MoeGreenSpecial
2022
The core loop of this game was fun, and the extra mechanics that continued to be added on as the game progressed prevented things from getting too stale. However, it did eventually feel like the game was trying to be a bit too many things - puzzle sequences, boss fights, branch management, farming, and even rhythm and asteroids-like minigames all pop up at some point or another.
I do think that this game would sorely benefit from some quality-of-life improvements. Specifically, a button to automatically harvest "all-but-2" of each species of fish in your farm to send to either of your branches would take a way a lot of the daily repetitiveness on display. Similarly, a way to permanently hire someone to manage your farm (similar to how you have someone manage your branch) would be tremendous.
Overall it was fun, but it did drag on a bit long. A tighter version with better quality of life features would probably add an extra star.
I do think that this game would sorely benefit from some quality-of-life improvements. Specifically, a button to automatically harvest "all-but-2" of each species of fish in your farm to send to either of your branches would take a way a lot of the daily repetitiveness on display. Similarly, a way to permanently hire someone to manage your farm (similar to how you have someone manage your branch) would be tremendous.
Overall it was fun, but it did drag on a bit long. A tighter version with better quality of life features would probably add an extra star.
This was the most fun DLC of the group so far. It's mostly standard fare - new characters, new weapons, a new map. But, the thing that makes it stand out are the new random events on the map that ask you to get to different spots on that map within a specified period of time. That really helps add to the minute-to-minute goals of gameplay, and works really well.
2023
This is a technical marvel - I'm not really sure how they pulled off the mechanic of placing photos over top of the 3D world so well, but it works exactly as you would expect, and leads to some fun puzzles. It's not overlong, and doesn't overstay its welcome.
There were a few puzzles that I found to be a bit finicky, and I very much did not like that the last level had a timer on it (something which should be verbotten in puzzle games like this - you're meant to spend time thinking about solutions, not be racing a clock).
But, overall, enjoyable and worth playing.
There were a few puzzles that I found to be a bit finicky, and I very much did not like that the last level had a timer on it (something which should be verbotten in puzzle games like this - you're meant to spend time thinking about solutions, not be racing a clock).
But, overall, enjoyable and worth playing.
This goes down as my favorite of the Yakuza series so far. They took everything that made Yakuza: Like a Dragon so much fun, and then fine tuned it to make it even better here. The addition of movement during the turn based combat sequences really adds a lot to the game, as does the ability to slot in skills from other jobs to customize each character.
This game also does a great job of avoiding having you fall into the trap of just treating each combat encounter identically in several ways. First, by splitting the game up into a Japan and a Hawaii half, you have two different parties who control differently to play with. Secondly, by having each job provide permanent bonuses for being upgraded (both by having skills unlocked or just direct HP, MP, etc bufs), you're encouraged to cycle characters through multiple jobs. Finally, they also do the standard thing of having different enemies be weak and strong against different moves which forces you to change things up.
Dondoko Island and Sujimon league were both great minigames (although the actual act of recruiting Sujimon left a little something to be desired). Having never played Animal Crossing, I was surprised how into Dondoko Island I got - I basically did not leave the island once I arrived in Chapter 6 until I had gotten it to 5 stars. I do wish it was more customizable as a resort than as, well, Kamurocho, but it makes sense how RGG was able to reuse assets to save development time when building the game.
The writing here is top notch, and I loved the Hawaii portion of the game - it captured Waikiki perfectly IMO. The new protagonist characters were all great additions, as was Yamai. However, the main villains in the story didn't hold up as well as other Yakuza villains in the past, and that led to the main plot falling a little bit short for me.
This game also does a great job of avoiding having you fall into the trap of just treating each combat encounter identically in several ways. First, by splitting the game up into a Japan and a Hawaii half, you have two different parties who control differently to play with. Secondly, by having each job provide permanent bonuses for being upgraded (both by having skills unlocked or just direct HP, MP, etc bufs), you're encouraged to cycle characters through multiple jobs. Finally, they also do the standard thing of having different enemies be weak and strong against different moves which forces you to change things up.
Dondoko Island and Sujimon league were both great minigames (although the actual act of recruiting Sujimon left a little something to be desired). Having never played Animal Crossing, I was surprised how into Dondoko Island I got - I basically did not leave the island once I arrived in Chapter 6 until I had gotten it to 5 stars. I do wish it was more customizable as a resort than as, well, Kamurocho, but it makes sense how RGG was able to reuse assets to save development time when building the game.
The writing here is top notch, and I loved the Hawaii portion of the game - it captured Waikiki perfectly IMO. The new protagonist characters were all great additions, as was Yamai. However, the main villains in the story didn't hold up as well as other Yakuza villains in the past, and that led to the main plot falling a little bit short for me.
2023
This review contains spoilers
This was an engaging turn based RPG, with fun varied gameplay, and a good story. Generally the writing was funny and the mood of the game was uplifitng without being saccharine, which I appreciated. The amount of content here is staggering, especially for a team so small. There are a huge variety of biomes, all with unique art, enemies, and music to go with them.
I very much appreciated how the designers of the game kept combat from getting stale. Not only did they use the usual tricks of having different enemies be strong/weak against different damage types - but they introduced a lock system where enemies needed to be hit by specific types of attacks before a specific number of turns in order to prevent an attack. At its best, this functions as a mini in-battle puzzle, trying to figure out how to shuffle your characters and abilities around in order to meet the requirements of the lock. In combination these things really helped avoid the trap that many turn based combat systems can fall into where you find one combination of attacks that works for you and just settle into them for the rest of the game.
For a lot of the game I was wishing there was a fast travel system, but one does appear in the very late game. I do also wish there was a good way to go back to the world map quickly when you were in a level -- this would have been especially useful when mopping up collectibles.
My only major gripe with the game is a spoiler for the very end game ...
...
The final boss fight in the true ending was all fine and good, but then it goes to a space shooter format out of nowhere after the whole game to that point had only required succeeding at turn based combat. Failure on the shooter part resets the final boss's health, which meant that this encounter took me well over an hour to complete when streaming from my Xbox to my Steam Deck. :-/ Additionally, maybe I missed it, but I didn't even see a prompt telling you what the controls were in this portion -- it took me 4 or 4 times through before I realized you could press A to shoot. Having such a required change of pace come out of nowhere so late in the game was truly unfortunate.
I very much appreciated how the designers of the game kept combat from getting stale. Not only did they use the usual tricks of having different enemies be strong/weak against different damage types - but they introduced a lock system where enemies needed to be hit by specific types of attacks before a specific number of turns in order to prevent an attack. At its best, this functions as a mini in-battle puzzle, trying to figure out how to shuffle your characters and abilities around in order to meet the requirements of the lock. In combination these things really helped avoid the trap that many turn based combat systems can fall into where you find one combination of attacks that works for you and just settle into them for the rest of the game.
For a lot of the game I was wishing there was a fast travel system, but one does appear in the very late game. I do also wish there was a good way to go back to the world map quickly when you were in a level -- this would have been especially useful when mopping up collectibles.
My only major gripe with the game is a spoiler for the very end game ...
...
The final boss fight in the true ending was all fine and good, but then it goes to a space shooter format out of nowhere after the whole game to that point had only required succeeding at turn based combat. Failure on the shooter part resets the final boss's health, which meant that this encounter took me well over an hour to complete when streaming from my Xbox to my Steam Deck. :-/ Additionally, maybe I missed it, but I didn't even see a prompt telling you what the controls were in this portion -- it took me 4 or 4 times through before I realized you could press A to shoot. Having such a required change of pace come out of nowhere so late in the game was truly unfortunate.
2022
A fun concept - bouncing between going on dungeon crawls to get resources to power up your cult, which provides resources to power up subsequent dungeon runs. I did find that by the end the cult side of things felt too micro-mangey for me, but overall it was fun and didn't overstay its welcome. (Perhaps to a fault? When the credits rolled, it felt like a bit of a "that's it?" moment to me).
2021
Mechanics were too finicky - figuring out how to do the thing I knew I needed to do got frustrating quickly, especially when you only had one shot each time through the time loop (and where some of the things I was trying to do required doing a sequence of events to set them up each time)
A more difficult map and set of characters than the base game. Notably the new map feels much more like a traditional video game map, with different areas having different enemies and biomes to explore. It was fun to have new unlocks to go after and interesting new abilities to unlock. Fundamentally it's more of the same from the base game, but that's not a bad thing at all.
2022
My Mount Rushmore of TV is The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, The Wire and Deadwood, so As Dusk Falls was right up my alley. I am also obviously biased, but the xCloud implementation was top notch.
2016
A solid sequel to the first Dishonored - it's a lot more of the same, which is great.
This was good for what it was - a short 2d adventure game. The lack of a quest log was mitigated by the short game length which meant you could keep your objectives easily in mind. The game did feel a bit padded by having to do a bit of back tracking. Combat was a bit flat, which was OK during the main game but grew stale somewhat quickly on the train in the DLC.
Blossom Tales is pretty good for what it is - clearly a Link to the Past-alike, and it pulls that off fairly well. My main issues with the game were the repetitive puzzle designs, and the straight-forward dungeons. There's a core of a good idea here, it just falls slightly flat.
2021
Very enjoyable - a fun mix of stealth, action, and rouge-lite elements, all with typical Arcane world building. The banter between Colt and Julianna was quite good. A real highlight was the job the game does of building tension, especially in the early game - should I press my luck and try to take out that visionary, or should I go back to the tunnel and lock in these trinkets and weapons that I have already found.
This tension did taper off toward the mid-to-late game however, since I wound up finding a loadout that worked well for me- Shift and Nexus slabs (perhaps since I just recently played the Dishonored games, I was used to those powers) along with a silenced pistol, a sniper rifle, and a shotgun, and not modifying it much. I do wish there were better ways to improve your character between loops toward the end game - I wound up not using most of the trinkets I would find in an area (there would be lots of duplicates or versions of lower power than I already had).
Minor gripe is that there seems to be achievement related bugs, I never unlocked several of the story related achievements even though I did complete the game.
This tension did taper off toward the mid-to-late game however, since I wound up finding a loadout that worked well for me- Shift and Nexus slabs (perhaps since I just recently played the Dishonored games, I was used to those powers) along with a silenced pistol, a sniper rifle, and a shotgun, and not modifying it much. I do wish there were better ways to improve your character between loops toward the end game - I wound up not using most of the trinkets I would find in an area (there would be lots of duplicates or versions of lower power than I already had).
Minor gripe is that there seems to be achievement related bugs, I never unlocked several of the story related achievements even though I did complete the game.
This review contains spoilers
This was a fairly good adventure game, even for someone without a background in the original games. For the most part, it avoided having overly obtuse puzzles - and it has an included hint book for if you do get stuck. The story moved quickly and had nice narrative framing, with older Guybrush telling a story to his kid.
It did bog down a bit in chapter 4, but it was enjoyable throughout.
The very end of the story and the note left behind in the scrapbook did strike me as fairly sad, with the creators of the game saying that they perhaps had done all they can do with the series even though there's always a pull to make it continue on.
It did bog down a bit in chapter 4, but it was enjoyable throughout.
The very end of the story and the note left behind in the scrapbook did strike me as fairly sad, with the creators of the game saying that they perhaps had done all they can do with the series even though there's always a pull to make it continue on.
2022
This game is a lot more of the 2018 God of War, which is great by me. That one was one of my favorite games, perhaps hitting harder since I had just become a parent when I played it and couldn't really fathom how to raise a child without my wife around.
This one didn't have that type of impact, perhaps because the parenting issues were ones that I wouldn't have run into yet, but I still found the narrative to be engaging and well done. In particular, Odin was top notch in this game.
I have seen some complaints about the pacing - swapping between the linear story segments and the more open side-quest segments, but I actually really liked that aspect of the game. I tend to play games by doing as many side quests as possible before advancing the main story, and the way this game was structured provided a nice counter-balance to the way I would normally do things. Additionally, some light metroid-vania elements of having areas of the world be inaccessible until some item was unlocked further in the story made it so that I did keep steady story progress. I very much appreciated the characters providing some throw away dialog lines to let you know that the thing you are puzzling over would require an item you didn't have yet, so that you didn't sit around trying to figure out something that wasn't yet doable.
This game does have a lot of systems and fairly technical combat. I found them all enjoyable by the end, but it did take me a couple of hours to get my head around it. I can certainly imagine that this would not be the type of game you could put down and come back to later - keeping all the different move sets in your head (in addition to the story line) would be a bit too much.
Overall, my favorite game of 2022.
This one didn't have that type of impact, perhaps because the parenting issues were ones that I wouldn't have run into yet, but I still found the narrative to be engaging and well done. In particular, Odin was top notch in this game.
I have seen some complaints about the pacing - swapping between the linear story segments and the more open side-quest segments, but I actually really liked that aspect of the game. I tend to play games by doing as many side quests as possible before advancing the main story, and the way this game was structured provided a nice counter-balance to the way I would normally do things. Additionally, some light metroid-vania elements of having areas of the world be inaccessible until some item was unlocked further in the story made it so that I did keep steady story progress. I very much appreciated the characters providing some throw away dialog lines to let you know that the thing you are puzzling over would require an item you didn't have yet, so that you didn't sit around trying to figure out something that wasn't yet doable.
This game does have a lot of systems and fairly technical combat. I found them all enjoyable by the end, but it did take me a couple of hours to get my head around it. I can certainly imagine that this would not be the type of game you could put down and come back to later - keeping all the different move sets in your head (in addition to the story line) would be a bit too much.
Overall, my favorite game of 2022.