funeralcharm
Gacha games make me want to be dead.
Standard is genuinely a really fun format right now, wish this game actually let you play it.
Standard is genuinely a really fun format right now, wish this game actually let you play it.
IF YOU ARE READING THIS, PLAYING XENOBLADE 3, AND HAVE CHAIN ATTACKS UNLOCKED, STOP READING THIS REVIEW RIGHT NOW, GO INTO THE OPTIONS -> GAME MENU AND TURN OFF OVERKILL. PLEASE. DON'T FORGET TO FOR 30 LEVELS LIKE I DID. WHY DO THEY HAVE THAT FEATURE.
Man I don't know lmao. I'm too sick of this game to feel anything good for it, but I've gotten too much out of it to say I didn't have fun and not feel stupid.
Systems upon systems upon mechanics upon mechanics, and they all work pretty well... once you actually have access to all of the parts necessary for them to function. Which happens, at the very earliest, like 50 hours in. The fact that only one out of three Agnus base classes has one single art with a combo status and it's the talent is inexcusable. Also, with the Master Arts (these are good, I like them, they're cool other than this) you're allowed to stick as many combo arts on one character as you like, so have fun with Break - Topple - Launch - Smashing bosses like four times in a row. The combat stays pretty fun in spite of this, though, but like only on hard mode.
The story is for the most part enjoyable when it's actually sticking with the core conceit and for the most part like getting teeth pulled when it's not doing that, which is way too much in my opinion. What actually sucks is that, at least on the English voices end, (and with the understanding I've been spoiled in regard to this for these games), once you're deep enough in, you start to feel like you're viewing cutscenes you've already seen like three previous times, or that the game is having characters talk just to have characters talk (or having them React To Environment for the sake of React To Environment). Most of the heroes are fun to have around, most of the hero quests are Pretty Okay (shoutouts to Valdi's, Ashera's, and Fiona's especially for being genuinely good stories), most of the classes kind of aren't worth playing or keeping on the team to get the full 10 levels.
Something fundamentally unpleasant about the way Masatsugu Saito draws faces. If you think the 2d still drawings are bad to look at, just wait til you see them animated.
Man I don't know lmao. I'm too sick of this game to feel anything good for it, but I've gotten too much out of it to say I didn't have fun and not feel stupid.
Systems upon systems upon mechanics upon mechanics, and they all work pretty well... once you actually have access to all of the parts necessary for them to function. Which happens, at the very earliest, like 50 hours in. The fact that only one out of three Agnus base classes has one single art with a combo status and it's the talent is inexcusable. Also, with the Master Arts (these are good, I like them, they're cool other than this) you're allowed to stick as many combo arts on one character as you like, so have fun with Break - Topple - Launch - Smashing bosses like four times in a row. The combat stays pretty fun in spite of this, though, but like only on hard mode.
The story is for the most part enjoyable when it's actually sticking with the core conceit and for the most part like getting teeth pulled when it's not doing that, which is way too much in my opinion. What actually sucks is that, at least on the English voices end, (and with the understanding I've been spoiled in regard to this for these games), once you're deep enough in, you start to feel like you're viewing cutscenes you've already seen like three previous times, or that the game is having characters talk just to have characters talk (or having them React To Environment for the sake of React To Environment). Most of the heroes are fun to have around, most of the hero quests are Pretty Okay (shoutouts to Valdi's, Ashera's, and Fiona's especially for being genuinely good stories), most of the classes kind of aren't worth playing or keeping on the team to get the full 10 levels.
Something fundamentally unpleasant about the way Masatsugu Saito draws faces. If you think the 2d still drawings are bad to look at, just wait til you see them animated.
Things this game knows very well:
1. Catharsis by itself isn't a goal worth pursuing.
2. If your voiceover, art, and music teams ace literally every single thing handed to them without fail, your story writing and quest design can be as sloppy as it needs to be.
3. It's awesome when something is big and bright.
I could never give this any kind of fair rating. I do not have it in me. If you're a first time player, check in frequently with someone who isn't so they can pick up the huge amount of slack left by the tutorials.
1. Catharsis by itself isn't a goal worth pursuing.
2. If your voiceover, art, and music teams ace literally every single thing handed to them without fail, your story writing and quest design can be as sloppy as it needs to be.
3. It's awesome when something is big and bright.
I could never give this any kind of fair rating. I do not have it in me. If you're a first time player, check in frequently with someone who isn't so they can pick up the huge amount of slack left by the tutorials.
I played this game for 6 hours every day for like eight weeks and then basically never touched it again. It's one of those.
Pretty cool. Gliding and shieldsurfing are easily like 40% of the fun in this game, which is a testament both to how copy-pasted and weaksauce the enemies are and to how deliberate and thought-out a lot of the level design is. The game rewarding you for playing it by just making the final boss fight shorter is unforgivably boring. This game really wants me to like cooking, which I would except it consists entirely of "select a bunch of stuff from some menus and hope for the best". Music is bad most of the time because it refuses to just go for it enough, exceptions being the Molduga and Hinox themes.
Monolith working on this makes a lot of sense because frankly a lot of the game feels like Xenoblade except blander and with less depth. (This is two out of a total of four unrelated reviews I have brought up Xenoblade in, because I am a parody of myself.) Not lost on me how "this game is going to be more high fantasy than other Zeldas" mostly means "oh fuck, we gotta get even more reactionary".
Pretty cool. Gliding and shieldsurfing are easily like 40% of the fun in this game, which is a testament both to how copy-pasted and weaksauce the enemies are and to how deliberate and thought-out a lot of the level design is. The game rewarding you for playing it by just making the final boss fight shorter is unforgivably boring. This game really wants me to like cooking, which I would except it consists entirely of "select a bunch of stuff from some menus and hope for the best". Music is bad most of the time because it refuses to just go for it enough, exceptions being the Molduga and Hinox themes.
Monolith working on this makes a lot of sense because frankly a lot of the game feels like Xenoblade except blander and with less depth. (This is two out of a total of four unrelated reviews I have brought up Xenoblade in, because I am a parody of myself.) Not lost on me how "this game is going to be more high fantasy than other Zeldas" mostly means "oh fuck, we gotta get even more reactionary".
2018
Deeply and fundamentally enjoyable game. The bullet-hell and the timed elements from Undertale have received minor touchups that make both of them much more fun and interesting, and the party mechanics both during encounters and in the field are very welcome additions. I get that there's artistic intent behind not being able to change the keybindings, but (for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that this was released in 2018) come the fuck on. There's a Mercy bar to go with the enemy healthbar now which just feels so...
Actually whatever. Yeah, a lot of Deltarune feels like Toby Fox is doing Undertale's Thing except more spelled out. Both that and Chapter 2 of this are probably "better" objectively (as far as that can be objective) but this one captures something very interesting to me that I can't put words to. Plus I think the final + optional bosses in this one are cooler than the other one. Maybe it's a mistake to rank different chapters of something above or below each other though, they're both components in something bigger than any of them.
Also I'm pretty sure one of the tracks is a Xenoblade reference? Most random pull in the world to me but I like it. Is it because there's a party gauge now?
Actually whatever. Yeah, a lot of Deltarune feels like Toby Fox is doing Undertale's Thing except more spelled out. Both that and Chapter 2 of this are probably "better" objectively (as far as that can be objective) but this one captures something very interesting to me that I can't put words to. Plus I think the final + optional bosses in this one are cooler than the other one. Maybe it's a mistake to rank different chapters of something above or below each other though, they're both components in something bigger than any of them.
Also I'm pretty sure one of the tracks is a Xenoblade reference? Most random pull in the world to me but I like it. Is it because there's a party gauge now?
(Note: technical difficulties have made it prohibitively hard for me to access this game, so it is unfinished for now.)
Nuts how good this game feels. Once you know what you're doing the standard cannon-fodder-goon combat that spreads out the game is kind of easy but it never stops feeling tense and fast. The bosses are orders of magnitude harder and it has never taken me any less than five tries to beat one but with one very outstanding exception I've never been sick of any of them. The combat is just great: simple enough that it can be easily understood but with a few curveballs that keep it from feeling rote or repetitive. The stealth is notable for being pretty simple yet also an anticipated and designed-for aspect of gameplay rather than feeling kind of superfluous, which makes it actually enjoyable rather than something you hear about or do once in a tutorial and then resolve never to do again. One of the few games that recognizably was intended for a controller that works well with a mouse and keyboard.
Some of the RPG stuff I like, some of it I don't. I love the progression: the trees give you "build" choices that significantly alter your experience but you'll basically never be punished for choosing to go with something "incorrect" or make it boring for yourself by choosing the "right" option. The exceptions to this are kind of glaring, though: Vault Over stands out as something presented to you almost as soon as you're introduced to the concept of skill trees but is entirely unusable until a much later point, and it's almost impossible to deal with the wooden shield enemies until you pick up Loaded Axe, at which point it becomes a procedure: axe, then deathblow. But it's easier for me to be specific about what I don't like than what I do and the rest of it I love, it's incredibly satisfying to unlock something and then immediately warp my entire playstyle around it. The consumables honestly give me a headache: at the strange-but-unobtrusive end you have the spirit emblems, which you're expected to start each "level" with a full deck of yet for whatever reason draw from a stock that you have to manually refill; and at the active-impediment-to-gameplay end you have divine confetti, which is just baffling in every single aspect.
There's a solid story here but one that the game refuses to define itself to the detriment of the mechanics by, which is a breath of fresh air for me personally but I do kinda wish Wolf talked more. The vibes here are also incredible: it's morbid and self-serious to degrees that were they not intensely earned would feel corny and teeth-grinding, but in combination with everything else work really well.
Anyway yeah unreserved 10/10.
Nuts how good this game feels. Once you know what you're doing the standard cannon-fodder-goon combat that spreads out the game is kind of easy but it never stops feeling tense and fast. The bosses are orders of magnitude harder and it has never taken me any less than five tries to beat one but with one very outstanding exception I've never been sick of any of them. The combat is just great: simple enough that it can be easily understood but with a few curveballs that keep it from feeling rote or repetitive. The stealth is notable for being pretty simple yet also an anticipated and designed-for aspect of gameplay rather than feeling kind of superfluous, which makes it actually enjoyable rather than something you hear about or do once in a tutorial and then resolve never to do again. One of the few games that recognizably was intended for a controller that works well with a mouse and keyboard.
Some of the RPG stuff I like, some of it I don't. I love the progression: the trees give you "build" choices that significantly alter your experience but you'll basically never be punished for choosing to go with something "incorrect" or make it boring for yourself by choosing the "right" option. The exceptions to this are kind of glaring, though: Vault Over stands out as something presented to you almost as soon as you're introduced to the concept of skill trees but is entirely unusable until a much later point, and it's almost impossible to deal with the wooden shield enemies until you pick up Loaded Axe, at which point it becomes a procedure: axe, then deathblow. But it's easier for me to be specific about what I don't like than what I do and the rest of it I love, it's incredibly satisfying to unlock something and then immediately warp my entire playstyle around it. The consumables honestly give me a headache: at the strange-but-unobtrusive end you have the spirit emblems, which you're expected to start each "level" with a full deck of yet for whatever reason draw from a stock that you have to manually refill; and at the active-impediment-to-gameplay end you have divine confetti, which is just baffling in every single aspect.
There's a solid story here but one that the game refuses to define itself to the detriment of the mechanics by, which is a breath of fresh air for me personally but I do kinda wish Wolf talked more. The vibes here are also incredible: it's morbid and self-serious to degrees that were they not intensely earned would feel corny and teeth-grinding, but in combination with everything else work really well.
Anyway yeah unreserved 10/10.
I picked this game up and put it back down four separate times in the span of about a year because I didn't have the patience for the actual gameplay a lot of the time, and I haven't gotten a (non-premature) ending yet. Even if I don't like the act of playing, in concept I think a lot of the mechanics are cool as hell, and I REALLY REALLY like the skills and their "voices". There's a lot of dialogue in this game that will stick with me until I die. I went in to this game wanting to like it and I really really did.
Sometimes people criticize this game on the grounds that it's pro-police because you play as a cop. I don't agree with that but I think it's an understandable conclusion to reach, I think it tries to give police officers and the concept of policing and law much more nuance (and frankly sympathy) than either deserve, in a way that's very jarring when considering the game's politics in every other aspect. Also Harry du Bois is a trans woman.
Sometimes people criticize this game on the grounds that it's pro-police because you play as a cop. I don't agree with that but I think it's an understandable conclusion to reach, I think it tries to give police officers and the concept of policing and law much more nuance (and frankly sympathy) than either deserve, in a way that's very jarring when considering the game's politics in every other aspect. Also Harry du Bois is a trans woman.