DeltaWDunn
This review contains spoilers
I recently played Sephonie, a 3D Platformer by Analgesic Productions. This was partially due to my familiarity with Analgesic’s previous games, including Anodyne 2. Familiarity is underplaying it though, because around 3 years ago, I would’ve called Anodyne 2 my favorite game. In fact, wanting to write a review of this game is part of why I joined this website in the first place. As time went on, my thoughts on the game slowly degraded for multiple reasons, but I still held it in high regard. When I started playing Sephonie, I inevitably began to think about Anodyne 2, and I felt a need to replay it. I couldn’t help but wonder how my perception of the game would change three years removed.
The game remains great, and even occasionally brilliant. It follows Nova, who shrinks down and cleans dangerous nanodust from the insides of people. This cleaning saves people from corruption, and Nova moves on to help other people in need. That’s how it starts at least; The plot soon becomes an allegory for faith, structure, and purpose, where Nova gains more perspective on nanodust and the greater world. Combine this with mix of 3D exploration and top-down dungeons, sprinkle in some quirkiness, and add a dash of progressive themes, and that’s basically Anodyne 2. Now, this may seem akin to many indie games: games that mean well but execute their concepts confusedly and amateurishly. Honestly, that’s how I’d describe some other Analgesic’s games. However, this game nails what matters most. I’d be lying if I called the 3D exploration incredible, as it’s mostly carried by atmospheric, alien locations. Optional collectibles and fun character interactions don’t make up for the lack of environmental interaction and compelling puzzles or platforming. Even as an overworld for the top-down dungeons, the 3D world feels far too sparse given the breadth of the environments. The car transformation and late-game fast travel somewhat rectify this issue, but only somewhat.
The excellent top-down Zelda-esque sections do the heavy lifting here. The Zelda comparison isn’t entirely apt, as you don’t get a bunch of new items throughout the games. No, Nova mainly just uses a vacuum cleaner, sucking up items and enemies a la Kirby’s Dream Land (Side note, going from a broom in the first game to a vacuum cleaner here is funny). The game gets a lot of mileage out of this, constructing really fun puzzles and combat scenarios. The efficiency with which this game establishes and expands on concepts surprises me; It does a lot with little, and the game respects the player’s ability to figure mechanics out for themselves. The initially simple dungeons with straightforward mechanics and stories eventually give way to more wacky and varied levels, with one being a parody of classic RPGs. This high-quality design is accompanied by a narrative justification for the shift from 2D -> 3D: Nova is “Shrinking” the resolution of the game while she shrinks in size. Tons of indie games mash two genres together, but few make sense of such a combination the way Anodyne 2 does.
I have a few benign complaints about the 2D gameplay. The lack of difficulty hurts my enjoyment a bit. I’ll assume the leisure with which I finished the game is due to it being a second playthrough (And also me being good at videogames). Regardless, the plentiful checkpoints mean I never felt much of a threat, even in the rare occasions when my health did diminish. The other issue I have is more of a missed opportunity related to the titular dust. Dust gates progression, but you can’t really hold that much, and depositing it requires backtracking. Again, this is usually merely benign (Unless you go for the ‘bad’ ending, where you need to collect tons of dust), but having that dust just sit there made me think about how it could’ve been used for other gameplay purposes. The concept of channeling dust is mentioned, but the gameplay implications of this were extremely minor. An extra use for dust could’ve been really interesting, especially considering how often it sits in the player’s tank.
The story makes no effort to hide its messages of seeking purpose and meaning, but I consider it a compelling story regardless. The narrative is supported by some good character progression and decent twists. Nora initially sees the benefits of structure and believing in an inherent purpose, but later realizes finding your own purpose can also be fulfilling. In the ‘good’ ending, Nova rejects her purpose given to her by the Center, a representation of Leaders\Religion. It’s a pretty solid story overall, although I admit that most of what I enjoy comes down to specific concepts and moments. One of the highlights comes midway through the game. Palisade, a mother figure of sorts to Nova, creates a playground for Nova and dies soon after. Eventually Nova finds this playground and assumes that it’s meant to train her. The concept of having fun is alien to her; everything has an inherent meaning, even random dice rolls. This moment does a great job of characterizing Nova and representing the game’s themes
One initially inconspicuous section compels me more than any other in the game. You meet a ‘bugged’ NPC, and upon shrinking down and entering this NPC, you see the story of Nora, who exists in what seems to be the real world. In this section, the game implies that the main story is simply Nora escaping the problems of her life by playing a videogame, only exercising freedom in fantasy. This compelling extra layer looks at the escapist nature of games, and the happy ending of the game now seems to almost be a red herring.
Unfortunately, the dialogue often undercuts what should just speak for itself. Nora starts talking about minimum wage at one point and I’m just sitting here thinking, “Ok, sure, but does this need to be here?” There’s one section of the story that’s conceptually excellent: Nova tries to help a rock guy who blindly commits to a purpose and pays the price. This sets up the idea that blindly following a purpose isn’t always a good idea, which the game later expands on. However, the dialogue hammers this idea in way too hard. Even worse, this dialogue can’t be skipped. The game literally puts up progression gates that only go down once you talk to all the people. This would be obnoxious for even the best writing. The game takes the ‘Tell don’t show’ approach far too often, and this approach often hurts otherwise impactful story beats. Excess aside, the dialogue can be hit-and-miss, regardless of if it aims for drama or comedy. Often it leans too far into self-indulgence and quirk, briefly becoming that indie game stereotype I described at the beginning. The best jokes and story beats are told visually. There’s some graffiti that reads “Environmental Storytelling” earlier on. In the aforementioned JRPG Parody, the game makes fun of the way staircases are presented in Dragon Quest games. There’s an announcer that’s a spider named ‘Announci’, a joke I only picked up on this playthrough. None of these gags are forced on the player, which means even the occasional annoying dialogue from an NPC is bearable. I suppose this strength of optional content and dialogue fits, since Anodyne 2 explores free will and finding your own purpose…
These themes of freedom and finding purpose are characterized on a gameplay level by Metacoins. Metacoins can be collected in the 3D Areas (And occasionally in 2D levels), and you can buy various items with them. However, what if you wanted to get all of them? There’s not much of a reason, but what if you just really wanted to? Well, you gotta look hard. In fact, you have to go beyond the bounds of reality. Many of these coins are hidden in walls and out of bounds. To get them, you have to glitch the game. For a game going against what you’re ‘supposed’ to do, this concept somehow balances being both logical and insane. This optional sidequest that appears halfway through the game remains the best part of the 3D gameplay. Make of that what you will. Despite my love for this game, I never ended up getting every single coin. I looked online too, but considering this game’s obscurity, I could find little. Honestly though, I love the sense of mystery in this game. Metacoins aside, there’s a lot of weird optional stuff here, much of which reveals itself in the post-game. Nowadays I try to avoid guides for games as much as possible, and I think this game’s sense of mystery may have contributed to this habit. In that spirit of mystery, I won’t spoil anything about what the post-game has to offer.
Analgesic spoiled us with the audiovisuals though. This game released around the time low-poly visuals were making a resurgence, and I do enjoy the visual style despite some issues. Some locations look great, but others are muddled and dull. Could this have been an intentional homage to the actual visuals of the time? Maybe, but if so, the game’s very selective in its faithfulness. It’s also worth noting that cutscenes, assuming they don’t play out with still images or in dialogue, lack pretty much any unique animations; Characters will stand in their idle animations and talk. Yes, this game was made by a small team, but the lack of animation distracted me nonetheless. The 2D sections generally look better on a surface level, and the visuals often nicely tie into a character’s psyche. However, 2D or 3D sections, the music always resonates with me. The audio balances style and substance beautifully; I can tell if a song is from this game, but the compositions have a great range regardless.
Replaying this game was fun. Not just because it’s a great game, but also because it makes me think about how I’ve changed. Looking back, I can’t help but wonder if part of why I identified with this game’s story so much was the fact that I struggled with what my purpose should be as well. I played this game the same month I graduated from High School. I started college months later, not necessarily because I had an idea of what I wanted to do, but because that’s what people expected me to do. For the same reason, I considered going into a medical career. Having something present that dilemma of purpose probably vindicated me. Nowadays though, I have a much better idea of what I want to do with my life. I enjoy learning about Math in College, I’m more confident in myself, and I’ve even made friends and stuff. I’m not perfect of course, but who is…
I’ve never really bought into the notion that certain experiences with art are invalid. Even if a game was made with a specific audience in mind, people outside that audience deserve a voice. Good stories should at least be entertaining or compelling for people who don’t personally relate to the main character. Anodyne 2 certainly targets an audience, but it also houses good gameplay, an interesting story, and great music. This game isn’t a 10/10 masterpiece, and I’m hesitant to rate it 9/10 either. However, even three years later I had a great time, and that’s enough for me. My numerical rating doesn’t matter much at the end of the day; I can’t imagine this review would actually convince many people to play the game. It's being posted on a fairly obscure website by an even more obscure user. It’s basically a useless review. However, I wrote it because I wanted it to exist. Does this review really need a purpose? That question resonates even more for my review from three years ago. That poorly written, dated review doesn’t really serve a purpose, but it represents who I was back then. Shouldn’t that person, flaws and all, still be allowed to exist? I think so.
The game remains great, and even occasionally brilliant. It follows Nova, who shrinks down and cleans dangerous nanodust from the insides of people. This cleaning saves people from corruption, and Nova moves on to help other people in need. That’s how it starts at least; The plot soon becomes an allegory for faith, structure, and purpose, where Nova gains more perspective on nanodust and the greater world. Combine this with mix of 3D exploration and top-down dungeons, sprinkle in some quirkiness, and add a dash of progressive themes, and that’s basically Anodyne 2. Now, this may seem akin to many indie games: games that mean well but execute their concepts confusedly and amateurishly. Honestly, that’s how I’d describe some other Analgesic’s games. However, this game nails what matters most. I’d be lying if I called the 3D exploration incredible, as it’s mostly carried by atmospheric, alien locations. Optional collectibles and fun character interactions don’t make up for the lack of environmental interaction and compelling puzzles or platforming. Even as an overworld for the top-down dungeons, the 3D world feels far too sparse given the breadth of the environments. The car transformation and late-game fast travel somewhat rectify this issue, but only somewhat.
The excellent top-down Zelda-esque sections do the heavy lifting here. The Zelda comparison isn’t entirely apt, as you don’t get a bunch of new items throughout the games. No, Nova mainly just uses a vacuum cleaner, sucking up items and enemies a la Kirby’s Dream Land (Side note, going from a broom in the first game to a vacuum cleaner here is funny). The game gets a lot of mileage out of this, constructing really fun puzzles and combat scenarios. The efficiency with which this game establishes and expands on concepts surprises me; It does a lot with little, and the game respects the player’s ability to figure mechanics out for themselves. The initially simple dungeons with straightforward mechanics and stories eventually give way to more wacky and varied levels, with one being a parody of classic RPGs. This high-quality design is accompanied by a narrative justification for the shift from 2D -> 3D: Nova is “Shrinking” the resolution of the game while she shrinks in size. Tons of indie games mash two genres together, but few make sense of such a combination the way Anodyne 2 does.
I have a few benign complaints about the 2D gameplay. The lack of difficulty hurts my enjoyment a bit. I’ll assume the leisure with which I finished the game is due to it being a second playthrough (And also me being good at videogames). Regardless, the plentiful checkpoints mean I never felt much of a threat, even in the rare occasions when my health did diminish. The other issue I have is more of a missed opportunity related to the titular dust. Dust gates progression, but you can’t really hold that much, and depositing it requires backtracking. Again, this is usually merely benign (Unless you go for the ‘bad’ ending, where you need to collect tons of dust), but having that dust just sit there made me think about how it could’ve been used for other gameplay purposes. The concept of channeling dust is mentioned, but the gameplay implications of this were extremely minor. An extra use for dust could’ve been really interesting, especially considering how often it sits in the player’s tank.
The story makes no effort to hide its messages of seeking purpose and meaning, but I consider it a compelling story regardless. The narrative is supported by some good character progression and decent twists. Nora initially sees the benefits of structure and believing in an inherent purpose, but later realizes finding your own purpose can also be fulfilling. In the ‘good’ ending, Nova rejects her purpose given to her by the Center, a representation of Leaders\Religion. It’s a pretty solid story overall, although I admit that most of what I enjoy comes down to specific concepts and moments. One of the highlights comes midway through the game. Palisade, a mother figure of sorts to Nova, creates a playground for Nova and dies soon after. Eventually Nova finds this playground and assumes that it’s meant to train her. The concept of having fun is alien to her; everything has an inherent meaning, even random dice rolls. This moment does a great job of characterizing Nova and representing the game’s themes
One initially inconspicuous section compels me more than any other in the game. You meet a ‘bugged’ NPC, and upon shrinking down and entering this NPC, you see the story of Nora, who exists in what seems to be the real world. In this section, the game implies that the main story is simply Nora escaping the problems of her life by playing a videogame, only exercising freedom in fantasy. This compelling extra layer looks at the escapist nature of games, and the happy ending of the game now seems to almost be a red herring.
Unfortunately, the dialogue often undercuts what should just speak for itself. Nora starts talking about minimum wage at one point and I’m just sitting here thinking, “Ok, sure, but does this need to be here?” There’s one section of the story that’s conceptually excellent: Nova tries to help a rock guy who blindly commits to a purpose and pays the price. This sets up the idea that blindly following a purpose isn’t always a good idea, which the game later expands on. However, the dialogue hammers this idea in way too hard. Even worse, this dialogue can’t be skipped. The game literally puts up progression gates that only go down once you talk to all the people. This would be obnoxious for even the best writing. The game takes the ‘Tell don’t show’ approach far too often, and this approach often hurts otherwise impactful story beats. Excess aside, the dialogue can be hit-and-miss, regardless of if it aims for drama or comedy. Often it leans too far into self-indulgence and quirk, briefly becoming that indie game stereotype I described at the beginning. The best jokes and story beats are told visually. There’s some graffiti that reads “Environmental Storytelling” earlier on. In the aforementioned JRPG Parody, the game makes fun of the way staircases are presented in Dragon Quest games. There’s an announcer that’s a spider named ‘Announci’, a joke I only picked up on this playthrough. None of these gags are forced on the player, which means even the occasional annoying dialogue from an NPC is bearable. I suppose this strength of optional content and dialogue fits, since Anodyne 2 explores free will and finding your own purpose…
These themes of freedom and finding purpose are characterized on a gameplay level by Metacoins. Metacoins can be collected in the 3D Areas (And occasionally in 2D levels), and you can buy various items with them. However, what if you wanted to get all of them? There’s not much of a reason, but what if you just really wanted to? Well, you gotta look hard. In fact, you have to go beyond the bounds of reality. Many of these coins are hidden in walls and out of bounds. To get them, you have to glitch the game. For a game going against what you’re ‘supposed’ to do, this concept somehow balances being both logical and insane. This optional sidequest that appears halfway through the game remains the best part of the 3D gameplay. Make of that what you will. Despite my love for this game, I never ended up getting every single coin. I looked online too, but considering this game’s obscurity, I could find little. Honestly though, I love the sense of mystery in this game. Metacoins aside, there’s a lot of weird optional stuff here, much of which reveals itself in the post-game. Nowadays I try to avoid guides for games as much as possible, and I think this game’s sense of mystery may have contributed to this habit. In that spirit of mystery, I won’t spoil anything about what the post-game has to offer.
Analgesic spoiled us with the audiovisuals though. This game released around the time low-poly visuals were making a resurgence, and I do enjoy the visual style despite some issues. Some locations look great, but others are muddled and dull. Could this have been an intentional homage to the actual visuals of the time? Maybe, but if so, the game’s very selective in its faithfulness. It’s also worth noting that cutscenes, assuming they don’t play out with still images or in dialogue, lack pretty much any unique animations; Characters will stand in their idle animations and talk. Yes, this game was made by a small team, but the lack of animation distracted me nonetheless. The 2D sections generally look better on a surface level, and the visuals often nicely tie into a character’s psyche. However, 2D or 3D sections, the music always resonates with me. The audio balances style and substance beautifully; I can tell if a song is from this game, but the compositions have a great range regardless.
Replaying this game was fun. Not just because it’s a great game, but also because it makes me think about how I’ve changed. Looking back, I can’t help but wonder if part of why I identified with this game’s story so much was the fact that I struggled with what my purpose should be as well. I played this game the same month I graduated from High School. I started college months later, not necessarily because I had an idea of what I wanted to do, but because that’s what people expected me to do. For the same reason, I considered going into a medical career. Having something present that dilemma of purpose probably vindicated me. Nowadays though, I have a much better idea of what I want to do with my life. I enjoy learning about Math in College, I’m more confident in myself, and I’ve even made friends and stuff. I’m not perfect of course, but who is…
I’ve never really bought into the notion that certain experiences with art are invalid. Even if a game was made with a specific audience in mind, people outside that audience deserve a voice. Good stories should at least be entertaining or compelling for people who don’t personally relate to the main character. Anodyne 2 certainly targets an audience, but it also houses good gameplay, an interesting story, and great music. This game isn’t a 10/10 masterpiece, and I’m hesitant to rate it 9/10 either. However, even three years later I had a great time, and that’s enough for me. My numerical rating doesn’t matter much at the end of the day; I can’t imagine this review would actually convince many people to play the game. It's being posted on a fairly obscure website by an even more obscure user. It’s basically a useless review. However, I wrote it because I wanted it to exist. Does this review really need a purpose? That question resonates even more for my review from three years ago. That poorly written, dated review doesn’t really serve a purpose, but it represents who I was back then. Shouldn’t that person, flaws and all, still be allowed to exist? I think so.
2017
The fact that this is one of the best Indie 3D Platformers I've played is kinda sad, but more than that it's just really funny.
I know that this is shorter than most of my reviews, but I don't wanna spoil this for anyone. If it seems interesting, play it.
I know that this is shorter than most of my reviews, but I don't wanna spoil this for anyone. If it seems interesting, play it.
Suggested by @DeemonAndGames for this list.
Wario Land 4 is one of my favorite games of all time, and the overall Wario Land series is great for what is basically a Mario spin-off. It uses an exaggeration of Mario, an icon of gaming, as a vessel for a subversion and exaggeration of tropes of 2D Platformers and games in general. What’s so interesting about WarioWare is how despite its similarities, it’s an extremely different game. WarioWare is more overtly about games, but I don’t think this means it’s entirely without subtext. A very surface-level look of this game would say that it’s composed of titular microgames that, for the most part, are completely different from each other and very simple. I complain a lot about unnatural variety and minigames, so I should hate this game.
However, there’s a little more to the story, and I mean that literally. Microgames are presented as solutions to the current character’s problem in every stage, but... why is this? Why does picking your nose help Mona escape from the cops? Yes, many games have stories that are clearly excuses for gameplay to happen, but most try to provide some kind of context or reason why you’re doing what you’re doing. When I play Donkey Kong Country, I know that I’m going through these levels because the banana thief K. Rool is at the end of my journey, I know the bananas along the way were likely dropped by him, and I know the enemies are his subordinates. And while I do like many of the characters in the game, the story is basically just there to provide that context and sense of cohesion.
WarioWare is a game without context or cohesion, and this is actually its greatest strength. The most context for microgames is a single descriptive word of your goal, and the only cohesion is some kind of basic theme of the microgames like “sci-fi” or “nature”. Even artstyles change between games, as one may go for realism while another is retro-game styled, with everything in between. All this leaves is extremely short and simple games with extraneous details stripped out. You need to figure out your goal and execute it all within a few seconds. It’s a novel idea, but the way WarioWare executes the fine details is what elevates it to greatness. As a set of Microgames goes on, the pace increases and twists are thrown into microgames which you previously played, and there are different variants of these microgames, meaning that even when you become more familiar with one microgame it can still surprise you. It also helps that while different in most ways, many microgames have some level of consistency for the less forgiving aspects of a microgame, and the more unique games are often focused on that uniqueness. At the end of a stage, you have a ‘boss’, which is a little more complicated than other microgames, and these are still simple but have a little more to them. One’s a little shmup, one’s basically Punch-Out!!, and they feel fitting to top off the smaller challenges. It helps that even after these bosses are defeated, you can return to a stage and enter an endless mode where you can try to top your high score, leading to tons of replay value. It’s all an unexpectedly exhilarating playing experience.
Honestly, my main issues stem from the fact that while microgames are mostly consistently great, there’s a few exceptions. Some don’t feel doable first time around, whether it be for an inaccurate opening word or aspect of the game that isn’t readily apparent. Some detail of controls may not be clear until you try the microgame once, which makes some harder than others when playing for the first time. Also, a lot of these microgames are just some kind of timed button press, which is slightly disappointing. Really though, this is still a great game. Through its sheer lack of consistency and theming, the game feels ironically unique and iconic. I’m definitely going to try more of these games, but I’m not sure if they’ll really hit the same way this one did. If there’s one thing that this game taught me, the feeling of trying and solving something for the first time is core to games. Replicating that feeling in a sequel is a tall order, but if there’s any gaming icon I’d expect to pull it off, it would be Wario.
Wario Land 4 is one of my favorite games of all time, and the overall Wario Land series is great for what is basically a Mario spin-off. It uses an exaggeration of Mario, an icon of gaming, as a vessel for a subversion and exaggeration of tropes of 2D Platformers and games in general. What’s so interesting about WarioWare is how despite its similarities, it’s an extremely different game. WarioWare is more overtly about games, but I don’t think this means it’s entirely without subtext. A very surface-level look of this game would say that it’s composed of titular microgames that, for the most part, are completely different from each other and very simple. I complain a lot about unnatural variety and minigames, so I should hate this game.
However, there’s a little more to the story, and I mean that literally. Microgames are presented as solutions to the current character’s problem in every stage, but... why is this? Why does picking your nose help Mona escape from the cops? Yes, many games have stories that are clearly excuses for gameplay to happen, but most try to provide some kind of context or reason why you’re doing what you’re doing. When I play Donkey Kong Country, I know that I’m going through these levels because the banana thief K. Rool is at the end of my journey, I know the bananas along the way were likely dropped by him, and I know the enemies are his subordinates. And while I do like many of the characters in the game, the story is basically just there to provide that context and sense of cohesion.
WarioWare is a game without context or cohesion, and this is actually its greatest strength. The most context for microgames is a single descriptive word of your goal, and the only cohesion is some kind of basic theme of the microgames like “sci-fi” or “nature”. Even artstyles change between games, as one may go for realism while another is retro-game styled, with everything in between. All this leaves is extremely short and simple games with extraneous details stripped out. You need to figure out your goal and execute it all within a few seconds. It’s a novel idea, but the way WarioWare executes the fine details is what elevates it to greatness. As a set of Microgames goes on, the pace increases and twists are thrown into microgames which you previously played, and there are different variants of these microgames, meaning that even when you become more familiar with one microgame it can still surprise you. It also helps that while different in most ways, many microgames have some level of consistency for the less forgiving aspects of a microgame, and the more unique games are often focused on that uniqueness. At the end of a stage, you have a ‘boss’, which is a little more complicated than other microgames, and these are still simple but have a little more to them. One’s a little shmup, one’s basically Punch-Out!!, and they feel fitting to top off the smaller challenges. It helps that even after these bosses are defeated, you can return to a stage and enter an endless mode where you can try to top your high score, leading to tons of replay value. It’s all an unexpectedly exhilarating playing experience.
Honestly, my main issues stem from the fact that while microgames are mostly consistently great, there’s a few exceptions. Some don’t feel doable first time around, whether it be for an inaccurate opening word or aspect of the game that isn’t readily apparent. Some detail of controls may not be clear until you try the microgame once, which makes some harder than others when playing for the first time. Also, a lot of these microgames are just some kind of timed button press, which is slightly disappointing. Really though, this is still a great game. Through its sheer lack of consistency and theming, the game feels ironically unique and iconic. I’m definitely going to try more of these games, but I’m not sure if they’ll really hit the same way this one did. If there’s one thing that this game taught me, the feeling of trying and solving something for the first time is core to games. Replicating that feeling in a sequel is a tall order, but if there’s any gaming icon I’d expect to pull it off, it would be Wario.
1998
This review contains spoilers
Hey, remember at the end of my review for the first Armored Core when I said I’d be reviewing Echo Night? This was mostly a cheeky joke referring to Dark Souls, but I did have the intention of playing this game eventually. Well, here I am, having completed Echo Night before not only Dark Souls, but also Resident Evil and Silent Hill.
Despite the fact that I haven’t beaten Resident Evil, what I have played shows a lot of how Echo Night was lacking. In Resident Evil, enemy encounters are made engaging because of the different options and factors to consider. In Echo Night, most interactions just involve running from enemies. It also hurts a bit that resource management really isn’t that… Hey wait a minute, this is exactly how I started my review for Yomawari Midnight Shadows! These games are pretty similar, honestly. However, a few things separate Echo Night from Yomawari Midnight Shadows.
While enemy interactions are shallow, the purpose of these enemies is usually just roadblocks. Sometimes you do just have to run from an enemy (Especially later in the game), but often you need to use an item or something to make the ghost go away or find a way to turn on a light. It’s a missed opportunity, but it was never meant to be the crux of the gameplay. That crux would be the puzzles involving the pacifist ghosts. Usually, you help a ghost who’s not at peace for some reason, and in return you get an item needed to progress. The puzzles for finding out how to help these ghosts aren’t great, but they’re fine, and some are fun. I can’t really discuss them without spoiling the solutions, but it’s mostly simple stuff that requires you to pay attention to your surroundings.
In terms of the story, it’s alright. Most of it consists of trying to solve the mystery of this boat that went missing called the Orpheus. There’s some stuff about a red stone and blue stone, and your dad has something to do with all of this, but you’re not given much to go off initially. As you progress though, you help the ghosts on board and learn their stories, and possibly more about the greater plot. It’s an alright concept, but the execution leaves a bit to be desired. First, I rarely feel like I’m actually aboard a ship. A lot of the game is inside rooms that aren’t necessarily characteristic of boats. Second, helping ghosts often involves teleporting through space and time, which is something that just happens without any explanation or player input. It’s not just like you get to view past events either, you must take items from the past to use in the future. There are probably more natural ways to get across these backstories than what we have here, and I generally enjoyed the puzzles that took place on the boat more. Well, I say that, but the stuff on the boat itself is some kind of teleportation from the beginning of the game where the player character’s father is missing. When you’re teleported to the boat, it’s just hanging out in the water. Is the boat actually somewhere in the physical world? It went missing, right? Maybe this is a nitpick, but I just don’t want to be wondering about time-travel stuff in a horror game.
Maybe I’m being a little harsh on this game. This was made by a small team, after all. It’s not entirely fair to compare it to something like Resident Evil. It does have the atmosphere down. The sound design is pretty solid and the visuals do feel unsettling in many ways. However, there’s one way that the game could’ve been great independent of budget: Writing. I mean, sure, it was pretty much inevitable that the voice acting would suck (I still love it for the goofiness), but the actual words the characters say could’ve been good. I know this is a Japanese game originally and maybe the Japanese version has incredible writing, but in English, the writing is very disappointing. In horror/puzzle games, it’s often fun to interact with an item and get some flavor text. Maybe it tells us a bit about the character. Maybe it paints a more vivid picture of the world than the limited graphics can display. In Echo Night, 9/10 times you interact with something, it says, “There is a ___.” You look at a chair? “There is a chair.” You check out a bed? “There is a bed.” This is not hyperbole, almost everything that isn’t absolutely tied to solving a puzzle has this kind of description. Could they not be bothered to write something else?!? Did they only have a week to localize the game? I don’t know, but it hurts the final product, and it’s truly a shame.
Echo Night is passable. It’s pretty rough around the edges, something that could also be said about Armored Core, but that game was unique and more focused on a specific premise. Maybe I’ll play the sequels someday, but I think it’s time I play another Fromsoft game. You know, the one that put them on the map for some people when it came out back in the day, where you battle monsters in a brutal world. Yep, it’s finally time. I’m playing King’s Field next! See you then.
Despite the fact that I haven’t beaten Resident Evil, what I have played shows a lot of how Echo Night was lacking. In Resident Evil, enemy encounters are made engaging because of the different options and factors to consider. In Echo Night, most interactions just involve running from enemies. It also hurts a bit that resource management really isn’t that… Hey wait a minute, this is exactly how I started my review for Yomawari Midnight Shadows! These games are pretty similar, honestly. However, a few things separate Echo Night from Yomawari Midnight Shadows.
While enemy interactions are shallow, the purpose of these enemies is usually just roadblocks. Sometimes you do just have to run from an enemy (Especially later in the game), but often you need to use an item or something to make the ghost go away or find a way to turn on a light. It’s a missed opportunity, but it was never meant to be the crux of the gameplay. That crux would be the puzzles involving the pacifist ghosts. Usually, you help a ghost who’s not at peace for some reason, and in return you get an item needed to progress. The puzzles for finding out how to help these ghosts aren’t great, but they’re fine, and some are fun. I can’t really discuss them without spoiling the solutions, but it’s mostly simple stuff that requires you to pay attention to your surroundings.
In terms of the story, it’s alright. Most of it consists of trying to solve the mystery of this boat that went missing called the Orpheus. There’s some stuff about a red stone and blue stone, and your dad has something to do with all of this, but you’re not given much to go off initially. As you progress though, you help the ghosts on board and learn their stories, and possibly more about the greater plot. It’s an alright concept, but the execution leaves a bit to be desired. First, I rarely feel like I’m actually aboard a ship. A lot of the game is inside rooms that aren’t necessarily characteristic of boats. Second, helping ghosts often involves teleporting through space and time, which is something that just happens without any explanation or player input. It’s not just like you get to view past events either, you must take items from the past to use in the future. There are probably more natural ways to get across these backstories than what we have here, and I generally enjoyed the puzzles that took place on the boat more. Well, I say that, but the stuff on the boat itself is some kind of teleportation from the beginning of the game where the player character’s father is missing. When you’re teleported to the boat, it’s just hanging out in the water. Is the boat actually somewhere in the physical world? It went missing, right? Maybe this is a nitpick, but I just don’t want to be wondering about time-travel stuff in a horror game.
Maybe I’m being a little harsh on this game. This was made by a small team, after all. It’s not entirely fair to compare it to something like Resident Evil. It does have the atmosphere down. The sound design is pretty solid and the visuals do feel unsettling in many ways. However, there’s one way that the game could’ve been great independent of budget: Writing. I mean, sure, it was pretty much inevitable that the voice acting would suck (I still love it for the goofiness), but the actual words the characters say could’ve been good. I know this is a Japanese game originally and maybe the Japanese version has incredible writing, but in English, the writing is very disappointing. In horror/puzzle games, it’s often fun to interact with an item and get some flavor text. Maybe it tells us a bit about the character. Maybe it paints a more vivid picture of the world than the limited graphics can display. In Echo Night, 9/10 times you interact with something, it says, “There is a ___.” You look at a chair? “There is a chair.” You check out a bed? “There is a bed.” This is not hyperbole, almost everything that isn’t absolutely tied to solving a puzzle has this kind of description. Could they not be bothered to write something else?!? Did they only have a week to localize the game? I don’t know, but it hurts the final product, and it’s truly a shame.
Echo Night is passable. It’s pretty rough around the edges, something that could also be said about Armored Core, but that game was unique and more focused on a specific premise. Maybe I’ll play the sequels someday, but I think it’s time I play another Fromsoft game. You know, the one that put them on the map for some people when it came out back in the day, where you battle monsters in a brutal world. Yep, it’s finally time. I’m playing King’s Field next! See you then.
1992
For some reason, I still have that stupid NSO subscription, and in an effort to get the most out of my wasted money, I’ll sometimes check out the more obscure stuff in the retro sections. Fire ‘n Ice always kinda looked like a Tetris clone or something. In reality, this is a sequel to Solomon’s Key, which is a puzzle platformer I’m not super familiar with. However, it’s clear that despite their similarities, these two are distinct games. In Solomon’s Key, you have a time limit, you have aggressive enemies, and gaining height is trivial given enough time. It’s a fairly even blend of action, puzzle, and platforming.
In Fire ‘n Ice, enemies are stationary or have predictable paths, and are not obstacles but necessary to defeat. There is a timer, but it’s only there for intrinsic motivation. You can’t jump, although you can climb up a block in front of you. Given that your sole ability aside from movement is placing an ice block diagonally down and forward, gaining height takes some effort. Mix in some properties of blocks sliding, blocks connecting to walls when created next to them, and gravity, all of which are mostly based on contextual actions from the player and environment, and you have a very simple basis that allows for a lot of great puzzles. Figuring out how to hit enemies with your ice blocks will start out simple, but as time goes on, even the most minute detail can have a big impact on how you approach a challenge. Everything is very simple at first in terms of the amount of things to consider, but the game gradually adds more and more new mechanics that’ll change the approach of levels entirely. There’s pipes you can travel through, but not if ice is blocking the exit. There’s torches that will permanently light up if an enemy touches them. These are simple mechanics, but when they’re combined it creates a really challenging, fun experience. It also helps that despite the minimalist-yet-polished presentation, there’s a lot of ‘noise’ to the puzzles because you have consistent, broad rules of where you can put the block.
I usually don’t do this, but take a look at this screen. This is midway through the game, and I’m going to spoil the solution, so skip to the penultimate paragraph if you care. Now, due to the enemy placement and terrain, you can’t create new blocks within the structure without it being connected to the walls, which means they can’t be used to attack the enemies. The exception is the block up top, which isn’t connected to anything (Note that because it’s a 1x1 block, you can’t jump on it and can only push it). My main question was pretty clear: How do I manipulate this one block to get enough blocks to kill all enemies? My first thought was to go to the left side of this block through the pipes, create a bridge through the hole near it, go back and push the block into the wall on the left so I can stand on it and create new blocks with it.
The issue is that by creating this bridge, I blocked my only way to get to the other side of the block, which was falling through the hole. So I tried the same thing from the other side: Create a bridge of ice that goes all the way to the right wall, then push the block into the right wall so I can stand on it and make more ice blocks. The issue here is that in order to get to the left side, I need to go through the pipe, which this ice bridge would block.
I continued for a while, a few different things before I finally realized the solution. First, slide the block into the enemy highest up. Now with it out of the way, you can create new, slideable blocks where the enemy once was. After this, slide a block into the lowest enemy, and keep sliding them until you stack high enough to defeat the final enemy (If you want to watch this happen to better understand the game's workings, you can do so here.). I’m explaining this because pretty much every detail is important. If there wasn’t a drop on the way to the left side of the block, I could’ve backtracked and executed my first plan. If the one on the right extended up one more block, I wouldn’t need to cover it with the ice bridge for my second plan.
All of this shows just how deliberate the designers were with this game, as despite how integral every detail is, there’s still a lot of potential solutions for the player to consider before getting the correct one. The game isn’t perfect though. Some of the ‘boss fights’ have cycling autoscroll maps that move very slowly. I understand they wanted to create tension with these levels, but often I’d ironically be forced to go slower, which is all too common with autoscrollers. A better idea likely would’ve been to add a limit to the amount of blocks you can create or something, or just scroll the screen with every block creation. The game even ends with a pretty unique boss who intermittently uses fire to melt your ice blocks, and I think something like that could’ve been used for more bosses.
Other than that though, I just wish there was more. Not necessarily more levels (There’s over 100 here, and honestly some of those could probably be trimmed out), but more mechanics, and honestly, more games like this. Games that are simple, but still unique. Games that know exactly what they want to be and be it. Despite my reservations, I was anything but lukewarm on this game. This is undoubtedly one of the best NES games, and a great game in general. 8/10
In Fire ‘n Ice, enemies are stationary or have predictable paths, and are not obstacles but necessary to defeat. There is a timer, but it’s only there for intrinsic motivation. You can’t jump, although you can climb up a block in front of you. Given that your sole ability aside from movement is placing an ice block diagonally down and forward, gaining height takes some effort. Mix in some properties of blocks sliding, blocks connecting to walls when created next to them, and gravity, all of which are mostly based on contextual actions from the player and environment, and you have a very simple basis that allows for a lot of great puzzles. Figuring out how to hit enemies with your ice blocks will start out simple, but as time goes on, even the most minute detail can have a big impact on how you approach a challenge. Everything is very simple at first in terms of the amount of things to consider, but the game gradually adds more and more new mechanics that’ll change the approach of levels entirely. There’s pipes you can travel through, but not if ice is blocking the exit. There’s torches that will permanently light up if an enemy touches them. These are simple mechanics, but when they’re combined it creates a really challenging, fun experience. It also helps that despite the minimalist-yet-polished presentation, there’s a lot of ‘noise’ to the puzzles because you have consistent, broad rules of where you can put the block.
I usually don’t do this, but take a look at this screen. This is midway through the game, and I’m going to spoil the solution, so skip to the penultimate paragraph if you care. Now, due to the enemy placement and terrain, you can’t create new blocks within the structure without it being connected to the walls, which means they can’t be used to attack the enemies. The exception is the block up top, which isn’t connected to anything (Note that because it’s a 1x1 block, you can’t jump on it and can only push it). My main question was pretty clear: How do I manipulate this one block to get enough blocks to kill all enemies? My first thought was to go to the left side of this block through the pipes, create a bridge through the hole near it, go back and push the block into the wall on the left so I can stand on it and create new blocks with it.
The issue is that by creating this bridge, I blocked my only way to get to the other side of the block, which was falling through the hole. So I tried the same thing from the other side: Create a bridge of ice that goes all the way to the right wall, then push the block into the right wall so I can stand on it and make more ice blocks. The issue here is that in order to get to the left side, I need to go through the pipe, which this ice bridge would block.
I continued for a while, a few different things before I finally realized the solution. First, slide the block into the enemy highest up. Now with it out of the way, you can create new, slideable blocks where the enemy once was. After this, slide a block into the lowest enemy, and keep sliding them until you stack high enough to defeat the final enemy (If you want to watch this happen to better understand the game's workings, you can do so here.). I’m explaining this because pretty much every detail is important. If there wasn’t a drop on the way to the left side of the block, I could’ve backtracked and executed my first plan. If the one on the right extended up one more block, I wouldn’t need to cover it with the ice bridge for my second plan.
All of this shows just how deliberate the designers were with this game, as despite how integral every detail is, there’s still a lot of potential solutions for the player to consider before getting the correct one. The game isn’t perfect though. Some of the ‘boss fights’ have cycling autoscroll maps that move very slowly. I understand they wanted to create tension with these levels, but often I’d ironically be forced to go slower, which is all too common with autoscrollers. A better idea likely would’ve been to add a limit to the amount of blocks you can create or something, or just scroll the screen with every block creation. The game even ends with a pretty unique boss who intermittently uses fire to melt your ice blocks, and I think something like that could’ve been used for more bosses.
Other than that though, I just wish there was more. Not necessarily more levels (There’s over 100 here, and honestly some of those could probably be trimmed out), but more mechanics, and honestly, more games like this. Games that are simple, but still unique. Games that know exactly what they want to be and be it. Despite my reservations, I was anything but lukewarm on this game. This is undoubtedly one of the best NES games, and a great game in general. 8/10
2020
Suggested by @MrTheMan for This list.
It seems that every indie game nowadays has to be a spiritual successor to something or a combination of two games. I can empathize with developers, as this is a good way to sell a game at the end of the day, but it means that often, the games that have the most potential to experiment will stick too close to their inspirations. While concepts like Dark Souls Castleroid, Quake mixed with Blood, and Super Metroid with more platforming can be cool, rarely do they reach the height of the games they’re inspired by.
Ultrakill is one of those few cases that just about does. You can’t deny the influences here, because typing devilmayquake.com into your search engine of choice will lead you to this game’s steam page. This game is a clear attempt to make a stylish, expressive boomer shooter-character action hybrid. While this concept sounds cool, the actually details of executing the concept seem somewhat dubious. How do you combine the flashy excess of Devil May Cry with the raw simplicity of Quake into a good game?
I think one of the best ways to demonstrate this game’s qualities is with one of its most iconic elements: the coin. Basically, you flip a coin into the air, and if you shoot the coin with a hitscan gun, your bullet will become stronger and hit the nearest enemy’s weakspot. The first positive of the coin is that it allows for a lot of strategies. You can use it to hit enemies around corners, shoot through an enemy, hit the coin, and then hit another enemy, hit a lot of coins to build up more damage, and more. This simple idea allows for a lot of strategies, and this applies to the rest of the surprisingly small loadout. Honestly, the guns are pretty conventional at a glance, but their alternate fires give a little more complexity and uniqueness, at least as much as you can have for a game so dedicated to being fast paced. The nailgun has a magnet for attracting shots, there’s these rockets that you can hold in place and let fly after a few seconds, it’s not the most unique weapon loadout I’ve seen but they’re all fun to use and fit the game.
Another positive of the coin is that it basically tells you an enemy’s weak spot when you use it. It’s a kinda genius way to show weaknesses for enemies, as while it’s a pretty simple method, it’s not overtly signaled to players. This is indicative of how the game lets the players figure out mechanics on their own with minimal guidance. When you get a new weapon, a brief summary of the weapon appears on screen, and you go through a small section to demonstrate the weapon’s properties. While this game can occasionally be overwhelming, it gives enough wiggle room and information to let the player choose their playstyle. This leads well into the third positive of the coin…
It’s just cool. This is, of course, subjective, but ricocheting shots off coins is awesome, as is a lot of other stuff in this game. You can slide around and rocket jump, punch projectiles back at enemies, you can also punch shotgun blasts after you shoot them to make them stronger. There’s a great mix of options being balanced while also just being intrinsically fun to use. In this way, Ultrakill does have some of the “Rule of Cool” appeal of Devil May Cry, although I wouldn’t call it quite as over-the-top. Unfortunately, you can’t surf on enemies or use motorcycles as weapons in this game.
The coin does show one of the issues with the games, which is that abilities are kinda easy to spam. The obvious note is that most guns have no ammo or reloading. Spam that shotgun all you want, you’ll never run out of bullets! This is fine, my main issue is how easy it is to get alt fires and dashes back, which usually return after a cooldown. Considering that one of the main mechanics is that the only way to recover health is to get up-close-and-personal with the enemy, I don’t get why they didn’t put a kill or damage requirement to earn alt fires back. I suppose this is less of a problem as the skill ceiling goes up (missing a coin-deflected railgun shot is kinda just punishment enough sometimes), but I think some of these guns could’ve used more punishment for missing shots.
Just like how the coin deflects shots from linear-shooting guns, the level design here is more linear than any of its influences. Most of the time, backtracking is minimal, which I’m honestly fine with. This doesn’t stop the developers from hiding a few secrets, which were fun to find. Most encounters take place in arenas that feature solid cover and verticality, and the enemies that populate these arenas are also pretty varied in terms of how you want to take them down. There’s a decent amount of visual variety here, and while I’d hesitate to call it cohesive in the greater game, each act’s levels usually lead naturally enough into the next one.
This game also has a story. Much how I couldn’t think of a way to tie this to the coin metaphor, I feel like the story is somewhat tonally disconnected from the rest of the experience. For how “Rule of cool” this game is, I’m surprised that they try to build lore and stuff. They even have optional history books in a few levels. The story stuff is fine, I guess. I don’t really care much about Gabriel as a character, although he is a pretty decent rival character a la Vergil or Genshin. It’s easy enough to ignore either way, and I can’t imagine the story being the main appeal to anyone.
Ultrakill is still in early access (As of now, ACT II is complete), but I’d say it’s worth buying regardless. If you’re experienced with fast-paced FPS games, go ahead and try the demo, and if you like it, toss the creators some coins and buy the full game at some point. Honestly, those who aren’t as familiar with games like this may be better off trying the essentials like Doom or Quake first, as I think this game works best with knowledge of games like that. I’m gonna give Ultrakill a 9/10, close to an 8.
It seems that every indie game nowadays has to be a spiritual successor to something or a combination of two games. I can empathize with developers, as this is a good way to sell a game at the end of the day, but it means that often, the games that have the most potential to experiment will stick too close to their inspirations. While concepts like Dark Souls Castleroid, Quake mixed with Blood, and Super Metroid with more platforming can be cool, rarely do they reach the height of the games they’re inspired by.
Ultrakill is one of those few cases that just about does. You can’t deny the influences here, because typing devilmayquake.com into your search engine of choice will lead you to this game’s steam page. This game is a clear attempt to make a stylish, expressive boomer shooter-character action hybrid. While this concept sounds cool, the actually details of executing the concept seem somewhat dubious. How do you combine the flashy excess of Devil May Cry with the raw simplicity of Quake into a good game?
I think one of the best ways to demonstrate this game’s qualities is with one of its most iconic elements: the coin. Basically, you flip a coin into the air, and if you shoot the coin with a hitscan gun, your bullet will become stronger and hit the nearest enemy’s weakspot. The first positive of the coin is that it allows for a lot of strategies. You can use it to hit enemies around corners, shoot through an enemy, hit the coin, and then hit another enemy, hit a lot of coins to build up more damage, and more. This simple idea allows for a lot of strategies, and this applies to the rest of the surprisingly small loadout. Honestly, the guns are pretty conventional at a glance, but their alternate fires give a little more complexity and uniqueness, at least as much as you can have for a game so dedicated to being fast paced. The nailgun has a magnet for attracting shots, there’s these rockets that you can hold in place and let fly after a few seconds, it’s not the most unique weapon loadout I’ve seen but they’re all fun to use and fit the game.
Another positive of the coin is that it basically tells you an enemy’s weak spot when you use it. It’s a kinda genius way to show weaknesses for enemies, as while it’s a pretty simple method, it’s not overtly signaled to players. This is indicative of how the game lets the players figure out mechanics on their own with minimal guidance. When you get a new weapon, a brief summary of the weapon appears on screen, and you go through a small section to demonstrate the weapon’s properties. While this game can occasionally be overwhelming, it gives enough wiggle room and information to let the player choose their playstyle. This leads well into the third positive of the coin…
It’s just cool. This is, of course, subjective, but ricocheting shots off coins is awesome, as is a lot of other stuff in this game. You can slide around and rocket jump, punch projectiles back at enemies, you can also punch shotgun blasts after you shoot them to make them stronger. There’s a great mix of options being balanced while also just being intrinsically fun to use. In this way, Ultrakill does have some of the “Rule of Cool” appeal of Devil May Cry, although I wouldn’t call it quite as over-the-top. Unfortunately, you can’t surf on enemies or use motorcycles as weapons in this game.
The coin does show one of the issues with the games, which is that abilities are kinda easy to spam. The obvious note is that most guns have no ammo or reloading. Spam that shotgun all you want, you’ll never run out of bullets! This is fine, my main issue is how easy it is to get alt fires and dashes back, which usually return after a cooldown. Considering that one of the main mechanics is that the only way to recover health is to get up-close-and-personal with the enemy, I don’t get why they didn’t put a kill or damage requirement to earn alt fires back. I suppose this is less of a problem as the skill ceiling goes up (missing a coin-deflected railgun shot is kinda just punishment enough sometimes), but I think some of these guns could’ve used more punishment for missing shots.
Just like how the coin deflects shots from linear-shooting guns, the level design here is more linear than any of its influences. Most of the time, backtracking is minimal, which I’m honestly fine with. This doesn’t stop the developers from hiding a few secrets, which were fun to find. Most encounters take place in arenas that feature solid cover and verticality, and the enemies that populate these arenas are also pretty varied in terms of how you want to take them down. There’s a decent amount of visual variety here, and while I’d hesitate to call it cohesive in the greater game, each act’s levels usually lead naturally enough into the next one.
This game also has a story. Much how I couldn’t think of a way to tie this to the coin metaphor, I feel like the story is somewhat tonally disconnected from the rest of the experience. For how “Rule of cool” this game is, I’m surprised that they try to build lore and stuff. They even have optional history books in a few levels. The story stuff is fine, I guess. I don’t really care much about Gabriel as a character, although he is a pretty decent rival character a la Vergil or Genshin. It’s easy enough to ignore either way, and I can’t imagine the story being the main appeal to anyone.
Ultrakill is still in early access (As of now, ACT II is complete), but I’d say it’s worth buying regardless. If you’re experienced with fast-paced FPS games, go ahead and try the demo, and if you like it, toss the creators some coins and buy the full game at some point. Honestly, those who aren’t as familiar with games like this may be better off trying the essentials like Doom or Quake first, as I think this game works best with knowledge of games like that. I’m gonna give Ultrakill a 9/10, close to an 8.
2008
I’m not too familiar with the Ninja Gaiden series. The only other game I’ve played to a significant degree is the NES original. So, one may wonder, why did I play the modern Ninja Gaiden II instead of its more beloved predecessor Ninja Gaiden Black? Well, I’m not like other Backloggd users. I say ‘Castleroid’ instead of ‘Metroidvania’, I don’t quote other users in my reviews, I hate ironic humour, I always commit to my comedic bits unwaveringly, and I just like playing sequels before the original games (The real reason is that I had trouble trying to emulate Black and happened to see this one at a game store).
All of that being said, the game is pretty good, but fairly different than other action games I’ve played. To quote user Herbert in his review of Ultrakill, “Doom Eternal was Ninja Gaiden Black (for FPS games)”. I can’t attest to how similar Doom Eternal is to Ninja Gaiden Black, but it is pretty similar to the latter’s sequel. The brutality, the need to consider every enemy, the gratifying finisher moves, a bit of platforming every once and a while, etc… However, part of the reason I like Ninja Gaiden II much more than Doom Eternal is that you have options in this game. The best way to display this is the fact that this game has achievements for clearing the story with a single weapon. Anyone whose played Doom Eternal knows that trying to use one weapon in that game is pretty much impossible due to the way enemies and resources are designed. You will use every weapon in the ‘right’ way, or you just won’t take down enemies efficiently. Personally, this kind of restriction is not appealing.
In Ninja Gaiden II, there’s still ‘right’ ways to take down enemies, there’s just way more of them. You have a pretty solid set of weapons to use, swords, claws, staffs, chain blades, and more. Each one has different moves that will greatly change the way you need to fight. Attack power, speed, range, mobility, and even specific moves are all things to consider when choosing a weapon to wield. I mostly stuck to the Dragon Sword because it was quick and allowed for a lot of mobility and the Lunar staff because it had good range and crowd control, but I’d switch to the other weapons for certain situations too. This game is far from accessible or easy, but this one allowance is what makes the game engaging for me. Certain moves work well for certain situations, but I had to learn them for myself, and if I didn’t like that move, I could try another weapons’ alternative that, while not identical, would usually get the job done. You also have a good selection of ranged weapons that have different use cases, usually firing quick shots can be a nice disruptor while a focused attack can be used to kill weaker ranged enemies.
It also helps that the normal enemy design, while extremely brutal at times, makes fights super fun. While you have the potential to eviscerate enemies, they can do the same to you. Enemies will lose body parts in fights, and if you don’t finish them off, they will suicide attack you for a third of your health, so every enemy needs to be taken seriously. I know some people say the camera is ‘outdated’, but the truth is that enemies are too aggressive and plenty to be approached with a lock-on akin to Ocarina of Time, and the soft lock-on here was pretty consistent for me personally. Anyway, the multitude of strong enemies means you’ll need to master finishers, essence charges, and a few fundamental combos like the izuna drop to annihilate your enemies. What ties this together is the covertly brilliant ‘lasting damage system’. While health pickups are generous and you actually recover health when no enemies are nearby, your max health will slowly go down the more damage you take, and the only way to restore it is with save points and items. This makes every fight feel tense, because not only can one wrong move massively cut down your health, but even if you do overcome this particular challenge, you’re going into your next fight with a bit of a disadvantage. This means many fights have not only the frantic, all-or-nothing feeling that games with generous checkpoints do, but also the tension and call to mastery that more scarce checkpoints create. More games need to try something like this.
Honestly though, while the common enemies are mostly great, the bosses are a bit mixed. There are some good ones, and they’re usually the most conventional opponents, humanoid bosses that are hard but feel fairly similar in design to common enemies. However, way too many require you to use the bow, and I don’t mean you just fire off a shot and then go in with your blades, you have to stand still, charge an arrow for a few seconds, and shoot, and for some bosses this is the optimal way to deal damage for the entire fight, at least to my knowledge. Really though, I think one issue that hurts all bosses a little is that you can’t combo on them nearly as hard as with normal enemies. All of this makes the fights feel a little more reserved in a way I don’t entirely like that for this kind of game.
I suppose that brings us to the level design. Apparently Ninja Gaiden Black has an interconnected map similar to a Metroidvania or something, but this game has mostly linear levels. They’re pretty solid. It’s hard to get lost, but you do have some optional areas and backtracking to keep things interesting. Ranged enemies are often placed in areas above, and you usually want to deal with them first, be it by shooting them a lot or climbing up and dealing with close-range. There’s some light platforming present, which is thankfully much better than in games like God of War where it’s boring and one mistake instantly kills you. The level design is mostly a really nice blend of fighting and light platforming, and some attacks even depend on jumping off walls to use, which means level design has an added importance to fights that works well with the agility of Ryu.
Alright, I usually only nitpick the stories of games (We’d be here a while if I did so with this one), but there were a lot of specific gameplay moments that really annoyed me. First though, I have to talk about the performance and glitches. I played this game vanilla on 360, so maybe this isn’t the best way to play the game, but frame drops weren’t uncommon and there were a significant amount of glitches. One time, an enemy got stuck behind a gate. The only way to open this gate is to kill the enemy, and since I couldn’t reach the enemy, I had to reload a save. One time these enemies that sprout up from underground started coming up too high before suddenly disappearing and repeating. This made the fight trivial but annoying. A few times an enemy just started standing in the air for some reason. These kinds of things weren’t super common, but they happened enough that I’m convinced that this game needed a little more polish. Load times can be pretty long too, and that one staircase fight’s reputation is completely earned. It would be really cool if it wasn’t in slow-mo! And look, I like hard games, but sometimes this game is just mean. After beating a boss one time, it just exploded and killed me in one hit. “Ok, next time I’ll run away before it explodes.” I thought. Still, it killed me in one hit despite me being far away from the explosion. I don’t usually like looking stuff up for games, but I ended up just searching the solution so I wouldn’t waste more of my time, and it turns out you just have to block it. This is the definition of a beginner’s trap. It’s trivial to avoid if you know about it, but the punishment is harsh if you don’t. Another time, I killed a boss on an island surrounded by lava. This isn’t a big deal because Ryu can obviously run on lava, but some sadistic bastard at Tecmo decided to put some lava bombs under the lava on the way to the exit. I didn’t notice the subtle tell of these bombs, so I died and had to fight the boss again. Again, dealing with these is no problem if you’re aware of them, so their inclusion serves no purpose other than to punish someone who already defeated a hard boss.
It's honestly the stuff in the previous paragraph that made me bump this down from an 8 to a 7/10. This does mean a replay on an emulator/updated version might have the potential to bring it back up to an 8, but I think I want to play Ninja Gaiden Black first. If that game has what I like about this one and what I don’t like isn’t present, I could see it becoming a personal favorite. As for this game, 7/10.
All of that being said, the game is pretty good, but fairly different than other action games I’ve played. To quote user Herbert in his review of Ultrakill, “Doom Eternal was Ninja Gaiden Black (for FPS games)”. I can’t attest to how similar Doom Eternal is to Ninja Gaiden Black, but it is pretty similar to the latter’s sequel. The brutality, the need to consider every enemy, the gratifying finisher moves, a bit of platforming every once and a while, etc… However, part of the reason I like Ninja Gaiden II much more than Doom Eternal is that you have options in this game. The best way to display this is the fact that this game has achievements for clearing the story with a single weapon. Anyone whose played Doom Eternal knows that trying to use one weapon in that game is pretty much impossible due to the way enemies and resources are designed. You will use every weapon in the ‘right’ way, or you just won’t take down enemies efficiently. Personally, this kind of restriction is not appealing.
In Ninja Gaiden II, there’s still ‘right’ ways to take down enemies, there’s just way more of them. You have a pretty solid set of weapons to use, swords, claws, staffs, chain blades, and more. Each one has different moves that will greatly change the way you need to fight. Attack power, speed, range, mobility, and even specific moves are all things to consider when choosing a weapon to wield. I mostly stuck to the Dragon Sword because it was quick and allowed for a lot of mobility and the Lunar staff because it had good range and crowd control, but I’d switch to the other weapons for certain situations too. This game is far from accessible or easy, but this one allowance is what makes the game engaging for me. Certain moves work well for certain situations, but I had to learn them for myself, and if I didn’t like that move, I could try another weapons’ alternative that, while not identical, would usually get the job done. You also have a good selection of ranged weapons that have different use cases, usually firing quick shots can be a nice disruptor while a focused attack can be used to kill weaker ranged enemies.
It also helps that the normal enemy design, while extremely brutal at times, makes fights super fun. While you have the potential to eviscerate enemies, they can do the same to you. Enemies will lose body parts in fights, and if you don’t finish them off, they will suicide attack you for a third of your health, so every enemy needs to be taken seriously. I know some people say the camera is ‘outdated’, but the truth is that enemies are too aggressive and plenty to be approached with a lock-on akin to Ocarina of Time, and the soft lock-on here was pretty consistent for me personally. Anyway, the multitude of strong enemies means you’ll need to master finishers, essence charges, and a few fundamental combos like the izuna drop to annihilate your enemies. What ties this together is the covertly brilliant ‘lasting damage system’. While health pickups are generous and you actually recover health when no enemies are nearby, your max health will slowly go down the more damage you take, and the only way to restore it is with save points and items. This makes every fight feel tense, because not only can one wrong move massively cut down your health, but even if you do overcome this particular challenge, you’re going into your next fight with a bit of a disadvantage. This means many fights have not only the frantic, all-or-nothing feeling that games with generous checkpoints do, but also the tension and call to mastery that more scarce checkpoints create. More games need to try something like this.
Honestly though, while the common enemies are mostly great, the bosses are a bit mixed. There are some good ones, and they’re usually the most conventional opponents, humanoid bosses that are hard but feel fairly similar in design to common enemies. However, way too many require you to use the bow, and I don’t mean you just fire off a shot and then go in with your blades, you have to stand still, charge an arrow for a few seconds, and shoot, and for some bosses this is the optimal way to deal damage for the entire fight, at least to my knowledge. Really though, I think one issue that hurts all bosses a little is that you can’t combo on them nearly as hard as with normal enemies. All of this makes the fights feel a little more reserved in a way I don’t entirely like that for this kind of game.
I suppose that brings us to the level design. Apparently Ninja Gaiden Black has an interconnected map similar to a Metroidvania or something, but this game has mostly linear levels. They’re pretty solid. It’s hard to get lost, but you do have some optional areas and backtracking to keep things interesting. Ranged enemies are often placed in areas above, and you usually want to deal with them first, be it by shooting them a lot or climbing up and dealing with close-range. There’s some light platforming present, which is thankfully much better than in games like God of War where it’s boring and one mistake instantly kills you. The level design is mostly a really nice blend of fighting and light platforming, and some attacks even depend on jumping off walls to use, which means level design has an added importance to fights that works well with the agility of Ryu.
Alright, I usually only nitpick the stories of games (We’d be here a while if I did so with this one), but there were a lot of specific gameplay moments that really annoyed me. First though, I have to talk about the performance and glitches. I played this game vanilla on 360, so maybe this isn’t the best way to play the game, but frame drops weren’t uncommon and there were a significant amount of glitches. One time, an enemy got stuck behind a gate. The only way to open this gate is to kill the enemy, and since I couldn’t reach the enemy, I had to reload a save. One time these enemies that sprout up from underground started coming up too high before suddenly disappearing and repeating. This made the fight trivial but annoying. A few times an enemy just started standing in the air for some reason. These kinds of things weren’t super common, but they happened enough that I’m convinced that this game needed a little more polish. Load times can be pretty long too, and that one staircase fight’s reputation is completely earned. It would be really cool if it wasn’t in slow-mo! And look, I like hard games, but sometimes this game is just mean. After beating a boss one time, it just exploded and killed me in one hit. “Ok, next time I’ll run away before it explodes.” I thought. Still, it killed me in one hit despite me being far away from the explosion. I don’t usually like looking stuff up for games, but I ended up just searching the solution so I wouldn’t waste more of my time, and it turns out you just have to block it. This is the definition of a beginner’s trap. It’s trivial to avoid if you know about it, but the punishment is harsh if you don’t. Another time, I killed a boss on an island surrounded by lava. This isn’t a big deal because Ryu can obviously run on lava, but some sadistic bastard at Tecmo decided to put some lava bombs under the lava on the way to the exit. I didn’t notice the subtle tell of these bombs, so I died and had to fight the boss again. Again, dealing with these is no problem if you’re aware of them, so their inclusion serves no purpose other than to punish someone who already defeated a hard boss.
It's honestly the stuff in the previous paragraph that made me bump this down from an 8 to a 7/10. This does mean a replay on an emulator/updated version might have the potential to bring it back up to an 8, but I think I want to play Ninja Gaiden Black first. If that game has what I like about this one and what I don’t like isn’t present, I could see it becoming a personal favorite. As for this game, 7/10.
2023
If you follow me and have played this game, you may have known this review was coming. I'm always on the lookout for a new 3D Platformer and this one got a lot of praise. I heard it was a 3D Castleroid with a platforming focus. The only other game that I know of that fits that description is Blue Fire, which, while a fine game, was pretty uninspired in many ways. As such, I was looking forward to seeing if this game reached the potential of the concept.
In many ways, it does. This game has one of the best movesets for platforming of any 3D Platformer. Expressive, unique, but also classical. Many of these moves are conceptually similar to those in other platformers, but the execution makes them special. There's a wall kick, but you only get three per jump, and you're given a lot more control of what angle you jump out. There's a slide into a long jump, but it's fully committal. There's even this hidden, crazy side jump that's hard to use but super good. Pretty much all of these are upgrades characteristic of the Castleroid structure. One problem I had with Blue Fire is that the platforming upgrades just trivialized sections, but in Pseudoregalia, the upgrades make the gameplay more complex. At first I thought I was really clever doing some sequence breaking here and there, but eventually I realized there's no real sequence to break at all in many cases. Several challenges can be cleared with a multitude of move combinations, and it's up to you to discover how to progress. It also helps that your moveset will increase your mobility, making backtracking much faster in general. It's a really awesome way to blend Platforming and Castleroid structure.
The more contentious part of this game is the exploration and the lack of a map. However, I believe the root of the problem is the level design. The rooms independently are pretty well designed, but it's looking at them altogether when some issues emerge. Many rooms are distinct to an extent, but considering the game's low-poly, low detail style, it can feel somewhat homogeneous. Really though, I think the main issue is that the path to the boss keys feel the same as the other paths. The door needed to advance will look just like the door that might just be an alternate path to where you just came from and nothing else. If you look at the Castlevania series, notice that not only is it portrayed that you need to get to the top of the castle, but the required detours from that path also have a clear direction, it makes a little more sense why many people get confused here. Very rarely is there an intuitive direction to go, as most entrances to important rooms are placed right beside entrances to less important rooms that might possibly have an upgrade but could very well not (They probably should've added more health/stat upgrades...). Of course, this wouldn't be as big of an issue if you simply had a map, but for game as small as this, I think a map isn't particularly necessary. If the doors to rooms were more unique (And not covered by fog), it would be easier to tell where you've been, even without a map. It's not a big deal, and I'm sure if I replayed this game the issue would be far less detrimental to my time, but it's still a problem.
The other thing that kinda holds this game back is combat. I mean, it's fine I guess. There's few enemy types, the ones that are here a pretty simply designed, and your attacks never progress beyond a 3-hit combo. You get benefits for fighting, but most of those are to solve problems caused by the combat in the first place. You can just run past most enemies, but if that's a positive, something went wrong here. It feels added out of a sense of obligation, which is the worst feeling to have about something in a game. The only boss fight is the final boss, which is solid overall, but it still kind of irks me that a platforming game has to end with a fight where platforming is mostly an afterthought. There's not even a final section to the bossfight here. Once you get all of the keys and go to the big door, it's straight to the boss. There was a missed opportunity for a final area that tested you on all of your abilities. Oh well.
It's a pretty good 3D Platformer, but it doesn't quite reach its potential. 7/10, very close to an 8.
In many ways, it does. This game has one of the best movesets for platforming of any 3D Platformer. Expressive, unique, but also classical. Many of these moves are conceptually similar to those in other platformers, but the execution makes them special. There's a wall kick, but you only get three per jump, and you're given a lot more control of what angle you jump out. There's a slide into a long jump, but it's fully committal. There's even this hidden, crazy side jump that's hard to use but super good. Pretty much all of these are upgrades characteristic of the Castleroid structure. One problem I had with Blue Fire is that the platforming upgrades just trivialized sections, but in Pseudoregalia, the upgrades make the gameplay more complex. At first I thought I was really clever doing some sequence breaking here and there, but eventually I realized there's no real sequence to break at all in many cases. Several challenges can be cleared with a multitude of move combinations, and it's up to you to discover how to progress. It also helps that your moveset will increase your mobility, making backtracking much faster in general. It's a really awesome way to blend Platforming and Castleroid structure.
The more contentious part of this game is the exploration and the lack of a map. However, I believe the root of the problem is the level design. The rooms independently are pretty well designed, but it's looking at them altogether when some issues emerge. Many rooms are distinct to an extent, but considering the game's low-poly, low detail style, it can feel somewhat homogeneous. Really though, I think the main issue is that the path to the boss keys feel the same as the other paths. The door needed to advance will look just like the door that might just be an alternate path to where you just came from and nothing else. If you look at the Castlevania series, notice that not only is it portrayed that you need to get to the top of the castle, but the required detours from that path also have a clear direction, it makes a little more sense why many people get confused here. Very rarely is there an intuitive direction to go, as most entrances to important rooms are placed right beside entrances to less important rooms that might possibly have an upgrade but could very well not (They probably should've added more health/stat upgrades...). Of course, this wouldn't be as big of an issue if you simply had a map, but for game as small as this, I think a map isn't particularly necessary. If the doors to rooms were more unique (And not covered by fog), it would be easier to tell where you've been, even without a map. It's not a big deal, and I'm sure if I replayed this game the issue would be far less detrimental to my time, but it's still a problem.
The other thing that kinda holds this game back is combat. I mean, it's fine I guess. There's few enemy types, the ones that are here a pretty simply designed, and your attacks never progress beyond a 3-hit combo. You get benefits for fighting, but most of those are to solve problems caused by the combat in the first place. You can just run past most enemies, but if that's a positive, something went wrong here. It feels added out of a sense of obligation, which is the worst feeling to have about something in a game. The only boss fight is the final boss, which is solid overall, but it still kind of irks me that a platforming game has to end with a fight where platforming is mostly an afterthought. There's not even a final section to the bossfight here. Once you get all of the keys and go to the big door, it's straight to the boss. There was a missed opportunity for a final area that tested you on all of your abilities. Oh well.
It's a pretty good 3D Platformer, but it doesn't quite reach its potential. 7/10, very close to an 8.
This review contains spoilers
When a series takes a new direction, no matter how subtle or positive it is, it’ll upset fans. Despite Breath of the Wild being one of the most acclaimed games of the last decade or so, there’s still a lot of criticisms of it that are mostly rooted around it not doing stuff like older Zelda games. I’d probably be kinda bummed about the new direction of that series too, if Majora’s Mask didn’t exist, which is basically everything I could want out of that style of Zelda. Incidentally, Majora’s Mask was formerly my favorite game. That was before I played Armored Core: Last Raven, which basically fulfills what Majora’s Mask did for its series, creating an experience so great that I don’t mind the mixup that Armored Core 4 initiated. Pretty much everything is at its peak here. The customization carries over the positive changes from Nexus while balancing it so that ECM and Overheating are important but not overbearing. The missions are varied and have lots of twists and turns that make them super fun. Arena fights are tense and rewarding without compromising the economy. The story, while not incredible, is pretty much everything I’d want out of this kind of game: Unintrusive, but with more under the surface if you’re willing to look. All of it is tied together by the difficulty, which makes you really and truly experiment and optimize your war machine, forcing you to master and consider every part of it for the crushing challenge you’re undoubtedly facing, which expands your knowledge and appreciation of every part, all which make up what is probably the most balanced lineup in the series. Just like how you must reinvent your AC to face your challenges, Last Raven reinvents its story, with multiple paths, which allows for replayability, dynamic difficulty, and a brisk pace. I thought about doing a square-one review for this game, where I explain it as if the reader had no familiarity with the series, but that almost misses the point of the game, which is ultimately a sort of finale for those who already loved this style of the series. If you’ve played earlier games, you know about the customization, the story, the missions, the arena, the worldbuilding, all of it. The best thing I can say about Last Raven is that despite doing all of those things better than pretty much every previous entry, it never makes those games obsolete and feels special, which is everything a game like this should be. And to be honest, it’s not perfect, but I loved pretty much every second about it. Painting my AC. Fine Tuning every detail. Being sent Xbox Live hatemail. Equipping machineguns, Orbital Cores, and energy supplements so I could destroy an enemy in seconds, and then realizing that it doesn’t work on this one guy and going back to customizing. Dropping weapons to go faster. Raiding a town looking for a warlord, only to not find him and learn your employer made the story up to justify you killing competitors. Dodging those deadly, slow missiles before finding them for myself in the shop. Bunny hopping while shooting enemies to save that last bit of energy. Looking at the raven list and realizing I’m slowly fulfilling the game’s title. Taking out the final boss with my last bit of health and ammo. Even failing miserably at a mission. It all contributed to an experience that utterly hooked me, making me want to replay right after the first playthrough. It’s my new favorite game, and I’m not sure if it’ll be dethroned for a while. 10/10.
(To be clear though, Glover is still better, as it always will be.)
(To be clear though, Glover is still better, as it always will be.)
I'm gonna write a longer review later, but this is probably my new favorite game.
2004
This review contains spoilers
The focus of this game’s detractors, the overheating and ECM being nigh-omnipresent, is kind of misplaced. Fromsoft definitely went overboard with these two, but it is kind of refreshing to really consider radars and radiators when customizing. Customization has generally been expanded here with the great new addition of Tuning, which is basically min-maxing certain AC parts. Each part has different stats you can min-max, but there’s enough ways to negate overheating and the problems it causes your mech that it never feels restrictive. All that aside, the customization is generally great. The other big addition, hangar units, adds another factor to consider in picking a core. I didn’t engage with these that much, but I could see myself playing around with them if I ever come back to this.
Hey guys? Guess what? In the year 2004, Fromsoft finally added analogue aiming to this series. Now you can not only play the game with analogue controls, but also drop weapons and use extensions with the press of a button. There’s still one extra button though. They really should’ve used this for reloading. In this game, if you shoot a quickfire gun a certain amount of times, you can’t shoot the gun for a while while you ‘reload’, even though you don’t actually press a button and no reload animation occurs. It’s a fine balancing change but it feels very imprecise and odd, so why they didn’t just use a more conventional style is beyond me.
One change to customization that initially worried me was that parts now depreciate in value after being used. This seemed like a change that could really inhibit experimentation, but the parts don’t depreciate that much, and missions have much bigger payouts, a large part of which are often contained within advanced payments. I think they might’ve overcorrected a bit though. Oftentimes I would fail a mission pretty bad but still make a solid amount of money. I obviously would’ve made more money if I won, but making any profit just feels somewhat wrong when you fail. This may be due to the removal of Human+, but I feel like Human+ is a really good solution to this problem, so I’m not sure why they removed it. The arena, too, could’ve been a good way to counteract this problem, but it was heavily altered to become normal missions that are scarcely available. It’s kind of weird that the series already had two cool ways to alter difficulty and Nexus just ignored them.
Really though, I think what hurts this game is the mission design. There’s one infamous mission in this game where you shoot a single helicopter, which only takes ten seconds. A lot of missions suffer the same affliction this mission does, just to a much lesser degree. Missions are just very barebones for the most part. The map designs are simple, and the objectives are usually just to kill every enemy. A significant amount of missions here are just going into this plain training/test room and fighting robots for scientists to observe. These tests kinda foreshadow things in later missions, but this could’ve been done better. Don’t get me wrong, there are some good missions here, but when there are so many basic missions it just gets kinda tiring, especially after 3 and Silent Line had so many great missions. After some thought, I realized that all of this may be due to the story having ‘branching paths’. The story reacts to you, but this is almost exclusively contained within news reports and emails as opposed to any developments actually happening in missions, at least until the end of the game. Yes, the final mission is epic. Does this mean the entire story is super awesome? Eh, not really. It’s fine, and it follows up the previous games in a satisfying way, but there’s pretty much no reoccurring characters here and very little sense of worldbuilding. It does the job as an Armored Core story, but with each game that bar feels lower and lower.
As per tradition, this game’s visuals are an incremental improvement over the last game. People mention a blurry filter that I honestly didn't notice. It's probably there, I just have a PC that isn't super great. However, the soundtrack is very unique and overall really good. I think it’s a little overrated, but yeah, there are some cool songs here.
So yeah, if this game had better missions, I’d have no problem calling it great. However, as it is I’m a little hesitant to. It has many great elements and additions, but mission design is a massive weak link. I’ve heard the second disc has a lot of remakes of missions from old games along with a proper arena, but I kinda want to go to a new game instead of playing remakes of levels that I already played recently. Maybe I’ll come back to this, but 7/10 for now. It's pretty good, and if you like the series you'll probably like this.
Hey guys? Guess what? In the year 2004, Fromsoft finally added analogue aiming to this series. Now you can not only play the game with analogue controls, but also drop weapons and use extensions with the press of a button. There’s still one extra button though. They really should’ve used this for reloading. In this game, if you shoot a quickfire gun a certain amount of times, you can’t shoot the gun for a while while you ‘reload’, even though you don’t actually press a button and no reload animation occurs. It’s a fine balancing change but it feels very imprecise and odd, so why they didn’t just use a more conventional style is beyond me.
One change to customization that initially worried me was that parts now depreciate in value after being used. This seemed like a change that could really inhibit experimentation, but the parts don’t depreciate that much, and missions have much bigger payouts, a large part of which are often contained within advanced payments. I think they might’ve overcorrected a bit though. Oftentimes I would fail a mission pretty bad but still make a solid amount of money. I obviously would’ve made more money if I won, but making any profit just feels somewhat wrong when you fail. This may be due to the removal of Human+, but I feel like Human+ is a really good solution to this problem, so I’m not sure why they removed it. The arena, too, could’ve been a good way to counteract this problem, but it was heavily altered to become normal missions that are scarcely available. It’s kind of weird that the series already had two cool ways to alter difficulty and Nexus just ignored them.
Really though, I think what hurts this game is the mission design. There’s one infamous mission in this game where you shoot a single helicopter, which only takes ten seconds. A lot of missions suffer the same affliction this mission does, just to a much lesser degree. Missions are just very barebones for the most part. The map designs are simple, and the objectives are usually just to kill every enemy. A significant amount of missions here are just going into this plain training/test room and fighting robots for scientists to observe. These tests kinda foreshadow things in later missions, but this could’ve been done better. Don’t get me wrong, there are some good missions here, but when there are so many basic missions it just gets kinda tiring, especially after 3 and Silent Line had so many great missions. After some thought, I realized that all of this may be due to the story having ‘branching paths’. The story reacts to you, but this is almost exclusively contained within news reports and emails as opposed to any developments actually happening in missions, at least until the end of the game. Yes, the final mission is epic. Does this mean the entire story is super awesome? Eh, not really. It’s fine, and it follows up the previous games in a satisfying way, but there’s pretty much no reoccurring characters here and very little sense of worldbuilding. It does the job as an Armored Core story, but with each game that bar feels lower and lower.
As per tradition, this game’s visuals are an incremental improvement over the last game. People mention a blurry filter that I honestly didn't notice. It's probably there, I just have a PC that isn't super great. However, the soundtrack is very unique and overall really good. I think it’s a little overrated, but yeah, there are some cool songs here.
So yeah, if this game had better missions, I’d have no problem calling it great. However, as it is I’m a little hesitant to. It has many great elements and additions, but mission design is a massive weak link. I’ve heard the second disc has a lot of remakes of missions from old games along with a proper arena, but I kinda want to go to a new game instead of playing remakes of levels that I already played recently. Maybe I’ll come back to this, but 7/10 for now. It's pretty good, and if you like the series you'll probably like this.
2017
Suggested by @Drax for this list.
A while back I did a review of Ty the Tasmanian Tiger. I specifically pointed out that one level featured no jumping, which I said was ridiculous for a 3D Platformer. Removing jumping in a game focused on 3D movement is a bold choice. Jumping is the players main and usually only way to interact with the Z-Axis in a 3D Platformer. Removing that interaction is a decision that the developers of Ty made rather flippantly.
By comparison, Snake Pass feels much more deliberate. In a genre about moving around in 3D spaces, the simple act of moving forward can take some conscious effort. In the game, ground movement is fastest when you move in a zigzag pattern as opposed to simply moving forward. While not hard, it’s certainly more conscious to wiggle the control stick back and forth rather than just push forward. This mirrors real life, as many snakes themselves move in this zigzag pattern. This philosophy applies to the whole game, with the important note that it’s still a fantastical setting. Snakes can’t jump. They can do quick attacks that may look like jumps, but there’s nothing to attack in this game. The most vertical distance you can gain in this game is raising your head a small amount. As such, all platforming is done by climbing things. Wrapping around protruding surfaces and using them as foundation for more movement, extending from a platform to get a collectible or maybe take a slither of faith hoping you land on another nearby platform. Your other tools aside from slithering and lifting your head are a button to hold your grip and a bird friend that will lift your tail. That last one may sound a little overpowered, but the bird can lift only the tail, and it also results in no counterweight to the head when you’re dangling off of a pole or the like. It’s all fairly simple, but it allows for a decent amount of varied platforming and a little nuance. It’s almost puzzle-like in how it works, as often there’s multiple ways to tackle a challenge, but experimentation can find one particular way that works really well.
One interesting element of the level design is that the complexity of platforms actually decreased as the game went on. Earlier on, there were wooden structures with several protrusions one could use to pull themselves up with, but by the end, platforms had much less support. This isn’t to say the level design became lazy, it was consistently solid throughout. The game has a linear progression of levels, but the levels themselves are non-linear, and you can collect the three gems needed to proceed in any order. The first set of levels is pretty tame, which makes sense considering how unconventional this game is, but in due time you’re dealing with more and more moving platforms and diagonal structures. I was worried early on that the checkpoint system would create issues. It’s basic, with no lives and the simple system of respawning at the last checkpoint and losing all item progress. Generally I’m fine with this ’’’’outdated’’’’ system, but considering this game is all-or-nothing in terms of health and a movement system that could make excessive backtracking annoying, I was kinda worried. However, the game thankfully positions checkpoint near the most challenging segments, optional or not.
While I think the level design is good, it definitely feels a little monotonous to an extent. While the latter three worlds do feature at least one main mixup, the implementation of these is mixed. This game features some pretty solid sections in the water level, for example. However, the third world just introduces lava, which doesn’t really do anything the previous established threats of pits and spikes couldn’t. The last world’s gimmick is by far the most consistently present, being wind. It requires you to be very careful in many cases, but in others it allows for more speed and freedom than ever before. While we’re on problems, there’s these switches that you have to pull to activate platforms and the like. While pulling these switches with your snake body is initially novel, the utilization of these switches remain the same from start to end. More could’ve been done to add more unique environmental interaction here.
The problem of monotonous theming extends to the visuals as well. The game’s world are themed around grass, water, fire, and air. Already this is pretty underwhelming, but the individual worlds just look very similar. The most stark difference are just lighting and skybox changes. This comes with the tradeoff of very polished visuals. The wider game has a jungle ruins theme, and it’s all very bright and colorful. However I still feel the lack of visual variety is worth mentioning. We have some great music here though. That’s because the composer was David Wise, known for the first two Donkey Kong Country games, composed for this game too. I’m not sure if his soundtrack here is as strong as those two, but it’s great regardless. It fits the tone and theme of the game and is just generally very good.
This is probably one of the shorter reviews that I’ve done for this list, but Snake Pass is a pretty simple game. It knows exactly what it is and doesn’t bog itself down with unnecessary fluff. No combat, No pointless diversion, and little story. However, it’s also a very novel game throughout its short length. In that spirit of brevity, I’m gonna end it here. This was a very good game, and one of the better 3D Platformers I’ve played. 7/10, honestly close to an 8.
A while back I did a review of Ty the Tasmanian Tiger. I specifically pointed out that one level featured no jumping, which I said was ridiculous for a 3D Platformer. Removing jumping in a game focused on 3D movement is a bold choice. Jumping is the players main and usually only way to interact with the Z-Axis in a 3D Platformer. Removing that interaction is a decision that the developers of Ty made rather flippantly.
By comparison, Snake Pass feels much more deliberate. In a genre about moving around in 3D spaces, the simple act of moving forward can take some conscious effort. In the game, ground movement is fastest when you move in a zigzag pattern as opposed to simply moving forward. While not hard, it’s certainly more conscious to wiggle the control stick back and forth rather than just push forward. This mirrors real life, as many snakes themselves move in this zigzag pattern. This philosophy applies to the whole game, with the important note that it’s still a fantastical setting. Snakes can’t jump. They can do quick attacks that may look like jumps, but there’s nothing to attack in this game. The most vertical distance you can gain in this game is raising your head a small amount. As such, all platforming is done by climbing things. Wrapping around protruding surfaces and using them as foundation for more movement, extending from a platform to get a collectible or maybe take a slither of faith hoping you land on another nearby platform. Your other tools aside from slithering and lifting your head are a button to hold your grip and a bird friend that will lift your tail. That last one may sound a little overpowered, but the bird can lift only the tail, and it also results in no counterweight to the head when you’re dangling off of a pole or the like. It’s all fairly simple, but it allows for a decent amount of varied platforming and a little nuance. It’s almost puzzle-like in how it works, as often there’s multiple ways to tackle a challenge, but experimentation can find one particular way that works really well.
One interesting element of the level design is that the complexity of platforms actually decreased as the game went on. Earlier on, there were wooden structures with several protrusions one could use to pull themselves up with, but by the end, platforms had much less support. This isn’t to say the level design became lazy, it was consistently solid throughout. The game has a linear progression of levels, but the levels themselves are non-linear, and you can collect the three gems needed to proceed in any order. The first set of levels is pretty tame, which makes sense considering how unconventional this game is, but in due time you’re dealing with more and more moving platforms and diagonal structures. I was worried early on that the checkpoint system would create issues. It’s basic, with no lives and the simple system of respawning at the last checkpoint and losing all item progress. Generally I’m fine with this ’’’’outdated’’’’ system, but considering this game is all-or-nothing in terms of health and a movement system that could make excessive backtracking annoying, I was kinda worried. However, the game thankfully positions checkpoint near the most challenging segments, optional or not.
While I think the level design is good, it definitely feels a little monotonous to an extent. While the latter three worlds do feature at least one main mixup, the implementation of these is mixed. This game features some pretty solid sections in the water level, for example. However, the third world just introduces lava, which doesn’t really do anything the previous established threats of pits and spikes couldn’t. The last world’s gimmick is by far the most consistently present, being wind. It requires you to be very careful in many cases, but in others it allows for more speed and freedom than ever before. While we’re on problems, there’s these switches that you have to pull to activate platforms and the like. While pulling these switches with your snake body is initially novel, the utilization of these switches remain the same from start to end. More could’ve been done to add more unique environmental interaction here.
The problem of monotonous theming extends to the visuals as well. The game’s world are themed around grass, water, fire, and air. Already this is pretty underwhelming, but the individual worlds just look very similar. The most stark difference are just lighting and skybox changes. This comes with the tradeoff of very polished visuals. The wider game has a jungle ruins theme, and it’s all very bright and colorful. However I still feel the lack of visual variety is worth mentioning. We have some great music here though. That’s because the composer was David Wise, known for the first two Donkey Kong Country games, composed for this game too. I’m not sure if his soundtrack here is as strong as those two, but it’s great regardless. It fits the tone and theme of the game and is just generally very good.
This is probably one of the shorter reviews that I’ve done for this list, but Snake Pass is a pretty simple game. It knows exactly what it is and doesn’t bog itself down with unnecessary fluff. No combat, No pointless diversion, and little story. However, it’s also a very novel game throughout its short length. In that spirit of brevity, I’m gonna end it here. This was a very good game, and one of the better 3D Platformers I’ve played. 7/10, honestly close to an 8.
This review contains spoilers
Something I’ve been meaning to talk about on this website is that people seem to judge sequels differently than expansions. It makes sense, but it can kind of bring up a lot of semantical arguments. One could criticize a game like Tears of the Kingdom for a lot of stuff, but when people say ‘This is just an DLC/update of Breath of the Wild’, it raises a lot of questions. First, what does this exactly mean? Is it an expansion because it almost exclusively adds stuff instead of making fundamental changes? Maybe, but other sequels have done this without being scrutinized nearly as much. Is it because enough isn’t added/changed? Possibly, but I honestly think if this game was for some reason split into three or so parts and released as DLC of Breath of the Wild for the same price in the end, people would be fine with it. I mean, look at Super Smash Bros Ultimate. It costs $60 to buy 12 DLC fighters along with their stages. Clearly, this is less content than the base game at the exact same price. As such, it becomes clear that people simply hold sequels to a higher level of scrutiny. Saying a sequel is just an expansion is a criticism of a game.
With that, I have to ask: is Silent Line: Armored Core a sequel to or expansion of Armored Core 3? I would say that in many ways this is an expansion. You can transfer your save from Armored Core 3 over to this game. All of the parts in that game are present here. The general movement and UI are the same. There’s an arena with new opponents, but it’s ultimately not that different from the arena of the previous game. And of course, Silent Line: Armored Core still has that same dumb control scheme I feel obligated to mention in each review.
However, pretty much every mission is completely original. Not only that, but they’re consistently the best missions in the series. Even the more basic missions will have lots of little twists that make playing them more entertaining. For example, there was one mission where you initially just start with some target and evasion practice, but by the end you’re fighting a giant robot while hopping around on airplanes. Surprises like this are all throughout this game, and it makes a ton of missions really memorable. The missions can get pretty challenging too, so you really have to consider your loadout before going into battle. You can’t take parts like extension and inside parts for granted, you really must optimize. Even once you get past that, the opportunity to earn new parts is present in every mission, whether it be from finding one out in the wild or getting it as a gift for doing a good job. This makes missions much more replayable on a whole.
And wow, there’s a ton of new parts. Most previous expansions averaged around 20 to 30 new parts. This game offers 198. I’d be remissed if I didn’t mention that many of these are simply upgrades to other parts, but these upgrade parts are usually the aforementioned mission rewards, so I think that’s honestly fine. A lot of these parts are new left-handed weapons. This game still differentiates between right and left-handed weapons, but there’s way more options for left-handed weapons that I don’t even really care. This adds so much more customization to the game, and it made way more builds viable. It’s the best feedback loop a game like this can have: Missions are hard enough that you really need to consider loadouts, and missions will reward you with new parts, meaning you always have something new to try out.
And maybe most importantly, this game’s story is a direct follow up to that of Armored Core 3. In fact, it’s the most direct of a follow-up that we’ve had in the series so far. You could argue that the story here is the same kind of stuff the series has been doing: A self-destructive cycle of corporations attacking each other where you are a self-destructive soldier for them. However, it feels a little more deliberate here. Even after everything that happened in the previous game, none of these superpower companies have learned anything. It seems the antagonist may be thinking the same, as it slowly becomes more active in pushing against the corporations’ war. The ending really caps it off well, with the final words of IBIS being, “The rest is up to you.” It makes you consider whether or not IBIS was meant to stop humanity or crown a new protector. I hope they expand on if IBIS’ defeat was a good or bad thing in later entries.
So, at the end of the day, is this a sequel or expansion? It’s all semantics. It’s the same as arguing if the AC I started Armored Core 3 with is the same as the one I have here. Here and there I’d replace parts to the point that it’s pretty much a completely different mech. But if it is different, when exactly did it definitively become a different AC? It’s an AC of Theseus, if you will. These kinds of semantics are worth discussing, but if there’s one thing Silent Line: Armored Core is, it’s great. Once again, it’s the best I’ve played in this series marathon so far. 9/10.
With that, I have to ask: is Silent Line: Armored Core a sequel to or expansion of Armored Core 3? I would say that in many ways this is an expansion. You can transfer your save from Armored Core 3 over to this game. All of the parts in that game are present here. The general movement and UI are the same. There’s an arena with new opponents, but it’s ultimately not that different from the arena of the previous game. And of course, Silent Line: Armored Core still has that same dumb control scheme I feel obligated to mention in each review.
However, pretty much every mission is completely original. Not only that, but they’re consistently the best missions in the series. Even the more basic missions will have lots of little twists that make playing them more entertaining. For example, there was one mission where you initially just start with some target and evasion practice, but by the end you’re fighting a giant robot while hopping around on airplanes. Surprises like this are all throughout this game, and it makes a ton of missions really memorable. The missions can get pretty challenging too, so you really have to consider your loadout before going into battle. You can’t take parts like extension and inside parts for granted, you really must optimize. Even once you get past that, the opportunity to earn new parts is present in every mission, whether it be from finding one out in the wild or getting it as a gift for doing a good job. This makes missions much more replayable on a whole.
And wow, there’s a ton of new parts. Most previous expansions averaged around 20 to 30 new parts. This game offers 198. I’d be remissed if I didn’t mention that many of these are simply upgrades to other parts, but these upgrade parts are usually the aforementioned mission rewards, so I think that’s honestly fine. A lot of these parts are new left-handed weapons. This game still differentiates between right and left-handed weapons, but there’s way more options for left-handed weapons that I don’t even really care. This adds so much more customization to the game, and it made way more builds viable. It’s the best feedback loop a game like this can have: Missions are hard enough that you really need to consider loadouts, and missions will reward you with new parts, meaning you always have something new to try out.
And maybe most importantly, this game’s story is a direct follow up to that of Armored Core 3. In fact, it’s the most direct of a follow-up that we’ve had in the series so far. You could argue that the story here is the same kind of stuff the series has been doing: A self-destructive cycle of corporations attacking each other where you are a self-destructive soldier for them. However, it feels a little more deliberate here. Even after everything that happened in the previous game, none of these superpower companies have learned anything. It seems the antagonist may be thinking the same, as it slowly becomes more active in pushing against the corporations’ war. The ending really caps it off well, with the final words of IBIS being, “The rest is up to you.” It makes you consider whether or not IBIS was meant to stop humanity or crown a new protector. I hope they expand on if IBIS’ defeat was a good or bad thing in later entries.
So, at the end of the day, is this a sequel or expansion? It’s all semantics. It’s the same as arguing if the AC I started Armored Core 3 with is the same as the one I have here. Here and there I’d replace parts to the point that it’s pretty much a completely different mech. But if it is different, when exactly did it definitively become a different AC? It’s an AC of Theseus, if you will. These kinds of semantics are worth discussing, but if there’s one thing Silent Line: Armored Core is, it’s great. Once again, it’s the best I’ve played in this series marathon so far. 9/10.
2002
This review contains spoilers
In my review of Armored Core 2: Another Age, I lamented that the series was becoming stagnant and worried that the release rate was hurting the games. Armored Core 3 came out just short of a year after Another Age and is in many ways a remake of the first and a reboot of the series. I was unsure whether a reboot/remake was really a good idea at this point, but this game ended up being one of the best in the series.
It's still the same old Armored Core. There are a few additions, but if you played Armored Core 2 you have a good idea of what’s gonna be here. Same kinds of weapons for the most part, the arena’s here, you still can’t use the right stick to move the camera (Or anything else. This game was released in 2002). Even the same kind of story, although I’d still say it’s an improvement over the narrative of the original Armored Core. However, it’s great in pretty much every way that you’d hope. The controls and movement are a little smoother but are still weighty. In general, the game just feels more polished than earlier entries. Quad legs actually walk now. It’s more fun to play in a way that’s hard to explain.
What's a little easier to explain the greatness of is the mission design though. This was such a breath of fresh air after Another Age. Not every mission is super unique, but there are a ton of memorable ones. Retrieving a package from a sinking ship, saving floating cargo on the water, Traveling through air ducts to disable EMPs, and way more missions were really interesting. Missions now take much more advantage of parts like hover legs and radiators too, which is nice. Funnily enough, despite being a soft remake of the first game, this game has fewer overt remake levels than Armored Core 2 from what I remember. The first missions are clear callbacks, but that’s mostly it.
There are definitely improvements in other fields though. Menuing is a big part of this series, and it’s been made much more convenient. Transitions are faster, the garage and shop have been combined into one section, and you can sell parts in the equip area. However, for some reason stat comparisons in the shop have been removed, meaning you can’t easily see how your part is better or worse than a prospective purchase.
While there are no new part types, there are iterations on pre-existing parts. In Armored Core 2, Overboost was a new addition that I really enjoyed. In Armored Core 3 your core may have Overboost, but it could also come equipped with Orbital Cores. These are auto firing energy weapons with infinite ammo that can be really useful on longer missions or if you really need max firepower and no mobility. There’s also a few more options for left arm parts. Now you can equip howitzers and flamethrowers instead of swords and shields. It seems FromSoft is slowly realizing that there’s really no need to differentiate between left arm weapons and right arm weapons. Slowly.
You can also drop weapons mid-mission. This can lighten your AC, and you don’t actually have to pay for the dropped ammo. Unfortunately, you have to enter a Street Fighter Combo to drop a weapon. Hmm, if only there was a stick that could free up some other buttons for alternative use…
You know what’s back though? The Arena! It’s still good, but it’s a little worse than that of Armored Core 2. That game’s arena was more difficult and had me really considering my parts and tactics. In this game, fights are much easier. However, they did limit the amount of fights you can do by making you complete more missions. That was probably a good idea, because these matches are still the best way to earn money. I was a little in debt once, but after playing enough arena matches, I was a millionaire.
Now, we must talk about the story. It’s good enough. It uses the main structure of the first game’s story, but it’s a little different. The Controller’s existence is well known and supported by the trio of corporations. Even when the Controller begins to seemingly glitch and start randomly sending robots to destroy stuff, the corporations trust it. You could definitely pull some sociopolitical commentary from this, but we never learn really why the Controller is doing what it does. It just happens. Why did the Controller open the surface up at the end? Was it a test to see if humanity was strong enough or something? Maybe I’ll find out in the next game, but still. We’re also missing Nineball here, which I guess means the Controller isn’t in charge of the Raven’s nest this time. I’m not sure why they changed that. Overall, I think this game’s story could’ve been a little better.
I don't usually bring up the audiovisuals in my reviews of these games, but Armored Core 3 is an exception. The visuals are good. Everything looks fine. But for some reason, the soundtrack here blows every previous soundtrack out of the water. It’s really good. They went for a mix of techno and orchestra, and the songs are really good without feeling intrusive.
This is a great game. In fact, it’s the best game in this marathon I’ve been doing. If you want a taste of old gen Armored Core, this might be the best game to start with. Just make sure you rebind the controls after the first mission. I was really considering giving this a 9/10, but I think I’ll leave it at an 8/10 for now. Next I’ll be playing Silent Line.
It's still the same old Armored Core. There are a few additions, but if you played Armored Core 2 you have a good idea of what’s gonna be here. Same kinds of weapons for the most part, the arena’s here, you still can’t use the right stick to move the camera (Or anything else. This game was released in 2002). Even the same kind of story, although I’d still say it’s an improvement over the narrative of the original Armored Core. However, it’s great in pretty much every way that you’d hope. The controls and movement are a little smoother but are still weighty. In general, the game just feels more polished than earlier entries. Quad legs actually walk now. It’s more fun to play in a way that’s hard to explain.
What's a little easier to explain the greatness of is the mission design though. This was such a breath of fresh air after Another Age. Not every mission is super unique, but there are a ton of memorable ones. Retrieving a package from a sinking ship, saving floating cargo on the water, Traveling through air ducts to disable EMPs, and way more missions were really interesting. Missions now take much more advantage of parts like hover legs and radiators too, which is nice. Funnily enough, despite being a soft remake of the first game, this game has fewer overt remake levels than Armored Core 2 from what I remember. The first missions are clear callbacks, but that’s mostly it.
There are definitely improvements in other fields though. Menuing is a big part of this series, and it’s been made much more convenient. Transitions are faster, the garage and shop have been combined into one section, and you can sell parts in the equip area. However, for some reason stat comparisons in the shop have been removed, meaning you can’t easily see how your part is better or worse than a prospective purchase.
While there are no new part types, there are iterations on pre-existing parts. In Armored Core 2, Overboost was a new addition that I really enjoyed. In Armored Core 3 your core may have Overboost, but it could also come equipped with Orbital Cores. These are auto firing energy weapons with infinite ammo that can be really useful on longer missions or if you really need max firepower and no mobility. There’s also a few more options for left arm parts. Now you can equip howitzers and flamethrowers instead of swords and shields. It seems FromSoft is slowly realizing that there’s really no need to differentiate between left arm weapons and right arm weapons. Slowly.
You can also drop weapons mid-mission. This can lighten your AC, and you don’t actually have to pay for the dropped ammo. Unfortunately, you have to enter a Street Fighter Combo to drop a weapon. Hmm, if only there was a stick that could free up some other buttons for alternative use…
You know what’s back though? The Arena! It’s still good, but it’s a little worse than that of Armored Core 2. That game’s arena was more difficult and had me really considering my parts and tactics. In this game, fights are much easier. However, they did limit the amount of fights you can do by making you complete more missions. That was probably a good idea, because these matches are still the best way to earn money. I was a little in debt once, but after playing enough arena matches, I was a millionaire.
Now, we must talk about the story. It’s good enough. It uses the main structure of the first game’s story, but it’s a little different. The Controller’s existence is well known and supported by the trio of corporations. Even when the Controller begins to seemingly glitch and start randomly sending robots to destroy stuff, the corporations trust it. You could definitely pull some sociopolitical commentary from this, but we never learn really why the Controller is doing what it does. It just happens. Why did the Controller open the surface up at the end? Was it a test to see if humanity was strong enough or something? Maybe I’ll find out in the next game, but still. We’re also missing Nineball here, which I guess means the Controller isn’t in charge of the Raven’s nest this time. I’m not sure why they changed that. Overall, I think this game’s story could’ve been a little better.
I don't usually bring up the audiovisuals in my reviews of these games, but Armored Core 3 is an exception. The visuals are good. Everything looks fine. But for some reason, the soundtrack here blows every previous soundtrack out of the water. It’s really good. They went for a mix of techno and orchestra, and the songs are really good without feeling intrusive.
This is a great game. In fact, it’s the best game in this marathon I’ve been doing. If you want a taste of old gen Armored Core, this might be the best game to start with. Just make sure you rebind the controls after the first mission. I was really considering giving this a 9/10, but I think I’ll leave it at an 8/10 for now. Next I’ll be playing Silent Line.
Anyone who follows me on this website probably knows I like Armored Core. Depending on how good later games are, I could see myself calling it one of my favorite game series. I love the customization, the interesting approaches to difficulty, even many of the games’ stories in how they present their themes. However, even I think this game feels tired.
The main thing that I heard about Another Age before going in was that the story was sparse and there’s no arena. Instead, there’s around 100 missions that can be tackled in a non-linear order. This kind of concerned me, because the arena was my favorite part in Armored Core 2, and while I wasn’t huge on that game’s story, I was hoping to see some improvements instead of a removal. Plus, the arena is important for balancing. If you don’t have the arena, there’s nothing to really stop players from deep debt, even if Human+ sticks a band-aid on the wound.
Well, that’s the first thing: Losing missions no longer loses you money. Ammo and repair is still costly and the payouts are usually lower to compensate for the lower risk, but I’m still not a fan of the new focus and the consequential changes. Project Phantasma and Master of Arena were certainly expansions on the first game, but they had original stories and added new things. Another Age, by comparison, removes stuff. Little story, no arena, and not too many new parts. I did get a lot of use out of the quick turn extension and a laser rifle, but the rest are nothing special. There’s nothing wrong with changing and even removing stuff. However, most of what they did was simply remove the most unique elements in the series.
It should be clear that the game lives or dies on the missions. And so, the game dies. These missions went for quantity over quality. There are some cool ones. For example, there’s one where you shoot escape pods so they destroy the MTs inside before they land. There’s another where you jump from plane to plane fighting enemies. However, for each good mission, there’s at least two boring ones and a bad one. For an example of a bad one, there’s one mission where you have to go from floor to floor on elevators defeating enemies. All this really entails is killing enemies in a room, sitting in elevator for 20 seconds, reaching the next floor and repeating. What really sticks out about this mission to me is that they took an already boring mission (Kill all enemies/destroy a bunch of stuff, which already makes up like half of the missions here), and just stuck in elevator rides where you do nothing. It’s also worth noting that the missions in this game miss two major things:
1. A sense of continuity
2. A sense of dynamism
Let’s start with the first of these two. Despite having pretty much no story, this game does have a few mini stories within mission groups, but they don’t really leave much impact. Other than that, there’s really no overarching story. This is obviously because the game is non-linear in terms of what missions you do, but it ultimately means there’s no sense of escalation. Was it really worth sacrificing pacing for non-linearity? Even with the non-linear structure, there could’ve been a better attempt at worldbuilding or something. I mean, even the first game in this series, despite not having an arena, had a Raven ranking. It served no gameplay function, but it enhanced the world and encouraged the player. Players see themselves going up on this ranking and want to hit #1 by completing more missions. The only thing encouraging you here is your own intrinsic motivation (Which for me wasn’t particularly high), and the mission completion %. That’s it. What we have here is pretty much nothing. Nothing feels important or intriguing. Very few characters even have names.
What about the second element though? It’s always exciting in any game when you go in expecting something simple and end up on a greater quest. The most basic and common application of this in this series is ending a few missions with an unexpected AC boss. It happens a lot because it keeps the player on edge and makes missions a little more interesting. The biggest issue in Another Age is how often there’s no dynamism with missions. They’re too straightforward. Very rarely does your mission objective stray from the briefing. I honestly think that a better approach would’ve been fewer, longer missions that have a lot of variety and are dynamic. The developers would’ve had to make some changes to how the game handles resource management probably, but I think it could’ve been done, and it would’ve been much better in my opinion. At the very least, they should’ve prioritized quality over quantity, as I can’t take playing 100 of these generally middling missions.
That brings us to the final nail in the coffin: This game makes you complete every mission to beat the game. As if this game wasn’t repetitive enough. You can’t choose missions that you don’t like, only the order in which you play them. This did honestly mean all of the final missions were really tense, as they were the ones I skipped over before, but it doesn’t make the ending any less disappointing. Upon beating the final mission (Which has no real plot significance, of course), the game immediately goes to credits. No cutscene or anything.
Also, the game still doesn’t use analog sticks for movement and camera. Come on, you couldn’t just add that in? Ok, I guess this is an expansion game. They better add it in Armored core 3 though.
To be honest, while I have been critical of this series, it’s just very easy for me to keep playing them in a way that I don’t with other games. I finish them very fast. It was a little harder for this one though, taking me much more time to complete. Maybe that’s partially because it’s simply longer and I’ve returned to school, but I still beat Armored Core 2 very quickly. Overall, I’d say it’s the worst in the series I played so far. Well, aside from Armored Core V maybe, but that’s a story for another time…
In my Master of Arena review, I said that Armored Core was very similar to Pokemon. It’s clear that my comparison was far more apt than I initially thought. Both series have a very good basis with a lot of customization, but it seems that just like Pokemon, this series is pumping out releases in a way that isn’t good for these games. One-year development cycles weren’t uncommon in the 90s. The thing is, as technology has grown, so has the timeframe needed to take advantage of that tech. I’m afraid that as this series goes on, FromSoft won’t compensate for this. Hopefully I’m wrong. 4/10, very close to a 5.
The main thing that I heard about Another Age before going in was that the story was sparse and there’s no arena. Instead, there’s around 100 missions that can be tackled in a non-linear order. This kind of concerned me, because the arena was my favorite part in Armored Core 2, and while I wasn’t huge on that game’s story, I was hoping to see some improvements instead of a removal. Plus, the arena is important for balancing. If you don’t have the arena, there’s nothing to really stop players from deep debt, even if Human+ sticks a band-aid on the wound.
Well, that’s the first thing: Losing missions no longer loses you money. Ammo and repair is still costly and the payouts are usually lower to compensate for the lower risk, but I’m still not a fan of the new focus and the consequential changes. Project Phantasma and Master of Arena were certainly expansions on the first game, but they had original stories and added new things. Another Age, by comparison, removes stuff. Little story, no arena, and not too many new parts. I did get a lot of use out of the quick turn extension and a laser rifle, but the rest are nothing special. There’s nothing wrong with changing and even removing stuff. However, most of what they did was simply remove the most unique elements in the series.
It should be clear that the game lives or dies on the missions. And so, the game dies. These missions went for quantity over quality. There are some cool ones. For example, there’s one where you shoot escape pods so they destroy the MTs inside before they land. There’s another where you jump from plane to plane fighting enemies. However, for each good mission, there’s at least two boring ones and a bad one. For an example of a bad one, there’s one mission where you have to go from floor to floor on elevators defeating enemies. All this really entails is killing enemies in a room, sitting in elevator for 20 seconds, reaching the next floor and repeating. What really sticks out about this mission to me is that they took an already boring mission (Kill all enemies/destroy a bunch of stuff, which already makes up like half of the missions here), and just stuck in elevator rides where you do nothing. It’s also worth noting that the missions in this game miss two major things:
1. A sense of continuity
2. A sense of dynamism
Let’s start with the first of these two. Despite having pretty much no story, this game does have a few mini stories within mission groups, but they don’t really leave much impact. Other than that, there’s really no overarching story. This is obviously because the game is non-linear in terms of what missions you do, but it ultimately means there’s no sense of escalation. Was it really worth sacrificing pacing for non-linearity? Even with the non-linear structure, there could’ve been a better attempt at worldbuilding or something. I mean, even the first game in this series, despite not having an arena, had a Raven ranking. It served no gameplay function, but it enhanced the world and encouraged the player. Players see themselves going up on this ranking and want to hit #1 by completing more missions. The only thing encouraging you here is your own intrinsic motivation (Which for me wasn’t particularly high), and the mission completion %. That’s it. What we have here is pretty much nothing. Nothing feels important or intriguing. Very few characters even have names.
What about the second element though? It’s always exciting in any game when you go in expecting something simple and end up on a greater quest. The most basic and common application of this in this series is ending a few missions with an unexpected AC boss. It happens a lot because it keeps the player on edge and makes missions a little more interesting. The biggest issue in Another Age is how often there’s no dynamism with missions. They’re too straightforward. Very rarely does your mission objective stray from the briefing. I honestly think that a better approach would’ve been fewer, longer missions that have a lot of variety and are dynamic. The developers would’ve had to make some changes to how the game handles resource management probably, but I think it could’ve been done, and it would’ve been much better in my opinion. At the very least, they should’ve prioritized quality over quantity, as I can’t take playing 100 of these generally middling missions.
That brings us to the final nail in the coffin: This game makes you complete every mission to beat the game. As if this game wasn’t repetitive enough. You can’t choose missions that you don’t like, only the order in which you play them. This did honestly mean all of the final missions were really tense, as they were the ones I skipped over before, but it doesn’t make the ending any less disappointing. Upon beating the final mission (Which has no real plot significance, of course), the game immediately goes to credits. No cutscene or anything.
Also, the game still doesn’t use analog sticks for movement and camera. Come on, you couldn’t just add that in? Ok, I guess this is an expansion game. They better add it in Armored core 3 though.
To be honest, while I have been critical of this series, it’s just very easy for me to keep playing them in a way that I don’t with other games. I finish them very fast. It was a little harder for this one though, taking me much more time to complete. Maybe that’s partially because it’s simply longer and I’ve returned to school, but I still beat Armored Core 2 very quickly. Overall, I’d say it’s the worst in the series I played so far. Well, aside from Armored Core V maybe, but that’s a story for another time…
In my Master of Arena review, I said that Armored Core was very similar to Pokemon. It’s clear that my comparison was far more apt than I initially thought. Both series have a very good basis with a lot of customization, but it seems that just like Pokemon, this series is pumping out releases in a way that isn’t good for these games. One-year development cycles weren’t uncommon in the 90s. The thing is, as technology has grown, so has the timeframe needed to take advantage of that tech. I’m afraid that as this series goes on, FromSoft won’t compensate for this. Hopefully I’m wrong. 4/10, very close to a 5.