The game is carried by proximity chat, and would be so boring without it. However that's not necessarily a bad thing. It's honestly really cool how much fun you can get out of such a concept when the formula of the game is so simple but so cleverly built around it.

In my experience most co-op horror games are straight up bad from a gameplay perspective. Not only is lethal company fun, it's also very balanced and things are random enough to where you will never predict what happen. You'll get scared, you'll be silly, you'll pull off that amazing once in a lifetime escape, you'll never feel cheated. Most importantly, you will always have a laugh no matter the outcome which is why I respect it so much as someone who fell out of multiplayer games a while ago. Even if you're no good with horror, I do say give it a whirl, I'm sure you'll get something out of it.

All that said this is definitely a game best experienced in short bursts, despite all the great mods out there, you'll probably ruin your fun if you play it too much or take it too seriously. I've played about 10 hours at the time of writing this and I look forward to revisiting it every now and then, but I definitely don't want to play it religiously.

oh yeah and the visual effects are really cool i like them alot alot :)) sound design also does wonders for the atmosphere

Watch Dogs is supposed to be the next Grand Theft Auto III! The next-gen revolutionary open-world game! Well, there’s one big flaw in all that hype. Watch Dogs was developed for last-gen consoles. We will never get a truly next-gen experience until a game is made specifically for next-gen consoles and is no longer ported to last-gen or has those consoles in mind. With that said, Watch Dogs is a solid open-world game, but it feels limited due to the scope that it tried to create.

You are Aiden Pearce. A vigilante hacker is trying to exact revenge on his niece’s death. You get involved in a huge blackmail hacking/drug ring while operating Chicago’s own connected grid. This online grid is called CTOS or Citizen Operating System. Chicago has cameras everywhere (even in places they aren’t supposed to) and is storing all the data on servers. Hacker groups are battling for the data while some have blackmailed city officials. It makes for a pretty twisty story, but that falls flat due to the story being dragged out for too long. One thing that an open world needs are strong characters and Watch Dogs is lacking that. Each character has potential but they are missing that certain something to make them more than generic or they don’t get enough screen time.

Outside of the so-so story is the so-so gameplay. Now the gunplay is solid with a great cover mechanic and a weapon wheel. You also get the electronics on your side such as the gimmicky “camera hopping” ability. You can hack cameras around an area to stealthily blow up stuff and distract enemies. It kind of felt like something similar to the Batman Arkham games. Some enemies have grenades that you can explode remotely that are on them, disrupt their comms, disable reinforcements, etc. This stealthy way of combat is actually pretty fun, but gets old in the end because it becomes predictable and almost too easy. Gunning it all the way is tough because you die so quickly. A few shots and you’re dead.

Most GTA-like games have wanted levels and cops that come after you. Watch Dogs does something rather unique in the sense that you can use the city against the cops. With the push of a button, you can raise bridges, activate blockers, blow up underground pipes, change traffic lights to block intersections, etc. I just found that the cops can find you way too easily. You are able to craft gadgets to stop enemies. One such item is the Jam Comms. This is used when police are trying to find you. When this happens yellow circles will appear on your map and you much avoid them until the search is called off. I only ever avoided this once in the whole game. My only option was to be found and then escape the police.

Another gameplay element that open-world games have are mini-games. Watch Dogs is full of them but neither of them is interesting, including the side missions. Being able to prevent crimes, AR time trials, online contract hunts, etc. These are all interesting the first time, but after that, I lost interest. I have yet to talk about what caused Watch Dogs to get such hype and that is the profiler. When you pull out your phone every citizen’s info is displayed. Their job, income, what they currently do/dark secret, and sometimes you can hack their phone conversations or steal money from them. Now, this may seem like a big deal but it’s all randomized and after a few minutes of exploring this you just won’t care anymore.

That’s the main problem with Watch Dogs at the end of the day. You just stop caring about more and more things as you play. When you start off you’re completely confused on how to use this new hacking/profiling ability. It all seems overwhelming. Once you play for a few hours you start checking off what’s interesting and what’s not in your head. That’s usually not a good thing for a game. Watch Dogs brings a lot to the table but none of it is outstanding or memorable. The graphics are also decent, but even for PC and next-gen consoles there are some ugly spots, the character models are dated, and it all just feels like a last-gen game with a next-gen coating of polish slapped on top.

This game is a fun time.

I like it, really like it for what it is. Never understood people that didn't like it. Hell, I prefer this over GTA V.

Aiden Pearce is someone that feels real, doesn't feel like a walking steriotype. Altrough his character isn't totally fleshed out in the story, we can see glimpses of him through out it without giving us long boring expositions or flashbacks.

It's a typical open world, but you can hack things. Yeah, but it sadly doesn't get much deeper than trigger one single action:
"On/Off". Watch Dogs 2 actually improved on this mechanic making it a bit more interesting to mess around with objects. The world itself feels alive, not totally detail but it feels alive. NPC doing silly stuff, profiles, random events. Very cool.

The story, is...let's say it's a videogame story focused on progression. That's why it's good mixed with the gameplay in my opinion compared to most modern GTA games that think they're godamn Hollywood.

The driving feels like shit. Cars are made out of cardboard, the camera is a bitch, the sounds are basic, the radio is mid. It's not a good experience driving in this game, avoid it.

In short. It's a fun silly revenge game.

Do you trust your government? Do you trust your social media outlets? Do you trust anyone with money or power? That’s what Watch Dogs 2 constantly asks you as you play through the campaign. You play as a hacker named Marcus who is trying to take over what Aiden Pierce did in the first Watch Dogs and take down the corporate conglomerate Blume and their ctOS 2.0 system that is continuously monitoring the people’s every move and step to a creepy factor.

Watch Dogs 2, now set in San Fransisco instead of Chicago, is a gorgeous open-world game full of many activities as well as side missions to complete next to the main campaign. There are also collectibles and various shops in which you can deck Marcus out in cool hip threads. But, that’s not what I want to talk about first. Let’s first talk about this whole “hack anything” gameplay feature that Ubisoft bragged about for Watch Dogs 1 and didn’t deliver. Your main weapon is your cell phone and when you move the camera a white line will connect to everything around you from cars to electrical boxes to people and let you either control it or the citizen’s cell phones in various ways. Steal cash from their bank account, burn their phone up (and kill them in the process), set the police or gangs on them, and even listen in on texts and audio calls. It’s really neat and works much better than the first game and it’s integral for combat when going into restricted areas which are about 90% of every mission’s contents.

When you get to a restricted area it can be as small as a house or as large as a rocket building facility or even a boat. You can either go in guns blazing which is impossible early on as the better weapons are really expensive to buy and you must unlock weapon slots. Your main tools are your RC Jumper Car and your RC Copter. The RC Copter comes in halfway through the campaign, but you get the car immediately and you can complete entire missions with this thing without ever having to walk in. Set up just outside the restricted boundaries and control your RC car through vents, doors, have it hack laptops, and even distract guards by making their cell phone ring so you can roll on by. The RC car has physical capabilities that the copter can not do such as pick up items and physically hack certain things that require access through to main objectives.

The RC copter is great for scouting and remotely hacking things that don’t require physical interaction. Now, there are some missions in which Marcus must physically hack into something himself and these can get a little though. You don’t last very long in this game by shooting as you die after a few shots. It’s better to maybe call in the mafia on a guard and have them shoot it out and thin the herd a bit, or use the cameras around the building and maybe rig electrical boxes and have guards go out that way. Sometimes I would just remotely have a car rampage its way through an area which is a lot of fun. There are so many ways to complete objectives and it’s basically a fun sandbox of hacking and shooting. The RC car and RC copter are a Godsend as some facilities are just too difficult for Marcus to enter without dying constantly.

Then there are a few missions where you just hack your way through via scripted puzzles which are a blast. Making people suffer or humiliating them through various hacking scenarios is just so much fun and I always wanted more. Outside of these missions, scenarios are how you escape from the cops and that’s a whole thing. You do have a cooldown timer when you are caught and once you hid long enough everyone will break off, but it’s not as easy as it sounds. In the city, running from the cops requires either hiding away from streets or ducking down in a car. I would sometimes duck down in a car and when a cop car strolled by I would hack their car and kick it into reverse before they spotted me. It’s really cool to see so many ways to play around with the game from having cranes lift you hundreds of feet into the air and onto a building, to using a forklift to deliver an explosive canister to a group of guards and have them blow up.

That’s what the game is mostly made up of with some side activities such as races, hacking events, real-time co-op side missions, and situations in which another player enters your area and you must find them with your hacker vision before they steal your followers. Outside of this, the story is great with memorable characters that I really cared about thanks to the amazing voice acting and well-written dialog. The cut scenes kept me pushing through this game through an entire week and I didn’t want to put it down. The game uses fake groups that represent real-life corporations such as Nudle (Google), !Nvite (Facebook), and the overall social media trend being used to manipulate the public. It really makes you think about what’s going on in the world today and I have to commend Ubisoft for making real-world problems like racism, sexism, and various social issues present in the game to wake up gamers.

The game also looks fantastic with a very realistic San Francisco such as the Golden Gate Bridge, the famous hairpin street, various monuments, and buildings. The game, however, suffers from a poorly optimized engine with even two GPU generations ahead of what’s required struggling to keep up at max settings at 4K. MSAA anti-aliasing cripples anything but multiple GPU setups and I constantly would go from 90FPS and dip into the 30s during driving scenes or climbing buildings for no apparent reason. Despite all of this, the game looks fantastic.

Overall, Watch Dogs 2 is a sandbox of hacking and shooting with so many fun scenarios and ways to complete them. The story, characters, and dialog are all well written and keep you coming for more and using real-world problems to deliver this story is a plus. Despite the poorly optimized engine, the game looks amazing and the rebuilt San Francisco is a blast. I just didn’t care much for the tedious activities and collecting spray cans and hacker points to max out my research. It just felt incredibly tedious.

Whenever people bring Killer7 to the conversation, the ambiguous story and political themes will be always on the table. The way it's presented will be confusing if you don't pay attention or, piece the puzzle that is the narrative in your head. It demands the time to be known, but it gives you little glimpses of what it is or what wants to tell. It's not incoherent nonsense spitted by the writter himself Suda51 to make you feel smarter once you understand it, it's about context and knowing what do with the tools and information you currently have. That in itself is hard, the game will be full of contradictions albeit on purpose and things that will get you the wrong idea, either your mission is to interpret those contradictions or outright not use them to form your narrative on the story. Not many people seem to have a clear idea of what it is, or what objectively wants to tell. Honestly? Me neither, it is surrealism after all and a work of art that can be interpreted in various ways.

It's the battle between west and east for world dominance, good and evil, old and new, the battle between the tiger and the dragon, Dracula vs the Belmont family? Probably, it's a cycle. "The World doesn't change, all it does it turns". It's the cycle that keeps on going, this can be seen in the "Lion" chapter where it recreates the last bit of the "Angel" chapter. 100 Years, on different places the world spins around. It doesn't matter the place but what happens in it. It's all the same, the conflict keeps on going. What matters are the actors and the people who perpetrate those actions. Than itself can be a contradiction on my end. But we can change the narrative for you liking. America can take the evil role, while Japan takes the good sided role. But it's not that easy either. Law and Chaos. It's about individualism and collectivism. Maybe all that I just said can be wrong, or truth but this is just my personal interpretations sort of throwing concept at a wall to see if it sticks or that can land in a agreement with someone else.

Compared to any rail shooter, Killer7 wants to take your time to stop and think whenever you hear a maniacal laugh or the simple puzzles that require more than anything simple memorization. Shooting, and puzzles this is the premise for gameplay. Most mechanics believe it or not are part of the story itself. Having 7 type of borderline personalities will give you the advantage to use them at will. These are the Smith Syndicate, comprised by believe it or not 7 members including it's vessel Harman Smith. While all this might seem like I'm spitting nonsense it start to once you start playing. So if this is a rail shooter, shouldn't be any space for puzzle? You got it all wrong. This is 2000's Capcom, this is Mikami's Capcom era which means there are puzzles, and by that definition multiple paths to take. Puzzles can range from fairly obvious to very tricky but nothing that could leave you hanging for a long time. It really is just a Resident Evil game, that it might be why people consider it a "Horror Survival" game. It has the bases for a horror survival game without the survival aspect of it, has horror elements sure but not enough to specifically fall into the genre.

While this game might seem like a chaotic mess for the ones that look from outside. It's actually structured like a proper era video game. Not that I thought less of it, but seeing how outageous differently visually is from anything I've seen and for the looks from the trailers themselves I swear I was expecting something much more wild. In fact, the very same structure of level selection can be streched to as far back as Mega Man boss selection. 7 people, killer7, right? That streching things too far, but my point is don't be scared about it's structure. It start to get very comfortable once you get the loop, once you know what to do, once the puzzle start to feel but mere obstacles in your way. Art-sy game tend to break the mold as far as they can, but this wasn't the era nor the time to do it. Though it will play with your expectations more often than not so expect to see weird stuff regardless.

It's the style, which helps having a great sense of substance. As much as SUDA51 loves to put his art over really...anything? It stands up for something incredibly unique and obtuse first time playing it. Can't really say I've experience something like these before, outside some arcades I usually stopped by after school as a kid. None other game that I personally know has been inspired by killer7 specifically (outside of Killer is Dead but I'm yet to play that one). What other game at the time had the balls to not put real texutures into already basic geometry? These are flat colors, makes characters and objects pop-up much more while keeping the visuals simple and not obstruct with any post-processing effect like particles or not. Only gave that came up in my mind while I'm writting this is MadWorld from Platinum Games on the Wii.

What is killer7 then? I took the ideas that stood up the most to me. I can say that this is a rail shooting game with horor elements but that is keeping it short. It's an action game with deep political themes but that is selling it short. You start to get the idea, different people have different interpretations. It's the same as in this page there, is not a real truth and we can only but interpret what a work and it's purpose to the exist it. Specially as something as surreal and unique as killer7. Whenever I tried to write something about this game I always think I'm selling it short or I'm not doing enough justice. It's complicated, but fascinating to talk about.

There seems to be a prevailing expectation that as games evolved, they also became exponentially more approachable. Higher budgets resulted in smoother graphics and fewer bugs. More complex controls (adding left/right triggers, then adding one/two joysticks, then dabbling with motion inputs, etc) gave players a firmer grasp over their characters. AI became more predictable as their algorithms became more intricate to capture a wider range of responses. In a sense, as the technology expanded, the resulting products seemingly became more streamlined to better suit the player’s needs while more thoroughly capturing a developer’s vision.

Team Ico has never been about following tradition, however. If anything, the evolution of their titles embodies the regression of player control, choosing to instead utilize technological advancements not just to refine its premise via "design by subtraction" as chump has pointed out, but to deliver an entirely new experience altogether. Ico was a classic tale of boy meets girl; the girl had to be freed from her cage and pulled around the castle, as the boy protected her against everything in her way to prevent her demise. Shadow of the Colossus, however, was a story concerned with the struggle over control. The lone wanderer, in his quest to revive Mono, hunts down various several-story colossi capable of swatting him about like a fly. In the resulting desperate dance of death, he at first struggles to climb their hulking figures, hanging on for dear life until he discovers their weak points and stabs the colossi while they helplessly flail about. In other words, it's a game about trying to regain any semblance of control until you realize after the fact that the only shadow left was the literal shadow cast by Wander over their fallen corpse.

The Last Guardian then, can be thought of as the natural evolution of Team Ico titles, in that it melds previous design sensibilities and thrives off of disempowering the player throughout its entirety. Trico, the player’s companion and a cross between cat and bird, is essentially the analog to Wander’s horse in Shadow of the Colossus, Agro. Fumito Ueda designed Agro as a companion rather than just a vehicle, and had his team develop specific movement algorithms that would allow Agro to steer herself without the player’s explicit control, forcing players to put their trust in their steed during certain fights emphasizing bow aiming. Ueda and his new team at GenDesign iterated upon this idea, explicitly creating environments where the player was forced to rely upon Trico’s actions to progress and thus establish dependency between the boy and his companion.

While the game can be thought of as an inversion of Ico in this sense, its design influence upon The Last Guardian should not go overlooked, particularly in how the game captures Ico’s physicality. Ico’s key strength was establishing a sense of presence through minimalist puzzles that lacked overly gamey elements, namely in how Ico interacted with his surroundings. Players are subtly guided into climbing chains, pulling levers, sitting on stone sofas to save, and most importantly, holding down R1 to hold Yorda by the hand around the castle and pull her out of danger whenever captured. The Last Guardian innovates upon this by combining several of the traversable elements and the companion into one. To better navigate the vast ruins, the boy must guide Trico and utilize their tall body of climbable feathers in order to scale heights, while occasionally dragging around their large tail and dangling it over ledges to safely climb down. Most importantly, you get to pet Trico whenever you feel like it to comfort your friend in both their happiest and most emotionally taxing moments. In both Ico and The Last Guardian, the player’s constant contact with both the environment and their companion keeps them firmly rooted within its constructed sense of reality by regularly reminding them of their companion’s physical presence.

This physicality would not be as significant without the lessons learned from Shadow of the Colossus however, not just regarding AI behavior but also specifically in how it adapts the game’s sense of scale. Trico is large, and the boy is small. As mentioned previously, Trico can utilize their size to lean against walls and give the boy a step up, but they can also utilize their weight to hold down large chains and swipe away at imposing bodies of armor. Meanwhile, the boy is much more agile and can fit into otherwise inaccessible small spaces by Trico, squeezing through narrow tunnels and gaps in metal gates to pull switches and let his partner through. This obvious difference in size creates consistent room for contrast, not just in how the two characters differ in terms of functionality but also in terms of their scale when measured against the traversed liminal spaces of the ruins, constantly transforming from immense empty rooms to constrained and suffocating tunnels and corridors.

What is particularly interesting is not just The Last Guardian’s disempowerment or sense of scale, but rather what it manages to achieve with said elements and the resulting contrast to establish interdependency between the two characters and solidify their relationship. The combat, an almost complete inverse of Ico’s combat, is the most obvious example. Rather than defending Yorda by whacking shadow enemies with a stick, the roles have been reversed, in that the player must rely upon Trico to guard against scores of possessed armor as to avoid getting kidnapped himself. Even so, the game plays around with this idea of vulnerability, shifting the onus of responsibility about as the boy often finds himself in positions where he must actively support or protect Trico, such as disposing of glass eyes that scare his friend or scrambling to pull a nearby switch to lower a bridge and give Trico room to climb up to safety. The game is even willing to occasionally break its own rules to demonstrate how this sense of caring evolves past its defined guidelines. In almost any other game, this mechanical inconsistency would be regarded as a flaw, but it is this sense of doubt that creates room for the relationship to build from in the first place, and is perhaps the game’s most understated strength.

This is not to say that The Last Guardian was bereft of limitations regarding the execution of its ambitious scope. The most pressing challenge that Ueda and his team faced was how to balance its constructed sense of reality with regards to player expectations; that is, it had to find meaningful ways to commit to its vision of establishing the relationship between the boy and Trico while also acknowledging and appeasing players that would otherwise get lost or frustrated. Perhaps the most obvious downgrade from Ico is the presence of constant button prompts appearing on-screen to alert the players on how to better control the boy and instruct Trico; while the frequency of the prompts lessens over time, it is a slight disappointment that the game doesn’t simply force the players to experiment with inputs and commands as a more subtle and trusting substitute. This downfall however, is an anomaly amongst The Last Guardian’s other shortcomings, as it manages to successfully disguise many of its other concessions and limitations. There’s a classic “escape from the collapsing structure” sequence where all you do is hold forward and jump, but the game gets away with it because the player is used to being framed as a helpless participant. There’s occasional voice-over dialogue hints whenever the player has been stuck for a while in the same area, but it feels far less intrusive than Dormin’s repeated and booming hints in Shadow of the Colossus because the game has already established itself as a retrospective re-telling from the now grown boy’s point of view. Trico doesn’t respond immediately to the boy’s commands when being told where to go, but it makes sense that they wouldn’t function like clockwork and would need time to spot and process the situation from their own point of view, so the lag in response feels justified. It doesn’t matter that certain isolated elements of the game would crumble under scrutiny. What matters is that the situational context to allow players to suspend their disbelief is almost always present; in other words, the illusion holds up.

I’m still learning more about the game to this day. There are so many little details that I wouldn’t have spotted upon a first playthrough, and it’s an absolute joy finally getting to gush upon spotting them in replays. Of course it makes sense that you can’t just issue specific commands to Trico at the very start as a sequence-break despite not being taught by the game; after all, Trico hasn’t had time to observe you and mimic your actions to carry out such commands. Of course the hostile creatures that look exactly like your friend behave similarly; how can you then use your preconceived knowledge of their physiology to aid your friend in a fight against their copycat? I also can’t help but appreciate how GenDesign condensed so much learning within its introduction; in the first ten minutes alone, you’re hinted on how to later deal with the bodies of armor (the magical runes that appear before waking up are the exact same as the runes that appear when grabbed, and are dispelled in the same manner of furiously mashing buttons), you get to figure out how Trico’s eyes change colors depending upon whether they’re mesmerized or hostile, and it quickly establishes the premise of building up trust with a very wary creature that’s more than likely to misunderstand or ignore you at first. Combine all of these nuances with the game’s ability to destabilize and diversify playthroughs via Trico’s innate curiosity and semi-unpredictable instincts, and you get a game that becomes easier to appreciate the more the player familiarizes themselves with its inner workings.

I think a lot of criticism for The Last Guardian ultimately comes down to less of what we perceive the game is and more of what we perceive the game isn’t. It’s not a fully player-controlled puzzle-platforming game like Ico, it’s not a puzzle-combat game with spectacle like Shadow of the Colossus, and it’s certainly not a classic companion escort-quest game where you can just order Trico around like a robot and expect automatic results every time. Instead of focusing on the progression of more complex controls and puzzles, The Last Guardian is focused on the progression of a seemingly more complex relationship. I’m not going to pretend that everyone will get something out of this game, as it definitely requires a good deal of patience and player investment to meet the game halfway. It’s certainly more difficult to appreciate given its lack of influence unlike Ico or its lack of exhilarating boss encounters unlike Shadow of the Colossus. That said, it’s this element of danger in its ability to commit to its vision while alienating impatient players that makes it such a compelling title once it finally clicks. Many before me have pointed out how powerful the bond between the player and Trico felt upon learning from others that improperly caring for Trico results in your companion stubbornly ignoring the player’s commands; after all, volume swells cannot exist without contrast to provide room for growth. Perhaps this is why at the end of the day, I find myself transfixed by every word that Fumito Ueda has to offer. In an era where developers feel overly concerned with the best and brightest, he doesn’t seem concerned about what video games mean so much as what video games are. I can only hope that someday, he and GenDesign will return to bring us a new title that captures our imagination as thoroughly as many of his works already have for me.

Paris. A thief by night and regular Joe by day. A strange symbol your father left you. An Anti-Christ that has risen from the grave. This all sounds like an epic recipe for some crazy National Treasure sequel, and honestly, this kind of feels like an anime version of that movie. You play Phantom R and are trying to uncover an ancient mystery that your dad left you as a small boy while stopping the evil Napoleon Bonaparte himself from taking over Paris.

The story really takes itself too seriously for how silly the plot is. During the 5 hours you will spend with this game I honestly felt no attachment to the characters or story. They're very cookie-cutter and don't really develop any type of personality. The spotty voice acting doesn't help either. There are a lot of characters for such a short game and many of them only get a few seconds of screen time to shout at you and that's about it. It's a very forgettable game, not just in the story. The visuals are your bog-standard anime-style graphics. The game plays like a rhythm version of Professor Layton on top of all that.

Once you get a hold of your character and can explore the map you will be presented with still backgrounds on the bottom screen like in Professor Layton. You then tap away ferociously until stuff happens. You can collect two hidden presents per screen for golden coins that are used to buy aids during mini-games. Some screens will have secrets such as notes that need to be found to find a secret music page, soundtrack CD, or objects that produce sounds that are needed to build the master instrument. These hidden items eventually unlock hidden chapters, but I honestly didn't care enough for any of the characters to learn any backstory here from said chapters.

The meat of the game is the rhythm sections and these are fairly simplistic, but frustrating in nature. In most rhythm games you can get good at it by following the beat of the song. In this game, you don't ride the entire beat like in most rhythm games. Small sections are cut out with button presses. For example, you do a sequence with A or B buttons like A-B-B-A-B and that section follows the beat of the song. This would be fine if the entire game wasn't a Simon Says game disguised as a rhythm game. You have to listen to a sequence of notes and repeat them regardless of the beat of the song. I wound up failing many mini-games because I wanted to naturally tap or press buttons in time with the beat, but just mashing the buttons worked. Increased difficulty means more prompts to remember and they sometimes play so fast that it's almost impossible to remember the sequence on the first try.

While I praise the game for giving a variety of mini-game types they do repeat very often. The games usually require you to tap two buttons or swipe on the screen in certain directions. That's it. In between the rhythm games are mini-game puzzles that are fairly easy and offer no challenge. There are a few Simon Says ones in here too, but the sequence is remembered so if you mess up you just start at the last note you messed up on. That offers no challenge and allows you to basically mash all the buttons and not care about the order. While I could find a groove with some rhythm mini-games there were many that I just couldn't get into or kept messing up on and didn't understand why.

Overall, Rhythm Thief is a Simon Says game disguised as a rhythm game. There's no true rhythm here outside of repeating every pattern in time with a beat. I could do that without a beat. The increased difficulty isn't about more complicated songs, but just increased speed and more prompts in a shorter time frame. That's not challenging just frustrating. The story is nonsensical and takes itself too seriously with characters that are one note and don't have any time to build a personality to care for. While the visuals are nice it feels way too much like a cousin to Professor Layton and not its own thing.

I honestly don't know where to begin. Bravely Default was one of the most anticipated JRPGs in years. I remember everyone playing the demo and progress would carry across into the main game. It's good at luring you into a false sense of familiarity. You might think this is a typical JRPG with the only need to balance physical and magical attacks. There are over a dozen jobs in this game and they are crucial to getting through the many, and I mean many, dozens of bosses. Bravely Default is mostly a boss rush game with a few dungeons put in between to level you up.

The game starts out like any other typical JRPG. You have to solve a worldwide calamity, you are in a small town, you can visit shops, and you learn the ropes of the game. The main bulk of combat lies in Braving and Defaulting which allows you to borrow or save up turns. This is the key strategy this entire game and it takes trial and error to really learn when to do each of these during boss fights. You can bank up to three turns or borrow up to three. If you borrow turns in the negative you forfeit that many turns moving forward. This is great if you're powerful and want to get the battle over with or need to heal everyone fast. In combination with the right jobs and equipment, you can overpower many foes. Half of the jobs are locked away behind optional "asterisk" bosses while some are acquired during the story. The jobs are well balanced ranging between offensive and defensive types with supporting roles as well. The downside to this many jobs is the trial and error of knowing what jobs are best against what bosses. There are 14 levels per job and they don't level up super fast. You learn more job abilities as you level up as well.

It's important to balance your party. You don't want all offensive characters with none supporting you unless you're insanely powerful. The goal of the first third of the game is to awaken four elemental crystals with four guardians you have to beat to get to them. These dungeons are full of red chests with items and equipment, but some dungeons and areas have locked blue chests which can't be accessed until toward the end of the game. They contain some of the best equipment. There are save points usually before each major boss, and you can visit many towns to rest, and buy magic, armor, weapons, accessories, and items. The game consists of a large map that slowly opens up to you and eventually, you get a ship that can travel the entire map.

Now, I have to address the infamous final third act. These are chapters 5-8. Without spoiling anything you have to endure these chapters to see the true ending. You can skip this repetitive nightmare by breaking a crystal (I don't want to spoil more) and ending the game there. I sucked it up and endured cleansing the same crystals 20 times (literally 20) to see this ending. This is one of those things that makes me really have JRPGs. We could have just gotten a cutscene explaining what happens during these acts instead of literally repeating the same dungeons and bosses 20 freaking times. It was insanely boring and I wound up listening to music to distract me from the frustration. A lot of gamers will most likely just quit the game here or end it early with a false ending.

On top of these repetitive chapters, you can also repeat the optional "asterisk" bosses multiple times to level up your jobs. If you missed these asterisks during the first four chapters you can get these jobs later on, but the bosses are leveled to you. The benefit of getting them as they come up early on is you can level past them and make the fights easier. If you already have all the jobs you can just use these bosses to grind XP. There are some options to ease the burden a bit which helped a lot. You can actually turn random battles off or increase them. This is great for exploring a dungeon fully and then leveling up near a save or near the entrance. I really loved this feature and used it a lot. You can also reduce the difficulty down to easy any time or increase it. These options help push JRPGs into a more modern feeling and setting.

With all of that said the graphics are pretty and the music is great if repetitive. The same world map and dungeon songs will repeat a lot, but they aren't bad songs. The English voice acting is horrendous so I suggest the Japanese audio, and the story, while it does have a nice twist in the third act, isn't worth the extra dozen or so hours it will take to get through that third act to get the true ending. It's awful, boring, frustrating, tedious, and just plain not fun, and I can't forgive the game for this. No matter how good the rest of the game might be, or how unique the combat is, this third act is abhorrent and an obvious excuse to pad game time. I really hate, I mean hate, JRPGs that do this. It doesn't add anything to the game that a cut scene couldn't solve. Shame on Square Enix for this.

Overall, I'm not the biggest JRPG fan so others will like this more than I did, but that third act is unforgivable. I also felt there were too many jobs and the game's difficulty is through the roof. Towards the end of the game, you need to be doing close to the 9,999 damage limit to finish the game. To really finish this game and see everything that's here you will most likely need to hit the 99-level max at some point. This is an insanely hardcore JRPG and the casual Final Fantasy fans will probably quit during chapter 2 like I did when the game was first released. You will need to sink a good 100 hours just to see everything in the game including the bonus final dungeon that grants you the best stuff in the game to finish off the optional boss. While the graphics, music, and overall aesthetic of the game is pleasing this is a hate it or love it type of game.