[re-upload of Steam review]
As someone who loved the first game and its characters to the point of 100% completion, Arcade Spirits: The New Challengers just makes me mad.
For starters, the dating pool is so utterly lacking on the charm their predecessors had it's not even funny; Locksley is easily the best option, but everybody else ranges from "I guess you're cool" to "I am two inches away from filing a restraining order". My first route was going to be Zapper, but 1) I hate how she can't stop saying "awesome", feels like a 12-year-old's idea of what a confident and assertive character is and 2) there's some dialogue with her that makes me think that she's constantly trying to get a good grade at therapy. Venting to me about how she's an "abusive piece of shit" right off the bat on Chapter 1, because she got angry at a friend of hers and said some things she grew to regret, felt extremely out of place. Girl, I barely know you!
Speaking of stilted writing, in come the sections where the writers comment on the gaming industry's blunders. And let me be perfectly clear: I agree with a lot of what is being said. I, too, hate the current battle pass format and the crypto fad that permeated the conversations in the gaming community at the time of this game's release, but I can't help but wonder — wasn't there a more subtle way to say you hated this stuff than making a representative of the evil corp prattle on about how much these things rock and they're all going into the new business model, because that's how you know this corp's evil? And this is just one example — the messaging in a lot of segments like this one (for another, Zapper's rant on war games, or the painfully transparent argument about the Blitzchung incident) is so unsubtle it leaves me thinking that maybe the writers just don't trust the player base to pick up on anything other than that.
The overall tone of the game does not help a thing either. It's not like the writing has changed a lot from the first installment, it's still the same corny nerdy humour we've grown to... tolerate; but where that awkwardness served the first game's better character writing, here it just acts as to accentuate the flaws. As in: I'm already annoyed by several other things, and all the n-th rerun of the pizza bagel joke (which was never that funny to begin with, I'm sorry) is doing for me is making me even more unwilling to talk about this game in good faith.
Other reviews have pointed this out too, but the character creator is lacking at best. It's a step up from the original, that's to be sure, but it's just... ah, damn, I'll just say it, it's ugly. I'm sorry. I understand that its art style has to be more simplified in comparison to the other characters, but the sheer contrast between how I look and how my lovers look was just too distracting for me to handle. The fact I have to look at it all the time, compared to its offscreen presence in the first game, serves to all the more accentuate it. I appreciate it exists, though; I just wish it was better.
Lightning round of smaller complaints: the fact you can instantly redo any FoD match you lose is awkward and removes the supposed narrative weight of a loss; I didn't super like how Jynx was written, though articulating this point admittedly escapes me; and I found those "funny" insults you could throw at Coda in Chapter 1 were just deeply embarrassing, but I guess humour's subjective.
Overall, Arcade Spirits: The New Challenges has the makings of a great sequel, but preachy talking points, awkward customisation, and the same corny writing style that once served to make the first game a good, silly time hold everything down to a saddening degree. I said it was a game that made me mad; writing this frankly ridiculously long Steam review has me finding it also makes me sad. I guess they can't all be winners.
As someone who loved the first game and its characters to the point of 100% completion, Arcade Spirits: The New Challengers just makes me mad.
For starters, the dating pool is so utterly lacking on the charm their predecessors had it's not even funny; Locksley is easily the best option, but everybody else ranges from "I guess you're cool" to "I am two inches away from filing a restraining order". My first route was going to be Zapper, but 1) I hate how she can't stop saying "awesome", feels like a 12-year-old's idea of what a confident and assertive character is and 2) there's some dialogue with her that makes me think that she's constantly trying to get a good grade at therapy. Venting to me about how she's an "abusive piece of shit" right off the bat on Chapter 1, because she got angry at a friend of hers and said some things she grew to regret, felt extremely out of place. Girl, I barely know you!
Speaking of stilted writing, in come the sections where the writers comment on the gaming industry's blunders. And let me be perfectly clear: I agree with a lot of what is being said. I, too, hate the current battle pass format and the crypto fad that permeated the conversations in the gaming community at the time of this game's release, but I can't help but wonder — wasn't there a more subtle way to say you hated this stuff than making a representative of the evil corp prattle on about how much these things rock and they're all going into the new business model, because that's how you know this corp's evil? And this is just one example — the messaging in a lot of segments like this one (for another, Zapper's rant on war games, or the painfully transparent argument about the Blitzchung incident) is so unsubtle it leaves me thinking that maybe the writers just don't trust the player base to pick up on anything other than that.
The overall tone of the game does not help a thing either. It's not like the writing has changed a lot from the first installment, it's still the same corny nerdy humour we've grown to... tolerate; but where that awkwardness served the first game's better character writing, here it just acts as to accentuate the flaws. As in: I'm already annoyed by several other things, and all the n-th rerun of the pizza bagel joke (which was never that funny to begin with, I'm sorry) is doing for me is making me even more unwilling to talk about this game in good faith.
Other reviews have pointed this out too, but the character creator is lacking at best. It's a step up from the original, that's to be sure, but it's just... ah, damn, I'll just say it, it's ugly. I'm sorry. I understand that its art style has to be more simplified in comparison to the other characters, but the sheer contrast between how I look and how my lovers look was just too distracting for me to handle. The fact I have to look at it all the time, compared to its offscreen presence in the first game, serves to all the more accentuate it. I appreciate it exists, though; I just wish it was better.
Lightning round of smaller complaints: the fact you can instantly redo any FoD match you lose is awkward and removes the supposed narrative weight of a loss; I didn't super like how Jynx was written, though articulating this point admittedly escapes me; and I found those "funny" insults you could throw at Coda in Chapter 1 were just deeply embarrassing, but I guess humour's subjective.
Overall, Arcade Spirits: The New Challenges has the makings of a great sequel, but preachy talking points, awkward customisation, and the same corny writing style that once served to make the first game a good, silly time hold everything down to a saddening degree. I said it was a game that made me mad; writing this frankly ridiculously long Steam review has me finding it also makes me sad. I guess they can't all be winners.