ys IV Perfect Collection” but while the original album is freaking phenomenal on its own, that doesn’t take away the excellent instrumentalisation that went into translating the original composition into something that could be played by the PCE absolutely insane sound chip ! It’s simple, the soundtrack for Dawn of Ys might be my favorite soundtrack in the entire series ! While Yuzo Koshiro’s soundtrack for the original 2 Ys games was already an absolute joy for the ear, his departure didn’t mean that the JDK team couldn’t up the ante and provide a soundtrack which tells a million words with only a few notes !
The synths, the guitars, the FREAKING SAXOPHONE in the intro of the game, everything about this OST oozes from pure 90’s funk and pop with a lot variety in the composition, of course you get your adventure tracks that make you pump to rush into battle like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWYZDs0ARqg but you also get more ambient music that makes you feel like you’re adventuring in a scary yet sacred place and you don’t belong there with ominous sound reverberating through the room https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QRx_ZBoSrE then you fight a boss and the music goes : https://youtu.be/4HNEPXbNEK4?si=oaBREVaNcJIG7zqj !
There is so much variety and energy to the soundtrack that to me it easily rivals some of the greats like Final Fantasy, Megaman, Castlevania or even Donkey Kong Country with which Dawn of Ys shares its sense of harmony and insane instrumentalisation which seems impossible to do on such ancient hardware but yet it does !
And I even like a lot of the creative choice they make when remaking old tracks, Fountain of Love, Tears of Sylph and the Syonin for example is composed with an instrumentalisation closer to that of the PC-98 instead of how it was in the PCE version of Ys 1 to clearly separate the homely, familiar and old-school feeling of Adol’s quasi home-town which contrasts with the rest of the adventures which uses more elaborate instrumentalisation as Adol dives into the unknown, the same way Adol evolves and his adventure get more grandiose and epic, the soundtrack get crazier and more complex in return !
Heck at some point in the game, you return to Darm Tower which is about to crumble and fall, they could’ve done some weird melancholic version of the tune but nah, your return to Darm Tower is accompanied by some funky, jazzy upbeat version of the original tune, what once used to be the base of operation of a great evil and Adol’s greatest challenge yet is now a freaking dance party !!! You’re dancing to the beat of your old enemies main theme and desecrate their corpses because that’s how strong and confident Adol became through his adventure and to him the Darm Tower isn’t a place of challenge to him but a leisurely walk to the DANCEFLOOR BABY : https://youtu.be/hMnq4RSmZtI?si=mxLh4IP0a_1t2QcR
Theme of Adol 1993, Field, A Great Ordeal, Temple of The Sun, Karna, A Kiss from Eldeel, so many great tracks henched into my brain thanks to Ryo Yonemitsu exquisite arrangements of the JDK’s masterclass of a soundtrack for the PC-Engine ! I’m not a music theorist so I can’t really explain with technical terms how and why these tracks work for me but the vibes are genuinely immaculate !
The Ys franchise is first and foremost about adventure, about this intoxicating feeling of wanting to give everything up, grab our bags and journey to places unknown ! Pushing with relentless motion through the different places Adol visits on his journey and a soundtrack this energetic and varied only emphasize that feeling even more !
But fear not my friend because Dawn of Ys isn’t just a really cool aesthetic served on silver platter of banger tracks, it’s also first and foremost an EXCELLENT videogame ! Once again, we’re back to Bump Combat and I know that after everything I’ve just said that might’ve gotten you a little bit too excited you’ll probably say something of the likes of : “Oh really ? We’re doing this ancient ass, clunky ass, stupid ass bump system again ?” and ladies and gentle straw men who live in my head, I’ve heard your plight !
After all, Bump Combat is such an acquired taste that I had to spend two whole reviews talking about the strengths of a well executed version of such a system as well as its merits when it comes to the flow and the momentum of the game and the cracks that shows when this balance isn’t respected by badly coded hitboxes, stilted movement, terrible boss design and so forth. But Ok I know this can be a turn-off to some people but once again put your bias aside because Dawn of Ys took Bump Combat and made it EXCELLENT ! It’s easily the best game featuring bump combat in the entire series (it’s also the last one if we don’t count all of the countless ports of Ys 1&2 for modern platforms).
Dawn of Ys, much like Mask of The Sun, decides to take the same basic moveset as Ys II, with the same sets of magic to unlock too. One might think of this decision as lazy since the game doesn’t really offer much novelty from a strict gameplay sense but while your toolkit may be the same, the way Hudson uses that toolkit is much more different and the game is full of surprises at every turn. The only real difference now is that you now possess the power of DIAGONAL movement which is an actual god sent for fighting enemies or just traversing the map and offers a greater degree of freedom when it comes to positioning and even puzzles !
Unlike Tonkin House who understood so little of the appeal of the bump combat system they implemented elements of game design which came in contradiction to it, Hudson decided to play with that element of constant motion with sometimes really clever movement based puzzle making almost each dungeon in the game pop with creativity and flair they couldn’t really achieve back then. Like I said in my first review, the secret of the early Ys games was their simplicity and ease of access but also its constant sense of motion which made you rush into battle to the tunes of power metal ! But while simplicity is indeed charming, ambition is definitely more enthralling !
While Ys II chose the route of streamlining the game to be more accessible and focus more greatly on its narration by designing their game in a more linear fashion, Hudson decided to take the freedom of Ys 1 and the varied setpieces of Ys 2 to create the perfect synthesis of the Ys formula imaginable. Dawn of Ys is a game which never stops going and always comes up with new and exciting ideas for your adventure !
When you arrive on the mainland to start your adventure, boom you’re confronted by the Romun Empire and sent to prison where they take your cool ass equipment from your adventures in Ys II and you’re mad as shit about this but you break-out with the help of cool characters such as Durgen and Karna and you realize that sometimes the game will make you fight with ally who also deals with enemies the same as you ! One time you’re on a raft and have to survive an onslaught of enemies, one time you’re in a volcano ! One time you’re turned into a monster and have to find a way to turn back to normal ! One time you’re in Esher Space and the gravity is flipped upside down and so much more !
What about the bosses tho ? Well Hudson also pushed themselves on that front, Dawn of Ys possesses more than 15 bosses compared to Mask of The Sun mere 9 and it’s one more boss than both Ys 1&2 combined (proving once again that Dawn of Ys is the true Ys II if the first two games are combined into one complete experience). With bump combat and magic available much like in Ys II we can imagine that there would be an imbalance between the two mechanics but nope, each boss of Dawn of Ys is extremely well designed and fun to fight !
All of the bosses strike a good balance between having to use bump combat and magic to defeat them and when it comes to pattern and all, I have absolutely nothing to complain about here, some of the later bosses are true marvel of boss design which fully plays into the strength of the somewhat simple yet effective battle system of the series so far ! A friend of mine once told me that the Twin Head boss in Ys 1 was the best they could do with Bump Combat and he was immediately proven wrong upon playing Dawn of Ys for the first time and realizing that even the first boss of that games tops any boss from either Ys 1 or Ys 2. Dawn of Ys is a game of constant wonder that always finds a way to surprise you at every turn with its setpieces, and each one of them go by so fast that you don’t get to see the time pass ! This game's sense of flow and pacing is so immaculate that not a single moment of it is boring and you feel like you’re living a really epic adventure with twists and turns and revelations at every corner ! The game may be short, it can be completed in a little over 10 h but these 10h are so intense and filled with stuff that you feel like the adventure is 10 times more epic and grand than what you can imagine !
And this proves that a game can make us feel and experience many things with more intensity no matter the actual game time, something that Falcom seems to have forgotten with time ! It’s not about how long and how stuffed with content a game is, it’s not about how much you can pad out a game to give the illusion of something richer, deeper and more interesting. It’s about making the most of what the content you have to truly impact the minds of the player who experiences your art ! And if length and only length was a determining factor some medium like films wouldn’t be so successful and Hudson understood it perfectly.
The story of Dawn of Ys is also one that I wanted to give a lot of credit towards. While Mask of The Sun followed the guideline of the design document to a T without attempting anything fancy (and with how awkwardly the story was told here, they didn’t attempt to even follow it right imo), Hudson took the idea of a direct sequel to Ys 1&2 further and did a lot of really cool things with the continuity and the established lore at the time ! The game is called “The Dawn of Ys” because more than just a new adventure in a brand new land, Adol was about to discover the secret of what he went through in the first two games ! It seems that Celceta holds the answers to all the events that lead to the corruption of the Black Pearl and the fall of Ys before Adol’s arrival in the first game and as you explore Celceta, you find yourself uncovering these answers and I absolutely love the connections they made here !
From the relationship the twin goddesses had with the inhabitant of Celceta, to the origins of Darm and the Black Pearl, to how certain things in Esteria and Ys relate to things in Celceta and how everything played into one another. One of my absolute favorite moment of the game is when during one of the game many info-dump flashbacks, you not only learn the real name of Dark Fact but also it’s revealed to you that one of the items you’ve been using in Ys 1 is actually a super important item in the global lore of the series ! Meaning that you now have to depart for Esteria and revisit the map of Ys 1 now free of all the demons ! Can you imagine the absolute flex that it is ? They didn’t have to do this and yet they did ! And it’s so good seeing all the characters from the first two games but also the different places and what they became after Adol’s departure, Ys 1 which used to be so simple, is now relegated to a small chapter inside of a much more ambitious whole ! Sure, it’s not on the level of say, the second half of DQ3 or the Kanto reveal in Pokemon Gold and Silver to name a similar exemple but man I’m a sucker for that type of stuff !
Everything about Dawn of Ys to its presentation, to its music, to its story, to level design, to the way the game builds on the basis of Ys 1&2 and plays with its continuity make the game feel like a non-stop constantly moving grand epic to which we never see the time passes ! They took everything that made Ys 1&2 so iconic and perfected it, Hudson didn’t just want to create yet another title in the prestigious Ys saga, they wanted to create the Ultimate Ys game !
The game is a love letter to the series and what Masaya Hashimoto and Tomoyoshi Miyazaki, now too busy to work on their own project accomplished years ago and in many ways they managed to surpass them (well at least as far as making a Ys game goes !) and I believe that no one understood the appeal of Ys more than the team at Hudson Soft.
However, Falcom had other plans for the franchises and didn’t want to let go of Adol and the series and with Hudson hopping a bit too much above the initial guidelines to make a conclusion to the series instead of yet another episode, they decided that the game would now be considered not canon and Mask of The Sun will therefore be the version of reference for every subsequent Ys title. On one hand, I get it, this isn’t Hudson’s series, it was Falcom’s and if they wanted to continue with this series they just couldn’t let something like the ending of Dawn of Ys happen and give the series the proper closure it deserves.
Personally speaking, while what Hudson Soft did can be compared to mere fanfiction, it’s really good fanfiction and aside from coming into conflicts with the modern lore of the series and offering an epilogue that could have easily been acknowledged by Falcom without actually hurting the continuity, I think that what Hudson did here is phenomenal, the ending of Dawn of Ys is perhaps my favorite ending in the series despite and never fail to make me emotional. So many of Hudson’s ideas for the lore and continuity of the series at least in my opinion could’ve been reworked into the main timeline as I do think that some ideas here are actually better than what Falcom will eventually do with them !
Much to my dismay, that means that for how excellent Dawn of Ys is, its legacy is now forgotten, even Falcom seems to be really keen on ignoring the game’s existence or any influence Hudson might’ve had on the franchise (in fact : in the modern port of the older titles, you can play every OST’s of each version of Ys 1,2 and 3 but not the PC-Engine version but I bet it’s due to copyright issues rather than pettiness) and I think this is a great injustice.
I really do implore you, if you enjoy Ys especially Ys 1&2, I urge yourself to try out Dawn of Ys even more so if you were disappointed by Falcom’s own take on the game they did 20 years later with “Memories of Celceta” (but that will be a story for another time !). It’s really a masterpiece and easily amongst the best the series has to offer, a true labor of love and passion made by people who probably loved and understood Ys more than its original creators.
The next game in the series will be handled by Falcom themselves and who knows, maybe they won’t fuck it up… right ?
See you next time, as we take a look at “Ys V” the game, the game which almost killed the Ys franchise !
In the 80’s there were few developers who actually knew what they were doing more than Hudson Soft, these guys are probably single handedly responsible for Nintendo opening itself to third party developers to make the NES/Famicom the legendary console we know today. Hudson Soft first and foremost were people who didn’t just like video games as a way to make money on a newly expanding market, these guys were very passionate about new technology and the wonders of gaming as a whole.
But eventually, when you enjoy making games so much, you start to become ambitious and soon Hudson Soft will partner with NEC the prime micro-computer manufacturer (and creator of the famous “porn game machine” known as the PC-98) under a share common interest of building the game console of the future : The PC-Engine otherwise known as the Turbografx 16 outside of Japan. The PCE was a really impressive machine for the time and even today, I’m still kind of blown away by the technical capabilities of the console which only has an 8 bit processor but packs a lot of punch otherwise especially with the CD Add-on that they’ve adopted earlier than many other companies at the time.
However, they were releasing a new console on an highly competitive market, Sega and Nintendo were fiercely competing for domination and other companies who dared venture on hardware territory knew that it was complicated to stand out amongst the crowd and that’s when Hudson had a brilliant idea, they will partner with Falcom to port their classic Ys title to their console. Ys 1 and Ys 2 were already considered classic of NEC micro-computers system and they have already existed many ports of the game to pretty much all available platforms at the time including the NES and the Master System but Hudson’s version on their PC-Engine was going to be different, it wasn’t just going to be a port, it was going to be a full-on REMAKE !
Ys Book 1&2 took the first two games in the series and combined them together into a single one like it was originally planned for the first time and the game will receive the most premium treatment imaginable ! A graphical overhaul which put new life into the game, touched up gameplay that made the experience smoother to play, smoother leveling curves which mitigated the grinding, new tracks to accompany certain important moment with new remixes on the absurdly insane sounding PCE soundchip which was able to make freaking miracle happened, it had animated cutscenes and full fucking voice-acting for a game released in 1989 and they did it both in Japanese and in English as this was the first game in the series to be shipped internationally (not counting the weird European port of Ys 1 on the Master System) !
Everyone’s mind was freaking blown away by how much love and care was put into this new iteration, gamers who were alive to see it happen before their very eyes as children couldn’t believe their eyes ! It was a true epic adventure with all the proper care put into its presentation to heightened that sense of wonder. It’s clear that probably the reason why Ys even got so popular in the first place and managed to stay relevant was because of this port right there, the game was well received pretty much everywhere and magazines sang the tales of how Hudson made Ys 1 & 2 a legendary game going beyond its simple ambition !
And all of this before Zelda or any other company was able to release their next-gen titles !
The PC-Engine version of Ys 1&2 was a massive success and single-handedly was enough of a reason for people to even buy a PC-Engine in the first place. It was clear that Hudson Soft didn’t just enjoy Ys, they didn’t just like Ys heck they didn’t even love Ys ! THEY WERE TRULY PASSIONATE ABOUT YS ! So much so that Hudson was allowed to port Ys III for the PC-Engine too with the same level of care and polish as what they did for Ys 1&2 even tho no amount of polish managed to make the game any good in the end and they botched the localization of it but oh well…
So when Falcom couldn’t make Ys IV themselves, Hudson seemed like the obvious choice to direct and create a new entry in their series ! But making a game from scratch with only a design document full of concept arts, a few guidelines and no lines of code or any prototype was a vastly different task than just taking an already existing game and polishing it to completion but unlike Tonkin House who was this small no-name company playing with their turds trying to make a barely playable game to satisfy the guideline, Hudson had something that they didn’t, they had experiences with making successful cult classic games but most importantly they had PASSION
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCmsS8eD_XY
From the moment you boot up the game you understand that the level of production value here is through the fucking roof ! You ain’t playing some dinky ass, poopy ass, budget ass, Tonkin Ass, Cold Steel Era Falcom ass “product” ! YOU ARE PLAYING A REAL VIDEOGAME ! MADE BY REAL DEVELOPERS ! WITH REAL TALENT ! REAL PASSION AND A REAL BUDGET TO GIVE THEM THE MEAN TO PRODUCE A MASTERPIECE AND YOU BET YOUR ASS THEY WERE GONNA TAKE THE CHANCE ! THERE IS NO BRAKE ON THIS TRAIN ! DAWN OF YS IS A GAME THAT’S GOING TO SHOW MODERN FALCOM PLAYERS HOW WE USED TO DO IT BACK IN THE 9 TO THE TIES ! A PRODUCT MOLD IN THE VOLCANO OF LOVE AND FORGED BY THE FINEST SOUL-MAKER IN THE INDUSTRY !
What made Ys 1&2 so legendary already was the visual presentation of it all, it made the original script of those games popped even more than they originally did in spite of the limited presentation and the added animated character portrait, voice acting and even cutscenes really added a lot of flair to the original two games. But Ys 1&2 Hudson was merely adding on top of the original game. With Dawn of Ys, they had full control over the game's presentation and how it would fit inside of the game ! And I’m happy to report they did a phenomenal job on just the visual presentation and scene direction level !
The first few minutes of Dawn of Ys already introduce the game in a much better way than Tonkin's version did. After coming back from one of their travels, Adol and Dogi stop by Esteria. It's been 2 years since the event of their adventure there and everyone is waiting for them ! A lot of things have changed already, Goban has opened a shop, Lilia now lives among the people of Esteria and is constantly waiting for Adol’s return and her health got better too ! Sarah is alive and managed to survive the assault of Dark Fact and his army after mysteriously disappearing in Ys 1 ! As you walk toward the city, the title of the game fades on top of the screen, everyone is celebrating Adol’s return ! This section feels like a genuine victory lap and a great way to welcome us back to the world of Ys after so long and I love every single minute of it and it’s all done really well !
One thing that’s clear from the game’s visual presentation is that the game will put more of an emphasis on its narration and especially how it’s going to be told through its visuals, you have much more scripted events the likes of other RPGs at the time where you lose control of Adol’s character for a moment to witness dialogues and scenes ! The general artstyle of the game oozes of that timeless 90’s anime charm, the character design is pretty damn excellent and on par with the striking designs of the original game, many characters from the first two games even got a face lift for the occasion, each of the game’s portrait and cutscenes are superbly animated and full of details ! That recreation of Ys II final battle is only a technical flex before the game bombards you with an avalanche of colors which pops out of your screen and invites you to live the adventure of a lifetime !
While the in-game graphics might be less impressive than the anime style portrait, cg’s and animation I just love how colorful the game looks which complimented by the extremely varied environments the game make you go through from lush forest to snowy mountains to a creepy abandoned mansion and even more, the visuals manage sometimes to pull off some really cool things with the environment and it definitely make the journey feel more alive than ever !
One particularly impressive thing about Dawn of Ys is that while text boxes are still the norm for dialogues with regular NPC’s most of the big story scene are entirely dubbed with animated character portraits popping on the screen and sometimes even CG’s much like in visual novel to highlight some of the more important moments, the original Japanese performance is honestly pretty stellar and I’m still shocked at how cleanly the voice acting sound on such an old hardware.
However this raised an issue when it came to the availability of the game for the longest time as much like Mask of the Sun, Dawn of Ys remained a Japanese exclusive and in the case of Dawn while an english fan translation already existed for a while most of the important dialogue remained untranslated simply because they couldn’t display subtitles during the game numerous voiced only segments. Thankfully nowadays this is no longer an issue thanks to a group of talented but amateurish voice actors who banded together with the goal to bring a fandub of the entire game !
While it’s not quite as professionally well made as the official dub of Ys 1&2 with the only professional voice actor here being Alan Oppenheimer, third cousin of THE Oppenheimer and voice of Skeletor in the He-Man series giving his voice to Darm in the intro of the game. That doesn’t mean that the rest of the crew delivered a hack job and I think that on average, they did manage to at least capture the feel of that era of voice-acting. I think it was probably something the dubbing team wanted to transmit with their performance, something that sound like it was recorded by a bunch of voice actors going off way too much in a at times goofy, at times overly serious and badass tone and I just think it works really well and definitely feel like the game actually did came out in the west. The only issue with the English Dub however is that the general audio mixing is rather poor, you can feel each member of the team had different mike quality and the voice acting can sometimes be a bit muffled by the music or sound effect playing in the background and with no option to arrange the audio mixing yourself in the settings you’ll have to sometimes open your ear wide to understand what the hell are they saying. Be sure to check their website at : https://www.ysutopia.net/downloads/ys4/Ys%20IV%20Dub%20Readme/readme.html
But back to the story, as Adol is celebrating with his friends, Sara the local fortune teller tells him about the distant land of Celceta. While she was escaping the forces of Dark Fact she discovered a connection between the black pearl and some ruins recently found on the mainland and she asked Adol to investigate it ! Without losing a single minute, Adol answered the call to adventure and in the dark of night set out to Celceta the mysteries of this ancient land ! But in the shadows, a sinister group of individual are trying to perform a dark ritual shown in a metal as fuck way too fucking gory for this franchise animated cutscenes before the game starts off with this absolute BANGER !
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tK9JTh0gAXs
GODDAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMN MY DUDE THESE SAXOPHONES ARE MAKING MY ASS WETTER THAN A FOUNTAIN ON A SUNDAY AFTERNOON JESUS CHRIST !
One of the strongest aspect of the Ys series ever since its infancy has always been its amazing soundtrack, baring some exceptions, you know that an Ys game is going to own several asses just going by the soundtrack alone and I must report that the soundtrack for Dawn of Ys is once again completely out of this world ! For the first time in the history of the franchise, it’s the Falcom Sound JDK team handling the soundtrack. The Falcom JDK team is Falcom's very own personal rock-band. Composed of many prominent members joining in and out as the company evolve with time, the JDK team was originally founded to make CD quality audio version of Falcom’s soundtrack to sell them as promotional material but eventually, the JDK team took a more prominent role in development and as the advent of technology and sound quality went on, the JDK team now started actually composing for Ys as well as other Falcom titles.
Ys IV soundtrack was composed before the game ever began development and most of the music were made on CD’s that were later released as the “Ys IV Perfect Collection” but while the original album is freaking phenomenal on its own, that doesn’t take away the excellent instrumentalisation that went into translating the original composition into something that could be played by the PCE absolutely insane sound chip ! It’s simple, the soundtrack for Dawn of Ys might be my favorite soundtrack in the entire series ! While Yuzo Koshiro’s soundtrack for the original 2 Ys games was already an absolute joy for the ear, his departure didn’t mean that the JDK team couldn’t up the ante and provide a soundtrack which tells a million words with only a few notes !
The synths, the guitars, the FREAKING SAXOPHONE in the intro of the game, everything about this OST oozes from pure 90’s funk and pop with a lot variety in the composition, of course you get your adventure tracks that make you pump to rush into battle like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWYZDs0ARqg but you also get more ambient music that makes you feel like you’re adventuring in a scary yet sacred place and you don’t belong there with ominous sound reverberating through the room https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QRx_ZBoSrE then you fight a boss and the music goes : https://youtu.be/4HNEPXbNEK4?si=oaBREVaNcJIG7zqj !
There is so much variety and energy to the soundtrack that to me it easily rivals some of the greats like Final Fantasy, Megaman, Castlevania or even Donkey Kong Country with which Dawn of Ys shares its sense of harmony and insane instrumentalisation which seems impossible to do on such ancient hardware but yet it does !
And I even like a lot of the creative choice they make when remaking old tracks, Fountain of Love, Tears of Sylph and the Syonin for example is composed with an instrumentalisation closer to that of the PC-98 instead of how it was in the PCE version of Ys 1 to clearly separate the homely, familiar and old-school feeling of Adol’s quasi home-town which contrasts with the rest of the adventures which uses more elaborate instrumentalisation as Adol dives into the unknown, the same way Adol evolves and his adventure get more grandiose and epic, the soundtrack get crazier and more complex in return !
Heck at some point in the game, you return to Darm Tower which is about to crumble and fall, they could’ve done some weird melancholic version of the tune but nah, your return to Darm Tower is accompanied by some funky, jazzy upbeat version of the original tune, what once used to be the base of operation of a great evil and Adol’s greatest challenge yet is now a freaking dance party !!! You’re dancing to the beat of your old enemies main theme and desecrate their corpses because that’s how strong and confident Adol became through his adventure and to him the Darm Tower isn’t a place of challenge to him but a leisurely walk to the DANCEFLOOR BABY : https://youtu.be/hMnq4RSmZtI?si=mxLh4IP0a_1t2QcR
Theme of Adol 1993, Field, A Great Ordeal, Temple of The Sun, Karna, A Kiss from Eldeel, so many great tracks henched into my brain thanks to Ryo Yonemitsu exquisite arrangements of the JDK’s masterclass of a soundtrack for the PC-Engine ! I’m not a music theorist so I can’t really explain with technical terms how and why these tracks work for me but the vibes are genuinely immaculate !
The Ys franchise is first and foremost about adventure, about this intoxicating feeling of wanting to give everything up, grab our bags and journey to places unknown ! Pushing with relentless motion through the different places Adol visits on his journey and a soundtrack this energetic and varied only emphasize that feeling even more !
But fear not my friend because Dawn of Ys isn’t just a really cool aesthetic served on silver platter of banger tracks, it’s also first and foremost an EXCELLENT videogame ! Once again, we’re back to Bump Combat and I know that after everything I’ve just said that might’ve gotten you a little bit too excited you’ll probably say something of the likes of : “Oh really ? We’re doing this ancient ass, clunky ass, stupid ass bump system again ?” and ladies and gentle straw men who live in my head, I’ve heard your plight !
After all, Bump Combat is such an acquired taste that I had to spend two whole reviews talking about the strengths of a well executed version of such a system as well as its merits when it comes to the flow and the momentum of the game and the cracks that shows when this balance isn’t respected by badly coded hitboxes, stilted movement, terrible boss design and so forth. But Ok I know this can be a turn-off to some people but once again put your bias aside because Dawn of Ys took Bump Combat and made it EXCELLENT ! It’s easily the best game featuring bump combat in the entire series (it’s also the last one if we don’t count all of the countless ports of Ys 1&2 for modern platforms).
Dawn of Ys, much like Mask of The Sun, decides to take the same basic moveset as Ys II, with the same sets of magic to unlock too. One might think of this decision as lazy since the game doesn’t really offer much novelty from a strict gameplay sense but while your toolkit may be the same, the way Hudson uses that toolkit is much more different and the game is full of surprises at every turn. The only real difference now is that you now possess the power of DIAGONAL movement which is an actual god sent for fighting enemies or just traversing the map and offers a greater degree of freedom when it comes to positioning and even puzzles !
Unlike Tonkin House who understood so little of the appeal of the bump combat system they implemented elements of game design which came in contradiction to it, Hudson decided to play with that element of constant motion with sometimes really clever movement based puzzle making almost each dungeon in the game pop with creativity and flair they couldn’t really achieve back then. Like I said in my first review, the secret of the early Ys games was their simplicity and ease of access but also its constant sense of motion which made you rush into battle to the tunes of power metal ! But while simplicity is indeed charming, ambition is definitely more enthralling !
While Ys II chose the route of streamlining the game to be more accessible and focus more greatly on its narration by designing their game in a more linear fashion, Hudson decided to take the freedom of Ys 1 and the varied setpieces of Ys 2 to create the perfect synthesis of the Ys formula imaginable. Dawn of Ys is a game which never stops going and always comes up with new and exciting ideas for your adventure !
When you arrive on the mainland to start your adventure, boom you’re confronted by the Romun Empire and sent to prison where they take your cool ass equipment from your adventures in Ys II and you’re mad as shit about this but you break-out with the help of cool characters such as Durgen and Karna and you realize that sometimes the game will make you fight with ally who also deals with enemies the same as you ! One time you’re on a raft and have to survive an onslaught of enemies, one time you’re in a volcano ! One time you’re turned into a monster and have to find a way to turn back to normal ! One time you’re in Esher Space and the gravity is flipped upside down and so much more !
What about the bosses tho ? Well Hudson also pushed themselves on that front, Dawn of Ys possesses more than 15 bosses compared to Mask of The Sun mere 9 and it’s one more boss than both Ys 1&2 combined (proving once again that Dawn of Ys is the true Ys II if the first two games are combined into one complete experience). With bump combat and magic available much like in Ys II we can imagine that there would be an imbalance between the two mechanics but nope, each boss of Dawn of Ys is extremely well designed and fun to fight !
All of the bosses strike a good balance between having to use bump combat and magic to defeat them and when it comes to pattern and all, I have absolutely nothing to complain about here, some of the later bosses are true marvel of boss design which fully plays into the strength of the somewhat simple yet effective battle system of the series so far ! A friend of mine once told me that the Twin Head boss in Ys 1 was the best they could do with Bump Combat and he was immediately proven wrong upon playing Dawn of Ys for the first time and realizing that even the first boss of that games tops any boss from either Ys 1 or Ys 2. Dawn of Ys is a game of constant wonder that always finds a way to surprise you at every turn with its setpieces, and each one of them go by so fast that you don’t get to see the time pass ! This game's sense of flow and pacing is so immaculate that not a single moment of it is boring and you feel like you’re living a really epic adventure with twists and turns and revelations at every corner ! The game may be short, it can be completed in a little over 10 h but these 10h are so intense and filled with stuff that you feel like the adventure is 10 times more epic and grand than what you can imagine !
And this proves that a game can make us feel and experience many things with more intensity no matter the actual game time, something that Falcom seems to have forgotten with time ! It’s not about how long and how stuffed with content a game is, it’s not about how much you can pad out a game to give the illusion of something richer, deeper and more interesting. It’s about making the most of what the content you have to truly impact the minds of the player who experiences your art ! And if length and only length was a determining factor some medium like films wouldn’t be so successful and Hudson understood it perfectly.
The story of Dawn of Ys is also one that I wanted to give a lot of credit towards. While Mask of The Sun followed the guideline of the design document to a T without attempting anything fancy (and with how awkwardly the story was told here, they didn’t attempt to even follow it right imo), Hudson took the idea of a direct sequel to Ys 1&2 further and did a lot of really cool things with the continuity and the established lore at the time ! The game is called “The Dawn of Ys” because more than just a new adventure in a brand new land, Adol was about to discover the secret of what he went through in the first two games ! It seems that Celceta holds the answers to all the events that lead to the corruption of the Black Pearl and the fall of Ys before Adol’s arrival in the first game and as you explore Celceta, you find yourself uncovering these answers and I absolutely love the connections they made here !
From the relationship the twin goddesses had with the inhabitant of Celceta, to the origins of Darm and the Black Pearl, to how certain things in Esteria and Ys relate to things in Celceta and how everything played into one another. One of my absolute favorite moment of the game is when during one of the game many info-dump flashbacks, you not only learn the real name of Dark Fact but also it’s revealed to you that one of the items you’ve been using in Ys 1 is actually a super important item in the global lore of the series ! Meaning that you now have to depart for Esteria and revisit the map of Ys 1 now free of all the demons ! Can you imagine the absolute flex that it is ? They didn’t have to do this and yet they did ! And it’s so good seeing all the characters from the first two games but also the different places and what they became after Adol’s departure, Ys 1 which used to be so simple, is now relegated to a small chapter inside of a much more ambitious whole ! Sure, it’s not on the level of say, the second half of DQ3 or the Kanto reveal in Pokemon Gold and Silver to name a similar exemple but man I’m a sucker for that type of stuff !
Everything about Dawn of Ys to its presentation, to its music, to its story, to level design, to the way the game builds on the basis of Ys 1&2 and plays with its continuity make the game feel like a non-stop constantly moving grand epic to which we never see the time passes ! They took everything that made Ys 1&2 so iconic and perfected it, Hudson didn’t just want to create yet another title in the prestigious Ys saga, they wanted to create the Ultimate Ys game !
The game is a love letter to the series and what Masaya Hashimoto and Tomoyoshi Miyazaki, now too busy to work on their own project accomplished years ago and in many ways they managed to surpass them (well at least as far as making a Ys game goes !) and I believe that no one understood the appeal of Ys more than the team at Hudson Soft.
However, Falcom had other plans for the franchises and didn’t want to let go of Adol and the series and with Hudson hopping a bit too much above the initial guidelines to make a conclusion to the series instead of yet another episode, they decided that the game would now be considered not canon and Mask of The Sun will therefore be the version of reference for every subsequent Ys title. On one hand, I get it, this isn’t Hudson’s series, it was Falcom’s and if they wanted to continue with this series they just couldn’t let something like the ending of Dawn of Ys happen and give the series the proper closure it deserves.
Personally speaking, while what Hudson Soft did can be compared to mere fanfiction, it’s really good fanfiction and aside from coming into conflicts with the modern lore of the series and offering an epilogue that could have easily been acknowledged by Falcom without actually hurting the continuity, I think that what Hudson did here is phenomenal, the ending of Dawn of Ys is perhaps my favorite ending in the series despite and never fail to make me emotional. So many of Hudson’s ideas for the lore and continuity of the series at least in my opinion could’ve been reworked into the main timeline as I do think that some ideas here are actually better than what Falcom will eventually do with them !
Much to my dismay, that means that for how excellent Dawn of Ys is, its legacy is now forgotten, even Falcom seems to be really keen on ignoring the game’s existence or any influence Hudson might’ve had on the franchise (in fact : in the modern port of the older titles, you can play every OST’s of each version of Ys 1,2 and 3 but not the PC-Engine version but I bet it’s due to copyright issues rather than pettiness) and I think this is a great injustice.
I really do implore you, if you enjoy Ys especially Ys 1&2, I urge yourself to try out Dawn of Ys even more so if you were disappointed by Falcom’s own take on the game they did 20 years later with “Memories of Celceta” (but that will be a story for another time !). It’s really a masterpiece and easily amongst the best the series has to offer, a true labor of love and passion made by people who probably loved and understood Ys more than its original creators.
The next game in the series will be handled by Falcom themselves and who knows, maybe they won’t fuck it up… right ?
See you next time, as we take a look at “Ys V” the game, the game which almost killed the Ys franchise !
Street Fighter 6
2023
All I did was getting my ass beaten to nothingness by people way better than me for like hours long and I'd do that all over again, no second thoughts. That's just how good this game plays
Armored Core has remarkable entries, but only some of them will generate really, really strong reactions once said. Last Raven is, by no means exaggerating, one of them, and for all the good and bad reasons.
As it goes for For Answer, this is one of the games in the series which features this "impeding doom" scenario, writing, and atmosphere. The latter being thick enough which will sell you on the game in its first beats - just as art direction, soundtrack and quality of life changes will do.
Those latter improvements are welcome, as they are needed in order to advance through the toughest parts of the title. From the original three we get five AC loadouts, the garage UI is completely revamped, the statistics sections too, the tuning is free of charge and not irreversible, and there's a whole new menu for any information regarding rival ACs, missions, world and story. Controls are carried over from Nexus and Nine-Breaker, but the old-school option still remains. So much is given...
...Only for the game to take it back, tenfold.
When people speak about this thing being hard, they are not lying or making it up. Parts can break down during a fight, worsening your AC performance in real time, and even make you unable to use an arm weapon. Those broken parts will have to be bought again in full at the shop, which makes experimenting harder, at least in your first play-through.
If Silent Line has the habit of dropping in ACs like MTs, Last Raven has the habit of dropping in bosses like ACs. If your performance was rewarded with a challenge before, now it's rewarded with a brick wall. Always expect the unexpected.
You won't bring OP-INTENSIFY here, everyone is a human plus, and most of the rival ACs are also over-tuned to the point of basically cheating against the player. All things which will generate frustration beyond everything you have experienced in the series, like "Destroy Floating Mines" or "B-1 Grand Chief".
That's because, even if the game is the biggest in terms of options - only some of them are viable. Those strong parts are, funny enough, the ones you won't be carrying over from Nexus, and instead finding in Last Raven. What you carry over from Nexus and Nine-Breaker is, instead, the EN balancing, lightweights being dead on arrival and weapons' spread making some of them borderline unusable. Adding in the game's habit to reward you with parts when you S-tier a mission, the pain points are now revealed. Yet how come this absolute disaster of a game is that praised?
Well, this thing is just - that - good. Arguably, some of the best the series can offer. And that can easily be explained by the game's high-level structure.
Time is of the essence. You, other ravens, corporations and independent warlords all fight for a piece of the remaining pie in this post-apocalyptic world soon to be engulfed in the apocalypse once again. You almost always have a choice, which will bring you towards one of the many endings this game offers.
Last Raven is more than a statement. Everyone has a bounty on his head. If you get them - the money's yours. Once you get them - they're gone for good, written out of that "blacklist" of sorts. You can still fight them in the VR Arena which, by the way, offers by far the toughest rival AC in the whole series.
The parts and missions offering is the biggest in the series, and the challenge arguably over-delivers in that regard too. With that said - do not be afraid, or at least, do be in a reasonable level. This is one of the some ACs where, even if you nail the garage right, the execution is on a whole other league. Be prepared to retry some encounters over and over.
Difficulty is, again, overall higher than all of the previous entries, but your experience will radically change depending on which path you do end up choosing. The easiest routes are tough, but doable. The toughest ones are on another level. If you want to go through the easiest, or toughest, or all of the routes - your call, but do keep at least your first play-through in the blind.
The most painful entry of the series is also one of the most joyful to play with. The sheer variety of options in all regards, the quality of life changes, and the technical improvements all deliver towards the best of the late 3rd generation and, arguably, some of the best action in the whole series.
Recommended.
As it goes for For Answer, this is one of the games in the series which features this "impeding doom" scenario, writing, and atmosphere. The latter being thick enough which will sell you on the game in its first beats - just as art direction, soundtrack and quality of life changes will do.
Those latter improvements are welcome, as they are needed in order to advance through the toughest parts of the title. From the original three we get five AC loadouts, the garage UI is completely revamped, the statistics sections too, the tuning is free of charge and not irreversible, and there's a whole new menu for any information regarding rival ACs, missions, world and story. Controls are carried over from Nexus and Nine-Breaker, but the old-school option still remains. So much is given...
...Only for the game to take it back, tenfold.
When people speak about this thing being hard, they are not lying or making it up. Parts can break down during a fight, worsening your AC performance in real time, and even make you unable to use an arm weapon. Those broken parts will have to be bought again in full at the shop, which makes experimenting harder, at least in your first play-through.
If Silent Line has the habit of dropping in ACs like MTs, Last Raven has the habit of dropping in bosses like ACs. If your performance was rewarded with a challenge before, now it's rewarded with a brick wall. Always expect the unexpected.
You won't bring OP-INTENSIFY here, everyone is a human plus, and most of the rival ACs are also over-tuned to the point of basically cheating against the player. All things which will generate frustration beyond everything you have experienced in the series, like "Destroy Floating Mines" or "B-1 Grand Chief".
That's because, even if the game is the biggest in terms of options - only some of them are viable. Those strong parts are, funny enough, the ones you won't be carrying over from Nexus, and instead finding in Last Raven. What you carry over from Nexus and Nine-Breaker is, instead, the EN balancing, lightweights being dead on arrival and weapons' spread making some of them borderline unusable. Adding in the game's habit to reward you with parts when you S-tier a mission, the pain points are now revealed. Yet how come this absolute disaster of a game is that praised?
Well, this thing is just - that - good. Arguably, some of the best the series can offer. And that can easily be explained by the game's high-level structure.
Time is of the essence. You, other ravens, corporations and independent warlords all fight for a piece of the remaining pie in this post-apocalyptic world soon to be engulfed in the apocalypse once again. You almost always have a choice, which will bring you towards one of the many endings this game offers.
Last Raven is more than a statement. Everyone has a bounty on his head. If you get them - the money's yours. Once you get them - they're gone for good, written out of that "blacklist" of sorts. You can still fight them in the VR Arena which, by the way, offers by far the toughest rival AC in the whole series.
The parts and missions offering is the biggest in the series, and the challenge arguably over-delivers in that regard too. With that said - do not be afraid, or at least, do be in a reasonable level. This is one of the some ACs where, even if you nail the garage right, the execution is on a whole other league. Be prepared to retry some encounters over and over.
Difficulty is, again, overall higher than all of the previous entries, but your experience will radically change depending on which path you do end up choosing. The easiest routes are tough, but doable. The toughest ones are on another level. If you want to go through the easiest, or toughest, or all of the routes - your call, but do keep at least your first play-through in the blind.
The most painful entry of the series is also one of the most joyful to play with. The sheer variety of options in all regards, the quality of life changes, and the technical improvements all deliver towards the best of the late 3rd generation and, arguably, some of the best action in the whole series.
Recommended.
Titanfall 2
2016
The rare occurrence when something truly falls into the "easy to pick up and play but hard to master" definition, with a skill ceiling which can only instill admiration, if not dread, to whoever really dared to challenge it.
You can outrun jets in Ace Combat. You can outflank mechs in Armored Core. You can become untouchable, here, in Titanfall 2.
The time-to-kill of this sequel is less forgiving than the original but still manageable: sitting just a tad over games like Call of Duty, the experience will vary a lot based on how much you rely on the movement system, the weapons you're using and landing the shots themselves, obviously. Weapons which can either fall in the category of hit-scan or projectile-based: useless to say, if you use hit-scan you're missing out on the fun, even if you gain the indisputable competitive edge... Or do you?
Run, jump, stick on a wall, your movement speed increases. Jump out of the wall, land on the ground while crouched, jump just right in time in order to, again, stick to another wall, while running.
Momentum.
To build it, it's easy. To keep it up, is hard. Once you manage to do so, it's time to air strafe around: to become a pain in the ass to other players. To become speed. To outrun, outflank, outsmart, and ultimately overcome. There's a plethora of tools which will help you: abilities, lethal, and tactical grenades. "Tools", given how they can be creatively used in order to gain and keep momentum, to obtain ad advantage over enemy pilots and titans.
Titans which still retain some hints of load-out customization, but they all share an heavy characterization, while each and everyone of them defined by a role they cover: heavyweights, middleweights, and lightweights with either close or short range specialization. If the pilot is ultimately an expression of free-form gameplay and movement, the titan is a welcome change of pace. Its presence changes the match flow fundamentally, becoming both a target and a menace for enemy pilots.
Don't hesitate, though. Boldness is heftily rewarded in this game. Gain the titan faster by exploiting your enemy's weaknesses in a moment of doubt. Weaken them while their attention's drawn by another enemy. Focus on pilots, titans or NPCs in order to ultimately win the match. Which is all that matters. Like Attrition: the only mode truly worth playing, in the end.
Become the ultimate fear of CAR and Tone meta users: embrace the grenadiers, grapple and frags. To everyone aiming at you and trying to land shots at you: become ungovernable.
Born to re-gen
World is a fuck
I am trash grenadier
410,757,864,350 dead hitscan users
Originally sandwiched in between the releases of two of the biggest franchises in its genre, and arguably in its industry itself, Titanfall 2 still somehow managed to retain the interest of a way, way smaller than deserved number of people. The multiplayer's free of any bullshit you'd find in other competitors, compromised of a lot of stuff to unlock. The single-player is super solid, a must-play. The cooperative, added in an update, it's also worth your time.
No one truly yearns for this game. It's always been there. It's still here. What some yearn to is a "return-to-form" of other, way better established franchises. They will not find that here.
Respawn Entertainment was never meant to replace anyone in the industry. They were only looking for a place where they belong. And just as those stories tend to go... Time was not lenient at all to Titanfall 2.
You can still make up for it, though.
All you need to do, is to play it.
You can outrun jets in Ace Combat. You can outflank mechs in Armored Core. You can become untouchable, here, in Titanfall 2.
The time-to-kill of this sequel is less forgiving than the original but still manageable: sitting just a tad over games like Call of Duty, the experience will vary a lot based on how much you rely on the movement system, the weapons you're using and landing the shots themselves, obviously. Weapons which can either fall in the category of hit-scan or projectile-based: useless to say, if you use hit-scan you're missing out on the fun, even if you gain the indisputable competitive edge... Or do you?
Run, jump, stick on a wall, your movement speed increases. Jump out of the wall, land on the ground while crouched, jump just right in time in order to, again, stick to another wall, while running.
Momentum.
To build it, it's easy. To keep it up, is hard. Once you manage to do so, it's time to air strafe around: to become a pain in the ass to other players. To become speed. To outrun, outflank, outsmart, and ultimately overcome. There's a plethora of tools which will help you: abilities, lethal, and tactical grenades. "Tools", given how they can be creatively used in order to gain and keep momentum, to obtain ad advantage over enemy pilots and titans.
Titans which still retain some hints of load-out customization, but they all share an heavy characterization, while each and everyone of them defined by a role they cover: heavyweights, middleweights, and lightweights with either close or short range specialization. If the pilot is ultimately an expression of free-form gameplay and movement, the titan is a welcome change of pace. Its presence changes the match flow fundamentally, becoming both a target and a menace for enemy pilots.
Don't hesitate, though. Boldness is heftily rewarded in this game. Gain the titan faster by exploiting your enemy's weaknesses in a moment of doubt. Weaken them while their attention's drawn by another enemy. Focus on pilots, titans or NPCs in order to ultimately win the match. Which is all that matters. Like Attrition: the only mode truly worth playing, in the end.
Become the ultimate fear of CAR and Tone meta users: embrace the grenadiers, grapple and frags. To everyone aiming at you and trying to land shots at you: become ungovernable.
Born to re-gen
World is a fuck
I am trash grenadier
410,757,864,350 dead hitscan users
Originally sandwiched in between the releases of two of the biggest franchises in its genre, and arguably in its industry itself, Titanfall 2 still somehow managed to retain the interest of a way, way smaller than deserved number of people. The multiplayer's free of any bullshit you'd find in other competitors, compromised of a lot of stuff to unlock. The single-player is super solid, a must-play. The cooperative, added in an update, it's also worth your time.
No one truly yearns for this game. It's always been there. It's still here. What some yearn to is a "return-to-form" of other, way better established franchises. They will not find that here.
Respawn Entertainment was never meant to replace anyone in the industry. They were only looking for a place where they belong. And just as those stories tend to go... Time was not lenient at all to Titanfall 2.
You can still make up for it, though.
All you need to do, is to play it.
It's not the first time I'm checking backloggd reviews just to see some takes here and there only for getting into some of the worst ways I could waste my time into. Like, I get it, backloggd reviews are bad, but I'm getting tired of the pattern of people throwing a lot of crap to one game, checking out their profile and their score graph looks like the stairs they've fallen from when they were children with their favourite game being Full Metal Daemon Muramasa. It's funny but gets boring after a while.
One other thing, I don't really like "reviewing" stuff, it's more about conveying how I felt playing the games I played, I can easily review a game but have you ever done that? It gets so stale so quick and nobody is paying you to talk about a product no one gives a shit about just for some likes, especially if you're gonna be controversial about it.
That being said, we can finally talk about how this game treated me like a bitch because I didn't know "OP-Intensify" was a thing to carry from AC3 so here I am. Game has literally the best mission quality so far, with some of them having the best scenarios I've ever seen in an AC; it is a relentless gauntlet that doesn't let you go until the game is done. Remember how Master of Arena wanted to end every mission with an AC fight? Well, here you're gonna get used to play 1v2. Oh, with your remaining AP and ammo, of course. And don't think even for a second that what comes before it might be barely as easy as you hope it to be, I'm already having "Defend Lawdas Factory" PTSD over here.
Lucky for me, though, I'm a sucker for this kind of challenges: the game has some of the most build variety I have ever seen and made me learn (again) that most of the gameplan is made in the garage. Back weapons and Left Arm weapons have wayyy more options than we used to have, and the new part designs for this game are insanely good, I really wanted to rebuild my 3 ACs from scratch just because how good looking those were and how many options this game makes you toy with is just insane.
And, on top of that, one of the most compelling soundtracks in the franchise so far: Kota Hoshino's last "banger tracks" I remembered were from Master of Arena and, while 2 and 3 were fine with some very good tracks here and there, Silent Line just obliterates them in overall quality.
Only real gripes I have is that the arena didn't have as much care as the other titles (even though it gets hard pretty quick, the top 3 wasn't that hard to begin with MEANWHILE CORPSE MAKER MADE ME LOSE MY MIND) and the final boss, while having literally the best design I've ever seen in AC along with Nine-ball Seraph, doesn't put quite a show and that's a shame since the difficulty of this game has been very high through most of my playthrough. Also, even though I really enjoy challenging games, this one raised the bar a bit too high in some frustrating ways: this game almost never refills your AP and ammo, so you're getting some of the missions with whole difficult chunks to do in one go and if you fuck up ONE section you know you're not gonna last for the end of them. Challenging me through movement, puzzles, fighting skills is very fun but not when you stretch the whole bunch of them in one go, it just gets tedious and frustrating.
But that being said, Silent Line has it all: customization, memorable missions, memorable soundtrack, very compelling atmosphere and some of the best designs I've seen for the mechs. Do I like it more than MOA? To be fair, I don't know at all because these two games nail a lot of stuff in different ways so it's really hard to me to compare them. But that aside, I'm getting a break from this franchise since I've been playing these games nonstop and they're mad good, mind you, but I don't want to risk a "burnout" from playing to much of the same thing, especially when the difficulty bar gets exhausting like this game does. Incredible game, but for the love of god play AC3 before this.
One other thing, I don't really like "reviewing" stuff, it's more about conveying how I felt playing the games I played, I can easily review a game but have you ever done that? It gets so stale so quick and nobody is paying you to talk about a product no one gives a shit about just for some likes, especially if you're gonna be controversial about it.
That being said, we can finally talk about how this game treated me like a bitch because I didn't know "OP-Intensify" was a thing to carry from AC3 so here I am. Game has literally the best mission quality so far, with some of them having the best scenarios I've ever seen in an AC; it is a relentless gauntlet that doesn't let you go until the game is done. Remember how Master of Arena wanted to end every mission with an AC fight? Well, here you're gonna get used to play 1v2. Oh, with your remaining AP and ammo, of course. And don't think even for a second that what comes before it might be barely as easy as you hope it to be, I'm already having "Defend Lawdas Factory" PTSD over here.
Lucky for me, though, I'm a sucker for this kind of challenges: the game has some of the most build variety I have ever seen and made me learn (again) that most of the gameplan is made in the garage. Back weapons and Left Arm weapons have wayyy more options than we used to have, and the new part designs for this game are insanely good, I really wanted to rebuild my 3 ACs from scratch just because how good looking those were and how many options this game makes you toy with is just insane.
And, on top of that, one of the most compelling soundtracks in the franchise so far: Kota Hoshino's last "banger tracks" I remembered were from Master of Arena and, while 2 and 3 were fine with some very good tracks here and there, Silent Line just obliterates them in overall quality.
Only real gripes I have is that the arena didn't have as much care as the other titles (even though it gets hard pretty quick, the top 3 wasn't that hard to begin with MEANWHILE CORPSE MAKER MADE ME LOSE MY MIND) and the final boss, while having literally the best design I've ever seen in AC along with Nine-ball Seraph, doesn't put quite a show and that's a shame since the difficulty of this game has been very high through most of my playthrough. Also, even though I really enjoy challenging games, this one raised the bar a bit too high in some frustrating ways: this game almost never refills your AP and ammo, so you're getting some of the missions with whole difficult chunks to do in one go and if you fuck up ONE section you know you're not gonna last for the end of them. Challenging me through movement, puzzles, fighting skills is very fun but not when you stretch the whole bunch of them in one go, it just gets tedious and frustrating.
But that being said, Silent Line has it all: customization, memorable missions, memorable soundtrack, very compelling atmosphere and some of the best designs I've seen for the mechs. Do I like it more than MOA? To be fair, I don't know at all because these two games nail a lot of stuff in different ways so it's really hard to me to compare them. But that aside, I'm getting a break from this franchise since I've been playing these games nonstop and they're mad good, mind you, but I don't want to risk a "burnout" from playing to much of the same thing, especially when the difficulty bar gets exhausting like this game does. Incredible game, but for the love of god play AC3 before this.
When something stays for one or two games, it could be a mistake. When something sticks around for two and an half generations - it's deliberate.
That's regarding the control scheme of Armored Core Silent Line. It's the same unforgiving mess which will make your hands sweat and some of your fingers hurt. But in Silent Line - it doesn't matter.
It doesn't since the AC feels butter smooth, the controls somehow do too, and everything is tighter and more "present". There's something inexplicable about how much feedback, animations, VFXs and sound design really sell the mech action's fantasy - and that's happening right here. This game wants to be obliterated by you, and it's asking that so much so you can already find out in the shop.
Shop which features a plethora of left-handed weapons which somehow mirror the right-handed ranged ones, bringing into the mix the ability to dual-wield without having to rely on weapon arms. Extensions get stronger, so much so that stuff like the MEST-MX/CROW is so strong you may just make an AC design just around that one component. And that's for starters.
If AC3 was somehow a bit tuned towards the heavyweights, here every kind of AC finds its own volition: you want a lightweight, speedy, flaking build? That's viable. A middleweight, classic Moonlight Karasawa action? Arguably some of the best renditions of both weapons.
Renditions which do not stop at weapons. Being AC3 kind of a retelling of the original Armored Core, you guessed it - Silent Line tries to make you feel like in Master of Arena. Those are big fat shoes to fill, and the game delivers on that. Partially. That will become soon understandable once you finish the title.
Until you finish though, get your ass ready for some kicking.
This thing is not joking around. Even if you bring OP-INTENSIFY, which by the way is the best rendition of the human plus system in the whole series, some if not the most of the missions are going to test your skills to the maximum. It won't take much long for ACs to drop like they were MTs, and duo or trio AC fights to become basically the norm. By that point, though, you'll be ready.
May it be a quick tour of the garage, or a stop by the arena. Silent Line, as said before, is almost overwhelming with options in order to build your tailor-made AC: being it so easy to develop a play-style-defining AC, you will spend way more time testing and trying out more stuff. That's also because one of the games featuring weapon variants, which share meshes with already existing weaponry, but with different statistics and colors.
Story goes hard. Soundtrack goes hard. If there's something really worth complaining, again, it's probably the very, very last section of the game. That's only because it under-delivers in the challenge department in a game which, mind you, it's tough, but absolutely forgiving.
Some of the best that the series has to offer is right there. Taking into account AC3, the early 3rd generation is probably quality-wise the most consistent the series has ever been.
Recommended.
That's regarding the control scheme of Armored Core Silent Line. It's the same unforgiving mess which will make your hands sweat and some of your fingers hurt. But in Silent Line - it doesn't matter.
It doesn't since the AC feels butter smooth, the controls somehow do too, and everything is tighter and more "present". There's something inexplicable about how much feedback, animations, VFXs and sound design really sell the mech action's fantasy - and that's happening right here. This game wants to be obliterated by you, and it's asking that so much so you can already find out in the shop.
Shop which features a plethora of left-handed weapons which somehow mirror the right-handed ranged ones, bringing into the mix the ability to dual-wield without having to rely on weapon arms. Extensions get stronger, so much so that stuff like the MEST-MX/CROW is so strong you may just make an AC design just around that one component. And that's for starters.
If AC3 was somehow a bit tuned towards the heavyweights, here every kind of AC finds its own volition: you want a lightweight, speedy, flaking build? That's viable. A middleweight, classic Moonlight Karasawa action? Arguably some of the best renditions of both weapons.
Renditions which do not stop at weapons. Being AC3 kind of a retelling of the original Armored Core, you guessed it - Silent Line tries to make you feel like in Master of Arena. Those are big fat shoes to fill, and the game delivers on that. Partially. That will become soon understandable once you finish the title.
Until you finish though, get your ass ready for some kicking.
This thing is not joking around. Even if you bring OP-INTENSIFY, which by the way is the best rendition of the human plus system in the whole series, some if not the most of the missions are going to test your skills to the maximum. It won't take much long for ACs to drop like they were MTs, and duo or trio AC fights to become basically the norm. By that point, though, you'll be ready.
May it be a quick tour of the garage, or a stop by the arena. Silent Line, as said before, is almost overwhelming with options in order to build your tailor-made AC: being it so easy to develop a play-style-defining AC, you will spend way more time testing and trying out more stuff. That's also because one of the games featuring weapon variants, which share meshes with already existing weaponry, but with different statistics and colors.
Story goes hard. Soundtrack goes hard. If there's something really worth complaining, again, it's probably the very, very last section of the game. That's only because it under-delivers in the challenge department in a game which, mind you, it's tough, but absolutely forgiving.
Some of the best that the series has to offer is right there. Taking into account AC3, the early 3rd generation is probably quality-wise the most consistent the series has ever been.
Recommended.
If Armored Core nails the fundamentals in a miraculous first try and Project Phantasma experiments by ultimately leading to a subpar experience, Master of Arena is undoubtedly the culmination of the 1st generation of ACs.
The reasons why can be nailed down quite early. For starters, a really strong introduction delivers the reasons for all the struggle: a grudge with an enemy raven. That raven being none other than Hustler One in his Nine-Ball. This will soon become a trope in AC, but MoA is trailblazing his way into greatness.
The Arena is integrated into the story-line in a way which will then again set the standards for future ACs: you need a sponsor, and the sponsor needs work done. Back to the missions you go.
Speaking of which, mission design's the best of the 1st generation. Set-pieces, environments, concepts and ideas finally delivered in a substantial and effective way. They never feel the same, and there's always a reason to revisit the missing ones post-game, unlike Project Phantasma.
All of AC parts went into a balacing pass, but stuff's still broken like you'd expect in 1st Gen. Taking into account how tough this game gets in the late stages, you'd want to bring in only the best you have. And that's where Master of Arena excels.
Once in a while, through the normal, bite-sized missions, you'll find enemy ACs pouring out of nowhere, slowly becoming an habit, only for then being reward with a final gauntlet against your rival. And that - that thing goes way harder than you'd expect.
Kota Hoshino started working in the AC series with MoA. Even if some tracks from the original and Project Phantasma already went hard - this is where stuff really gets memorable. You'll find out soon enough.
Bring human plus or don't - the choice is yours. Just - don't sleep on this thing.
This is some of the best offerings in the entire series and you don't want to miss it.
Recommended.
The reasons why can be nailed down quite early. For starters, a really strong introduction delivers the reasons for all the struggle: a grudge with an enemy raven. That raven being none other than Hustler One in his Nine-Ball. This will soon become a trope in AC, but MoA is trailblazing his way into greatness.
The Arena is integrated into the story-line in a way which will then again set the standards for future ACs: you need a sponsor, and the sponsor needs work done. Back to the missions you go.
Speaking of which, mission design's the best of the 1st generation. Set-pieces, environments, concepts and ideas finally delivered in a substantial and effective way. They never feel the same, and there's always a reason to revisit the missing ones post-game, unlike Project Phantasma.
All of AC parts went into a balacing pass, but stuff's still broken like you'd expect in 1st Gen. Taking into account how tough this game gets in the late stages, you'd want to bring in only the best you have. And that's where Master of Arena excels.
Once in a while, through the normal, bite-sized missions, you'll find enemy ACs pouring out of nowhere, slowly becoming an habit, only for then being reward with a final gauntlet against your rival. And that - that thing goes way harder than you'd expect.
Kota Hoshino started working in the AC series with MoA. Even if some tracks from the original and Project Phantasma already went hard - this is where stuff really gets memorable. You'll find out soon enough.
Bring human plus or don't - the choice is yours. Just - don't sleep on this thing.
This is some of the best offerings in the entire series and you don't want to miss it.
Recommended.
Lies of P
2023
I think of you
while waiting in the rain
Take me away as I am exhausted in the dark.
while waiting in the rain
Take me away as I am exhausted in the dark.
Auto Modellista
2002
Far from perfect, but nevertheless a stylish blend of the garage life of a car-tinkering petrol-head alongside race-day feeling events. The handling is not the best in the market but does his job well enough to underline the differences of drive-trains, track conditions and performance upgrades.
The track list is poor in quantity but with a varied enough selection ensuring some replay-ability, alongside reverse variants of such tracks. Car selection, on the other hand, is really good and quite big, considering how almost all of those can be customized to the player's liking.
Going back and forth in between the garage and the track can get tedious at times but the game loop is really strong. Obtaining new performance upgrades, cars and items to decorate your garage is pure player expression, alongside a game already rewarding player agency by its structure.
The atmosphere and the art direction of the game are by far its best selling point: speed lines and brake lines reminding of stuff such as Initial-D, and the cel shading alongside comic book-like outlines really make the looks of the game withstand even two decades of hardware and software improvements.
The US release features new cars, new tracks and some welcome quality of life updates in the UI department, but the handling model basically kills all the charm you'd otherwise find in the Japanese and European releases. These latter are by far the best way to experience Auto Modellista.
Recommended.
The track list is poor in quantity but with a varied enough selection ensuring some replay-ability, alongside reverse variants of such tracks. Car selection, on the other hand, is really good and quite big, considering how almost all of those can be customized to the player's liking.
Going back and forth in between the garage and the track can get tedious at times but the game loop is really strong. Obtaining new performance upgrades, cars and items to decorate your garage is pure player expression, alongside a game already rewarding player agency by its structure.
The atmosphere and the art direction of the game are by far its best selling point: speed lines and brake lines reminding of stuff such as Initial-D, and the cel shading alongside comic book-like outlines really make the looks of the game withstand even two decades of hardware and software improvements.
The US release features new cars, new tracks and some welcome quality of life updates in the UI department, but the handling model basically kills all the charm you'd otherwise find in the Japanese and European releases. These latter are by far the best way to experience Auto Modellista.
Recommended.
Sea of Stars
2023
Sea of stars is both as expected and quite surprising in almost a 50/50 split way, I took part in the Kickstarter years ago after playing The Messenger having almost complete faith in the team, while still having doubts about the genre because I'm not too fond of JRPG, but clocking in at 32 house I can confidently say that they knocked it out of the park AGAIN with a masterful game that takes both the new and the old and creates an unforgettable package.
But breaking it down, the first thing I think should be approached is the gameplay, this game took a thousand inspirations and chose to masterfully build upon them creating a game that's great to play and experiment in like any good JRPG should be, while also shuffling around how the puzzle aspect of the genre affects the single fight, it's a child of Chrono trigger for sure, but it's also a child of the Mario & Luigi series (and kinda Mario RPG as a whole) and flirts with a lot of big name jrpgs, building a combat system that's by far one of my favorites.
The story is not really something that's explosive or mind bending but the Sabotage Team has incredible writers that are perfectly aware about how to write a funny game that's not overbearing or cringy while also building genuine characters and interactions, and a story that's quite nicely put together and memorable
The OST and the pixel art are really really really good, as expected, and the pacing is frankly just right, not too hasty, not too slow.
I have small nitpicks here and there but they are nothing in the face of a game that can, and should, be the foundation for the next 10 years of indie JRPGs.
Thank you Sabotage for such an endearing game that I will not forget for quite some time.
But breaking it down, the first thing I think should be approached is the gameplay, this game took a thousand inspirations and chose to masterfully build upon them creating a game that's great to play and experiment in like any good JRPG should be, while also shuffling around how the puzzle aspect of the genre affects the single fight, it's a child of Chrono trigger for sure, but it's also a child of the Mario & Luigi series (and kinda Mario RPG as a whole) and flirts with a lot of big name jrpgs, building a combat system that's by far one of my favorites.
The story is not really something that's explosive or mind bending but the Sabotage Team has incredible writers that are perfectly aware about how to write a funny game that's not overbearing or cringy while also building genuine characters and interactions, and a story that's quite nicely put together and memorable
The OST and the pixel art are really really really good, as expected, and the pacing is frankly just right, not too hasty, not too slow.
I have small nitpicks here and there but they are nothing in the face of a game that can, and should, be the foundation for the next 10 years of indie JRPGs.
Thank you Sabotage for such an endearing game that I will not forget for quite some time.