Katsono
Continued by my review of the second game.
I'm genuinely conflicted by this game. On one hand it's a very nice "horror" game. Night Alone is beautiful with an incredibly well done sound design that carries the charm of a lonely walk through a town at night. It has light horror elements that are almost poetic and it really builds an atmosphere around that.
On the other hand, it tries too hard to do horror by throwing some unneeded screamers at you, some of the sounds being way too high and breaking the game's peaceful atmosphere and an absurdly frustrating difficulty at multiple points of the game.
The difficulty is really the biggest flaw of the game in my opinion. One of the things I really loved about the game at first is that it was not hard and felt very different from every horror game I've ever played. You walk around spirits and most of them are almost harmless, the remaining ones are like a puzzle and each of them have an appropriate way of being approached. You're not running, your life is not under a big threat, in many ways it reminded me of a movie like Spirited Away. It's also quite similar to Yume Nikki in the amount of weird and unique things you'll find through your adventure.
But aside from that, not only does the game throw more and more boring chase sequences at you but they're just absurdly difficult and require almost perfect timings (moving as soon as a cutscene is over, managing your stamina...) to survive. The checkpoint system contributes to making this frustrating especially late game. There's even a boss fight which feels completely out of place in a game like this.
I really wish the game had just stuck to the peaceful horror kind instead of trying more. Even the sole fact of walking in such a charming city at night makes it a one of a kind game because I've never seen any game replicate a feeling like this.
I think the game could have also benefited from being more open ended and less linear. Since we're just collecting trinkets through the entire game and there isn't really much of a narrative progression, such a structure would have been perfectly fitting and would have amplified the ingenuity of the design. But it still feels very nice to discover this small city and I really enjoyed that part.
Ultimately, the game doesn't seem to understand what it's good at and tries to appeal to generic concepts instead. Maybe it was riskier, but this game could have been great without being linear, without a "proper story" and without following horror tropes. This also raises a question: do all games that aim to be horror need to be scary? I think this game had a rather cool perspective of that and instead aimed at being spiritual more so than scary: you play a kid as if you were a cartoon's protagonist, there is no stress in regards to resource management (well except the salt, good luck finding salt) and dying isn't punished heavily. It could be an amazing, chill horror themed exploration game, but it's not.
I'm genuinely conflicted by this game. On one hand it's a very nice "horror" game. Night Alone is beautiful with an incredibly well done sound design that carries the charm of a lonely walk through a town at night. It has light horror elements that are almost poetic and it really builds an atmosphere around that.
On the other hand, it tries too hard to do horror by throwing some unneeded screamers at you, some of the sounds being way too high and breaking the game's peaceful atmosphere and an absurdly frustrating difficulty at multiple points of the game.
The difficulty is really the biggest flaw of the game in my opinion. One of the things I really loved about the game at first is that it was not hard and felt very different from every horror game I've ever played. You walk around spirits and most of them are almost harmless, the remaining ones are like a puzzle and each of them have an appropriate way of being approached. You're not running, your life is not under a big threat, in many ways it reminded me of a movie like Spirited Away. It's also quite similar to Yume Nikki in the amount of weird and unique things you'll find through your adventure.
But aside from that, not only does the game throw more and more boring chase sequences at you but they're just absurdly difficult and require almost perfect timings (moving as soon as a cutscene is over, managing your stamina...) to survive. The checkpoint system contributes to making this frustrating especially late game. There's even a boss fight which feels completely out of place in a game like this.
I really wish the game had just stuck to the peaceful horror kind instead of trying more. Even the sole fact of walking in such a charming city at night makes it a one of a kind game because I've never seen any game replicate a feeling like this.
I think the game could have also benefited from being more open ended and less linear. Since we're just collecting trinkets through the entire game and there isn't really much of a narrative progression, such a structure would have been perfectly fitting and would have amplified the ingenuity of the design. But it still feels very nice to discover this small city and I really enjoyed that part.
Ultimately, the game doesn't seem to understand what it's good at and tries to appeal to generic concepts instead. Maybe it was riskier, but this game could have been great without being linear, without a "proper story" and without following horror tropes. This also raises a question: do all games that aim to be horror need to be scary? I think this game had a rather cool perspective of that and instead aimed at being spiritual more so than scary: you play a kid as if you were a cartoon's protagonist, there is no stress in regards to resource management (well except the salt, good luck finding salt) and dying isn't punished heavily. It could be an amazing, chill horror themed exploration game, but it's not.
2023
This is pretty much machine translation and for a visual novel game it's difficult to overlook. It's hard to understand and enjoy the text, I hope the developers will eventually bring a proper English translation.
In a way it's a pretty cool game, it's got a strong old-school JRPG and homemade vibe but they're also why this game isn't that good. Overall I'd say that the game would have gained a lot from being more modern especially on the interface side of things, but it plays like a SNES/PS1 game even though it came out in 2009.
The gameplay is fine honestly. It's very difficult and the controls are somewhat clunky but you can do a lot and it was relatively fun. Being able to control multiple characters in an action plateformer is something I've seen in no other game and that's amazing!
However the level design really leaves to be desired and it's mostly mindless dungeon grinding in maze-like repetitive areas. The story is also very slow and while it's funny and cute, the lack of any sort of accomplishment somewhat bored me. I've enjoyed slice of life games like Trails in the sky so maybe this one is just too childish for me. It's similar to a magical girl anime.
The gameplay is fine honestly. It's very difficult and the controls are somewhat clunky but you can do a lot and it was relatively fun. Being able to control multiple characters in an action plateformer is something I've seen in no other game and that's amazing!
However the level design really leaves to be desired and it's mostly mindless dungeon grinding in maze-like repetitive areas. The story is also very slow and while it's funny and cute, the lack of any sort of accomplishment somewhat bored me. I've enjoyed slice of life games like Trails in the sky so maybe this one is just too childish for me. It's similar to a magical girl anime.
2019
I wanted to 100% this game but encountered two problems: 1) some of my progression achievements were not accounted for 2) the game crashed during a sidequest and all sidequests became inaccessible.
Overall a nice game if I exclude this problem. Nice enough that I wanted to 100% it.
The game is pretty simple and bare bone outside of combat, it's the main appeal of the game. The combat is nice and in my opinion offers quite a bit of variety with a lot of moves to be unlocked. I was never quite bored and experimented a lot of different things throughout the game.
The game is fairly easy but it's also why you can afford to experiment so much and the moves are cool, so I had a lot of fun. I also like the fact that every mission has a hard alternative and the ranking system adds some more meat to the game.
Outside combat, there's not much to see. The characters are nice but the story is forgettable and sometimes sounds like gibberish machine translation. The game has some Persona-like events which are disappointingly short and void of any depth. The events are like five long and that's it. For example, one of them was just a conversation akin to "Hey you got a guitar? You'll play music for me sometimes? Yeah ok".
All the collectibles are pretty stupid, requiring you to spam the same action over and over until you get it : eating multiple times at restaurants, spending 10 minutes watching the gacha action to get all the loot... It feels like they were designed for you to come back every once in a while and max them out just like you would in Yakuza for example, but there's no reason to hang out in the city and getting the food buff that way would be genuinely painful. Besides, nothing stops you from spamming and the prices are cheap.
And speaking of spam, one of the achievements require you to constantly water a tree throughout almost the entire game. It seriously takes a long time.
I hope the second game would be less buggy and have improve the quality of content outside combat. Considering the length of these games though, I'm not buying it anytime soon because it's too expensive.
Overall a nice game if I exclude this problem. Nice enough that I wanted to 100% it.
The game is pretty simple and bare bone outside of combat, it's the main appeal of the game. The combat is nice and in my opinion offers quite a bit of variety with a lot of moves to be unlocked. I was never quite bored and experimented a lot of different things throughout the game.
The game is fairly easy but it's also why you can afford to experiment so much and the moves are cool, so I had a lot of fun. I also like the fact that every mission has a hard alternative and the ranking system adds some more meat to the game.
Outside combat, there's not much to see. The characters are nice but the story is forgettable and sometimes sounds like gibberish machine translation. The game has some Persona-like events which are disappointingly short and void of any depth. The events are like five long and that's it. For example, one of them was just a conversation akin to "Hey you got a guitar? You'll play music for me sometimes? Yeah ok".
All the collectibles are pretty stupid, requiring you to spam the same action over and over until you get it : eating multiple times at restaurants, spending 10 minutes watching the gacha action to get all the loot... It feels like they were designed for you to come back every once in a while and max them out just like you would in Yakuza for example, but there's no reason to hang out in the city and getting the food buff that way would be genuinely painful. Besides, nothing stops you from spamming and the prices are cheap.
And speaking of spam, one of the achievements require you to constantly water a tree throughout almost the entire game. It seriously takes a long time.
I hope the second game would be less buggy and have improve the quality of content outside combat. Considering the length of these games though, I'm not buying it anytime soon because it's too expensive.
This is a vampire survivors clone with characters based on the Hololive company vtubers. I have no interest in Hololive though but I think the game is pretty good.
The biggest strength of the game is a solid roster of characters that each have their unique abilities and are very varied, yet all of them are fun to play and feel viable. I'm legitimately surprised at such an expensive and qualitative roster, it's impressive. The design is also quite cool and the pixel art is nice to look at.
The roster gives you a good amount of content to explore and grind. There are few stages so far though but the game is still in development after all.
The lack of features such as time acceleration is painful though. Each ruin is at least 20min and this can be quite tedious. There's also only one special stage for now (for an average of 5min runs).
The game has relatively few balancing issues and is very fun to play. The enemies and maps are diversified and great. While mostly a copy of VS, its twists make it a good game that I enjoyed.
The biggest strength of the game is a solid roster of characters that each have their unique abilities and are very varied, yet all of them are fun to play and feel viable. I'm legitimately surprised at such an expensive and qualitative roster, it's impressive. The design is also quite cool and the pixel art is nice to look at.
The roster gives you a good amount of content to explore and grind. There are few stages so far though but the game is still in development after all.
The lack of features such as time acceleration is painful though. Each ruin is at least 20min and this can be quite tedious. There's also only one special stage for now (for an average of 5min runs).
The game has relatively few balancing issues and is very fun to play. The enemies and maps are diversified and great. While mostly a copy of VS, its twists make it a good game that I enjoyed.
The game has a lot to show and always throws something new and interesting to the player. The story is simple and intriguing. Overall, the game is very pretty.
I feel like the linear structure and cinematic walking wasn't really necessary, as most of the game happens through transitioning into a new environment when you interact with something in the house. Having a more "movable" character and a free house to explore (like Gone Home, for example) would have been more interesting in my opinion. If there's a part of the game that doesn't add anything, it's surely slowly crawling through a hole, although I get that they wanted to pace the game like a movie (which it isn't, it's a game after all).
The game has many details but the overly linear and cinematic experience doesn't really emphasize going back to find them, so I do think it's a miss on that part. It doesn't feel as natural as finding something in Gone Home or maybe Deus Ex, for example.
I feel like the linear structure and cinematic walking wasn't really necessary, as most of the game happens through transitioning into a new environment when you interact with something in the house. Having a more "movable" character and a free house to explore (like Gone Home, for example) would have been more interesting in my opinion. If there's a part of the game that doesn't add anything, it's surely slowly crawling through a hole, although I get that they wanted to pace the game like a movie (which it isn't, it's a game after all).
The game has many details but the overly linear and cinematic experience doesn't really emphasize going back to find them, so I do think it's a miss on that part. It doesn't feel as natural as finding something in Gone Home or maybe Deus Ex, for example.
2021
Conceptually, I'd love this game. It's one of the rare "wall defender" type of game where you defend a wall against hordes of enemies and there are few examples of this game, perhaps the best still being Elona shooter from a decade ago because I never managed to find a newer and more complex game.
Unfortunately the game is very shallow and also repetitive. There is little weapon variety, the characters are very similar and every run ends up being the same. There's also what, five different enemies? And the story can be completed in an hour. There are only a few very short interactions to be seen outside of it.
The gameplay is also pretty braindead honestly. You just blindly shoot and you're good, there isn't much thought or strategy involved. At most there's a bit of RNG in the survival mode.
The sprites are part of the game's charm, unfortunately while they look good, there's hardly any animation at all. So overall, it's a pretty average experience.
Unfortunately the game is very shallow and also repetitive. There is little weapon variety, the characters are very similar and every run ends up being the same. There's also what, five different enemies? And the story can be completed in an hour. There are only a few very short interactions to be seen outside of it.
The gameplay is also pretty braindead honestly. You just blindly shoot and you're good, there isn't much thought or strategy involved. At most there's a bit of RNG in the survival mode.
The sprites are part of the game's charm, unfortunately while they look good, there's hardly any animation at all. So overall, it's a pretty average experience.
2021
Everyone praises this game for its gameplay but I believe that a lot of people are forgetting that the gameplay is not just the combat, but the entire interactive part of the game. Yes, SMT5 has solid combats and as always, the demon management part is also good but what else does it do well?
The old dungeon crawler style which is simple yet works was replaced by a bland, generic and unbearable 3D world. The game feels jank to walk through and ironically emphasizes exploration to find collectibles, which doesn't make it any more interesting. The combat encounters are no longer random but I can't find any pleasure in going after the overworld enemies and seeing them move like them, randomly agitating themselves in this empty world.
Yes, this was enough to make me drop the game. This is a big chunk of the gameplay and I personally can't ignore it, the whole game feels jank and cheap because of things like this and I'm not enough of a SMT enjoyer to just care about the combat.
The old dungeon crawler style which is simple yet works was replaced by a bland, generic and unbearable 3D world. The game feels jank to walk through and ironically emphasizes exploration to find collectibles, which doesn't make it any more interesting. The combat encounters are no longer random but I can't find any pleasure in going after the overworld enemies and seeing them move like them, randomly agitating themselves in this empty world.
Yes, this was enough to make me drop the game. This is a big chunk of the gameplay and I personally can't ignore it, the whole game feels jank and cheap because of things like this and I'm not enough of a SMT enjoyer to just care about the combat.
2014
This game is an amazing recreation of the atmosphere of the first movie, in a certain manner, but other than that it doesn't have much to offer unfortunately. It's a fun visit for maybe the first hour, then the environments just repeat themselves.
The gameplay part is horrendous. Stealth games like Thief, Dishonored or Sekiro are fun because they offer interesting and rewarding mechanics while a game like this only has you crawling slowly or hiding in a shelf to avoid enemies while waiting for them to move away. It's just tedious, especially considering the long stretches of stealth you need to do and the save system with no checkpoint, forcing you to restart entire sections if you die. Even Outlast understands this is not very fun, hence why you only have to hide or slow down a few times and why it has regular checkpoints.
Yes, the alien has advanced AI, but did we really need it and does it do anything in this context? Rather than the enemy AI, what can I as a player do other than hide in a cabinet, crawl slowly behind NPCs who follow boring patterns and use a few weapons from to time to time, in an endlessly repetitive loop.
Aside from the stealth, all you do is gather things for a very basic and generic craft system as well as opening doors, repairing things... perhaps the most generic game objectives possible. You arrive somewhere new, you need to repair a door, some machines, that's it, that's the game.
Perhaps these mechanics could have worked if the game was more sandbox and open. Go in any direction you want, find some audio log or something like Outer Wilds while avoiding environmental danger. And cut the length of the game: it would have been a fine 5 hours long game, it's a stretchy and boring 20 hours adventure.
The gameplay part is horrendous. Stealth games like Thief, Dishonored or Sekiro are fun because they offer interesting and rewarding mechanics while a game like this only has you crawling slowly or hiding in a shelf to avoid enemies while waiting for them to move away. It's just tedious, especially considering the long stretches of stealth you need to do and the save system with no checkpoint, forcing you to restart entire sections if you die. Even Outlast understands this is not very fun, hence why you only have to hide or slow down a few times and why it has regular checkpoints.
Yes, the alien has advanced AI, but did we really need it and does it do anything in this context? Rather than the enemy AI, what can I as a player do other than hide in a cabinet, crawl slowly behind NPCs who follow boring patterns and use a few weapons from to time to time, in an endlessly repetitive loop.
Aside from the stealth, all you do is gather things for a very basic and generic craft system as well as opening doors, repairing things... perhaps the most generic game objectives possible. You arrive somewhere new, you need to repair a door, some machines, that's it, that's the game.
Perhaps these mechanics could have worked if the game was more sandbox and open. Go in any direction you want, find some audio log or something like Outer Wilds while avoiding environmental danger. And cut the length of the game: it would have been a fine 5 hours long game, it's a stretchy and boring 20 hours adventure.
2013
Throughout the whole game I was very confused whether the player is Sam or Katie because there's no explanation given for the "audio journal" that's being read out loud. Turns out the journal being read is the not the player character rambling, but the journal of her sister whose absence you investigate. I think this part really could have been introduce better. Why am I hearing this audio journal when I pick up random notes? Why isn't it given through cassettes or something? Very confusing and it also breaks the sensation of discovery compared to the rest of the game. In a game that focuses on environmental story telling, I don't think the main story should be a narrator's voice-over telling you everything in a very evident manner.
By the end of it, I was somewhat disappointed it ultimately focuses on a single character and the story is very simple. There are few points of relationship between the members of the family and the whole journal about Sam is really just about that one story, with a lot of details that feel unnecessary in my opinion. I would have liked seeing more notes on the parents and how the whole family interacted. The player character also has very few things about herself.
I think the game had very great opportunities to build the characters separately and show how they interact. How the daughter doesn't get along with the parents but then also notes from the other side, more details about their daily interactions...
It's an interesting concept though, exploring a rather normal house and just investigating normal things. Finding notes where they naturally belong (unlike the audio journal, you get why I didn't like it?) and learning about their daily lives. That's pretty much it. It's short but it was mostly enjoyable.
By the end of it, I was somewhat disappointed it ultimately focuses on a single character and the story is very simple. There are few points of relationship between the members of the family and the whole journal about Sam is really just about that one story, with a lot of details that feel unnecessary in my opinion. I would have liked seeing more notes on the parents and how the whole family interacted. The player character also has very few things about herself.
I think the game had very great opportunities to build the characters separately and show how they interact. How the daughter doesn't get along with the parents but then also notes from the other side, more details about their daily interactions...
It's an interesting concept though, exploring a rather normal house and just investigating normal things. Finding notes where they naturally belong (unlike the audio journal, you get why I didn't like it?) and learning about their daily lives. That's pretty much it. It's short but it was mostly enjoyable.
2020
I've complained before that Persona 5 was a bunch of mini-cutscenes that are way too short and ultimately only create superficial plot. Haven uses a similar structure to Persona with short slice of life events but with a single change: there's only two characters and every event relates to the two of them. And boom! The game is only ten hours long but it gives its story more depth and manages to create something meaningful.
I really enjoyed playing through this game and it is a solid example of slice of life in video games. I strongly appreciate how they don't hold just make the entire concept of a physical relationship disappear like many games do, in the spirit of puritanism, but instead they freely refer to it, just like traditional French works.
I do have to complain that the gameplay is too simple and gets repetitive very fast. What's more, the controls of your most common action, moving, are pretty bad. The game hardly renews itself: every map is the same with exactly the same things to clear out and every so often you have to fight a few monsters to clean the area. It doesn't help that you'll usually miss one spot or a monster which is not obvious, which just makes things more tedious.
The environment variety is also poor: there's only four biomes and 90% of the game is in the same one. There's more variety to monsters and I did feel like I was progressing through the combat until I unlocked everything, knew how to deal with monsters and then some of the last battles were just tedious too especially when I had to clear multiple groups per map.
A lot of the game's rhythm relies on the pacing of slice of life events that come up throughout the adventure or when you go back to base. The slice of life is a genuinely enjoyable experience, however most of the game is spent cleaning similar islets of the grasslands, looking for that one last hidden thing to clear the islet and hearing the same repeated overworld dialogues.
I really enjoyed playing through this game and it is a solid example of slice of life in video games. I strongly appreciate how they don't hold just make the entire concept of a physical relationship disappear like many games do, in the spirit of puritanism, but instead they freely refer to it, just like traditional French works.
I do have to complain that the gameplay is too simple and gets repetitive very fast. What's more, the controls of your most common action, moving, are pretty bad. The game hardly renews itself: every map is the same with exactly the same things to clear out and every so often you have to fight a few monsters to clean the area. It doesn't help that you'll usually miss one spot or a monster which is not obvious, which just makes things more tedious.
The environment variety is also poor: there's only four biomes and 90% of the game is in the same one. There's more variety to monsters and I did feel like I was progressing through the combat until I unlocked everything, knew how to deal with monsters and then some of the last battles were just tedious too especially when I had to clear multiple groups per map.
A lot of the game's rhythm relies on the pacing of slice of life events that come up throughout the adventure or when you go back to base. The slice of life is a genuinely enjoyable experience, however most of the game is spent cleaning similar islets of the grasslands, looking for that one last hidden thing to clear the islet and hearing the same repeated overworld dialogues.
It's hard to make a serious game and in my opinion, most big franchises have very corny and boring writing. They're very boring, full of annoying cutscene moments and various gameplay interruptions or other annoying this. This game... did not try to be anything like that and instead focused on being fun, and it's much easier to make a fun game.
From beginning to end, the game is mostly comedic and the story is very easy to follow, without too much cutscene or too many interruptions. Everything in the game seems to be designed to just be fun and not too serious. The gameplay is very similar to a GTA game but the guns are more crazy, the characters walking down the street are goofy, there are many mini-games which are just some sort of arcade games to have fun for a while... And all of this ultimately makes Saints Row 3 a pretty fun game.
That's all I have to say, really. I enjoyed my time with the game and I never felt like it was too long, too boring, too annoying. Hell, I could have even left midway through the game and not finished the story because it doesn't matter at all, it doesn't hook you or anything. It's mostly just some funny interactions between the funny characters. But I actually replayed this game like three times just because I thought it was fun.
Oh and the character creation and the fashionista potential are pretty strong, so that was cool too!
From beginning to end, the game is mostly comedic and the story is very easy to follow, without too much cutscene or too many interruptions. Everything in the game seems to be designed to just be fun and not too serious. The gameplay is very similar to a GTA game but the guns are more crazy, the characters walking down the street are goofy, there are many mini-games which are just some sort of arcade games to have fun for a while... And all of this ultimately makes Saints Row 3 a pretty fun game.
That's all I have to say, really. I enjoyed my time with the game and I never felt like it was too long, too boring, too annoying. Hell, I could have even left midway through the game and not finished the story because it doesn't matter at all, it doesn't hook you or anything. It's mostly just some funny interactions between the funny characters. But I actually replayed this game like three times just because I thought it was fun.
Oh and the character creation and the fashionista potential are pretty strong, so that was cool too!
2019
Will I ever have the courage to finish such a long game? No, probably not. I have replayed the game multiple game and really, I can't get close to the ending because it's so long. It doesn't mean I don't like the game though, I enjoyed it a great deal and it's also why I eventually replayed it.
Persona 5 is a game bursting with personality. The user interface is an absolute blast and overall, the visuals of the game really have a good direction. Starting from the beginning, the vibe of walking into the town really made me feel like I'm the new kid in a big city and it's the first time I've felt such a marvel at a video game. Taking the subway felt magical.
The gameplay is like a mix of dating sim and dungeon crawling. The slice of life part of the game is pretty cool but I find the stories to be a little too shallow. All the events are unfortunately short and don't really develop into any type of story arc, which makes me feel like this format is ultimately very limited. Every character only has one story which is basically spread through the multiple events and it feels very short. When you reach the end, you're just left desiring for more. Ultimately, the game is the story of the player growing and meeting people.
The dungeon crawling, I was not much of a fan and it's the part that tired me the most. It just doesn't change. The dungeons get boring fast and they're really long and tiring, especially the memento area which is extremely bland. Unfortunately, it also affects the pacing as you'll have a time limit to challenge a dungeon. I find it paradoxal that they made the slice of life events short as not to overwhelm the player, but the dungeons are so long and tedious. The game offers SMT combat but I really am not that much of a dungeon crawler fan to invest myself into it.
I think this is what ultimately tires me out everytime. It's also the same for every Persona, but at least the dungeons in this one are pretty good unlike the previous games where they were awful corridors.
Persona 5 is a game bursting with personality. The user interface is an absolute blast and overall, the visuals of the game really have a good direction. Starting from the beginning, the vibe of walking into the town really made me feel like I'm the new kid in a big city and it's the first time I've felt such a marvel at a video game. Taking the subway felt magical.
The gameplay is like a mix of dating sim and dungeon crawling. The slice of life part of the game is pretty cool but I find the stories to be a little too shallow. All the events are unfortunately short and don't really develop into any type of story arc, which makes me feel like this format is ultimately very limited. Every character only has one story which is basically spread through the multiple events and it feels very short. When you reach the end, you're just left desiring for more. Ultimately, the game is the story of the player growing and meeting people.
The dungeon crawling, I was not much of a fan and it's the part that tired me the most. It just doesn't change. The dungeons get boring fast and they're really long and tiring, especially the memento area which is extremely bland. Unfortunately, it also affects the pacing as you'll have a time limit to challenge a dungeon. I find it paradoxal that they made the slice of life events short as not to overwhelm the player, but the dungeons are so long and tedious. The game offers SMT combat but I really am not that much of a dungeon crawler fan to invest myself into it.
I think this is what ultimately tires me out everytime. It's also the same for every Persona, but at least the dungeons in this one are pretty good unlike the previous games where they were awful corridors.
I like the concept of this game: it's like Minecraft but with that one aspect of Terraria where you make houses to recruit NPCs and they can do things with you. There's also more emphasis on farming and sort of creating a village, and RPG elements.
However, what ruined my enjoyment is... this isn't actually a sandbox. It's a super linear game, everything you do feels so linear that every single bit of progression feels cheap and unrewarding. I get a new weapon? Yeah well it was part of the story. I'm in a new area, I have multiple objectives: I can only accomplish them in order because that's how the story wants me to do it. There isn't much point to exploring because areas are locked into the main quest and aside from a few collectibles, it makes it pointless to go anywhere but where the story wants you to.
While the story is very funny and the writing isn't bad, the game being this linear just made me not want to keep playing. And it's so excruciatingly slow! And you don't get to choose your own pace either, because of how linear it is. Want to play more and do new things? You must sit through the story now and read for the next ten minutes before you can procede to do something.
Just imagine if Minecraft had a main story quest where you have to do things in order. It asks you to cut a tree, then make your first tools, then mine, then build your first house, then farm; every area would be explored in the order the game wants you to; you only discover new things by progressing the story. It would remove all the magic about the game! Sometimes the game will even go as far as telling you exactly what a building should look like and you have to follow a blueprint, can you imagine that in Minecraft instead of making your own wonderful structures? Well, it certainly didn't sit well with me.
However, what ruined my enjoyment is... this isn't actually a sandbox. It's a super linear game, everything you do feels so linear that every single bit of progression feels cheap and unrewarding. I get a new weapon? Yeah well it was part of the story. I'm in a new area, I have multiple objectives: I can only accomplish them in order because that's how the story wants me to do it. There isn't much point to exploring because areas are locked into the main quest and aside from a few collectibles, it makes it pointless to go anywhere but where the story wants you to.
While the story is very funny and the writing isn't bad, the game being this linear just made me not want to keep playing. And it's so excruciatingly slow! And you don't get to choose your own pace either, because of how linear it is. Want to play more and do new things? You must sit through the story now and read for the next ten minutes before you can procede to do something.
Just imagine if Minecraft had a main story quest where you have to do things in order. It asks you to cut a tree, then make your first tools, then mine, then build your first house, then farm; every area would be explored in the order the game wants you to; you only discover new things by progressing the story. It would remove all the magic about the game! Sometimes the game will even go as far as telling you exactly what a building should look like and you have to follow a blueprint, can you imagine that in Minecraft instead of making your own wonderful structures? Well, it certainly didn't sit well with me.
2016
Endroll is an amazing horror inspired RPG maker 2000 game. By all means it should be played and I believe this is my favourite RPG maker game, even more so than Omori. You play as Russell, a serial killer who has been sentenced to death and takes part in a medical trial where he's given a drug named "Happy Dream", whose purpose is to make him develop guilt and regret his crimes. The whole story takes place inside his dream, where a nameless village with very kind inhabitants is created. You will very quickly uncover the truth about the inhabitants and every day focuses on one of them.
This game doesn't beat around the bush and you could compare it to Omori's creepiest parts. Take that and make it creepier, and then make an entire game out of it. While I thought it looked fairly standard at the beginning, the game hooked me very quickly with its pacing and how on point it was. Almost the entire game has a creepy unsettling atmosphere and it only gets worse as you progress, but it is just translating the game's themes. At its roots it's still a Mother/Earthbound-like game, though, and there's also a lot of comedy.
One of the most interesting things about the narration is that half if not more of the game's content is optional. If you only do the main plot, I estimate you'd beat the game in about five hours, but the game has a lot of side stories or requests from the villagers which make it last longer. Every in-game day, you can talk to them to learn rumours or get a request, and you can revisit previous places to see if any change has happened. Oftentimes you'll stumble upon an entirely new dungeon by revisiting a previous location, or realise that every NPC has new dialogue and an event is on-going and unlock new locations too. After every main quest, you will also advance the day to night time, and the world is very different (and dangerous) at night, some events being exclusive to it. The side content is honestly amazing and it feels like you keep discovering darker secrets continuously. A lot of them will develop the characterisation of the villagers and the creepier story elements.
I think one of the game's most original aspect for me was that unlike Omori, the main character is perfectly aware of his past and it is the virtual characters of his world which are confronted and shocked by the truth. The main character simply develop his guilt by watching their reaction, trauma and protecting them. Often, the quests will actually reveal the story of these characters rather than the protagonist, whether they are stories imagined by him or things he knew, and represent those characters overcoming THEIR obstacles and not Russell. Essentially, the game has several arcs which focus on one character but you can further explore them by revisiting locations related to their story. If I had to give a main theme to this game, it would definitively be the feeling of guilt. I found it very easy to sympathise with what the protagonist would be feeling during the events of the game.
The game also has a very interesting combat gameplay. While it may seem pretty standard at first, it actually has a good focus on buff/debuff and elemental weaknesses. There are also multiple status that enemies can affect and which you have to deal with. One of the more interesting aspects of combat is that you can go to a great extent to customise characters. For example, you can buy spell books to teach a specific ability to a character and turn them into a healer or magician, and there are stat increasing seeds all to increase a specific trait. There are even two seeds which will increase either physical or magical abilities to a very great extent, but they will decrease the opposite one by a great amount too. And the most fascinating is that every character has at least two weapon types, a more magic-focused weapon and a physical-focused one, with different skills being available depending on the weapon type you are using which makes every character very versatile. Did I mention that you can almost freely customise a party of four with NINE characters? They all have fairly unique skills too, even though they can serve almost any roll. The game also doesn't lack challenge and the optional zones will offer great combat value, with the last ones being fairly difficult albeit I never needed to grind.
If it has any flaw, it would be that it seems primitive, considering it's RPG Maker 2000 and there are obvious limitations such as only being able to change maps when you're walking on a road or the hitboxes of buildings, but it didn't bother me once I realise how much depth this game had and once you get there, you have a really wonderful game and in my opinion it is just as great as Omori.
You can get the game for free and in English at: https://vgperson.com/games/endroll.htm
This game doesn't beat around the bush and you could compare it to Omori's creepiest parts. Take that and make it creepier, and then make an entire game out of it. While I thought it looked fairly standard at the beginning, the game hooked me very quickly with its pacing and how on point it was. Almost the entire game has a creepy unsettling atmosphere and it only gets worse as you progress, but it is just translating the game's themes. At its roots it's still a Mother/Earthbound-like game, though, and there's also a lot of comedy.
One of the most interesting things about the narration is that half if not more of the game's content is optional. If you only do the main plot, I estimate you'd beat the game in about five hours, but the game has a lot of side stories or requests from the villagers which make it last longer. Every in-game day, you can talk to them to learn rumours or get a request, and you can revisit previous places to see if any change has happened. Oftentimes you'll stumble upon an entirely new dungeon by revisiting a previous location, or realise that every NPC has new dialogue and an event is on-going and unlock new locations too. After every main quest, you will also advance the day to night time, and the world is very different (and dangerous) at night, some events being exclusive to it. The side content is honestly amazing and it feels like you keep discovering darker secrets continuously. A lot of them will develop the characterisation of the villagers and the creepier story elements.
I think one of the game's most original aspect for me was that unlike Omori, the main character is perfectly aware of his past and it is the virtual characters of his world which are confronted and shocked by the truth. The main character simply develop his guilt by watching their reaction, trauma and protecting them. Often, the quests will actually reveal the story of these characters rather than the protagonist, whether they are stories imagined by him or things he knew, and represent those characters overcoming THEIR obstacles and not Russell. Essentially, the game has several arcs which focus on one character but you can further explore them by revisiting locations related to their story. If I had to give a main theme to this game, it would definitively be the feeling of guilt. I found it very easy to sympathise with what the protagonist would be feeling during the events of the game.
The game also has a very interesting combat gameplay. While it may seem pretty standard at first, it actually has a good focus on buff/debuff and elemental weaknesses. There are also multiple status that enemies can affect and which you have to deal with. One of the more interesting aspects of combat is that you can go to a great extent to customise characters. For example, you can buy spell books to teach a specific ability to a character and turn them into a healer or magician, and there are stat increasing seeds all to increase a specific trait. There are even two seeds which will increase either physical or magical abilities to a very great extent, but they will decrease the opposite one by a great amount too. And the most fascinating is that every character has at least two weapon types, a more magic-focused weapon and a physical-focused one, with different skills being available depending on the weapon type you are using which makes every character very versatile. Did I mention that you can almost freely customise a party of four with NINE characters? They all have fairly unique skills too, even though they can serve almost any roll. The game also doesn't lack challenge and the optional zones will offer great combat value, with the last ones being fairly difficult albeit I never needed to grind.
If it has any flaw, it would be that it seems primitive, considering it's RPG Maker 2000 and there are obvious limitations such as only being able to change maps when you're walking on a road or the hitboxes of buildings, but it didn't bother me once I realise how much depth this game had and once you get there, you have a really wonderful game and in my opinion it is just as great as Omori.
You can get the game for free and in English at: https://vgperson.com/games/endroll.htm