#i still love the characters and story its just; gameplay wise it feels repetitive nowadays for me

[darabeatha]

[cosmiciaria]

Tales of Zestiria Review! (Spoilers Free)

I've JUST come from finishing Tales of Zestiria and with tears still on my face, I'm confirming that I need Tales of Berseria right away. But let's talk about Zestiria for a bit now!

This is my first 'Tales of' game ever. My first encounter actually was with Tales of the Abyss, which I have for my PS2, but never played it (yeah, don't hurt me). So, Zestiria was my real first experience with the franchise. I may have made the wrong decision in buying it, because it seems it's not quite welcomed among fans, but it has a really solid fandom out there, and even more now with the anime series. Oh, yeah, I have to watch the anime! Yay! Small consolation!

This is your classic JRPG. Like, really. The story does bring some new elements to the table, but at the end of the day, it's just a bunch of teenagers that must save the world. AND THAT'S COOL AS HELL!

The gameplay remains mainly the same from previous 'Tales of' games, and it seems it will continue on like this from what I could see in Berseria. The key new feature, though, it that the human characters can 'armatize' (a.k.a., fuse) with the seraph characters (some kind of spiritsss angelssss persons that normal people can't see), and that’s the core of your battles, so you better get along with it.

The game had some issues nonetheless. I think this is already cliché to say, but 'Tales of' games have really outdated graphics. I know they want to keep the anime style, but there are plenty of games out there that have this appearance, and they still look gorgeous as hell, which is not the case of Bandai Namco games. They say this game was first created for the PS3 and then it was upgraded for the PS4, but even if the game was originally planned for the PS3, it still looks outdated. For instance, Final Fantasy XIII was released in 2009 for the PS3 and it has three times the graphics Zestiria has (or any other 'Tales of' game). From what I could see in Berseria… they're not going to change the style anytime soon.

Another big issue I found is that, in a certain moment during the game, you're set to find some 'gems' around the whole world. Yes, you read it: the whole world. Of course this is easy somehow, because it's pinpointed on the map where you should go, but it's a lot of backtracking, and it forces you to do it, because if not, the story can't go on. It's a change of pace, it's kinda frustrating, and it just adds many hours of gameplay that could've been erased.

The third big complaint (and not only mine, but from many others too) is that the character Alisha is portrayed as the main heroine, and that's not true at all. I've watched the first episode of the anime, and she already has more screen time there than in the whole game. She appears in the beginning hours of the story, it seems she's going to follow you deeper, but she doesn't: she leaves right after the second town we visit. And it's Rose who comes in her replacement: Rose is a really, really great character (I'm going to speak about her later), but still, you feel deceived. I know there's a DLC out there (which I'm not planning on playing) about Alisha, but without that DLC episode, her character is underdeveloped and very well wasted. AND THAT ENRAGES ME. Because I don't wanna pay for character development, although I need Episode Prompto from FFXV with all my soul!!

Alright, so those are my personal complaints about the game. The gameplay may get repetitive (smash thAT BUTTON), but it's addictive, and it's satisfying to see how quickly the HP bar of your enemies goes down, like you're some kind of demigod. Apart from that, I didn't have problems with how to play the game.

Oh, wait, I did have. Dungeons can get really irritating. I won’t spoil it for you, but, there’s a shrine (WATER) in which you have to use certain ability (TO HIDE YOURSELF) all the time, because if not, you get back to the beginning of the dungeon (AND THE ABILITY DOESN’T EVEN LAST THAT MUCH SO IT’S ALL VERY RANDOM AND ANNOYING). You’re gonna go back and forth many times in many dungeons, so beware of mazes and stuff. 

Anyway...! 

What I liked the most from the game was its characters. At first I was expecting every stereotype: the stupid hero who faces everything head on, the nerd guy, the tomboy girl, the wise man, the 'brooding on a corner' dark kind of guy with a mysterious past, the comic relief… and although we did get some other stereotypes, I was profoundly surprised to know that Sorey, the main character, wasn't as stupid as I pictured him at the beginning. I was also glad to see how brave and determined Alisha was (in her minimal appearances throughout the game) – and maybe I should point this out: she's a knight princess, and no one questions her title, no one dares to look down on her because she's like 'defying the social system' or anything, because in this game, it doesn't matter if you're a woman or a man. And that's just awesome, and more people should be aware that JRPGS position women in a higher place than other stories. I thought I should just throw this out there.

Mikleo was also a big surprise: I was amazed at how fond of him I grew. He quickly became my favorite during the armatize thing (because he can attack from afar and… I don't know, I felt OP af when playing with him), and suddenly, he crawled into my heart and made a nest there, because, oh good Lord, he needs protection at all costs, PLEASE, SOMEONE GIVE HIM A HUG. YES, I HAVE A WEAKNESS FOR ADORABLE CHARACTERS, THANK YOU VERY MUCH.

I liked the other characters as well: Edna is just downright hilarious with her mean comments, and I loved her interactions with Zaveid. I didn't like Zaveid much at the beginning, and he might be a bit dense, but he made his way into my list of favorites. Dezel, on the other hand… I think he was a very misunderstood character, and it isn't until his ten minutes of fame that we get to fully comprehend what he was going through.

That leads us to Rose, the true main heroine. I liked her. A lot. Like, really. She could be funny sometimes, not so serious, a bit light-hearted… and all of a sudden, she becomes this assassin, serious killer, with a particular sense of compassion and mercy that's not shared with everyone. And I just loved how well she expresses herself: she's not afraid of showing herself crying or angry, she's not afraid of speaking her mind, and she can easily understand others, what makes her a good shoulder to lean on. What I liked the most from her, was her relationship with Sorey. It's hard to find nowadays two characters, a male and a female, that are just friends in a story: most of them portrait them as romantically involved, but this wasn't the case. They're friends, they're warriors, they're in this together. There's also some kind of loyalty from Rose towards Sorey, some kind of fidelity, that it's just too precious not to be mentioned. They're brother and sister in arms, and I cherish their moments. You should cherish them too.

I also LOVED Sorey and Mikleo's relationship. I know there are a lot of people out there that ship them, but personally, I consider them as brothers… and that's kinda what they are, since they were raised together and… oh, my, the pictures in the credits… when they were children… and the post credits scene… oh, no, I'm not crying, it's just raining on my face…

The music is also pretty good, especially during the shrine trials and some bosses. It's as epic as it gets. Just go and listen to the soundtrack in YouTube. Really, go do yourself a favor.

The ending is just beautiful. It gets down to a part where you have to move the character to the certain ending, and you're just like 'oh, no, but I don't want this to happen' and your hand is trembling over your controller because of mixed feelings and BOOM, the pain train is out! Thanks for playing Tales of Zestiria, see ya around!

So, was this a good game? Yes, it was. It was fun, it was tender, and it was challenging. Is it original? Not so much, your average JRPG. Should you totally play it? Depends: if you're a 'Tales of' fan, you can't miss this one. But if you've never played a one of these games, like me, Zestiria really did the trick. Right now, I'm aching for more 'Tales of' games, and I'm craving for the anime, to see it they changed or added anything.

It's a solid 7 out of 10. Not so many fresh plot points, but enough to keep you interested, loveable characters, and an ending worth striving for.

[terryblount]

RAGE 2 – Review

What is the secret behind a good sequel? Some of the best examples focus on refining what was poorly implemented in the first instalment, while others just carry on the story and leave the core gameplay largely intact. On the other hand, certain sequels have achieved greatness by making everything bigger or more elaborate, and yet some of my favourites are basically just a graphical upgrade.

While there seems to be no clear or definitive answer, there is actually a common thread between all these different approaches. A good sequel comes from a developer that can objectively ask what their game needs. This may seem like an oversimplification, but all the best sequels in our industry work because they find something new in the familiar. A good sequel has the potential to lift out an I.P.’s residual potential rather than adding, rebooting, beautifying or changing.

That hair style was all the reason I needed.

So this brings us to RAGE 2, a sequel. This collaboration between id Software and Avalance Studios has stayed within the first game’s premise, but the graphics, gunplay and scope of the game have all been overclocked. I can sense an attempt towards continuity from the first game, and yet it feels like RAGE 2 could do without many of the changes that have been added. As an open world game, there is undeniably a solid experience here, but I would have a hard time convincing fans of the original to go out of their way to play this.

Up your asteroid

The first RAGE game was a pretty big deal back in 2010 even if the story hardly brought anything new to the genre. RAGE was released during the ‘Crysis era’ when first-person shooters were at the forefront of graphical experimentation. See, you played Rage to benchmark John Carmack’s fancy new ‘Mega Texture’ tech building the game’s identity from the world around you.

Rage plunged the player into a bleak world filled with mutants and garage bandits fighting for survival in the aftermath of a cataclysmic asteroid strike (rather than a nuclear winter you see often nowadays). RAGE 2 plays out within this same setting, but takes place 30 years later in a civilisation that has risen from the ashes and is no longer trying to get by on scraps of resources.

Meet the leader of The Authority.

Players thus enter a world in which the Arks, or satellites preserving life on earth, have been reactivated and a new world is beginning to emerge. Unfortunately, a formidable faction seen in the first game, named The Authority, has proclaimed themselves the leaders of this new Earth. Rather than earn their leadership, they have used a series of bloody wars to obliterate anyone standing between them and their authoritarian regime.

The only opposition that once proved a match for The Authority are a division of technologically-enhanced mercenaries called rangers. You play as either a male or female version of the last, surviving ranger named Walker (I can neither confirm nor deny if this is some kind of Chuck Norris reference). The campaign is subsequently centred on Walker’s exploits of starting a contingency plan against The Authority named operation Dagger. You do this by shooting, blowing up, eradicating and driving over anything they deem even mildly important.

Choose wisely. The game kills off the character you don’t choose shortly after this.

What’s my age again?

Sounds kind of familiar right? Well, Avalanche Studios are the developers of the Just Cause series, and they have fallen back on their tried and trusted template of toppling a South-American dictator here. Yet, this is also the problem since RAGE 2 plunges into the trap that I see many open-world games fall into. Namely, the rather poorly-told story just ends up fading into the background.

Now many might say “Hold up, the Just Cause games are about blowing stuff up, not a moving, deep story!” True, but remember that the post-apocalyptic and open-world genres are hopelessly oversaturated markets right now. Seeing as RAGE’s story was somewhat underdeveloped, this would have been the perfect opportunity for RAGE 2 to make me care about its plot and characters some more.

These arks are scattered all over the Wasteland. They unlock powers for Walker’s ranger armour.

Instead, you have to grind your way to a farcical and irrelevant main villain via a series of noticeably repetitive tasks. Let me be clear that these tasks are fun, but the fun only lasts for small doses at a time. Playing RAGE 2 gets monotonous too quick for comfort because every play through eventually began to feel like I was working my way down a checklist. Killed all those mutants? Check. Destroyed this big sentry turret? Check. Cleared the outpost of bandits? Check… why am I doing all this again?

This is a problem I see all the time in the abundance of open world types filling up my backlog. A character would yak-yak-yak away telling me so-and-so has their such-and-such and the solution is to go to point x and kill every last y. I don’t care about such-and-such because I don’t know them, and don’t bother yacking my ear off because I know how the mission is going to go anyway. This feels too similar to what I have been doing for the last 2 hours, and it is a design philosophy in open world games that needs to evolve.

Smash that asteroid

So you will probably forget the story, but does the gameplay redeem RAGE 2? Well, sort of. RAGE 2’s gameplay ends up feeling like a weird hybrid of genres. It is like 2016’s DOOM hardware, but running on Far Cry’s software. This means that Bethesda has recycled the explosive, momentum-based mechanics they had virtually perfected in 2016, and revived it in a lush, open world this time.

That is the actual shock wave from my shotgun.

What do you actually do in RAGE 2? You shoot the crap out of things, so that you can collect things, so that you can upgrade things, which is interspersed with the occasional race through the wasteland. It is really that simple because the aim of the game is not to find missions. The player’s task is using an arsenal of weapons and traversal abilities in order to turn themselves into a killing juggernaut.

RAGE 2 absolutely nails this part because the combat truly goes out of its way to make the player feel dangerous. It is every bit as gloriously violent as DOOM, except demons have been replaced with split-lipped mutants and punks who look like they are attending a Rammstein concert. There are also show-downs with big bosses who were deadly head-on, but fell quickly once I used Walker’s smooth acrobatics to stay just one step ahead of their sights.

Thank heavens for the dash ability.

The first RAGE had some of the best enemy AI I have ever seen in a video game, and this has been faithfully preserved in its sequel. Enemies dodge and leap out of your gunfire while their companions would sneakily flank you from behind, forcing you to switch to close-range artillery. Virtually all the missions dealing with baddies involved either clearing an outpost/bridge/building claimed by bandits, or, in the case of the mutants, it was a closed-off, darker lairs where Walker could mow them down in droves.

As a side note, I played as the female version because reasons, but this frequently became annoying due to the actress’s voice acting. I would recommend the male Walker because nearly every time she received an injury, she made a moaning sound which I can only describe as somewhere between an orgasm, and giving birth.

In any case, killing enemies gives you various kinds of loot used for the aforementioned upgrading, but once the environment is covered in blood, the player can also explore for additional goodies hidden in cooler boxes and crates. You will know it is loot because they are painted shocking pink. Who the hell was making all this pink paint before the apocalypse!? Far Cry: New Dawn this is your fault.

This brings me to the second issue I took with RAGE 2 because the developers have just gone way over the top with locked content. Worse still, the upgrades have all been arranged in a rather convoluted system of menus and sub-menus that made me exhausted by just looking at them. It is all really just too much since I rarely noticed the upgrades once I unlocked them, and let’s not forget that the first game had a much more subtle emphasis on this aspect of gameplay.

Look at all these upgrades… you don’t need.

Road Rage

Since Half-life 2 introduced drivable vehicles into shooter games, cars were basically just an interesting way of getting over long distance. Again, RAGE was sensitive to this. You could do races which I actually enjoyed as a minor distraction, but the major purpose of the armour-clad dune buggies was to get you through dangerous terrain.

The vehicles serve a much more central role in RAGE 2 as there is a lot more driving and races. I actually had to look both ways before crossing the roads since I was run over more than once, and had to restart from the last checkpoint (lol). However, I still felt most cars to be a little sluggish and unpredictable in their handling.

Some of my vehicular antics.

When cruising through the wasteland to my next objective and taking on convoys with mounted guns, this is less noticeable, thankfully. During the races, it is rage-quit inducing. I found almost no enjoyment in the racing at all since the cars refuse to turn, the handbrake is far too enthusiastic, I occasionally won only for a bug to tell me I placed second, and hitting certain plants made my buggy fly out of the track once. RAGE was much better on this point.

Boy you shur got a purdy mouth

Despite bandits having an unhealthy obsession with the colour pink, RAGE 2 is graphically quite varied. As mentioned, the arks have been terraforming the Earth again which means that forests and wetlands have begun to emerge in certain parts of the wasteland. This makes for a nice distinction between the missions when the same vegetation and rocks begin to test your patience.

Bandits love blocking the roads and attacking anyone caught in the blockade.

This game is also more expansive and more vertical than the claustrophobic canyons or corridors of the first one. There was the occasional, jarring pop-in while driving across the landscape at high speed, but the mountains did a reasonable job of hiding such things in the distance. The slow but steady day-night cycle produced some gorgeous sunsets, and I never felt that the wide variety of textures in the landscapes ever repeated themselves. Avalanche is really good at this stuff.

During combat, the game is more than capable of handling large variety of explosions and particle effects when the action intensifies. This is particularly noticeable when you use the nanotech abilities within the ranger armour. These are movement-based attacks which allow for devastating damage on the punks and muties, and they feel glorious within the physics system built into RAGE 2’s engine. I suppose I do not have to explain what everyone’s favourite, Shatter, does…

Even the sunsets are pink! Pretty though…

Dammit Bethesda

I get that everyone’s favourite target of internet hate is the Epic Store at the moment, but Oh My Gosh the Bethesda client is utter trash. It happened to be the platform on which my review copy arrived, and I instantly remembered why I have been avoiding their stupid software until now. I felt as if I fought with it to play this game.

I urge everyone to purchase RAGE 2 on Steam instead. Virtually every button on the client basically opens up a web page, you have to log in with your password every time, I could not find any option to save screen shots, installation of the game randomly restarted, there are only a handful of games, and my download speed was embarrassingly slow. My experience may represent no reflection on yours, but it is high time we start putting some pressure on Bethesda to get with the program.

That is the question

This conclusion puts me in a difficult situation. If you enjoyed the first game and you are looking to have a repeat performance of that experience, I am afraid that RAGE 2 will leave you disappointed. I actually played RAGE in preparation for this review and I have realised they are almost nothing alike. They share ideas but not experiences, which make me wonder if the title was trying to bait fans by using nostalgia. This feels more like some sort of a standalone expansion to DOOM.

The environments in RAGE 2 feel incredibly alive. Bandits are constantly racing past you and having little skirmishes on the roads.

However, if this is what you are looking for, or your appetite for open world games is somehow not yet slaked, you are going to love this game. The action is refined and intense, the world is big and begging to be explored, and there are tonnes of unlockables to refine your playing style. Matter of fact, you would have to be a cantankerous old fart who’s daily highlight is chasing children off your lawn not to find anything you like here.

Let me therefore emphasise, again, that the problem is how long this fun will last for. After playing for about 5 hours, my map was chockfull of question marks, arks to explore, bandit camps, and so on. One part of me was saying “seriously, do I have to do all that? I just cleared out a hundred hideouts!” The other part was hopping up onto a garage roof, charging up Shatter, and turning some blue-headed sucker into a cranberry smoothie. I like that part of me.

Decent graphics

Combat (DAMN!)

Story

Selection of guns

Interesting environments

Racing

Overemphasis on unlocking

Lackluster story telling

Too far from first game

Boring NPC’s

          Play time: About 20 hours total. Combination of both missions relating to main story line with a substantial amount of side questing.

Computer Specs: Windows 10 64-bit computer using Nvidia GTX 1070, i5 4690K CPU, 16GB RAM

RAGE 2 – Review published first on https://touchgen.tumblr.com/