15

I’m a bit shocked at the 3.7 rating on here. Maybe visual novels just aren’t for me, but this is very clearly a cheap game (I know why) with its simple—maybe too simple art style, and the generic dialogue that you’d find in every single visual novel ever made. If someone didn’t know that this was a Sonic game, and you showed them the dialogue, there is no way they’d be able to tell that these are in fact Sonic characters; granted I’m not the biggest Sonic fan, but these characterizations are straight up boring. You have all the archetypes here! All of them! The minigame is easily the best part of the game, so much so that I wish it was focused on more, so that I wouldn’t have to sit through this much tedium.

Playtime: 1.6 hours

Every Game I’ve Ever Played - Ranked (By Score)
Sonic Games - Ranked
2023 - Ranked

22

This game deserves some respect because of how much it pioneered the fighting game genre, and propelled the Dragon Ball Z franchise forward; but when you really look at any mechanic or feature, they’re all executed in the worst possible ways. I’m not the biggest fan of fighting games, I’d even go as far as to say I fucking hate them—mostly because I completely suck at every single one I try… but I still wanted to give this trilogy a shot because I remember all three so fondly.

The story is a mixed bag. Its simplicity can be commended, as it streamlines the story of the anime in an approachable and understandable way; but it can also be criticized for skipping a ton of epic fights and moments, in favor of implementing multiple—repetitive mainline battles. Gohan fights Perfect Cell four times… and each one is largely the same except now, you have two health bars instead of three! It’s boring. So many story moments are completely ruined, with a few hits immediately resulting in you losing your transformation which ruins the spectacle of the fight. It’s also worth noting that the music is terrible, and nowhere near the quality of the show—or even some of the other games. It barely resembles the anime, and sounds like a poor imitation that is unbelievably generic. When all of these issues are weighing down the experience, it’s hard for me to care or feel invested in this version of the story—although I will say that the locations are instantly recognizable so it deserves some points for that. Oh, and the bonus chapters are cool! Vegeta turning into a Super Saiyan before Goku will always be dope.

But obviously, the main draw of the Budokai franchise is the fighting. And… uhm, it’s crap. Like I said before, I’m not the biggest fan of this genre, so I’m not going to pretend like I know what I’m talking about when it comes to the abundance of mechanics in these games; but there’s not all that many here? And it’s very strange how if you’re playing on anything but easy, the AI will be the most aggressive, annoying piece of shits you’ve ever played against. I can’t get an attack in because they won’t stop spamming, so it leaves no room for me to do anything; and yeah, I know, I know… I should just “git gud”, and that’s fair. But it’s still annoying nonetheless. The choreography isn’t fluid either, with attacks looking the slowest they’ve ever looked in a fighting game, it’s almost like it’s in slow-mo. Most of these things can be summed up as the game being outdated, you can see this with the art style—as it's missing that iconic cel shaded look. I still like the simplicity of it though. But something I won’t forgive is some of the special moves looking completely wrong, why is the kamehameha yellow? How can you possibly get that wrong? There must be a reason, I don’t know though. In conclusion, bad game. Hopefully the sequels improve.

Playtime: 3.4 hours

Every Game I've Ever Played - Ranked (By Score)
Dragon Ball Z - Ranked
2002 - Ranked

12

Much worse than its predecessor. I don’t understand why the story mode is structured as a board game… I can see a possible version of it that is executed better, but the mechanics and features—as they are here, feel underbaked. You’ll have to fight enemies countless times as they needlessly gain back health through abusing the healing pad mechanic, all while the difficulty—of said fights, are inconsistent. Sometimes they’ll have four-five health bars, other times they’ll only have one or two. Sometimes they’ll be passive, and other times they won’t stop spamming attacks. It’s just weird. I don’t get how this dumb fucking system works. Not to mention how much of a joke the difficulty scaling is. Easy and Very Easy feel the same. Easy is too easy, and normal is too hard. I can’t even imagine how frustrating the fights must feel on Very Hard; The CPU probably predicts every attack that you haven’t even thought of yet.

The story mode is of the same vein as the difficulty: frustrating and inconsistent. It’s barely even a story mode, so I’ll stop calling it that. Dragon World is pure gimmick. No cutscenes. Lots of dialogue boxes, I feel like I’m playing a shitty JRPG side quest disguised as a whole game. If it had a few fights each stage I’d be more on board with it, but you have to battle several opponents multiple times. I thought the first game was repetitive… but this one? Oh man, it’s on a whole different level. Dragon World is made even worse when you consider the fact that it discourages you from playing as anyone other than Goku. You have the option of choosing from several different fighters each stage—Goku being the main, and then one or two allies. So if you decide to battle as anyone other than Goku, you’ll miss out on all the voice lines and story beats. You’ll just be going from fight to fight with nothing in between. But this isn’t even its worst feature, oh no… there’s something much worse. I used Gohan for the majority of the game, including stage three, where Goku is supposed to fight Frieza and become a Super Saiyan; and each time you defeat an opponent, you get skills for the specific character that you used. So when I beat Frieza as Gohan, I didn’t get Goku’s Super Saiyan transformation, only Gohan’s. You see, this is bad because “ally” characters have less health on the board, meaning you can only die twice before the stage resets. Point is, for the entire game… I was maining Gohan, missing out on dialogue, being at a constant disadvantage—both because of Gohan having less health, and because my Goku was severely underpowered; and you need that base transformation! If you didn’t get Super Saiyan 1, then you’re not going to be able to use Super Saiyan 2 or 3! So you see, this is why this fucking game sucks balls. It made every little thing so repetitive, and frustrating, and annoying. No wonder they never remastered it, I’m happy this got left behind because it’s such a fucking travesty in game design and everything else.

So, positives! The art style is much better, sporting that classic cel-shaded look that these games are famous for. The visuals across the board are much better in every single way. There’s more color, more particle effects, more accurate special attacks! Yes, the kamehameha is now blue! That’s right! (No idea why it was yellow to begin with). The combat feels better, although I’m not sure why. And the UI is cleaner with a much nicer visual aesthetic. But that’s about it! Oh, and the opening cinematic is a banger. This isn’t instilling hope in me for the third game though…

Playtime: 4.4 hours

Every Game I've Ever Played - Ranked (By Score)
Dragon Ball Z - Ranked
2003 - Ranked

30

The best of the Budokai trilogy, but still not good—not even close. Yet again, there are several improvements to the core fundamentals; the combat, the visuals, the character roster, all of these receive numerous updates and additions. But the developers are still intent on making a frustrating “story mode” that doesn’t offer anything new, besides mechanics that are pure gimmick so that the player can experience somewhat of a story.

So instead of a board game, this time you’re flying around the world—collecting Dragon Balls, finding optional fights with Saibamen and other obscure DBZ characters such as Cooler, or progressing through the story in the form of mainline battles. There still aren’t any cutscenes, only dialogue boxes with surprisingly mediocre voice acting. This is one of the only times I’ve heard the DBZ voice cast completely phone it in, it's almost like they don't even want to be there? You can play the story mode with different characters, experiencing an array of perspectives throughout every saga, and I’m not a big fan of this feature. It’s needlessly long, drawn out, and boring—not to mention that a few of the characters overlap, meaning you have to do some fights several times between characters. I don’t know anyone who willingly wants to play as Yamcha, Tien, Piccolo, or Krillin. They barely have any attacks, it’s just boring. Like I said before, there are some references to other obscure (at the time) characters, such as Cooler, Broly, and even SSJ4 Goku; but they're hidden in the world, meaning you have to aimlessly wander through it until you see a slight sparkle on the ground. If I didn’t look up videos of this game, then I wouldn’t even know that those characters are in here. It would’ve been cool if instead of those hidden encounters, entire cutscenes and levels were dedicated to them!.. but yeah, they don’t do those anymore.

Combat has very noticeably improved. More attacks. More special moves. More mechanics. There’s a lot more control. I feel like I can actually do stuff with intent instead of mindlessly blocking like I did in the previous games. They add a couple new mechanics that I’m not sure I like though, the hyper mode that allows you to become stronger until your ki runs out isn’t fun to play against, or to even use yourself. If the enemy uses it, you can literally only do one thing until it depletes, evade—because you won’t be able to attack, since they can’t be stunned while in that state. And that isn’t fun, it’s not diverse in gameplay, it’s limited, I don’t see what the purpose of adding it was, since some of the later enemies completely abuse it every chance they get. The dragon rush mechanic is also total ass. It’s pure RNG, and nothing more.

In terms of visuals—again, lots of fantastic improvements. More colours, more effects, everything just looks more like Dragon Ball Z. Even the stages are more accurate and impressive, whilst also being able to transition into other stages based on certain attacks. It’s all really cool.

Replaying these three games recently has convinced me to never touch a fighting game again. I’ve realized that I just really fucking hate this genre with a passion. As a whole, they’re a lot more focused on the fighting aspect than delivering any sort of narrative (without a bunch of dumb gimmicks thrown in)—rightfully so, because that is the main appeal, but to me? They do nothing. Another banger cinematic though!

Playtime: 6.1 hours

Every Game I've Ever Played - Ranked (By Score)
Dragon Ball Z - Ranked
2004 - Ranked

32

With the release of both LEGO The Incredibles and LEGO DC Super Villains within the same year, it’s clear that TT Games obviously put way more effort into the latter. Everything in LEGO The Incredibles is subpar; whether it’s the levels, the humor, the open world, the visuals, or the noticeably weird lack of charm that used to be the main selling point of this franchise, and ultimately—why people would play them in the first place. Charm is a hard thing to dissect. I don’t exactly know what makes a game… charming. Is it nostalgia? Simplicity? Or is it when you can visibly see the amount of love and care developers put into their game? Probably all three—but this isn’t nostalgic to me, and it pains me to say that it completely fails at the other two. I remember when these games had a formula, but weren’t so obsessed with repeating it every chance they got without adding much of anything new or original. It’s reached a point where it feels like TT Games are emulating their own fucking formula—putting no effort at all into expanding it and making it feel fresh.

The best example of this is the open world. It sucks. It’s a shit attempt at bloating out the game with mindless collectibles that take no effort whatsoever to… you know, collect. I remember the good ol' days of LEGO Marvel Superheroes when each puzzle was engaging and actually stumped you at times—it’s not like they were the hardest thing ever, but the point is… they made you think, even if it was only for 20 seconds. Here, you don’t think. You select a flying character and fly around the world collecting bricks on rooftops and in “hidden” places for four hours, even though you can literally see them on the map. You can get a district done in about 10 minutes just by aimlessly flying around, it’s so dumb. They didn’t even try, there are close to zero actual puzzles in the world; I can only remember one, which was when you had to figure out how to open a locked container in the sea. Apart from that though, there’s nothing, and I honestly had to put on a YouTube video in the background so I wouldn’t be so bored. And when I say that it was mindless, I mean that very literally; this is what my face looked like when I was playing through the open world, it was that bad. Now keep in mind, it wouldn’t be so frustrating if it was only tedious collectibles, but they also implement these activities called crime waves; not only do these become repetitive after the third one… but there’s also 10 of them. And they each contain 2-3 missions within them, so essentially—you’re doing the same shit on repeat. But I think another big reason the open world is so disappointing is that… it just doesn’t look good. It’s small, empty, stretched thin, and has no detail at all. Look at LEGO DC Super Villains for example. The lighting, the reflections, the effects, the small details; it’s all so beautiful to look at and absorb—it's one of the main reasons I love that game so much (and it’s arguably close to the visuals of LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga). And I think a huge reason for that is just straightforward… art direction. I don’t see any discernible visual traits that are only in this LEGO game—I mean if anything, it’s direction-less. I honestly prefer the visuals of much older LEGO games like LEGO Batman, LEGO Marvel Superheroes, LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga, and plenty of others. I do like the numerous references to other Pixar properties though, building iconic landmarks from those films was really fun and helped solidify my need for a Skywalker Saga-sized Pixar game that selects 10 of their best movies and does a bunch of crazy cool shit with them.

The story levels are a mixed bag. You’re immediately thrown into the story of the second movie first, as opposed to starting with the original; and this was a horrible choice. The second movie came out around the same time and I know they were obligated to start with it—so I get why, but I can guarantee that some fans quit the game because they couldn’t be bothered to sit through an adaptation of a much weaker movie. I wasn’t one of them of course, but I will say that the second movie is much, much, much weaker than the first. I don’t like it… almost at all, it’s nowhere near as complex or thought-provoking as the original, not to mention its utterly forgettable villain that can’t hold a candle to Syndrome. My thoughts on the movie inevitably link in with my thoughts on that part of the story mode, so I didn’t really enjoy it. Thankfully, the first movie kind of saves this game (not really though, because it still sucks). It’s a lot funnier (mainly due to Bomb Voyage, he’s hilarious), and the level design is more in tune with older LEGO games, even if it’s still lacking that charming simplicity. But I hate how many scenarios they’ve changed. So in the movie—a lot of the time, characters are alone and hardly ever in pairs. Now, I understand why this doesn’t work for the game, but they change crucial story elements that made the movie… so incredible and unique in the first place (excuse the pun). One of these happens late in the game when a character that was originally killed in the movie isn’t killed in the game—forcing them to join you as a partner for the level, and it rubbed me the wrong way. They could’ve just spawned in another character for co-op, or had—I don’t know, another way of making it a two player level that doesn’t very largely change a huge part of the story. Another change I don’t like is the absence of the guy that attempts to do that thing—okay I really do understand why this wasn’t included—but fuck, it’s such a huge part of the movie’s story that acts as the catalyst for everything that happens to superheroes and their eventual downfall, so I can’t help but feel a little disappointed. They could’ve tackled it like they’ve tackled many other dark aspects of the movies they’ve adapted, but it’s honestly not that big of a deal so I'm giving the game a pass for that. The free play in this one was surprisingly good. It’s fast, and doesn’t aim to waste your time. There aren’t that many invisible walls meaning you can fly straight past huge moments to collect what you need to collect, and it works. This is also complimented by the fact that the pacing is a lot quicker; the animations don’t have long wind-ups, and this makes going through the levels much more enjoyable because it’s not tedious. That’s actually a huge reason why my score isn’t lower; the game isn’t too long and doesn't try to waste your time—and it gets a few bonus points for that.

Oh and the music? I mean shit, it’s Michael Giacchino—can’t get any better than that… bangers after bangers. And playing this after LEGO Jurassic World was a blessing in disguise because this one actually has voice acting! Which was very surprising. The voices aren’t perfect replications, but they don’t have to be… and it’s a lot better than ripping audio straight from the movies, which I think they still do? But I honestly can’t tell, and I keep finding conflicting results online. I haven’t said anything about the character roster yet, and that’s because it’s not very good. This links back to my general point of TT Games picking franchises that don’t translate all that well to their formula, which is the case here too; with the whole—changing scenarios during levels, the open world, and the character roster that has a lot of characters that we’ve never seen in the movies apart from slight mentions. This was clearly not a good pick for a LEGO game… Oh and bugs! Bugs! Bugs! Bugs! FUCKING OPTIMIZE YOUR GAMES PLEASE.

Playtime: 14.5 hours

Every Game I’ve Ever Played - Ranked (By Score)
Superhero Games - Ranked
LEGO - Ranked
2018 - Ranked

Played from – to: (2023-10-28 – 2023-11-05) – PC keyboard.
‣ 6/10 – Where’s the ashes at?

‣ Thoughts: Remnant took a few attempts to fully grab my attention. It was definitely not a game I would’ve completed alone due to some unfair balancing issues and a dry story. However, with a buddy this was quite a blast and an enjoyable brainless shooter to bash out in a week.

Gameplay wise, Remnant is essentially a souls like with guns. There’s a dodge button, enemies that deal loads of damage and optional exploration that usually ends with a boss fight. Overall, I found the gunplay quite enjoyable and impactful. No guns felt like BB guns or pebble dispensers and there was enough weight to them to keep me engaged throughout my 8-hour story playthrough. I will say, this game is pretty challenging while playing alone, but splitting the enemies AI with a partner made the game basically a walk in the park on normal difficulty. So, if you are planning to try this game out, play on a harder difficulty, because you will not be able to change that mid-campaign without restarting your entire progress.

The weapon and gear system have sadly been a big letdown. Upgrading weapons is expensive and rather grindy, so you are forced into choosing one weapon and sticking with it in order to keep your power level optimal without replaying certain areas. Most boss weapons seemed interesting, but their upgrades were too costly to exchange an already maxed out beginner weapon that couldn’t be de crowned by any other item found. Essentially the weapon you pick in your first hour will be the weapon you’ll use in your last boss fight. Same goes with clothing gear. The more you upgrade your starting set the less inclined you will be to try other armor pieces, especially when there’s barely any to find or buy. Overall, the system is enough to keep you exploring, but the rewards you get won’t be better then what you start with. Rings and amulets are probably the strongest part of your arsenal variety.

Lastly, this game has a story and that is all I need to really say. If you pay attention, you might grab on to something that interests you and keeps you entertained. However, the way most story is given to you rivals the generic lore dumps Bethesda loves to do but does it in the dullest way possible. So, for me the story was something I just ignored and kept in the back of my mind.

All in all, Remnant is a pretty decent co-op souls like shooter that has a great variety in enemies and locations and challenges you when it is necessary. But don’t expect a narrative masterpiece with incredible gameplay depth.

Can't really imagine playing this in single player cause it's so designed around the multi player experience (with some baffling exceptions) but as a multi player game yeah it's good, it's fun to play and its paced pretty rapidly, it never gets stale really.
My main complains are with its weird structure. Randomized areas and bosses are pretty typical for multiplayer focused games like Risk of Rain or Deep Rock Galactic but the difference is that in those games a run is what, like an hour at most? Makes these games very replayable. This run took me and my two buddies about 9 hours, at which point I just lose motivation to replay it even knowing how much I'm missing out on due to its randomized nature. It doesn't scratch either itch for me, as I feel I didn't get as much out of it in a single run as I would have without all the random bullshit or in multiple, shorter runs that are all vastly different.