Recent reviews by Beeps

Shoutouts to Cristoph, the most overpowered healer in RPG history

A fair amount of good buried under way too much bad to put up with. Might've at least achieved the "silly fun with bros" standard if the online system wasn't borderline broken and the menus weren't outright incompetent. Has a data harvesting minigame produced in part by an actor from the Big Bang Theory.

Another one for the "SRPGs that completely fall apart at the last quarter" tally.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYTmhTxC6ik

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Fm8Hd3iWQAAYxGb.jpg

If you're a veteran of the genre like me and you're asking yourself if the overwhelmingly positive reviews actually translate to a game you'd find engrossing, let me save you the trouble: there's almost certainly nothing here for you.

Most SRPGs on steam feel like they've been designed by someone who played maybe one SRPG in their entire life and made the arrogant presumption that they could do it better. Symphony of War, on the other hand, feels like the team played a ton of old SRPGS and came away with the most shallow understanding conceivable of what works and why. Much more comparable to Shadows of Valentia than Ogre Battle, in the sense that they tried to dress up bog-standard map design, nonexistent AI and generally poor fundamentals with drab but functional character customization and extra player phase attack options (but in this game you have to unlock those options, because it has a tech tree for some godforsaken reason).

The FE namedrop isn't just for the sake of comparison: this game completely rips off the story from Fire Emblem 4, full stop. You've got to have a biblical degree of hubris to copy paste the story from one of the most well-known and beloved SRPGS of all time and think you're going to come out favorably. I kid you not, you get to play through the equivalent of the Battle of Belhalla and the game straight up tells you "Permadeath is disabled for this battle." That's the level of artistic integrity you're looking at here.

It's also incredibly horny, because I guess with everything else this game stole from older, better SRPGs they figured they might as well throw in something from ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Sengoku Rance. Can't even match up to that.

I had very high expectations for VS2 after the first game and it easily surpassed them. I dare say this is Kaga's best.

There is not a single chapter in this game that did not have me enthused. It's all killer, no filler.

6/10 with an extremely generous coat of death of the author thrown on it, 3/10 through the lens of what I'm pretty sure Omocat was actually going for, absolutely contemptible garbage as a story about grief. Analyzing this story's numerous failures requires one to fall into the trap of questioning it's overall authenticity which in turn requires any critic to prostrate themselves at the altar of Omori. Share your deeply personal connections to the very dark subject matter or incur the wrath of an army of teenage apologists claiming you don't understand trauma. I refuse; Omori doesn't deserve any more of my blood than it's already taken.

Just about any Yume Nikki-influenced RPG you can find will be more well-realized and more nuanced than this. Play one of those and not a game designed to sell t-shirts to children who've cried listening to vocaloid songs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnvvZyaJaHk

One of very few games where I can honestly say I hated every moment.