28 reviews liked by Servbot


Sephiroth took me an hour to beat and if I had failed that fight past the 40 minute mark this was gonna get a 3 stars. I didn't so it keeps the 5 stars but its on thin fucking ice

This review contains spoilers

If Asura's Wrath had ended where it had with nothing to follow it up it would've been good with some fun ideas and ambitions but lacking the final punch that I think an action series, film or story really needs to end on.

This DLC is that punch.

This DLC goes harder than anything else within the main game. Using QTE's in interesting and extremely creative ways. The QTE final punch with Yasha that never ends, extending your hand to god, the final QTE fight where the game itself is trying to out-QTE YOU. It takes the entire form of the entire thing. All of its ideas and ambitions and lofty goals and elevates them to such a degree that it feels like you're punching the developers in the face in order to give Mithra a happy ending.

It sucks total ass that they locked this behind DLC you have to pay for, that shit is genuinely criminal because this DLC is what makes Asura's Wrath (as good as it gets before this) the best shit it could possibly be. This cemented it in the same place for me as something like Redline or something. Playing with the medium and the form to do something fucking bombastic. To go all the fuck out.

If you play Asura's Wrath you HAVE to play this it's non-negotiable. Not only because it's the real ending but because it's a stellar way to end a game like this. Absolute masterclass shit.

Are we so gullible? Do we as an audience not demand anything from our art? There's no story, no new mechanics, no real characters, no interesting or enjoyable visuals, no compelling gameplay, no original ideas at all in fact. Is a faceless strawman to antagonise really enough to get millions of people to play an Unreal Engine asset flip made as artlessly as possible? Is no one else actively disturbed by how blatantly and gracelessly this rips mechanics from every popular game of the last 2 decades, without integrating any of them together whatsoever? Has art ever felt this cynical before?

Feel free to discount my opinion. I am a 'salty Pokemon fanboy' after all, and I only gave this game an hour or so of my not particularly highly valued time. I personally just prefer the art I engage with to care for the art form it sits within, even a little bit. Palworld hates video games. It sees nothing more within them than a collection of things to do and hopes that by shovelling a flaccid farcical version of as many of them as possible into your mouth it will somehow constitute a 'video game' when all is said and done. It doesn't. I'm deeply saddened that so many gamers think so lowly of our art form that they genuinely think this is acceptable.

bitches be like "this is what takes nintendo and those soulless corporations down" when this game was made with the same soulless sentiment

On garibaldi if you start and don't touch the controller you'll board into a crevice where you constantly bump and crash but don't respawn causing the controller to vibrate endlessly. Do with that what you will.

the person that thought filling this game with 10-20 minute score attack missions was a good idea should've been kicked off the team on the spot

Third one down. It’s good!! The mission design here is my biggest gripe--there’s a heavy focus on overlong ground assaults with pretty negligible resistance, giving the game a more languid pace than the 5-10 minute single objective bangers in Electrosphere. Incoming missiles feel weirdly rare and simple to dodge, and you totally miss out on most of the chaotic to-and fro moments of disorientating aerial evasion and cathartic re-engagement I love so much in the other titles I’ve played. While their presentation in the story sequences is neat, the Yellow squadron also aren’t particularly challenging or singular in their flight patterns/assault style/formations compared to other series elites, and the dogfighting aspects feel a little undercooked in addition to their sparseness. Still, the highs here are incredibly high and shine even in the face of their direct counterparts in Skies Unknown (Stonehenge is way better here, Farbanti feels so grand), and Megalith is an impeccable finale and a peak OST/mood moment for the franchise.

Really enjoyed the muted melancholy of the story presentation in this one, and I continue to be fascinated by the atypical narrative divulsion in many of the AC games. The way surrounding/opposing players in the conflict are given such emotive weight in contrast to the silent, relatively depersonalized (but always awe-inspiring, meteorically rising, eerily murder-adept) heroic player avatar has this vaguely subversive Drakengardy quality that complicates the oorah arcadey exuberance of play--and adds a faint but much-needed disquieting lens to the many bombing run onslaughts--in ways I don't always find 100% convincing, but really compelling nonetheless. I love how these games make efforts to problematize themselves while still going ham on their fraught stylized romanticism; it’s a way more interesting experience to see seductive and accomplished genre pieces like this messily attempting to self navigate and complicate their own meaning vs scoldy one-note polemics like spec ops: the line clunkily hammering you with an overtly obvious “deconstruction” while failing to show an understanding of the alluring, masterful, potentially dangerous core tenets of their genre to any convincing degree.

I do miss the utter confidence and idiosyncratic minimalism of Electrosphere compared to AC04; Shattered Skies feels like it’s in an in-between space that cant measure up to the steely infographic expressivity of 3 and the visceral romanticism/borderline Makoto Shinkai skies in future iterations, and the expanded radio chatter still doesn’t feel 100% embodied and engaging compared to the ensemble drama soapiness I know is coming. The game absolutely must have been a fucking banger when it came out though (especially compared to the interest-excised English version of Electrosphere we got at the time) and the highlights hold the hell up!! Unsung war next lets goooooo

Seeing the shaky hand on the pocket watch for the first time in the first kraken sequence: This game is fucking incredible

Attempting to actually solve any of the "puzzles" without a direct line to the developer's cerebral cortex: I have literally never been more miserable in my entire life

Link tearing through the lands of Hyrule on the shit that killed Shinzo Abe

Somehow, the bad optimization returned.