Legolas_Katarn legutóbbi értékelései

Simple but entertaining 40K story, fun visceral combat, gameplay that works well for solo or co-op, a great looking game with a lot going on in its backgrounds that I feel like is also one of the best running big budget releases I've played in some time but has a completely forgettable PVP mode and the Chaos forces just aren't as fun to fight as the Tyranids.

Space Marine 2 is a third person action game that has you controlling Space Marines as they fight off a Tyranid invasion and an incursion by the Tzeentch serving traitor chapter The Thousand Sons with their cultist and demon allies. You are armed with a primary, secondary, and melee weapon often fighting hordes of weaker enemies supported by a few larger and more damaging opponents. Using the right weapon or melee combos for horde clearing before focusing down on the stronger enemies with higher damage attacks and stuns or putting them down early from range (which can defeat the weaker enemies as well in the Tyranid's case) is what you will mainly be doing. You are encouraged to remain in the thick of the fighting because as you take health damage a portion of that lost health can be regained by doing damage back to your enemies, executing stunned and weakened foes regenerates armor while also providing an often satisfying visceral execution, and using your melee weapons to block and parry enemy attacks will not only stop the damage but put enemies in a state where you can quickly draw and fire a shot at their heads with your sidearm for high damage or an instant kill, a perfectly timed dodge can also open up these headshots. The entire campaign, apart from the brief prologue, is playable in three player co-op as you are always fighting alongside your two otherwise AI controlled allies. The environments are large and detailed with a lot going on in the background as you can often witness hordes of enemies in the distance often fighting guardsmen or amongst themselves. I did find fighting the Chaos forces to be less fun than fighting the Tyranids. While still enjoyable, it just becomes less visceral, they seem to react less visually to getting hit, their counterattacks seem more difficult to predict as they come from more docile looking enemies, and the execution moves are a bit more repetitive. The maneuverability or doing things like burrowing underground that a Tyranid can do while fighting you is also a lot more visually interesting than how the Chaos Space Marines are more likely to just practically stand still until taking some hits before instant teleporting somewhere else.

Narratively Space Marine 2 continues the story of the previous game, set 100 years later. Titus' has been resigned to the Ultramarines after spending the past century (and prologue) with the Deathwatch. The story follows a somewhat similar style to the first game where you are paired with two others with one being more open to you and one less trusting and more focused on following the Codex where Titus continues to view it as being more open to interpretation while his hidden past causes mistrust. The story is quick to get and keep you in the action, doing what it needs to progress the story and creates and wrap up some mostly brief character narrative threads without spending too much time on growth, reflection, or exploring the wider setting focusing more on the entertaining spectacle of the battles. One more unfortunate aspect I found was that while you do run into some Cadia guardsmen multiple times throughout the game that are able to show some personality and world design by having them burning bodies, listening to a speech from a Commissar, executing deserters or traitors, feeling the effects of the Chaos force's illusions and warp energy, etc the other Space Marines apart from the main (helmet off) character's are them at their most boring most of the time, fodder, background dressing, or a few generic lines that don't show much personality. A game primarily about the Space Marine makes most of them the least interesting part of the world, which from reading some of the books, is not how they have to be. It would have been nice to see them used a bit more before the game's final section and it was kind of odd that you are put in command of five others and the other three just get sent off to die or do nothing instead of being one of the two three person squads you play as in the co-op Operations mode. Your moments of reprieve from battle are brief and in those moments there can be a bit too much
"I don't think I trust you."
"That is your right, Brother."
"Perhaps you can tell us more of your past to remove his doubt."
"This conversation is over."
It becomes more entertaining and better at showing the world to listen in on the background conversations of the serfs, servitors, and Adeptus Mechanicus members you walk by on your way to your next mission.

The three person co-op based Operations mode greatly increases the playtime of what would have been a good but short single player experience. Each of the six missions has you taking on the roll of one of two three person Space Marine squads with five of the missions being directly related to the single player story with these two teams taking on different objectives than Titus' group simultaneously. While you are controlling named characters that have a few repeated dialogue for narrative sections you can choose between six different classes to play as with each having their own weapons, class perks, special ability, and some voice lines you can have them say specific to their class. For the most part, it just plays like the single player game with less cutscenes and more customization options, the abilities offered by the classes combined with the perks you can get for your class and guns tends to make the mode more mechanically fun to play than if you were playing through the single player game solo or in co-op though you have less scripted moments of spectacle. The objectives even offer some randomization where you might have different side activities to complete or different areas to defend or interact with in each match. This mode can be played with bots if you start a match before connecting with anyone, if someone leaves mid match and are replaced by a bot, or with an option added to create a private lobby for just yourself or for two people.

The controls for the game are one of its weaker areas. The default set controls for the keyboard and mouse is a nonsensical mess that they clearly didn't care about and is likely going to be difficult to make work well unless you have at least 3-4 extra buttons on your mouse. On a controller things are easier to get into (though I will never understand the Dark Souls style right bumper as melee in an action game) but your options to change things are more limited and the poor auto aim can make more precise shots, especially when trying to play as a sniper class in Operations or Eternal War more difficult than it should be.

There are some connections issue, I've never had a problem once in a game (even a few matches showing a red connection warning actually worked fine) but it will just frequently stop looking for a third or sometimes any teammates until you back out to the main menu/different mode and back to Operations/restart the game. There is a fairly thoughtlessly implemented system where you can only have one of each class on each team for some reason, so you might be the only class you have that is level or gear appropriate for a difficulty type only for it to throw you into a game in progress and tell you to change your class. Certainly less annoying than Darktide's problems at launch, but these problems combined with some long load times to get into the game, connect to the servers, and load into a match make what would be -

Full Review: https://www.backloggd.com/u/Kennan/review/1981129/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89sundROmpQ
Screenshots: https://x.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1840469060494213592

Dragon's Dogma 2 does interesting things in a world that is enjoyable to explore but never really goes far enough in any area to be exceptional and has confused people into thinking it is more unforgiving than it is.

You play as the Arisen, a character meant to battle a certain dragon and rule one of the main kingdoms while also having control over characters called pawns. Pawns are warriors that are said to have no personality or much in the way of reactions to others but travel around fighting hostile monsters, who exist to obey the orders of the Arisen, and who when killed seem to be transported to another place where they might can reappear later through riftstones (never mind that narrative, world design, and mechanics completely clash here as the personality thing is clearly not true and even narratively them going around themselves often defending people doesn't fit that either and it makes even less sense later on that they might allow themselves to be attacked or captured and moved around by random people, or what in the world Pawn Guilds are if pawns were incapable of doing or acting without the current Arisen). You create a main pawn alongside your character who is always with you and you can take two other pawns created by other players or by Capcom to join you in your journey. Pawns can play as six of the game's ten classes, have one of four different personality types that change what they say and some of their combat and exploration AI, and can be given one of a few different skills that might allow them to do things like speak another language so you can talk to certain NPCs or know the locations of rare crafting materials. As you travel the pawns will speak to you and amongst themselves depending on things like their personality, your location, the active quest or world situation, and their class choice which is nice but it does become clear fairly quickly that having some more conversation variety would have been a good thing. Pawns might congratulate or high five you as you walk by them after a battle. They can pick up materials and open chests on their own (with you having access to their inventories, though you can not take the equipment of your guests pawns into your own inventory). They almost always do a good job in battle, in navigating the environment, will often prioritize healing you or carrying another downed pawn to you to be revived, and in general, are probably a hell of a lot more competent than the average PlayStation stoner who doesn't even remember where he is in real life that you often get stuck with if you were playing with real people instead of NPCs.

The entire world not revolving entirely around the player character is felt is felt at times and leads to more interesting world, quest, and combat design than it otherwise would have. Certain quests will give you different outcomes where characters can be saved or killed and character plots can succeed or fail. Characters in the world are each named and do their own thing throughout the day and night and if killed will remain dead unless you revive them with some slightly rare items that you can find in the environment. Pawns aren't the only characters who fight monsters as there are patrols of soldiers and mercenary/adventures that you can frequently run into on the roads fighting enemies and towns themselves can even be attacked where people and soldiers will join in fights against them. At one point a dragon landed in the capital city and was fight be me, my three pawns, another pawn or two who was walking through town but not in my party, a group of soldiers, and random people in the area who either fled or joined in the fight with it ending with the body of the dragon laying upright against a building with its wings spread out over merchant shop stalls, a guard standing on top of its body, and a random passerby stopping to ask "what happened here". And while NPCs can die, the game doesn't make it an overly annoying feature where everyone but you is pathetic, normal soldiers can often hold their own fairly well and do damage to enemies. You won't walk into town one day to find half the people killed because two goblins entered the area.

Fast travel is less prevalent than in most games like this. Early on you will likely need to make trips walking to places and making use of campfires to rest to heal you and your pawns but you can also pay minor fees to ride oxcarts to larger towns that allow you to sleep in the back and hit a button to skip the journey (or to at least move on to a spot where you were attacked before you can get back on and continue on your way). Two of the towns have a portcrystal that you can travel to with the use of a rarer to find and expensive to buy early on ferrystone that will transport you, your pawns, and anyone following you for a quest or escort to that area. As you play you can find or be rewarded with mobile portcrystals that you can place in most areas that give you new fast travel ferrystone locations. The second half of the map has passenger and cargo lifts that go over areas of the environment that have to be cranked as you go by yourself or one of your pawns, this is slower going and frequently might see you attacked by flying enemies (who might grab and throw someone out of it likely to their death) and also requires to to wait to wheel a cart back to your location if it isn't at the spot you are trying to leave from but it is still a way to speed up travel a bit and something different for the game's world.

Quest design can be fairly interesting as it often goes beyond just going to a spot and killing a monster or collecting an item and giving it to someone. There are multiple quests with different outcomes depending on who you give certain information to or how you interreacted with a certain scene or who you agreed with, you might be able to make forgeries of certain items to get a reward from multiple people or to trick people who want something that will be a danger to them (in one cases trying to pass a forgery off to a merchant that might very well know better creates another set of unique circumstances), you might have to dress in a disguise for some, not entirely well done, but different quests involving subterfuge and locating information. There a series of quests that can relocate people to other areas or even free a minor village from a corrupt overseer that has you fighting guards with them after finding their confiscated weapons or buying them new ones before they all relocate to another town. The only disappointing thing with the quest design is that there aren't more of them to give a bit more life to the larger number of named NPCs in the towns and there are certain things you can do that seem like they might lead to more quests later in another area or help an important character who might come back later for new quests or to aid you but this just doesn't really tend to ever happen.

For all the people saying how complicated and difficult the game is, it ends up being very fair and helpful. Your allied pawns are strong and usually perform their roles very well and at times can be almost as strong as you (better if it's a sorcerer with the Meteoron spell). You can lose maximum health over time but this is a fairly slow process and there are camping spots to rest all over the place. Pawns can lead you to quest locations and goals if you take one with you that has done the quest already with their own master. When it comes to upgrading equipment you get full access to your storage while doing it so you don't have to go collect needed items you already own. Money is easy to get rendering things like the fast travel ferrystones extremely easy to get at replenished item shops, oxcarts can easily be taken between different towns-

Full Review: https://www.backloggd.com/u/Kennan/review/1947267/
https://youtu.be/rSAcn3GG_p0?si=fi2Y3j1J1ui3eJ5w

:Beaten on Game Pass:

Well acted almost constantly entertaining dialogue, that only breaks from being funny to have a focus on surprising well done scenes and a larger plot dealing with each character overcoming past traumas to trust each other. It ends up having a lot of great scenes with each of the main and with some of the supporting cast. Conversation choices don't change the course of the story but they can have a large effect on one level, effect cutscenes, change later dialogue, and can make certain fights easier. Varied environments with the story taking you to a surprising variety of planets, ships, and other environments, even changing things up with some ship flying and combat. Combat and exploration frequently makes use of team's abilities by having you give them orders to use more powerful abilities in combat or telling them to interact with things in the environment to clear and make paths or to attack enemies. A combat meter that when filled allows a team huddle to be activated to choose a speech to give that might improve morale and have Star Lord choosing a song from his playlist as the fight continues is a limited but fun feature. There is an easily activated photo mode but it doesn't have that many features and can be further limited by what is happening in the scene.

Even with the game doing a decent job of having the team work together, combat is just boring. Star Lord is boring to play as, your melee attacks are strange and either weak or ridiculous, you can't really use your jet boots to fly around because of how limited their usage is, your guns feel and look weak (somehow even making a slow to activate charged shot look and feel pathetic and useless). You can be constantly taking damage from ranged attacking enemies but it doesn't matter because every enemy drops health which is good because some scenes have you getting shot as they are still playing and combat begins with you getting hit multiple times before you can even move. Many of your attacks either can use auto aim if you hold down the target lock button or will automatically auto lock onto enemies, these lock-ons barely function and will actively fight you if you try to change your target to what you want to hit. You unlock four types of elemental shots that certain enemies can be weak against but even they aren't that fun to use and two you unlock much later in the game. Your dodges and indications for incoming enemy attacks aren't handled anywhere near as well as similar feeling melee games like the Arkham series and both you and enemies are too tanky to have more exciting moments like the Uncharted series.

It's really all just a matter of waiting for each character's abilities to cool down so you can use your significantly more powerful skills to end the fight sooner. Each character starts with one ability and can learn three more with them all sharing the same cooldown, but as you don't actually control your allies they are never as fun to use as they can be and setting some of them up right can be more difficult than it needs to be, your personal abilities are tossing grenades around you, hovering to avoid melee attacks, making yourself immune to damage, and standing still while you rapidly fire your guns, none are really fun to use. You can unlock passive upgrades with parts but none of these add anything to the experience, the most significant gameplay change you can get is slowing down time after a close dodge, the rest is more health, more shield, more shield recharge, faster shield recharge, more health drops, visor mode finds parts for upgrades, it's all clearly an afterthought and if you are looking around the environment you will have bought everything when the game is half over. Near the very end of the game when you have all or almost all abilities and there are some more open areas instead of the more generic arena style fights it starts to become decent but you are too close to the end by that point.

There are a lot of issues with things syncing up properly. There are so many conversations that you won't hear everything in one playthrough but they tendency to constantly cut conversations off if you advance to far, if you go into an alternate path, they might either stop ongoing talks or keep the current one going and then skip new ones. In combat your attacks are the more Uncharted style cinematic auto aiming ones and your blows and frequently finishing and team moves just don't visibly connect properly. Around five times the game did not realize a fight was over after the last enemy was killed forcing a reload of the last checkpoint. Subtitles would randomly stop showing up either not showing anything or freezing on the name of a character that was formerly speaking.

A very odd choice was made to leave many of the well written character building moments that end up extremely important later scenes and world building behind discussing hidden collectibles you then have to find and discuss on your ship or by noticing random interactions if you find a character in the environment being more still than usual. Tends to kill the pacing of what feels best when you are moving quickly through the majority of maps with constant back and forth between the characters only to be suddenly stopped when you have to deal with time wasting puzzles of rotating energy circuits to open doors, using your vision mode (Batman detective mode) to find battery cells, finding things to shoot to make paths, or needing to look around constantly to find both parts to upgrade your abilities as well as those plot focused collectibles that shouldn't be hidden in the first place. No matter what kind of environment you are in you are also always dealing with the same thing, how do you make a bridge or path over something, get Drax to punch or push something, get Gamora to cut something, over and over and over.

Controller is obviously the better way to go but the game seems to have trouble with it in certain situations. The two moments where you fly your ship in combat would not recognize the button to fire missiles but would work on the mouse, one cutscene requires you to draw your gun to shoot someone and in that moment I could move but it would not shoot or aim unless you used the mouse, and there were moments platforming where the rocket boots just wouldn't work (though that seems like it might just have issues in general if some conversations are still playing out).

I still recommend it, narratively it would be one of my favorite games, if only it did anything else anywhere near as well.

Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1503639248771059715
https://youtu.be/GEND6xiQJfo

:Played on Game Pass:

Choice focused adventure game where you manage your kingdom's gold, supplies, contentment, while trying to protect your family and make alliances with other lords and kings. Decent, often dark story. Looks great, has good music, some well done moments.

It can be very trial and error focused, even having a series of events the same day that might require the same agent to deal with it, though the penalty usually isn't that harsh. How difficult the game is will depend on, as is the case with most games like this, how well you understand that playing logically isn't good and you need to play to exploit the games obvious system flaws. In the first war you are preparing for it wants you to gain 1,000 soldiers. The thing is, you can win your battle with less, 1,000 is just the amount needed as one of the checklist items for an achievement/trophy and is around what you should have. The more soldiers you have the more supplies you have to spend each week to upkeep the army so you don't lose some soldiers each week. You can get a lot more soldiers than 1,000 and you spend basically every supply you have or beyond to keep the army at full strength. If you obviously realize that you don't need that many troops and stop supply the army while still doing things to get more soldiers and build more alliances that will supply you with gold and supplies each week, you basically never have to worry about supplies for more than half the game. And if you know how the game is narratively set to work and that you will lose all those soldiers but keep whatever you have of your supplies, then you really don't have to worry about army upkeep.

There is no way to speed up days or skip plot events if you need to or want to replay the game. The few more adventure genre like moments can want you to find difficult to notice things in the backgrounds, though these moments are few.

An alright playthrough but no real plot deviations that should make you want to play it again, and knowing what will happen would remove any difficulty in your decisions. Everything is done quite well, except for the actual kingdom management that makes up the actual gameplay.

Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1485558310161903616

:Originally completed on Itch:

You are a newly created reaper office drone handling the "daily" paperwork to decide who lives and dies by reading short details about their life, while working for a boss who has grown tired of existence while sometimes leaving his cat in charge of things, and while occasionally meeting colleagues in the bar after work. Somewhat light hearted Papers Please, you need to maintain daily death numbers in general to prevent being fired but have more freedom and money is just used to buy drinks, cosmetics, or items to give more details on how people effect the world. The world can be in a good or bad state in regards to peace, economy, medicine, and the environment based on your choices. It's a short and more often funny game, you can get different endings and discover some new things based on your choices but there isn't a large amount going on, a new game + mode gives you some new conversation options and allows you to keep items and for some of your bought items to remember the positive and negative effects allowing someone to live or die will have on the world. Choosing who lives and dies is often a bit arbitrary, outside of whether or not you are trying to follow certain orders, as it is difficult to tell what exactly will happen if someone lives or dies. The death of someone might see large donations to their cause or a cause in their name, an old lady who seems to just want to continue her hobby in robotics might be making a death dealing robot. As entertaining as the characters you meet in the bar can be, you only talk to each of them once and most days the bar isn't even open.

Well voice acted.

Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1414897387538165770

A good narrative with a great presentation that gives us a solid Werewolf The Apocalypse game that provides you more time to enjoy being a werewolf than the previous game did.

A partial sequel to Heart of the Forest where you play as a new character while also running into and working with the main character and some of the supporting cast of the previous game, though this one can be played without you missing out on much if you skipped the first.

Purgatory has you playing as a woman from Afghanistan who comes from a sect of werewolves. The game opens as you attempt to get through the border to Poland with your younger brother to join your aunt, passing through the forest that was the main setting of the previous game. While there you learn that the local werewolves have had one of their members recently killed and that many are split on a desire to help the refugees and protect them from the border guards while others see them as distractions from their purpose in fighting creatures of the Wyrm. One werewolf in charge of his own pack recently seems to have developed a hatred or suspicion of refugees and blames them for their recent loss. You end up being able to join a character from the previous game as you look into the death of the werewolf or you can join your pack leader in investigating the mounting schism in the werewolf community.

Purgatory primarily functions the same way as the previous game, a visual novel where the different stats you gain (in wisdom, glory, and honor), trust levels with possible friends and allies, and maintaining different levels of rage, health, despair, and willpower can effect the actions you can perform and the choices and information available to you. It also maintains the atmospheric artwork and music and sound of the previous game. Where Purgatory surpasses the former is by having you start out as a werewolf with many more opportunities to shapeshift between your five different forms and more times for your amount of rage to effect your possible actions. When the game begins you can choose one of three different skills in physical, social, and mental categories that can give you new ways to deal with or attempt to deal with problems. A choice between five auspice options gives you a one use power that can help in certain situations and can provide unique flavor to text or information based on the knowledge you have, choosing between one of five tribes does the same, you also choose between one of three packs but those don't give you a power and I don't remember the one I chose ever doing anything but I played a route that was probably less likely for it to come up. Early in the game you get two different story routes that you can follow that greatly change what you are doing and who you are spending time with, this is also a good change as the previous game mostly had one path with different minor routes to get to know a bit more about the rest of the cast and was much more likely to end with you feeling like you were missing things without multiple playthroughs.

It is a short game, with my first playthrough taking under three hours. Issues with that come from them needing to include more seemingly ridiculously minor ways to potentially lower your limited willpower or to effect your rage, I actually never found a moment in my playthrough where I could use any item I picked up or either of the two gifts I gained from my chosen auspice or tribe with the paths I chose so while you might seemingly get a lot of options many might not necessarily matter in your playthrough. There is also no way to make manual saves, the game just autosaves as you reach certain points in each minor section of a chapter so you don't have much ability to go back and change your decisions or see alternate routes without starting a new game, and when you start the new game you don't even have the normal visual novel options of rapidly making text you have seen before progress until you reach something new.

Screenshots: https://x.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1830429045911343221

A mediocre action platformer whose platforming stage design and arena like combat stage designs never reach the heights of its inspirations like Dust Force or N+ with the additional issue of awkward controls and momentum use that never feels right and a dull narrative and hub section to explore.

The story features a cyberpunk setting where your extremely annoying character has been diagnosed with an incurable disease and is told about a new possible treatment that involves going into a digital world created from her mind where completing the challenges she faces there can reduce and reverse the spread of her illness. You explore a hub world where you find two types of challenge rooms, one focused on platforming that has you attempting to reach the end as fast as you can while maintaining a synch combo by constantly collecting pickups and destroying enemies that don't attack you and the other room type offering a more closed off combat focused test where you have to destroy all the enemies and collect all the pickups with the enemies now being more varied and having different wats to attack you. Your performance in each stage is ranked getting an A or an S rank will give you 1 or 2 items needed to progress the game by allowing you to access more areas of the hub, while getting an S+ rank gives you an item used to access more advanced challenge rooms for side content.

Platforming gives you a dash ability that can be performed on the ground and in mid air and a double and triple jump along with the ability to run up walls, run along ceilings, and slide down steeper slopes to gain speed. Your attacks consist of a light attack that is quick and does one damage, a slower heavy attack that gives you more range and hangtime in the air that does three damage, and if you find a pickup to charge it a gun that can be aimed in a direction in slow motion that damages or destroys anything in its path. Destroying enemies in mid-air refills one use of either a jump or dash and in certain stages they have to be destroyed to allow you to advance to the end. Your only real hazards in the platforming sections are falling off cliffs and areas of the environment that are red that you can basically think of as spikes in a lot of other similar games (even being similar enough to many games in that they have extremely questionable hit detection that not even the game seems to understand as it frequently will partially move the camera and your character like you landed a jump while it also kills you and moves you back to the checkpoint). Everything about these stages is generic with nothing new or interesting offered, worse it just all controls awkwardly requiring you to hit down to make use of sliding or to drop from ceilings (and I mean DOWN, no touching right or left at all like in a normal game or it just isn't going to work) your running speed and momentum rarely feel right and some of the more frustrating moments had me eventually having an Angry Video Game Nerd moment where I realized "You can just walk over it" (do nothing and she will probably get by it by herself, usually the movement was a bit too questionable for guarantees). If you die you can be taken back to a checkpoint, which can lead to moments of confusion as you aren't informed about where these checkpoints are and when you spawn back in the camera is probably in a completely different place than when you were last on that spot. Many of these stages also waste time by having the first half be some simplistic thing easily gotten through with no effort before suddenly throwing in some more usually moments you aren't going to be ready for unless you know they are coming which will then force you to replace everything else after you die to try to get a better score.

The combat stages give you all the same abilities only you have aggressive enemies attacking you in a large but enclosed area where you need to take a path that will allow you to kill everything and pick everything up as fast as possible for the best ranking. Some enemies doing things like launching seeking missiles at you and the wall climbing remind me of N+ but there is nothing fun or interesting about these stages as the enemies almost never pose any threat and their attacks can be destroyed with your own. Even when I thought I did badly time wise on these I was often given an S+ ranking. The times I found myself most likely to be hit was when one started up their attack animation when they were barely on or not on the screen yet due to the camera.

Some side activities see you trying to reach harder to get to areas in the hub areas to collect floppy disks for more setting details and discovering more out of the way harder challenges to get video game cartridges for an even more annoying version of Skippy from the Expeditionary Force series. Other than that, the hub area really offers nothing apart from some decent visuals and constant needless references to other media instead of doing much for its own setting.

Even if I were to think about it being entirely just me having problems with the way this game controls and moves and I was able to control everything with no issues like I can in most in games, while it would certainly make the game less frustrating, when compared to similar titles it still wouldn't be offering anything interesting in any area and therefore still wouldn't make it very good.

I supported it on Kickstarter and was added to the credits as a backer and as a character profile in the game.

Screenshots: https://x.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1830133116704604320
https://youtu.be/PD1gMkjhK_0?si=CRTEGZHxzwbd7QnK

A sequel that makes minor but all positive changes to what was originally already solid tactical game with good artwork.

Fuga 2 has the same gameplay as the original title, fate again has the children aboard a powerful tank chasing down the one they used in the previous game that has been commandeered by someone who has also taken some of cast hostage. You fight 1-3 waves of various enemies making use of each characters weapon type (machine gun, grenade launcher, or cannon), their base damage, speed, and crit skills, their unique skills that use the tank's SP, and the passive bonus each character gives when placed in a support role for one of the three active gunners that can be something like additional damage or HP regeneration. Enemies may be be easier to hit with a certain type of weapon or hitting them with certain attacks may delay their turns. Between battles your tank travels across the chapter's terrain giving you options of taking easier or more dangerous paths that will likely have more items and less regenerating supplies but more items and experience. Reaching certain points in each chapter allows you to spend AP to have the characters talk to raise their affinity with each other for stronger support bonuses, cook meals for stat improvements, grow food to cook those meals, upgrade weapons, sleep for an XP boost and to recover injured characters, speak to depressed characters to help them recover, etc.

The main changes from the previous game are that some of the characters abilities and weapon types have changed, partially to avoid some easily exploitable strategies and due to having one old character not playable for this game. An airship can be run into on the map that you can pay to drop replenishing supplies for you, pay to bomb enemy targets on the map so you won't have to fight them, buy and sell items at a shop, or you can pay to transport your tank back so that you can travel alternate paths for more more items and experience. The soul cannon of the first game that allowed you to sacrifice a character to win a battle has been changed, no longer being just a pointless inclusion no one would have a desire to ever use. In normal fights the soul cannon is replaced with a different powerful attack that will injure one of the characters and remove them from the battle and cause you to receive no experience for the fight. When fighting bosses the new AI inside of your tank will automatically activate the soul cannon if you reach a certain percentage of health where a character is then random chosen to be sacrificed unless you can win the battle in a set number of turns. While I never even came close to having the soul cannon used (or even activated) this is certainly a more interesting method of use than in the previous game and there are events that can only show up in certain chapter if particular characters are alive or dead, so you can see them repercussions from losing a character aside from just gameplay ones. A new addition is the ability to build up empathy or resolve points based on conversation choices that allow the main character access to passive bonuses that can be activated in battle when you pass certain thresholds, depending on if you are focusing on building one up or a combination of both you can also see different events while traveling.

The only problems that remain are the nonsensical way some information is given. Your abilities and support bonuses just don't make clear what they are actually doing and you really need to try things out to see what is good or not as it just writing nonsense like does a large amount or gigantic amount of damage is meaningless especially when comparing different skills that can be somewhere between level 1-3 where they get better but see no description change when it comes to damage. You also run into merchants that just say that they have stuff and you can either pay some money to get some thing, some more money to get more things, or pay nothing to be given an item that would have been part of what they can sell for free. I can't understand why anyone thought this was a good idea or something that even makes sense, one of Malt's responses of refusal even seems to be him saying he would need to see the supplies before paying for anything.

Fuga still has good different tactical gameplay and good music, and the sequel hasn't made any large changes but it has made some minor improvements and good additions.

Screenshots: https://x.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1827938823659266120

Improves on the original, which was already one of the better SRPGs I've played, and continues to be heavily designed around the best parts of Fire Emblem 4 and 5.

Vestaria Saga II manages to improve on the original, which was already one of the better SRPGs I've played, and continues to be heavily designed around the best parts of Fire Emblem 4 and 5 with the story focusing on multiple war fronts and family and political relations and the large maps offering a variety of side and varied objectives.

There are a lot of memorable stages in the game with one of the best having you assault a fort heavily defended by accurate and heavily damaging ballistae with a variety of other units supporting the inside and outside defenses of the fort. What and how quickly you do certain things can effects how easy or difficult the battle becomes. If you saved a character in a previous chapter the battle starts asking you to pick from two characters to support you with one being able to destroy northern ballistae and the other having a staff that can silence enemy mages armed with with long range status effecting spells. Getting through the northern ballistae with a ranged or flying unit by making use of characters with magic that can give characters an extra turn or just by trying to dodge or tank a ballistae hit or two can allow them to destroy three engineer units across a river trying to repair it so enemy cavalry can get across to flank your army, with the units leader being someone who can be turned into an ally later. If you destroy all the engineers before they can repair the bridges the cavalry has to retreat. Intercepting a shipment of gold stops the fort leader from paying his powerful mercenary guards he surrounds himself with who will leave him. Killing a unit occupying a town to deliver people to a group of demons in the hills will prevent the demons from aiding the fort. Killing the knight occupying another town quickly enough will free the families of a group of farmers being forced into joining the forts militia and will have them either never spawn as enemies or if they have spawned as enemies will cause them to flee the map. The southern ballistae will hit and kill almost anything they fire at but just because of a named unit with high stats and a passive command skill increasing the accuracy of the other artillery units, fighting your way through a group of assassins in the corner of the map leads you to their fort where you can pay them to sneak in and assassinate that artillery commander.

Even the usual terrible end game is made more interesting here. In something like a Fire Emblem game you often get some awful chapter where you fight the evil dragon god by attacking it with your lord/lords newly acquired super weapons in what is usually a very poorly thought out or arena like stage. Here you still attack the evil dragon god with your lord's newly acquired super weapon but the dragon is taking up 1/5 of the map, in a map that is bigger than most Fire Emblem maps. The dragon has multiple horn, scale, tail, leg, etc parts that can all have their own attacks and ranges. You are attempting to hold out for the lord character to arrive while defending three different NPC characters (a fourth one doesn't need defending) who each have their own armies of NPC defending them already all while a large army is amassing to the south of you but that you can get to kill off 1/3 of their numbers and temporarily put another 1/3 to sleep with different actions. It is a very easy map if you have kept certain NPCs alive and made a certain decision at an earlier point that will give you powerful characters to control to defend an area you would otherwise have to quickly run a group across the map to defend but is a much more interesting ending than most games in this genre get.

It being a sequel with many returning characters it handles the power of the characters in the best way I think possible. The level cap is just 30, promoting does nothing but gives you additional stats boosts based on the class and can slightly raise some stat caps but most units don't even promote because they come in their advanced form. If they are in their advanced form they take an XP penalty from battles. Most of your characters start off as promoted units just with a lower level and more stats to gain but you get access to a lot of abilities right from the start and the larger variety of weapons those promoted classes can equip(you start off with the swordmaster who can wield swords and great swords who can attack first while defending, possibly land an additional hit for every attack he makes, and who gets an increased critical hit chance, and who also starts with a terminal illness doing 1 damage to him every turn).

In addition to the various characters to recruit narratively, by capturing them, or by fulfilling certain conditions there is a large number of side characters that you can keep alive by doing different actions in battles or making different decisions when choices come up who may come back to aid you in later chapters or show up in story events with their roles or other side characters living or dying based on who you keep alive. Sometimes doing something that gets a character killed might both be mechanically easier and also get you their equipment to use but might cause you to face other enemy units later, while saving them might have them giving you items or teaching you a passive skill as well as showing up to join you or as an NPC leading other NPC characters later on in large battles. Even the characters that join you are split into different groups automatically or based on who you choose to send to each stage and some leave your party to join other characters and wars that are being fought by your allies from the previous game. Near the end when one character leaves another will go with her but if you had gotten her killed earlier on then you would be be able to keep the other character for the remaining chapters.

Even with the limitations of it being a freely available game in Japan and with a limited number of people working on it the soundtrack is still very good and while the animations and artwork isn't the most detailed the character portraits remain good and the attack animations flowing into different attacks when you are able to get off more than one attack usually still looks a lot better than some of the more repetitive animations of similar titles. There are some limitations to the design, the same ones the first game had, the resolution is low, hitting F4 is the only way to fullscreen the game, there is no Steam cloud save support or achievements, it crashes every now and then, the ESC key will close the game if you are playing on the keyboard and expecting that to open menus, using a controller works well enough but it doesn't always respond to lighter stick movements in some directions that should be more than enough to move the cursor and is in other directions. Mechanically as good as the design can be for a lot of the stages it was good to see a change to being able to save whenever you want as opposed to every five turns like in the previous game, there are a lot of events or things you can activate that will completely screw you over if you didn't know what was going to happen or if you are just trying to do things like capturing certain characters for recruitment and trying to weaken instead of kill them.

Hopefully Kaga continues to work on the other two games in the series and they also see an official translation.

Screenshots: https://x.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1820355080232833423

An entertaining 2-4 player co-op platformer where the group is chained together and has to escape from hell by climbing out. Physics of the chain don't always make sense but it is a good enough gimmick to make for a mostly enjoyable game but the stage design becomes more visually interesting but dull and simple mechanically in the last 1/3 of the game.

As you climb you start to change environments from settings like hell, to city rooftops, temples, ruins, etc. There are areas to climb, traps, rotating and disappearing blocks, objects to bounce off of, vehicle driving segments, and minor puzzles and mazes. What tends to be the most interesting are parts that want you to make use of your chains, such as dangling a player over the edge to hit buttons on the side of a platform or having the group slit to opposites sides of a slanted pipe to slide down while avoid obstacles above it, unfortunately there aren't too many situations like this. If someone falls of a cliff and other members of the group are on solid ground they can face that player and attempt to pull the chain up to keep the group safe, though the chain pulling can be strange at times and not always work well, forward momentum or the group all moving in the same direction can also pull fallen players back up.

Depending on the difficulty you can either load fairly frequent checkpoints or you can play where you have to continue from where you fell down to, which can be all the way to the start of the game from the highest point.

Played with a combination of two and three players.

Screenshots: https://x.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1808748003072880842