Something I've been having a lot of trouble with while writing reviews in this website is doing so for games I love or really respect, partly because I feel like I wouldn't be doing them any justice whatsoever, or simply due to not being able to convey my feelings and experience properly (and honestly, there are reviews out there that are so good that it just feels like anything I'd write down would be inferior in every capacity).

However, this game, which also happened to be the 200th game on my profile, motivated me enough to at least give it a go.

"Even the sweetest treats get bitter with each bite."

I first stumbled upon this game when buying the itch.io Ukraine Bundle, and a friend telling me the game is amazing and "the Undertale of shmups" made me give it a go...
...and I ended up liking it so much I bought it on Steam not long after, if that's any indicative of how much I enjoyed it.

There are many things I could say about this game, but first things first, this game is a blast. It would be unfair to say other shmups aren't (i.e. CAVE games are amazing), but this game in particular shows it's been carefully thought of for years, and the sheer passion of the devs bleeds out of the game uncontrollably.
The controls feel snappy, it never felt unfair to me, the music is amazing, and so are the two-palette graphics. On top of that, it's really accessible to people who haven't played shmups before with its somewhat lenient continues/lives system.

...but most of this can be said for other shmups. What makes ZeroRanger stand out?

"You've entered a vicious cycle of life and death."

For starters, the game won't be a cakewalk. As is a staple of the genre, you will die. A lot. But your determination shall not waver, and even the game helps in this endeavour by progressively making it smoother with more continues the longer you play. The beautiful landscapes and scenarios this game presents while you shoot down Green Orange's forces will feel nowhere as unique and vibrant on your subsequent runs, but even so, you might feel compelled to keep pushing through despite the several adversities on the way (trust me, there are many).

"As you cling on to this cycle, your desires poison your mind"

With the actual progression system as your true companion in this journey, you will slowly gain the power to get through what this game has to offer, and even despite the aforementioned adversities, your rewards for your struggles will be there in the form of your runs lasting longer, and getting deeper and deeper into this everlasting cycle.

But it has an end to be put to. And the game seems so heavily insistent on the idea of reaching enlightenment. Maybe that's what's waiting for you at the finish line?
You may ask what that is, but I'm not one to say or decide. You can play this game and reach your so desired response, or lack thereof, but I'll keep this as vague as I possibly can.

"Ignorance. Attachment. Aversion."

The story and symbolisms that this game carries forward are top-notch, despite most of the storytelling being either very vague or just implicit. I will not talk about this much as I want to keep this spoiler-free, but when you reach the ending, the experience just clicks together, and makes the journey and the countless hindrances so much more satisfying in hindsight.

If whenever you finish the game you're confused, which you might as well be, there's a lot of discussion about this game and its story/topics online that may help on that front.
At this point in time, which is only a few days after having finished the game, I still don't know if I get what it tries to say in its entirety, but what I can grasp makes it a simple, yet meaningful story.

"Feeding these unwholesome thoughts will only lead to more suffering."

This game is probably one of the best experiences that are awaiting you in this entire genre. Maybe the game might not seem appealing to you, and that's fine, but if there's even one shred of doubt or interest, I strongly recommend giving it a fair shake before giving up on it. The game is a piece of art, but it's hard, and it will do what it possibly can to remind you of that fact of all times, so you know what you'd be getting yourself into.

Perhaps when you finish it you won't think the same way I do, or you may just think it's good but nothing amazing, but you never know, so give it a chance, I don't think you'll regret it.

Shall you get to dedicate some of your time to this game, remember these words:
Do not give in to Despair.
May you attain Enlightenment.

And if you do,
I hope you can carry this Power with you.

Este juego lo siento como un quiero pero no
El juego en si, es el mas amplio de la saga con diferencia con un montón de super técnicas, super tácticas, espíritus guerreros y tótems, es una pasada el contenido que tiene PERO:

>Siento que los tótems es como un parche o repuesta a los espíritus (Los tótems empiezan siendo débiles cuando lo invocan y van subiendo de nivel conforme se usen llegando a superar el poder de los espíritus, a veces) pero no le veo realmente uso mas allá del PVP que lo usaras poco (a no ser que tengas un grupo de amigos o algo a sin) ya que no es el contenido principal, si ya tiene a los espíritus que son claramente superiores que la mayoría, no vale la pena usar los tótems

>Hay una gran variedad de personajes y hasta en cierto punto de la aventura te dan bastantes personajes antiguos que gustaran a los fans... pero realmente no hay gran diferencia a usar x o y personaje pues puedes cambiarles cualquier super técnica, puedes usar un delantero como portero y viceversa lo cual hace que la mayoría de personajes se sientan que son copypaste pero con skin de tu favorito lo cual es decepcionante

>La historia es mala, no es la peor de la saga (Eso son Luz/Sombra) pero no es buena, te ves venir realmente la mayoría de giros (Solo 1 realmente me sorprendió) y fuerzan cosas como "O claro, los aliens existen" y no se lo plantean lo cual no es nuevo en la saga pero siempre me saco de la historia personalmente además usan lo típico de la amistad siempre prevalece lo cual abunda en la saga (Sobre todo en Go) y cansa, se siente como algo que ya vi lo cual a mi gusto hace la historia mala

>Los mapas de la saga siempre me gustaron y aquí estoy dividido... Realmente me gustaron los escenarios pero se sienten raro por las excesivas pantallas de cargas que tienes para ir de un lugar a otro, matan bastante el ritmo. Los mapas lo podemos dividir en la Tierra y otros Planetas, los Planetas esta genial, fue una gran sorpresa, incluso tienen pequeños minijuegos algunos bastante agradables y divertido, la Tierra por otro lado se siente rara, por una parte algunos lugares se sienten acogedores (sobre todo los de otras entregas) pero los nuevos se sienten vacíos o que solo vas a pasar un par de veces por allí lo cual es triste porque realmente me gustan como están los escenarios

Dicho eso, me pase el juego con mas de 30 horas y a esta fecha llevo 50 horas y estoy construyendo mi equipo definitivo, no es mal juego pero tampoco puedo decir que alguien que no sea fan lo juegue, mas incluyendo que tendrías que parchearlo en español y demás... Esperaba mas de este juego

While a great throwback to the NES Era of video game, Final Fantasy simply fails to live up to its predecessor Stranger of Paradise, keeping in mind its shortcomings and lack of content this game should've been a DLC bonus for Stranger of Paradise rather than its own standalone title.

Final Fantasy is a total step down in everything, even the combat, and story which was greatly shocking to me as I found those aspects of the original to be phenomenal.
Gone are the complexities of the soul shield system, and in exchange, we have a watered-down job system with a tiring and exhausting turn-based combat system which is a complete insult to everything Stranger of Paradise was.

The story is a complete rehash of Stranger of Paradise with plot points removed, despite the fact this is a sequel which greatly upsets me as the story was one of the best aspects of the original game and a follow up had a lot of potential, yet the execs over at Square care not for artistic integrity but trying to make a quick buck cashing on a massively popular IP which makes it safe to assume that Stranger of Paradise was a lightning in a bottle that they will never be able to capture again.

So, I tried this game out of curiosity after having heard of it, mainly due to being one of Arcaea's first collabs with other rhythm games.
The servers are no longer online and it's no longer downloadable through Google Play Store, so yeah it's sadly died off, therefore I could only try offline mode, which is as barebones as it can get, since it only consists in trying out the songs the game has in Practice Mode, that, as far as I can tell, doesn't even save your top scores.

Whatever modes and content the game had online, I can't talk about them from experience, though I might get better informed about it and come back to fill that out eventually.

After having played for a while, I can say it's pretty fun: the songs, even though it doesn't have much as the game didn't last too long, are pretty good and what you'd expect from an arcade-y rhythm game, and the chart are decently fun, with a fair level curve to get better at the game.

Its graphics are also really pretty, with how the character sprites look and all, so there's that to take into account too.

What I don't get are the ratings, I've managed to do a Full Combo in one song, with almost all of it being perfect notes, yet I didn't get even an A, just a B, and considering there's also A, S and SS, I don't know what I'm exactly missing out on (if my memory serves me right I do recall reading something about how the ranking system was pretty much broken or really weird in the last updates so that might be it).

Last, but not least, its English translation is serviceable enough, but a complete mess, there's no way that wasn't machine translated.

To sum it up, this is a potential-filled yet unpolished rhythm game that sadly went off too soon, the visuals are really pretty and if properly ironed out could have been a really good rhythm game, but alas, it couldn't.

If Collesta, the game devs, ever decide to try a revival, I'll be there to try it out as from the little I could play of it, they were getting onto something and I'd be glad to watch them polish it up and try again.

P.D. This score may not accurately reflect what the game was during its active runtime, I'll try to figure that out eventually.

I don't like this revisionist history I'm seeing with regards to this project that tries to paint Sonic '06 as something that can be salvaged with "better core gameplay". Sonic 06 was a fundamentally broken game, in every single aspect of its design. It's not something so easily fixed, and after all these years of it being one of the most laughably bad games of all time, one that even the most die-hard fans seemed to have trouble defending, it's very strange seeing people online saying stuff like "it had good ideas!" or "it just needed a bit more development time!" or "It has a lot of potential!". My knee-jerk reaction is to say this is nostalgia talking for a lot of people, wanting to believe this game they felt so disappointed by as a kid could've ended up as a masterpiece, but the reality is that the game never stood a chance. You'd have to go back to the drawing board with Sonic 06 to pull out something decent, not just give it more time in the oven.

No hate to the project's creator, because I think it's a genuine show of love for the series that someone would undergo trying to salvage one of the most infamous games of all time. If I'm judging just his work I'd be praising him, but unfortunately his great work is still being built upon, well, Sonic '06. If the myriad of tweaks is enough to make this game enjoyable for Sonic fans, all the more power to them. But playing this project just crystalized for me how much Sega absolutely failed with Sonic '06. The level design is boring, frequently includes frustrating mechanics and the additional characters outside Sonic, Shadow and Silver still feel tacked on and never as fun as the primary trio, and focusing on half-baked physics puzzles and vehicle combat for the Shadow and Silver campaigns is still completely misguided.

I fully admit the game controls much better now, and would love to see people take this framework and do something new with it. But good core controls doesn't suddenly make Sonic '06 worth playing, it just shows that game development is complicated, and the fixes we propose as fans often aren't enough to save the games we want to love. I wanted to love Sonic '06 when I played it as a young kid, but even then, when my standards for games were so much lower, I still felt that this game was broken beyond repair. Unfortunately after playing P-06, I still feel that way.

Garfield Kart es irónicamente un relato humano sobre la pérdida de la inocencia y la cordura.

La historia nos sitúa en un día cualquiera, mostrando que las tragedias suceden cuando menos te las esperas. Garfield no puede caminar por algún motivo extraño así que decide usar un coche para cumplir un sueño que tuvo desde muy pequeño de correr por varios circuitos de todo el mundo. Jon es consciente de esto así que le pide como favor al resto de personajes del universo que colaboren y hagan carreras junto al gato.

Esto pone feliz a Garfield y le muestra que incluso en su punto más bajo puede encontrar la felicidad mediante sus seres queridos. Pero a la vez, le envía en una espiral de la que no podrá salir. El juego solo nos da la opción de correr en los mismos circuitos hasta que nos aburramos mostrando que Garfield nunca será feliz. Correrá hasta el final de los tiempos y no encontrará la cura.

Al tener su nombre en el título del juego ninguno de los otros personajes puede hacer nada. Simplemente rezar en un paralelismo a “I have no mouth and I must scream” de que algún día morirán y podrán descansar de llevar estúpidos sombreros y conducir coches más pequeños que la mesa de mi comedor.

Es por esta depresión que pasa Garfield que los niveles son algo planos y sin mucho desafío. La mente de Garfield se abstrae a recuerdos de sitios que conoce o en los que le gustaría estar. También ahí el manejo de algunos vehículos siendo torpe. Simplemente no hay ganas de girar un poquito el volante. Y los objetos son pura esquizofrenia.

Podría profundizar mucho más pero me quiero ir a dormir así que lo dejaré así: Garfield Kart es uno de los videojuegos más emocionalmente impactantes que he jugado en mi vida por la historia que nos cuenta donde ningún personaje acaba siendo feliz. Es deprimente y cada segundo que pasas jugando piensas en como pocos videojuegos se han atrevido a tocar estos temas y llevarlos con tanta maestría de la metáfora. El infierno son los otros. A quick one before the eternal worm devours connecticut.

"Hey, this series' music is pretty good and people seem to think Kichikuou Rance is amazing, maybe the games are worth something despite what they look like at first glance?"
i.e.:
- ex. 1 ~ Fiend Boss, Rance X
- ex. 2 ~ Mars, Sengoku Rance
- ex. 3 ~ Outdoor Crawl - arrange, Rance Quest
- ex. 4 ~ Influence, Kichikuou Rance (enough examples already, but Rough Edge is also pretty good)

As someone who sometimes gets really interested in a game due to its music, my thoughts were akin to the quote above. And so, I decided to try the series going by release order.
The answer is, at least for this first game, no. Bear with me while I explain why.

Old but gold copper
Beyond its appearance lies a product that has aged as well as a carton of milk contemporary to this game's initial release.
With its extremely barebones and easy-to-break battle system (within 10 minutes of random battles I had leveled up enough that I had no trouble at all for the rest of the game), Rance I's core is flawed beyond redemption.

The game isn't too long to begin with, so it's not like I was expecting some outstanding and profound RPG, but somehow, I was left disappointed. I guess I should maybe even be glad I broke the game that easily, becoming tedious would have been the last straw.
At least the graphics and music are decent for its time, I guess?

A parody to its core
The game's story is pretty much an excuse to make Rance go do something instead of having an actually meaningful plot.
A simplified summary would be something like: "there's a girl that has disappeared, go investigate and bring her back to earn a hefty sum of money", and then you do just that, but adding some minor sidetracking to the mix, so, expecting a lot from this story would not be the smartest move.
To be fair to this game, it pretty much feels like a parody of the average fantasy RPG, so I guess it makes sense it's like this.

When it comes to the humour, this game is an extremely mixed bag, because on one hand, there's a lot of content and puns that can alienate a lot of people, and understandably so, but despite that, the game admittedly has moments where it is genuinely funny.
An example I recall is (paraphrasing it):
+ "How old are you?"
- "I don't have an age."
+ "Huh?"
- "My writers are just lazy."

As you would expect from a game like this, the game does have some questionable content, but personally, the game is so unabashedly goofy that I couldn't take anything seriously and therefore, didn't care about it, I just brushed it off (having played it while talking in VC with friends might have something to do with it). Regardless, it is still something to take into account if you ever feel like playing this series, or this game particularly (for whatever reason).

A proper guidance for the player? Never heard of it
This is something a lot of old RPGs suffer from due to its shorter runtime back then, but this game is just obtuse as hell.
You either use a guide, wander aimlessly trying to take a stab in the dark in the hopes of getting somewhere, or heavily rely on the clue system the game includes, which if I recall correctly, was tied to money (I don't remember how expensive it was though), so... you better get ready to take part in more insanely satisfying battles! Exactly what everyone was waiting for!

Actually cool insights into its development
Before starting the game, there's an option called "Alice's Mansion" that's nothing amazing, but is worth mentioning for anyone interested in old game development, as it scratches the surface of what it entails, and overall, is just a nice bonus.

General thoughts
All in all, this game is definitely a product of its time, somewhat made as a parody to all the fantasy RPGs taking the market by storm at the time.
The setting itself may prove to be more interesting in future entries, but as it stands, with its severely outdated mechanics and structure, weird jokes, and run-of-the-mill storyline, this game is definitely not something I'd call good, at least by current standards.
At worst, the game is annoying, and at best, it's inoffensive. The game also seems to know it is not to be taken seriously, and also doesn't overstay its welcome, so there's that to take into account.

I might have been overly negative with this review, but anyways, it is simply not good, although it's not the worst thing I've ever played either.

If you actually want to play this game, be it for context for further entries, or anything else, download Rance I Rebuilt, it fixes bugs from the original English TL and is probably a better experience overall.

Will the next entries be better than this?
Probably.
Will I keep pushing forward until I reach Kichikuou to see if this is really worth it?
Perhaps.
Did this game make me want to do so?
Not at all.

P.S. why I've made such a long review about this game out of every possible option I could have picked is beyond me. Also, I hope I've been as accurate as possible, but I've played this game more than a month ago, so...

Most of what I've said in Rance I's review (https://www.backloggd.com/u/OmiGCN/review/985650/) is pretty much applicable to this one. However, it certainly does improve a little bit over its predecessor, and just feels like it has more substance when playing.

Boring battles, now with partners!
The battle system largely remains the same, but now you have an actual party! What did you say? You want to control the other characters? Ahahahaha, nope, this game won't let you, the others will do whatever they please (Persona 3 flashbacks ensue), though it's honestly not that big of a deal for most of the game.

I only really had trouble with that at the final boss, due to barely having any healing items left, and Sill just constantly healing Rance, even if she was a hit away from death (for context, if any character dies, it's over).

What is actually annoying is that the strategy of just spamming your way through is the exact same since you have the same amount of control as Rance I, but now there's also somebody else to back you up. Therefore, for the most part it's just spamming attacks, then healing occasionally.

So, in other words, it's as shallow as ever, but at least it kinda felt more fun, I guess? Twice the people, twice the fun, or something like that.

As parodical as ever
The humour from Rance I returns, as expected, but I wouldn't lie if I said a couple of jokes caught me off-guard and made me laugh more than I expected. Tone-wise, yeah, it's still goofy as hell, with some 4th wall-breaking jokes, and other wacky gags, don't really expect anything else or you'll come out disappointed. Of course, sexual jokes are also quite abundant; this is Rance, so who am I to be surprised.

When it comes to its odd and yet-to-be explored amalgamation that is its setting, it still doesn't really go anywhere, much to my disappointment. However, it felt to me that the story is less tacked on and less of an excuse when compared to I. Hell, there's even a few scenes that actually felt serious and seem to delve a bit deeper into the characters, which is something I'll gladly take over whatever Rance I was doing when it got "serious".

Proper guidance? They still don't know what that is
Definitely use a guide for this game too. It's as obnoxious and confusing as the first game, and sometimes seems to heavily rely in having some insane sixth sense to guess stuff, or setting in the boredom by just not knowing what to do. Maybe this gets somewhat fixed in the remaster, but I wouldn't know.

General thoughts
I don't know if I'm missing anything important, but that's pretty much it. Overall, it's nothing mindblowing, but it is, even if barely, a passable experience, and it once again has its moments (they're arguably a bit more frequent than in the first game). At least I had a bit more fun playing this than Rance I, so that's enough for me.

I just hope Rance III finally delivers a bit more on the characters and world, because I can see the potential it harbours. For that, they just have to free the series of the shackles of being limited to just a mere parody of RPGs.

Will they? I don't know, but I sure hope so.

P.S. I should stop making reviews this long, for Rance of all series, I swear.