Shenobi
2010
The 360 version was riddled with bugs and I ultimately managed to boundary break to the edge of the world. Spoiler: New Vegas was apparently an island because there's nothing but radioactive water in every direction outside of the regular game field.
Played it through a couple years later on PC and it was still a stellar experience...much better without having the dozen or so freezes and the boundary break I experienced in the 360 version.
Played it through a couple years later on PC and it was still a stellar experience...much better without having the dozen or so freezes and the boundary break I experienced in the 360 version.
2015
Not sure what the hate is on this game -- it looks great, the story is enjoyable, if not a little saddening at times, and the combat is silky-smooth. Did people get their feelings hurt in the arena or something?
The sequel was a huge drop in quality and one giant fan-service dump. This was a great experience, though.
The sequel was a huge drop in quality and one giant fan-service dump. This was a great experience, though.
2014
Regardless of whether you have any interest in games that are reminiscent of the Sonic platforming style or not -- go check out the soundtrack for Freedom Planet because it's golden.
2011
Amazing soundtrack, ridiculously stupid ending(s).
This review contains spoilers
Short, short answer: When it's fun, it's really fun. When it's obnoxious, it's really obnoxious.
Longer answer: Well, let's break it down piece-by-piece.
Visually, the game is a mixed bag. Occasionally solid visuals get marred by horrible jagging and outlines (especially with characters), textures popping in and out that can sometimes happen so fast and repeatedly that it looks like a clinical in how to induce an inadvertent seizure, and the oft-mentioned draw distance problem coming into play, usually in the form of mons or other things you're specifically looking for not showing up until you're right on them. Not a deal-breaker by any means, but it's always a fun time when you're crouching in a cave and can see white light pouring through the seams of textures that don't quite touch the ground properly (or worse in some cases).
The game is fine as audio goes. Cues for alpha mons, some fun area music, subdued music when crouching in tall grass -- it's all pretty nice. If I had one concern, it's a question of why music sometimes just isn't present in an area at all. My wife and I have both had points where we'd be moving around for long periods of time with no area music playing, only to have it start up all of the sudden out of nowhere.
Technical issues, I only ran into a few.
At one point, the game started lagging a lot, so I saved, only to have it crash about ten seconds later. Nothing intensive, was just walking out of Galaxy Hall and heading over to the item box.
Another issue is that turn order in combat sometimes doesn't care about said order anymore when you're facing multiple pokemon at once. I can't speak to any specifics, but I definitely had a fairly fast mon that was significantly higher in level than the three mons it was up against sit there through five actions after using an Agile attack that -- at least according to the turn counter -- suggested it should only have to wait through three actions. Had a few situations like this, but I can only speculate on some aspects of it and it largely doesn't make sense to me in the case of the example I cited.
USEFUL TECHNICAL ISSUE FOR PLAYERS WANTING TO GAME THE SYSTEM -- Was doing some trading with my wife to test the usual mons to see if they'd evolve on trades with or without items, and noticed something very peculiar. Essentially, mons that you traded to someone and had traded back to you counted as another new mon in your research list for the purposes of catching mons.
Having trouble with Request 17 wanting you to fill out a Cherrim entry completely? Get someone to evolve a Cherubi and trade it back and forth until you're done. Especially useful since they're (at least for us) a pain to find and Petal Dance -- the move it asks to see for research purposes -- isn't learned until near level 50.
Basically, if you have a friend and are willing to commit to back-and-forths for trades, you can knock out some of the more frustrating mons pretty easily to get your Research Level 10 quotas.
Regarding gameplay, the game really manages to feel both fun and irritating for me depending on any given moment. I actually enjoyed the sneaking around to catch mons far more than I thought I would, and battling is mostly fine.
Battles feel really binary, as it seems like mons are built in a stacked manner against a player who might bring mons that should be strong against them to the battle. A lot of strategy is out the window because certain things just aren't relevant anymore -- status effects are temporary (and gone after battle), setups (both field-based and stat-based) are temporary during the battle, and you will occasionally be forced into battles against multiple mons at once with no ability to hit all mons present (as far as I know).
I'm not sure to the full extent of which AI behaves in this manner, but some mons specifically formulate their turn AFTER you've dealt damage -- in the case of one particular legendary in the postgame, it would heal itself right after a hit would reduce it to red bar levels WITHOUT FAIL. Trying to balance your attacks to get it into the red so you can catch it? Better stack yourself up with a second free turn because you're going to need it (or in my case, just get tired of it and throw a ball while it was in the yellow and get lucky).
Wasn't fond of the bosses for the most part. My wife said that they're there to test your understanding of the mechanics of the game, but I feel like it's just another "thing" that they wanted to try out, as per the standard in Pokemon games. You never sneak around or try and catch the bosses, nor do you even really actively engage them with your own mons -- instead, you're required to play an arena dodging game for a bit until the mon either does something that stuns it and allows you to engage it with a mon, or it gets tired of going through its cycle of moves and lets you throw a mon then. Yeah, you're throwing stuff at it to weaken it the whole time, but that's not something you do in the wild with normal mons, either. And the reward for beating a given boss with a mon is to have a few extra seconds to throw more stuff at the boss.
Some of the patterns do result in a fun time (second boss for me, specifically), but it mostly just feels like a chore. I died to the third boss once because dodging out of the way resulted in me clipping against invisible walls because of the way the terrain is set up for the fight, so that's an added bonus!
If you are having trouble with them, you are given the option to restart the fight or even restart the fight with your current progress against that boss counted in the restart. Nice option to have for people having trouble, I guess.
Having an invisible stamina bar for your dash/sprint/run move seems weird, but since there isn't any stamina required for dodging, you can always dodge roll forward whenever your sprint runs out because it's slightly faster than your normal movement and a few seconds will recharge your invisible stamina bar.
There's some weird design decisions, like giving the player the option to drown after they've acquired the water mount -- if you're using a mount and hit the water, you automatically call the water mount...but if you just jump into the water, you have to choose to call the water mount or drown and get sent back to shore. This also applies to the flying mount allowing you to switch to a non-flier in mid-air and drop (potentially to your death) if you want to. Kind of weird that they allow it, but in a way, it did allow me to realize that you could use the climbing mount to move up a wall, let go, fly to rise higher, then cling to the wall and switch again to move up the wall slightly faster. Beyond that, still seems like some weird decisions.
I don't mind there not being any breeding or (as far as I know) player battling in the game, but it does kinda put a damper on my desire to push beyond just collecting all the mons up and through postgame.
I did like some of the design decisions for alternate forms for some mons (which I will not mention here, regardless of the spoiler warning). I did end up using a couple of them through the end and postgame sections because I kinda grew attached to them. STILL WAITING ON SOME NEW EEVEELUTIONS, CAN'T WAIT FOR 2037 WHEN THEY FINALLY GIVE US A NEW ONE.
So yeah, essentially...when I'm not fighting bosses (outside of the second one) or just occasionally getting ganked in a goofy way in combat, it's a pretty alright time. I think I died three times in total? Once to the third boss, once to the endgame boss, and once to trying to be a good Samaritan by trying to get someone's bag they dropped and falling off an invisible-walled cliff because they dropped their bag in an area I wasn't normally able to access because of incorrect mounts, but it didn't stop me from walking/sprinting/jumping up awkward textures until I was too high to save myself from falling. Whoops!
Can't imagine getting this on sale unless you get lucky with one of those rare 30% sales that happen like twice a year, so I'd say it's worth getting full price if Pokemon is your bag, but if you think you can hold off, keep an eye out for one of those rare sales and just wishlist it. It's fun enough, the lore they try to throw out there is interesting (at times), and you get some new forms of several mons that make for some more interesting team chemistry if that's your bag.
Longer answer: Well, let's break it down piece-by-piece.
Visually, the game is a mixed bag. Occasionally solid visuals get marred by horrible jagging and outlines (especially with characters), textures popping in and out that can sometimes happen so fast and repeatedly that it looks like a clinical in how to induce an inadvertent seizure, and the oft-mentioned draw distance problem coming into play, usually in the form of mons or other things you're specifically looking for not showing up until you're right on them. Not a deal-breaker by any means, but it's always a fun time when you're crouching in a cave and can see white light pouring through the seams of textures that don't quite touch the ground properly (or worse in some cases).
The game is fine as audio goes. Cues for alpha mons, some fun area music, subdued music when crouching in tall grass -- it's all pretty nice. If I had one concern, it's a question of why music sometimes just isn't present in an area at all. My wife and I have both had points where we'd be moving around for long periods of time with no area music playing, only to have it start up all of the sudden out of nowhere.
Technical issues, I only ran into a few.
At one point, the game started lagging a lot, so I saved, only to have it crash about ten seconds later. Nothing intensive, was just walking out of Galaxy Hall and heading over to the item box.
Another issue is that turn order in combat sometimes doesn't care about said order anymore when you're facing multiple pokemon at once. I can't speak to any specifics, but I definitely had a fairly fast mon that was significantly higher in level than the three mons it was up against sit there through five actions after using an Agile attack that -- at least according to the turn counter -- suggested it should only have to wait through three actions. Had a few situations like this, but I can only speculate on some aspects of it and it largely doesn't make sense to me in the case of the example I cited.
USEFUL TECHNICAL ISSUE FOR PLAYERS WANTING TO GAME THE SYSTEM -- Was doing some trading with my wife to test the usual mons to see if they'd evolve on trades with or without items, and noticed something very peculiar. Essentially, mons that you traded to someone and had traded back to you counted as another new mon in your research list for the purposes of catching mons.
Having trouble with Request 17 wanting you to fill out a Cherrim entry completely? Get someone to evolve a Cherubi and trade it back and forth until you're done. Especially useful since they're (at least for us) a pain to find and Petal Dance -- the move it asks to see for research purposes -- isn't learned until near level 50.
Basically, if you have a friend and are willing to commit to back-and-forths for trades, you can knock out some of the more frustrating mons pretty easily to get your Research Level 10 quotas.
Regarding gameplay, the game really manages to feel both fun and irritating for me depending on any given moment. I actually enjoyed the sneaking around to catch mons far more than I thought I would, and battling is mostly fine.
Battles feel really binary, as it seems like mons are built in a stacked manner against a player who might bring mons that should be strong against them to the battle. A lot of strategy is out the window because certain things just aren't relevant anymore -- status effects are temporary (and gone after battle), setups (both field-based and stat-based) are temporary during the battle, and you will occasionally be forced into battles against multiple mons at once with no ability to hit all mons present (as far as I know).
I'm not sure to the full extent of which AI behaves in this manner, but some mons specifically formulate their turn AFTER you've dealt damage -- in the case of one particular legendary in the postgame, it would heal itself right after a hit would reduce it to red bar levels WITHOUT FAIL. Trying to balance your attacks to get it into the red so you can catch it? Better stack yourself up with a second free turn because you're going to need it (or in my case, just get tired of it and throw a ball while it was in the yellow and get lucky).
Wasn't fond of the bosses for the most part. My wife said that they're there to test your understanding of the mechanics of the game, but I feel like it's just another "thing" that they wanted to try out, as per the standard in Pokemon games. You never sneak around or try and catch the bosses, nor do you even really actively engage them with your own mons -- instead, you're required to play an arena dodging game for a bit until the mon either does something that stuns it and allows you to engage it with a mon, or it gets tired of going through its cycle of moves and lets you throw a mon then. Yeah, you're throwing stuff at it to weaken it the whole time, but that's not something you do in the wild with normal mons, either. And the reward for beating a given boss with a mon is to have a few extra seconds to throw more stuff at the boss.
Some of the patterns do result in a fun time (second boss for me, specifically), but it mostly just feels like a chore. I died to the third boss once because dodging out of the way resulted in me clipping against invisible walls because of the way the terrain is set up for the fight, so that's an added bonus!
If you are having trouble with them, you are given the option to restart the fight or even restart the fight with your current progress against that boss counted in the restart. Nice option to have for people having trouble, I guess.
Having an invisible stamina bar for your dash/sprint/run move seems weird, but since there isn't any stamina required for dodging, you can always dodge roll forward whenever your sprint runs out because it's slightly faster than your normal movement and a few seconds will recharge your invisible stamina bar.
There's some weird design decisions, like giving the player the option to drown after they've acquired the water mount -- if you're using a mount and hit the water, you automatically call the water mount...but if you just jump into the water, you have to choose to call the water mount or drown and get sent back to shore. This also applies to the flying mount allowing you to switch to a non-flier in mid-air and drop (potentially to your death) if you want to. Kind of weird that they allow it, but in a way, it did allow me to realize that you could use the climbing mount to move up a wall, let go, fly to rise higher, then cling to the wall and switch again to move up the wall slightly faster. Beyond that, still seems like some weird decisions.
I don't mind there not being any breeding or (as far as I know) player battling in the game, but it does kinda put a damper on my desire to push beyond just collecting all the mons up and through postgame.
I did like some of the design decisions for alternate forms for some mons (which I will not mention here, regardless of the spoiler warning). I did end up using a couple of them through the end and postgame sections because I kinda grew attached to them. STILL WAITING ON SOME NEW EEVEELUTIONS, CAN'T WAIT FOR 2037 WHEN THEY FINALLY GIVE US A NEW ONE.
So yeah, essentially...when I'm not fighting bosses (outside of the second one) or just occasionally getting ganked in a goofy way in combat, it's a pretty alright time. I think I died three times in total? Once to the third boss, once to the endgame boss, and once to trying to be a good Samaritan by trying to get someone's bag they dropped and falling off an invisible-walled cliff because they dropped their bag in an area I wasn't normally able to access because of incorrect mounts, but it didn't stop me from walking/sprinting/jumping up awkward textures until I was too high to save myself from falling. Whoops!
Can't imagine getting this on sale unless you get lucky with one of those rare 30% sales that happen like twice a year, so I'd say it's worth getting full price if Pokemon is your bag, but if you think you can hold off, keep an eye out for one of those rare sales and just wishlist it. It's fun enough, the lore they try to throw out there is interesting (at times), and you get some new forms of several mons that make for some more interesting team chemistry if that's your bag.
2022
Eh, it's 5 AM and Steam says I've logged 149.2 hours on the game in the last two weeks. I'm just going to leave it at: it's an amazing game, even with its occasional issues.
Maybe I'll write more tomorrow, but I definitely feel like I got my money's worth and then some out of it. Also ends up somewhere on my list of favorite games of all-time easily, even with Radahn doing his worst Mario Kart Bowser impression.
Maybe I'll write more tomorrow, but I definitely feel like I got my money's worth and then some out of it. Also ends up somewhere on my list of favorite games of all-time easily, even with Radahn doing his worst Mario Kart Bowser impression.
2021
The graphics are pretty one-note and the combat is about as basic as you're going to get, but for a platforming micro-Metroidvania, the movement/jump controls are GOLDEN and the music ranges from mediocre to excellent depending on the area you're in.
I beat the game in just under an hour, but more importantly, didn't realize that there was a whole DLC area for free that was a separate ship with extra content. Go figure.
For three bucks, it's a steal and you don't even need to wait for a sale. Worst case scenario, you're out 20-33% of the cost of a movie ticket while also wasting less time than if your movie sucked. Give this dev some love, please!
I beat the game in just under an hour, but more importantly, didn't realize that there was a whole DLC area for free that was a separate ship with extra content. Go figure.
For three bucks, it's a steal and you don't even need to wait for a sale. Worst case scenario, you're out 20-33% of the cost of a movie ticket while also wasting less time than if your movie sucked. Give this dev some love, please!
2016
EDIT: Now that I've played the free and paid DLCs, I'm bumping this to five stars.
My original gripe with sequence breaking and not being able to progress in the non-Volcano area was my fault because there actually are ways around those "roadblocks", to the extent that there's actually a 0% Item/Ability run you can do that you can get achievements for in both the main game and postgame. You can actually play the entire game without your weapon and still beat it in a non-pacifist manner. In fact, the game was designed with so many different ways to approach it that the devs added in achievements for each scenario that you could pull off and encouraged you to break the game as much as possible, while still making it manageable for anyone who wants that challenge.
The volcano thing is still weird because you needed to have a particular conversation and then have a couple cutscenes to progress that exploration because of story, and this happens with a few other postgame sections, including a post-postgame (yes, there is one).
I'd say that my only real standing gripe is the buttons being listed as numbers in the movelists because yes, I do enjoy experimenting with controls, but sometimes I would rather just look and see a familiar button list to know how to do things. Everything else is essentially golden, with some very excellent boss fights on top of that exploration and sequence breaking that the game unabashedly showcases.
Original review follows.
----------------------------------------------
If you like Metroivanias with non-linear exploration and bosses that are fun bullet hells, this game is made for you and you need to play it.
I have only a couple gripes.
1) Although the UI itself is absolutely lovely, text instructions for abilities that show up in them are unintuitive because it doesn't account for the names of controller buttons, so explanations of moves will be things like, "Press (down arrow) + BUTTON 4." Sometimes when I'd learn a new ability/move, I'd just mess around with all buttons and directions until I figured it out. Not a big deal, just a small thing that makes you burn a few extra seconds to figure stuff out.
2) The non-linearity of this game is mostly excellent, and it's the "mostly" that's come back to haunt me a couple times in one form or another. There's an area I found early on that I couldn't proceed through because the game wants you to clear the first chapter before you're allowed to go do it.
At another point, I used hidden moves to get myself really deep into the volcano area and found myself eventually at a long shaft that seems to repeat infinitely with a save point in the middle of it. I was looking for hidden ledges to drop onto while falling infinitely because the map overlay on the save screen shows a separate-colored room at the bottom.
After spending about fifteen minutes wandering slamming into walls with my face or hammer or magic (and the brief opening that has some spikes on the ground in one section), I checked a walkthrough, only to find out that this area was inaccessible until MUCH later in the game and I had to use my hidden-tech skills to work my way all the way back out of the volcano to the teleporter (which was much more difficult to get back to than it was getting in from). This one was a little more frustrating because the non-linearity encourages exploration, but I was also penalized very thoroughly for exploring in this instance, to the point that I had to check a walkthrough to see I was wasting my time.
Those are minor issues, though -- the walk back from the first area I mentioned wasn't that bad (even if I did it twice) and if you're reading this and haven't played it yet, you're now aware that you shouldn't go too deep into the volcano using hidden tech abilities once you figure out how they work. It's essentially an extra 30 minutes I tacked onto the game for walking back from places and if nothing else, the volcano situation was good practice for honing those skills, even if it was frustrating.
I used all of this review to talk about these things because frankly, I don't want to lay out all the good things this game has going for it because they're innumerable. It's beautiful, non-linear, mostly encourages exploration, lets you progress story at your leisure for the most part, and the soundtrack is nice. There's a postgame and I haven't started it yet, but I will soon. There's also a free DLC that is suggested to be played in postgame and two other DLCs that add more areas/content and I intend to check those out eventually, as well.
Easily in the Top 20 and possibly Top 10 best Metroidvanias just for content alone.
My original gripe with sequence breaking and not being able to progress in the non-Volcano area was my fault because there actually are ways around those "roadblocks", to the extent that there's actually a 0% Item/Ability run you can do that you can get achievements for in both the main game and postgame. You can actually play the entire game without your weapon and still beat it in a non-pacifist manner. In fact, the game was designed with so many different ways to approach it that the devs added in achievements for each scenario that you could pull off and encouraged you to break the game as much as possible, while still making it manageable for anyone who wants that challenge.
The volcano thing is still weird because you needed to have a particular conversation and then have a couple cutscenes to progress that exploration because of story, and this happens with a few other postgame sections, including a post-postgame (yes, there is one).
I'd say that my only real standing gripe is the buttons being listed as numbers in the movelists because yes, I do enjoy experimenting with controls, but sometimes I would rather just look and see a familiar button list to know how to do things. Everything else is essentially golden, with some very excellent boss fights on top of that exploration and sequence breaking that the game unabashedly showcases.
Original review follows.
----------------------------------------------
If you like Metroivanias with non-linear exploration and bosses that are fun bullet hells, this game is made for you and you need to play it.
I have only a couple gripes.
1) Although the UI itself is absolutely lovely, text instructions for abilities that show up in them are unintuitive because it doesn't account for the names of controller buttons, so explanations of moves will be things like, "Press (down arrow) + BUTTON 4." Sometimes when I'd learn a new ability/move, I'd just mess around with all buttons and directions until I figured it out. Not a big deal, just a small thing that makes you burn a few extra seconds to figure stuff out.
2) The non-linearity of this game is mostly excellent, and it's the "mostly" that's come back to haunt me a couple times in one form or another. There's an area I found early on that I couldn't proceed through because the game wants you to clear the first chapter before you're allowed to go do it.
At another point, I used hidden moves to get myself really deep into the volcano area and found myself eventually at a long shaft that seems to repeat infinitely with a save point in the middle of it. I was looking for hidden ledges to drop onto while falling infinitely because the map overlay on the save screen shows a separate-colored room at the bottom.
After spending about fifteen minutes wandering slamming into walls with my face or hammer or magic (and the brief opening that has some spikes on the ground in one section), I checked a walkthrough, only to find out that this area was inaccessible until MUCH later in the game and I had to use my hidden-tech skills to work my way all the way back out of the volcano to the teleporter (which was much more difficult to get back to than it was getting in from). This one was a little more frustrating because the non-linearity encourages exploration, but I was also penalized very thoroughly for exploring in this instance, to the point that I had to check a walkthrough to see I was wasting my time.
Those are minor issues, though -- the walk back from the first area I mentioned wasn't that bad (even if I did it twice) and if you're reading this and haven't played it yet, you're now aware that you shouldn't go too deep into the volcano using hidden tech abilities once you figure out how they work. It's essentially an extra 30 minutes I tacked onto the game for walking back from places and if nothing else, the volcano situation was good practice for honing those skills, even if it was frustrating.
I used all of this review to talk about these things because frankly, I don't want to lay out all the good things this game has going for it because they're innumerable. It's beautiful, non-linear, mostly encourages exploration, lets you progress story at your leisure for the most part, and the soundtrack is nice. There's a postgame and I haven't started it yet, but I will soon. There's also a free DLC that is suggested to be played in postgame and two other DLCs that add more areas/content and I intend to check those out eventually, as well.
Easily in the Top 20 and possibly Top 10 best Metroidvanias just for content alone.
2011
I guess I've "mastered" this game...I do have the one trophy on Steam for completing the game. I played this not long after it initially was released, so it's hard for me to really think back on why it was so frustrating for me, but I distinctly remember feeling extremely unfulfilled when I finished the game.
Take my rating with a grain of salt and maybe consider another review by someone who played the game recently -- this is just here for me to note my 0.5 because I still feel this really strong and negative vibe about the game every time I see it in my library or mentioned on lists. I won't go back to play it again and find out why, though.
Take my rating with a grain of salt and maybe consider another review by someone who played the game recently -- this is just here for me to note my 0.5 because I still feel this really strong and negative vibe about the game every time I see it in my library or mentioned on lists. I won't go back to play it again and find out why, though.
It's a mixed bag for me -- sometimes it's a really fun experience, and sometimes it's trying to swim through laser barriers. You never know what you're going to get. Definitely an alright game, though.
1990
One of my favorite FF games in terms of job systems. The last dungeon is ludicrous in terms of difficulty spikes, though. Put me off of finishing the game the first time around and I had to come back sometime later and give it a real go, but it was worth it.
As far as the games in the series go, kinda enjoyed this one a lot more than I thought I would. Felt like a story dealing with military characters wasn't going to resonate well with me (especially given how very pointedly they try and make your initial interactions between characters awkward for one-another), but it kinda drew me in as the game progressed.
I still hate QTEs to death, House of Ashes at least made me feel like stealth and action moments were important, even if you could feel out the pattern of when the QTEs were coming (especially in the final stand-off of the game).
It doesn't win any awards for me and sometimes characters had a bit of that creepy uncanny valley look to them (Rebecca more than anyone else), but it was fun and probably the best DPA game in the series (if you don't count Until Dawn, which the series doesn't seem to do, either).
Get it on sale, as it's about six to seven hours if you are being careful and trying to find collectables (I collected all frames and 43/50 secrets). There is replayability as always because of different storyline potentials and achievements/trophies, so it's worth it simply on the principle of treating it like going to the movies -- this is largely just an interactive movie that runs about 3-4 times as long as your typical movie, priced at about 2-3 times the cost of a movie, with extra reasons to go back and "watch" it again. If nothing else, get a friend to come over and watch them play through it and see how much their choices differ.
I'd say it's a reasonable deal at 30% off, a steal at 50%.
I still hate QTEs to death, House of Ashes at least made me feel like stealth and action moments were important, even if you could feel out the pattern of when the QTEs were coming (especially in the final stand-off of the game).
It doesn't win any awards for me and sometimes characters had a bit of that creepy uncanny valley look to them (Rebecca more than anyone else), but it was fun and probably the best DPA game in the series (if you don't count Until Dawn, which the series doesn't seem to do, either).
Get it on sale, as it's about six to seven hours if you are being careful and trying to find collectables (I collected all frames and 43/50 secrets). There is replayability as always because of different storyline potentials and achievements/trophies, so it's worth it simply on the principle of treating it like going to the movies -- this is largely just an interactive movie that runs about 3-4 times as long as your typical movie, priced at about 2-3 times the cost of a movie, with extra reasons to go back and "watch" it again. If nothing else, get a friend to come over and watch them play through it and see how much their choices differ.
I'd say it's a reasonable deal at 30% off, a steal at 50%.
1985
A good start in the franchise. Only mildly related, I loved that Blades of Steel featured a mini-game between periods where you could fight a boss ship from this game. Ahh, the halcyon days of good Konami.
I guess this is going to exist perpetually in my backlog.
Originally, I played this up to the Tree of Life point and once I got there, I fed it to the backlog monster so I could play some other stuff that was more appealing at the time.
Time passes, I come back and find out my save is corrupt. Eh, it happens, but I remember it being fun enough, so let's start up again! And...some weird jankiness is going on where Death continued to list to the right when I was moving in the opening area, so I deleted the game and threw it onto the backlog again.
Several years pass, I finally go back and the controls are behaving fine this time, so I beat the opening area...and backlog it again.
And...it's April of 2022, I finally come back to it. It's got that Metroidvania-meets-Zelda-with-other-gimmicks feel that I remember that's charming...until you go through a couple dungeons and realize it's TOO puzzle-oriented and the experience system is strange.
You can't grind extra levels because enemies eventually just pay zero experience...which is fine, I guess. But this means that if you're good at fighting things that might be out of your league early, you're suddenly getting equipment that you can't use until Level 10 and you're Level 5 and the only thing you can do is just progress the game normally...and by the time I got to level 10, I had better equipment than the reward I was given from an optional boss fight in the first place.
The decision to use Diabloesque loot drops is fine, but when they eclipse the special rewards you get from beating something optional and significant, it seems like maybe this game is just seated too far into the gimmick territory.
The world is amazing, but it's a shame that the dungeons feel so flat by comparison because it's just stone with different colors to them and maybe some lava or water. I made it back to the Tree of Life area and then went to do an optional boss fight, which descended into doing ANOTHER lava dungeon and my brain just switched off.
I love the first game, but this just feels like the pinnacle of mediocrity. I'll probably come back to it yet again at some point and hopefully my save won't be corrupted this time and I'll discover that the future dungeons aren't just stone with an element theme attached to them and boatloads of puzzles to pad the dungeon time.
Sticking with the 2.5 star rating until further notice.
Originally, I played this up to the Tree of Life point and once I got there, I fed it to the backlog monster so I could play some other stuff that was more appealing at the time.
Time passes, I come back and find out my save is corrupt. Eh, it happens, but I remember it being fun enough, so let's start up again! And...some weird jankiness is going on where Death continued to list to the right when I was moving in the opening area, so I deleted the game and threw it onto the backlog again.
Several years pass, I finally go back and the controls are behaving fine this time, so I beat the opening area...and backlog it again.
And...it's April of 2022, I finally come back to it. It's got that Metroidvania-meets-Zelda-with-other-gimmicks feel that I remember that's charming...until you go through a couple dungeons and realize it's TOO puzzle-oriented and the experience system is strange.
You can't grind extra levels because enemies eventually just pay zero experience...which is fine, I guess. But this means that if you're good at fighting things that might be out of your league early, you're suddenly getting equipment that you can't use until Level 10 and you're Level 5 and the only thing you can do is just progress the game normally...and by the time I got to level 10, I had better equipment than the reward I was given from an optional boss fight in the first place.
The decision to use Diabloesque loot drops is fine, but when they eclipse the special rewards you get from beating something optional and significant, it seems like maybe this game is just seated too far into the gimmick territory.
The world is amazing, but it's a shame that the dungeons feel so flat by comparison because it's just stone with different colors to them and maybe some lava or water. I made it back to the Tree of Life area and then went to do an optional boss fight, which descended into doing ANOTHER lava dungeon and my brain just switched off.
I love the first game, but this just feels like the pinnacle of mediocrity. I'll probably come back to it yet again at some point and hopefully my save won't be corrupted this time and I'll discover that the future dungeons aren't just stone with an element theme attached to them and boatloads of puzzles to pad the dungeon time.
Sticking with the 2.5 star rating until further notice.
My second favorite Wizardry game (the third being the PS3 one and the first being Wizardry 8). I wish more dungeon crawlers were like this.