Imagine you’re at a restaurant eating a nice dinner. It’s delicious, one of the best meals you’ve had in a while, and right when you finish, the chef comes out, bringing four more of the same dish you were eating and tells you you can’t leave until you eat all of it. That’s what Bravely Default is.
Bravely Default starts out as a great throwback JRPG with a unique battle system and fun characters, but then halfway through makes the ungodly decision to make you repeat the same 4 boss battles you already did 4 more times. If you don’t mind that level of repetition, you’ll have a great time. Otherwise, you shouldn’t bother.

Why do you get softlocked if you die to the amazon boss
Why do you have to go to one stage to get warped to one of the other stages so that you can go through the mirror that was previously just a one-way teleport destination
Why is the last stage just one of the previous stages again
Why does the last boss fight just involve climbing up a rope with no obstacles
It's ok

masterclass in how to screw up a time-tested gameplay formula that at this point probably should've been failproof for capcom

the overall pacing is bad - it's a 12 hour game that should only be around half its runtime

level design is wonky - you're either constantly backtracking from location to location or you're moving around an entire facility with no real way to get from point A to B concisely. it's an ordeal to grab one item needed for progression (in a game series about resource management and planning routes effectively!). comparing the maps in this to the RE1 mansion or the RE2 police station is such a stark contrast

for some reason the game gives you way too many bullets and resources? the way enemy placement is laid out encourages you to use them too. by the time you've explored a map once, you've killed all the zombies and then you're just running around empty corridors with no tension or need to plan ahead with your loadout - again, bad pacing. you can argue this can happen in the other classic REs but their level design guarantees youre not really visiting those same places over and over and over again. CV wants to be an action game but without all the mechanics to make that actually work

and even with that abundance of resources they never seem to be in the place where you actually need them - like, before boss fights?? i've seen more than one post here from people saying they had to restart the game completely because they ran out of healing items or explosive arrows or what have you (it all comes back to bad pacing...). to be fair - this can be mitigated by just rotating your saves but if it comes down to it that often that feels like bad game design on the devs' part

steve fucking sucks ass

the art direction overall isn't... great? it's softer and lends itself to being a lot less, idk, spooky, but i think there are individual parts of the game that are pretty cool - the victorian stylings of ashford residence, the cabin on the island, etc. and before it sunk in just how fucking long this game was, some of the backtracking felt almost comfy - like a walking sim pure vibes game.

and then i beat the tyrant on the plane and claire went to antarctica. and then after another hour the perspective shifts and theres a whole other half to the game. okay jesus christ

plot's bombastic and ridiculous but it's a different bombastic and ridiculous than other titles - and i do think a lot of it is genuinely really fun because of it. alexia and alfred are goofy weirdos, the first meeting with neo wesker is fun, it's INSANELY contrived in a way that works in its favor because of how goofy RE is as a series already so all the plot beats are just seeing how quirky the writers can get with it

this game would probably benefit from a remake like a lot of code veronica defenders say - but i don't see why capcom would feel the want or need to when the source material just isn't quite there. better to move on to revamping one of the best-selling games in the series in RE5 rather than a complete overhaul of a game that most folks don't really care about - and for good reason

Astro Boy: Omega Factor is quite the remarkable game, especially amongst its peers on the GameBoy Advance.

The story is enjoyable, but maybe a little tangled at first. First you’ll start in a bustling city, then you go to an island, then space, then the arctic, then to the past, then to the future where you’ll fight in a tournament of robots. I couldn’t help but feel like I was being thrown around to different areas with no true direction in the story. Narratively things start to make more sense after you see the credits for the first time. After those credits, the real game begins. Fortunately, the story not only starts to make more sense, but also gets more interesting after you start the Rebirth portion of the game. The story will have you going around from place to place finding NPCs to guide you and give you clues to your next destination. There will be twists, intrigue, and revelations to make your experience all the more enjoyable.

I believe most aspects of the art in this game are done really well. The backgrounds are gorgeous and detailed. There wasn’t really a time in the game where I was bored at what I was looking at. Even the enemies, despite maybe not having a variation of types, are all distinguished by sizes and colors. The bigger they are, the stronger they are. Different colors on enemies will also dictte how those enemies will attack.

I think the mechanics of this game shine the most. It’s not just a brawler, portions of the game will have you flying at high speeds incorporating a bullet hell style gameplay, and other portions will have you flying at low speeds fighting a boss. These gameplay styles are switched up at normal intervals, so the gameplay never gets too stale or repetitive. Dashing gives you invincibility frames, so you can fly through enemies and avoid their projectiles and punches without taking any damage.

NPCs not only play a massive part in the story, they also play a big part in how the mechanics enrich gameplay. Astro Boy will upgrade his abilities by finding and interacting with NPCs. Astro Boy can have his health, punching power, laser power, dash abilities among others upgraded to help him in combat. The more you upgrade, the more powerful they get and the more useful they get. Upgrading your senses with let Astro Boy see in the dark, or see through fog, it will even sense the presence of a hidden NPC. Upgrading your lasers not only increases the damage, but it also increases the area of attack which can be useful in many parts of the game. The only problem with the NPCs is that maybe there are a bit too many included in the game. There is a pretty large gallery of all the NPCs, some of which you may forget that you found. This may be a problem especially if the story requires you to find them again.

Gameplay is mostly fluid, but can be severely punishing and the combat mechanics take some getting used to. I think I may have had a GameShark when I played this when I was younger because I don’t remember dying so much. Even on normal mode enemies hit considerably hard. Mid to end game some of them can take you down in two hits and a boss has the ability to take you down in one even if you have your health maxed out. Enemies could attack you and you wouldn’t even notice because maybe they’re hidden. Some of the bosses take up more than half of the screen making them near impossible to maneuver without getting hit.

At this point you may be thinking, “But why not just use your dash to avoid damage?” While, as mentioned above, dashing does give you invincibility frames, it requires you to press the D-pad in the desired direction twice. This is also paired with an animation of Astro Boy doing a flip before he dashes. An animation in which you can still get hit…if the system even detects that you’ve done it. Sometimes the system my not detect that you’ve done your input, or maybe you get too anxious and mash the button in hopes of getting out of a sticky situation. A situation in which you’ll do multiple flips and be able to get hurt. A costly mistake especially if you’re fighting bosses or larger enemies which could cause knock back…tremendously so. The knock back is a speedrunner’s worst nightmare and it kills the flow of the game. It may sound manageable and insignificant when I say your knock back will last three to four seconds, but with how fast some of these fights are it feels like an eternity. I think the combat could have been greatly improved if there was a dedicated button on the system or controller for dashing.

Despite all of it’s flaws, this is a remarkable game on the GameBoy Advance. It outshines the overwhelming majority of the competition. I think this is a game I could recommend to a lot of people interested in trying out games from this generation.

To quickly get the port discussion out of the way, the audio mixing on the Steam version is terrible, but I actually enjoyed some of the dialogue from the prince in this one.

The game itself is... fine. It's just fine. It's good, probably. The platforming was fun enough and never really got boring, though it also wasn't anything too special either. But this game has a horrible, horrible flaw and that's the combat. It's dreadful, I don't care much to describe how it works because you need only watch some footage or play the game to understand how mind-numbing it is. I probably wouldn't hate the combat if it was used sparingly, but Ubisoft just had artificially extend the game's length so people couldn't beat it too quickly. Almost every fucking platforming challenge is punctuated by a combat room. Multiple enemies, usually spawning over and over, it was so so so tedious!

The game has a charm to it, though. It's quaint and largely inoffensive, something a compliment I can't offer to its sequel. I can only hope the remake addresses some of its shortcomings, though I'm starting to doubt we'll ever even see it.

Expected a little more from this one ... The close camera doesn't really mesh well with Astros agility, the skill system is extremely unbalanced and only punishes you if you go for the wrong stats and the level design is super linear and boring.

It does have it's good points, though. I like the idea of the combat more or less revolving around filling your energy bar to constantly use special attacks. It leads to using your strongest attacks in a efficient way while forcing you to use your basic moveset as well.

I also enjoy the look of the game and most bosses were quite decent. Didn't care for some of the enemy designs, but maybe they just adapted the manga/anime. I'm not familiar with it, so I can only guess.

It's a decent time but going back and replaying the whole thing for a different ending doesn't sit right with me, which is why I quit after the first credits rolled.

This is by far the worst Treasure game I have played yet, and the only one I'd truly call bad.

Innovative, clever, and enjoyable are the most important words that come to mind when talking about Treasure's games. Words that will be completely absent in this game's review after this sentence

Let's stop beating around the bush. As pretentious as it may sound, Astro Boy: Omega Factor has both fundamental flaws and horrible design choices.
 
Let's start talking about the leveling system and its different stats.
Every once in a while, either by just progressing the game or by finding them hiding somewhere in the stages, you'll encounter some of Astro's characters. Each time you do, you'll get the chance to invest in one of these six different stats:

Life - Absolutely crucial if you want to get far in the game, and the very first stat you should max out. If you do not level up your life points at least once on every stage, you'll find yourself getting wrecked over and over again by even the most insignificant enemies. A simple punch from an enemy can drain almost half your health, starting Stage 3. I'm not kidding.

Punch - Self explanatoiry. Surprisingly useless since the game punishes you by engaging in physical combat: Astro is extremely delicate and would be sent flying all over the other edge of the screen by a regular enemy attack. Combine that with Astro's awful defense, and you have a match made in hell.

Laser - The only attack stat you should max out (there's three of them total) since it has penetration damage (hehe), which means you can hit multiple targets at once. You can also use it both on the ground and midair from a very safe distance with no real consequences, so you are going to be using it for more than 80% of the time.

Shot - Spread shot attack. Really pointless since your laser does basically the same and more efficiently.

Jets - The number of times you can dash. After beating the game, I can guarantee you that there's no need to level this stat more than once.

Sensor - Completely useless. The game will force you to level up this stat at various points in the game in a desperate attempt to try and prevent you from breaking the game by maxing out Life and Laser sooner.

The thing is, there's no way to know that you've invested in the wrong stats until it's too late, making the game unbearable to beat if you did. So yeah, the leveling-up system is a complete rookie's trap.

As for the levels, well, they are just really boring, uninspired, and tiny, really fricking tiny. There's no room for exploring, and the sprites are too big; it makes you constantly feel as if you are trapped in a fish bowl.
Spawning a horde of enemies in a straight line seems to be the only thing the game knows how to do to fill the gaps between the rare instances in which a fun section appears.

But the worst of the worst is that in order to get the true ending, you must beat it more than once, except that there's nothing different from the first time: no changes whatsoever, no cool remixes, no neatly reimagined enemies or situations—it's the same boring game you already beat once but a second time.


The music is good, the controls are tight, the graphics are beautiful, the vertical shoot 'em up stages are not bad, and there are a couple of great boss battles, but at its core, Omega Factor is simply a defective video game.

I can't believe these are the same guys that made Dynamite Headdy, Gunstar Heroes, Mischief Makers, Silhouette Mirage, and Radiant Silvergun. Hell, even the McDonald's game might be better.

Alright, fine. Maybe this game isn’t THAT bad. Maybe.

I think what helps Metroid 1 push past its fatal (and I mean extremely fatal; like this game has been shot in the chest and is now bleeding out type fatal) flaws is its nonlinearity. There’s so much freedom to gather items in whatever way you want, and it actually adds quite a bit of replay value that rewards player experience and memory. I just started a second file and I got the Varia Suit within the first 45 minutes using nothing but my memory and a crude map of Brinstar that I drew myself (made on the advice of The Geek Critique, but I don’t have enough paper to draw a map of the entire fucking game, so all I have is Brinstar and a small section of Norfair), which made me feel like an absolutely awesome badass.

I’m not gonna sit here and defend this game, though. If you don’t like Metroid 1 due to its litany of problems, that’s a totally valid opinion. I’ve just grown to appreciate it a bit more now.

Zero Mission is still leagues ahead of this game, though. If you wanna get into the series, you should definitely skip this one in favor of that and come back later if you’re curious about where it all started.

The Good
- Great Platforming
- Fun Weapons to use
- Fun Saturday Morning Cartoon-esque Story
- 2 Fun main leads
- Humorous Writing
- Really Enjoyed Ratchet's character arc

The Meh
- Bosses could have been better. The final boss was the only one that I felt was "good".

The Bad
- The economy could have been better.
- Unforgiving Checkpoints
- Multiple playthroughs to get more bolts as a means of affording everything the game had to offer, felt like an arbitrary method that Insomniac added to the game to pad out the playtime.

Conclusion
One of the best platformers on the PS2. It had its hiccups but was an enjoyable experience overall. I haven't played the other two games in the trilogy yet so my opinion may change after I play those but I loved what I played and can't wait to play the rest.

A decent start to a beloved series, but sadly I can't agree that it's one of the best entries.

This game still looks great for a PS2 game and the music is fantastic. The levels are fun to explore and the characters you run into are funny and memorable. The large roster of wacky weapons sets this game apart from the many other platformers of the time.

The problem is that Ratchet controls like ass. He's slow to react to inputs, and he still keeps moving for a bit after stopping inputs, which caused me many extremely frustrating deaths. Controls absolutely make or break platformers, along with the camera, which also caused issues at times in this game.

I may have been able to forgive these issues if the game didn't have such punishing checkpoints. Later in the game, deaths lose a significant chunk of progress, and many of my deaths were caused by the janky controls, or poor enemy placement. In later levels, there are many enemies placed well out of range of most of Ratchet's weapons, and can only be defeated by sniping them with a tiny handful of specific weapons, which usually have very limited and/or costly ammo. And you have to dodge their projectiles with Ratchet's bad controls at the same time.

Generally, the parts of the game that focus on pure platforming without any gimmicks or enemies are quite good, and the issues are less frustrating earlier in the game when getting hit and dying aren't so costly. But the issues were so frustrating that I have never felt like replaying this game, while I have replayed others in the series multiple times. Almost all of these issues were immediately fixed in the sequel.

"Sly, before you can progress in this game about sneaking around, platforming, and avoiding lasers and guards, you NEEED to light these 30 candles with your flamethrower, Sly! You neeed to in order to get the key! And, your flamethrower is fueled by piranahas, Sly! Light the 30 candles with your piranha-fueled flamethrower to progress, SLYYY!"

Easily, my favorite of the PS2 3d Platformers by far. Just wished it let me play the fun parts for 100% of the game.

7.5/10