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beyondmistland · 6 years ago

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“May your heart be your guiding key” (Full thoughts on Kingdom Hearts III below!)

Graphics:

Ø The game is bloody gorgeous, which helps mitigate the long and frequent cutscenes

Ø The lip-syncing rarely fails

Music:

Ø The new remixes are awesome and the brand-new tracks don't disappoint either

Ø What does though is the actual audio mixing:

More often than not I struggled to hear the music over the sound effects during gameplay and the voiceovers during cutscenes

Ranking the Worlds:

Ø #1: Corona: The world is huge, with varied terrain and a kick-ass final boss

Ø #2 Olympus: The sheer scale and scope of the world took my breath away, plus we (finally!) get to fight all four titans

Ø #3 The Caribbean: Assassin's Creed IV meets Kingdom Hearts, what's not to like

Ø #4 Monstropolis: While not as eye-catching as some of the other worlds the way it intersects with the broader KH lore is really neat and the final cutscene was a delight in that it averts the Disney characters being useless when dealing with the original KH villains, on top of which its straightforward design is a nice change of pace, my only complaint is that there are only four types of Unversed

Ø #5 San Fransokyo: The story is surprisingly short, which means you don't really get the chance to explore the environment, which sucks because the verticality and day/night cycle are awesome, plus there are a number of memorable boss fights

Ø #6 Twilight Town: If it had been fully recreated based off the KH2 version the world would be much higher on my list but despite how small it is I love the liveliness, not to mention how peaceful it is in comparison to the other worlds, the same can be said for Hundred Acre Wood

Ø #7 Keyblade Graveyard + Final World + Scala Ad Caelum: Though jaw-dropping in terms of visuals and audio they're not fully realized worlds, the same can be said for Dark World

Ø #8 Toy Box: I loved the final boss as well as how the story tied into the larger plot of the game and I would be lying if I said I didn't enjoy exploring Andy's room while "You have a friend in me" played in the background

Why then is Toy Box so far down on my list, world design

Even with endgame stats (LV40-45) the Gigas are tough to take down and as a result they come off as gimmicky in the worst sense of the word, beyond that the fact that the majority of the world is set in Galaxy Toys made me feel constrained and claustrophobic, which could have been partially alleviated if we'd been allowed to make our way through the parking lot outside, finally, the story kind of got repetitive with the backtracking whenever the characters were about to leave because "someone went missing yet again"

Ø #9 Arrendelle: Though it has one of the best final bosses in the game along with Corona there is so much wrong with this world that I wonder if it's less Square Enix's fault and more Disney placing an insane amount of red tape on their favorite cash-cow:

1) Elsa does not become a party member even after you beat the world

2) You do not get to explore the city or the ice palace despite the latter being fully rendered on the map

3) Larxene, a lightning-based character, randomly traps you in an ice labyrinth when that would have made a lot more sense both logically and thematically if it had been Elsa

4) Speaking of Larxene, she does practically nothing the whole time you're there unlike Marluxia and Luxord, who are at least semi-active

5) You climb a mountain and get knocked off of it so many times that even Sora gets fed up

6) The bloody minigame where you have to find Olaf's body parts

7) Forcing us to watch the entire "Let it go" sequence and then having "Do you want to build a snowman" play over Anna's voice as she's explaining herself to Sora

8) So much of the story is excised that you have little clue as to what's going on to the point Hans appears for all of five minutes, doesn't say any lines, and isn't even named when it would have been cool, not to mention, just plain better, if he had started off as a guest member of your party

9) As a result of #8 Sora, Donald, and Goofy's presence feels like even more of an afterthought than usual in the sense that them not being there wouldn't have changed anything at all apart from Hans' Heartless then having no one to defeat it which can be seen by the fact that when they leave no one tells them goodbye unlike in every other world

10) The visual design was bland and tiresome after a while

11) The world's gimmick was uninspired to say the least

12) Fighting alongside a giant snowman (AKA Marshmallow) was awesome and in terms of pure gameplay the labyrinth was actually quite fun

Story Pros:

Ø Master Xehanort's new voice actor is good but after hearing Leonard Nimoy's voice for the past couple of games the change is a bit jarring

Ø The way previous games are referenced and tied together is a nice way of bringing new players into the fold while also setting up the finale's resolutions

Ø The game has a better sense of humor than previous installments

Ø Sora is more like his KH2 self than the bland caricature we saw in 3D and quite a few characters display some degree of genre-savviness

Ø Master Yen Sid gets out of his chair to lend a hand for once

Ø Donald Duck is the most powerful mage in Square Enix canon (and I am not making that up)

Gameplay Pros:

Ø Being able to switch between different save points in the same world is a welcome addition

Ø The secondary ability of all shotlocks to airstep is ingenious

Ø You can have more than two party members finally!

Ø The secret ending isn't too hard to unlock

Ø You can upgrade your Keyblades, which means older ones aren't automatically relegated to redundancy

Ø Donald and Goofy are useful again after being nerfed into uselessness in KH2

Ø Towns and cities are actually populated by fully-voiced NPCs!

Ø Cutscenes in Theater Mode are unlocked after completing each world rather than after beating the game

Ø I never tried the Classic Kingdom minigames but the cooking one with Remy was a nice break from the normal gameplay (I suck at the egg-cracking one though)

Ø The camera doesn't get in the way like it infamously did in KH1

Ø I like the new main menu design (Feel free to disagree though)

Ø The Gummi Ship is entirely optional outside of a few mandatory boss battles

Ø Moogle Tickets are a nice way of giving players a second chance during difficult encounters (I do wish they didn’t activate so quickly though)

Gameplay Cons:

Ø The game never once tells you that you can switch between Situation Commands using L2

Ø The game never once tells you that you keep all your lower-tier magic (Fire, Fira for example) and that your shortcuts don't automatically update to include the higher-tier version of whatever magic you have equipped

Ø There's no real incentive to switch between Keyblades (That being said, my favorites are Wheel of Fate, Nano Arms, and Happy Gear/Ever After)

Ø Attractions lose their charm quickly and completely ruin the flow of combat

Ø Summons aren't too big of a deal since I only ever ended up using them once and even then it was by accident

Ø Donald still heals you at the wrong time more often than not

Ø Even on Proud Mode the game is way too easy for the most part (Apparently Critical Mode addresses this but I can't confirm that)

Ø There is a lack of sidequests and post-game content that contributes to the feeling Square & Disney gave us half a game (For example, there is only one secret boss, said secret boss has a generic design, no ties to the story, and can be defeated at LV40 on your first attempt)

Ø Hollow Bastion, Mysterious Tower, and Destiny Islands are not playable

Ø The parkour from 3D has been nerfed too much in terms of distance to actually be useful

Story Cons:

Ø Nomura fridged Kairi and he worfed almost everyone the first time you arrive at the Keyblade Graveyard!

Ø The wrapping up of plot points and character arcs from prior entries was a little too nice and neat for me

Ø The out-of-nowhere introduction of Subject X

Ø Pete and Maleficent do literally nothing the whole damn game

Ø The pacing is awful:

Almost all of the game's resolution is held back until after you've beaten the last Disney world

Ø There are two important cutscenes in the Final World that you can accidentally miss because for some reason they are optional

Ø We don't get to see what happened to Lingering Will, which also means we don't get any more insight into the third aspect of being (AKA the soul)

Ø There are no Final Fantasy characters in the game, not even Sephiroth!

Ø What happened to Demyx?

Ø Master Eraqus has absolutely nothing to do with Terra’s restoration

Changes I’d make:

Ø Require us to go through the Disney worlds a second time like in KH2

Ø Have Aqua and Ven be saved halfway through the game instead of at the end, they could then spend the second half of the game resting or join you on one of the Disney worlds to refresh themselves

Ø Have Lea and Kairi join you on one of the Disney worlds to get practical experience

Ø Make the Keyblade Graveyard sequence be a series of one/two/three-on one battles so that members of Organization XIII can use their full arsenal of attacks from previous games

Ø Let us play the second battle between Lingering Will and Terra-Xehanort

Ø Speaking of Terra-Xehanort, we should have fought him alongside the Guardian Heartless

Ø Have us explore Scala Ad Caelum while hunting down the individual replicas before then making us fight all of them in a boss battle

DLC

Ø The presence of it says a lot about the game and not in a good way

Final Score

Ø 7/10-8/10

#kingdom hearts #square enix #disney #kingdom hearts iii

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guidingkey · 6 years ago

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i have a lot of thoughts about KH3 so i’m going to put them below. it’s pretty long and obviously, spoiler-ish, so it’s under a cut in case anyone hasn’t played / finished it yet

okay, i have ... a lot of disappointment with KH3. when i first finished the game i was heart broken and hurt but i thought the journey had been incredible, but the more and more i thought about it, and the more hours and days started to pass and i started to really think on it, the more disappointed i became. i was just trying my best not to admit or recognize that i was disappointed because this is a game i, that all of us, have been waiting over a decade for, and to admit that it was anything less than what we’d hoped and imagined it to be is heartbreaking. but it wasn’t what i imagined it would be like, it didn’t feel like a proper end to a 16 year saga.

that isn’t to say i hate the game or that i even dislike it, i loved playing it, and the journey was incredible. there were so many things that KH3 did right and did amazing, a lot of amazing moments and the way they pulled everything together, convoluted plotline and dozens of characters and all, was interesting to see. it had a very different feel to the other games, especially the title games KH1 and KH2. it was far more poignant, more mature and serious. throughout the game you got the sense that this was the end to things, because everything was coming together and sora was reflecting on his journey so far.

so i feel like between that, and between nomura’s comments on how the end of the game would be hard to accept / how some friendships would change, i should have seen things coming, and i thought i did, but i didn’t. and i wish i could say that i was only disappointed in the ending of the game, but there’s far more to it than that. the ending however definitely felt a bit like a slap to the face, especially when you put it together with everything else that kind of fell flat.

to start off on the technical side: i feel very bad for any new players, because right off the bat square enix throws a whole lot at them, game mechanic wise, and it was a little tough even for me to keep up with all the controls at first. all the shortcuts and command switching in the middle of combat can be difficult sometimes. that being said, the way they incorporated all of the game mechanics from previous games and morphed into something more streamline, sleek, and uniform was fucking great. they really did well on that, and on making combat fun, exciting, and dynamic. all the links, the spells, the attacks, the combos, the team attacks and summons were great! the keyblade upgrading was a fun aspect too and i had fun maxing out starseeker and wheel of fate.

speaking of wheel of fate, aside from ultima which will always be the fuckin best keyblade to ever grace the goddamn planet, i LOVED wheel of fate so much!! it was so fucking badass and very powerful and along with starseeker, once i got it i don’t think i ever unequipped it lol.

also, one BIG THING that i absolute loved and could not stop talking about to anyone who would listen: THE NPCS!!! THE WORLD POPULATION!!! the fact that there were PEOPLE in the worlds! actual PEOPLE who walked, talked, laughed! people you could interact with and who reacted to you! It was so much fun just walking around the world and hearing all the conversations, seeing all the different NPC models. It really, really REALLY helped make the game feel more real. Like the worlds were actual worlds, and not just empty sets like in the other games. It really added another layer to the game, making it much more immersive, and I think the devs did a fucking AMAZING job and a fantastic decision on including them. :-)

and speaking of NPCS, the developers who scripted them and were in charge of them, i would like to thank them a whole lot. especially when it comes to the companions / teammates. because holy FUCK. CAN I TALK ABOUT THAT? BECAUSE I CAN’T GET OVER IT. in KH1 and KH2, it was always fun having your world companions with you, but there was never really much of anything to them apart from the fact that they fought beside you in combat and that they interacted with sora during cutscenes. but that was all there was to them. in between, while traveling, walking running breaking things or jumping on / off things, going different places, there was no reaction from them. teammates were silent companions and that was always kind of sad, always felt a little lacking.

and kh3 changed that. the scripts for your NPC teammates, having them interact with you during the actual game, point things out to you or comment on stuff you did. like flynn whenever you showboated tricks in the town, or the little games you could play with them while journeying through the world with them like in corona, when you slid down the meadow with rapunzel and flynn or danced in the town square with them. even whenever you took a selfie with them or a photo of them and they would look at the camera, comment on it, react, pose maybe. it’s those little things, the little reactions and the interactions between sora and his teammates / companions that made the journey seem much more ... real? it made the friendships more believable, that you actually did have someone traveling with you because they had personalities that shone and were shown outside of cutscenes or battle. but the cutscenes helped, too. there was much more interaction between everyone in the cutscenes this time around, and the dialogue -- while still cheesy at times (its kh and disney, of course, why wouldn’t it be?) was much more believable and natural as compared to the past few games. it felt more polished, more like conversations between actual friends, there was more emotion being displayed. in how they reacted verbally and also in the minute micro-expressions. the micro-expressions!!! god!! watching a brow twitch or an eye twitch or someone’s eyes crinkle or their hair move with the wind and the little subtle facial changes and scrunches !!! i loved it!!!

also, obviously ... the fucking graphics. the level of detail in the game. was fucking. GORGEOUS. the entire time i played i could understand why the game took so long, with everything that went into it, and how the gameplay graphics blended in so seamlessly with the in-game cutscenes. it was amazing. absolutely beautiful. all the models, all the textures, the lighting, the style --- so fucking gorgeous. and THE VIBRANCY OF THE WORLDS! the EXPANSIVENESS of them! they were HUGE! the fact that you could go so many places and weren’t bound to a small box room for the most part, no fading to black as you entered a new area. you just keep going for the most part and it doesn’t break you out of the illusion of actually being there. the maps were so expansive and the work that went into each of them was so clear...it was absolutely gorgeous and so much fun exploring them all and testing the limits and boundaries of them all.

HOWEVER, one of my main gripes with KH3, was the level of difficulty in the game. which is to say ... it had absolutely zero challenge in it. and it was extremely disappointing. in the other games you at least had to strategize on what items to equip and more importantly, what ABILITIES, but here they just hand you everything on a silver platter and let you go wild and yes, that can be fun, but not if it makes the game so unchallenging. even the boss fights were disappointing because they weren’t tough at all. the final fight against master xehanort wasn’t difficult, just time consuming. the boss battle of all boss battles in kingdom hearts 3, and he wasn’t even as difficult as riku or ansem from KH1. like. what? how does that make sense? they gave you kupo tokens in case you die but i literally never had to use it once. maybe it’s different on pride mode, but i’ve talked to people who have played it in pride mode, including my brother, and they say it’s not challenging at all either.

which, i don’t want to be eternally frustrated and never be able to beat a game because it’s so hard, but damn. at least some level of difficulty would have been nice. the enemies had a lot more HP this game but as far as their attack style went and how much damage you took, with all the accessories you were given and could equip, it didn’t matter how much HP they had, you’d cut through them easily and never be in any real danger of losing.

the worlds were also so short. like, incredibly short. unbelievably so. to the point where i really thought, for over half the game, that there would be a second go at them and you’d come back to them until i found out that that wasn’t the case, and you only go there once. the stories in so many of the worlds, toy story, mount olympus, twilight town and tangled especially, felt so ... incomplete. not only that, but so many of the worlds were just cut and dry repeats of what had happened in the original movies. it wasn’t like the other games where there were new plots and stories introduced that you could go through. the cutscenes were all basically just the movie repeated but with sora somewhere in the background. which, they looked absolutely beautiful! no joke. i won’t lie about that. it’s amazing how faithful to the disney movie art styles they stayed and how they recreated them. that’s amazing. but as far as actual content and story? they felt lacking. especially since so much of the worlds were made up of cutscenes. not even gameplay or battles but cutscenes.

there was eleven hours worth of cutscenes in the game. eleven! on average it takes around 20-29 hours to beat KH3. that’s practically half the game. that’s insane. and i hesitate to complain about this because i love cutscenes, i love seeing the characters and seeing them interact, but unlike the other games KH3 felt less like a game you played and more like a movie you watched where you could on occasion participate.

okay. now to the worlds:

Mount Olympus: so gorgeous....what a big ass fuckin world too. mount olympus had the most GORGEOUS lighting and colors and i probably spent a good hour just. turning every which way and staring for a couple of minutes at how beautiful and scenic everything was. the friendly back and forth between herc and sora was so cute too, really felt like they were good friends, it felt very natural and i adored it. sora’s instagram post on herc’s dad was hilarious too, oh my god.

Twilight Town: SO BEAUTIFUL! i love how they expanding on Twilight Town’s world, made it so much more open, made it so populated! the sunset was gorgeous and i took way too many selfies in front of it on the rooftops than necessary. hayner pence and olette were adorable and i adore them and how much they wanted to learn about roxas and get him back, and how they juped xemnas LMAO. ratatouille’s bistro was a lot of fun as well but cracking the damn eggs are devil’s work and i never fuckin got to five stars BECAUSE I COULDN’T GET EXCELLENT ON ANY EGG RECIPE BFBFRJFESJSAB

Toy Story: VERY VERY CUTE VERY NOSTALGIC GOD HOW CAN ANYONE NOT LOVE TOY STORY’S WORLD??? they did an amazing job in every world recreating the movie art styles but MAN ... TOY STORY FELT JUST LIKE THE MOVIE. fighting in the mechs was a lot of fun, the doll heartless was creepy, i had way too much trouble finding the stores i needed to go to and spent far too much time getting everyone’s voice high on helium LOL. woody was MVP of the world and he kicked ass, loved the sass he gave ymx. and speaking of ymx, how he kept subtly fucking with sora’s head, really fucked with me and left me so fuckin worried and anxious. also did we ever get an explanation on how they got home?? like we left them in a world split in two and we were just like okay bye now g2g laterrrr and its like, WELL ... OKAY THEN ... im glad it seemed their world was repaired at the end in the credits but, also, that means they forgot about sora and that makes me );

Tangled: My second fav world!! i admit ... i wasn’t looking forward to rapunzel’s world. i thought it would be my least favorite cuz tangled is my least favorite disney movie. i thought it was too boring and bland. but her world was anything but! and rapunzel and flynn themselves were very dynamic and active and interactive too. :-) it sucked that her world, like many of the other worlds, was just cut and paste of her movie with no difference, but her world was so beautiful --- full of vibrant colors, so expansive, and the movie cutscenes were gorgeously recreated. the festival where you dance with the townspeople was the CUTEST FUCKING THING EVER AND I MUST HAVE DONE IT LIKE TEN TIMES.

Frozen: i was very tired at the end of it after being thrown off the mountain like 5 times LOL BJSKDBA. the fact that they had sora poke fun at their plot after the last time he gets thrown off is funny too haha. other than that, frozen was cute. too cold and the colors too muted / the same in every direction for my tastes, and i had the most trouble finding one of the mickey lucky marks here too. all that fucking snow man. GAH. hearing idina menzel sing though was surprising but a blessing and while frozen has never been one of my favorite movies, i adore how much emotion idina delivers in let it go. the fact that sora was so clearly in awe of her voice and powers and his instragram post on it just makes it even better fbksba.

Monstropolis: this was fun! boo was adorable. sully and mike caring for boo and their back and forth banter, the way they just yeeted vanitas through one of the doors was fucking hilarious. sora’s reaction to being monster-ified was funny as well, and it was nice that there was a somewhat different plot to this world from the original movie.

POTC: MY FAVORITE WORLD HANDS DOWN ... nothing compares imo bjsakdbsa. the fucking hours i spent grinding to get my leviathan ship to max level and finding all the treasures and all the ingredients AND THE GIANT TREASURE COVE FULL OF ORICHALCUM AND PRECIOUS MATERIALS AND ACCESSORIES. WHOOOOOO! sora’s enthusiasm for being a pirate was cute as always, and the fact that he finally became captain of his own ship!!! the sailing of the seas and ship combat was so much fun too and unexpected, and the undersea combat was very fun as well. diving down and seeing all the fish and coves and caves!! man. it was so much fun. easily my favorite world by far.

San Fransokyo: i think my favorite part about this world was the fact that it was modern day, and so phones and cars and television were a thing, and the fact that we SAW! HEARTLESS! ON NATIONAL TV! ON THE NEWS! PEOPLE WERE TALKING ABOUT HEARTLESS ATTACKING AND IT FELT SO MUCH LIKE TWO WORLDS COLLIDING AND I LOVED IT SO MUCH. and i know the BH6 world was the movie version of the world but i like to think it’s still connected to earth-616 like in the comics anyway and therefore marvel and therefore sora in the same world as the avengers and the x-men. as for the actual world itself...i was really excited at first, but it felt a little ... anti-climactic? it felt very short compared to the other worlds, and san fransokyo itself was probably the smallest out of every other one. so that was a little disappointing, but BH6 team was adorable, and i loved all their interactions with one another and with sora donald and goofy. :-)

Pooh’s World: pooh’s world probably gave me the world’s biggest heart attack, with sora reassuring pooh and having us think everything was fine and innocent and carefree like the other times and then BAM you hear sora’s thoughts and he’s like ‘he’s right something’s pulling us apart, what’s happening to me?’ and you’re just left like HUH WHAT ? THE FUCK, EXPLAIN. other than that, it was very cute. very short, but cute.

now onto the actualy story of the game. i was kind of shocked about how serious, how dark and much more intense the story was in this game. the tone and the emotion in KH3 was so vastly different compared to the other games. it’s partly due to the dialogue but also, i think there was much more of an emphasis on realistic emotions and reactions as well. in the other games, whenever something bad happened, it sucked, but it was never really a big deal. the characters would never really react like it was something world ending or horrible, they’d just move past it like it wasn’t grave or like it weighed on them. there were times where things were more serious, sure, but even then, it was usually resolved with a smile or a laugh or a joke or some motivational speech or saying.

KH3 on the other hand? totally different. everything felt like it had so much more gravitas, because the situations that the characters were put into, the battles they faced, the people they met or fought against --- they weren’t resolved with a laugh or a speech, they weren’t moved on from after a few seconds of deciding everything was alright. there were some moments like that, but there were far more weighty situations where the characters really took everything in, really reacted to it. showed negative emotions -- fear, sadness, confusion, doubt, anger. there wasn’t just symbolic talk of death in some abstract form, where you could interpret the loss of a heart for someone dying but still vague enough it could be said it wasn’t really death. there were far more realistic and understandable forms of death: flynn getting stabbed with a knife, will getting stabbed with a sword, xigbar purposely letting himself fall off the ledge down a cliffside. sora going to ‘heaven’, and chirithy telling him -- and us, the audience -- that when the heart and body perish together someone is dead, and that that’s what happened to sora and the others. and the reactions to those deaths were far more real as well. in the other games death, when it happened, was never given much weight, apart from a few -- the main characters in each of the game mainly. but for the most part, the organization members, the NPCS who lost their hearts?

they were given moments but sora and the others all just kind of. moved on very quickly, and that was that. but for this game the reactions to seeing someone die were so much more intense. they were more real. when someone was dying, like flynn or will, people cried, sora got angry and violent and lashed out. for the organization members, they all had their own moments, there were conversations that were had, emotions displayed and truths told, and when all of the trios reunited there were tears and joy and breakdowns of relief. you could feel all of those emotions and you could see it in them and just how much this journey had cost each and every single one of them. there was no moving on right away, there was surprise but blink and they’re over it moments. each reunion and each goodbye held so much real, raw emotion, where the pain and the exhaustion and the sadness and joy were able to be felt.

in general, there was much more of a range of emotion and personality for all of the characters during moments of duress or conflict, but especially when it came to sora. and i absolutely adored it, even though it gave me so many heart attacks lol and a lot of pain and worry. he was showing such a mature side of him that we haven’t been able to get in other games. the closest one is DDD, where we saw sides to him that were serious, had more weight, but even then his faith was never broken, never shaken, and he had unwavering faith and radiated positivity. this game pushed sora to his limits. we saw him at his weakest, and his strongest, and every moment in between. we were able to hear his thoughts --- hear all the directions his mind takes that he doesn’t speak out loud. we were able to see that yes, sora is smart, and no, when things happen to him, he doesn’t just brush them off. he feels them - the pain, the hurt, the anger, the sadness, the doubt - just as much as anyone else. and the doubt. i’ve been saying this for YEARS that sora, while his strength lies in his friends, he relies on his friends too much, in the sense that he attributes all his success and all his strength and his worth from them. that he believes he’s ordinary and unextraordinary without them. this game fucking confirmed that. the moments where he doubted himself, where he lost hope in himself, where he admitted that he didn’t think anything of his abilities without his friends. it was heartbreaking to see but it showed us that sora isn’t just happy - go - lucky all the time like some people like to believe.

and riku ... RIKU! i’m SO PROUD OF RIKU. so proud of who he’s become. his empathy, his kindness, his thoughtfulness was so beautiful and so sweet. especially when it came to aqua. that first time we saw him and mickey in the realm of darkness, and riku was hesitant to leave, and he voiced how lonely and sad aqua must feel trapped there, it really showed how empathetic he is towards people, how caring he is. his conversations with repliku, his reassurance towards sora, how he picked up on what mickey had been planning to use stopga, the way he protects everyone. he’s warm and kind and he has a strong heart and while his moments were sadly quite few in the game, he really shined bright in a couple of scenes.

for kairi, i couldn’t shake the feeling all game that they were shafting her, pushing her to the side again. more so really in the first half of the game because, wow, while riku didn’t get much screen time (and i’ll talk about that in the next paragraph), kairi had even less. i’m pretty sure hayner, pence, and olette had double her screentime in the first half of the game which ... i love them, but really? c’mon. i was hoping we’d see more of her and lea training, or their conversations, or something. the moments they had were lovely and cute and so scenic and very deep, but i was hoping for more, especially for kairi. ): they also really fucked her over fighting wise. despite stressing that she and lea have been training together to become keyblade wielders and despite both of them being told in the game that they were ready to fight xehanort and organization xiii, they only showed kairi needing to be rescued. we saw lea fighting, but kairi? maybe one or two seconds. and that ... sucks. they still didn’t do her justice in that sense. she’s prepared - she’s capable. why not show that? that being said, i’m happy she had more focus on the second half of the game, and i absolutely ADORE her being determined to be the one to save sora this time and not the other way around, and making good on that promise, and being sora’s light to guide him back to the world of the living.

that being said i am very disappointed we weren’t able to play as her, or even as RIKU apart from those two short battles in the realm of darkness. i thought we’d be able to play more as him or kairi or even aqua, seeing how this is the third and final game in the saga, and we were able to play as riku for half of DDD and aqua had her own prequel to KH3 but it seems not. :/

not only that, but the characterization for riku, while i definitely think it started off strong, felt like it fell flat after that first fight in the realm of darkness. the fact that sora and riku were in the same room together, twice, at yen sid’s tower, and yet hardly even acknowledged one another, felt so odd. especially considering the fact that in every other game, their friendship and bond was stressed heavily, implying how close they were and how much they cared for one another. the fact that this was the end to the saga, the third game in the series, and they had only two significant moments with each other, both which lasted only about a minute or two, was so weird. it was so so weird.

i know nomura said that he wanted to keep the friendships realistic, that friends can grow distant over time as goals change, and fine, that’s fine, but it doesn’t make sense when you look at literally every other game and see how close sora and riku are, and then they hardly even look each other’s direction out of nowhere. it was just so ... disjointed. not just sora and riku either, but riku and kairi. we never ONCE saw them interact or even TALK. not once! sora and kairi were the only ones who got any real screen time and development together in the game, which i’m happy for, because that was long overdue, and kairi was a STAR in the second half of the game and that moment between them where they FINALLY FINALLY FINALLY share the paopu fruit with each other and make a promise to protect each other was so ... fucking long overdue ... and so gratifying and sweet and romantic.

but it’s just incredibly disappointing how all the other trios were able to get their reunion EXCEPT for sora, kairi, and riku. every other trio. literally every other trio was close, were friends, had a reunion scene. were able to relax, to find peace and rest after this long journey they’ve all been on. everyone except sora kairi and riku. we were all expecting for them to finish their journeys the way they started it: together on the island. after years of searching for one another, chasing each other, fighting, being apart. they were constantly looking out for each other and looking for each other and in the end? we never got that. we never got them together on destiny islands at last, after everything. never even got them together, period. it felt like such a slap in the face, alongside the fact that sora is dead.

and i know sora will remain the protagonist of the kingdom hearts series, and that the secret ending set up KH4 and sora’s next adventure, where possibly riku stars in it like DDD as well, but ... FUCK. it doesn’t take away the disappointment and the bitter feeling of knowing that everyone else is able to be at peace and find happiness and be among their friends, together with everyone at last, while he’s dead and gone and alone. and i try to justify it, because sora was fine with sacrificing himself for kairi. his journey started when he looked for her. he loves her. he loves his friends. he doesn’t want them to be dead. and if they’re happy, if they found peace, he’s happy.

but it also just hurts to think that after all that, after all of the sacrifices he made, after all the people he brought together and saved, he doesn’t get that happy ending for himself. doesn’t get to relax after everything. that he doesn’t get to be with his friends, that he’s alone.

it’s a very bitter ending and i know nomura intended for it to be that way, but understanding and knowing that the ending was meant to be like this doesn’t mean that the ending is any good, or satisfying in any way. it’s just disappointing and a little insulting.

in the end, i’m very mixed on kh3. i’m trying very hard to focus on what i enjoyed and take it for what it is and accept it, because there were a lot of good moments, but i can’t help but feel like the game could have been better in many ways.

#〈 out of worlds! 〉 ♕ ooc.#long post tw #spoilers tw #kh3 spoilers #very very long ....#i am very mixed and trying to stay positive and enjoy the good but

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cupcakeshakesnake · 7 years ago

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Concept: SU as a horror game

I was doing a sketch of the Diamonds in the style of a family photo you’d find in a haunted house type of horror game, then conversation sprung up between me and @fabledartz and resulted in this.

(Said sketch is still in progress, will upload later when done)

(One thing: We’re not sure if the Gems in this thingy are the same as canon Gems, or people, humanoid creatures/organics or something in between.)

(Another thing: For some reason we put in more and more blood/gore as we talked, so yeah... warnings apply.)

[Read More will give you a LONG read]

- It starts off with you playing as Steven and everything’s happy, but the atmosphere of the game keeps getting darker. You get the Diamonds as grotesque boss enemies with a miserable backstory while you find out more and more about your family(Crystal Gems)’s past. Your whole ‘worldview’ starts getting darker; things aren’t as colorful as they once were.

- You keep finding pink gem shards that you put together as you go along.

- When you find your first shard, you get a Ruby jumpscare. After finding some more shards, you get chased by Blue and Yellow Diamonds.

- You find yourself looking for shards in a large abandoned manor/house, which is where the Diamonds come in. They committed suicide in their grief, but continue to haunt their own home. When you find a certain shard, there’s a Diamonds encounter where they howl about you being a murderer.

- The Diamonds’ Pearls are either middle bosses that scare and chase you for a while inside the manor, or NPCs that keep popping up quietly in corners but never confront you. Their limbs twitch and jolt, their clothes bloodstained; lingering housekeepers of a long forgotten place. They may be still alive, but they’ve turned insane due to their masters’ conditions.

- At some point you find a pale Pearl in the ruins of a woman’s statue, full of cracks and its arms lying uselessly on the ground. The Pearl’s hand is sewn to her mouth.

- Alternatively, Pearl disappears after you show her the first pink shard you found. You later find her in her room with hand sewn over mouth. Either way, you later find out that she wasn’t the one who did it to herself.

- Eventually Garnet splits up and disappears. Later, you find two cracked Gemstones and a rock next to a pond, frogs hopping innocently nearby.

- Your house looks less and less welcoming as you keep discovering more shards.

- When you look at the photo (or painting) of your mother (Rose Quartz) after finding a certain shard, it will show her with a bloody knife/sword for a split second.

- You find a pink lion. Like the photo, it has bloody fangs and white eyes for a moment before going back to normal.

- There is a pocket dimension in which there are happy pictures of your family, but as you look around they all look wrong, as if the bodies are empty. They change every time you look at them but you can’t put your finger on it. Sometimes the characters’ positions change, sometimes someone is missing or a body part is misplaced. Their smiles look... empty.

- When you use a warp pad, a dark place of silhouettes and haunting wailings surround you. Just as you arrive at your destination you hear thudding footsteps approaching you. The more you use the warp pads, the closer the footsteps sound.

- That, or each time you use the warp pad a horrific sound keeps coming closer; it almost gets you but is always cut off by your arrival.

- At some point you start to make out shapes out of the silhouettes that surround you during warp travel. Shapes of many faces and body parts sewn together into one agonizing mess.

- You have a sleepover at your friend(Connie)’s house one night. You dream of the pink shards you found, but one of them starts morphing into the child you saw in the faded photo inside the Diamonds’ manor.

- You explore the town (Beach City) and find a barn in the outskirts. A glimpse of green dashes by you among the stains, rot and shadows.

- Peridot is a humanoid goblin-like being that attacks you at the start, though you can tame her. She won’t give much information or talk a lot, but will attack enemy mobs once tamed. You kill her by sending her off to distract a monster in your path. Further down the way, you see a vision of her mangled remains crawling towards you slowly before fading. You go to bury her but can’t find her body.

- Later, you find some body parts sewn together... there’s a green hand that’s all too familiar.

- One day, the tide goes up too far. It’s not high enough to flood the boardwalk, but the beach is submerged and there is no apparent cause. When you finally find the cause, you see two bodies unexplainably mangled into one giant thing (Malachite), but after a while they literally break apart.

- The torn-up beings (Lapis and Jasper) can’t see you at first, but you can’t take them on a fight. You have to trick them into fighting each other while staying out of sight. And that’s how you end up hiding under an algae-covered rock as you watch them tear each other apart. The water becomes reddened with blood.

- As the fight goes on, the bloody water’s level rises, almost drowning you. Just about when you think you’re really done for, your father (Greg) comes in and saves you. He takes you to his van where your family (including Peridot) is happily waiting for you. They tell you that you must have had a nightmare; no one is hurt or dead, but just as you are about to bite into the sandwich they prepared for you, it all disappears. You wake up on a cold rock surface soaked with blood. No one is around. You are all alone.

- You step on something mushy... It looks like blue-tinted flesh.

- Alternatively, before your dad rescues you, you peek out from your hiding place. You see either Jasper or Lapis crying over the other’s mangles and torn body; this cutscene only happens when you press a certain button. There are no forewarnings or hints that tell you this. The dead one is who tried to attack you first before you tricked them into fighting each other. The other one is bleeding too much to survive much longer.

- One day, as you go along the boardwalk, you spot some kittens. You start feeding them daily. After some time you go to feed them as usual but instead of hungry meows, you are greeted with a bloodied box of limp cat bodies. A knife and a note lies next to it. The note either reads “Should have stayed so I could capture your essence...” or “I hear humans need food. Your supply was getting low so I gave you some.” In the latter case, the kittens’ bodies are stuffed into plastic bags.

- Alternatively, a lunchbox with some sort of cooked meat turns up at your doorstep one day. At this point in the story you don’t have a regular food supply anymore, so being hungry as you are, you eat it all up. Then you go to feed the kittens... There’s nothing but blood and skin.

- Amethyst takes you to her kindergarten one day. She used to show you this place before, but this time something is different. The holes seem a bit too deep; you can’t see the ends. She goes into her hole, but never comes out. You get tired of waiting, go home and come back the next day to find all the holes filled. Either that, you encounter an earthquake. You hear her voice calling for help but there’s nothing you can do. You run. When you come back later, the place is barely recognizeable. Bloodstains seem to well up from the ground wherever you set foot.

- In the rubble, you see a bunch of dead children (Beta Amethysts). They never got out of the place. Every time you enter the kindergarten after this incident, you hear faint whispers that grow louder the closer you get to where you found those bodies, and a soft wailing near where Amethyst’s hole used to be.

- After exploring the Diamonds’ manor a certain number of times, you find one ancient portrait of a lady clad in white that you’ve never seen before. You forget about it for a long time until...

- you find out it was Steven in drag. (Okay, that was a joke by @mamalizmas. It was too good to leave out.)

- Anyway, back to the point: The second time you see that portrait, her head has been cut off. For some reason you dream about her that night, but with no face.

- One day, you find a room in the Gem Temple full of deformed corpses (Corrupted gems). Most of them don’t even look human. Every single one is grotesque, beastlike, and dead. In the middle of the room is a single bloodied sword. The job is yours now.

- As the game progresses and/or you kill more people, your Gem’s color changes to a bloodier red.

- Alternatively, your hands get bloodier each time you cause a death, either directly or indirectly.

- In the end, everything’s alright. The Crystal Gems are back... although they seem off. You yourself are not who you used to be.

- At the end of the game, you tell the Crystal Gems that you’ve grown up and that you want to go travelling for a while. As you leave the house, you either look back only to see a ruin that hasn’t been inhabited for years, or get a jumpscare in the end credits.

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musingsofonehuman · 4 years ago

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Well, the Epic/Apple situation hasn’t changed, and probably won’t for quite a while, so in the meantime, let’s talk about something a bit more positive, speedrunning.

Speedrunning has been around for ages, it’s only because of the advances in streaming and video technology that speedrunning has become so prevelant in recent years. For those that don’t know, speedrunning, in its most basic form, is all about finishing a game in the shortest time possible, that means skipping cutscenes, using the quickest movement options and doing just enough to finish the game. There can also be permutations to these runs, such as having to collect a certain amount of items or not using certain abilities or glitches, if a game has multiple endings, it might be a fun to reach a specific ending or reach a certain point in the game, people can speedrun all manner of games in a variety of ways, from running a game blindfolded to running a fitness game. Speedrunning has evolved over the years where there are now organisations dedicated to it.

One such organisation is Games Done Quick, also known as GDQ. GDQ was set up to showcase speedrunning while helping raise money for charity, their two biggest events, Awesome Games Done Quick (AGDQ) and Summer Games Done Quick (SGDQ), raise millions for charity every year, they recently finished their lastest SGDQ event and raised $2.3million in a week, which is an incredible feat. The events are week long live streams with runs throughout the week nonstop, all manner of games get shown during a GDQ event, many games submitted don’t make the cut unfortunately, which shows just how tight the submission process is. Highlights from this year’s SGDQ for me include a speedrun done in VR, an exhibition of an arcade dance pad game and a game where you make sentences to break the game.

There are other organisations as well, RPG Limit Break is an organisation dedicated to showcasing speedrunning in RPGs, which you think there wouldn’t be a lot of considering RPGs are mainly story based, but you’d be surprised just how much skill there is in an RPG speedrun, from massive RPGs to turn based favourites. Then there’s ESA, no, not the European Space Agency, I’m talking about the European Speedrunning Assembly, an organisation based in Europe helping promote the European speedrunning community, they hold their own events similar to GDQ but they like to showcase runs that are a bit unique, such as a 10 player co op run or a massive relay race. I could talk about different organisations all day, but there’s a particular game I wanna talk about when it comes to speedrunning, Kingdom Hearts.

I love Kingdom Hearts, I’ve been playing the games ever since the first game all the way back on the PS2, and while there have been many games in the series, my favourite has always been, and still continues to be, Kingdom Hearts 2. It refined on the movement and difficulty problems from the first game while adding to the combat for a more rounded and enjoyable experience, to this day it still remains the pinnacle of the Kingdom Hearts series, the game that all others are compared to, and while the games that followed KH2 were ok, they never lived up to that high point, both in terms of story but also mechanically. More recent games have become more flashy in their combat, trying to show off what they can create and achieve, but it doesn’t really make the game satisfying in the end, only pretty.

In terms of speedrunning, KH2 is one of the best speedruns you can watch in my opinion, KH2 doesn’t feature major glitches that skip portions of the game, so it’s all about movement and combat techniques. It’s a game that has been through so many optimisations throughout the years, from the use of summons and drives to limits such as Duck Flare becoming more used, you can even learn new things to help with casual runs, did you know reflect is insane? Most casual players never even think about using reflect, but it’s such a good magic, it can save you in a pinch, and it can break up boss patterns such as Luxord’s card games or Roxa’s constant barrage. Chicken Little and Stitch also have use as well, again, never really used them in casual playthroughs before I started watching speedruns. The actual speedrun itself has dropped in time considerably over the years, mainly because the HD versions cut out a lot of the load times, but new techniques discovered as well, if you have the time, watch a run from 2015 then watch the latest marathon run from this year, it’s insane to think how optimised this game has become, and potentially there’s still more optimisation to come.

However, in recent months, there has been a new addition to KH2 speedrunning, something that I have been trying out, a randomiser. A randomiser is as it says, it randomises the game so that each play through is different, for KH2, potions, drives, summons and other items and abilities are all randomised, enemies are not randomised but they are trialling randomised bosses, though it is still being tested and is not generally being used yet. Basically, the randomiser is done by creating a mod that creates a hub world, eliminating all the gummy missions (also known as the annoying parts of Kingdom Hearts) and instead making it so every world is accessible from the beginning, from there, the aim is to find the three proofs in order to unlock the final boss, as well as levelling up and gaining enough items and abilities in order to be able to face the final boss. You can play a non randomised version with the hub world which is nice as it cuts out the gummy missions, but generally the reason why you’re using the hub world mod is because you want to play randomiser.

I have done one full run and a partial run, and even with my limited experience, I can say I’m already enjoying it, I’ve never been one to replay games again and again, I prefer to play a game and then move on to the next game, it’s why I’ve never been interested in speedrunning KH2 myself, but doing the randomiser has been a lot of fun. It turns the game from a journey through the worlds into this game of risk and reward, I’m always thinking about where I need to go next, what’s gonna give me the most chances for the least time and effort, something I’ve never really played before. I play it on beginner with a few XP boosts just to help me out, but even with those boosts it’s still a challenge, fighting bosses out of order with abilities that I shouldn’t have, it’s given me a new appreciation for KH2. Not having scan from the start has been weird, it’s such a small thing not seeing an enemy’s health bar but it makes such a big difference, especially with bosses as you don’t know when their DM phase (desperation move, a move where they do crazy damage and they’re generally invulnerable) is coming up. That said, I did do my first DM skip the other day, on Xigbar no less, who knew berserk charge and horizontal slash together were such a powerful combination? I’m still working out my opening move, I’ve tried doing the Pride Lands fight at Lvl 1 but I’m just not skilled enough to do it yet so I take Disney Castle first to get some levels then see where I am.

For those that have played KH2 and want a new challenge, I would highly recommend trying out the randomiser, there’s even been a few randomiser races so if you wanted to learn more about it before jumping in, I would recommend watching one of the randomiser races to give you some perspective. I will leave you with one more run, which is Kingdom Hearts at its most exhilarating, a Lvl 1 Data Org run, I’m not gonna explain it, just watch it, trust me, you won’t be disappointed.

youtube

#Youtube #gaming #playstation #kingdom hearts #gdq #speedrun #randomiser #kingdom hearts 2

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randomisedgaming · 7 years ago

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Steel Strider - Review - Vol 21

Format: Windows PC Publisher: Nyu Media Developer: Astro Port Release year: 2015 Genre: Run & Gun Shooter / Platformer

Randomised Gaming reviewed the Steam digital download version of Steel Strider on a Windows 7 PC.

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To some the words budget title, can conjure the images of some horrible looking cheap and broken game with a cover art that closely resembles a well-known franchise from a more famous company. In other cases it might mean a re-release of a classic game from yesteryear covered in a new unpleasant sliver packaging, designed to taunt the owner that they didn't buy the game when it first came out.

These days, thanks to services like Steam, Xbox Live Arcade, PlayStation Network and the rise and return of small interdependent developers. The price of the game doesn't in the slightest reflect the quality and that budget game you just bought, for £1.99 can be every bit as good as that £49.99, big budget title, if not better.

Which is a good thing, as for us at Randomised Gaming the price of the title means nothing it's what's under the hood that counts. The only factor that really comes into play on cost is the length of a game, as you don't expect a hundred hours epic story adventure if you are paying £4.79 for a title.

The second world has a very sci-fi feel and the look is a real throwback to the days of the Amiga home computer

Steel Strider is a run and gun shooter crossed with a platformer, much like Konami's Contra series, but nowhere as hard. Developed by Astro Port, a studio who has made a name for themselves on producing retro themed arcade games with a modern look and feel. The game itself is a sequel to Astro Port's previous title Gigantic Army with Steel Strider taking place a number of years after Gigantic Army finished. Other nods include the SALADIN mech from the first game appearing as the boss at the end of the first world and the second mission sees you returning to the planet Ramulon from Gigantic Army to stop another outbreak of war. The plot from the third mission is directly linked to another space shooter from Astro Port called SATAZIUS.

As the name would suggest the game is packed full of giant robots, mechs or mechas pending which name you prefer. It's also packed with lots of guns too, as you will be blasting just about everything in sight. Added to that you have a nice Gundam / Star Wars inspired beam saber just in case anything gets to close for comfort.

That description may well conquer up images of Masaya's Assault Suit/s series (Target Earth / Cybernator for us in the west) in your head and you would be spot on. As Steel Strider clearly homages these games. This is a perfect example of a modern shooter and when you're not gunning down the rank and file infantry. Which come in all shapes and sizes, from small bomb carrying droids to large walker with mount rockets and laser cannons. You can expect to see plenty of full screen world destroying boss units.

Huge boss battles really are one of Steel Strider's highlights

Steel Strider is fast and frantic, for skilled run and gun player's like myself I was able to finish the game on normal in around two and a half hours. Steel Strider offers four difficulties and if you want to see everything the game has to offer, then you will have to at least finish the game on hard or insane, to see the true final boss. The higher difficulties also change up some of the enemies seen in each level.

Steel Strider is about 80% shooting mixed with about 20% platforming. Most of the shooting action is very much point, click and fire. There isn't a huge amount of tactics involved as most of the standard units can be blasted anywhere. They also normally attack in huge numbers, so it's best just to clear the enemies as quickly as you can. There's the odd shielded enemy and some of the bosses have to be damaged via a weak point, but most of them can be damaged anywhere.

Much of the gameplay involves picking your favourite gun and blast anything in slight while dodging their fire, nice and simple. You have full 360 degree fire control so you can shoot enemies from any angle you choose. Speaking of guns there's eight different weapons to find over the course of the game. While the default handgun is designed as a last resort weapon, owning to having unlimited ammo, its damage is very weak.

A shotgun down a narrow corridor, is a sure way to clear robot mobs

You will be quickly looking to use alternative weapons like the assault rifle or shotgun, later weapons include rockets and the all powerful railgun. Each weapon performs differently and learning in which situation to use each weapon is a vital skill. The shotgun is great for hitting rapidly moving enemies, while the rocket launcher is perfect for dealing high damage to bosses.

Limited ammo for these weapons, however, means they should be used sparingly as you don't want to walk into a boss fight with just the beam sword and handgun, unless you're testing your gaming skills. Later stages include upgrades to the various weapons, but these upgrades don't change the balance much and as you are given them wholesale as the game progresses, they don't really feel like a reward for good performance or exploring a level.

The game supports both mouse & keyboard and joypad options, the controls themselves are very straightforward and easy to learn. While normally I would prefer to use a joypad for this type of game, I found the joypad controls on Steel Strider rather twitchy and a bit unresponsive, when using an official Xbox 360 pad. In the end I found the game easier to control with the mouse & keyboard. As this set up controlled faster and was more responsive, even if this wasn't my preferred choice of controls.

The opening section of stage 3 sees you taking to the skies

Steel Strider included four unique worlds, each made up of a number of stages. Each world has its own setting the first is on a mountain planet, second a yellow mining world, you have a green gas world for the third and an urban city for the final one. The art direction of Steel Strider is one of the weaker areas of the game as the interior stages all look the same and largely the colour scheme uses far too many grey textures. Making the game very bland looking and it subtracts from the great design work done for some of the mech units in game. On the whole the mech sprite are far more colourful and very contrasting with the background, perhaps this was intended so you could easily see the incoming enemy fire clearly. It ends up making the game feel rather drab as you explore each world.

The level design in part managed to make up for this, as each stage has its own theme. World two adds in a few stealth sections and includes an impressive chase along a train. While world three sees you boosting through the clouds to board a stolen cruiser. These add a nice touch to each of the worlds. However, these extra sections are often over a bit too quickly and then it's back to shooting robots down a long corridor. Still nothing in this game lasts that long and you quickly move from stage to stage. While the level design isn't quite to the quality of Cybernator / Assault Suits Valken, Steel Strider's design is well paced with enough new twists along the way to keep you playing until the end.

Even this train doesn’t stand a chance against this giant circular saw robot, don’t stop moving

When you're not shooting, there's a fair amount of jumping nothing too taxing, in part due to the huge jetpack mounted on your back, which allows you to hover and glide over platforms. There are few bottomless pits to watch out for that kill you instantly, but with checkpoint at every section, you rarely have to replay more than a minute or two. The main use of the jetpack is to primarily time your jumps to avoid the onslaught of enemy fire directed your way. The odd saying “anything you can do, I can do better” springs to mind, as for every weapon you have, the enemies have, a fast, longer and bigger version. So expect to jump, duck and dive, out of the way of rockets, bombs, missiles, lasers and much much more. Just remember hazard pay isn't included.

Story wise there's not a huge amount apart from the mission briefings you encounter before and during each level. Asides from a few very short in-game cutscenes. It mainly boils down to the fact you are a special force unit, guided by an operator, running shadow operations to prevent wars. There's a slightly interesting moral twist at the end of the game, but that's for you the reader to discover. However, the quality of the English script and text, leaves a lot to be desired. It's functional, but doesn't flow at all well.

These bland mission briefings are pretty much it for the story

The music fits the steel theme of the game nice, with a nice section of techno music perhaps a nod to the music from the 16bit era. Nice to listen too as you play, but very forgettable stuff and nor is it going to rouse emotions like the superb soundtrack for Front Mission on Super Nintendo. A decent soundtrack, but not a great one.

Audio wise the sound effects are what you expect in this type of game with mechanical noises and explosions going off everywhere. Which more than suffices, as you don't really need to listen to detailed affects, when you're constantly blowing up everything in sight.

There is a scoring system included and Steel Strider also keeps a record of your playthrough time, if you decide you want to improve on your personal best time. The scoring system did seem fairly basic and the highest score awards seemed to be for just finishing a stage without take a hit.

The final forth mission gets very hectic in places

That just about covers everything there is to say, performance on out test unit was perfect and the game has fairly low minimum specs for modern PC titles. Option are very limited and the game only has 640x480 and 1024x768 resolution support. There is a wide screen aspect option, but this didn't work for me and just put the game into a tiny window. The lack of options was somewhat of a let down as most gamers would expect at least 1440x1080 support in-game and ideally 1920x1080p.

Unstoppable robot soldier or twisted and broken scrape metal?

Taken as a whole the gameplay of Steel Strider is fairly standard for the genre, it's a run and gun and these games always tend to get pretty repetitive at times. While Steel Strider is far from the best example of the genre it does a good job of capturing the spirit of more well-known games, if not quite putting it altogether correctly. The bland nature of some of the levels is ultimately what stops Steel Strider from reaching greater heights.

Even in some of the boss battles, you have to watch your footing to avoid falling off!

As a veteran of the genre, it kept me playing all the way to the end, even if it did only take two hours to finish. While it might not offer a huge amount of replay value you can't complain at the budget price it was launched at and there's at least enough to keep you coming back for a second playthrough on hard to see the true final boss. Even the great classic that is Cybernator / Assault Suits Valken wasn't exactly a long game to finish either.

Is Steel Strider as good as the big classics like Contra, Metal Slug, Metal Warriors, Front Mission Gun Hazard, Assault Suits Valken & Leynos 1 and 2. Short answer is no, is it worth your money, however, well yes! Both Steel Strider and its prequel Gigantic Army can be found in a bundle with most of Astro Port's other games on Steam, at a very reasonable price, well worth the cost of admission.

While picking up original copies of games like Cybernator aren't that cheap, digital options are available. (time of writing Virtual Console is still up on Wii & Wii U, just) Where as Metal Warriors on SNES is very hard to find these days and very expensive. The Metal Slug series on the other hand is available on just about every post mid 90s console going.

The Trafalgar from SATAZIUS helping out the player, in a cameo role

It's fair to say, you should aim to purchase and plays the mentioned titles first, before looking at Astro Port's offerings. If you have played all the latter games and want something new to try out, then these budget games by Astro Port should be right up your street. You can certainly pay a lot more for far worse, Contra: Legacy of War or Scud: The Disposable Assassin, anyone?

Minimum Spec on Steam: OS: Windows 2000, XP, 7, or 8 Processor: Pentium 4 1.4GHz or better Memory: 512 MB RAM Graphics: NDIVIA Geforce series, AMD(ATI) Radeon series Storage: 100 MB available space Sound Card: DirectSound-compatible Sound Card

Astro Port Official website: http://www.interq.or.jp/saturn/takuhama/dhc.html Nyu Media website: http://nyu-media.com/category/astro-port/

Review by Random Gamer Riven.

Twitter: RDGamerRiven

Email: [email protected]

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#Steel Strider #PC #Windows #Nyu Media #Astro Port #Steam #review #reviews

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theantoniomabs · 5 years ago

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I’ve played a lot of games in mind time, but nothing quite like this one.

South Park: The Stick of Truth is a single player game with RPG mechanics set in the wonderfully imaginative and crude world of South Park.

Join the usual cast of character, Stan, Cartman, Butters, Kyle, and Kenny as you battle through hordes of elves, mutant bacteria, Nazi Zombies, and Hobos all in hopes of retrieving the all mighty “Stick of Truth”.

At surface level this might appear to be just another series trying to rake in money by making a videogame, however in comparison to the infamous E.T. game. South Park: The Stick of Truth, deserves your money!

Here’s why:

Immersive World with tons of things to do:

This game is large! I mean, 20 + hours of content. Hard enemies that will keep you on your toes, tons of quests to complete all over South Park, and a cast of characters that is not only fun to play with, but are immensely funny.

Playing this game feels just like being inside an episode of the animated show. The cut scenes

are top notch. The character animations are of very high quality, and the story is just insane, filled with tones of twist and turns.

It’s hard to write about such a story heavy game without spoiling things, but when you’re aboard a spaceship getting rammed up the bum by alien space dildos, it’s hard to keep it a secret.

I mean come on, Mr.Slave’s summon is borderline pornographic, and Jesus Christ comes from the heavens to save you with some heavenly artillery.

It can’t get better than that… Oh wait, yes it can!

Fast Action Turn-Based Combat with a Spark

I’m not a huge fan of RPG’s mainly because I hate all the random encounters and the amount of stats one has to keep track of just to know if you’ll survive the next battle, and the waiting! Oh, I hate the waiting.

South Park: The Stick of Truth, manages to deliver a simple, concise and fun battle system that is very much inline with old RPG’s but it’s much faster, coupled with the faction action button presses that determine how much damage you’ll make or if you can defend from the attack. This is hands down, the best combat system I’ve had the pleasure of using in any RPG to date.

This game being a story somewhat rooted in Fantasy lore, has the basic classes of any RPG. A thief, a warrior, a magician, your standard stuff, but oh boy is it not standard at all.

You have 3 bars,: the health, a power bar that allows you to preform stronger attacks called abilities, and a mana bar that revolves around, literally your butt.

Eat a burrito, and watch as those potent beans fester in your stomach to deliver a nasty blow to your opponent senses.

Give me 1 Final Fantasy that shows debufs by literally putting people on fire, having them bleed out or puke their innards during combat because of how nasty your magical fart was. Didn’t think so.

If you need a refresher on what a good battle system is, you need to pick up this game. I promise that you will enjoy every second of it. I still find myself going back to it, just to study the Battle System. That’s how good it is. I wish I could give personal thanks to whoever built it. I want to be like them when I grow up.

All jokes aside, this game features a wide array of enemies, bosses, and weapons that will have you clamping at the bits for more.

Gross but Great

If you’ve made it this far, you deserve to see this nutsack. You do, it’s your accomplishment for being such a great reader.

This game is so set on making you feel like you are in an episode that the comedy gags extend into the mechanics itself. This screenshot you see above is an actual in-game fight scene with a boss that happens to be fighting you while your parents are having sex.

Horrible mental picture, I know. I got grossed out while I was typing, but I swear that when you play during the scene you’ll be laughing right out of your chair.

Everyone in the game has something to tell you, and they are all hilarious. From the lady at the corner that urges you to get a plastic nose surgery, to the alcoholic piece of poop that lives in the sewer and needs you to find her son. The writer is 100% in-line with the show. You can can imagine how much thought, passion and dedication went into this project from the amount of cleverness each line of dialogue, each cutscene and each boss fight has. You will be laughing the whole way through.

It’s Gross but Great.

Leveling System like no other

Unlike most games; in this one you do not only level up from defeating enemies and completing quests. You can also level up something call your perks based on the amount of characters you make friends with. More friends equal better perks, and in a high stake battle against the Mongolian Horde of the Tower of Peace, this can mean life or death.

Each character is excited to interact with you, and their dialogue and sometimes missions make it a true delight to go around South Park talking with everyone. Even the lame ticket box attendant is fun to interact with.

PS: You can fart on everyone! XD

Weapons Galore

This cast of fourth graders have no concern for safety. Use a bat, an axe, a sword, or a pink vibrating dildo to work your way through increasingly difficult battles against all sorts of enemies.

You can also customize your character’s style. With armor, hats, and gloves that not only affect the way you perform in battle but also look super stylish.

South Park: The Stick of Truth deserves all the praise it’s gotten and more. So pick it up next time you get a chance and let me know how you liked it in the comments section below.

South Park: The Stick of Truth I've played a lot of games in mind time, but nothing quite like this one. South Park: The Stick of Truth…

#animation #blogging #fun #Games #reviews #south park #stick of sturth #videogames

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terryblount · 6 years ago

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Devil May Cry 5 Review: So Stylish, Very Thrilling, & Too Dull

Devil May Cry: an epic, polarizing series that began in 2001, had a terrible sequel in 2003, fought back with 2005’s worthy third entry, and then went missing in action-gaming after 2007’s well-received DMC 4. Some 12 years later the series is back to deliver the authentic stylized madness fans have been waiting for. So is DMC 5 worthy? Is it brilliant? Is it a must play? Well, you must read on to find out!

Spectacle Fighters Anatomy & DMC 5

Before I give you my overall opinion, let me explain my perspective on DMC-style games. Games of this genre (often called spectacle fighters) have a basic three-part structure: cutscenes, combat, and levels. That’s basically it, and the quality of the game comes down to how expertly each part is crafted. Let’s break down how well DMC 5 fares in each regard.

DMC 5’s cutscenes are immaculate, with off-the-charts production value. The characters are awe-inspiring, both technologically and personality-wise. Just look at the picture below! The hair, the skin, the clothing. It’s all so perfect, both in still pictures and in motion. The story’s a big mess, but we’ll talk about that later.

Do you see these graphics!? They are crazy good!

The heart of any Devil May Cry is the combat, and DMC 5 does not disappoint. Combat is detailed, precise, nuanced, and oh so flashy. There’s countless diverse ways to kill with style and grace, and it’ll take a good 30 or 40 hours to truly master the vast arsenal of weapons, skills, and combos.

So what do you do when not watching mind-blowing cutscenes and engaging in adrenaline-filled death-matches? You stroll through the world, of course! Sadly, this is where DMC 5 nose-dives into surprisingly weak territory, get stuck in the mire of boring and uninspired level design. There’s also far too few unique environments, with a large recycling of level elements. Not good.

TLDR: My DMC 5 Conclusion

Rather than wait until the end, let me give you my personal conclusion. As the review subtitle says, DMC 5 is so stylish…in cutscenes, very thrilling…in combat, and too dull…in level design (and story). All in all, DMC 5 is a wild ride, but I got off the ride disappointed because it could have and should have been so much more.

This is a thrilling ride with chopping and slashing and much blood and style!

To put it another way, if all you care about is beloved characters and intense combat, DMC 5 delivers hardcore. If you want those beloved characters to actually take part in an epic and powerful story set in an imaginative and memorable world, then DMC 5 will likely ring a bit hollow for you.

Now that you know my ultimate opinion, let me back up all my claims with many more words and fun pictures!

Three-Fold Character Combat: Tri-Awesome

Let’s start with DMC 5’s best element: the delicious combat! There’s three unique characters you play as during your adventure, and each is enjoyable and well-crafted. You might come to favor one character, but I found that each character grew on me as I continued to play, which is is a testament to DMC 5’s superb combat design!

You begin with Nero, whose trick is his special right arm that can transform into many different attacks. Nero also excels at quickly grappling enemies, pulling either the enemy or himself closer. Many of his best attacks don’t come until late in the game (and the next playthrough), but Nero is worthy.

Here’s Nero fighting some scary demonic knights. No problem!

A few hours in you switch to the newcomer, V. V is highly unique, using his computer-controlled minions to attack. I really enjoy the semi-real-time-strategy aspect to V. You give you orders and watch as your minions play out their attacks, all while you personally avoid getting hit. It’s a refreshing change of pace from the “one-man-army” style of the other two characters. Speaking of which…

I call this picture ‘away from smoky reddish-vine in a pretty sky cane-man on black-blue-bird rides o’er beat-up railroad tracks.’ The title could use some work.

Toward the second half of the game you finally get to play the true hero of the series: Dante. It’s been a long time coming for DMC fans, but Dante is back and better than ever. He’s powerful, capable, versatile, and very enjoyable to play as.

Ah, the legendary Dante! And…he’s being given a hat-weapon for hat-attacks. For real!

Dante has a veritable arsenal of long-range and short-range weapons, all easily swappable at any time. He also features four unique modes you can switch between during combat. While all of this may sound like a lot, the controls are simple and quick to learn.

There’s a huge selection of skills to unlock, allowing for tons of combat options.

Despite the diversity of characters and attacks, the main takeaway is how extremely balanced and awesome DMC 5’s character combat system is. So slick. So polished. So good.

Enemies & Bosses: Worthy

There’s not much to say here because DMC 5 delivers exactly what you’d expect from a game of this caliber. There’s an excellent roster of enemies, from simple fodder, to smarter underlings, to flying creatures, to hybrids, and other very deadly assortments. Some might wish for more variety, but what’s here is very good.

This is Dante in one of his powerful forms. I have no idea what’s happening here.

On the boss front, there’s a decent, although not extensive, range of small, mid, and large bosses. Some are bipedal. Some are mostly stationary. A few are the huge smashy-smashy types, while the most lethal are the later-game bosses you must carefully duel, either deftly dodging or dying horribly.

Style Rankings, Playthroughs, & Difficulty

In case you’re new to this type of game, the goal of combat isn’t so much to simply win but to win in style (hence the ‘spectacle fighter’ term)! All your moves gain you style points and the goal is to use a variety of moves to reach the coveted ‘S’ rank and beyond.

Here’s a handy tutorial screen teaching us about ranks. From D to S and beyond!

The higher your rank, the more Red Orbs you acquire, which are used to unlock skills (and revive upon death). It’s a great system that works just as well today as it did so many years ago when first introduced.

Devil May Cry is also known for its multiple playthroughs. The first playthrough is a warm-up. The second is a test of competence. The third is a grueling gauntlet…and those beyond are for you to discover for yourself!

You get a rank for every mission. The better you play, the better your rewards.

It should be noted that DMC 5 is very flexible with game difficulty. You can choose to start on ‘Human’ mode, which is quite easy. You can even turn on ‘Auto’ mode, which will perform cool combos without figuring it out yourself. So whether you’re very bad at these types of game or an old pro, there’s an option for you.

Level Design & World Building: Not Good

Oh boy, this is going to be contentious, but I’ve got to be honest. DMC 5’s level design isn’t good: it’s fairly basic and boring. Far too many levels consist of bland hallways, straight tunnels, and no sense of wild exuberance and style that the characters and combat so cleverly display.

This hotel looks quite nice, but it’s just a few hallways and rooms.

What’s worse, the world-building is pretty dismal in DMC 5. World-building is about immersing the player in a believable world that flows naturally from the game’s setting and story. It’s what makes you feel like you’ve “been there” in a game rather than having just “watched it” in a movie.

Sadly, it was hard for me to get a strong sense of place when playing DMC 5 because the levels seem thrown together haphazardly, rather than connecting to form a plausible world. It feels like the developers picked from a grab-bag of video game levels to be backdrops for their insanely good cutscenes.

We’re in a crypt now because crypts are cool…I guess…no real reason beyond that.

You’ve got a sewer level. There’s a crypt and trainyard. A hotel and a metro. Add in some urban settings for good measure. Why these locations? We’ll never know because none of them play into the actual story. It feels like meaningless filler that we’ve seen in other games ten times over.

Recycling Levels: Not Stylish!

Did I mention the game recycles levels quite often? Sometimes you’ll play the same location as a different character, which feels cheap. The most egregious sin, though, is how many missions (seven of them!) take place in the same sort of organic/plant tileset, with only slight modifications.

Get used to seeing this environment…over and over and over and over…

For a type of environment used in literally a third of the game, these organic/plant locations aren’t attractive. They’re visually and thematically sparse and barren. A couple of these levels even reuse the same exact arena multiple times in a row, and it’s darn boring to have such flashy and fun combat set in the same lame physical spaces.

I can’t help but feel many corners were cut in the level design department of DMC 5. The best thing I can say about the level design is the levels are short, so you don’t have to endure too much monotony.

Here’s a market area, but the produce details aren’t so great…

The Cutscenes: A More Critical Analysis

I’ve already said the quality of the cutscenes is insanely good. The acting and voice-work is all exceptionally well-crafted. DMC 5 delivers hyper-believable choreography and performances, with near-perfect facial and body nuance, and there’s extreme charm and likability to each character, in my opinion.

Something happened and there’s much pain. What I mostly notice are his excellent teeth!

So what’s the problem? While the presentation is gorgeous and mesmerizing, the actual story being woven is less like a vivid tapestry and more like a stale, half-eaten perplexing pretzel. Why is it so bad? For starters, the plot relies far too heavily on happenstance.

There’s a plant-thing that emerges to threaten the city. Why a plant and why now? Nobody knows, but the characters just happen to be where they’re needed. Even more problematic is the terrible narrative framing that harshly cuts back and forth in time, jumbling the story to build artificial suspense. Let’s discuss.

The Story: Jarring Narrative Framing

Instead of telling the story chronologically, the game purposefully cuts up story segments to ensure you’re entirely confused for at least the first half of the game. This method can work if done judiciously and wisely, but DMC 5 is heavy-handed and annoying in its shattering of the story.

Why annoying? The framing style results in several game sections being replayed over and over, as the game slowly reveals new tidbits of story truth. It was about the third or fourth time facing off against the same exact boss in the same exact location in the same exact way that I wanted to scream, “Just get on with it!”

You’ll be seeing this scene so many times. Move on with the story already!

Speaking of story tidbits, DMC 5 does have some quality narrative bits, but they’re just that: bits. There’s a heart-warming scene here or there. Some excellent dialogue brings a tiny dose of backstory and motivation to some characters, and there’s one or two powerful reveals. The problem is all these good tiny bits exist in isolation, never coalescing into a coherent and memorable tale.

Some will not care one iota that DMC 5’s story is such a gorgeous mess. However, as a reviewer, I cannot overlook this. Illogical, broken storytelling was more acceptable back in the early days of Devil May Cry, but in 2019 players should expect more.

Nero’s in a destroyed city because sometimes cities get destroyed I guess.

Moreover, when the prior game in the series delivered such a strong and coherent narrative, it’s not acceptable for the series to take such a huge step backwards. Yes, I’m speaking about the 2013 reboot, DmC: Devil may Cry.

Get your popcorn out because I’m about to do what no sane reviewer should ever do: compare the current beloved game to the prior much-maligned game.

2019’s DMC 5 versus 2013’s Dmc: Devil may Cry

Six years ago the prior Devil May Cry game was released, but it wasn’t a proper sequel. It was a reimagining of the series, a reboot both in character and spirit. There was a large and understandable uproar from hardcore DMC fans who’d been waiting 5 years for a continuation of the original Dante & Crew story.

People love the Dante with a rocket launcher, not the scrawny one from 2013.

Despite the fury over the reboot and reimagining of Dante, DmC went on to be one of the best spectacle fighters ever made, and it still holds up today. The combat is intense and cerebral. The story is relevant, engaging, and well-told. The level design is lavishly creative.

But don’t just take my word for it! DMC 5’s director, Hideaki Itsuno, has personally stated that DmC is his favorite entry in the series. That’s quite high praise! And so, I feel it’s extremely appropriate for me to compare this current entry to the prior game because a series should and must continually improve upon each release.

Technology…DMC 5; Combat…Tie!

In some ways DMC 5 is superior to DmC. We’ve already discussed at length how DMC 5’s graphical technology and rendering of characters and animations is phenomenal. Naturally the more recent game wins this category.

Yet another gorgeous cutscene. These characters are so lifelike!

The combat system in both games is brilliant, neither being objectively better. DmC features one playable character (ignoring DLC) and favors weapon-switching based on enemy weapon immunity (blue/red). DMC 5 gives us three distinct playable characters and focuses more on positioning and dodging. Ultimately, which you prefer really comes down to personal tastes, and I personally love both!

DmC: Double the Environments

Now we come to the highly problematic areas of DMC 5, and it’s really too bad DMC 5 doesn’t take more inspiration from DmC when it comes to story and level design.

Let’s start with level design. DmC has some of the most imaginative and exuberant levels of any video game. There’s the wild night club with the ground pulsating to the beat. There’s the crazy vertical scale of climbing through a distorted soda warehouse. DMC 5 has nothing like this.

This bridge level is one of the handful of truly unique environments.

Putting it in math terms, DmC has 16 truly unique level environments out of 20 missions while DMC 5 only has 8 unique level environments out of 21 missions. Let that sink in. DMC 5 has half as many unique level environments. That’s downright pathetic.

To put it another way, DmC gives us 16 complete levels with no reusing of assets. DMC 5 only gives us about 8 complete levels, with the remaining 13 being recycled parts of prior locations. It looks like DMC 5 fell victim to poor planning just like DMC 4’s rushed and recycled level design.

The game loves ruined buildings and roots. It’s downright obsessed with them.

Disconnected versus Logical Environments

To add insult to injury, the limited number of environments in DMC 5 don’t even make story sense, as we noted previously. Instead of using the locations to build the story, the levels all feel very disconnected.

At one point I was tasked with finding a mythical item of power, and I was placed in a graveyard. I thought, “Great, finally a location that makes sense; I’ll find the mythical item in a long-forgotten tomb or something.” Sure enough, there was a fancy tomb, but guess what? The tomb was just for looks, and none of it was connected to the story in any way. Who came up with all this?

See that glowing tomb in the distance? It’s meaningless. This area is just filler.

On the contrary, DmC’s environments make sense. You explore a nightclub because you need to pursue the villain’s lover, who runs the club. You attack a soda factory because you need to stop the poisoning of the people. None of this is groundbreaking storytelling, but it flows nicely and lets the player follow the plot. The same can’t be said for DMC 5.

To sum up, DMC 5 lacks content, and the content that is there makes little story sense. It feels like the level design team and character/cutscene team worked 100% independently, merging their work together at the end without concern for a unified gameplay experience.

Enough of our comparison. Let’s get back to DMC 5 and wrap up some loose review ends.

Multiplayer & Sweet Gold Orbs

DMC 5 features no true multiplayer, however occasionally other player’s gameplay will be shown when going through certain missions. You can see them playing and at the end of the mission you can choose to “thumbs up” their performance. That’s about it.

Notice the two other players, showing recordings of their performances. Also, more roots!

The best thing about this multiplayer is the Gold Orb (extra life) reward if another player “thumbs up” your performance. Gold Orbs are very important items on later difficulties, and unless you’re some action-gaming God, you’ll need dozens of these to make it through the final difficulty levels.

To put the multiplayer rewards into perspective, you’re going to find maybe 20 Gold Orbs through the game, but I was given over 20 Gold Orbs as multiplayer rewards during my time reviewing the game. So if you choose to (of have to) play offline, you’ll be missing out on this.

Sound & Music: Juicy & Delicious

Special mention goes to Capcom’s brilliant audio team. DMC 5 has fabulous sound effects, both in combat and in cutscenes. It also has a wonderful variety of music, with many tracks being so groovy I found myself wishing to hear them again and again while playing. Music is a matter of taste, but DMC 5 is delivers nice noise!

Imagine loud and pounding music playing as V shatters his enemies into fine dust.

Horrible DLC Practices: Pay to Win

Unfortunately, Capcom has decided to sell in-game currency for real money. I condemn this practice. It’s unacceptable, especially since you use this currency to revive. I won’t stop condemning this practice no matter how ‘mainstream’ it becomes. Enough said.

Upon death you can use Red Orbs to revive…which can be bought for real money. YUCK!

Various Minor Issues

The out-of-combat movement system feels a bit weird. Jumping and platforming feels slightly off, and the ‘dash’ ability is strange. Once you unlock it, instead of always running faster, it only kicks in once you’ve run slowly for a few seconds. It’s unwieldy and weird.

Some of the secret (bonus) missions are quite uninspired, and some are downright annoying. Maybe some will enjoy them, but they could have been much more inventive.

The game has a few missteps, much like how I got sliced real good in this picture.

You can quickly load your last checkpoint, but the menu doesn’t tell you the time marker since your last checkpoint. 2013’s DmC had this excellent feature (very handy for higher difficulties), but DMC 5 omits it sadly.

On PC the game loads so fast that it’s nearly impossible to read the story synopsis text on the loading screens. A button prompt to load into the game would have been handy because these write-ups are often quite helpful in understanding the jumbled story.

This car was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Bonus points if you spot more roots!

Another annoyance is how pressing Start/Escape skips cutscenes immediately, without warning. A menu option to enable “1-button Cutscene Skipping” would be ideal, since speedrunners want quick skipping while those of us who get interrupted a lot would benefit from pausing.

In regard to cutscenes, at least there’s a convenient ‘Gallery’ menu option to easily replay all cutscenes, in case you skipped one or just want to revel again in the ultra-detailed and lavish presentation. Did I mention the cutscenes are gorgeous? Remind me to mention that…because the cutscenes are really gorgeous!

Conclusion: It’s A Mixed Bag

DMC 5 saddens me. It could have and should have been so much more. The technology is amazing. The game engine runs superbly. There’s a wonderful cast of hyper-real and brilliantly choreographed characters. The combat is diverse, enthralling, and a pleasure to play.

Things are so fun when you’re slicing and dicing with power and style!

But then there’s the big mess of a story with muddled framing and incoherent plot points set in often-recycled levels with bland design and limited visual creativity. Why can’t the narrative and world be as passionately enthusiastic and charming as the rest of the game?

If combat and cutscenes are all that matters to you, DMC 5 is one of the best games out there, but I for one can’t shake the feeling that the narrative and world-design squanders the incredible technology and charismatic characters. This is why DMC 5 saddens me…at least the cutscenes are gorgeous.

Character technology

Charming, unique cast

Gorgeous cutscenes

Flashy, robust combat

Three excellent playstyles

Nicely-paced missions

Stellar sound and music

High replayability

The classic DMC humor

Runs great on PC

Weak, incoherent story

Muddled narrative framing

Story/setting disconnect

Far too few unique levels

Recycled level elements

Boring, dull level design

Various design annoyances

Playtime: 22 hours total. Nick spent 12 hours leisurely completing the standard difficulty level, Devil Hunter. Then he pushed through the next higher difficulty, Son of Sparda, in 8 hours. A few more hours was spent goofing off and unlocking Achievements.

Computer Specs: Windows 10 64-bit computer using an Intel i7-3930k CPU, 32GB of memory, and a nVidia GTX 980 Ti graphics card.

Also read the Devil May Cry 5 PC Performance Analysis.

Devil May Cry 5 Review: So Stylish, Very Thrilling, & Too Dull published first on https://touchgen.tumblr.com/

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