#the way you integrated certain parts of gameplay so smoothly into the story

[rhendarzon]

On Journey Roads and Judgement Calls

Ordinarily a druid's journey to the Sun Shrine is not long, but there are a great deal of things that make the present circumstances rather extraordinary. Rhen might be the Oracle's Chosen One, but this does not give her the power of teleportation--and thus, she and her party have another long walk ahead of them if they are to see Rashnu safely to Aveyond.

As told by Rashnu, the Druid of Darkness. Set during Rhen's Quest. 6 chapters, total of 12.7k words. No warnings, no spoilers if you've played the game to the point of rescuing Rashnu.

Peace had never felt so chaotic.

The world hit my senses with the force of a tidal wave. My balance was compromised, I needed to right it. I was under attack, I needed to defend myself. The daeva--

--- --- ---

[chrismerle]

what’s up i spent way too long typing up a post about my thoughts on P5S, and it isn’t even all encompassing. i guess if you’re curious about anything i didn’t mention in this trainwreck just ask.

my spoiler-heavy thoughts/pseudo-review below the cut

THINGS I LIKED:

The characterization, broadly speaking. If you, like me, loved the Thieves in P5/P5R then you’ll be pretty happy with them here. There are a couple moments that made me roll my eyes (lookin’ at you, hot springs) but on the whole, the main cast are unchanged.

The new characters. Sophia and Zenkichi are great. Sophia is precious and Zenkichi straddles a very fine line of ‘realistically out of the loop, but gives as good as he gets.’ I don’t even care how silly their costumes were. Sophie looked like the Stay Puff Marshmallow Man, though I did like her little emoticon visor, but also she had no pants. Wolf’s mask was badass but the fact that his stupid pointy hat was riveted to the top of his stupid disco high collar killed it and I wanted to see someone grab his hat and pull it back to see it fling back into place like a drinky-drinky bird. Even so, the characters were great, and when I noticed that all the attacks for Sophie’s initial pseudo-Persona had question marks after them (Kouga? Dia?), it made me laugh, and Wolf’s a good all-purpose party member because he hits like a fucking truck and nothing is immune to Almighty. Plus in some of his post-battle dialogue he calls them all ‘kiddos’ and they consistently call him Gramps.

The gameplay. I mean, yeah, it’s VERY different than P5, but you all know that. And hey! The game no longer immediately ends if Joker gets knocked out (unless he’s the only one left in the party, obviously). It ran pretty smoothly, there’s something weirdly charming about the other Thieves showing up perched on cover points, and the only consistent issue I ran into is that in segments where the camera gets forced into a certain angle, it can switch back so abruptly at the end that you accidentally go walking right off a ledge.

I’ve never really played a Dynasty Warriors-type game before, so it took me a Jail or so to get used to it, but then I was just cackling as I mowed down swarms of Jack Frosts like a weed-whacker in a flower field with a knife the size of Joker’s torso. Honestly, it took me the longest to get used to the fact that the circle button became the all-purpose ‘interact’ button than anything else.

Actually, that’s a lie. It took me the longest to get used to the fact that if I left a Jail, I wouldn’t be losing any time. I’m very used to Persona games having the calendar constantly counting down, which wasn’t the case here.

The story, broadly speaking. It had some hiccups and some issues, which I’ll get into, but for the most part, it was fun. I’m...not going to outline every detail of the story here, but it felt very P5-y and I enjoyed it.

THINGS I LIKED BUT THAT NEEDED WORK:

The writing. It was a little inconsistent, beyond just the usual weirdness that I have accepted comes along with Persona games. (//patiently clicks through numerous conversations of the gang going ‘did this super obvious thing that this memory threw in our faces happen? Let’s debate about whether the most likely answer by a huge margin is the answer’ and several conversations of ‘are we sure this person is bad? We saw them playing nice, like literally every other villain we’ve faced’) A lot was great! Like, the bit with the Okinawa locals breaking into the RV while the kids hide in the bushes? Genuinely unsettling! Akane’s Jail and the fake Thieves was fun, and seeing Zenkichi scuttle from hiding place to hiding place without Thief powers was funny, and his Shadow’s glowing eyes watching him before becoming his Persona was both badass and unsettling. The realization that EMMA was actively lying to Konoe was nice. Character interactions were great and I loved that Sophia went with Ichinose at the end. There was a lot that was good. But there were also a lot of missteps.

Like, it kind of felt like the direction for the writing changed partway through. It started out as if each member of the Phantom Thieves was going to get their own time to shine, identifying and empathizing with a Monarch. Ann realized she could have been Alice. Yusuke realized he could have been Ango and also saw redeeming him as sort of like redeeming Madarame by proxy. Mariko was a link to Haru’s childhood and her father. The ghost Jail on Okinawa lured Sophie in and by the end she realized how much she meant to her friends ryuji said fuck. Akane was Zenkichi’s literal daughter. And then it went to Konoe and then EMMA, so Ryuji, Futaba, Morgana, Makoto, and Joker didn’t get a chance to shine in that regard. The switch from ‘a Jail for everyone to identify with’ to ‘whelp here’s the decoy and the end boss’ felt like they came from two separate drafts of the script, and it’s not like they had to watch the time; I got through P5S in about a third the time it took me to get through P5R. It took me about 35 hours. Considering the game kind of relies on you having played P5, they already knew their target audience has a longer attention span than that.

Owada was talked up as kind of a big deal, but he had like two scenes on-screen and otherwise was an entirely off-screen character. There’s a lot of mid-combat dialogue that is very difficult to focus on, which was sort of annoying when some of it was actually relevant. Ichinose’s reveal as a villain is very info-dump-y.

Plus, Joker wasn’t utilized particularly well as a silent protagonist. He’s got more implied personality than basically any other Persona protag. Which means he’s actually pretty expressive throughout the game, but I can probably count his lines of dialogue outside of combat with fingers left over. No one expects Yu Narukami to actually react to anything, so it doesn’t feel odd when he doesn’t. But the combination of Joker being reasonably expressive and having a demonstrated personality means you’re perpetually EXPECTING and WANTING him to say something about the shit going on, and when he doesn’t it feels like mentally missing a stair.

THINGS THAT I DIDN’T LIKE:

The cut corners. Like, a lot of things just seem lazy. There were scenes that really should have been included that weren’t, like how the Thieves escaped from the hotel after the police showed up; it cut from Zenkichi warning them and getting arrested to them arriving at the temporary hideout, so we never even got to see how the Thieves reacted to realizing the cops were outside. Requests to bond with the other Thieves only got a couple of text boxes, when they could have shown a tiny scene of them hanging out like they had all over P5. Rather than having Sae actually on-screen for her brief scene, the camera instead very unnaturally switched to an angle as if it was from her point of view, which was literally the only time the camera did that in the entire game. All of the Sentries look the same from Jail to Jail, instead of being unique to each Jail. Igor is completely absent for the entire game, and other than a throwaway ‘my master can’t be here’ from Lavenza it’s just not really acknowledged.

The missed opportunities. Like, there is no way to look at this except to assume that Joker was a horrible friend to literally everyone in this world state. Like, I can pass off the fact that everyone has their baseline Personae as being because they haven’t had access to their powers for a while, but when you combine it with the fact that NONE of Joker’s other confidants show up or even know he’s back in Tokyo, it leaves little to assume except that in this world, no confidants got maxed out. On top of that, the Personae are all basically pointless. They could be Pokemon or Stands or Digimon or fucking YuGiOh cards, and it wouldn’t make a difference; NOTHING about the game says ‘these entities are integral to this world and important to these characters.’ Also they could have had Akane actually realize who the Thieves were and it would have been hysterical, but that’s just my personal sulk.

The Requests. I liked the Mementos missions in P5/P5R. They felt like they had a point. Requests in P5S are all basically just fetch quests. ‘Go to Location A, fight so many of Enemy B to get so many of Item C. Turn in Request.’ Hell, one of them bugged out on me, I swear. There’s a Request to teach Zenkichi how to cook a simple meal, and Haru gives you a recipe including beef. I had no beef on me at the time, because if you want SP restoratives you gotta cook a fair amount and I used it, and I could find literally no beef in the city I was in at the time so I had to abandon the Request. On top of that, outside of getting food or a few moments where another character specifically asks for Joker’s attention, character-specific Requests mostly replace the ability to bond with the other characters individually.

The restoratives. Or, more specifically, the disparity between HP restoratives and SP restoratives. There’s essentially one cookable recipe to restore SP for every four recipes to restore HP. Even if I stopped at every store and vending machine, I’m pretty sure there were a couple cities where I could find NO SP restoratives for sale, while most stores and vending machines had at least two or three HP restoratives. And while it is true that you can go in and out of a Jail whenever you please to restore SP, that doesn’t help you if you run out during a boss fight you weren’t expecting (mini-boss encounters are virtually identical to regular monster encounters) or during one of the times where you CAN’T leave the Jail for reasons XYZ.

The final boss, and not just because I died and had to start over a few times. As a concept, EMMA could be cool, but in reality she just seemed like the writers threw Yaldabaoth and Maruki in a blender and poured the results into the game. Like Yaldabaoth, she is a false god who seeks to control humanity, claiming it’s what they want. Like Maruki, she seems genuinely deluded into thinking it’s for the best and that she’s not doing anything wrong. Her Jail looked like a slightly sci-fi reskin of the Depths of Mementos. The shtick with the multiple platforms and getting to actually SEE an all-out attack at the end were nice, but for the most part the fight itself was nothing special. Ultimately, EMMA had nothing unique going for her except her name.

Plus, EMMA’s entire rationale was that the majority of humans want someone else to control their lives for them, essentially out of convenience. And she’s presented as being more or less right, but that just being one of the hurdles of being human. It seemed a little dour and far-fetched. Like, the Thieves repeatedly point out that struggling allows people to grow, and they’re right, but in my experience, I’ve never actually met anyone who, upon hitting a roadblock, decided ‘Jesus take the wheel.’ Considering the greed with which her weird tentacle arms snatched up the solidified Desires, the pettiness of the complaints she used as a “gotcha,” and the fact that she just kind of reiterates her ‘people want to be controlled’ point over and over, I think it would have felt a bit more true to life and given her more agency if, instead of presenting her as largely correct, it instead acknowledged that everyone at some time or another hits a wall and wants someone to tell them what to do and had her capitalizing on those individual brief moments to hook people in, despite her having reams of data that for most people, those moments are temporary.

[terminator855]

Ori and The Blind Forest Review

Ori and The Blind Forrest – The best platformer metroidvania

Introduction

Nowadays there is a certain problem with AAA-games: Reusing already existing Ips and only changing the formula or the presentation is a safe way to make good money, but a lack of creativity has become a symptom of this disease which holds every publisher nowadays in a form of strangulation. Even Nintendo suffers from it, their newest original and creative IP with decent success being Splatoon. The worst example is Assasin’s Creed with more than 20 games in a decade and such a franchise fatigue that even the most hardcore fans would agree if I would say that this change wasn’t for the best. But why am I telling an already old and stale tale? As the title already suggests Ori and The Blind Forrest was an exception and remains a milestone within the history of Metroidvanias. Combining Metroid’s classic system, incredible hand drawn visuals which still hold up and the movement of the Rayman games something new had been forged. And when it was finally released (in eager anticipation) on the 11th of March 2015, everyone knew that something magical had happened.

Story

The basic premise really reminds me of the Zelda Series: You are the titular Ori (sorry Link) and have to safe the also titular Blind Forrest which has suffered form severe attacks. Because of that you are visiting each shrine to solve riddles, reach the centre and restore the balance. Nothing special, nothing really revolutionary, but here is the catch: The presentation is so polished and lacks most of the time any words. By showing you the environment, you already get the idea what this place used to be and it changed over time. An example of this is the more or less first Area of the game: The Swamp. The water is toxic and the environment is dying because of this. So when you finally manage to clear the temple, you are thrown outside only to see that the water is clear and hid new areas which can be explored. The concept “Show me don’t tell” always has been a really difficult point for gaming as immersion is nowhere easier to reach than in video games. But many producers are still inspired by movies and so they are using cutscenes to show us the impact of a situation. Even though I love Sonic Generations, every major story point is a cutscene and an introduction which evil guy has to be beaten next. With around 45 minutes for an 8 hour long story I am wondering how Sega didn’t manage to catch any flag for this. So many cutscenes does Ori have? The answer is: 6 This game has 6 cutscenes and in some of them you even gain control of your character. While the events are not less scripted, it integrates the player more smoothly into the situation and manages to encapsulate feelings so good that crying sometimes seems to be an option. Also it is really interesting to note that the cutscenes are only used to portray actions which out of the player’s range of action. To sum this part up: The story is nothing special but it manages to use the advantages of video gaming almost to it’s fullest potential. Just a shining example of how to understand your medium.

Gameplay

Now we get to the real deal: Ori and The Blind Forest is probably the best platformer in a while and manages to make the action of just moving entertaining and enjoyable. At the beginning of the game you are quite limited and not able to to much. Most of the time you feel like you can’t even jump high enough to explore anything which makes the gameplay more horizontal that vertical. Of course that’s just a clever trick to teach you the basics. Many things are basics like gliding or the double jump, but over time your arsenal becomes broader and trying to use the skills in quick sequences. It just feels very satisfying learning every trick and often times you will surprised how you can optimize your movement.

Difficulty

Sometimes the game is pretty relaxing and there is nothing to fear. Especially if you visit “older” parts of the map as their challenge is limited because of the new abilities at your disposal. But when you reach the moments you need to escape: Start to feel the music, because you are in for a ride. At these times the game becomes untouchable and everything comes together. But you will most likely die a lot and feel like you are in Dark Souls.

Music

Most of the time the music takes a backseat. While being perfect for the atmosphere and gameplay. there are not too many tracks are really memorable. This more a stylistic choice than anything else though. If the music needs to hit you right in the feels or to give you the feeling of spectating a legend: It will succeed.

Conclusion

While not a masterpiece because it lacks new concepts, it will hold up as a classic and it’s impact on the whole metroidvania genre can not be understated due to the fact that it’s refinement still is yet to be surpassed.

[xb-squaredx]

Nier: Automata Review: Do Androids Dream?

2017 was a solid year for video games, and one unlikely candidate for Game of the Year for a LOT of people was found in Nier: Automata. A sequel and somewhat of a spinoff to Nier (which is itself a spinoff to the Drakenguard games), this game might prove to be the breakout hit of director Yoko Taro. While not quite a household name yet, Automata’s financial and critical success provides him with a decent foot in the door. While his games have a devoted cult following, this will likely be a great many gamer’s introduction to the man and his…interesting ideas on game design. Let us begin the weird, melancholy journey that is Nier: Automata and I’ll attempt to do so with as few story-spoilers as I possibly can.

Set far into the future, humanity has been driven off of their planet by aliens and their powerful machine lifeforms. With the remnants of humanity living on the moon, Project Yorha is created, a military force of powerful androids that work to repel the machines and take back the planet. The war has been locked in a stalemate for a long time however, and the story begins at a crucial time in the conflict, following the perspective of androids 2B, 9S and A2, androids at different stages of dealing with the constant struggle. The atmosphere of the game is definitely somber, downright heartbreaking at times, but balanced out with some odd humorous moments and sweet interactions, before the viewer’s heart is yanked out and shown to them. This isn’t a game to induce good feelings, is all I’m saying.

Obviously, the story is the biggest draw here, and I’ll take care to not say much more. Automata’s story details the ongoing conflict and questions what it really means to exist. The lines between humans, androids and machines and how blurry they really are; it gets quite existential. Along the way there is a good amount of foreshadowing and twists that, on a repeat playthrough, completely re-contextualize several moments in the game. There are several sequences in the game that are incredibly disturbing and will stay with me for a long time. An uncanniness in these metallic characters displaying human-like qualities, but being ever so slightly off. Automata isn’t quite a horror game, but it’s very haunting all the same as you explore the ruins of mankind with something in its place that feel like cruel imitations.

The voice cast is phenomenal, everyone knocking their roles out of the park. Kira Buckland and Kyle McCarley have a great dynamic in 2B and 9S, 9S in particular developing in an interesting manner throughout the game. Cherami Leigh plays the gruff A2 well and Alexis Tipton brings a lot of heart to the character of Pascal, one of the few friendly machines the player encounters. There’s a great amount of talent to be found in this game and it really makes the more emotional moments hit hard. Other aspects of the presentation are great; the music is the standout there, with hypnotic, somewhat haunting vocal themes throughout the OST, aided by slick visuals. I’m not a fan of the somewhat desaturated look the game is going for, I like vivid, colorful games myself, but it goes with the tone so I don’t mind too much.

Now, gameplay is where things get interesting. Any fan of Yoko Taro’s games will tell you that while his games are almost always interesting…they aren’t that great to play. This time around, PlatinumGames have been brought in to polish the action and the results are mostly fantastic, resulting in two companies playing to their strengths. While not nearly as in-depth as most of the action games in Platinum’s resume, Automata has their telltale slick and stylish footprints all over it. You can chain together simple attacks with a variety of weapons, from swords of varying sizes to giant fists and spears. All the while, you have a dodge that can allow for a counter attack if you time it right that seems right out of Bayonetta. Players also have a Pod accompanying them, a little drone that assists in battle. Pods work as a long-range option, their default attack being a gatling gun that sends bullets straight ahead, and can use Pod Programs as special attacks working off a cooldown. You can summon a shield or hit enemies with a big attack; it’s quite similar to Grimoire Weiss in Nier, for reference.

Adding to all this, players can use Plug-in Chips to customize your abilities. Augment movement speed, attack power, grant yourself a parry maneuver or slow down time after a dodge—there’s a lot of chips out there to really change things up. However, you have limited memory to work with and have to pick and choose chips that will fit, but in an interesting twist you can remove aspects of your HUD to free up extra space. If you really want that extra bit of attack power, then you don’t REALLY need that minimap or health bar visible, right? Just don’t remove that OS-Chip. You kinda need that to live. All and all, the combat in Automata isn’t quite as deep as Platinum’s other titles in terms of weapon variety or combos, but has plenty of options to keep it interesting. In fact, the gameplay itself will change up quite a bit throughout the game; you can pilot a flying mech or engage in hacking, the camera even changes to overhead or side-scrolling positions at times to keep things fresh. One thing is certain though: Yoko Taro LOVES bullet hell and you better be prepared for a LOT of that sprinkled in. Enemies frequently launch projectiles at you, but most can be cancelled out with shots from your Pod, though some require a melee attack to dissipate. These sequences can be a bit bothersome if you’re not into that genre, but if you stick with it I don’t think they’re too bad (up to a specific point that anyone who’s beaten the game will know anyway…).

The Platinum touch is very appreciated with the combat, though there are some elements that don’t come together as well I think. The bullet hell sections occasionally work, and sometimes they don’t. I find the changing camera perspectives to be disorientating more often than not, and more than one boss feels way more awkward than they needed to be. While battling against common enemies isn’t too bad, there are times when they seem to just…randomly ignore hitstun and attack me anyway, or else there are SO many enemies being thrown at you, and you can barely get a hit in before you have to dodge like mad. One area really stuck out to me; fighting a bunch of strong enemies in a little pit with a ladder in the center. The camera gets hung up on the geometry of the area and at times I’d accidentally attach to the ladder and be unable to escape as an enemy winds up and knocks off half my health. Most of the game is set up in wide-open areas at the very least, but to say every fight works smoothly wouldn’t be true.

But now we get to the BIG elephant in the room, one Yoko Taro fans know all too well: multiple endings. The Drakenguard games and Nier all have multiple endings and that much also holds true for Automata, but that isn’t to say you can beat the game once and are stuck with the ending you happen to get. The “endings” in Nier: Automata are less like endings and more like “routes.” Each new route you play through will add new elements that weren’t there before and eventually more parts of the story are shown. This isn’t like Ghost n’ Goblins where you beat the same game twice just for a slightly different ending screen; things can get VERY different as you go through later routes, but this does lead to a bit of repetition in a game that’s already filled with backtracking. Without saying too much, ending A of Automata is only about a third of the game as far as narrative is concerned and stopping there (where I fear a lot of people will) would result in a story that has potential, but doesn’t seem to conclude much of anything. So I will say this: keep playing. Square Enix even puts in a message at the end of the credits asking you to keep playing. I was invested enough to keep going and I was glad I saw the game through to the end. The REAL end. There’s so much more story, so much more variety to the gameplay after those credits roll the first time, and it’s sad that so many people will likely miss it because…well, we got to credits, so game’s over, right? But that isn’t how Yoko Taro thinks, for better or worse.

Speaking honestly, while I enjoy the game a great deal and really like the places the story goes…I won’t pretend that the decision to break the narrative up like that does the game a lot of good. I think it only harms the game, really. Compared to something like 999, a game that integrated the concept of new-game plus into its narrative in a way that made sense, Automata doesn’t handle it as gracefully. In 999 you can skip past dialogue and scenarios you have already done, but you aren’t so lucky in Automata. Granted, there are fairly significant differences that appear as soon as you start that second playthrough but it’s not exactly fun to go through the same story beats and wait to re-unlock fast travel again. I get what Taro is going for; only in video games can you do something like this. You can’t read a book, then go back to re-read a section and have new pages suddenly added. I can appreciate him for trying something different, but I question if that’s the best usage of the medium for telling a story. It might not be worth alienating people who don’t want to jump through all those hoops just to get closure to a story, nor is it going to help if people don’t know that the game has multiple routes in the first place. That Square Enix needed to put in a message after you beat the game is pretty telling.

Even without taking the multiple routes into consideration, I’m not fond of all the backtracking. While at times new things are added to locations you’ve already visited to keep it interesting, a lot of the time you’re simply going across the same four or five areas. I can’t tell you how many times you’re told to explore the factory that makes up the first “level” of the game. Often times this is for sidequests, sure, and thus the backtracking can be optional….but then again, the sidequests are so rewarding both in experience points and rewards, it’d be crazy to NOT do a good portion of them. On top of that, the areas just feel kinda empty, which might be the point. Still, navigation could be better. You CAN ride on the backs of animals to cut down on travel time…sometimes anyway, and you do get fast travel later on but it’s limited. Why is it I can save when I get close enough to an Access Point, but have to physically touch the Access Point when I want to fast travel? There’s even one extended sequence of “controllable helplessness” where you have to drag your limping body halfway across the game world that, while memorable…is memorable more so for dragging on WAY too long. It’s a bit of fat that could have been trimmed.

At the end of the day, Nier: Automata is a game I won’t soon forget, and it’s largely a positive experience. I do really enjoy it, even if at times the frustrations overwhelmed the good parts. Platinum and Yoko Taro’s team gelled together fairly well, resulting in something that’s solid in just about every fashion. The combat is slick and open-ended, the soundtrack is fantastic and the performances by the voice actors really sell the scenes and add a little extra heart to it all, but the fragmented story, constant backtracking and the rare shoddy battle here or there brings it down a bit. If you’re a fan of Yoko Taro’s work, you’ll enjoy it immensely and if it’s your first experience with the man’s games, you’ll still find a lot to like here. I WILL state that it would be better if you’ve played Nier beforehand, but there’s generally enough context within this game that certain late-game moments will…mostly make sense. You’ll just be lacking a bit of clarity. Glad I was able to get to this game before 2017 was over, and I would look forward to whatever Taro does next…because no matter what it is, it’ll be something worth talking about. See you next time.

-B

[doktorpeace]

Shadows of Valentia was really good. Its story is pretty straight forward with no real twists but the writing quality is very high overall. It falls into some traps because it’s based on a much older game but I liked it a lot. The character’s voicework and writing is top notch though, easily some of the best in the franchise. This game wins hands down in terms of voice acting quality among FE games, and the cast of characters are all interesting and well realized. Even with a limited number of support conversations the Memory Prisms and Base Conversations really go a great length in conveying these characters and developing their history, interests, and personalities. None of the characters feel like anime tropes, thank god, they feel like well realized individuals some of whom are more interesting than others. The gameplay was a lot of fun, a great return to form for the franchise. People say Gaiden’s map design is weak, while I would agree on it being much more simple compared to later games in the series the mechanics of the game are all built to support how the maps are designed. Having maps that are generally more open means the player has to learn how to position their army to draw aggro properly rather than just make a wall or block off a choke point and let the enemy kill themselves against their army. Terrain bonuses being so high also encourages the player to play around the special terrain types, but because they’re often put near one another if the player isn’t careful the enemy could just as easily make use of it. Enemy variety is pretty high and there’s a lot of different items and weapons enemies can be holding, which helps keep the game fresh all the way through.  Also the way this entry handles skills is probably my favorite? I think it’s the most balanced anyway, I really like RD’s skill system and FE4′s as well, but I think this game did the best in terms of making skills meaningful, but not overcentralizing or broken. The (re)introduction of more traditional RPG elements also went smoothly imo. They’re largely able to be ignored if you don’t want to mess with them and they give nice bonuses and incentivize doing certain things if you are interested. I had a lot of fun engaging with them, I feel they’re well handled and a good addition to the game. Unit balance is overall pretty good. I didn’t feel like any given unit was unsalvagable, though some are certainly superior to others. A player could feel free to use whoever they want though and see success. I beat the game on Classic/Hard and had no deaths and I never really felt compelled to drop units I wanted to use just cause they were inferior to other options, except in the very final mission but that’s due to its deploy limit. Story maps are still big and have a good bit of set dressing to them giving them all an identity and requiring unique strategies to tackle. A great part of this is that since each of Alm and Celica’s armies are fairly small all of your units on either side will be deployed in every important story battle, as long as it doesn’t take place within a dungeon. That said, each side gets 16 characters and the allowance in dungeons is 10, meaning it’s easy enough to keep everyone fighting fit if you so choose. I enjoyed the game’s level design a lot and some of my favorite maps were actually the tiny, cramped dungeon battle maps which are all intentionally very small, but often times have a lot of terrain types to really make each space count. This game actually felt like it took a degree of skill and tactical thinking and execution to get through without having characters die, and that’s even with Mila’s Turnwheel. It basically exists to accelerate the reloading process if you happen to let a character die and don’t want that to happen, but it doesn’t trivialize the player’s skill and ability. It lets you get back to making decisions quickly but doesn’t win for you. While I feel Mila’s Turnwheel ultimately gets too many charges if the player finds all of the cogs for it, it still never felt like it just let me win. It let me erase an unfortunate critical hit or rethink my strategy if something unforseen happened, but it didn’t just let me rewind over and over to spam an interaction until it happened to go the way I wanted. Honestly I like Mila’s Turnwheel a lot because it also erases the good luck you had. If you had a unit die due to an enemy crit, but you happened to get 3 or 4 lucky criticals you’ll likely have to erase some or all of those too in order to rethink what you did, which completely changes the flow of the battle compared to how it was just going. Really what is more of a letdown in terms of being too lenient is that the player is allowed 9 resurrections of dead characters. 3 are hidden, but the other 6 the player will naturally come across. The soundtrack is really great too. If you like FE or have any interest in the series but were rightly turned off by Awakening and Fates being littered with gross anime tropes and character designs, give this one a shot. If you have a general enjoyment or love for strategy games or Strategy RPGs I’d recommend it for that as well. All in all a super good game, easily in my top 3 favorite FEs at this point. Edit: Anyone who says the game ‘feels incomplete’ without DLC is fooling themselves and is trying to fool you. I have absolutely no DLC for this game at all downloaded currently and completed the game with no deaths on its hardest difficulty setting, while also completing every sidequest the game had to offer before postgame. The game is well and truly a full and complete experience without DLC, the DLC should be considered a nice bonus for after beating the game or for a second runthrough, not integral to the base product.

[entergamingxp]

Muv-Luv Expo: The Summer of (Muv) Luv: All The Announcements

July 3, 2020 6:47 PM EST

Muv-Luv photonmelodies, Unlimited The Day After Episode 04, Project Mikhail, Project Immortal, Alternative anime, and more.

Avex and aNCHOR held the Muv-Luv Expo: The Summer of (Muv) Luv event on July 1, revealing multiple new details on Muv-Luv games and projects. It was the biggest Muv-Luv event since the âge 20th anniversary event in October 2019, where Muv-Luv Integrate was announced. Interestingly, one of the biggest shockers about the event wasn’t the new info in itself but the fact aNCHOR took the effort to fully translate the stream, including all the information and slides, in English. Usually, Japanese companies or events at most only do an English version of their stream, with commentators translating bits of info live. Here, Every Little Thing was translated. As such, my role to play is pretty limited compared to my usual summaries of Japanese streams, which are timelier and detailed.

If you’re really into Muv-Luv, watch the whole stream yourself. It’ll definitely be worthwhile. And if you can understand some Japanese, I’d also redirect you to Yoshimune Kouki’s weekly streams. Which I’m not paid enough to cover each week. Anyway, here’s a roundup of everything revealed at Muv-Luv Expo.

Muv-Luv photonmelodies Launches July 30 in English On Steam

Muv-Luv photonmelodies was one of the games promised by the huge Muv-Luv Kickstarter in 2015 (over 1 million dollars) that aimed to bring the original trilogy and its related games to the west, in an official manner. Now, it finally got a release date, launching July 30 for 29.99$. photonmelodies is a fandisc, as in side-stories or sequels of a visual-novel specifically made for the fans.

There are three stories in photonmelodies: A Shimmering Shard of Spacetime, which is the official Muv-Luv Alternative epilogue depicting the end of protagonist Takeru’s journey. Adoration, which depicts Europe trying to resist the BETA, and Resurrection, a story about a certain character spy infiltrating a Japanese base.

Muv-Luv Unlimited: The Day After Announced in English For 2020 Release, New Artwork for TDA Episode 4

Muv-Luv Unlimited: The Day After will be published officially in English in 2020.

In Japan, the Muv-Luv Unlimited: The Day After is a series of multiple games, included inside the Muv-Luv Alternative Chronicles releases since 2010. The latest game, Muv-Luv Unlimited: The Day After Episode 03, is included in Muv-Luv Alternative Chronicles Vol.4, released in 2013 in Japan. The next game, Muv-Luv Unlimited: The Day After Episode 04, is currently in development, and will launch in English at around the same time as in Japan.

Muv-Luv Unlimited: The Day After takes place in the Unlimited timeline, after Muv-Luv Unlimited.

New artwork for Muv-Luv Unlimited: The Day After Episode 04 were revealed on stream. Yoshimune Kouki commented each one of them starting the 1:16:00 mark. Though he also said he can’t comment too much, to avoid spoilers.

Muv-Luv Expo: New Details on Project Mikhail (Tentative Title)

Muv-Luv Project Mikhail was first announced at the âge20th Anniversary broadcast [still breathing] event in October 2019. (âge is aNCHOR’s original name). It’s an online multiplayer action game coming 2021 worldwide on PC via Steam, iOS, and Android. The game was previously described as “Muv-Luv Armored Core“. It most notably won’t be free-to-play and won’t feature a gacha system but have something similar to a subscription. At Muv-Luv Expo, we learned new details on the game’s story and gameplay.

The game’s first trailer, revealed in May 2020, stated how “your decisions guide the world”. We learned at Muv-Luv Expo it literally meant that. Players in Project Mikhail all share the same world, and each person’s actions will affect everyone else’ experience. This will allow the game’s story to depict new possibilities not seen in any Muv-Luv timeline so far. Such as changing the events of the coup d’état arc. This is pretty interesting, as Project Mikhail might be the perfect simulator for veteran Muv-Luv fans arguing for over 15 years on what plans and what choices would be better.

Players will also be able to fully customize their TSFs.

Lastly, pre-alpha gameplay footage of Project Mikhail was shown on stream at the 29:10 mark. Note that while the gameplay runs on mobile, the game is primarily developed for PC.

Muv-Luv Expo: New Details on Project Immortal (Tentative Title)

Muv-Luv Project Immortal is a free-to-play Action RPG with Strategy elements, coming to IOS, Android, PC, in 2021. Project Immortal also got a trailer in May 2020, which most notably jokes about how the game will stay playable offline even if it shuts down, a typical Cookie self-jab referencing Muv-Luv Alternative Strike Frontier which shut down in 2018. The mobile market in Japan is ruthless and saturated, many games end up closing down each year, sometimes only a few months after launch. It’s a nightmare for the artists and developers who put in ton of hard work, and the fans loose the game’s content forever.

We learned on the stream Project Immortal might be coming to consoles as well, and the development team hopes it’ll be possible. The game will have TSFs customization, a Story Mode, PvP, Coop, Random stages, and more.

Muv-Luv Alternative Anime Adaptation Project is Going Smoothly

A rough design for the Takemikazuchi in the upcoming Muv-Luv Alternative anime adaptation was revealed for the first time at Muv-Luv Expo. The project is going well. The trailer above was published in May 2020.

Muv-Luv Alternative Manga Will Be Officially Available in English This July

This is self-explanatory.

New Digital Artbook: âge Graphicers Artbook Now Available on Booth

Muv-Luv Expo Summer of (Muv) Luv: Q&A Corner

The second half of the stream was a lengthy discussion and Q&A corner. Starting the 1:20:00 mark. The staff answered questions from fans. The staff who answered were Muv-Luv original author Yoshimune Kouki, Muv-Luv General Producer tororo (Kazutoshi Matsumura), Project Mikhail Director Hitoshi Kumano, and Project Immortal developer Kitakuou.

tororo said besides Project Mikhail, Project Immortal, The Day After Episode 4, and Muv-Luv Integrate, aNCHOR is currently working on 2-3 unannounced projects.

Yoshimune Kouki would like to do The Day After Episode 04 short side stories on Marimo and Ikaruga, Takeru and Meiya. He already thought up stories for these, but The Day After focuses on the two brand new characters it introduces, Hibiki and Yuzuka. So he’s not sure he’ll be able to do it. TDA can’t focus on what every single character does.

Hitoshi Kumano: Players will be able to color-customize dropped TSF parts in Project Mikhail. They’re also considering a function to display your own squad emblem on parts.

Hitoshi Kumano: Project Mikhail will not be fully-voiced, that may seem like a downside but at least this way new scenario updates won’t have to wait for the availability of the seiyuu, and they’ll add more and more scenario.

Hitoshi Kumano: Project Mikhail won’t have romance related game systems, but it’ll be similar to that if you for example keep picking the choices that’ll please a certain girl, raising her trust levels.

The Project Immortal team didn’t think yet of whether to add romance elements or not.

Hitoshi Kumano: In Project Mikhail, which NPC you decide to help and the choices you make can be picked before each mission and won’t affect the parts and rewards you get. That way there won’t be certain choices or NPCs that are more advantageous than others gameplay wise.

Yoshimune Kouki was asked “which is the strongest TSF besides Susanoo”. He answered if you take into account every Muv-Luv material released so far, it’ll be the Hinokagutsuchi in Ayu-Mayu Alternative and coming second would be the F-47 Ishkur. The event MC added how at the end of the day each TSF is made for a different situation, so it’ll ultimately depend of the mission.

That’s everything. Thanks for reading. We’ve got tons of Muv-Luv things to look forward to in 2020 and 2021. I personally never thought the series would be localized regularly like this when I first heard of it over ten years ago. As a side note, âge is also working on a Kimi Ga Nozomu Eien reboot, which I’m personally looking forward to as well.

July 3, 2020 6:47 PM EST

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2020/07/muv-luv-expo-the-summer-of-muv-luv-all-the-announcements/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=muv-luv-expo-the-summer-of-muv-luv-all-the-announcements