#but the fight felt underwhelming for a final boss. like it. had the elements that could’ve made it a great final boss | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

pinchraccoon · 2 years ago

Text

Pinch Reviews: Spark The Electric Jester (1,2 and 3)

In an unusual fashion for me, I'm choosing to review the entire Spark series in one fell swoop. Somewhat recently I decided to play the entire series with my friend and cohost Space Buffoon. They proposed playing the series with me on stream as we're both fans of the Sonic The Hedgehog series, and Spark has very clear shared inspiration and DNA.

Over the course of three weeks, Buffy and I played the three titles in the Spark series, opting to play them in order. I'm choosing to cover the three of them today because I feel that comparing and contrasting the games to one another can shed some light on their strengths and weaknesses.

Spoilers, of course, for the entire Spark series!

Spark the Electric Jester, the first one, is a 2D platformer focused on speed and using powerups to creatively remove enemies from the optimal path. Notably, Spark differs immediately from Sonic while maintaining the core gameplay loop in that, far different to 2D Sonic's shield powerups, the powerups in Spark act much more like they might in a game like Mario, or like the different weapons in Mega Man.

The multiple different powerups in this game serve to further diversify an already diverse gameplay loop, finding alternate paths, by granting the player significantly different abilities and movement tech with which to maneuver through levels and carve out the path the player would most like to take. Whether it's removing specific enemies from blocking a path, or something as simple as an extended jump, the powerups allow players to express themselves really effectively. The powerups are also complimented by the stage design itself, which gives all the powerups that they contain a time to shine within them, and occasionally rewarding creative exploration with different, rarer powerups as well.

twitch_clip

Every level in Spark is really satisfying to complete, and despite being longer than the typical level within the genre, it's rare to become bored with the levels as their visual themes as well as the gameplay gimmicks and powerup swaps keep them interesting. The levels are also a phenomenal example of this game's lovely visual style. It's this charming pixel art that really grants a lot of character to the world, it's locales and it's people.

The story in Spark the Electric Jester is a fun, simple romp that calls upon a cute cast of side characters and recurring villains, although I would have liked if the Shadow the Hedgehog-esque "Fark" or "Fake Spark" were better executed in the main game. Otherwise though, Spark has some really clever and somewhat self-aware writing that knows what this game is and what it's trying to be. Spark wisely doesn't seek to do more than it's earned in this game, and I applaud it for knowing its limits. Also, I really like Spark as a character, particularly his grounded nature and apathy toward the situation at hand. He's a good person, but at the end of the day the guy really just want to pay rent more than anything else. His presence in the story makes for a really fun juxtaposition to some of the more serious elements that it tries to pull, and grounds the story through him.

Really the issues I had with the game were incredibly small, primarily that the final boss felt extremely underwhelming due to the unique "Super Spark" powerup that the player is given feels supremely underwhelming, and being able to die far easier in that fight kinda kills the tension of what could otherwise be a really cool moment. I wish to stress, though, that my issues with this game are minute, almost inconsequential, even, and I only feel a need to bring up my issues with what is otherwise an extremely solid and consistent title because I had a great time with the game and just wish it was *that* much more improved. It is very close to being a game I could call a modern classic, but something like the final boss and other, very minor quirks do stick out to me because I *want* this game to be excellent. As it stands though, it's a really great experience that I would absolutely recommend.

Spark The Electric Jester 2 brings the series in a bold, new direction compared to its predecessor, which is to say, Spark is fully Not in the game. Also it's in 3D now.

Spark The Electric Jester 2, or as I'm choosing to call it because I'm spiteful, Fark2, is a 3D platformer with some of the same combat elements as the first game, but with the notable change, of course, of being a 3D game.

I won't beat around the bush here, I don't think this game is very good whatsoever. There is genuinely nothing notable that I liked about my time with this game. Because I will surely go off on tangents about every minute instance of failure on which this game underperforms, I have opted to segment this part of the review, so as to maintain concision, and make my point as clearly as possible. I am going to discuss Fark2's gameplay, story, and presentation separately from one another.

Gameplay

Fark2 controls about how you would expect it to, you have a fast character who has a homing attack now, attacks that can help deal with enemies that cannot be dealt with by the homing attack, as well as a parry. Similarly to the previous game, Fark also has access to his own powerups, but not even close to the same amount as Spark had. Additionally, Fark has access to a few "special" moves that can be performed by holding a button and then pressing an alternate input.

With this core kit in mind, the tools given to the player would imply that the usage of all of the items within Fark's arsenal would be used, much like how Spark 1 heavily encouraged and featured the varied use of abilities and powerups to reach the end of a varied and interesting level. This implication, however, is wrong. In reality, very little of the kit given to you actually does end up being used, as the most effective tactics available could not possibly be simpler. I mean it without a shred of irony that every challenge that this game poses to you, outside of a boss fight, can be trivialized by simply running and jumping. This is because Fark is genuinely too fast for the levels, and the amount of space that he covers means that enemies, many jumps, and in some cases major portions of levels can just be ignored. By just running and jumping with the occasional homing attack, players can ignore 90% of Fark's auxiliary kit, including the special moves, the parry, and perhaps most damning, the powerups.

Levels in this game are often very open, and enemies do not populate enough of the space within the levels to actually be able to pose a threat to a player who is, literally, just running and jumping. Normally, I don't have an issue with level design that allows and encourages the player to speed through the level and even in some cases ignore mechanics for the sake of that speed, but I want to emphasize that this is The Entire Game that is like this. It almost feels as though, combined with the extremely generous health system, Fark2 makes genuinely no effort to actually try to kill the player, or worse, makes no effort to make the player adapt. The player creativity that was present in the first game is completely gone in this game, thanks in large part to the fact that the most effective tactic available is also the easiest tactic available.

twitch_clip

A quote from Soren Johnson and Sid Meier, creators of the Civilization series, comes to mind, and I feel that this quote and the information that it presents can aptly highlight the issues present within this game's gameplay loop.

"Given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game; One of the responsibilities of designers is to protect the player from themselves."

I find this quote to be particularly important in discussion of this because, well, the devs are blatantly not attempting to challenge the player enough to encourage them to engage with anything other than what works immediately, and the result it an uninteresting slog through a collection of straightaways with nothing of interest to break them up.

This game is not entirely a platformer, however. This game has a combat system and it would just *love it* if you were to engage with it, so it does throw you into several combat scenarios with bosses so as to not waste the effort made to animate punches and kicks. Unfortunately, while it is an instance in which the player has to do *something* other than run and jump, every boss encounter can also be trivialized, this time by spamming the attack button mercilessly until the opponent falls to the ground in about 45 seconds. Now, I played the game on normal difficulty, and I don't always think that games should be super super hard all the time, but I do think that a boss encounter of a kind shouldn't go down in 45 seconds in a third person action game-style combat system on the baseline difficulty of the game. Because of how absolutely spineless the bosses themselves are, they feel pointless and kinda pathetic, really.

To conclude the section on gameplay; Fark2 does not make enough of an effort to actually make the player use any of their advanced tools, regardless of how success within the game is defined. Because of this lack of interest in making a player engage with the game, the game is boring and feels meaningless to play.

2. Story

Fark2's story fails to captivate, or even begin to intrigue me for a multitude of reasons, not the least of which being that I find Fark, the middling "edgy version of the MC" from the last game not particularly interesting or compelling. Fark2 doesn't actually do much with any of its story beats, and creates countless plot hooks that are never resolved, such is the case with the majority of the game's bosses, Float, Flint and Double, all of whom the player learns next to nothing about except that they're working with a somehow edgier clone of Fark named E.J. and that makes them bad, because of course it does.

The story culminates in a predictable and uninteresting "I was created by the enemy" notion, the likes of which we've seen countless times, notably, in the series' influence. I am not kidding when I say it, Shadow the Hedgehog (2005) does Fark2's core story better than Fark2 does.

Of course, a lot of games have predictable, or otherwise simple larger plots that are saved by good or writing that has a lot of character, so does Fark2 have that?

Absolutely not, not even a little. Get a look at this line, to see what I'm talking about.

twitch_clip

The overly edgy, completely ironic way that this game plays itself is not only annoying to try to make sense of, but also refuses to go all the way with it. Every character comes off as edgy, but not edgy enough to where I can even begin to see the cheesiness that they're going for. After a certain point you begin to just tune out as secondhand embarrassment begins to set in.

The writing style that was so endearing about the few instances in the first game where dialogue would happen, particularly the tongue-in-cheek tone, is completely missing from this game, and comparing the two's writing styles to one another feels like night and day. It's dissonant to play these games one after the other, as they feel completely unrecognizable from one another.

It's so obvious that the writers want you to like Fark really badly, but they don't give him anything to latch on to as a character to actually make him likable. Comparisons between Spark and Fark as protagonists are unavoidable, but the most notable point in which the two diverge where Spark succeeds and Fark doesn't is that Fark fails to provide almost any input into the story itself, getting pointed in countless different directions for one reason or another, or for no reason at all. Fark feels like an engine to move through a story that he both is and isn't the center of, whereas Spark feels intentionally disconnected to events at hand because he doesn't particularly care about them.

Speaking of Spark, where is he? They mention him once as "being off enjoying a blank check" but that begs the question, why didn't they name the game "Fark the Electric Jester?" It's just supremely weird to me that in a game named after a specific character, that character has actually NO on screen presence. In some way, it feels like false advertising. And, considering that the devs are billing it as the *same series* the writing inconsistencies seem even more dissonant. If this were a spin off I would get it but it's not! Why is it named after a character who isn't in the game? This is like if the next Shantae game was called Shantae: The Curse of Driftwood, and then the game has no appearance of Shantae herself, and you're locked into playing as Rottytops.

The story of Fark2 fails on so many fundamental levels that I can't say that it's worth it to watch any of the cutscenes. It suffers issues on several fronts, from unsatisfying conclusions, plot contrivances, pointless characters, an attempt at intrigue that fails spectacularly, and a protagonist who is extremely easy to dislike.

There's one thing I didn't hate about this game's story, and that's that it does do the super form better than the first game did, but only because it wore a sickening amount of Dragon Ball on its sleeves.

3. Presentation

First, to get this out of the way, this game has some fun butt rock songs to play in boss fights, despite how lame those fights themselves are. I appreciate the attempt there, but music choice in this game is really quite odd.

There's no way I can put it politely, this game is not satisfying to look at. The textures are passable at best, the area design is really quite same-y and the model work for many characters is butt ugly. The two former problems I can pass, they're still problems, but I feel that the issue of the models cannot be as easily forgotten.

twitch_clip

The way that these characters are executed in 3D is, disappointing to say the least, exacerbated by the fact that are that you see *in game* has every one of these characters looking far better than they do here! I'm consistently left confused about what happened here to make all of these characters look like they have all of their features stickered onto their face, which is genuinely just a sphere.

I genuinely like all of these character designs! I think that everyone here looks cute or cool in some degree, but to have such an uncanny representation of them in-game does a legitimate disservice to these characters. I know 3D modelling is hard, I get it, but there should be a point, I feel, where a product isn't ready to be implemented into a build of the game, and none of the models of these characters were ready yet.

In Conclusion about Fark2:

Fark2 fails at just about everything it sets out to do, it's largely uncool, uninteresting, boring, and I don't feel that it is worth your time, and especially not your money. It's gameplay, story and presentation aren't anything special, and it isn't even "so bad it's good." This game is painfully mediocre, and I would believe it if this game were something of a demo for the following entry in the series. Clearly, someone felt that this game is as pointless as I feel it is, because every one of its levels were used as late game extra content in Spark the Electric Jester 3.

Spark The Electric Jester 3 is another 3D platformer, but makes significant improvements to everything that Fark2 tries to accomplish.

First and foremost, Spark the Electric Jester 3 manages to provide fast-paced, fun core gameplay that actually necessitates challenge to the player in both combat and platforming sections. Spark, as the rightful playable character in this game, has access to a large arsenal of combat and movement abilities, which are unlocked from an ingame shop, which serves to naturally encourage the player to learn each move as they can afford it. Spark can also double jump, as well as charge a dash forward that can be used in midair. Despite there not being much more than there was in Fark2 from a platforming perspective, the platforming of this game is far more satisfying as the levels themselves are actually made with Spark's movement and abilities in mind. Levels will frequently push back against you, and require that you at least manage a degree of skill to succeed.

On the combat of things, everything has been revamped to allow combat encounters to feel like anything more than a spam fest. In Spark3, players are encouraged to earn stunlocks against opponents in order to maximize the amount of damage that they can pull off off of one option. Additionally, use of the parry is more difficult, but no less required, making each combat encounter with lots of enemies into a test to see if the player can manage their combo strings while avoiding or parrying enemy attacks simultaneously. Again, compared to some of the action games that this gameplay loop is commonly accredited to, it's a bit more barebones still, however as it isn't the whole focus of the title, and the sections where the pure combat sections are used are somewhat far between, the combat doesn't get old and remains a welcome refresher when platforming could risk getting monotonous.

twitch_clip

Spark3 sees the return of powerups, again, however the player doesn't actually get many of them at all in a normal intended playthrough, really only getting maybe one of them for certain. I got to play with the Reaper powerup during my playthrough as I managed to defeat a certain boss who was supposed to beat me on my first attempt on him, and I think that this is a really interesting way to handle the powerups. Each powerup has much of the same fundamental kit, so players are never left wondering how to input something compared to Spark's normal moveset. I found this powerup implementation to be rewarding, but I felt myself wanting more upgrades to unlock in more apparent ways throughout one playthrough.

Level design in Spark 3 is extremely varied, and consistently visually and mechanically engaging the whole way through! This game works on the basis of certain "worlds" that unlock as the player progresses, sorta like how more rooms of Peach's castle will open at certain amounts of stars in Super Mario 64. Each level within these "worlds" are themed around a specific concept, like a city in a state of riot, an airport/rocket launch facility, or a militarized jungle. The theming of these areas doesn't just account for visuals, however, as each of the areas themselves are also considered for what could be interesting gameplay-wise. For example, one level in the airport level sees a plane crashing and Spark having to escape, in a rare timed level with strong wind mechanics attempting to throw the player off. Or, in the rioting city level, players can jump off of crowds of protestors for a boost, and use a helicopter in brief, but consistently solid vehicle sections. Speaking of, I adore the car sections. Spark3 starts in a car section and I adored every second of it. It's a thunderous, no-nonsense beginning to the game that served to really effectively set a tone that had me down for anything as soon as it started.

twitch_clip

Despite being "down for anything" Spark 3 does lose me in one area. I don't think that it's story is very good, really. My primary issues with the story are that, despite far better writing, this game fails to actually deliver on any of the hooks that it puts out, and seems far more interested, for some fuckin reason, on fleshing out characters from Fark2, specifically the main bosses from Fark2, at least two of which are presumed dead at the end of that game. While there is *a degree* of plot relevance that there could be, in that Float, one of the presumed dead bosses from the previous game, appears to have returned, and seems sad about having dead friends. I take issue with the notion of how this is done however, because Float doesn't actually tell Spark anything, and instead this information is exhibited through stylized 16 bit cutscenes, which while looking cool, take up significantly more runtime in the story than is necessary, especially considering how this story ends.

My BIGGEST issue with Spark3's story is its *egregious* ending, which I will warn prospective players about spoilers for if they're averse to that sort of thing, BUT the rest of this paragraph will concern these spoilers. Spark3 ends in a way that couldn't have been seen from three feet ahead of you. Spark3's ending is, no joke, comparable to NieR Automata and Neon Genesis Evangelion. There's nothing wrong with an ending like that art has, I quite like endings like that, but mostly because art like NieR or NGE EARN their endings, by laying consistent plot threads the whole runtime about something mysterious. Spark3 does *not* do this, and instead pulls it out as shockingly as possible. The entire game is predicated on "Spark has to go and remove Fark, who has become something of a dictator, from power, as he's militarized most of the world using the Fark Force." Now, this is a novel concept, cute even! I really hate Fark, so I'm down to bring him down a peg! But upon reaching the end of the game Spark reaches Fark, who doesn't want to fight him, and instead explains to Spark that both of them have been in a simulation for 3000 years, and Float, a character who's past we learned a lot about in this game, was actually a fake created by the simulation arbitrator, Clarity, in order to lure Spark toward it's own goals. Notably, there have been ABSOLUTELY NO notable clues that the world was a simulation. Additionally, in a near final boss moment, they make you play as Fark, which pissed me off personally, but that's not empirical it's just something I didn't like. The issue with Spark3's story is that it spends five hours of runtime satisfied in the status quo of it's normality, while it attempts to end with something that would have been far more effective, and far less jarring if there were ANY foreshadowing AT ALL. Because Spark3 doesn't have an interest in actually encouraging the player to think about how the game outside of the typical "big simple punch off" fare, it doesn't work to implement something as left field as the ending that is in the game. Additionally, the game ends on a discussion between Fark and Spark, who are dead, and have been dead, about the importance of keeping moving forward, really played pretty straight, no jokes, no irony, then immediately after the credits roll is a Friday Night Funkin reference. Tonal inconsistency is *so* rampant throughout this ending.

The ending, regardless of if you did or did not read the previous paragraph, left me so dissatisfied with the game that my opinion on this game soured significantly, to the point where on stream I actively did not recommend the game to viewers because of the ending.

To conclude, Spark3 is a game with a really excellent gameplay loop that doesn't leave a lot to be desired, and consistently seeks to challenge the player while also giving them opportunities to experiment with new and fun toys that consistently spice up the gameplay loop whenever present. Despite the quality of the gameplay, this game's story is not only unfulfilling, but also useless within the context of the game itself. There are two cutscenes that matter, and they're the ones before and after the final bosses. I would recommend Spark3 to someone looking for an exemplary gameplay experience, however I wouldn't begin to recommend the game to someone who wants a deep or interesting story.

twitch_clip

Now that I've discussed each game at length, I'd like to conclude with a short review of the series as a whole. S

park, when the direction accounts for potential shortcomings, is extremely fun, however the series' writing is consistently passable at best, with some egregious exceptions that make it hard to not skip every cutscene after a while.

Spark 1 is a really fun and interesting romp through a variety of interesting levels in 2d, with an overall fun atmosphere that doesn't seek to take itself too seriously, much to it's benefit. Complete with a multitude of gameplay styles and extreme encouragement of player creativity, it's an excellent way to satisfy a 2D speed platformer itch.

Fark 2 is awful.

Spark 3 takes consistent points from Spark 1 regarding player creativity, visual diversity, wealth of content, and attention to fun and engaging experiences that makes it easy to recommend for it's gameplay and visuals. However, the game's story takes itself far more seriously than it earns, much like Fark2 did to no avail, and the story becomes worse because of it.

If you'd like to watch these playthroughs for yourself, they're all up on my YouTube channel linked below! Thanks so much for reading!

#game review #pinch reviews #indie vtuber #spark the electric jester #twitch streamer #youtube #pinch raccoon #envtuber #spark the electric jester 2 #spark the electric jester 3 #sonic the hedghog #vtuber #game reviews #raccoon

16 notes · View notes

less-than-three-3 · 2 years ago

Text

played metroid prime just like everyone else on the planet, apparently

it was ok (for a metroid game) (that means it is still pretty damn good)

But I can’t lie, given the reputation this game has, I was somewhat disappointed. For transparency, I did play it m+kb on my microsoft wii, though if I had shelled out the price for the remaster I doubt my experience would have been much different lol. Explanation below, with spoilers?

I’ll start with what it does well though, and that’s being Super Metroid but in 3d. In terms of exploration, how the world is presented, how you progress, etc. was translated to 3d pretty perfectly. Having pretty much no guidance and a full map, but still having one or maybe two actual correct ways that, if you just keep going forward or think about what you’ve seen before, you can find really easily. Honestly, in many ways, it just kinda feels like a really really big zelda dungeon. Or maybe zelda is a mini metroidvania. You decide! You can really see the bones of this game in so many modern metroidvanias. There’s not even really things you need to shoot a million times because of scan visor!

And yeah, the scan visor is really cool. Being able to just scan to find out how to approach enemies, or how (or when) to get past obstacles, or learn stuff about the world is pretty neato. The other visors, though, were... ok, I guess. They aren’t interesting to use or anything, just *necessary to see certain enemies*, which I guess is fine just not nearly as interesting as scan visor. (They are also sort of an eyesore, and I imagine the remaster does improve on that)

Speaking of needing a thing to beat certain enemies, I just really hate the space pirates and drones and metroids that have a certain element that they can be hit by. This might just be some bias but I feel like they just take way too long to kill compared to their 2d counterparts, and being forced to use, say, ice beam (which shoots slow as hell) is just a slog. It kinda leads into my first major gripe, being that the combat feels like it takes a little too much of a spotlight for how... admittedly boring it can be. And this is with m+kb controls making aiming a lot better. I don’t really know if it’s actually just later enemies having too much health but the shooting doesn’t feel *that* fun or fluid, like in the 2d games, or out of the way, like in ori 1. Like if it was just a minor thing you just don’t have to think about I wouldn’t complain, but since fights take so long I can’t help but just be a little underwhelmed.

It is definitely exacerbated by my second gripe, which is just that enemies, and especially bosses, are not that interesting? Like they have 1 or 2 attack patterns that you can recognize and dodge, and then you have your turn and you shoot them in the weak spot or with the weak element, rinse and repeat for however long. I think I can give it a little bit of a pass for how old the game is, but I just didn’t really feel that engaged by the bosses. Maybe that’s just a boss design thing and not the combat? I don’t know. Something in there just felt underwhelming.

One last thing to complain about, I promise, but I felt pretty much the entire last “act” was kind of... eh? I didn’t really care for the artifact hunt, it felt a little annoying (especially having to go through the space pirate research base again...). And then the back to back to back of Meta Ridley, Metroid Prime, then Metroid Prime again just really made a point of showing me the totally awesome boss fight design. Especially the final Metroid Prime form which I thought would be like Dark Beast Ganon like oh cool I super zap it to deal a ton of damage.... and then it dealt like maybe 1/10 of its health bar. And then it started summoning more metroids, some of which were the annoying ones. So it was just a really really... fun.... “I have my turn (for a full minute) and then you have yours (for 10 seconds)”. And to then top it all off, I don’t even get an evacuation sequence?? :/

This one’s a more minor, personal issue, and that’s just that I really don’t care to read so much lore. Environmental storytelling and worldbuilding, and ambient mood setting are things that I think Super Metroid perfected and nothing has really met, and that’s something I still believe even having played Prime. If you want to deliver story beats/developments/realizations in a game like this, you show don’t tell. I’m not delivering like a crazy revelation here, any writer knows this lol. But like, for example, to show that, say, the space pirates experimentations of phazon with metroids, instead of a bunch of space pirate data logs to read, there could have been like, idk, some metroid encounters or you see a metroid escape that looks unstable and oozing with phazon. And the chozo artifacts could definitely have been better tied to the phazon stuff too. It’s why I’ve always really enjoyed Fusion and Dread, even if they are departures from the way things are presented in Super, because they actually commit to narrative telling. Maybe I’m off base here, idk, but I just really wish there were less lore tablets and more intuitive things or like even straight up character interactions to show me what’s going on. I hope Silksong improves on that, but I doubt it. Wait what game are we talking about again?

Ok but enough negativity, I really enjoyed everything up to then. Like I said the actual metroidvania parts of it were really excellent. As good as Super Metroid? Not quite, but I do consider that pretty much peak metroidvania performance, so that’s a very high bar. It emulates it super well, and I was definitely really enjoying the full loop of unlocking and going further into the planet. The music too, was really good -- but again Super Metroid’s soundtrack is simply a masterpiece that I think even the 3DS and Switch’s adaptations/remasters of the same tracks don’t hit the same.

All in all I think that’s pretty much a really good way to put it. It adapts Super Metroid’s strengths very well, but not quite to the extent of it, and some things do just get lost in the transition to 2D and 3D, I guess. It’s different from Fusion and Dread because those games are unabashedly more straightforward experiences, while still maintaining pretty much all the Metroid backbone and blood. It’s trying the same thing, but in a different form. I can respect it, but it’s definitely not my favorite. Which is a high bar! For reference I still end up rating this game pretty much a 9/10 - which may seem odd given all I’ve said, but I think for the most part this really hits the mark, and Metroid has just a really super good backbone, there’s just some.. growing pains? idk. I’ll definitely play the rest of the trilogy. I did see Dark Samus escape from metroid prime so... I think the next 2 games will definitely up the ante. Or maybe they won’t. We’ll see.

#metroid #metroid prime

6 notes · View notes

malo-mart · 6 years ago

Note

I saw some of your tags in a previous post, did you not like BotW? (not trying to stir shit, genuinely curious because I didn't love it myself)

so i’ve gotten a couple asks today like this one so I think it’s finally time to make a post about why i didnt love botw :~) this is like 2 years worth of internal critique that ive held in because i know its a really really popular game and arguably the most mainstream zelda game ever (possibly after oot) but i managed to write just my top 3 dislikes!!! woo!!!!

anyway so i just want to disclaim that botw is an amazing and incredible open world game with fantastic graphics and designs and just all round gorgeous! but it doesnt really hit the standard of a Zelda game to me....so here we go

music: forgettable ost so we’ve all played Zelda games before and we’re all familiar with the music of the franchise. We all know the classics, like the overworld theme, and song of storms, dragon roost island, midnas lament etc. These are really, really iconic songs which we all know and love....So i want to ask how many memorable songs did we get from botw? i loved the trailer music, you know the song that plays when you unlock towers, but the best use of that song was seriously only done in the trailer. I know a big argument a lot of people use to defend the music in botw is “you’re supposed to feel empty and alone” but I don’t want to feel like im alone! I want to feel like i’m on an adventure to save Hyrule. just want to reiterate that botw outside of the zelda franchise is AMAZING but as a zelda game im not impressed. so for the music, in comparison to 30+ years of incredible soundtracks, botw didn’t leave a mark (for me) ((these are just personal opinions)) (((so keep hate to a minimum thabk u))) also i want to add that i shouldn’t like watching the trailer more than i actually like playing the game......you gotta admit the trailer was awesome

plot: weak plot, boring, no flavour lol plot.....what plot....lol....surely we can all agree that botw had a weak ass plot. i understand that nintendo was trying to break zelda conventions by allowing you to do whatever you wanted whenever you wanted but what i dont understand is why that had to come at the cost of a good story....the fact that you could do a playthrough of botw without having to collect the memories really made the characters and the arc feel so insignificant when it could have been a really great story. one of my favourite zelda games is albw because i loved how they gave you the choice of where to go and what to do through Ravio! and then the plot right at the end....blew my tiny mind. i loved it! albw broke zelda conventions while also delivering an iconic story line. Finishing botw was not satisfying for me. The characters felt incomplete and there were entire plot points that were completely insignificant, like the Koroks. Even the Guardians were made to feel completely obsolete by the end of the game. They were never given a finishing story line. My girlfriend was telling me how botw would have had a greater impact if the final boss fight had involved the guardians, as in they returned to your side and helped you finish ganon or something like that, but instead they were just forgotten about. i feel like a lot of botw was just forgotten about...........but yeah. it was a weak plot, especially in comparison to other zelda games. i really feel like a good story is a key element to a good zelda game

shrines: too easy, too short, underwhelming ahhhh. shrines. 120 shrines, and all you get at the end are some clothes. i have a LOT to say about the shrines. they tried hard to switch it up here, replacing dungeons with shrines & divine beasts. i was really excited about this change at first but i felt they really under-delivered. Here are the zelda conventions they got rid of with the divine beasts: boss keys, dungeon specific items (bow, hookshot, boomerang etc), maps (kind of), compasses, mini boss. cool cool cool cool cool thats fine. i feel like they couldnt include any of these because the divine beasts were soooo short. i feel like i completed them in like 20 minutes. i’d say that they were underwhelming! it really made me miss getting stuck in the bloody forest temple in oot shooting an arrow at the walls trying to get the hallways to untwist for like 7 hours u know? as for the shrines, they were boring too lol. the music was all the same, there was barely any variety in the elements or challenges and they were pretty simple to complete. i thought they were booooorrriiiing. i think definitely my key word for this section is underwhelming. the only reason i would get excited about finding a shrine is because it actually gave me something to do instead of just frolicking around and foraging for like 15 hours straight

but yeah anyway i did like botw but its not in my top 5 loz games barely even in my top 10 like maybe its tenth. and reiterating these are my personal opinions if u relate im starting a club we will have shirts that say ‘botw was okay’. if u thought this was completely wrong then i feel for ya i dont blame u for loving botw. its great! i have high hopes for the sequel!!! also if anyone read this far im surprised but i love u

#personal #botw #i tried putting a read more in idk if it worked???????#just edited to try and make it work

138 notes · View notes

nellie-elizabeth · 6 years ago

Text

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend: I Need to Find My Frenemy (4x15)

What even is this show. It's so unbelievably brilliant.

Cons:

I thought the Rap Battle reprise was a little underwhelming, when compared to the brilliant original. It wasn't bad enough to be like a real problem or anything, it just wasn't a new favorite either. Just thought I'd mention that.

Also, and this isn't a real complaint, but... I miss White Josh. It sucks that he hasn't been around more this season. It was so fun to see him here and I wish we could have so much more.

Pros:

I want to start with the comedy corner and just mention a few of my favorite jokes: Heather makes fun of the CW's "Dare to Defy" slogan, and it gives me life. I liked Darryl and White Josh being delighted in all the drama with the three guys. Every time Josh said "stand down," I cackled. Paula's references to a not-so-secret past gambling addiction, all of the call-backs to previous seasons (the butter, the reprises, the lyrics), it was all comedy gold. Specifically talking about the slow-motion song for a second: I honestly thought that gimmick was going to get old or stupid very quickly, but it didn't. Every time they went back to the slow-motion, there was a new element involved to make it even funnier.

There's so much to talk about in this episode that I think it might be best to take it one character at a time, starting with Rebecca's three suitors.

So... Greg is the clear winner for me in this episode, because he doesn't participate in the "stand down" nonsense, and when he sees that Rebecca has made a chart comparing her three love interests, he's horrified and he doesn't want any part of it. He's also got the line item on his column that says that he seems to understand Rebecca in a deep way, which is a lot more specific and important than anything on the other charts. The fact that he gets roped in to the "three dates for Rebecca" scheme is sort of a backsliding moment, but it also shows that Greg is willing to fight for Rebecca right along with the other two.

Nathaniel and Josh both come across looking like idiots in comparison to Greg, in a way, since they're both willing to pretend to back off only to go back on their promises immediately. I honestly like Nathaniel a lot, and I think he and Rebecca make sense together, but this season has taken the show in a direction such that the two of them getting together would feel unsatisfying. That goes double for Josh, though. I don't think there's a chance in hell that Rebecca and Josh could make each other happy, and I trust this show to know its characters well enough to avoid any ridiculous pitfalls. I just hope we get to see a satisfying ending for all of the characters.

"The Math of Love Triangles" reprise was more successful for me than the song with Audra. I wish it could have been longer, but I thought it was a great way to emphasize the degree to which Rebecca is stuck in a rut. At the end of this episode, we learn that Greg, Nathaniel, and Josh all want to take Rebecca out on a date, and then she can make her choice between the three of them. It's clear that this is part of a pattern that isn't sustainable. We know that Rebecca's life is about more than a man, and the very fact that she isn't sure which of them to pick might be an indication that the answer is... none of the above.

Before we get to Rebecca and Audra, let's talk about the other trio of characters in this episode: Paula, Valencia, and Heather. Each of them has a small subplot about a problem in their lives, and their trip to Vegas acts as a means of avoidance for them.

Heather feels like she's having to be a mother for Hector, always picking up after him and taking care of the little things. What I liked about this journey for Heather is that it wasn't the typical thing where a sitcom wife indulges a lazy husband, and it also wasn't a dramatic moment where Heather realized that she and Hector weren't right for each other. It was just... a pretty normal thing that I bet happens in a lot of relationships, maybe especially with a woman taking care of a man. Heather recognizes an unhealthy pattern, talks to her husband about it, and Hector promises to do better. I like that we're seeing the aftermath of a "happily ever after" for Heather. She's got a job she loves and a husband she loves, but there will always be challenges.

Paula, meanwhile, is excited to start her new job, but she's a bit apprehensive when she sees the expensive power suits that all of the lawyers are wearing. She ends up buying one after winning a bunch of money in Vegas, but she tells her new boss that she's not going to buy another - it's just not her. This was another plot thread that could have been overly dramatic. Paula could have started her new job and realized that the high-powered world of corporate law wasn't what she wanted, after all. She could have realized that she was more comfortable back with Darryl and the others, and reverted to a safer part of her life. But no - she's a little bit worried that she won't fit in, but her new co-worker assures her right away that they don't care about Paula's wardrobe - they value her for her legal mind and they're excited to have her working with them. I'm so happy for Paula!

Finally, you've got Valencia. Beth tells her that she's not ready to propose, and Valencia is crushed, and refuses to back down from her ultimatum. Her time in Vegas shows her that it's stupid to be withholding from her girlfriend, and that ultimatums are manipulative. She calls and asks for Beth's forgiveness, and Beth forgives her, and then says that she wasn't saying no to marriage forever - some day, Valencia could get a ring for Beth. Valencia is adorably delighted at the notion that she could be the one to propose. I found this to be incredibly charming. I was worried last week about Valencia's ultimatum, but this week's resolution felt so appropriate. Valencia has grown so much as a person, but some of her ingrained prejudices and ideas about relationships are still within her, and I'm happy she's overcome another hurdle.

Okay. Audra Levine. I'm so happy that this character got to have one final appearance. The thing about Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is that nothing is as simple as it appears. There are no caricatures - not really. Valencia was the bitchy girlfriend, Heather was the aloof cool girl neighbor, Rebecca was the "Crazy Ex-Girlfriend," and now we know them in the full complexity of their person-hood. Audra was trapped in the same restrictive life trajectory that Rebecca had been in back in the pilot episode. We see how she has outwardly succeeded - great career, lots of money, husband and three kids... and yet we know by now that things are a lot more nuanced than that. I loved that Audra initially justifies her behavior by comparing her decision to Rebecca's. Yes, Rebecca did uproot her life and move to a new place and then jump in to a series of ill-advised relationships. But she wasn't leaving behind a husband and three babies to do so. I like that Audra's behavior is framed as being incredibly terrible, but she is not condemned out of hand for it either. Rebecca knows what it is to be in a place of indecision and fear, and she helps Audra out to the best of her ability.

That's where I'll stop for now. There's always so much more I could say about Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, but that's the gist - this is an excellent show, and I'm on the edge of my seat, wondering how it's all going to end!

9/10

#review #crazy ex-girlfriend #crazy ex-girlfriend review #crazy ex girlfriend #crazy ex girlfriend review #crazy ex gf #crazy ex-gf

16 notes · View notes

acradaunt · 6 years ago

Text

EON Playthrough: Week 7

The 13th stratum's random encounters have a bit of a similar taste to the 10th; loads and loads of elemental recolours, but this time with a lot more physical vulnerability. My main game plan was for Juri to just delete a chump with Drop Shot while Iris Walls against the surviving elemental attacks. Elemental attacks can be stuffed very cheaply, but you can only do one element at most. Plus, with Chasers around, it's more vital they can take a normal hit as well. There's a lot of passive synergy in most encounters here. 13th also does a bit more with puzzles. I'd say it's overall one of the better strata, and almost certainly the best of the new Nexus-only areas. 9th being a fairly distant second.

It's definitely making me think about how lots of strata just had random mish-mashes of enemies without any cohesive strategy between them, and the Shrines were particularly bad offenders, literally stealing random enemies, especially from EOV, and dumping them in without a care. Some places at least had the 'oh, and here's the one enemy that's immune to the thing everyone else hates' to fall back on (8th was a good example of this). Is it weird that I like it when enemies have a firm plan to kick my ass? Things like the Roller-chucking Baboons and the Nightseeker-wannabe birdies provided a bit of a puzzle in what order is really the best to handle them and made them really pop out as interesting but fair threats.

The final story boss was kind of a huge pushover. Just didn't really seem to have any tricks up his sleeve compared to the 9-11th strata. Weirdest is probably the ultra-telegraphed mass-physical attack, which feels more like something the 1st-3rd boss should do, not the last guy. Maybe he just didn't live long enough to do much (15 turns), since he sure didn't like Terra's Delayed Charge + Cross Charge + Bloodlust combos, but felt pretty underwhelming, even compared to the big dopey final story boss of EOIV. Protector and Deja Vu Unbinds shut down any offense on his part pretty hard, though; I THINK the big thing is his attacks bind, trying to get you to mix strategies up, but when I auto-recover every turn, I didn't have to care.

I guess it doesn't really mean much, though, at the end of the day. There's still a full bonus stratum to go and at least eight or so side-bosses and side-mazes now available or will shortly be available. Even so, I think I'm ending this weekly thing here. There's just nothing left to say. Of course I plan on doing all that content, but if the past is anything to go by, it'll be literal years before I legitimately beat the superboss. Unless they're a dumbass and you can get them to one-shot themselves, like Ur-Child. What a moron.

I've clocked about 135 hours on Nexus, although I dunno how much of that was oogling weapons at Napier's or fussing around at the guild hall about colours or assigning skill points to the 48 or so characters I haven't yet used. If Monster Hunter's anything to go by, it's a pretty significant percentage. I like window shopping a bit too much. Also I apparently finished in exactly 100 in-game days (Tiger the 16th), so that's a pretty nifty number.

I can't say I looked at the other games as critically, but I can definitely say there's spots where Nexus stutters. Just like absolutely every other EO game, it completely front-ends its cool boss ideas, although here it's less 'this 1st boss has a cool puzzle associated with it' and more 'here, fight this former superboss before you're even level 20' and 'Have two bosses, back to back'. Some later bosses do have interesting setups, but they're exactly who you'd expect to fight when you first enter. The Shrines are 16+5 floors of fairly same-y ideas with the same music and background in a game that mixes things up completely every three floors. It's really only bad by what it's standing next to. If two of the shrines stole music and tileset assets from, say, Gladsheim and Ginugagagap and changed nothing else, I don't think I'd be complaining about them.

Ironically, I think the more prominent remark is how quickly some content in the rest of the game comes and goes. I think I fought maybe a grand total of two Cube Gels, Whorled Puffers, and Starry Slugs. It's actually kind of a great problem. There's just SO MUCH content that some stuff slips between the cracks. I unironically think the encounter rate could have been just a touch higher (and with less rewards from bar quests or events to compensate). Especially on some strata where most rooms are puzzle/FOE rooms with radically reduced encounters, you just don't get into fights much at all. I think a FOE interrupted a random encounter like four times, total. And most of those were bats, which are wimps (and my fave FOE for how different a concept that is). I suppose this falls into the 'good players go through stuff fast, less good players stick around longer' auto-adjusting difficulty RPGs have.

There's an obvious complaint to be made about an overabundance of earlygame strata being used and nothing ever from any game's 5-6th stratum, but it honestly didn't bother me. Apart from both of EOIII's 5th stratum gimmicks, I can't really think of many puzzle assets that never showed up, or at least with a close proxy. Well, I guess there's EOV's butt-golem switches. And EOV's falling pillars. Okay, so a couple.

I guess my bottom line is that I still do believe Nexus is the best EO game, as quantity really does completely wash away any lower quality areas. It is a lot of the same, but apart from the 2nd stratum, it never really felt same-y. Maybe it's because I never played EOU or EO2U (or EOI to begin with), so those areas might feel more dull if I had, but to me, they hardly resemble the same-y unremarkable regions and enemies they once were in EOII. Nexus is likely not the best game to start on; I'd say ideally the order is any one of EOIV/EOU/EO2U, then EOV, then Nexus. Spaced out over several years. A lot of the fun of Nexus was seeing how they improved old stuff, and how new and old stuff from different games intermingle, and without any nostalgia and some sense of familiarity, it might be a little bit of a sensory overload. EOV content was clearly deliberately avoided, so EOV still feels like a very different game with lots of super-weird classes.

I think my favourite parts were the 11th stratum, which I seemed to be facing death several times, but always pulled things out, and the bosses/FOEs were demanding, but felt fair after 10th's ultra-unfair midboss. Seeing, and especially hearing, the 6th stratum after like a decade was phenomenal, even if it was a bit of a breather area. The 4th likewise, especially its side-maze, seeing some real mixing of the games. And while I ragged on them earlier, the 9th and 13th stratum had some really good puzzles. Really, only the 3rd and 5th were really lacking in puzzle/FOE rooms. Maybe that's why they felt like such meat-grinders.

#Etrian Odyssey #Etrian Odyssey Nexus #EON #EOX #EO Nexus

1 note · View note

its-kex · 8 years ago

Note

for the spyro meme: all of them :--)

HO BOY I’M FUCKING READY

1. Which Spyro game is your favorite? Spyro 2 - Ripto’s RageIronically I’ve never gotten my hands on the original Spyro game but the first three are super similar SO

2. Who is your favorite character from the Spyro series?:v..... Spyro.............. Hunter was a funny guy tho.

3. Which Spyro games have you played?I played the original Spyro on an emulator for 5 minutes but I don’t really count it because it worked bad so I stopped; Ripto’s Rage; The Eternal Night; Dawn of the Dragon.

4. What Spyro game did you play first?Ripto’s Rage and it’s the best out of all of them, I will fight everyone about this.

5. What “era” of Spyro is your favorite? (Insomniac, Legend of Spyro, the in between time)Insomniac will forever be my fav. LoS was okay but I didn’t enjoy it as much as the old games.

6. What is your favorite level from a Spyro game?I love the Glimmer homeworld in Ripto’s Rage, it’s not like... special because it’s literally the first level of the game but it’s super neat.

7. Which of Spyro’s many designs is your favorite?The one in Dawn of the Dragon. Probably just cause over time, they made him look older and stuff. Boy is growing up.

8. Favorite voice actor for Spyro?I just had to look this up and apparently Elijah Wood voiced Spyro in Dawn of the Dragon SO I GUESS THAT. I don’t really look up voice actors for characters often.

9. Would you consider yourself a part of the Spyro fandom?Nnnno, just because I don’t consider myself in any “fandom”? I have things I’m a fan of, that doesn’t really make me part of anything.

10. What is your opinion on the Spyro fandom as a whole?I don’t pay attention to it lol.

11. What have you contributed to the fandom?I feel called out

12. Do you read any Spyro fanfiction?I’ve stopped reading fanfiction altogether years ago since most of it is like cringy 12y/o fantasies.

13. Have you ever played a Spyro fan game? There are??????????? Fan games??????????? where

14. If you could live in one level/world from a Spyro game which would it be?Uhhhh Shady Oasis seems like a chill place?

15. Favorite boss in a Spyro game?Crush from RR, bitch was so easy to beat.

16. Do you own any Spyro merchandise?I WISH

17. What’s your favorite piece of music from the Spyro series?My answers are like 99% about Ripto’s Rage but anyway I liked the entirety of this games soundtrack it’s just so...... pleasant.

18. Which game has the best soundtrack, in your opinion?:)

19. Which game is your least favorite? The Eternal Night was the only game I never finished, I don’t really remember why? I might’ve just gotten kinda bored at the beginning :(

20. Any characters you hate or just can’t stand?MONEYBAGS IS A PIECE OF SHIT.

21. Have you ever had a Spyro related dream?i wish?

22. Which Spyro game do you think is the most difficult?Dawn of the Dragon, by far? I replayed that game a couple of times and at some points I was just so fucking done that I used cheats to get it over with. DotD was at the point where it stopped being a charming game and started trying to be serious but the upped difficulty was... annoying.

23. Which game do you think is the easiest? Ripto’s Rage lol. I mean, if you’re a completionist, then yeah there are some annoying as shit levels but just for a casual playthrough it’s easy.

24. Do you have an unpopular opinion related to Spyro? Ok so one thing I really hated about Dawn of the Dragon is that they had to make Cynder Spyro’s love interest? It felt super forced and it made Cynder’s character really poor. Then again, I haven’t played any other games with Cynder in them so maybe if I knew her whole story I’d feel different.

25. Which one of Spyro’s breath abilities is your favorite?Classic fire is my fave. When they slap 4 different abilities at you in DotD it’s like...... why are you over-complicating things dkfhjdfhdf.

26. Do you have any Spyro related headcanons?Spyro kills Moneybags.

27. Favorite line of dialogue from any game?EEEH I don’t really remember anything outstanding but I loved how in the earlier games Spyro was super sassy.

28. Have you ever 100% completed a Spyro game?Ya boi, Ripto’s Rage.

29. Anything in a Spyro game that makes you angry?The fucking SPEEDWAY MAPSAND MONEYBAGS

30. Favorite speedway/flight?Fuck off

31. What’s your opinion on the enemy names in the first 2 Legend of Spyro games?I looked those up and the ones I found were Cynder, Dark Master and Gaul lmao? I like Cynder, Gaul is weird and Dark Master is just underwhelming considering he’s like the most powerful dragon but ok.

32. What would your perfect Spyro game look like?RIPTO’S RAGE PS4 REMASTERED SOMEBODY MAKE THIS HAPPEN.

33. Do you ever mess around with glitches in any of the games?what glitches

34. Have you ever seen a speedrun of a Spyro game?Nah, sucks the fun out of it.

35. How often do you play Spyro games?Almost never? My ps1 is ancient and it doesn’t work too well.

36. When was the last time you played a Spyro game?Probably like a few years ago.

37. What’s your opinion on the Skylanders franchise?Skylanders Spyro is the stupidest shit I’ve ever seen, don’t ever bring that up to me.

38. Are the 5 gems from the first 3 Spyro games blue or purple?Blue? They have a purple-ish hint but I’ve always seen them as blue.

39. Which of the playable characters in Year of the Dragon is your favorite?(not counting Spyro)Never played it :)))))

40. Which home world is your favorite?I feel like I already said this but Glimmer.

41. Do you ever use the cheat codes in any of the games?In Dawn of the Dragon since it was stupid hard.

42. Favorite final boss?Ripto, lol.

43. Which game do you think had the best story?Dawn of the Dragon imo. It was heavily a story game with like..... war and shit, it had a very different vibe from the old Spyro games.

44. Do you own multiple copies of any of the games?I think I have 2 copies of Ripto’s Rage, have I said I like Ripto’s Rage because holy shit do I love Ripto’s Rage.

45. Do you like the skateboarding in Spyro 3?I need to play Spyro 3 now.

46. Which one of the 4 elemental dragons from the Legend of Spyro is your favorite?Fire.

47. Have you ever played Dawn of the Dragon with someone else?Yeah boi.

48. Who do you prefer to play as in Dawn of the Dragon? Spyro or Cynder?I’d switch between them often.

49. Which Fury attack from the Legend of Spyro is your favorite?I’m too tired to look them up.

50. Which one of Hunter’s designs do you like the best?Ok listen........ Dawn of the Dragon Hunter is fucking lit o K I MEAN HELLO ?????

51. Have you ever played a Skylanders game?Fuck that

52. Do you visit any Spyro fan sites? (darkSpyro, spyroforum, etc.)lmfao what now

#THANKS #I LOVE TALKING ABOUT SPYRO OK #I COULD NEVER SHUT UP #astraltus

2 notes · View notes

darkarm66 · 8 years ago

Text

Breath of the Wild review

On the Wii U, I had The Wind Waker and Twilight Princess in their HD remastered forms....and barely touched. This is reoccurring issue with me and remasters, even with games I love. No matter how much I loved them the first time, there are some games I won't touch again and it was mainly due to the beginning stages. I dreaded going though Ordon Village again and knowing I'd have to put up with those tutorials again to get to the parts of Twilight Princess i did enjoy. So once Link wakes up Breath of the Wild, gets his clothes and Sheikah Slate and I got to run around with my meager abilities and items, I knew that this game was gonna be a classic. Yes, that's all it took. Now, there have been many many reviews that extolled the excellence of Breath of the Wild, much better written reviews when it came out, possibly on the verge of hyperbolic. So allow me to add to it. And yes, not only is this the best game of 2017, It very well could be one of the greatest of all time. While those reviews have mentioned Witcher 3, Skyrim, Arkham Asylum and other open world games as direct influences (Nintendo said as much as well), this game inspired feelings in me I haven't felt since Xenoblade Chronicles. And like Xenoblade Chronicles, Breath of the Wild succeeded due to not just the high amount of gameplay but also by eliminating a lot of wonky, reductive elements.

There's no invisible barriers that prevents the player from going where they want to go, once you get off the Great Plateau after getting the runes in the Shrines, the player has everything the need to explore this amazing version of Hyrule. And the exploration was felt lacking in previous Zeldas. You knew that special icon or crack in the ground required the player to retrieve the item from a dungeon. Now, you just have to go there and a lot of it just jumps out at the player. This time around, Hyrule itself is a dungeon with so many puzzles that tempt to player to stop moving and just fiddle around for a bit. The world is littered with seemingly out of place shapes and it draws the player in a way that doesn't feel contrived or blatant. And even if a trail isn't apparent or there's no natural way to enter a place, the climbing mechanic breaks all of it. Climbing itself becomes its own minigame because its governed by a stamina wheel and the weather system, which does allow the player to be challenged by where they can climb but it doesn't allow the player to break the game by going everywhere. And speaking of challenge, get ready to eat humble pie with the simplest combat system but toughest enemies ever.

This Hyrule wasn't afraid to hand the player its ass over and over. And the lack of tutorials and locked rooms that teach you to fight means you're not stuck in this one place until you get it right. If you die, you come back and try again or move onto somewhere else to do something that won't kill you. When I tried to put off the story as much as I possibly can, I ended up discovering Shrines (in a minute, not yet), Koroks, rupees, side quests, food. Until I became bored and started the Zora quest line, which delighted because I got to climb up a waterfall with ice blocks and led to the real menace of Hyrule: Lynels. This is when previous Zelda game would put you in this room and turn this into a boss battle to see if the player has gotten any good. Not this time, it didn't care that I didn't have enough hearts, or my shields were too weak, or my weapons were brittle. So I just turn around from the high point and glided to somewhere else instead. While players will have to fight to actually survive, Breath of the Wild let the experience teach the players.

And mainly, those Shrines is how you get experience points. The Shrines are dotted the map, some not even trying to hide, some taking maddening puzzle solving, others rewarding the player for figuring out all the clues. Not only is this how the game facilitates fast travel, it also scratches that dungeon crawling itch for a bit, but only by being a puzzle shrine or a combat shrine. It lacks the incredible intertwining of previous Zelda dungeons but the light content and brain stretching use of items makes up for it. Especially since the player is always rewarded with a great item. Unless its a weapon...

Okay, in the early goings, weapon durability can be a bummer. Weapons break too common and by the time you get used to one, its gone. That's not the worst part of it. The problem comes when good weapons do start becoming more readily available but not you're out of slots because you don't wanna waste your Royal Broadswords on some basic ass Bokoblins because you know a Lynel needs that work more. However, you deal with it because all the puzzle solving and wander lusting led to Korok seeds to expand the inventory, so now by the time you wanna start wrecking things, you're actually equipped to do so this time around.

I also believe that the durability allows the player to actually replay certain areas. While other games use powerful enemies as gates to keep the player away for a few hours, that doesn't feel like it this time around. The map allows players to actually keep tabs on where they may want to go but don't feel like dying to do so. Place that stamp down, go somewhere else and come back to it when the player truly feels ready. I remember Miyamoto talking about how they wanted Zelda games to be able to replay certain areas for a reason. And now they didn't have to force the player to do a bunch of fetch quests or pixel hunts to come back to an area they already beaten. This makes Hyrule feel more livelier this time around because no matter how much time you spent in one area, you can come back to it and discover something hiding under your nose this whole time but you couldn't see it just yet. Or it has a dope sword you really needed but didn't have room for.

But one thing to make room for: food! There was something so hypnotic about resource gathering and cooking, in a way that surpasses Final Fantasy XV's photo-realistic dishes. The abundance of materials, which not only kills the tedium that might have killed lesser games, allows players to actual feel free to consume and experiment with everything they've gathered. In the beginning, basic meals are cooked to give your health a chance withstand raiding an enemy camp. By the time you're in the 100 hour mark, players are hunting to create complex dishes that give them dope buffs to make a play session a more pleasant.

One pleasant thing this go around is the story. For all the flack Nintendo gets for its approach to stories, it only gets it because they're not telling it through the usual cinema envy of other games. This is a deconstruction of Link and being the chosen one. Link isn't just gonna be handed all the tools needed to succeed just because he was chosen. Same goes for Zelda, who seems heartbroken that she has to be the reincarnation of a goddess. And thanks to the Memories questline, you get to see those cutscenes but they aren't automatically triggered because you did a thing. You earn those previous moments beforehand that showed Link and Zelda not truly feeling going along with what destiny wants to do because it worked 100 years ago...which was probably Nintendo's feelings developing this game.

For years, Eiji Aonuma talked about breaking the conventions and in the gameplay and story, that feeling comes across well with Divine Beast Champions, especially who they just fall doing what they were told to do. This is truly about how Zelda's dev team felt about coming together to give the same results, only for it to fail before it even began and the task fell to new people to do what's necessary to defeat Ganon through new means. It's deeply personal and the emotion maturely understated. Link and Zelda develop as legit characters through their struggles and heartbreak and it gives the story an emotional richness not seen since Ocarina/Majora. Link (and the player) truly earns the right to be called a hero, not because he was chosen but because he endured and grew.

I haven't even mentioned how beautiful this game is. Forget your need for 6 billion polygons per sec to animate a face. The details astounding from up close and far away. Climb to the top of the mountain and you see a sprawling, diverse horizon to take your breath away or look down to see a forest or lake or camp to possibly sail down. None of it ever stops looking gorgeous. My favorite place in the game revolved around a Shrine that needed an Orb to unlock but the area you were in was completely dark. Seeing Link as a shadow, lighting torches to move around this area was utterly beautiful and proves that developers don't need to high end CGI cutscenes to make a visual impression that last forever. Speaking of lasting impressions, this is one of the best UI I've seen in a game. It conveys information and stats without completely cluttering the screen and taking away from the game world. Even when playing in handheld mode, you can stil take in a lot of visual treats of Hyrule.

And despite the impression that I'm ready to marry this game, this game isn't flawless. Weapon switch is a legit pain. Holding down one button to switch to a particular weapon isn't as intuitive as the other controls in the game. You're better off just pausing and switching items, which sorta breaks the immersion for the player. Also, as great as the Koroks and Korok puzzles are, did their have to be 900 of them. I'm all for trolling the player and subverting expectations for attempting 100% completion, but 900?!? That quickly veers between padding and repetitive. And the dragons can suck it. Only one item drop per appearance and god help you if you don’t want a scale. Again. Which leads to the upgrade system being underwhelming, due to its limited focus on armor and not weapons.

What makes me ignore these flaws: the game never forces you to do any thing mentioned before this (except the first four shrines and runes). You never have to find a Korok seed (but why the fuck wouldn't you?!?), you never have to expand your health and stamina, you don't need to cook a meal, get the Master Sword, ride a horse, shield surf, regulate your temperature, complete a shrine. The game is indifferent to your progress. But you will do any and all those things because Breath of the Wild is excellent at triggering your curiosity and intellect and rewarding it, not rewarding your patience. Best of all, nearly everything you do fits into a mechanic the benefits the player, the quest aren't just a collection of repetitive checklists of escalating numbers nor is its badly tuned mechanics just thrown for the sake of variety. (Take that, open world games!)

This is not to say the previous Zeldas were awful. They didn't get tens and awards for nothing. You may even miss the linearity. They were great for what they are. Breath of the Wild is just better. Instead of telescoping design and handing you the fun stuff when you did the one thing it told you to do, it trusted the players this time around to make their own fun and build their own legend. Players will end up completing the same things but everyone will make their own path to completion. Breath of the Wild is worthy of the praise it has received and then some. It break ground by avoiding all the pot holes and wasted soil of previous Zeldas and open world games and brought freshnesss that hasn't been felt in years. Truly a game that lives up to the word 'Legend'

#nintendo legendofzelda breathofthewild jimsterlingisanidiot

2 notes · View notes

theroguebadger · 8 years ago

Text

Review: Final Fantasy XV

That’s it! I’ve come up with a new review! (No spoilers)

Following a game's development from the day of its initial announcement can be a difficult prospect. For many AAA games, that can mean two or three years of patience, with only a new trailer every few months to keep the fire of anticipation burning. In this sense, Final Fantasy XV is the most extreme of anomalies. It was first unveiled as Final Fantasy Versus XIII, a companion story with loose links to Final Fantasy XIII, at E3 in 2006, a whopping ten years before it would finally see the light of day. In the following years, updates and new information were so scarce that many feared that the game would never see release; even when it was officially rebranded as Final Fantasy XV at E3 2013, seven years after its first trailer aired, fans were subjected to a three-year wait before they could get their hands on it, though two demos and several trailers filled the gap. With a game like this, whose development history was so troubled and uncertain, it isn't enough to simply ask whether or not the finished product is a satisfactory one. Perhaps more importantly, we have to ask: was it worth the wait?

Final Fantasy XV picks and chooses aspects from earlier series instalments and takes them for itself, whilst occasionally throwing something new into the mix. Reminiscent of Final Fantasy III and X-2, your party is limited to a smaller group of people – four, in this case – all of which are present from the opening stages of the story. Noctis Lucis Caelum, prince of the kingdom of Lucis, departs the capital city of Insomnia in the opening scenes, accompanied by three close friends: Ignis, a sensible caretaker charged with keeping Noctis out of trouble; Gladiolus, a combat instructor responsible for training Noctis's combat skills; and Prompto, a close friend of the prince's from his school days, who brings a carefree enthusiasm and his photography skills to the team.

Together, they set off on a road trip to attend Noctis's own wedding to Lunafreya, princess of distant kingdom Tenebrae. It all quickly goes wrong, of course. Insomnia is invaded by an imperial army moments after you leave; your father the king is assassinated, your fiancée disappears on a journey of her own and the kingdom's Crystal, a magical relic needed to keep the world safe, is pilfered by the empire. As with much of the story, this is all communicated in a very rushed, head-scratching sort of way. The impact of events is made underwhelming by how little time or focus is dedicated to them. The invasion of Insomnia is shown to be a battle on a catastrophic scale, but the seconds-long cutscene that reveals it hardly adds anything to the immensity of the event.

With their mission now changed – they need to find Lunafreya, bring down the empire and restore the Crystal to Lucis – Noctis and company's true journey begins. Here the first portion of Lucis's open world becomes available to you, with the other sections locked behind early story progression. When you're not travelling between story areas – your means of transport being the Regalia, on foot or, eventually, via chocobo – you can tackle some of FF15's innumerable hunting missions, help out troubled NPCs at the various outposts or gather useful materials. Food sources will provide you with ingredients to bolster Ignis's list of recipes, which when prepared at camp will give the party a time-limited boost to various stats. In many cases, the right meal can make all the difference in a tough fight, of which there are many outside of the mandatory story fights, and Ignis's own enthusiasm for the culinary arts makes the whole process quite charming to watch.

Alongside ingredients, you can also discover ore with which to customise your car, or sources of magic to craft spells for use in battle. Gone are the days of scrolling through your acquired spells to find the right one for the occasion. Final Fantasy XV has its own approach to magic, allowing you to mix and match your stock of each element to create stronger variants – the classic -aras and -agas – but the most crucial aspect is adding in items you've collected along your travels. These can do anything from increasing the uses of a particular spell (they're all finite and must be replenished) to adding extra effects such as healing Noctis or boosting the experience you earn from any battle in which they're cast. Fiddling around with different combinations is interesting enough at first, but after a while I couldn't help but wish they'd stuck with something more traditional. Having these usage-limited tools of devastation is a novel concept, but friendly fire means you're just as likely to set your team ablaze as you are to turn the tide of battle with a well-placed, triple-cast Firaga.

Combat puts you solely in control of Noctis, with your allies only controllable through the activation of their own specific skills. Whilst your teammates are limited to two weapons of specific types – Gladiolus uses greatswords and shields, for example – Noctis can wield anything and everything, including the Royal Arms of the Lucis line. His unique, princely abilities allow him to teleport around the battlefield, instantly warping to a distant enemy and landing a fearsome blow that only grows stronger the further he warps. In bigger, more chaotic battles, the combat truly shines; at times, it feels as if Noctis's friends only fight with him to better enable his showy fighting style, and it works. Incapacitating a group of enemies with well-timed warp-strikes before following up with a combo attack – Gladiolus is capable of massive damage, whereas Ignis provides support and Prompto destabilises and hinders the enemy – is never unsatisfying.

The combat system only begins to exhibit major faults when you face off against certain screen-filling enemies, so large in size and scale that the camera doesn't know what to do or where to look. The hit-detection on these enemies is similarly inconsistent, meaning what you intended to be a critical blow with a warp-strike actually results in you sliding along the enemy's bulk before clipping through them and becoming lodged inside. These encounters are limited, however, and for the most part the fast-paced battles continue to be one of Final Fantasy XV's triumphs. It's a system where simplicity proves to be the a viable approach, though fans of Final Fantasy's turn-based roots might yearn for something more traditional. Summoning, a recurring feature of Final Fantasy combat, has also been overhauled – don't expect a designated summoner class in this game. The small but familiar selection of summons are a real spectacle to behold, towering high above the battlefield as they unleash a devastating ability. With their acquisition tied to story progression, however, there's no satisfaction or challenge in acquiring them, and their specific summon requirements – they're more likely to appear based on factors such as allies being knocked out or Noctis entering the danger state – make them awkward and fiddly at times, resulting in a mountain-sized, god-like creature appearing to end a battle against low-level enemies, or at the very end of a lengthy boss battle where their intervention would have been better appreciated early on.

Where Final Fantasy XV truly struggles is in telling its story. Its more recent predecessors had particular narrative issues – FF13's reliance on handing the player files to read in order to properly learn about the world, for instance – but never before have I felt that a Final Fantasy game's story is in dire need of fixing – until now. The problems start early and rarely abate, with one of FF15's rare, albeit beautiful, CGI cutscenes showing the king's death in mere seconds. The actual invasion of Insomnia, home to all four party members, is detailed mostly via radio transmissions heard by the group. After a little bit of moping, Noctis seemingly forgets his father has died at all; he doesn't move on from grieving so much as that particular plot thread is abandoned entirely. Later, another brief cutscene introduces you to the main group of antagonists, some of whom are never actually seen again. Whilst the open-world does a good enough job of showing the player a living, breathing Lucis, full of settlements big and small, their people engaging in conversations about anything from everyday minutia to whichever crisis is ongoing at that point in the game, the empire receives barely any development at all. Knowing your enemy is a major part of becoming invested in the experience, but I found myself unable to care about what little I knew of Noctis's foes.

By the end of the game, the imperial presence in FF15's world of Eos meant little more to me than the aircraft that would so routinely interrupt my travels to drop a group of Magitek Soldiers on my team. If you engage in optional activities to even the smallest extent, these altercations will be your main source of interaction with the antagonistic empire; what few officers and leaders they have disappear permanently not long after being introduced to you, and not necessarily because they were defeated. It's a baffling inadequacy in a game that took a decade to make. Final Fantasy has for years been a name synonymous with rich world-building and compelling stories, but Final Fantasy XV's decade-long development has produced an incoherent, muddled narrative that fails to match the scope and depth the developers no doubt intended for their world. Whilst the plot and its delivery do bring down the overall experience, there is a great deal of good to balance out the bad.

In some ways, Final Fantasy XV is both endearing and spectacular. Someone on the development team clearly understood how great an impact the little things can have, and it's in subtlety and nuance that FF15 is at its most charming. Although driving the Regalia is almost entirely an on-rails affair, it's made more enjoyable by the group's humourous exchanges and, best of all, the ability to listen to the soundtracks of previous Final Fantasy instalments, which can be purchased from vendors across Lucis. The track listings aren't complete, but there's something undeniably nostalgic about listening to FF10's Blitz Off or Blinded by Light from FF13, not to mention classic tracks from the series' earliest instalments. When you're done for the day and settle down at a camp or inn, you'll get to see the photographs Prompto has taken that day, and you can save any you like. Some are fairly typical – locations you've visited, people you've met – but the rest have real potential to amuse or delight. Alongside pictures of the group posing together by a landmark, I had photos of the four of them mid-battle with fearsome daemons – powerful enemies that only appear at night – or trekking across Lucis with a town visible in the distance and the sun just right in the sky beyond. Having Noctis and company settle down at night with a meal to pore over Prompto's handiwork always succeeds in strengthening your connection to them and the bond they so clearly share; it's just a shame that the rest of the cast wasn't treated so lovingly. From helpful mechanic Cindy, with her inexplicable accent and ridiculous attire, to fearsome warrior Aranea, anyone who isn't a part of Team Noctis will receive little in the way of character development, if they get anything at all. It's another jarring disappointment from a series that has in the past so consistently created compelling and likeable supporting casts.

It's often people like those who will be issuing your quests, but outside of a few generic lines of dialogue you'll learn almost nothing about them, and lesser NPCs are recycled with a consistency that would be impressive were it not so tedious. One man, a hunter named Dave of all things, pops up in settlements across Lucis, tasking the group with going to a nearby location and retrieving the dog tags of a fallen hunter. His dialogue rarely differs each time – “Fancy meeting you here. Mind collecting some dog tags for me?” – but he somehow has more of a presence than many of the game's more prominent characters. Rather than taking a copy-paste approach to side quests to the extent that they're almost MMO-esque in depth and variety, more time could have been taken to show us more of what we need and want to know. For all of the occasional chatter about her, Lunafreya has shockingly little to do in the game, which is worrying indeed given that as the Oracle she acts as a liaison between humans and the gods. By the end of the game, I could only find three aspects to her character: she and Noctis were in a long-distance relationship, she could communicate with the gods and she opposed the empire. Beyond that, there's little to learn. With so many excellent leading ladies to draw from in the series' history, it's a shame that Lunafreya contributes so little. Outside of Noctis's group, characters seem to exist only to push the heroes in a certain direction, lacking a real purpose or personality of their own.

That's the prevailing problem with Final Fantasy XV: it feels aimless. Winning battles and accomplishing certain feats awards you with experience points and AP with which to power up your party members, but it hardly feels rewarding. Most enemy encounters can be won with minimal effort, making the huge number of side missions and hunts feel completely unnecessary. The story will drag you from place to place on the whims of one person or another, but when the credits rolled I found myself with more questions than answers, and not for lack of paying attention. It's easy to get lost in the experience, to allow yourself to wander the wilds of Eos, undertaking hunts to eliminate powerful enemies before you seclude yourself at a nearby fishing spot, but the facade crumbles when you go anywhere near a main story mission. Final Fantasy has been erratic in quality post-FFX, but never before have the problems been so glaring, so detrimental to the overall experience. With ten years of development time, no matter how troubled those early years might have been, it shouldn't have been like this.

7/10

#Final Fantasy #Final Fantasy XV #FF15 #Noctis #Ignis #Gladiolus #Prompto #Square Enix #Reviews #My Stuff

1 note · View note

rate-out-of-10 · 7 years ago

Text

DESTINY 2 REVIEW

Here we are. Three years later and Destiny 2 is finally in our hands. Bungie has put a lot of work into building Destiny into the goliath it is today. With three raids, a dozen strike missions, a bunch of DLC content, and a ton of loot, Destiny was objectively massive. Destiny 2 has a lot riding on it, with it being the sequel to a game that many thought didn’t need a sequel, just a consistent stream of DLC and updates. What exactly did Destiny 2 build on? Is it a vast improvement from the first game? What will returning players find new and exciting? Is it a big enough draw for new players, or even players that abandoned the first game?

REVIEW NOTE: This review of Destiny 2 is based off of my experiences with the game on Xbox One.

Destiny 2 seeks to up root all that Destiny built from the get-go. The game begins with a brilliant cinematic of The Tower falling at the hands of a special Cabal force called “The Red Legion”. This was a very divisive start and I appreciated it a lot. It gave returning players a sense of loss (our loot! No!), and new players a fresh start, not feeling at all left behind from the first three years of this universe. Our Light is taken away and for the first time in centuries, humanity and the Guardians are vulnerable. I was excited to see how this new dynamic would play out through the campaign, but it only lasted a quick 2 or 3 “missions” until you are given your power back. It was a bit underwhelming. Sure, I have a lot of fun with my Super abilities, but the campaign seemed to be afraid of delving deeper into more groundbreaking territory. There is a line spoken by one of the characters in a side quest that really sums up how I feel about the campaign: “Don’t venture further than you have to, Guardian.” The encounters you’re faced with through the story feel very barren and recycled quite a bit. There are some new pieces, yes, such as the involvement of cinematic cut-scenes that fleshed out some of the returning characters, as well as the new ones a bit. But these weren’t enough to make the story feel authentic. The game often falls into the same traps the first did. Wave combat, mini bullet sponge bosses, or all too convenient plot points. It was nice to have a real villainous face to latch onto, and Dominus Ghaul was really great to look at, but he still felt bland. The final boss fight against him, where he has harnessed the power of the Light, could’ve been a spectacular one, capping the story mode off nicely. But it was short, too easy, and didn’t feel like a nice staple to this story. Throughout the story mode, the general feeling of troughing through it comes up quite often. Though, it’s not a bad campaign, I’ve played much worse before. Luckily the voice work from the cast keeps it from feeling too trivial (yes there are some annoying cheesy one-liners here and there). You can play through the campaign and get comfortable with the controls, all the new gameplay dynamics, get a feel for all the different enemy types, and also acquire some pretty nice loot (that may be the most significant draw to finishing the story mode).

Now the “end game” content is clearly the reason why we devoted players sink countless hours into the game. The loot system is very competent now, which should be a no-brainer compared to the trash heap that Destiny was at launch in 2014. By the end of the first game’s tenure it was a mammoth of content and loot and the loot system was fixed dramatically through that time, and it’s essentially moved right over into Destiny 2. This is the copy & paste stuff I don’t mind at all. The loot system needs to feel competent and rewarding and we need to feel the time invested in the game reflects back with the armor we wear and the weapons we have. Exotics don’t feel all too much locked behind closed doors as they once did. In fact you’ll snag a couple through the story mode. Destiny 2 gets players off to a fast start with acquiring some great gear early on. Some things are definitely welcome additions, like the in-game maps of the areas you can explore, lost sectors (aka mini-dungeons), and the ability to travel where you want, or from activity to activity, without having to go to orbit every single time. Thank you, Bungie, but these are things that many come to expect from exploration centric RPGs and MMOs.

The Leviathan Raid is massive and action-packed. And this is the sort of thing where Destiny 2 shines. Rewarding loot, interesting encounters with changing dynamics that stress teamwork and a game plan, and grand epic scenery and scope. It’s not my favorite Raid that we’ve seen, but it’s still jam packed with content and rewards. The strikes in Destiny 2 feel and play mostly fresh, with some new gameplay elements added to them (but that might certainly be because I haven’t played them to death yet). But my general complaint about all the “end game” is that there isn’t enough. A handful of strikes, repetitive public events, and a raid isn’t enough for me to feel the game is full. It feels much more populated than the launch of Destiny, but that’s not really saying much. Destiny 2, in terms of content doesn’t feel like a real step up. We’re given dates for the first two DLCs for year 1 of Destiny 2, but honestly it irks me to think that Bungie plans on keeping content hidden from us until they decide to sell it to us later. The micro transactions in the game are deplorable. Why do I want to pay for “Silver”? Why wouldn’t you, Bungie, just have all the content you can muster in the game at launch, and have us earn the gear through challenges and more strikes and quests? Don’t lock away stuff from the get-go and make us buy a season pass right from the start. This was one of the biggest complaints we had for the launch of Destiny.

Now, the menu and character pages were revamped somewhat. Instead of a “Primary, Special, Heavy” load out, it’s now a “Kinetic, Energy, Power” loadout. This allows for some more varying weapon combos. For instance, I can equip a kinetic Scout Rifle, a solar damage Auto Rifle in the energy weapon spot, and one of the new grenade-launchers in the Heavy spot. It’s an interesting change of pace for the game, but not a needed change. I would’ve much rather Bungie add some of the new weapon types that they did and keep the old loadout system, and maybe focus on adding a bunch more weapons and gameplay dynamics. There are new subclasses for each character type as well, and most of the old subclasses return. I’m still a bit sad that my favorite class for Warlocks, Sunsinger, is gone. I may just go back and play the first game to relive the glory days of my self-revive. But each class now has different subsections that cater to players who are more defensive/support oriented, and others who are more offensive/attack oriented. I’m very excited to find my favorite build for all my characters. As of right now, my favorite Warlock build is Voidwalker with the Attunement of Hunger subset. The leveling system that Destiny introduced in The Taken King expansion essentially returns intact, but a few slight differences. Now, engrams drop with a set power level when they drop, so decrypting them immediately is the best way to go, rather than sitting on them until you get to a higher level and open them up to a higher level. Factions work slightly differently in Destiny 2 as well. Instead of aligning yourself with a faction and leveling up to get gear from them, there are different factions on each explorable planet and completing activities (public events, adventures, lost sectors, etc.) there grant you Tokens, for the faction of that planet, you can turn in for gear. It’s a nice change I think and gives me reason to go and patrol the planets and complete the challenges on each planet. For some reason, Bungie thought “one time use” shaders were a good idea, and it costs currency to apply them to your weapons and armor. It wasn’t a good idea.

Perhaps the most significant change to the Destiny layout is the introduction of in-game clans. Players can now form clans and keep track of their clan activity and achievements in game. This is much needed improvement to the playability of the game. Now clan members can share loot when they finish certain activities. Like if your clan mates complete the Nightfall strike without while you were at work, all you have to do is go the Tower and meet with Hawthorne and she’ll give you some loot for your clan completing that activity. It’s a nice add that promotes more people being a part of groups and playing with more people. However, solo players aren’t left out. With the addition of Guided Games, solo players can find fireteams, in the game, to help them play activities that require more than one player. How it will work with the Leviathan Raid, we will see, but it’s a nice thought nonetheless.

PvP doesn’t get much of a touch up in Destiny 2. The team sizes switch from 6v6 to 4v4. New maps and new game modes don’t really make the game standout from the previous entry. The PvP is still remarkable well-balanced, and the loot you can acquire from The Crucible can be great. It’s fun to play for a little while, but its simply not my style of play. Other PvP oriented players may find a lot to enjoy from The Crucible since it's a very easy game to pick up and learn very quickly. It also can be very rewarding as you get better and play more competitive modes and Trials makes its return.

Destiny 2 isn’t an overhaul of the universe, it’s not a giant leap forward for the series; it’s simply just another iteration in the franchise. Returning players will have enough to latch onto to keep them going for hours on end, new players will find something worthwhile here for sure, since the game feels a bit more streamlined to appeal to a wider audience, but perhaps those players who gave up on the first game at any point will feel that Destiny 2 is just more of the same. Some areas of the game shine and are spectacular, and other drag on and feel bland or precarious. Graphically, the game is one of the best looking titles right now, the same was said for the first game, and the sound system and score is impeccable. Bungie knows what they’re doing in these regards, for sure. Whether you’re a returning faithful Destiny player or a newbie, there’s a lot stuff here for everyone, however some may feel there’s more than enough, and others may feel it’s all the same and not enough.

FINAL RATING: 7/10

#destiny 2 #destiny #bungie #gaming #video game #xbox #xbox one #ps4 #playstation #review #game review #video game review

0 notes

operationrainfall · 6 years ago

Text

Title Yoshi’s Crafted World Developer Good-Feel Publisher Nintendo Release Date March 29th, 2019 Genre Platformer Platform Nintendo Switch Age Rating E for Everyone – Mild Cartoon Violence Official Website

Sometimes we’re hardest on those things we love. I absolutely love Yoshi, as I have since the release of Yoshi’s Island. Which brings us to today’s review of Yoshi’s Crafted World. No matter how hard I try, I always feel compelled to compare each new Yoshi release not only to the one which preceded it, but the one that started it all. Which sets an awfully high bar, since no game has eclipsed the original, though Woolly World came the closest. But before we start comparing apples to delicious apples, it’s only fair to cover what Yoshi’s Crafted World does well, before we tackle what it does wrong.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Much like every other Yoshi game, Crafted World’s plot is the least important part of it. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have its high points. Sure the premise is the same “Kamek does something bad, Yoshis go to stop him and Baby Bowser”, but the way it is executed has some charm. There’s adorable cutscenes that show the baddies scheming, as well as some almost claymation style sequences right before boss fights. As soon as you understand there is no mystery here, just a two dimensional motivation to get going, you’ll enjoy the game a lot more. And while the premise is certainly simple, there’s an air of childlike wonder to it all that makes it enjoyable for gamers young and old alike. In this game, Kamek steals the wish-granting Sundream Stone that, for some inexplicable reason, was left in the care of the Yoshis. Or rather, Kamek tries to steal it, and the resulting tumult sends the stones set into the artifact flying. Whoever can collect them and put the artifact back together first will be granted a wish, and you can bet Baby Bowser’s demands aren’t healthy. Thus, you pick your flavor of Yoshi and get started on this adventure.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

As far as how the game controls, it’s pretty much what you expect. You can flutter jump, aim, ground pound and eat enemies to make eggs. I appreciated that there were a variety of control options, since the initial setup wasn’t what I wanted. Instead, I picked one that more closely resembled what I remembered from Yoshi’s Island. They really simplified the aiming, and instead of the reticule bouncing back and forth, it will just aim in whatever direction you want. You can still bounce eggs off things, you just will rarely have occasion to.

As a tried and true Yoshi fan, I went with Type B controls.

Like Woolly World before it, Crafted World is arranged with a distinct visual flair. Instead of yarn, this one is mostly about paper crafts, though there’s a huge variety of other influences. There are bouncing origami flowers, springy macaroons, giant magnetic soda cans and much more besides. In a weird way, aesthetically this almost reminds me of some of the Chibi-Robo games, with real world items making up strange landscapes. It’s all delightful to look at, especially since Good-Feel did their level best to make no two worlds the same, meaning there’s a ton of visual level variety.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Another way this apes its predecessor is that the levels are incredibly content dense. Besides finding all the Flowers, Red Coins and Heart pieces to 100% a level, they also have other ways to stretch out your playtime. And trust me, it can take a while just to find all those. Most levels I couldn’t find everything the first try, and many I’m still missing stuff after exploring them multiple times. You’ll also be able to play the flip side of stages, which is essentially just playing them in reverse. Though it’s cool to see the stages from another angle, thankfully they added something to make them a little more interesting. That special sauce are the Poochy Pups. Yoshi’s loyal hound has always been entertaining, but their puppies are even crazier. The little psychos run wild at the start of the flip side stages, and your goal is to find them all in a specific time frame in order to get rewarded with more Flowers. You have to find them and then hit them with an egg to make them follow you. Better yet, once they do, they act as a sort of infinite egg, and once tossed will boomerang back to you. As if that wasn’t adorable enough, when you flutter jump, they will hover as their little tails wag furiously.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Lastly, the other aspect that makes each stage a lot more extensive than you’d expect are the Souvenir hunts. You’ll come across these strange cardboard robots whenever you unlock a stage, and afterwards, they’ll have you find carefully hidden crafts in stages. Though these are optional, once you find them, you’ll be rewarded with even more Flowers. By now you’re probably wondering why you keep getting rewarded with Flowers. The good news is, they actually serve a purpose. They unlock stages, and the farther you get, the more you’ll need. I actually liked this feature, since I hate when you are forced to collect a bunch of items for no real reason in other games. Having said that, I wish getting all the Red Coins did something other than give me more Flowers. I would have loved if they unlocked extra stages or something similar.

More Yoshi on Page 2 ->

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

While the general flow of the game is play a stage, get Flowers, unlock more stages, rinse and repeat, there are some elements that keep things fresh. There are what I call event stages. They all have some gimmick and a set point goal you’re trying to reach in a limited time frame. A good example is the Go-Go Yoshi stage, where you climb into a cardboard mega Yoshi and try and break everything in sight with a giant fist. Another is when you pilot a plane by running up and down its length, or guide a solar powered car by steering it into beams of sunlight. These are all good fun, and fairly challenging to boot. I’m glad they are there to keep things interesting, though perhaps the game could have used a few more of them.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

One way Crafted World improves upon Woolly is with their boss fights. Unlike in Woolly World, here you never face the same boss more than once. Each encounter, whether against a main boss or mini boss, is totally unique, and challenging enough that you can’t get too cocky. Some of them are new takes on classic foes, like a giant Piranha Plant, but some are very unique and highly enjoyable. My personal favorite is the Gator Train, but the final boss also gives the one from the original Yoshi’s Island a run for their money. I just wish there were more boss fights, since in the SNES original there were a ton of them, and here there are only 5. That said, I’d rather have less bosses than rehash or uninspired battles. But with that in mind, I absolutely miss the Castle and Fort stages. Those did a great job of building up the tension until you reach the boss fight, whereas here, each boss fight is just its own stage that you unlock.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Visually speaking, this is a wonderful game and is dripping with creativity. There’s a lot of small moments of genius here, and each level is utterly packed with things to admire. My personal favorites were the Rumble Jungle, Ninjarama and Shadowville stages. One of which includes the first survival horror level I’ve ever played in a Yoshi game. And though I didn’t use them much, the many costumes you can unlock with coins in the game are a treat, especially the weird stuff like Cow Yoshi. One of my favorite parts visually were the cutscenes that occur when Kamek uses his magic to make each boss. These are totally trippy and I highly approve of them. Musically, Crafted World takes a hit. Much like in the last Good-Feel game, here the music is overly mellow and frankly underwhelming. There’s some variety, such as the music in the haunted mansion and ninja stages, but I just wanted a bit more punch. Seeing as how the original game had a bunch of wonderful tunes, I almost wish Good-Feel would just focus on the visual side and hire another team to do their music. Thankfully, the sound effects are all pitch perfect, which helps ease my frustration.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Thus far I’ve been mostly sticking to the positive stuff, but now I have to cover areas I felt the game could have improved. One involves the gameplay variety, which was overall a bit disappointing. I say that because mechanically speaking, Yoshi’s Crafted World feels a lot less innovative than Woolly World. In that game, there was constantly something crazy happening. Here they mostly play it safe, other than with the visual style. And while I do love the classic Yoshi’s Island mechanics, that game was also known for being very innovative and not resting on its laurels. In many ways, I feel Good-Feel played it safe with Crafted World. Sure, there’s lots of stuff to do, but doing it is mostly the same, and can start to feel repetitive. This goes double when you’re trying to grind through levels to find everything, which really takes a lot of the charm out of it. I don’t mind finding the basic stuff, but going through the same stage for the umpteenth time to find a deviously hidden souvenir started to wear on me.

Another minor frustration is with the egg toss aiming. Since each stage is 3D, even in 2D looking sections, aiming can be a challenge. You’ll be aiming down and might instead hit something in the foreground. This wasn’t game breaking by any means, but it was really irritating in the faster paced moving sections. More of a problem, at least for me, is that I really wanted more to unlock. Sure, each stage is dense, but besides what I’ve already mentioned, the only other things you unlock happen after you beat the game. You unlock a series of stages called the Hidden Hills, and it’s no exaggeration that these are brutally hard platforming challenges. Other than that, you’ll unlock a hide and seek character that will show up in every stage and challenges for boss battles, and that’s it. I really wanted something more, though to be fair we didn’t get much more in Woolly World.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

In the end, I did enjoy Yoshi’s Crafted World, though that was never really in doubt. But unfortunately, in many ways Yoshi’s Crafted World felt like a step back from Woolly World, which in many ways felt like the better game. It’s far from bad, and even is challenging enough that I died a handful of times, but it just felt like it was playing things too safe. It might be better if I had tried the two player mode, though I tend to doubt that would have influenced me much. For $59.99, I do feel you’ll get your money’s worth, as I easily spent 10 hours beating it and many more trying to unlock everything. But your mileage may vary for how motivated you feel to unlock everything the game has to offer. If you’re a fan of Yoshi, I’d say it’s worth buying, but if not, you may want to try another Switch platformer.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

[easyreview cat1title=”Overall” cat1detail=”” cat1rating=”3.5″]

Review Copy Purchased by Author

REVIEW: Yoshi’s Crafted World Title Yoshi's Crafted World

#Good Feel #Nintendo #nintendo switch #oprainfall #platformer #Review #Yoshi&039;s Crafted World

0 notes

midnakoopa · 6 years ago

Text

Woooo. There’s Octopath “done”. All 8 Chapter 4s. Still plenty to do, it seems. As for what else. Got some thoughts on the finales, why not.

Octopath Traveler endgame spoilers to follow. Also really long post.

So let’s go in order, why not.

Ophilia, fittingly enough, was the first Chapter 4 I did. Kinda had to after the way Chapter 3 ended. I’m like. What kinda fucking silver-tongued voodoo must this guy be up to that he talks to this girl and she’s like “Yeah, no, let me just betray, poison, and rob the only family I have left to resurrect your fuckin dark god or whatever, that sounds like a good time”. And. Given the events that followed, hell, maybe Mattias did have some kind of actual fuckin silver-tongued voodoo. ANYWAYS the whole thing was emotional and the battle felt really good, especially with the dialogues in the middle. Octopath also has a supremely excellent final boss theme.

Cyrus was my fourth Chapter 4. Leading up to it, I found myself thinking “Huh, I wonder who the final boss could be, couldn’t possibly be Yvon’s assistant who mysteriously disappeared in the middle of Chapter 3″. And lo and behold. Lucia had a kinda scary-seeming mechanic. What with 30 break points weak to all physical types, then 15 to all elemental. Wasn’t as hard a battle as I thought it might be, the numbers just threw me off. Also DEATH DOOM DESTRUCTION. There was a fucked up creature on this mural on the wall. I guess something that came “from the far reaches of hell”. More on that later. :v

Tressa was my fifth Chapter 4. During the whole intro, I was just waiting for something to go wrong. My working theory at the time was “The Eldrite’s gonna be lost forever but Tressa’s gonna find out the true meaning of friendship was inside her all along”. Turns out it was the notebook that got stolen. By some woman who seemed kinda the fuck out of nowhere. Judging by the enemies on the way to her, she was associated with the Obsidians? Which is interesting. She had a neat gimmick with the knives, but the battle was a bit underwhelming. Also Tressa found out the true meaning of friendship was inside her all along and also got a billion dollars. And we find out the diary’s author’s name was Graham Crossford. Which didn’t mean much to me yet.

Olberic was my sixth Chapter 4. Vive la resistance. I loved how when Erhardt came in, one of the enemy archers tried to shoot him and he just swings his sword like “fuck outta here”. Werner was riding a horse for some reason. Where did the horse come from, how did you get a horse into this mansion, Werner? Guy was kind of a motherfucker. Also it’s like. I’ve killed myself, making me the victor. No? It’s kind of enough that you’re fucking dead? Also HOLY shit, why do they always think they can get away with the whole “join me” bit? Like, yeah, let me just join forces with the guy that destroyed my life, sounds like a hoot.

Primrose was my third Chapter 4. Gee Primrose! How come Square Enix lets you have two final bosses? Simeon’s a big fucker with a flair for the dramatique and I found myself having way too much fun reading his lines. I don’t know what the fuck the deal was with the first battle. Like. Did that even really happen? Anyways the second phase was a royal pain in the ass because of Master of Silence. Depleted my herbs of clamor. I saw someone say once that, and I’m probably paraphrasing, Primrose seemed like she was kinda made to be “the protagonist”, of sorts. And seeing her story and comparing her finale and final boss with the others. I can kinda see it. She definitely has one of the grander end goals.

Alfyn was my last Chapter 4. I which we find out our mysterious mentor’s name was Graham Crossford. The same guy that wrote Tressa’s notebook. Also we fight a griffin. This one was pretty straightforward. Ogen gets sick, Alfyn finds out it’s the shit Graham cured him of, and we fight a bird to get the ingredient. Battle was as full of maladies as I’d expect of Alfyn’s final boss. The last turn started with Alfyn coming back from being blown away, H’aanit getting killed, and Alfyn getting blown back away. It seemed like a very desperate scramble from the bird. Which was funny.

Therion was my second Chapter 4, and my main protagonist. Darius is a wiener. Starts the fuckin battle by stealing my items. The least effective move in the world, as he is immediately broken and my items returned. As expected, steals HP and SP and is kind of annoying. Also has mid-battle dialogue. I found his death fitting. At least I assume he died; he got stabbed and left in a hole by his own “partners”. Also, fuck me, Cordelia’s 17. I thought she was, like. 30. Anyway. Being my main character, I got the credits for beating this one. And in the background was the final blow of every boss battle I fought, in order. It remembered who was there, what move was used, what everyone’s subclass was. Fun to see the pirate boys again because sure enough it replayed that fucking huge Remnant coming in and destroying them.

H’aanit was my seventh Chapter 4. And here’s where things get real fuckin interesting. Redeye first roars offscreen, and it sounds like an oddly human, kinda distorted, pained moan. And then we see it. I don’t know what I was expecting it to look like. But it wasn’t that. I think I, probably like H’aanit, was expecting some sort of worldly beast. Instead here’s fuckin’ Erebus I guess he found a way past Minato. Maybe that was the Gate of Finis he was guarding because fuck me if Redeye wasn’t the thing depicted in the fucking mural in the Ruins of Eld. Which really got me thinking. Is this what’s left of someone who fucked with the gate? Or is it what came from beyond the gate? Its gimmick (constant guard-shifting) was interesting, and fitting considering what it was. The way I had my party constantly able to be on the offensive, it was broken so much that it never actually got the chance to petrify anyone. :v

AAAANYway. Lastly, after all that was done, I went and challenged Balogar again. This time with an action plan. That plan being “Stockpile Sidesteps on Cyrus for when he shifts phases”. It also struck me during this battle that I should probably equip H’aanit with Surpassing Power, since Draefendi’s Rage was doing 9,999 damage when properly prepared. Runelord seems like a neat class. Therion had an abundance of leftover JP so I poured it into getting all but the divine skill. I feel like Olberic might be a better fit for it, though. Wellp. Something to consider at a later date.

AAAAAND, I’ve gone on and fucking on. So there’s some of my thoughts and experiences. Octopath Traveler is a supremely good game I think, and it really filled that spot for a good RPG I could really get into. And judging from going around in it, is still going to for some time yet. Mysteries to solve, quests to do, superbosses to fight. Should very well continue to be a good time.

Take easy.

#octopath traveler #octopath traveler spoilers #octopath spoilers #spoilers #seriously #just trying to cover all my bases here #video games #final thoughts #runelord tressa's fucking adorable though #long post #really long post #ignore meeee #heck

0 notes

tenoroftenors-blog · 7 years ago

Text

A Eulogy: The Sixty Dollars I Wasted On No Man’s Sky

We are gathered here today to mourn the loss of a very dear friend. The importance of this friend is often forgotten in the din of the day to day life, but nevertheless it is always there. Sixty dollars was never a braggart. It knew that it was a decent amount of money without the ego and pompous attitude thrown around by amounts of money larger than it. However, it deserved better than this.

Sixty dollars met his fate on August 9th, 2016. It finally was drawn from my checking account, gleefully awaiting the destiny of being exchanged for goods and services. It could not have known it would be used to buy something so underwhelming that it would be returned no more than a week later for half of its value. That of course was the very much anticipated and very much deflating video game known as No Man’s Sky.

Now don’t get me wrong, nobody could have known the death of Sixty dollars could have been because of this. Hello games painted the picture over two years ago of a game that literally promised a varied universe to explore. A literal infinite sandbox where you could go years and years before coming across another player. A space traveler fantasy where we could discover solar systems, galaxies, species, elements and claim bragging rights for discovering the honorable new animal “Balls Mahoney.”

We should have seen it coming to be honest. First the game was going to be a download exclusive only at about 20 dollars. Then it was delayed and priced close to 40 dollars. And then after another delay, a physical release and full triple-a style price was announced. However, the promise of becoming a new aged Han Solo complete with customizable ship and pew-pew gun was too seductive in the end.

So sixty dollars was given away for this game. I gleefully brought it home expecting to spend the day flying amongst the stars. 5 hours later, I had realized I made an error of astronomical proportions. The first 2 hours of my play of course had me fixing my ship, naming it “Quicksilver,” and planet hopping amongst the solar system I began in. Three planets, which I gleefully named Creed, Kingston, and Langston (The solar system was of course named the New Day System) were appropriately explored and catalogued. I legitimately felt immersed, like a scribe cataloging for future generations.

After doing several activities like harvesting minerals, greeting a new alien species, and raiding some vaults, I came across an ominous red orb. It said my purpose was to reach the center of the galaxy. I was intrigued, what did this ominous force have in store for me? A treasure trove of loot? A big boss to fight? This only added to my excitement! I eagerly jumped into the Quicksilver and shot off to the next star system, wondering what kinds of discoveries I could make on my journey to the center. I arrived at my new system, landed on a planet, and jumped out to find…….THE SAME GODDAMN PLANET I LEFT!

Oh don’t get me wrong, it had a different color scheme, slightly different animals, and a warning timer for cold instead of corrosive damage (there was honestly no difference) but nope, the planet “BUTTFACÉ” was basically the same planet. As I moved on, I began to realize what I had done, what horrible act of inhumanity I placed upon my Sixty dollars. After the first two hours of wonder, I was greeted with repetitive action after repetitive action. My suit is running out of fuel, so I refuel it. My gun has run out of energy, so I refuel it. My ship has run out of fuel, so I refuel it. Is this an exploration game or a fueling simulator?

Not only that, but I met the same alien I left behind in my previous galaxy. No, I’m not talking about the same kind of alien, IT WAS THE SAME ALIEN! Same name, same position, same ship! What happened to the variety I was promised? What happened to the warring factions that I could play against for resources and credits? The space combat, promised to have massive ship battles that you could join into, was a fluke. I fly out into space, one pirate comes after me, I shoot the pirate. No armadas exchanging volleys of missiles, no dogfights a la Star Wars, just one constantly aggravating space pirate.

The graphics and general look of these planets and species were just dull. No vibrancy at all. I felt like I was staring at a canvas that somebody ejaculated some neon colors onto with the image of a chicken/t-rex hybrid, and then when switching planets at another canvas that looked like somebody shat neon colors onto with the image of a t-rex/chicken hybrid.

The only thing I clung to, was this mission given to me by the orb. If there was to be any redeeming quality about this game, anything to justify my shelling out of my beloved sixty dollars, it had to be the endgame. I reach the last system before the center of the galaxy. I don’t bother naming it, I don’t bother exploring, I have enough fuel to just make the jump immediately. I click the center mass of the galaxy, to be greeted with a loud orchestral set complete with my map zooming outwards.

Wait, why am I going out? Shouldn’t I be moving into the galaxy? TOWARDS. THE. CENTER? Finally my ship stops, and the galaxy I just spent 5 hours of my life traversing appears, the name appearing, with an option to name it. I skip this, expecting a cut scene of some kind, only for my camera to rotate revealing ANOTHER GALAXY. I go to this galaxy, to a star system, to a planet. I land, I get out of the Quicksilver, and what do I see?

THROW UP NEON COLORS, AND A HIPPTY HOPPITY T-REX/CHICKEN HYBRID!

I can’t bring back my sixty dollars with an apology. I can’t fix the horrid mistakes I have made with a wish. I even tried ripping the game out of my playstation, going right back to the Gamestop, to see if I can try to save my dear friend. I was greeted with a store credit. I could hear the three Andrew Jackson adorned bills crying out to me;

“WE COULD HAVE BEEN YOUR DEPOSIT FOR SMASH BROS!!!”

They haunt me to this day.

So, I just want to apologize for my treatment of Sixty, and for all the sixty dollars that were sacrificed for this cheap extortion. Hello games prayed on our child-like want to explore and instead of giving us a certified hit they sold us a gallon of snake tonic. I promise to never sink money into a game like that again, even if it has had several large updates to it in the years since. You can only fool a man once when it comes to his wallet, and the pain that comes with it.

To Sixty dollars. Gone, but never forgotten.

#video games #no man's sky #make sure you wait before you buy #blog #humor #sixty dollars

0 notes

mlpsimta · 7 years ago

Text

Simta’s best games that he played in 2017

2017 has finally ended. I truly hope that everyone had a wonderful 2017 and that 2018 will be even better for any of us. As for gaming 2017 was remarkable. It started off really strong with games like Gravity Rush 2, Yakuza 0, Resident Evil 7 in January and was followed up immediately by amazing titles such as Nier: Automata and Horizon Zero Dawn. The year even got better with Nintendo’s highly successful new console the Switch. With an amazingly drop fed release schedule and top of the line quality of games it became one of the most seeked out system. Of course thanks to some companies who just couldn’t resist to spread some bullshit over the last months of this year we got some let’s just say underwhelming and disappointing titles too.

But this day is not for those games! Today I only intend to talk about the best games that I have played in 2017. There’s only one caveat. Because of the incredibly huge amount of amazing games that came out last year I just simply wasn’t able to play with all of them. Of course those games that I missed will have their own list. There are going to be some older titles because as mentioned before and my line-up is about the best games that I have played in 2017. So even if a game came out in the ‘80s but I only played it for the first time only now, it will be on the list. Let’s get started and see: what were my top games that I’ve played last year.

Dark Souls 3

I am a huge Dark Souls fan. Anything that is closely Souls Like I am going to jump upon it, but when Dark Souls 3 first came out I intentionally didn’t bought it. Mainly because I was waiting to get the inevitable GOTY edition of the game so I can power through all of that the title can offer in one or more painful weeks without touching anything else. So after a year of going completely dark and avoiding anything that is Dark Souls 3 I jumped into it knowing nothing and let the game surprise me. And oh boy it had quite the surprises! The whole game was a wonderful journey and not just in-game wise. I don’t know if it makes any sense but traversing through Lotrich showed also how the series evolved since Demon’s Souls. Meeting the Not Maiden in Black in the Not Nexus, fighting against the undead on the High Wall of Lotric, going into the Catacombs to get murdered by skeletons and every area of the game had that nostalgic feeling of you have been there, you have seen this. But From Software not just simply recycled previous ideas and maps from their games but evolved them, and learned from them, so the next time you came across something similar it won’t just be bigger and flashier, but better and more challenging too! And that is true for the game mechanics even! Every swing with my trusty Broadsword felt so right, every fight and even the spell casting felt for some reason better. No more gimmicky mechanics, no more overpowered stat, every build is viable! So it is only up to you how you are going to try and beat the game. Dark Souls 3 in short was a collection from the best elements of the Souls series, from Demon’s Soul, to Dark Souls and Bloodborne. The dev team picked all the parts that stood out of, and cranked them to eleven. It was a nice way to say goodbye to the Dark Souls series and I just simply can’t wait what they are going to come up with next!

PRAISE THE ART

Doom

You know whenever I see some YouTubers or other gamers talking about how their first game was Mario, Zelda, Sonic or Dizzy, I always find it funny when my time comes to talk about it and my response is: Doom. Yep my first game that got me started was Doom. So after the lacklustre Doom 3 I just kept waiting for a true successor and finally a true heir came in 2016! This game embodies everything that a Doom game has to be. It’s fast phased, filled with action and the story takes a backseat, because it knows that we are here not the get lectured or have life changing experience. We are here because we want to shoot, punch, blow up, and tear apart everything that stand in our way. This game truly understands what made the first two Doom games special and doesn’t shy away about it. It knows what we want to see and delivers on it with high octane! And you know what is funny? That it is able to deliver bombastic action while having one of the best story and main protagonist that I have ever seen. Doom Guy doesn’t say a word nor does he need to. You completely understand him simply by his gestures! Spoilers are coming up about the story so if you haven’t played it than please do so it worth your time. The whole plot is simply about your bog standard big evil corporation wants to get its hand on new ways to generate power for humanity. Obviously the best decision is to go to hell and use its energy to do so. Than shit hits the fan and that is when Doom Guy comes and saves the day. It is just so funny to see how your ‘boss’ tells you that you shouldn’t break some machines as those provides the power for humanity, and Doom Guy just takes a second to think and punches it and destroys it! These kinds of actions show that he not just simply doesn’t give a single fuck, but show that he understands hell the best. It’s bad, you shouldn’t touch it, okay you did it I’ll fix it by murdering everything that is demonic. I could go on and on about the game but I think that I have already carried away, so I just stop and you should go and play it.

I forgot to press the screenshot button during the whole campaing... So have this.

Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight

What more I can say about this game that I have already did in a few weeks ago in my review? Momodora is a true Metroidvania in every way or form. You play as a priestess armed to teeth with a leaf and your duty is to lift the curse of a city. With tight controls and a surprisingly deep customizable fight styles thanks to the items you found through the game you are in for a nice ride. It has a beautiful pixelated art style and an atmosphere remembrance of Bloodborne and the challenge you would see in games like that. You ought to yourself to play this little gem.

Read my review: http://mlpsimta.tumblr.com/post/168403269727/simta-reviews-momodora-reverie-under-the

Simple and beautiful

Persona 5

This year’s best game without a doubt for me easily. The Persona series always has been close to my heart and now after years and years of waiting I was finally be able to play a new one! I got this game just before the spring break and I completely no lifed it during the vacation. After exactly 108 hours later that took me one and a half week to achieve, I was looking at the end credits with a huge smile on my face and tears in my eyes. The game has an amazing cast of characters who you are genuinely care for and root for. The best designed menu system and visuals that you have ever seen! No joke! I often founded myself just moving from menu options from menu options to see every little detail that was purred into it. Also the game has a wonderful soundtrack too. From calm and relaxing music that plays during rainy days, to rock that just bursts and makes you pumped up during a fight! It has everything for every occasion and all of just clicks together so well. Now add all of it to a classic JRPG fighting system and you end up with turn based game that never feels slow. With the music mixed in, every battle can turn into a rhythm game where you try to keep up with the music, and paired all of this with the visuals it just simply looks and sounds amazing. I have to say it makes me really sad that I simply not literature enough to be able to make coherent sentences. Every time when I think about this game is just overflow with emotions of how great of a game it is. I just hope that everyone will get a chance to play it even if you are not a fan of Japanese games you ought to yourself to try this game and see through it. Believe me you are going to experience something wonderful.

YOU NEVER SEE IT COMING!

Tearaway Unfolded

While Sony tries to forget the PS Vita there are still some truly amazing games on that little machine that are begging for attention just like this one. Once a PS Vita launch title it got re-released on the PS4 so it can be finally played by more than a handful of people. The whole world of Tearaway from the trees to the houses, the animals even the water, everything looks like that it was handmade only and just only using paper. But not just the visuals even the controls have a unique twist to them too. You can swipe left to right on the controller’s touchpad to make the wind blow in the world, or press it to make everything jump. I’m not really into controller gimmicks because most of the time they just get into the way and make everything less convenient, but in this game this is not the case. Every function feels very natural and good to use. You can seamlessly move around, do your stuff, and interact with the world via the touchpad without you having to stop for a second, which is crucial as you have to use the wind during a lot of jumping sections to make you reach further platforms. The whole world is just filled with joy and happiness and it is simply a fun adventure that you should try. If you are looking for a third person platformer and for some reason missed Tearaway I urge you to try this one as it is one of the best that the genre has.

Read my review: http://mlpsimta.tumblr.com/post/158588857952/simta-reviews-tearaway-unfolded

Simply adorable and lovable

Undertale

Undertale became a huge hit in 2016 and while I was interested in it I decided to skip it. For some reason there are some types of games that I just simply prefer on a handheld device. Luckily the game got released on the Vita so I immediately purchased it, and I have to say it is truly as good as everybody says. With the premise of you can spare or kill anyone that you come across in the game which ultimately decides how every character will interact with you and the narrative to. Undertale has much more tricks up its sleeves, a game that remembers every decision of yours and adapts to it and judges you for them. It can deliver one of the most heartbreaking scenes that I have ever had the chance to experience. A well thought out world filled it loveable characters and truly unique game mechanics Undertale is tale that you have to hear. Go and play it!

It is possible that you should play this game

Wolfeinstein: The New Order

Besides Doom the original Wolfeinstein 3D was among my first games that I played as a child. While it had some good games since 3D for some reason I never really cared about them and ended up missing all of them (I should really play Return to Castle and the 2009 one) but not this one. While the game is old enough that a sequel just got released this year I kept putting this one into my backlog as one day I’m going to finish it. Well this summer I had a week off after my exams so I download it and decided to finally finish it, and it was a blast to play! Surprisingly this game just like Doom has an amazing storyline with a colourful cast of characters -who are depending on what timeline you decided to pick- and bombastic action that even takes you to a Nazi Moon base. This is another game that understands why we love this series so much and expands it. From one scene where you are planning with the resistance to another where Blatzko is silently taking out guards while monologing about his past, to another where you dual wield two automatic shotguns and mowing down even more Nazis, this game delivers in every way. Let it be story, a very well and tastefully done romance, sneaking or balls to the wall action this game has it all. If you love a good story, choosing your own play style (sneaky or loud) or just simply want to shoot some nazi bastards this game have you covered.

BJ is back!

Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess

Last year I got my very first home Nintendo console a Wii. The main reason for buying the system was to try and show my family that there are games that even they can enjoy. While the system didn’t become a huge hit, and I am still the only gamer in my household it is still used time to time for some good old fashioned Mario Kart and Wii Sports which I consider as a success. But when it is not party time the Wii become a Zelda machine for me. Besides Mari Kart and Wii Sports I got a copy of Twilight Princess for it and as someone who has never played any Zelda games before was very excited to see what is all the fuss about. While I haven’t finished the game as of writing this (I think I am close to the end) I have to admit this is a really good game, and it is not just because I love games that have motion control gimmicks in them, but it has an interesting story that I want to see through to the end, and some brilliant level design. Maybe it will sound odd but I felt like I was playing a Souls game during my adventure. While the combat is not as unforgiving for errors as a Souls game would be, but traversing Hyrule and especially the dungeons made them feel like you are playing a Souls game, as you not try to beat the enemies (they are not challenging the least) but as you try and beat the levels itself. Thinking about how to use every item in your arsenal, how to combine them and what to look after is really exciting and keeps you engaged. Also the boss fights are stunningly good! The feel when you finally got the key to the dungeon’s boss after figuring out every little puzzle and looked under every pot, you go and open the final door to reveal what is the last obstacle, and go against it is the same that I have whenever I beat a tough boss in a Souls game. Twilight Princess is another extremely well put together game with clever level and boss designs with motion controls that don’t get in your way. I hope that Nintendo will port it to the Switch.

Image from: http://en.stargame.com/201511/0536855363.html

Doki Doki Literature Club

Doki Doki Literature Club is your basic visual novel dating game that you have probably saw countless times already. You play as a shut-in guy whose childhood friend makes him join a Literature Club. From there you are going to meet with four (j̨̛̛̀ù͘͘͜s̕͠t̨̛̀͟͢ ̴̸̨̛͝M͡҉o̸̵n̵͟i̧̕͡k҉̷a̸̴) girls who ask you to stay and help them with the upcoming school festival while learning the ins and outs of poetry and writing. On the surface level this might sounds boring but as you are getting to know the girls better (p̸̨ĺ̵̶͘è̴́̕à̕҉͠s͘̕͜͟͠é̵͘ ̢͟l͜͠o̵͜҉̴v̨̕͏é̸̵͡ ̸̵̸̸ḿ̴̷̷͢e͞͏̛ ̡͠t̶͟͢͠o̸̧o̸̴̢) you realise that Sayori, Yuri and Natsuki have some real problem not just accepting the other members opinions and viewpoints but also themselves too. So from here your job is to not leave them hͣ͊͏̱̜̼̹͇͚̥̞a͛͊ͤͤͤͭ͛҉̸̛̤̤n̷̬ͭ͒̄̋̓͡g͚̦ͫ̇̈́ͭ̒̾͑̉i̢̪̩̖̣̼̝̤͋ͫͫ̋ͦ̇ͯn̨̙̼͍̬͎̩̮͖̿̔͟gͩ͛̈́̆͗̋ͩ̑͏̪̼̮̻̙͎, try and c̸̛͇̖͉̏͒͡ǘ͕̜̜̗̌̅̊̌̂̀ẗ̵̹̠͚̉̃ͩ͐ͫ̚͘ͅ corners in your life while not b̨͚̊̌͆̔͛̽͠͞ŗ͙̣͓̖̔̌̄̔ͪ̽͝ͅe̫̞̗̜ͩ̓͢a̷̵͉̩̱̽̈̅́͂͛ͅk̮͔͚̖ͣi͈̯̙̩̱͉̗̎̇ń̪̗̣͖̍̀͟g̦̬͇̻͉̦͆͊̒ͥ͌̀͝ ̵̳̖̲̦͙͎̣̀̎͞y̶̰͉̮̙͑̀͠ͅo̼̭͔ͥ̐̊u̴͖͇̭͔̬̯̞ͬ̊͆͒r̛̤̘̭̣̮̩̭̲̓́̎͐̈̈ͧ̍͜͝ ̰̻̞̪̫ͨ͂̀͛͒̄̅͡n̢̗̳͚̣̣̻͎͋̐͌̓ͫ͐́͟e͔̪̰̬͔̬̤͙͓͒͐͗́͒̄̅̎ͬcͭ̄̀ͧ̈̊́͘͏̗̪͙̣̯͙̞̟k̊̎̏҉̢͎̪̙̫̭̕ while helping them to make sure that not just the plans for the school festival but their lives too to get back on track. Doki Doki Literature Club while short is an amazing game that can delve into some truly horrific moments while you try and save each of the girls and unravel the mysteries behind their hatred.

What a cute and depressing game at the same time

Katawa Shoujo

This year I tried and played a few visual novels. This genre of gaming never really interested me as I found the concept of them is simply boring. How naive and stupid I was... Me! Who can love a well crafted story and characters enough to suffer through some janky game mechanics or grind countless of hours to make sure that I can see the best ending possible. So after some research and reading online what visual novel should I try out everybody pointed me towards this little free game. Just like in any other visual novel your main job is mainly consist of clicking next and reading while occasionally make a decision. Depending on your actions you can become closer friends to a girl or become her boyfriend, or achieve the opposite of it and you’ll start seeing her less and less again. As for the girls in the game I was surprised how well written they were! You see them how they interact with each other, how their own disability affects their relations, their everyday lives, and most importantly how they deal with them. And it is true for the main hero too! He who never had anything life threatening condition to care for suddenly finds itself in this new situation, and his journey is also remarkable. Seeing him interacting with the girls in the school as they teach him that just because he has a disability he shouldn’t let it get into him and he can still have a normal life. A truly beautiful game with important life lessons that everybody should at least give it a try.

Read my first impressions: http://mlpsimta.tumblr.com/post/156280048037/games-from-my-backlog-katawa-shoujo

I still love her

Splatoon 2

There’s gotta be a Switch title on the list. That little system became really popular and most wanted among gamers and rightfully so. While many people bought it to play the new Zelda (I really want to play it too) I was waiting how the system will hold its ground, but most importantly I wanted to see if Splatoon will be on it. Time moved on and summer came and with it Splatoon 2 hit the Switch. So in December when I was able to afford the console I bought a copy of it alongside my new console. Online shooters and any other kind of shooting games have been always amongst my favourite. So to see something vastly different that is not just simply about firing towards one and other got my attention. In most online shooters your only worth is mostly measured in K/D, but Splatoon 2 breaks away from that tradition by rewarding players the most who went after the objective. While players who prefer hunting down the opposite team’s members still will be appreciated as they make sure the keep the bad guys away while the rest of the team can peacefully paint the map. Just this little simple idea of using paint instead of bullets not only makes the game family friendly but opens up a lot of possibility game play wise. Painting the map not just gives you scores, but the more map you cover the faster your team will move around it. A simple but brilliant idea that turns every match into a game where map knowledge and controlling it is a must if you wish to succeed in the game. Not to mention playing for the objective also builds up your ultimate faster that lets you use powerful attacks that can turn even a losing match into a victory. A very fast phased, well balanced, fun game where you always have to keep your eyes open as in every minute the table can turn. Not to mention that all of this with regular free updates and events! So if you have a Switch and don’t have this game go and buy it! It’s well worth of your money. And for the others who already have I have a question for you: Are you a squid or a kid?

Why thank you Marie!

Stardew Valley

My go to comfort game of the last year. After a long day when I was really tired and I simply wanted to relax Stardew Valley was there for me on my Switch. A simple but somehow surprisingly deep game where your only job is run your own farm the best way you could. There’s just simply something calming for me to go over tiles and tiles watering the crops, cutting down some trees or mining, that helps soothe my nerves. While boring as it sounds wanting to see my farm grow and improve were rewarding enough that I truly felt some pride and accomplishment as I saw my homestead got bigger and better. You don’t also just improving your new home but your character too. On the first day maybe you get tired after watering a couple of plants, but as you go on and on you start to see how your avatar grows too. Simple task that were previously hard to do are becoming more and more easier, you learn new tricks how to make everything go smoother and easier as you start to understand the game mechanics and unlock new crafting recipes. I remember making my first sprinkler. I felt so proud that now I don’t have to manually water four tiles, only the remaining 100, because it was a long way to get there and quite expensive. But now half of my farm has a sprinkling system that saves me a lot of work and in so allows me spend more time with the villagers of Stardew Valley. Going into Stardew Valley you can find a lot of interesting people who occasionally ask you to deliver some farm product, and will offer their services for some of your money. Some will have a steady supply of seeds, some can patch you up, and others can build you new stuff and so on and so on. You truly feel like that you are part of a community, and as you start knowing the people better you understand them more and more and care for them. But not just plants can blossom in this game but friendships and loves too. You can get married and live together with your wife or husband (same sex marriage is completely OK!) and even can have kids too! There’s just simply so much more that I haven’t even see in this game that I can’t wait to go back and experience. If you are a fan of games like Harvest Moon, Terraria or Minecraft I urge you to check this one out and if you happen to have a Switch this game is perfect for it!

Me and best girl in the rain.

There you have it, the twelve games that I’ve played the most in 2017. Sadly a lot of games haven’t made into the list because of me not having the time to play them or the money to buy them.

If you are interested in what games I want to play that come out in 2017 here’s a quick list for you to see:

-Nier: Automata -The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild -Mario Odyssey -Gravity Rush 2 -Night in the Woods -Ladykiller in a Bind -Yakuza 0 -Horizon Zero Dawn -I am Setsuna -Nioh -Rain World -The Sexy Brutale -LawBreakers -Sonic Mania -Cuphead -A Hat in Time -Xenoblade Chronicles 2

As you can see the list of games that are waiting for me to buy them and play them is quite huge and I hope that I can cover some of them in this brand new year.

I hope that you are going to have a wonderful and successful 2018!

For closing I want to say thank you for your reading my post and of course have a great day!

Shameless self advertisement starts: —————————————————————————————————-

Don’t forget to like and share this article if you enjoyed it and press the follow button if you wish to read more like this.

Follow me at twitter where I absolutely do nothing interesting: https://twitter.com/MLP_Simta Read all of my previous “work” at: http://mlpsimta.tumblr.com/ Shameless self advertisement over —————————————————————————————————-

0 notes

operationrainfall · 6 years ago

Text

Title Towards the Pantheon Developer Connor O.R.T. Linning Publisher Connor O.R.T. Linning Release Date May 16th, 2018 Genre RPG Platform PC

When I first heard about Towards the Pantheon, it wasn’t so much the coverage about the game that caught my attention, but rather its developer. Despite my being an avid fan of classic RPGs, especially those that draw inspiration from the SNES and that golden age of RPGs, what ended up sticking with me enough to try this game was the man behind it; Connor Linning. A writer, musician, and game developer, spending just a few minutes on Connor’s blog made me realize the passion and drive this man possesses. I think it’s his ambition in the face of complacency attitude that sparked my interest in his project, Towards the Pantheon. 16-bit graphics, original sound score, narrative and gameplay that draws influence from classic RPG tropes, Towards the Pantheon is a game that honors some of the best this genre has to offer.

Towards the Pantheon drops you into a world in which four quarreling groups are pitted against one another by the Sworn Light, a militaristic entity using divide and conquer tactics to take control of the world. Immediately, we meet Freyja, a young warrior tasked to journey to the Pantheon, the headquarters of the Sworn Light, to deliver a fatal blow to their organization. Advised by Wuotan, an elder of her village, she first sets off to find a willing companion, Bam the cat. From there, she will venture into the four civilizations and interact with their people, learning of their struggles and the oppression by the Sworn Light. Freyja will meet new companions, explore the vast lands, and discover the depth of tyranny and evil the Sworn Light have instilled in the world.

The story of Towards the Pantheon is fairly straightforward, in that you have four isolated populations further turned against one another by an all-influential puppet master. Themes of prejudice, intolerance, and misinformation make up the core of the story, but there is plenty more to spark initial interest. The lore and the individual details of the four types of beings in this world are intriguing and are a pleasure to discover. I also like how equal attention is provided to both a grand scale and an individual level in terms of how the Sworn Light is oppressing the world. Hearing about how individuals, ranging from children, business owners, students, etc., are impacted is a nice touch, as it demonstrates how a world event influences the individual on a personal scale. I found these personal perspectives well written and was motivated to learn as much as I could about this world and its people.

The plot has its shortcomings, however, as one of my biggest gripes is with the strength and pacing of the plot. Simply put, the plot starts slow and remains more a framework than a fleshed out story. After Freyja is tasked with her quest, it takes quite some time before the plot picks up again. In between, we see Freyja and her growing party reduced to errand runners. Yes, plot details do get filled in, but it’s not enough, both in quantity and quality. Bland may be too strong of a word, but at times I definitely felt like saving the world was more an excuse than a purpose, as I was forced around the world on fetch quests and meet ups. Another element that concerns me is with the Pantheon itself. The game is Towards the Pantheon, yet the Pantheon ends up as just a place that houses the final boss. There is a dire need of lore or some unseen importance to this keyword. Give me something. Imagine if Ocarina of Time were instead called The Legend of Zelda – That Room atop that Flight of Stairs. Nobody cares about that room, it’s the Ocarina that’s central to the plot, receiving appropriate lore and significance. Yet here, the Pantheon really is just a place; a feeble finish line.

And finally, there is the horror element of the plot, which doesn’t actually show itself until the last stretch of the game. I am referring to the segment right before the Pantheon in which you have to unlock and cut through an old mansion/ hotel. It feels completely like a tangent, just thrown in at the end. As for the events within, I believe they do occur to the characters in their reality and it’s not some screwed up dream sequence, yet it came out of nowhere and didn’t fit the tone of the previous 3/4 of the game. Although it does make you think about who or what those soldiers really are, with the hints and notes on disappearances, kidnappings, and the electropunk culture of replacing body parts, I wouldn’t consider the game a “horror game” just because of a portion of play. It also fails to add significant depth to its characters, as I believe this segment is supposed to explore the individual characters’ inner struggles, whether it’s regret, loss, powerlessness, or what have you. But again, just throwing it in at the end doesn’t do any justice and it falls flat. Lack of pacing and plot strength make the plot an overall underwhelming experience.

In terms of its implementation, the story unfolds mainly through conversations between party members, NPC interactions, and scattered fragments of books or journal entries found throughout the world. Not a whole lot of the plot is unveiled through the main characters themselves and their interactions with each other, as is common for the genre. Rather, much of the plot is left for the player to discover. Speaking with NPCs multiple times throughout the game, completing side quests and requests, and reading through all the fragments will color in the plot. From history and the origins of the Sworn Light’s threat, to the current desolation and impact, most of these details and the depth they bring require the player’s willingness to discover them.

While I can appreciate this unorthodox method of delivering a story, I felt the narrative overall suffered from it. Typically, this method is used as a support, providing backstory and anything else that fills in the history and lore of a central narrative. Here though, I don’t appreciate this method at the cost of a robust story building effort. I would have preferred a stronger, more directly conveyed story that details unfolding events, rather than the fragments we collect along the way. I understand the intent of this choice; to let us discover the plot ourselves, however, this method lacks the immersion I was seeking during play. The conversations and fragments we come across are not substantial enough to draw you in and keep you immersed. Instead, they only provide just enough to eventually string a story together. Again, I acknowledge the attempt at something different, and while the plot has plenty of intrigue in and of itself, the potency and impact just wasn’t there, failing to consistently trigger immersion or draw my emotional investment.

I’ll admit, there are plenty of helpful hints too

As for its characters, Towards the Pantheon does an adequate job of presenting a set of characters that are easy to care for, instilling a want for seeing their journey through. There are plenty of personal details and friendship building elements to be had throughout and they stand out nicely. The campfire scenes that occur in save locations provide the most character development, allowing the group to recap, unwind, and interact with each other. Their sharing of their personal struggles, past pains, future goals, but also their good natures, humor, and uplifting encouragements to one another, all help to provide much needed depth. I especially like the expressiveness of the characters’ portraits during dialogues, as they help add a nice emotional element to their conversations. Since Freyja is mute, these expressions she shows really help convey her youthful and kindhearted personality without words. My only complaint would be that I wish there were more growth or transformation. The characters we see at the start are pretty much what we end up with. Besides that one point, I enjoyed journeying with this group.

*Heart melts

Towards the Pantheon also follows a traditional RPG style for its gameplay, as exploration and combat make up the majority of play. The world is made up of expansive maps with plenty to discover. Whether it’s finding hidden caves and secret caches for extra items or locations hiding fragments of plot lore, exploration is key to unveiling everything this game has to offer. Exploration is further enhanced by the unique traits each character possesses while on the world map. Although Freyja’s unique skill is climbing ladders, Bam the cat can fit within small openings, Mishima can hack through locked doors, and Phenez can turn invisible, bypassing guards to enter restricted areas. As the team grows, revisiting previous towns and areas is always a good move. Lastly, since exploration and, to a degree, backtracking are encouraged, the game also features a fast-travel system from the start. In typical fashion, once you’ve reached the town a first time, you can fast-travel to and fro.

For the most, combat is your traditional turn-based style, but there are specifics to using each character. With Freyja, each of her attacks requires Stamina Points (SP), which regenerate during every turn. Bam’s skills use EP, the SP equivalent, but they do not regenerate, requiring Bam to rely on EP regenerating skills during the fight. Mishima uses CPU and GPU points, her HP and SP equivalents, meaning that every attack she unleashes also does harm to her. Finally, Phenez uses NP, his HP, so again his attacks also do self-harm. It makes combat far more engaging, as you need to plan your actions accordingly. I found that having a particular strategy for each character’s usage helps greatly. Not having a sound strategy or being able to adapt it during a tough battle will have consequences. Something I do appreciate, even if a party member is incapacitated during battle, they will still receive the same amount of experience points, which is especially helpful for newly joined members, as they all start at Lv 1. With every level gained, a point is rewarded to be used for that character’s specific skill tree. Increases in health, power, recovery and more can be unlocked, so leveling is key. Finally, there are extra combo skills that are unlocked as you collect cards throughout your journey. These help immensely during tougher fights and can be found or purchased in packs throughout the game.

Combat isn’t perfect however, as I found the difficulty level is a touch higher than convention, especially early on. Fortunately, with some grinding, the campaign is very much doable and the grinding required is within a reasonable level. Yet, my issue is with the time it takes. The number of battles needed to maintain an acceptable challenge level is a bit high, taking a bit more time than I would have preferred. Also, combat can drag on, especially with multiple enemies on-screen using their own sets of skills during battle. While enemy encounters are visible and avoidable, they are very much a necessity, so quicker battles would have been ideal.

A final note on gameplay, throughout the game you will encounter event specific items used to solve puzzles, complete subquests, or access new areas. Instead of an auto-use style, you are required to open the item menu and search for the specific item you wish to use for interaction. At first, this is a non-issue, but as your inventory grows, this can become an inconvenience. I prefer auto-use, as most of the time choosing the right item to use, give, or place is fairly predictable. Again, a minor inconvenience, yet it springs up often enough for me to comment on.

Now we move to what I believe are the strongest points of Towards the Pantheon; its aesthetic appeal. This game looks and feels perfectly like a golden era RPG. Visually, the 16-bit graphics are fantastic, capturing the magic of the SNES styling. Everything is custom designed, from sprites to tilesets and the results are amazing. The portrait art showing the expressions of our heroes during their conversations is also incredible, providing an ample boost to the moods and tones of these scenes. Especially for Freyja, I love these changes of facial expressions, as they bring a feeling of genuine life. Humor, thought, and reactions to each other are made so much more lifelike with these simple changes to their faces. I can’t praise that level of detail enough. My only complaints are that, first, there were concept drawing and other artwork that never made it into the game. I would have liked to have seen them incorporated during cutscenes or in-between snippets because they further depicted our heroes in an appealing light. Secondly, the layouts of some maps are a bit jarring. For example, when you leave a forest and enter an electropunk town, the contrast is far too sharp. Better transitions from forest to urban are needed badly, as it looks like a rushed effort on map design.

I would have loved this in-game

The audio efforts are equally impressive and are some of the most impressive I’ve experienced in the genre. As a musician, Connor Linning does an incredible job of adding energy and life through his compositions. Every track fit its area or event perfectly. Plus, there’s plenty of music to enjoy. I love that he incorporated various dungeon themes, multiple battle themes, and an assortment of tracks for almost every location, all in that classic chiptune style. This is easily the game’s highest point and worth a playthrough to experience. Overall, the aesthetics of Towards the Pantheon are brilliant, perfectly capturing the look and feel of that classic RPG style.

Again, inclusion of art would have taken the aesthetics to another level

As a first offering, Towards the Pantheon is impressive, hitting many of the major RPG notes that makes a game of this genre outstanding. For RPG fans, many of the gameplay tropes are there; party based combat, unique skillsets, and traits and peculiarities both in and outside of battle, yet it all comes together and it works. While the ball was dropped in terms of story development and gameplay has its flaws, it was still very much a pleasure to play. I would recommend Towards the Pantheon to anyone looking for a solid 10+ hours of classic RPG to lose themselves in. Like me, it will take closer to 12-13 hours to complete your first run, and with a price tag as low as $1.99 during a Steam sale, there’s no reason to miss out. And finally, although the game is a far cry from perfection, I hope we see more from Connor Linning in the near future, for as he says, “If you fear failure, then consider that it is better to fail creating something that fulfills you than to fail creating something that is heartless.”

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

[easyreview cat1title=”Overall” cat1detail=”” cat1rating=”3.5″]

TBT REVIEW: Towards the Pantheon Title Towards the Pantheon

#classic rpg #Connor Linning #Connor O.R.T. Linning #ConnorORT Studios #JRPG #Pantheon #RPG #Towards The Pantheon

0 notes