Mettic
i think ive killed more frogs in this game than every video game ive ever played put together.
Boltgun is a good. It's got some frustrating design gripes and plays its whole hand basically half way through the game but the gunplay, weapons and movement is very satisfying.
There's a good variety of weapons and I found myself using all of them pretty evenly throughout the game, especially when you want to really start conserving your heavier ammo for the bigger boys. Combine this with being able to able to really haul ass movement wise and how almost everything explodes into blood and guts upon getting shot leads to a very good feeling game.
Enemy variety is... fine. Most of the human chaos enemies feel like variations of the same projectile shooting enemy with different amounts of health and armor. The daemons are better in variety (which is odd seeing how most daemon enemy types are also split inbetween a light and heavy mix). It def plays its hand too early; you encounter the last enemy type around the end of act 2 and from there you're sorta just flipping through various types of arenas with the same enemies.
Because most enemies are Shoot Projectile enemies a lot of fights can turn into shitshows and it feels pretty unreasonable to not get getting hit by random projectiles you dont even seen. The game is very generous with health so eventually you just deal with it but it can still be frustrating at times when you go from 200/200 to like 50/0 without really noticing.
Also enemies have a really bad habit of blending into the the map at times, particularly the cultists have very similar color palettes to most. Cultists were doing some MGS3 shit to me.
Level design i would say is good but this game is in desperate need of even a basic map. It's nice to have large ass maps again but i got constantly fucking lost in this game which blows my mind cuz this game uses yellow paint for climbable ledges and some areas straight up just have arrows pointing the way. Am I stupid? no. it's definitely not me. I swear. Also fuck the grand elevator.
It's good. I've got gripes and it's far from my favorite boomer shooter but when games workshop will lend this license to anyone and we have an endless sea of mid at best 40k games it's really nice to have a 40k game that's actually just good and feels good to play.
so many frogs. so many frogs.
Boltgun is a good. It's got some frustrating design gripes and plays its whole hand basically half way through the game but the gunplay, weapons and movement is very satisfying.
There's a good variety of weapons and I found myself using all of them pretty evenly throughout the game, especially when you want to really start conserving your heavier ammo for the bigger boys. Combine this with being able to able to really haul ass movement wise and how almost everything explodes into blood and guts upon getting shot leads to a very good feeling game.
Enemy variety is... fine. Most of the human chaos enemies feel like variations of the same projectile shooting enemy with different amounts of health and armor. The daemons are better in variety (which is odd seeing how most daemon enemy types are also split inbetween a light and heavy mix). It def plays its hand too early; you encounter the last enemy type around the end of act 2 and from there you're sorta just flipping through various types of arenas with the same enemies.
Because most enemies are Shoot Projectile enemies a lot of fights can turn into shitshows and it feels pretty unreasonable to not get getting hit by random projectiles you dont even seen. The game is very generous with health so eventually you just deal with it but it can still be frustrating at times when you go from 200/200 to like 50/0 without really noticing.
Also enemies have a really bad habit of blending into the the map at times, particularly the cultists have very similar color palettes to most. Cultists were doing some MGS3 shit to me.
Level design i would say is good but this game is in desperate need of even a basic map. It's nice to have large ass maps again but i got constantly fucking lost in this game which blows my mind cuz this game uses yellow paint for climbable ledges and some areas straight up just have arrows pointing the way. Am I stupid? no. it's definitely not me. I swear. Also fuck the grand elevator.
It's good. I've got gripes and it's far from my favorite boomer shooter but when games workshop will lend this license to anyone and we have an endless sea of mid at best 40k games it's really nice to have a 40k game that's actually just good and feels good to play.
so many frogs. so many frogs.
2014
to play this game i digged though my collection trying to find it, a game i know i own and have played before, failed to find it, went through the process of homebrewing my 3ds so I can download the game (which btw loaded up my old saved when i opened it), spending like 30 minutes of unjamming the B button through the power of canned air, a knife i use for gunpla, and mashing a lot, and then about an hour into actually playing the rubber cover on my circle pad literally fell apart and then I remembered that actually playing games on the 3ds is kinda uncomfortable. This is not a reflection of the game's quality I just wanted to let the world know i went though hell.
Triple Deluxe is pretty good, but it falls victim to being a relatively early 3DS game so they reallllllly want you to use all of the system's gimmicks and let me be real! i never want to turn on the 3ds' 3d. Stop making me tilt my fucking 3ds around.
It's pretty straight forward and simple level designs, which isnt that bad but also they like doing stuff like you gotta tilt your 3DS to move this vehicle around, the levels are based around having a background and also a foreground at times because they want you to use the 3ds 3D (NOT DOING THIS), to get 100% you need all the keychains and they wanted to use streepass tokens on that bad bitch. None of it is bad enough to really burn me but it could be better.
Good new powers! Cowboy / Leaf / Circus are all hitters. I wasn't sure if I was gonna like the hypernova segments because I remembered them being veyr walk forward and use skill but there were some decent puzzles and minibosses in those segments so they were better than I remember.
Listen I won't autistically talk about my true Kirby passion, which is true Arena No Powers runs, but this game is when Kumazaki really starts to hit a stride with boss design. There's a still a game off until he peaks and it's got maybe my least favorite metaknight fight (and i hate most of them) and a kind underwhelming Soul final phase but dog i fucking love true arena no powers. if you haven't done them its sooo good.
It's fine. the 3ds gimmicks are annoying but it's the middle point of kumazaki hitting his stride.
Triple Deluxe is pretty good, but it falls victim to being a relatively early 3DS game so they reallllllly want you to use all of the system's gimmicks and let me be real! i never want to turn on the 3ds' 3d. Stop making me tilt my fucking 3ds around.
It's pretty straight forward and simple level designs, which isnt that bad but also they like doing stuff like you gotta tilt your 3DS to move this vehicle around, the levels are based around having a background and also a foreground at times because they want you to use the 3ds 3D (NOT DOING THIS), to get 100% you need all the keychains and they wanted to use streepass tokens on that bad bitch. None of it is bad enough to really burn me but it could be better.
Good new powers! Cowboy / Leaf / Circus are all hitters. I wasn't sure if I was gonna like the hypernova segments because I remembered them being veyr walk forward and use skill but there were some decent puzzles and minibosses in those segments so they were better than I remember.
Listen I won't autistically talk about my true Kirby passion, which is true Arena No Powers runs, but this game is when Kumazaki really starts to hit a stride with boss design. There's a still a game off until he peaks and it's got maybe my least favorite metaknight fight (and i hate most of them) and a kind underwhelming Soul final phase but dog i fucking love true arena no powers. if you haven't done them its sooo good.
It's fine. the 3ds gimmicks are annoying but it's the middle point of kumazaki hitting his stride.
both the main story and the DLC questline end with cliffhangers teasing popular characters which is pretty funny now that we know we're never getting a midnight suns 2 because no one bought this game outside of a sale (including me). so lmao.
Midnight Suns is a pretty cool game with a unique and satisfying combat system that actually had a lot of layers in it. Most of the other stuff isn't that interesting.
It's a card based SRPG. It doesn't sound good on paper but it's from Friaxis (xcom devs) and while I dont think they have any card games under their belt they clearly knew what they were doing with the system. Despite the fact that on paper you can "only" play 3 cards a turn, good smart play of a combination of your cards/deckbuilding, map interactables and movement skills can lead to very explosive turns. While a quick fear of it being card based is that sometimes you get complete bricks of turns, I had very little turns over the course of my 60~ hour playthrough that felt like i just couldn't do shit. Recycle often can ungum up hands and if your hands are still getting gummed up while skill issue man put less heroics in your deck.
To go with the good core is both varied enemy list with each their own rules and missions with their own unique rules. The dogs all aggro on the same target, giving you pause to either try not to have 3 dogs hit your squishy hero, or abuse a hero with taunt/counter to force all of them to hit them with one taunt skill. The nest mother summons towers that you dont want to keep alive, but also damage her if you break them, and shes always protected by a guardian that makes you unable to target her. Do you prioritize killing her rocks and whittling her down, or do you have a line that lets you just sheer brute force it? These kind of decisions are often, and it's really just enjoyable even when you're grinding.
Your deck is made up of what heroes you bring to a mission, each hero comes with their own unique card pool and gimmicks. Deadpool gets a stacking buff based on how many people he kills and his cards improve in various ways basd on his stack. Most of Iron Man's cards dont get recycled when you discard them, but instead improve in various ways from either extra keywords or more damage. Ghost riders cards do great damage but all come with downsides like forcing you to discard or taking damage. I think the card pools per character are oddly small which is disappointing but the characters are varied enough that it doesn't get that repetitive, and also there's an endgame grind mechanic to let you roll for extra effects on cards for even more deckbuilding options
Outside of the combat is a combination of xcom base building and like hero social links. Interact with the heroes between missions to build relationships giving individual heroes boosts while getting permanent boosts by upgrading the abbey, or also exploring the abbey grounds for its own questline. Unfortunately, the not combat parts of this game are definitely its weakest part.
The main story is pretty sauceless. It's a very clean cut heroes fight corrupting evil elder god for the most part. It tries to mix it up with some hero drama between, particularly like between the original midnight suns getting frustrated with the avengers abruptly showing up taking command, but it's not good and feels like highschool soap drama. Most of the social links stuff is also pretty unmemorable opening up about their doubts and anxiety dumps or just talking about how cool the protag is. There's a couple fun little side things but it's played almost too straight most of the time for how weird the cast of characters are. And also when its trying to funny it's often not.
Most of the xcom building stuff doesnt have a lot of depth either. While the things they unlock are good and add layers to combat, there isn't much to them other than Do Unlocks Requirement (probably do X missions with Y hero or upgrade Z amount of skills with Y hero) > research it > unlock it next day, maybe gotta spend money to actually unlock it.
DLC is pretty good. If the game is on sale the complete edition is probably also on sale and I think the DLC is worth the on sale price upgrade. The season pass gets you 4 heroes and around 15~ missions and its own story line about killing vampires. The story still isn't good and the social links have the same issues but the missions are the equally high quality and amongst the hardest in the game, and also you can get Venom. Everyone loves Venom.
It's good. Playing it is fun and it's a unique and well designed combat system with good missions to back it up. But the story, writing, and in-between events are uninteresting and lets down what should be a fun setting of standoffish super heroes working together. I learned I like Magik a lot though, she's cool.
Midnight Suns is a pretty cool game with a unique and satisfying combat system that actually had a lot of layers in it. Most of the other stuff isn't that interesting.
It's a card based SRPG. It doesn't sound good on paper but it's from Friaxis (xcom devs) and while I dont think they have any card games under their belt they clearly knew what they were doing with the system. Despite the fact that on paper you can "only" play 3 cards a turn, good smart play of a combination of your cards/deckbuilding, map interactables and movement skills can lead to very explosive turns. While a quick fear of it being card based is that sometimes you get complete bricks of turns, I had very little turns over the course of my 60~ hour playthrough that felt like i just couldn't do shit. Recycle often can ungum up hands and if your hands are still getting gummed up while skill issue man put less heroics in your deck.
To go with the good core is both varied enemy list with each their own rules and missions with their own unique rules. The dogs all aggro on the same target, giving you pause to either try not to have 3 dogs hit your squishy hero, or abuse a hero with taunt/counter to force all of them to hit them with one taunt skill. The nest mother summons towers that you dont want to keep alive, but also damage her if you break them, and shes always protected by a guardian that makes you unable to target her. Do you prioritize killing her rocks and whittling her down, or do you have a line that lets you just sheer brute force it? These kind of decisions are often, and it's really just enjoyable even when you're grinding.
Your deck is made up of what heroes you bring to a mission, each hero comes with their own unique card pool and gimmicks. Deadpool gets a stacking buff based on how many people he kills and his cards improve in various ways basd on his stack. Most of Iron Man's cards dont get recycled when you discard them, but instead improve in various ways from either extra keywords or more damage. Ghost riders cards do great damage but all come with downsides like forcing you to discard or taking damage. I think the card pools per character are oddly small which is disappointing but the characters are varied enough that it doesn't get that repetitive, and also there's an endgame grind mechanic to let you roll for extra effects on cards for even more deckbuilding options
Outside of the combat is a combination of xcom base building and like hero social links. Interact with the heroes between missions to build relationships giving individual heroes boosts while getting permanent boosts by upgrading the abbey, or also exploring the abbey grounds for its own questline. Unfortunately, the not combat parts of this game are definitely its weakest part.
The main story is pretty sauceless. It's a very clean cut heroes fight corrupting evil elder god for the most part. It tries to mix it up with some hero drama between, particularly like between the original midnight suns getting frustrated with the avengers abruptly showing up taking command, but it's not good and feels like highschool soap drama. Most of the social links stuff is also pretty unmemorable opening up about their doubts and anxiety dumps or just talking about how cool the protag is. There's a couple fun little side things but it's played almost too straight most of the time for how weird the cast of characters are. And also when its trying to funny it's often not.
Most of the xcom building stuff doesnt have a lot of depth either. While the things they unlock are good and add layers to combat, there isn't much to them other than Do Unlocks Requirement (probably do X missions with Y hero or upgrade Z amount of skills with Y hero) > research it > unlock it next day, maybe gotta spend money to actually unlock it.
DLC is pretty good. If the game is on sale the complete edition is probably also on sale and I think the DLC is worth the on sale price upgrade. The season pass gets you 4 heroes and around 15~ missions and its own story line about killing vampires. The story still isn't good and the social links have the same issues but the missions are the equally high quality and amongst the hardest in the game, and also you can get Venom. Everyone loves Venom.
It's good. Playing it is fun and it's a unique and well designed combat system with good missions to back it up. But the story, writing, and in-between events are uninteresting and lets down what should be a fun setting of standoffish super heroes working together. I learned I like Magik a lot though, she's cool.
2023
did you know that one of the enemy journal entries says that swords just do not exist in mario's world? what am i suppose to make of that man.
Mario RPG is fine. I played the original like 2~ years ago and kinda came away with a feel of all charm no substance. Mario RPG remake comes with a bit more substance in gameplay upgrades and bit of a charm loss in that I think its a little ugly.
For the aforementioned substance, it takes the original RPG battle systems and adds a few bells and whistles; the big one being a separate meter that charges through proper attack timing/blocking, which can be used for various team super attacks that chane depending on who you have active. I also like the combo meter idea; when you get properly timed blocks/attacks you build a combo that not only generates more meter but gives you party buffs that increases the bigger your combo goes, but you lose it all if you drop one. Also there's a second extra strict aspect to timing now which lets you fully negate an attack on block and makes normal attacks hit all enemies. Finally, the game adds a bit of post game content in the form of 7 boss rematches.
It sounds good and honestly it is but unforantely the game is a pretty 1:1 remake until the post game, so these additional mechanics often amount to just making an already easy game even easier. You're already clobbering most enemies; with the power of the triple attack meter you can now kill a boss a round or two earlier. The post game rematches are actually quite fun and because they're designed for max level parties in mind you have to engage with the bosses actual mechanics but, but it's a little too late.
Most of the game's charm is still there; it's funny, it's a cute bite sized RPG adventure in the somehow under utilized mario world, with weird characters and enemies and funny attacks. All that is still there; I just think it's a little more ugly.
I just don't like the new models. I dont like how Mario and the toads look, I think bowser just being the modern bowser design shrunk by 50%, where it was a cool and unique look on the SNES it falls flat for me in 3D. The game at times feels oddly budgeted? Cutscenes not having any sound effects aside from the occasional stock Bowser noises is crazy to me.
Also you can't tell me you like new fat yoshi more than old fat yoshi.
Some stuff does look great; most the environments are fantastic, some enemy models are really killer now, love everything they did with Culex, but overall I think I like how the SNES game looks more.
Also a big thing is that the game does NOT run good. A lot of the towns have framedrops, most screens with water drops the frames, some of the triple attacks make that shit CHUG. It's not a game ruiner but it sucks.
It's fine. I can't confidentially tell you if you should play the remake or the original or not; I think SMRPG was always more style than substance but I think the remake loses a lot of its style, but it does objectively just have more content than the original. It's up to you.
The weapon boss battle theme is still stuck in my head tho.
Mario RPG is fine. I played the original like 2~ years ago and kinda came away with a feel of all charm no substance. Mario RPG remake comes with a bit more substance in gameplay upgrades and bit of a charm loss in that I think its a little ugly.
For the aforementioned substance, it takes the original RPG battle systems and adds a few bells and whistles; the big one being a separate meter that charges through proper attack timing/blocking, which can be used for various team super attacks that chane depending on who you have active. I also like the combo meter idea; when you get properly timed blocks/attacks you build a combo that not only generates more meter but gives you party buffs that increases the bigger your combo goes, but you lose it all if you drop one. Also there's a second extra strict aspect to timing now which lets you fully negate an attack on block and makes normal attacks hit all enemies. Finally, the game adds a bit of post game content in the form of 7 boss rematches.
It sounds good and honestly it is but unforantely the game is a pretty 1:1 remake until the post game, so these additional mechanics often amount to just making an already easy game even easier. You're already clobbering most enemies; with the power of the triple attack meter you can now kill a boss a round or two earlier. The post game rematches are actually quite fun and because they're designed for max level parties in mind you have to engage with the bosses actual mechanics but, but it's a little too late.
Most of the game's charm is still there; it's funny, it's a cute bite sized RPG adventure in the somehow under utilized mario world, with weird characters and enemies and funny attacks. All that is still there; I just think it's a little more ugly.
I just don't like the new models. I dont like how Mario and the toads look, I think bowser just being the modern bowser design shrunk by 50%, where it was a cool and unique look on the SNES it falls flat for me in 3D. The game at times feels oddly budgeted? Cutscenes not having any sound effects aside from the occasional stock Bowser noises is crazy to me.
Also you can't tell me you like new fat yoshi more than old fat yoshi.
Some stuff does look great; most the environments are fantastic, some enemy models are really killer now, love everything they did with Culex, but overall I think I like how the SNES game looks more.
Also a big thing is that the game does NOT run good. A lot of the towns have framedrops, most screens with water drops the frames, some of the triple attacks make that shit CHUG. It's not a game ruiner but it sucks.
It's fine. I can't confidentially tell you if you should play the remake or the original or not; I think SMRPG was always more style than substance but I think the remake loses a lot of its style, but it does objectively just have more content than the original. It's up to you.
The weapon boss battle theme is still stuck in my head tho.
2004
In this game you and your coworkers are sent to a distant planet full of dangerous native creatures by the shitty company you work for so you gather mundane objects for the sake of selling them back way over their actual value. So what I'm saying is that Pikmin 2 and Lethal Company are the same game.
I really liked this game. I knew going into this that I was probably gonna like it because I played this a lot as a kid but I didn't think I'd like it this much. Coming off Pikmin 4 felt like a really different beast; if that game was using the Pikmin system as an engine to make puzzles, this game uses the pikmin system to make a dungeon crawler. And it's tight.
Unlike Pikmin 1 (and the later 3), Pikmin 2 ditches the the timelimit and trims down the amount of time you spend in the overworld looking for items (though you still do that) for Caves, large multi floor dungeons with some random elements (Floor patterns, what treasures are on each floor, and type of enemies are consistent, but enemy spawn locations, treasure locations, starting position and exit locations have various different patterns).
I love the dungeons; the game knows that because there's no global timelimit like 1, it is allowed to be a little mean and punish you harsh if you fuck around because you'll always be able to resupply and go back in. Fucked up traps like bombs just falling from the sky (shoutouts to opening an egg that was full of mites that freak out all my pikmin and then dropping a bomb ontop of me), dense enemy spawn locations, enemies that very easily mulch pikmin if you move wrong (i lost a lot of pikmin to shit like calling pikmin back at the wrong time to wollywogs/moving the squad wrongly agaisnt cannon larvas), and because enemy spawns can be really dense you can't just completely own every enemy by walking behind them and throw Purple Pikmin until they die. And obviously you can't recover your pikmin outside of specific floors, so having a Pikmin Disaster fucking SUCKSSSSSSSS. It's great
Of course this is a gamecube game so it was made in the era of nintendo taking Genre, But Make It Rated E, so it's not THAT punishing. As mentioned before you have no global timelimit so if things go tits up you can always just bail, recoop your pikmin, and go back in. The game also lets you save between floors, so if you want to runback your Pikmin Disaster you can just hit reset and try again. And even if you do have to go back into the dungeon most floors are pretty easy to beeline straight to the exit to so it's quick to get back to whatever floor you missed an item on. It's fucking pikmin this isn't your masochist mod.
Things I have issues with are mostly control related. Limited camera controls can make trying to precisely aiming pikmin difficult which is frustrating for enemies with mid air attack points like the snargets and ect (this might be better on the versions of Pikmin 2 with motion controls, but then you lose all the branding, and I'm not giving up on being able to collect duracell batteries and skippy peanut butter), non flower pikmin (especially purples) being so slow that you can just lose them forces you to move slower than you need to be and is annoying, some floors just fuckin suck (S/O to Hole of heroes 6/dream den 10 layout. And by shoutout I mean go to hell. also specifically the Heroes 6 one because there are some treasure layouts that are actually impossible to get), and I think like 2-3 bosses are kinda dogshit. But it's really minor gripes in the long term.
This game was awesome. Such a fun skew for a weird console RTS/Dungeon Crawler hybrid. Not even the other pikmin game hit the same feeling, as the other dungeon focused pikmin game (4) is far more focused on puzzles than combat and "resource management" (not letting your pikmin get massacred).
I really liked this game. I knew going into this that I was probably gonna like it because I played this a lot as a kid but I didn't think I'd like it this much. Coming off Pikmin 4 felt like a really different beast; if that game was using the Pikmin system as an engine to make puzzles, this game uses the pikmin system to make a dungeon crawler. And it's tight.
Unlike Pikmin 1 (and the later 3), Pikmin 2 ditches the the timelimit and trims down the amount of time you spend in the overworld looking for items (though you still do that) for Caves, large multi floor dungeons with some random elements (Floor patterns, what treasures are on each floor, and type of enemies are consistent, but enemy spawn locations, treasure locations, starting position and exit locations have various different patterns).
I love the dungeons; the game knows that because there's no global timelimit like 1, it is allowed to be a little mean and punish you harsh if you fuck around because you'll always be able to resupply and go back in. Fucked up traps like bombs just falling from the sky (shoutouts to opening an egg that was full of mites that freak out all my pikmin and then dropping a bomb ontop of me), dense enemy spawn locations, enemies that very easily mulch pikmin if you move wrong (i lost a lot of pikmin to shit like calling pikmin back at the wrong time to wollywogs/moving the squad wrongly agaisnt cannon larvas), and because enemy spawns can be really dense you can't just completely own every enemy by walking behind them and throw Purple Pikmin until they die. And obviously you can't recover your pikmin outside of specific floors, so having a Pikmin Disaster fucking SUCKSSSSSSSS. It's great
Of course this is a gamecube game so it was made in the era of nintendo taking Genre, But Make It Rated E, so it's not THAT punishing. As mentioned before you have no global timelimit so if things go tits up you can always just bail, recoop your pikmin, and go back in. The game also lets you save between floors, so if you want to runback your Pikmin Disaster you can just hit reset and try again. And even if you do have to go back into the dungeon most floors are pretty easy to beeline straight to the exit to so it's quick to get back to whatever floor you missed an item on. It's fucking pikmin this isn't your masochist mod.
Things I have issues with are mostly control related. Limited camera controls can make trying to precisely aiming pikmin difficult which is frustrating for enemies with mid air attack points like the snargets and ect (this might be better on the versions of Pikmin 2 with motion controls, but then you lose all the branding, and I'm not giving up on being able to collect duracell batteries and skippy peanut butter), non flower pikmin (especially purples) being so slow that you can just lose them forces you to move slower than you need to be and is annoying, some floors just fuckin suck (S/O to Hole of heroes 6/dream den 10 layout. And by shoutout I mean go to hell. also specifically the Heroes 6 one because there are some treasure layouts that are actually impossible to get), and I think like 2-3 bosses are kinda dogshit. But it's really minor gripes in the long term.
This game was awesome. Such a fun skew for a weird console RTS/Dungeon Crawler hybrid. Not even the other pikmin game hit the same feeling, as the other dungeon focused pikmin game (4) is far more focused on puzzles than combat and "resource management" (not letting your pikmin get massacred).
2023
im fully convinced that that 100 glow pikmin could defeat goku.
Pikmin returns with the unique psuedo RTS adventure gameplay, nailing a lot of makes pikmin fan; wandering through zones and dungeons as an insect sized commander
and troops looking for items and hoping nothing horrible happens to your funny little guys. There's also a bunch of extra gameplay modes that are Okay.
The core gameplay is pretty swell; instead of adding a fourth captains it is instead you and your giant dog; effectively two captains with one of them having different gameplay mechanics. The Oatchi stuff is pretty great and the game makes the most out of him; dungeons are designed around this Super Pikmin and all his unique mechanics and a lot of bosses just would not work without being able to ride Oatchi. Oatchi rules. what a nice dog thing.
The standard pikmin design still works; this franchise hits a weird point of my brain where I am trying to optimize and be as efficient as possible but its also hitting me hard with some seratonin. The game kinda memes about the first part too; it gives a name to the concept of Doing As Much As Possible In The Least Amount Of Time with "Dandori", which most of the alternate gameplay modes are named after as well. I have 0 complaints the games main overworld areas and traditional dungeons other than like maybe there could be more visual diversity (4 Grassy Areas, 1 sand beach area and a house).
However there's not one but THREE different gameplay types that show up alongside of overworld + dungeons. Outside of treasures there's also various casteaways that you need to find as well; some of which have turned into funny leaf people which requires convincing them to come back to your base through Superior Dandori Skills, and then producing a cure for them, these seperate system being mostly attached to the previously mentioned different gameplay types.
Dandori challenges I quite like: you are thrown into a zone with a particular amount of pikmin and you are tasked with gathering as much as possible under a timelimit. It captures the spirit of dandori the best; every second matters and there's a lot of ways of optimizing it; I looked up platnium rank videos for some of the Dandori challenges just to find completely different routes that I didn't even consider. They're fun.
Dandori battles are Not Fun. Like the previously mentioned challenges, dandori battles put you into a zone with a small amount of pikmin and your goal is to gather the most points in a time limit; but this time you're playing against another player and trying to outscore each other, with items and random point bonus sections. It's messy, hard to follow because half your screen is taken up by the other player's screen, interacting or getting interacted with your opponent is frustrating, trying to actually optimize in the spirit of dandori sucks when everything rapidly changes, the maps are uninteresting. The last two mandatory Dandori battles i lost and the game said Hey Do You Want To Skip This And It Just Gets Solved :) and i hit that shit so fast. Still counts for the 100% baby
The last is nighttime expeditions. Effectively a tower defense mode where you defend a structure from enemies and inreturn you are awarded with the resource that cures people that turned into leaflings. It's... fine. To compensate for enemies rushing you you are given the absurdly overpowered Glow Pikmin instead of your usual crew. It's not BAD but pikmin without puzzlesolving, Effiencymaxxing, or combat where your pikmin choices matter is pretty shallow and also very easy.
Anyways here's bullet points for when I think I've been writing something for too long and wanna wrap it up but still got relevant thoughts
- very easy, which is a silly thing to complain about with a franchise that isnt known for difficulty but the game really sets you up so even if you have a pikmin annihilation disaster you are allowed to rewind the clock with 0 drawback, as as I previously mentoined you're allowed to skip Dandori challenges/battles if you're getting owned. But also I used both of these features so maybe thats on me.
-Oddly clunky to control at times, mostly when it comes to trying to swap between Captains. Having to go into a menu to swap between captains really slows the game pace down. It's not that bad but when you're really trying to go hard it can get annoying.
- Really meaty game too. I clocked in at 30 hours to 100% which is crazy for a pikmin game imo. This game effectively has a mini Pikmin 1 in it.
-stop making me watch these damn tutorials
Good game. While I'm not in love with the alternate gameplay sections, Pikmin is just a unique playing game that isnt replicated outside of this franchise and man I just love doing the dungeons and going around the map collecting shit it's sooooo chill. I played a game for 30 hours and I'm thinking about just playing Pikmin 2 again.
Pikmin returns with the unique psuedo RTS adventure gameplay, nailing a lot of makes pikmin fan; wandering through zones and dungeons as an insect sized commander
and troops looking for items and hoping nothing horrible happens to your funny little guys. There's also a bunch of extra gameplay modes that are Okay.
The core gameplay is pretty swell; instead of adding a fourth captains it is instead you and your giant dog; effectively two captains with one of them having different gameplay mechanics. The Oatchi stuff is pretty great and the game makes the most out of him; dungeons are designed around this Super Pikmin and all his unique mechanics and a lot of bosses just would not work without being able to ride Oatchi. Oatchi rules. what a nice dog thing.
The standard pikmin design still works; this franchise hits a weird point of my brain where I am trying to optimize and be as efficient as possible but its also hitting me hard with some seratonin. The game kinda memes about the first part too; it gives a name to the concept of Doing As Much As Possible In The Least Amount Of Time with "Dandori", which most of the alternate gameplay modes are named after as well. I have 0 complaints the games main overworld areas and traditional dungeons other than like maybe there could be more visual diversity (4 Grassy Areas, 1 sand beach area and a house).
However there's not one but THREE different gameplay types that show up alongside of overworld + dungeons. Outside of treasures there's also various casteaways that you need to find as well; some of which have turned into funny leaf people which requires convincing them to come back to your base through Superior Dandori Skills, and then producing a cure for them, these seperate system being mostly attached to the previously mentioned different gameplay types.
Dandori challenges I quite like: you are thrown into a zone with a particular amount of pikmin and you are tasked with gathering as much as possible under a timelimit. It captures the spirit of dandori the best; every second matters and there's a lot of ways of optimizing it; I looked up platnium rank videos for some of the Dandori challenges just to find completely different routes that I didn't even consider. They're fun.
Dandori battles are Not Fun. Like the previously mentioned challenges, dandori battles put you into a zone with a small amount of pikmin and your goal is to gather the most points in a time limit; but this time you're playing against another player and trying to outscore each other, with items and random point bonus sections. It's messy, hard to follow because half your screen is taken up by the other player's screen, interacting or getting interacted with your opponent is frustrating, trying to actually optimize in the spirit of dandori sucks when everything rapidly changes, the maps are uninteresting. The last two mandatory Dandori battles i lost and the game said Hey Do You Want To Skip This And It Just Gets Solved :) and i hit that shit so fast. Still counts for the 100% baby
The last is nighttime expeditions. Effectively a tower defense mode where you defend a structure from enemies and inreturn you are awarded with the resource that cures people that turned into leaflings. It's... fine. To compensate for enemies rushing you you are given the absurdly overpowered Glow Pikmin instead of your usual crew. It's not BAD but pikmin without puzzlesolving, Effiencymaxxing, or combat where your pikmin choices matter is pretty shallow and also very easy.
Anyways here's bullet points for when I think I've been writing something for too long and wanna wrap it up but still got relevant thoughts
- very easy, which is a silly thing to complain about with a franchise that isnt known for difficulty but the game really sets you up so even if you have a pikmin annihilation disaster you are allowed to rewind the clock with 0 drawback, as as I previously mentoined you're allowed to skip Dandori challenges/battles if you're getting owned. But also I used both of these features so maybe thats on me.
-Oddly clunky to control at times, mostly when it comes to trying to swap between Captains. Having to go into a menu to swap between captains really slows the game pace down. It's not that bad but when you're really trying to go hard it can get annoying.
- Really meaty game too. I clocked in at 30 hours to 100% which is crazy for a pikmin game imo. This game effectively has a mini Pikmin 1 in it.
-stop making me watch these damn tutorials
Good game. While I'm not in love with the alternate gameplay sections, Pikmin is just a unique playing game that isnt replicated outside of this franchise and man I just love doing the dungeons and going around the map collecting shit it's sooooo chill. I played a game for 30 hours and I'm thinking about just playing Pikmin 2 again.
how is anyone poor in hawaii. you can just look in the dumpsters and you'll find high quality metals and also grenades.
Complete smash hit for me. Took a game I already really liked in yakuza 7 and improved it across the the board.
Core combat changed in ways I didnt expect but like. It took things like occasionally hitting an enemy into a car or picking up an item to slap them into a core aspect of the game. During your character's turn you are allowed to move around in circle before actually declaring an attack. The game has multiple mechanics to emphasize positioning getting your more damage; position your character so that after you attack a guy he gets knocked into another person, or that its in range of another party member who will do a follow up attakc for, or both, ect ect. The same logic applies to aoe moves; line aoe attack? see if you can line it up to hit the most people possible for the most damage. Enemies also aren't static either; there's like an extra layer of trying to line things up fast because enemies will shuffle around while you're picking your actions, possible putting them out of range for whatever you're trying to do, or even waiting a bit to see if theyll shuffle into your range.
Skill usage also feels a lot more balanced than 7. In 7 I remembered especially by the end I was mostly just doing Highest Damage skill / Party Buff Skill / Healing / Tell joon gi han to apply poison to the boss as necessary. I was doing way more stuff and way more party skill combinations. There's less obviously clear "this is the skill you should be using", a lot more utility stuff and classic inherent gimmicks; shit like Kunoichi you want to specifically try to get her agility to +3 to get the most damage out of her big damage skills or party combos about abusing the Idol -elec resist skill and lined up with a party combo designed to get as much elec damage as you can, ect ect.
A big reason for the above is the changes to the job system. Before it each job had 2~ skills a character would always have access too once you level them, and then rest of your skills are pooled from whatever job your character is on. It still worked and emphasized leveling many jobs, but it was a bit limiting. In 8 instead you can crossclass 5 regular skills and one essence skill from ANY of the jobs that character has leveled.There's a lot of ways you can build your team, and the game wants you to level multiple jobs to mix and match your skills to get something crazy. Jobs are also clearly made with holes in their kit meant to be covered through cross classing; For example, Night Queen has great physical stats and a whole suite of good physical skills, but doesn't have a single Gun or Slashing move for coverage. Homeless Guy has great stats for a caster and really good defensive skills as well but only has ac cess to fire and generic magic attacks and no single target skills, or lightning/ice attacks, but you can cover that with skills from Host, or you just play host and cross class the homeless guy skills to that.
i do think there's some odd holes in the the skill list however; for example there is straight up no cross classable single target heavy/extreme damage electric damage skill so people looking to abuse skills like Playful Splash are rocking shit like the medium damage aoe jelly fish skill. It's weird but hey limitation breeds creativity.
I won't get go into story spoilers but I liked it. I think it gets a little off the rails at the time but this is also the series with the secret of onomicio so lol. I think it has weird little issues in terms of pacing and how some characters/plot points are executed, but on the flip side it has a very focused message and themeing and it nails that aspect of the story perfectly. Also the Kiryu half of the sidestories were genuinely getting me pretty good; walking the streets and reminiscing about the entire history of the franchise from the point of view of a character at the end of his life, as someone whose also followed this franchise since the ps2, really hurts a little man.
Game also looks great. The Ichiban focused yakuza aesthetic is just unmatched. I really just love hawaii as a setting, you're always running into really funny freaks. I fought a guy in a garbage bag and he shot me with a gun that was in his bag. There's nothing else like it.
My biggest complaint about this game isnt really about the game but the DLC; locking things like an endgame dungeon, regular NG+ (not super relevant cuz there's still premium adventure but u get me), preorder jobs. I really hate day 1 DLC and think we let people get away with too much, but this is far from the only RPG with this issue. Hey, I didn't buy it so you cant blame me.
Game is a great. Ichiban is my friend in real life.
Complete smash hit for me. Took a game I already really liked in yakuza 7 and improved it across the the board.
Core combat changed in ways I didnt expect but like. It took things like occasionally hitting an enemy into a car or picking up an item to slap them into a core aspect of the game. During your character's turn you are allowed to move around in circle before actually declaring an attack. The game has multiple mechanics to emphasize positioning getting your more damage; position your character so that after you attack a guy he gets knocked into another person, or that its in range of another party member who will do a follow up attakc for, or both, ect ect. The same logic applies to aoe moves; line aoe attack? see if you can line it up to hit the most people possible for the most damage. Enemies also aren't static either; there's like an extra layer of trying to line things up fast because enemies will shuffle around while you're picking your actions, possible putting them out of range for whatever you're trying to do, or even waiting a bit to see if theyll shuffle into your range.
Skill usage also feels a lot more balanced than 7. In 7 I remembered especially by the end I was mostly just doing Highest Damage skill / Party Buff Skill / Healing / Tell joon gi han to apply poison to the boss as necessary. I was doing way more stuff and way more party skill combinations. There's less obviously clear "this is the skill you should be using", a lot more utility stuff and classic inherent gimmicks; shit like Kunoichi you want to specifically try to get her agility to +3 to get the most damage out of her big damage skills or party combos about abusing the Idol -elec resist skill and lined up with a party combo designed to get as much elec damage as you can, ect ect.
A big reason for the above is the changes to the job system. Before it each job had 2~ skills a character would always have access too once you level them, and then rest of your skills are pooled from whatever job your character is on. It still worked and emphasized leveling many jobs, but it was a bit limiting. In 8 instead you can crossclass 5 regular skills and one essence skill from ANY of the jobs that character has leveled.There's a lot of ways you can build your team, and the game wants you to level multiple jobs to mix and match your skills to get something crazy. Jobs are also clearly made with holes in their kit meant to be covered through cross classing; For example, Night Queen has great physical stats and a whole suite of good physical skills, but doesn't have a single Gun or Slashing move for coverage. Homeless Guy has great stats for a caster and really good defensive skills as well but only has ac cess to fire and generic magic attacks and no single target skills, or lightning/ice attacks, but you can cover that with skills from Host, or you just play host and cross class the homeless guy skills to that.
i do think there's some odd holes in the the skill list however; for example there is straight up no cross classable single target heavy/extreme damage electric damage skill so people looking to abuse skills like Playful Splash are rocking shit like the medium damage aoe jelly fish skill. It's weird but hey limitation breeds creativity.
I won't get go into story spoilers but I liked it. I think it gets a little off the rails at the time but this is also the series with the secret of onomicio so lol. I think it has weird little issues in terms of pacing and how some characters/plot points are executed, but on the flip side it has a very focused message and themeing and it nails that aspect of the story perfectly. Also the Kiryu half of the sidestories were genuinely getting me pretty good; walking the streets and reminiscing about the entire history of the franchise from the point of view of a character at the end of his life, as someone whose also followed this franchise since the ps2, really hurts a little man.
Game also looks great. The Ichiban focused yakuza aesthetic is just unmatched. I really just love hawaii as a setting, you're always running into really funny freaks. I fought a guy in a garbage bag and he shot me with a gun that was in his bag. There's nothing else like it.
My biggest complaint about this game isnt really about the game but the DLC; locking things like an endgame dungeon, regular NG+ (not super relevant cuz there's still premium adventure but u get me), preorder jobs. I really hate day 1 DLC and think we let people get away with too much, but this is far from the only RPG with this issue. Hey, I didn't buy it so you cant blame me.
Game is a great. Ichiban is my friend in real life.
2022
pure unadultered dad on dad combat.
I have pretty similar opinion of this game as I did the previous Santa Monica GOW; the design philosophies of the Sony quadruple A games kinda piss me off but the core combat and story is JUST good enough to let me give it a pass. but it's also my fill of sony AAAAs for the year.
Combat is very similar to 2018 but More! I really enjoy the third weapon they introduced a lot, and I think adding multiple shields that have different mechanics is really good (even though i used the parry shield for the entire game lol). While the game still falls into the modern action game trope of XXXXY + Cooldown skills, a combination of a decently large movelist, very high damage from enemies, and combat scenarios that actively wants you to use all of your tools makes combat engaging. And sometimes it just feels so good to hold down the 3rd weapon move that knocks people back and send them right off a cliff.
There's a larger cast of enemies in this game with not that many taken straight from 2018 and all their combat gimmicks and there's probably only like two I think were really annoying (the stupid healing goblin thing and the WITCHES ARE BACK BABY WOO!!!) . The game still has its issue of stretching every boss to its limits; I did not get close to doing all the side content but even then I fought those fucking gators like 5 times.
Gear is a bit more involved overall. It still feels like shallow RPG dressing but gear as way more defined "builds" so to speak, and if there's a particular tool you like a lot in your arsenal there's probably a gear set designed to benefit. Personally I was all in on the gear set that gives you a damage bonus on blocking/parrying and your shield hits do damage, but at the end of the day it was making just the thing I was doing already do More Damage.
The open world/pacing of it is... fine? The game will often flip flop between linear story segments and at the end will open a large open world section with standard open world stuff where they slap a bunch of repeating unlocks. Circle around the place until you do all the nonir chests and the side quests. I'm not in love with this design and I don't think I ever will, but some of those sidequests were interesting so w/e.
Idk where to segway this in but this game has a shit ton of puzzles and most of them are fine to pretty good but some of them are kinda fucking nonsense, often from either weird game logic or just "i didnt think that would even be a possible interaction" when i looked up the answer but w/e. It's also the sticking part to many people's complaints when this game launch; characters dont shut the fuck up, and you will often only get a few seconds to think before a character tells you what to do... yet I swear the actually obtuse ones artreus decides it's time to shut the fuck it. It's pretty annoying.
Story is... fine? I think I might like 2018's more overall but they've got their pros and cons. A big thing for the me is that it feels very aimless for a lot of it; they understand Ragnarok is coming and they're gonna have to do something about this, but most for the of the game its Atreus going Well I Guess We Should Go Here And See What Happens and Kratos begrudgingly follows him along. There's still some memorable setpieces, especially towards the end, but also this game has some really groan worth segments that feel like hour long walk and talks (s/o to the first major atreus segment), and while I made fun of the bluntness of 2018 being a story about a father and son trying to reach the top of a mountain, I think I preferred the tightness of that story versus the unfocused feeling of Ragnarok.
What I cannot complain about however is everything about the father/son themes expressed between Kratos and Atreus. This part of the story is all fantastic; Atreus dreams of more and believes that there is a destiny awaiting him that requires him participating in Ragnarok and could possibly stop a fortold death of his father. Kratos is a man whose lost more family than most people will ever have and sees his son being lead astray but things that have lead him astray, throwing himself into fatal danger for a pointless war
for people that want to use him. They love each other more than anything and would do anything for each other, but can't agree on what they should be doing. And it ends with a really satisfying conclusion to this particular theme.
I said something similiar in my review of 2018, but Kratos and Atreus are both difficult people; but it's because they're two difficult people who mean the world to each other that it works so well.
I would like to complain about the dialogue writing though; it feels like half the game speaks from two different eras. Some characters talk like people I could hear outside today, even characters you wouldn't assume would talk like Odin or Thor break it out, while characters like Kratos and Mimir dialogue feels more... in place with the setting? This might be a complete me thing, your mileage will very. Besides I love listening to mimir and odin talk anyways.
I never have complicated thought about graphics in general but yeah its a pretty game. Obviously the graphics on the fidelity side are what you expect from sony first parties, but outside of that there's really strong takes on the norse mythological figures and locations. I particularly really like thsi game's take on Thor and Odin
I like this game. The sony AAAA tendencies of hyper focus group testing and That Open World Design grinds me a bit but the combat is visceral and challenging enough with characters and overall story I like enough to get me into it more than other games in it's genre. There's also a lot of content I just didnt get to, both undid side quest things, some postgame stuff, and the DLC which I didnt get to touch at all, but uhhhh sorry my most anticipated game of like the past 5 years comes out tomorrow I had to hit credits. I will definitely atleast clear out the DLC when I get a chance but sorry getting to see Ichiban again is like my #1 priority in my life in general right now.
I have pretty similar opinion of this game as I did the previous Santa Monica GOW; the design philosophies of the Sony quadruple A games kinda piss me off but the core combat and story is JUST good enough to let me give it a pass. but it's also my fill of sony AAAAs for the year.
Combat is very similar to 2018 but More! I really enjoy the third weapon they introduced a lot, and I think adding multiple shields that have different mechanics is really good (even though i used the parry shield for the entire game lol). While the game still falls into the modern action game trope of XXXXY + Cooldown skills, a combination of a decently large movelist, very high damage from enemies, and combat scenarios that actively wants you to use all of your tools makes combat engaging. And sometimes it just feels so good to hold down the 3rd weapon move that knocks people back and send them right off a cliff.
There's a larger cast of enemies in this game with not that many taken straight from 2018 and all their combat gimmicks and there's probably only like two I think were really annoying (the stupid healing goblin thing and the WITCHES ARE BACK BABY WOO!!!) . The game still has its issue of stretching every boss to its limits; I did not get close to doing all the side content but even then I fought those fucking gators like 5 times.
Gear is a bit more involved overall. It still feels like shallow RPG dressing but gear as way more defined "builds" so to speak, and if there's a particular tool you like a lot in your arsenal there's probably a gear set designed to benefit. Personally I was all in on the gear set that gives you a damage bonus on blocking/parrying and your shield hits do damage, but at the end of the day it was making just the thing I was doing already do More Damage.
The open world/pacing of it is... fine? The game will often flip flop between linear story segments and at the end will open a large open world section with standard open world stuff where they slap a bunch of repeating unlocks. Circle around the place until you do all the nonir chests and the side quests. I'm not in love with this design and I don't think I ever will, but some of those sidequests were interesting so w/e.
Idk where to segway this in but this game has a shit ton of puzzles and most of them are fine to pretty good but some of them are kinda fucking nonsense, often from either weird game logic or just "i didnt think that would even be a possible interaction" when i looked up the answer but w/e. It's also the sticking part to many people's complaints when this game launch; characters dont shut the fuck up, and you will often only get a few seconds to think before a character tells you what to do... yet I swear the actually obtuse ones artreus decides it's time to shut the fuck it. It's pretty annoying.
Story is... fine? I think I might like 2018's more overall but they've got their pros and cons. A big thing for the me is that it feels very aimless for a lot of it; they understand Ragnarok is coming and they're gonna have to do something about this, but most for the of the game its Atreus going Well I Guess We Should Go Here And See What Happens and Kratos begrudgingly follows him along. There's still some memorable setpieces, especially towards the end, but also this game has some really groan worth segments that feel like hour long walk and talks (s/o to the first major atreus segment), and while I made fun of the bluntness of 2018 being a story about a father and son trying to reach the top of a mountain, I think I preferred the tightness of that story versus the unfocused feeling of Ragnarok.
What I cannot complain about however is everything about the father/son themes expressed between Kratos and Atreus. This part of the story is all fantastic; Atreus dreams of more and believes that there is a destiny awaiting him that requires him participating in Ragnarok and could possibly stop a fortold death of his father. Kratos is a man whose lost more family than most people will ever have and sees his son being lead astray but things that have lead him astray, throwing himself into fatal danger for a pointless war
for people that want to use him. They love each other more than anything and would do anything for each other, but can't agree on what they should be doing. And it ends with a really satisfying conclusion to this particular theme.
I said something similiar in my review of 2018, but Kratos and Atreus are both difficult people; but it's because they're two difficult people who mean the world to each other that it works so well.
I would like to complain about the dialogue writing though; it feels like half the game speaks from two different eras. Some characters talk like people I could hear outside today, even characters you wouldn't assume would talk like Odin or Thor break it out, while characters like Kratos and Mimir dialogue feels more... in place with the setting? This might be a complete me thing, your mileage will very. Besides I love listening to mimir and odin talk anyways.
I never have complicated thought about graphics in general but yeah its a pretty game. Obviously the graphics on the fidelity side are what you expect from sony first parties, but outside of that there's really strong takes on the norse mythological figures and locations. I particularly really like thsi game's take on Thor and Odin
I like this game. The sony AAAA tendencies of hyper focus group testing and That Open World Design grinds me a bit but the combat is visceral and challenging enough with characters and overall story I like enough to get me into it more than other games in it's genre. There's also a lot of content I just didnt get to, both undid side quest things, some postgame stuff, and the DLC which I didnt get to touch at all, but uhhhh sorry my most anticipated game of like the past 5 years comes out tomorrow I had to hit credits. I will definitely atleast clear out the DLC when I get a chance but sorry getting to see Ichiban again is like my #1 priority in my life in general right now.
normally i'd complain about the continued erasure of red toad but they let me play as my girl toadette in this game so it's whatever he can enjoy his new career as a captain.
It's good. I'm not really super blown away by it but it's an incredibly polished with a lot of fun ideas thrown behind it.
The game's main gimmick is that, well, every level ahs a gimmick. Hit a wonder flower and things gets weird. Maybe you walk on walls now, maybe the pipes move, maybe the the flowers start singing, ect ect. A stage gimmick rarely gets used more than twice total throughout the game. They clearly had everyone on the team throw ideas at the wall and anything that could stick got used. There's a lot of variety, and in the hottest take on earth, I sorta wish there was less.
There's a ton of ideas but they never get enough time to really shine. They introduce the idea and its probably cool but most levels are pretty short so the level designs never really get much past a tutorial feelings to them. I really enjoyed most (AND I MEAN MOST, FUCK FLUFF PUFF RACE TO THE BEAT) of the special world levels are so much more interesting and memorable than most of the game because it feels liek they're actually using the gimmicks to their full potential, but idk maybe this is just a me thing and I shouldn't really be complaining that a mario game is straight forward and easy.
It controls good, the only major complaint is that I swear to god wall jumping does not fucking work 25% of the time. I'm also not super hot on the badge system; I know there's like 3 badge moves that are all attached to the R button but 9 different movement options being attached to Pick One Only is really lame to me, especially when only the R button ones would clash with each other control wise. Also makes the gimmicky badges way unappealing to use; the always running one is funny but to use it i'm giving up regular fun stuff.
Also, the online stuff is really funny and i'd recommend slapping it on. It makes the game even easier because you can basically piggy back off each other if you die but it's worth it for those moments of anonymous comradery when you and a yoshi named "GetANewGod" piggy back off each others ghosts to the end of a level and start emoting. Or because there's 3 children in your instance and they desperately need your help. Really recommend it.
It's a well polished, creative game that's just a little too easy for me to get into. but you're talking to a guy whose favorite mario game is sunshine so keep that in mind.
It's good. I'm not really super blown away by it but it's an incredibly polished with a lot of fun ideas thrown behind it.
The game's main gimmick is that, well, every level ahs a gimmick. Hit a wonder flower and things gets weird. Maybe you walk on walls now, maybe the pipes move, maybe the the flowers start singing, ect ect. A stage gimmick rarely gets used more than twice total throughout the game. They clearly had everyone on the team throw ideas at the wall and anything that could stick got used. There's a lot of variety, and in the hottest take on earth, I sorta wish there was less.
There's a ton of ideas but they never get enough time to really shine. They introduce the idea and its probably cool but most levels are pretty short so the level designs never really get much past a tutorial feelings to them. I really enjoyed most (AND I MEAN MOST, FUCK FLUFF PUFF RACE TO THE BEAT) of the special world levels are so much more interesting and memorable than most of the game because it feels liek they're actually using the gimmicks to their full potential, but idk maybe this is just a me thing and I shouldn't really be complaining that a mario game is straight forward and easy.
It controls good, the only major complaint is that I swear to god wall jumping does not fucking work 25% of the time. I'm also not super hot on the badge system; I know there's like 3 badge moves that are all attached to the R button but 9 different movement options being attached to Pick One Only is really lame to me, especially when only the R button ones would clash with each other control wise. Also makes the gimmicky badges way unappealing to use; the always running one is funny but to use it i'm giving up regular fun stuff.
Also, the online stuff is really funny and i'd recommend slapping it on. It makes the game even easier because you can basically piggy back off each other if you die but it's worth it for those moments of anonymous comradery when you and a yoshi named "GetANewGod" piggy back off each others ghosts to the end of a level and start emoting. Or because there's 3 children in your instance and they desperately need your help. Really recommend it.
It's a well polished, creative game that's just a little too easy for me to get into. but you're talking to a guy whose favorite mario game is sunshine so keep that in mind.
this joryu guy is so cool. They should make an entire franchise about him.
Legit would put this really high up in yakuza games. A shorter more condensed experience than the usual games, but still i was packing a solid 20 something hours without doing everything.
I like the story even if it's oddly paced at times (there is a pretty large chunk of this game that feels like filler) . It's a really strong way to connect the end of Yakuza 6 to a keystone moment of Yakuza 7, and inturn Yakuza 8. It's impressive because I was someone who was content with the ending of 6 and what we see of him in 7 being the end of Kiryu's story, and was hesitant with him coming back again in 8, but they managed to nail it so damn good job.
And as I'm sure you've heard, the final chapter is probably the best final chapter in this whole franchise.
One of the weaker games in sidequests, there's a couple funny and memorable ones but the hit rate is pretty low. I cant believe pocket racer came back.
The colosseum is pretty good for side content activities. I did all the initially available solo / vs group fights but didnt continue when i got to a platnium hell rumble fight where they put 3 big club oni guys and saw half the my party get cleaved almost instantly, or hte first of the four kings fights which was down to the wire, not because it was hard but because he had so much health that I only managed to kill him at like sub 5 seconds left. Having 20+ people throw down at once is pretty novel but the higher difficulty fights feel like they need you to grind out party members for better stats which I didnt feel like doing.
Combat is Yakuza combat but I think its one of the better feeling ones in the series. Agent style is fun but is clearly designed less for 1v1 fights and clearing out large groups of enemies (which the game definitely supplies; i finished many random fights by hitting them with the Maximum Spider and killing like 5+ people instantly). Also all around very low amount of classic Really Annoying Yakuza Bosses. The boss Super Fuck You charge attacks being almost always completely free enormous amounts of damage for you is kinda silly but the parry feels good so w/e.
A nice, condensed Yakuza experience that is designed to tie into Yakuza 8. If you like the franchise and/or plan on playing Yakuza 8, you should definetly pick it up.
Also you can play Daytona USA 2 in the arcade and that game is fucking awesome.
Legit would put this really high up in yakuza games. A shorter more condensed experience than the usual games, but still i was packing a solid 20 something hours without doing everything.
I like the story even if it's oddly paced at times (there is a pretty large chunk of this game that feels like filler) . It's a really strong way to connect the end of Yakuza 6 to a keystone moment of Yakuza 7, and inturn Yakuza 8. It's impressive because I was someone who was content with the ending of 6 and what we see of him in 7 being the end of Kiryu's story, and was hesitant with him coming back again in 8, but they managed to nail it so damn good job.
And as I'm sure you've heard, the final chapter is probably the best final chapter in this whole franchise.
One of the weaker games in sidequests, there's a couple funny and memorable ones but the hit rate is pretty low. I cant believe pocket racer came back.
The colosseum is pretty good for side content activities. I did all the initially available solo / vs group fights but didnt continue when i got to a platnium hell rumble fight where they put 3 big club oni guys and saw half the my party get cleaved almost instantly, or hte first of the four kings fights which was down to the wire, not because it was hard but because he had so much health that I only managed to kill him at like sub 5 seconds left. Having 20+ people throw down at once is pretty novel but the higher difficulty fights feel like they need you to grind out party members for better stats which I didnt feel like doing.
Combat is Yakuza combat but I think its one of the better feeling ones in the series. Agent style is fun but is clearly designed less for 1v1 fights and clearing out large groups of enemies (which the game definitely supplies; i finished many random fights by hitting them with the Maximum Spider and killing like 5+ people instantly). Also all around very low amount of classic Really Annoying Yakuza Bosses. The boss Super Fuck You charge attacks being almost always completely free enormous amounts of damage for you is kinda silly but the parry feels good so w/e.
A nice, condensed Yakuza experience that is designed to tie into Yakuza 8. If you like the franchise and/or plan on playing Yakuza 8, you should definetly pick it up.
Also you can play Daytona USA 2 in the arcade and that game is fucking awesome.
black mirror voice what if your gasoline could talk to you
I have no experience with AC games or mech games similar to it so I can't really give any good insight so this one will be short but I have basically 0 complaints with this game.
It just feels good to play, there's a lot of options for builds and the game very actively wants to swap around parts for missions, though for the most part the game isn't so hard that you are forced into going particular builds or you're gonna get clobbered for missions (there was basically two points in the game where I was like okay I need to completely change what I'm doing), but between being able to change your build on checkpoints and it being really easy to grind money if you find yourself needing to buy something makes the moments pretty smooth too.
There's a good variety in missions to push you to try different things in both builds . You get the standard fair combat missions but then there's things like you need to get to the bottom of a cavern while trying to dodge the Worlds Biggest Laser trying to beam you down, and guess what heavy armor and heavy weapons aren't gonna help you there. Even in combat missions you can be like this is just fighting a large amount of enemies that aren't super tough but you're gonna want weapons with larger ammo counts, or waves that are separated between lanes so youll want some form of movement between the waves, shit like that. I'm normally a bit of a stickler for when games add missions for "gameplay variety" but I had no complaints here.
I was pretty into the story. The pacing was a little funky and even though the main plot point is about gasoline that talks and igniting the gas in your lights up the whole block instead of just your car I was engaged. However some weirdness is paired with some genuinely fantastic moments and set pieces with characters that are sticking with people. I also haven't done everything because this game has like 3 endings but i liked what I got.
(if you're wondering what ending I got, I Lit That Shit Up)
If i was to complain about anything I'd say the post mission fees stuff feels kinda pointless when its almost impossible to hit a point where you actually super tank your income, and it's so easy to make money in this game. But I think it's also tied to the score stuff so w/e
Game's good. You should play it.
I have no experience with AC games or mech games similar to it so I can't really give any good insight so this one will be short but I have basically 0 complaints with this game.
It just feels good to play, there's a lot of options for builds and the game very actively wants to swap around parts for missions, though for the most part the game isn't so hard that you are forced into going particular builds or you're gonna get clobbered for missions (there was basically two points in the game where I was like okay I need to completely change what I'm doing), but between being able to change your build on checkpoints and it being really easy to grind money if you find yourself needing to buy something makes the moments pretty smooth too.
There's a good variety in missions to push you to try different things in both builds . You get the standard fair combat missions but then there's things like you need to get to the bottom of a cavern while trying to dodge the Worlds Biggest Laser trying to beam you down, and guess what heavy armor and heavy weapons aren't gonna help you there. Even in combat missions you can be like this is just fighting a large amount of enemies that aren't super tough but you're gonna want weapons with larger ammo counts, or waves that are separated between lanes so youll want some form of movement between the waves, shit like that. I'm normally a bit of a stickler for when games add missions for "gameplay variety" but I had no complaints here.
I was pretty into the story. The pacing was a little funky and even though the main plot point is about gasoline that talks and igniting the gas in your lights up the whole block instead of just your car I was engaged. However some weirdness is paired with some genuinely fantastic moments and set pieces with characters that are sticking with people. I also haven't done everything because this game has like 3 endings but i liked what I got.
(if you're wondering what ending I got, I Lit That Shit Up)
If i was to complain about anything I'd say the post mission fees stuff feels kinda pointless when its almost impossible to hit a point where you actually super tank your income, and it's so easy to make money in this game. But I think it's also tied to the score stuff so w/e
Game's good. You should play it.
This game ends on a fade to black screen with text that sasy "This story never truly ends". This is a reference to the fact that this game as so much post game stuff that it seems insane to actually 100%, and also that it ends on like 3 cliffhangers that might never get resolved.
Xenoblade X is very strange. Anyone familiar with the rest of the Xenoblade franchise knows that the games take a lot of inspiration from the MMO; obvious things like aggro being a game mechanic to just how the game map is designed, ect ect. But while XB games often feel like JRPGs that kind of feel like single player MMOs; XBX is basically just a single player mode. The single player part isn't even accurate; this game Kinda has multiplayer. Sorta.
The game's main story is... lacking. While the main setup is interesting and has some good moments it is blatantly an unfinished story and was made with a sequel that has never arrived in mind. The ending of this game's main story is loaded with what feels an endless pile of unfinished story threads or just straight up cliffhangers. This wasn't a huge deal in 2015 when there wasn't a precedent for this franchise yet and assumed that Monolith's next game would be XBX2. And then that game was acutally XB2. And then we said okay well now it's time for XBX2. Then it was the XB1 remake. And before we even got to say XBX2 XB3 got revealed. Maybe XBX2 or just a XBX remake is on the way now that the Klaus trilogy is over, but maybe the next trailer with a monolith logo will just be XB4 with some brand new shit. who knows.
While the main story is lacking I cannot say the same about this game's side quests, which are fantastic and some of the highlights of this game. While there's plenty of really generic one there's also a lot of hitters, and oddly a lot of quests branching paths that actually end pretty differently. A few examples: A quest where you're tasked with rescuing 3 people but if you rescue them in the right order you wont learn + acquire the item that lets you scare off the Giant Fucking Monkey that kills one of them. You help repair a crashed helicopter but end up in charge of picking the right wire to plug in. If you pick the wrong one (which you can figure out from main city dialogue.) the helicopter crashes again because you fucked it up idiot and they die, changing your rewards. In another someone's life is deicided by whenever or not you let them take a Anti-Stress shower. A lot of people can bite it in this game.
This does lead into an annoyance I have with this game however; this is one of the most You Gotta Wiki This Shit games ever. Many quests require you to acquire The random items that drop in the overworld, and there is no clear indicator as to where you get these items, even if you've gotten them before. Thankfully the fellas are the Xenoblade wiki are gods strongest soldiers, but the I Need To Wiki this extends well into a lot of this game; for exmaple, I didnt know that Skells overdrive bonus' change depending on what kind of Skell you use until literally writing out this review. Speaking of lets wiki this, Lets talk combat and class design.
Combat and classes are tied together. Your skills tied to what weapons you use (AKA if your class uses Knife and raygun, you can only use knife and raygun skills), but when you max out a class you are free to equip its weapons to any other class. The passives your job unlocks can also be moved onto any other job; infact the best job in there game is technically the starting blank because it has the most passive slots, but it's not good until you actually make a lot of progress and have a lot of skills unlocked.
Because of the above, this game has a really extensive build options. Probably deeper than Diablo 4. You get to pick from 8 skills from your two weapon choices (there are 12 weapons total), which have around 12-15 skills each, an additional 3-5 passives (each job also unlocks like 6~ passive options). And this isn't even considering your actual stat builds though armor and skells.
The big problem with it is that the eternity of your ground skill build should be based around a single thing; a good overdrive set up. And there is nothing more I Need A Wiki than Overdrive.
This whole franchise is full of I Need A Wiki Or Youtube video things but each game's Chain Attack equivalent I think you can figure out how to get a good result by bumbling you way through some CAs and eventually the neurons start connecting. You will probably need a video to really optimize but thats whatever.
Not the same with Overdrive. OD, the game's CA equivalent (though they are very different), is impossible to figure out on your own. You have got to pick up a video for that shit to really figure it out, and the video that's the clearest explanation of the system came out only like 3 years ago. And unfortunately, like I mentioned previously, your entire ground build should be based around being able to get an infinite overdrive. The entire game opens up once you actually understand how to overdrive, but I've spoken to a lot of people and many of them just never interacted with OD because they had no idea wtf is happening when you hit the button, and the game offers no clearance at all about what it is does. it's crazy.
In truth ground combat is pretty slow even with a good build, and you're relatively weak until you get 3000 tp and then, as long as you aren't getting 1 shot by the enemy, you can kinda just turn into an unstoppable and the game becomes really fun because you're pressing tons of buttons and there's that joy of seeing a build really click together; but if you cant figure out OD it's going to feel really wack.
On the flip side, lets talk skells. Skells, the mechas, get acquired at a later point in the story and are also a pretty important goal in endgame progression. The level 30/50 skells are acquired just through a pretty significant investment in money, while the level 60 and higher skells require going out to getting endgame materials and the alternative resources investment. The customizable skells (some 60 skells just have unchangeable skills are based on) are based entirely on the gear you ahve equipped.
However skell builds and combat feels oddly shallower than ground combat. Looking online a lot of skell builds boil down to:
1) try to oneshot with a super weapon
2) One very high power 60sec~ cooldown skill paired with 7 short cooldown skills, and fishing for cockpit mode to keep it going
3) a pure debuff build, which you probably wont play yourself but shove onto a NPC party member skell.
It often feels like there isn't much to it other than just pressing the buttons when they're on.
Skells are also just loaded with a bunch of weird mechanics that feel like baggage like Insurance, Fuel and jsut getting your skell back wehn it dies. just weird and frustrating ways to stop you from using skells 100% of the time once you get them, which is an annoyance to work with and isnt even that relevant because once you get overdrive the pilot becomes better than skells (assuming we're talking about something that wont get oneshot by a super weapon)
Other things that I can't segway into cleanly:
-I didnt super get to explore the end game/online because there's backlog stuff i wanna play, but this game is filling to the brim with content if you're a compleitionist. Tons of quest, affinity missions, late game gearing, build options yo ucan pretty freely swap between, ect. This game' online is on the way out because the wii u is shutting down all their stuff, so I wanna try going back in and really getting into it before it goes.
-A very large part of this game is having to explore through regions full of enemies that are higher level than you and it is On Sight if they spot you. Many missions really are just Go To This Place And Talk To This Guy which sounds bad... but the guy is in an area of enemies that are 20 levels over you when you unlock the quest. This is kino and it rules. Some of the funniest moments in this game is getting jumped by an enemy while fighting something else.
-just an insane soundtrack. They really just let Sawano do whatever the fuck he wants. It's not my favorite XB soundtrack but it's the most unique one, also the Overdrive song does go crazy.
-The bad fights in this game are BAD. This game is maybe the most frustrated ive gotten in a XB game; any fight with an enemy in the air is very frustrating, and the final section of the game fight where you have to fight 10 enemies that all cleave and aoe stagger had me FUMING.
-skells are cool
XBX is a weird game. It's flies way too close to the sun in its goal of being a singleplayer MMO, something following XB games dialed back on, and almost everything in this game is poorly explained to the user and the game is just not as fun if you don't take the time to figure out its inner working, and has a pretty poor main story. However, if you can dig below the surface it is a game with a ton of a depth and a brickload of content, and just a unique game.
I hope monolith does plan to do something with XBX, seeing how a large chunk of the game is about to just disappear with the Wii U online. However if the next Monolith game is not XBX remake or XBX2, I think thats just them giving up on this franchise.
Xenoblade X is very strange. Anyone familiar with the rest of the Xenoblade franchise knows that the games take a lot of inspiration from the MMO; obvious things like aggro being a game mechanic to just how the game map is designed, ect ect. But while XB games often feel like JRPGs that kind of feel like single player MMOs; XBX is basically just a single player mode. The single player part isn't even accurate; this game Kinda has multiplayer. Sorta.
The game's main story is... lacking. While the main setup is interesting and has some good moments it is blatantly an unfinished story and was made with a sequel that has never arrived in mind. The ending of this game's main story is loaded with what feels an endless pile of unfinished story threads or just straight up cliffhangers. This wasn't a huge deal in 2015 when there wasn't a precedent for this franchise yet and assumed that Monolith's next game would be XBX2. And then that game was acutally XB2. And then we said okay well now it's time for XBX2. Then it was the XB1 remake. And before we even got to say XBX2 XB3 got revealed. Maybe XBX2 or just a XBX remake is on the way now that the Klaus trilogy is over, but maybe the next trailer with a monolith logo will just be XB4 with some brand new shit. who knows.
While the main story is lacking I cannot say the same about this game's side quests, which are fantastic and some of the highlights of this game. While there's plenty of really generic one there's also a lot of hitters, and oddly a lot of quests branching paths that actually end pretty differently. A few examples: A quest where you're tasked with rescuing 3 people but if you rescue them in the right order you wont learn + acquire the item that lets you scare off the Giant Fucking Monkey that kills one of them. You help repair a crashed helicopter but end up in charge of picking the right wire to plug in. If you pick the wrong one (which you can figure out from main city dialogue.) the helicopter crashes again because you fucked it up idiot and they die, changing your rewards. In another someone's life is deicided by whenever or not you let them take a Anti-Stress shower. A lot of people can bite it in this game.
This does lead into an annoyance I have with this game however; this is one of the most You Gotta Wiki This Shit games ever. Many quests require you to acquire The random items that drop in the overworld, and there is no clear indicator as to where you get these items, even if you've gotten them before. Thankfully the fellas are the Xenoblade wiki are gods strongest soldiers, but the I Need To Wiki this extends well into a lot of this game; for exmaple, I didnt know that Skells overdrive bonus' change depending on what kind of Skell you use until literally writing out this review. Speaking of lets wiki this, Lets talk combat and class design.
Combat and classes are tied together. Your skills tied to what weapons you use (AKA if your class uses Knife and raygun, you can only use knife and raygun skills), but when you max out a class you are free to equip its weapons to any other class. The passives your job unlocks can also be moved onto any other job; infact the best job in there game is technically the starting blank because it has the most passive slots, but it's not good until you actually make a lot of progress and have a lot of skills unlocked.
Because of the above, this game has a really extensive build options. Probably deeper than Diablo 4. You get to pick from 8 skills from your two weapon choices (there are 12 weapons total), which have around 12-15 skills each, an additional 3-5 passives (each job also unlocks like 6~ passive options). And this isn't even considering your actual stat builds though armor and skells.
The big problem with it is that the eternity of your ground skill build should be based around a single thing; a good overdrive set up. And there is nothing more I Need A Wiki than Overdrive.
This whole franchise is full of I Need A Wiki Or Youtube video things but each game's Chain Attack equivalent I think you can figure out how to get a good result by bumbling you way through some CAs and eventually the neurons start connecting. You will probably need a video to really optimize but thats whatever.
Not the same with Overdrive. OD, the game's CA equivalent (though they are very different), is impossible to figure out on your own. You have got to pick up a video for that shit to really figure it out, and the video that's the clearest explanation of the system came out only like 3 years ago. And unfortunately, like I mentioned previously, your entire ground build should be based around being able to get an infinite overdrive. The entire game opens up once you actually understand how to overdrive, but I've spoken to a lot of people and many of them just never interacted with OD because they had no idea wtf is happening when you hit the button, and the game offers no clearance at all about what it is does. it's crazy.
In truth ground combat is pretty slow even with a good build, and you're relatively weak until you get 3000 tp and then, as long as you aren't getting 1 shot by the enemy, you can kinda just turn into an unstoppable and the game becomes really fun because you're pressing tons of buttons and there's that joy of seeing a build really click together; but if you cant figure out OD it's going to feel really wack.
On the flip side, lets talk skells. Skells, the mechas, get acquired at a later point in the story and are also a pretty important goal in endgame progression. The level 30/50 skells are acquired just through a pretty significant investment in money, while the level 60 and higher skells require going out to getting endgame materials and the alternative resources investment. The customizable skells (some 60 skells just have unchangeable skills are based on) are based entirely on the gear you ahve equipped.
However skell builds and combat feels oddly shallower than ground combat. Looking online a lot of skell builds boil down to:
1) try to oneshot with a super weapon
2) One very high power 60sec~ cooldown skill paired with 7 short cooldown skills, and fishing for cockpit mode to keep it going
3) a pure debuff build, which you probably wont play yourself but shove onto a NPC party member skell.
It often feels like there isn't much to it other than just pressing the buttons when they're on.
Skells are also just loaded with a bunch of weird mechanics that feel like baggage like Insurance, Fuel and jsut getting your skell back wehn it dies. just weird and frustrating ways to stop you from using skells 100% of the time once you get them, which is an annoyance to work with and isnt even that relevant because once you get overdrive the pilot becomes better than skells (assuming we're talking about something that wont get oneshot by a super weapon)
Other things that I can't segway into cleanly:
-I didnt super get to explore the end game/online because there's backlog stuff i wanna play, but this game is filling to the brim with content if you're a compleitionist. Tons of quest, affinity missions, late game gearing, build options yo ucan pretty freely swap between, ect. This game' online is on the way out because the wii u is shutting down all their stuff, so I wanna try going back in and really getting into it before it goes.
-A very large part of this game is having to explore through regions full of enemies that are higher level than you and it is On Sight if they spot you. Many missions really are just Go To This Place And Talk To This Guy which sounds bad... but the guy is in an area of enemies that are 20 levels over you when you unlock the quest. This is kino and it rules. Some of the funniest moments in this game is getting jumped by an enemy while fighting something else.
-just an insane soundtrack. They really just let Sawano do whatever the fuck he wants. It's not my favorite XB soundtrack but it's the most unique one, also the Overdrive song does go crazy.
-The bad fights in this game are BAD. This game is maybe the most frustrated ive gotten in a XB game; any fight with an enemy in the air is very frustrating, and the final section of the game fight where you have to fight 10 enemies that all cleave and aoe stagger had me FUMING.
-skells are cool
XBX is a weird game. It's flies way too close to the sun in its goal of being a singleplayer MMO, something following XB games dialed back on, and almost everything in this game is poorly explained to the user and the game is just not as fun if you don't take the time to figure out its inner working, and has a pretty poor main story. However, if you can dig below the surface it is a game with a ton of a depth and a brickload of content, and just a unique game.
I hope monolith does plan to do something with XBX, seeing how a large chunk of the game is about to just disappear with the Wii U online. However if the next Monolith game is not XBX remake or XBX2, I think thats just them giving up on this franchise.
2020
With enough Charisma, you'll learn that there's a lot of encounters in life where you can just tell someone to kill themselves and they'll do it.
To be honest I have 0 experience with this genre nor have I ever played DND so I feel like I cant give much actually insightful opinions so I'll keep it pretty short and open with the best review I can think of: this game took me 90 hours to clear and I'm already thinking about going back in.
I really enjoyed the combat all around, a combination of both inspired encounter designs and a very robust core systems really had me into it. It's not super difficult imo on normal difficulty, especially once you get into later levels where someone like me with no 5E experience whose kinda bumbling through levels can make characters that rips shit up, but it can be pretty punishing to bad combat choices so there's still plenty of actual combat tension. I can't speak for hard mode tho
Character leveling follows 5e rules I Think Anyways I Havent Played DND Lol, which i think makes some people vomit but I had a lot of fun with the classes and I didnt even bother messing with multiclassing. I did this playthrough as a Bard and spent a good chunk of thinking about how much I want to try that tavern brawl monk shit, had to fight myself from stopping myself form making a second file. I do think most of the feats seem like they Suck, especially compared to just taking ASI, but you get like 3 feats total or whatever there's enough good ones for a class.
I can't full speak on story/how many options you really have because I only did one playthrough. I thought the main story was pretty good, and was really impressed by how many genuinely difficult choices showed up in the story even when I was going a pretty straight forward good guy route. The party member I went through were also pretty good, I particularly liked Laezel's and Gale's. I also just missed a ton of shit I only learned about afterwords, which is always fun, and further makes me wanna go on a new playthrough.
(also, i completely fucking missed minsc which was really fucking funny when i looked it up later)
By far my biggest issue with the game is related to performance and some interface/control aspects. Act 3 in particular, being an act that takes place mostly in a crowded city, as serious issues with loading, which is annoying because it's the act that takes place between 3 different areas that require loading, this loading issue is can even affect cutscenes; and god help you if you have a fight taking place between two zones. I also just averaged around 50-60, likely closer to 50, in act 3 on a machines that should be above specs, I hear it can be pretty bad for people on lower end machines
Some aspects of the game's UI/controls is also fucking annoying; things like the game allowing you to move the camera and make clicks during action animations, but centering the camera and not actually being able to queue up actions leading to Movement I Didnt Want To Make happened all the time and is really annoying. The camera can just go to hell sometimes, especially on area's with multiple levels. Sometimes just how far you can move, especially when you get skills like flying, just feels oddly convoluted. Also, I spent most of the game with an inventory full of consumables that I just didnt use because I had so much that it felt like too much work to just dig through it to find the arrow that might be useful here (this might be a me thing)
I must say though that larian has been very active in publishing large patches which heavily target bugs and performance issues as well as making pretty sweeping QOL changes, so a lot of stuff I complained about here might not even be an issue in a year. who knows!
I really enjoyed the core combat and through the main story was pretty good with an interesting cast of characters to back it up. The replayablity between the wide option character choices in both leveling and the story itself really motivates me to go back in and play it again. Performance and bugs are a bummer, but its not enough to kill the experience for me, and its something that may be ironed out as time goes out. You should give this game a try, it's pretty special.
To be honest I have 0 experience with this genre nor have I ever played DND so I feel like I cant give much actually insightful opinions so I'll keep it pretty short and open with the best review I can think of: this game took me 90 hours to clear and I'm already thinking about going back in.
I really enjoyed the combat all around, a combination of both inspired encounter designs and a very robust core systems really had me into it. It's not super difficult imo on normal difficulty, especially once you get into later levels where someone like me with no 5E experience whose kinda bumbling through levels can make characters that rips shit up, but it can be pretty punishing to bad combat choices so there's still plenty of actual combat tension. I can't speak for hard mode tho
Character leveling follows 5e rules I Think Anyways I Havent Played DND Lol, which i think makes some people vomit but I had a lot of fun with the classes and I didnt even bother messing with multiclassing. I did this playthrough as a Bard and spent a good chunk of thinking about how much I want to try that tavern brawl monk shit, had to fight myself from stopping myself form making a second file. I do think most of the feats seem like they Suck, especially compared to just taking ASI, but you get like 3 feats total or whatever there's enough good ones for a class.
I can't full speak on story/how many options you really have because I only did one playthrough. I thought the main story was pretty good, and was really impressed by how many genuinely difficult choices showed up in the story even when I was going a pretty straight forward good guy route. The party member I went through were also pretty good, I particularly liked Laezel's and Gale's. I also just missed a ton of shit I only learned about afterwords, which is always fun, and further makes me wanna go on a new playthrough.
(also, i completely fucking missed minsc which was really fucking funny when i looked it up later)
By far my biggest issue with the game is related to performance and some interface/control aspects. Act 3 in particular, being an act that takes place mostly in a crowded city, as serious issues with loading, which is annoying because it's the act that takes place between 3 different areas that require loading, this loading issue is can even affect cutscenes; and god help you if you have a fight taking place between two zones. I also just averaged around 50-60, likely closer to 50, in act 3 on a machines that should be above specs, I hear it can be pretty bad for people on lower end machines
Some aspects of the game's UI/controls is also fucking annoying; things like the game allowing you to move the camera and make clicks during action animations, but centering the camera and not actually being able to queue up actions leading to Movement I Didnt Want To Make happened all the time and is really annoying. The camera can just go to hell sometimes, especially on area's with multiple levels. Sometimes just how far you can move, especially when you get skills like flying, just feels oddly convoluted. Also, I spent most of the game with an inventory full of consumables that I just didnt use because I had so much that it felt like too much work to just dig through it to find the arrow that might be useful here (this might be a me thing)
I must say though that larian has been very active in publishing large patches which heavily target bugs and performance issues as well as making pretty sweeping QOL changes, so a lot of stuff I complained about here might not even be an issue in a year. who knows!
I really enjoyed the core combat and through the main story was pretty good with an interesting cast of characters to back it up. The replayablity between the wide option character choices in both leveling and the story itself really motivates me to go back in and play it again. Performance and bugs are a bummer, but its not enough to kill the experience for me, and its something that may be ironed out as time goes out. You should give this game a try, it's pretty special.
2005
I'm glad yuji naka is in jail
Quick story before going into this; a year or two ago i had a quick 3d sonic stint of SA1/2/Heroes. 1 I thought was bad but had good ideas in it. 2 was overall better but still had some wack shit, but it felt like a good step forward. Heroes was so bad i didnt even bother finishing one route.
I also have that friend everyone has, who really likes Sonic. He tells me that sonic heroes was "okay". I thought it was unplayable. And then when Shadow is mentoined, he said he thought this game was unplayable.
I had to know. I had played this game as a kid so I remembered a chunk of it, but I was a stupid child with no standards. How bad could it be.
It's pretty bad. But in unique ways!
The game's biggest gimmick is it's path system; each mission has 2-3 different ways to beat it; one of them will be just reach the end of the level but other ones will be things like kill X amount of certain type of enemies, find X collectables, ect ect. Depending on what you pick it'll decide what level you get next, making a multi pathed flowchart campaign that lasts 6 levels and a few bosses. The game has 12 different endings which are needed to unlock the true real ending. Even if you're trying to repeat as little missiosn as possible, it'll feel repetitive between just going through levels again and again. You're gonna get really good at westopolis.
Levels and missions have a large range in quality, which is strange because I can't think of a mission that I have an opinion higher then "it's okay". Most missions that are just run to the end are fine enough, while everything else is either tedious or obnoxious. Some levels use it well, where youll go on wildly different paths depending on which mission you're trying to complete, but not enough most will jsut be walking around and killing everything. Hate all the destroy thing before it leaves missions. Also shoutouts to the one mission where the hero mission is to reach the end under the time limit, but the neutral mission requires you to reach the end OVER the time limit, so if you want to go neutral route (it's a 5th mission so its actually important), you just gotta sit there next to the ring until time is over. this is the mission design we're working with here.
Of course in classic 3d sonic fashion, shadow kinda controls like shit. He accelerates into full speed almost instantly and he turns fucking wide. It doesn't help that most of the level design is not made with this character speed in mind; why does shadow blitz into absurd speed in under a second when there's so few parts of the level where you just wont run into a wall or an enemy you couldn't of know was standing there along the way.
Other gameplay mechanics are also all oddly put together. Weapons are around always but because shadow swings wide everything that isn't autoaim feels shitty, but they all do so much more damage then actually air dashing at enemies. I'm not sure why there's even vehicles in this game at all, the only one thats worth using is the one that jumps higher and that's because the segments with it you need to use it. The chaos blast/control meter is also very silly, it's often slower then just shooting things, and while chaos control is very useful for reaching the end of the level skipping to the end is often counter productive to many missions.
Also I'm sure this isn't going to surprise you but the story is Not Good! Normally this would be a thing to mentoin but the game has a pretty heavy narrative push, the idea being what paths you take decides who Shadow ends up being. An ambitious idea but it just doesn't really work; doing anything that isn't just Pure Evil/Neutral/Hero will just end up in a completely nonsense narrative with no consistency, and even the pure routes which feel more structured aren't really compelling, even in a fun campy way like SA2.
That being said if you don't know shadow's whole character arch from SA2 > StH you should look it up because it's pretty crazy. And also just never mentioned again after this game. I sorta miss when sonic had a more consistent world and the events of previous gams were relevant but all these games after SA2 got panned critically until they dropped it so it's probably not coming back.
One last thing worth discussing is the "tone". Many remember this as being really fucking edgy. And it kinda is; characters "swear", you got guns and shoot people, people say "kill", the menu select sound effect is a gunshot. However it's so funny how they dial it back; they could not fucking possibly let this game get even a T rating, I'm sure the E10 rating ate them up inside. You can shoot humans but they don't actually die; they lie on the ground very obviously Not Dead and be like Please Dont Kill Me :(, most of the guns are NERF rifle looking shit and swears never go further then "damn". The game's tone is some kid trying to be cool and edgy but he doesn't want to go too far or mom will notice and get mad at him.
STH sucks. While there's neat ideas in theory none of it really works well at all and ends with a tedious and repetitive game. But I guess I bothered to get to the end so its better than Sonic Heroes.
it was killer when shadow was like "it's like taking candy from a baby, and that's all right" on the HERO route, though.
Quick story before going into this; a year or two ago i had a quick 3d sonic stint of SA1/2/Heroes. 1 I thought was bad but had good ideas in it. 2 was overall better but still had some wack shit, but it felt like a good step forward. Heroes was so bad i didnt even bother finishing one route.
I also have that friend everyone has, who really likes Sonic. He tells me that sonic heroes was "okay". I thought it was unplayable. And then when Shadow is mentoined, he said he thought this game was unplayable.
I had to know. I had played this game as a kid so I remembered a chunk of it, but I was a stupid child with no standards. How bad could it be.
It's pretty bad. But in unique ways!
The game's biggest gimmick is it's path system; each mission has 2-3 different ways to beat it; one of them will be just reach the end of the level but other ones will be things like kill X amount of certain type of enemies, find X collectables, ect ect. Depending on what you pick it'll decide what level you get next, making a multi pathed flowchart campaign that lasts 6 levels and a few bosses. The game has 12 different endings which are needed to unlock the true real ending. Even if you're trying to repeat as little missiosn as possible, it'll feel repetitive between just going through levels again and again. You're gonna get really good at westopolis.
Levels and missions have a large range in quality, which is strange because I can't think of a mission that I have an opinion higher then "it's okay". Most missions that are just run to the end are fine enough, while everything else is either tedious or obnoxious. Some levels use it well, where youll go on wildly different paths depending on which mission you're trying to complete, but not enough most will jsut be walking around and killing everything. Hate all the destroy thing before it leaves missions. Also shoutouts to the one mission where the hero mission is to reach the end under the time limit, but the neutral mission requires you to reach the end OVER the time limit, so if you want to go neutral route (it's a 5th mission so its actually important), you just gotta sit there next to the ring until time is over. this is the mission design we're working with here.
Of course in classic 3d sonic fashion, shadow kinda controls like shit. He accelerates into full speed almost instantly and he turns fucking wide. It doesn't help that most of the level design is not made with this character speed in mind; why does shadow blitz into absurd speed in under a second when there's so few parts of the level where you just wont run into a wall or an enemy you couldn't of know was standing there along the way.
Other gameplay mechanics are also all oddly put together. Weapons are around always but because shadow swings wide everything that isn't autoaim feels shitty, but they all do so much more damage then actually air dashing at enemies. I'm not sure why there's even vehicles in this game at all, the only one thats worth using is the one that jumps higher and that's because the segments with it you need to use it. The chaos blast/control meter is also very silly, it's often slower then just shooting things, and while chaos control is very useful for reaching the end of the level skipping to the end is often counter productive to many missions.
Also I'm sure this isn't going to surprise you but the story is Not Good! Normally this would be a thing to mentoin but the game has a pretty heavy narrative push, the idea being what paths you take decides who Shadow ends up being. An ambitious idea but it just doesn't really work; doing anything that isn't just Pure Evil/Neutral/Hero will just end up in a completely nonsense narrative with no consistency, and even the pure routes which feel more structured aren't really compelling, even in a fun campy way like SA2.
That being said if you don't know shadow's whole character arch from SA2 > StH you should look it up because it's pretty crazy. And also just never mentioned again after this game. I sorta miss when sonic had a more consistent world and the events of previous gams were relevant but all these games after SA2 got panned critically until they dropped it so it's probably not coming back.
One last thing worth discussing is the "tone". Many remember this as being really fucking edgy. And it kinda is; characters "swear", you got guns and shoot people, people say "kill", the menu select sound effect is a gunshot. However it's so funny how they dial it back; they could not fucking possibly let this game get even a T rating, I'm sure the E10 rating ate them up inside. You can shoot humans but they don't actually die; they lie on the ground very obviously Not Dead and be like Please Dont Kill Me :(, most of the guns are NERF rifle looking shit and swears never go further then "damn". The game's tone is some kid trying to be cool and edgy but he doesn't want to go too far or mom will notice and get mad at him.
STH sucks. While there's neat ideas in theory none of it really works well at all and ends with a tedious and repetitive game. But I guess I bothered to get to the end so its better than Sonic Heroes.
it was killer when shadow was like "it's like taking candy from a baby, and that's all right" on the HERO route, though.
2020
Mario Sunshine is an interesting game. Its buggy, likely a biproduct of coming out early in the 6th gen's life style and I can only assume a brutal production timeline, it's got some of the most fucked up stars in the whole franchise (i'd argue that lily pad IS the worst star in the franchise), and an odd structure to its stars making atleast 30 of its stars feel redundant; more if you don't reconsider anything that's not attached to its own mission or secret area unnecessary.
And I wouldn't change a fucking thing.
Okay well maybe I'd change Lily Pads.
I love Mario Sunshine, I'd even say it's my favorite 3d mario, with the only aesteric being that I haven't played galaxy 2 in like 10 years so idk how I really feel about it. For all it's jank and weird design choices lie a ton of soul, cool stars, fun movement, an unmatched aesthetic and Levels Were You Can Actually Die.
Sunshine's main gimmick is is FLUDD, a funny little talking water gun on your back who you use to shoot water or flip between a hover mode or eventually a rocket mode or a turbo speed mode. FLUDD rules. Like every game mechanic I like it's multi purpose and you can is used in many creative ways without designing specific interactions, and benefits the level design. it's weird that a lot of the cool fludd stuff (slip and slides/shotguns blasts/ect) are hidden and you just gotta figure it out on your own but it's whatever you've watched a sunshine speedrun before and watched them turn shadow mario to dust. I have no problem with fludd, he's great.
Individual stars are a mixed bag. I'd argue that most of them are good, but the stinkers are crazy. I said it before but lily pad red coins is genuinely awful. I do think a lot of the levels people point to as being annoying is mostly just because people didnt fully understand the mechanics. Things like the Manta Ray/cleaning up Sirena beach are much easier then they seem if you know what a shotgun blast is; and to be honest I never understood how people walled by things like Sandbird/blooper racing.
But the stars that ARE definitely fucked up, things like Pachinko or I'm A Chuckster! idk I just think they're funny. If dying in a single player video game hurts your ego no matter what or something, first go to therapy second it's not really a big deal. Most of the Secret levels have a 1up mushrooms early in the level to keep you going. Is pachinko fucked up? yeah. It is really funny to see mario go to hell on a stub? also yeah. Am I being bias? yeah fuck you.
And like I mentioned before, something I really like about this game is difficulty. If you read my review from a few years ago on Galaxy 1, what brought me down on that game was that despite it's insane polish and strong gameplay gimmick, was how easy the game is. All the polish in the world means nothign to me when most of the game is completely frictionless because there's like 5 stars total where there's even a risk of dying, it becomes a snoozefest. Mario sunshine is much harder then it's companions, and I like that. It's not like it's a complete ball buster but I have pay attention and try to win, and most of the Secret levels are gonna take you multiple tries to get at. 64 is not as bad about thsi but most of 64 is kinda a cakewalk anyways.
Something I like about this game that doesn't come with an * is the aesthetic . God. This game is still wonderful to look at. I've been chasing this game's aesthetic since it came out. One of my incredibly bias gripes about Pokemon Sun Moon (bet you didnt think that game would show up) is that I thought that game aesthetically would be the Sunshine 2 that i craved, and in the end i got Just Regular Pokemon.
The summer theming and the commitment to the aesthetic. It's so so good. No backing down to generic areas, the most generic you get is a volcano area and thats the final level. It's a summer vacation aesthetic; We got the easy beach stage but we also got other sick shit; an amusement park, a dock, a scenic beachside nice hotel with the casino you parents didnt let you come with and it might be haunted too (idk whats up with this I never really associated summer with horror but it's apparently a classic japanese summer thing so w/e), villages that are probably tourist traps, ect. It's wonderful. I want this more and no game as given it to me. It's either every level looks the same or every game has rapidly different designs for the sake of variety. The commitment to an aesthetic idea and variance without giving up on the core idea. it's perfect. I will never get this game's aesthetic again and it hurts.
To get back to being negatives despite that I love this game, the game's star structure is weird. To hit credits you need to beat the 7th level of every stage unlike 64 which was just get X amount of stars to progress to the next part of the castle, leading to only needing 49 stars to beat the game. Along with that a large chunk of the stars in this game are attached to blue coins, which suck but oh now you all agree with me that collectathon shit like banjo sucks? you all love banjo but hate blue coins? whatever man. To put it all together the reward for 120 stars is really ass; 64's isnt much better but there's not that many stars that feel like filler in 64 and obviously later into the franchise you get crazy 120 star rewards like galaxy. I say do all the main stages and grab delfino stars, and see how many blue coin stars you got by the end, you're not missing too much going blue coin hunting. you can also skip lily pad. fuck lily pad.
Sunshine is flawed, but I love the flaws. For everything it lacks it has something nothing else has. I'm also bias. fuck it. I should replay mario galaxy 2.
And I wouldn't change a fucking thing.
Okay well maybe I'd change Lily Pads.
I love Mario Sunshine, I'd even say it's my favorite 3d mario, with the only aesteric being that I haven't played galaxy 2 in like 10 years so idk how I really feel about it. For all it's jank and weird design choices lie a ton of soul, cool stars, fun movement, an unmatched aesthetic and Levels Were You Can Actually Die.
Sunshine's main gimmick is is FLUDD, a funny little talking water gun on your back who you use to shoot water or flip between a hover mode or eventually a rocket mode or a turbo speed mode. FLUDD rules. Like every game mechanic I like it's multi purpose and you can is used in many creative ways without designing specific interactions, and benefits the level design. it's weird that a lot of the cool fludd stuff (slip and slides/shotguns blasts/ect) are hidden and you just gotta figure it out on your own but it's whatever you've watched a sunshine speedrun before and watched them turn shadow mario to dust. I have no problem with fludd, he's great.
Individual stars are a mixed bag. I'd argue that most of them are good, but the stinkers are crazy. I said it before but lily pad red coins is genuinely awful. I do think a lot of the levels people point to as being annoying is mostly just because people didnt fully understand the mechanics. Things like the Manta Ray/cleaning up Sirena beach are much easier then they seem if you know what a shotgun blast is; and to be honest I never understood how people walled by things like Sandbird/blooper racing.
But the stars that ARE definitely fucked up, things like Pachinko or I'm A Chuckster! idk I just think they're funny. If dying in a single player video game hurts your ego no matter what or something, first go to therapy second it's not really a big deal. Most of the Secret levels have a 1up mushrooms early in the level to keep you going. Is pachinko fucked up? yeah. It is really funny to see mario go to hell on a stub? also yeah. Am I being bias? yeah fuck you.
And like I mentioned before, something I really like about this game is difficulty. If you read my review from a few years ago on Galaxy 1, what brought me down on that game was that despite it's insane polish and strong gameplay gimmick, was how easy the game is. All the polish in the world means nothign to me when most of the game is completely frictionless because there's like 5 stars total where there's even a risk of dying, it becomes a snoozefest. Mario sunshine is much harder then it's companions, and I like that. It's not like it's a complete ball buster but I have pay attention and try to win, and most of the Secret levels are gonna take you multiple tries to get at. 64 is not as bad about thsi but most of 64 is kinda a cakewalk anyways.
Something I like about this game that doesn't come with an * is the aesthetic . God. This game is still wonderful to look at. I've been chasing this game's aesthetic since it came out. One of my incredibly bias gripes about Pokemon Sun Moon (bet you didnt think that game would show up) is that I thought that game aesthetically would be the Sunshine 2 that i craved, and in the end i got Just Regular Pokemon.
The summer theming and the commitment to the aesthetic. It's so so good. No backing down to generic areas, the most generic you get is a volcano area and thats the final level. It's a summer vacation aesthetic; We got the easy beach stage but we also got other sick shit; an amusement park, a dock, a scenic beachside nice hotel with the casino you parents didnt let you come with and it might be haunted too (idk whats up with this I never really associated summer with horror but it's apparently a classic japanese summer thing so w/e), villages that are probably tourist traps, ect. It's wonderful. I want this more and no game as given it to me. It's either every level looks the same or every game has rapidly different designs for the sake of variety. The commitment to an aesthetic idea and variance without giving up on the core idea. it's perfect. I will never get this game's aesthetic again and it hurts.
To get back to being negatives despite that I love this game, the game's star structure is weird. To hit credits you need to beat the 7th level of every stage unlike 64 which was just get X amount of stars to progress to the next part of the castle, leading to only needing 49 stars to beat the game. Along with that a large chunk of the stars in this game are attached to blue coins, which suck but oh now you all agree with me that collectathon shit like banjo sucks? you all love banjo but hate blue coins? whatever man. To put it all together the reward for 120 stars is really ass; 64's isnt much better but there's not that many stars that feel like filler in 64 and obviously later into the franchise you get crazy 120 star rewards like galaxy. I say do all the main stages and grab delfino stars, and see how many blue coin stars you got by the end, you're not missing too much going blue coin hunting. you can also skip lily pad. fuck lily pad.
Sunshine is flawed, but I love the flaws. For everything it lacks it has something nothing else has. I'm also bias. fuck it. I should replay mario galaxy 2.