Recent reviews by Xafron Chi

I'm not entirely sure why after 8 years this game is hitting its highest player count ever.

It's not without issues. The game at launch had extremely predatory microtransactions, and the star card system was a part of that. The microtransactions were gutted from the game following controversy the likes of which not many games have suffered through that even saw EA win a Guinness World Record...

Unfortunately the star card system stayed. And in my opinion, it brings the game down and feels out of place.

EA also ended support for the game just a few years after release. So much potential flushed down the toilet. What could have been one of the best PvP games out there, ended up feeling never finished in more ways than one.

Despite all of that, it's still fun from time to time, and it goes on sale for as low as a few dollars. And with so many new and returning players flooding the servers recently, there's no better time to play. A warning, you may get an error when trying to connect to the game for online play. This is a bug that was never fixed. Just keep hitting connect and eventually it will work.

I do hope to see a Battlefront "3", or rather "5" someday, but not from EA and today's DICE. At this point I have little reason to believe they could handle that. And sadly, Pandemic was shut down by... oh right, EA.

Some of the former Battlefront 2 developers who since left DICE have expressed interest in coming back to the series, and some Pandemic developers have lamented what was lost with their canceled Battlefront 3 game. I can't think of a better place for these people to join together to make the next Battlefront game than Embark.

They call me the Oni Musher...

I missed out on most Capcom games growing up. In fact, aside from Street Fighter I hadn't really played any Capcom games for most of my life until fairly recently thanks to a friend who likes a lot of their IP. However he never played Onimusha, so I decided to try it out.

I had no bugs or any other problems. I played it a bit on Steam deck and it works great on that. It has tank controls for those that want it and free controls for those that don't, as well as fixed camera angles. And the game overall was a fun time, there was really nothing I disliked aside from one boss I found to be annoying. The story, exploration, puzzles, combat, music, characters, it's all enjoyable.

The only downside is that unfortunately this was not the Genma Onimusha version made for Xbox. That version had more armors (at the cost of the original ones), a new "green soul" mechanic, increased difficulty, new enemies, a new explorable area, and it combined the upgrades for swords and orbs. There may have been other changes as well.

If you've never played Onimusha, there's no better time to try it as the second game is getting a remaster soon (and hopefully the others will follow). It's also finally getting a new entry to the series in 2026, the first one in 20 years.

Listen to me, Burnt One. If you're intending to walk The Midnight Walk, you better be sure to keep your spark safe and burning...

Everything about this game is beautiful. The soundtrack, the animation that emulates stop-motion, the voice acting, the story, the handmade clay models they scanned into the game. It's just amazing. A really unique and artistic project with so much passion on display the likes of which we rarely get to see.

The Midnight Walk is so special, and I can't wait to see what MoonHood cooks up next.

When Oblivion came out in 2006 I was only a kid, and wasn't allowed to have M rated games. My friend's brother had it, and I would sneak playing it a little bit but he would always catch me. Years later I bought it for my PS3 and played a tiny bit, but then my PS3 broke. By the time I bought it on PC for dirt cheap, Skyrim had already been out for years and Oblivion just kind of fell off my radar, having never really experienced it properly.

Needless to say I was thrilled when the remaster got shadow dropped. It feels exactly like an Elder Scrolls game, just with new textures and models wrapped around it. They also updated some things like UI, leveling/attributes, character origins, animations, and they added sprinting. In the end the game feels like less than a remake, but more than a remaster.

Of course, you still get all the Bethesda jank (both the fun and the bad). I had to mod my game and use console commands to fix the thieves guild quest line, a bug which has existed since the original. There are also some new bugs, one of which was an early quest spawning way too many goblins and killing the people you were meant to protect, which I also got in my game. And being updated with UE5, the game crashed periodically, and there were stutters and FPS drops, mainly in the open world. Your mileage may vary, not all are experiencing these issues.

Despite all the problems I encountered I'm thoroughly enjoying my time in Cyrodiil, I've hardly been able to pull myself away from the game in my free time. I even completed the achievements. The game really is a stark reminder of what we lost with Starfield, and what Bethesda used to be capable of (and hopefully still is).

I think it's an incredibly fun experience that largely holds up, and still can impress when compared with much of today's AAA offerings. 10/10 would read The Lusty Argonian Maid with my thicc flame atronach again.

I rarely touch horror games because I don't handle them well, but every now and then I try one as a personal challenge I guess. I saw this one was only about two hours long (I have more time than that because I tried doing the achievements) and decided to play it.

So is it good?

It's certainly well made. I really felt for some of the characters, they were a strong point. The set up is interesting, the story unfolded in a really satisfying way, and the twists were in my opinion unexpected. I liked the art style. Overall the game was very atmospheric and at times extremely surreal.

However it gets progressively more and more disturbing and sad in a way I didn't enjoy. I don't think it was bad, I really enjoyed the process of seeing everything unfold up until the last handful of chapters when things became... let's just say extreme.

Also, while I usually think "content warnings" aren't needed, the developer didn't list some pretty big ones on the store page. I suppose they are spoilers, but this game contains suicide and SA. While it does happen off screen, you'll still be dealing with the impact of these events to an extent. There's also forced self-cannibalism. Fair warning if you're extra sensitive to these things.

I'm giving it a positive review because it does have a lot going for it and I think fans of horror games will especially like it. I didn't hate it, I don't regret playing it... however I really don't know how to feel about it on a personal level, I'll probably be thinking about this one for awhile.

"What are your pain points? What's your problem? What are our business struggles today? Let me help you invest in your future."

ƎNA: Dream BBQ is pure surreal art. The 2D animations and voice acting are stellar, the music is great, the characters are fun and the environments are weird. ƎNA, the protagonist (protagonists?), in particular is superb.

Did I understand a single thing that happened? Barely. Do I care? No.

If you like what you see in the trailer and don't expect too much in terms of the actual gameplay (it's fun but relatively simple), then it's a great experience. Sit back and enjoy the weird dreamlike ride.

Steel Hunters is a PvPvE extraction game played in duos. It seems like it has potential, I was having a bit of fun...

Until an hour in when my FPS dropped to single digits and the game turned into a slideshow that I had to force quit. It lost me the match when it was down to the last two duos.

I've since learned this problem has existed since the closed beta playtests last year, but Wargaming has not fixed it.

Between that, and the fact I definitely remember seeing more hunters in promotional videos (no doubt removed to sell to us later), for now it is a hard pass.

When they fix the huge FPS drops, I will update the review.

Shadow of the Erdtree got a lot of hate. I feel like most of it wasn't really fair.

One of the most common complaints I saw was the new progression system added: scadutree fragments. Personally I was fine with this. It was kinda fun to hunt them down, but I also didn't feel the need to find ALL of them. It also felt like it served a purpose... that being that high level players couldn't just waltz into the new area and mop the floor with all the bosses in a day.

Another common complaint was performance. Aside from one boss fight (you can guess which) I never had any performance issues in the expansion.

Personally my gripes with it are that a couple of the boss fights were hard to the point of not being fun (I did them, but they weren't fun), and the map design... I was so confused trying to get anywhere I had to consult guides and videos half the time.

So it's far from perfect, but overall I really enjoyed it. And if you liked the base game I'd definitely say to give it a try. It has a lot of fun content to offer, and some really beautiful and strange places to explore.

Phantom Liberty (and the 2.0 update that launched alongside it) is spectacular. They took everything they learned from creating the world and story in the base game and built upon it to make something better.

The game gives you the option to start in the Phantom Liberty DLC or at the beginning of the game. I would recommend the latter. When starting from the beginning, you'll be able to access the new content after completing Act 1 and a couple of quests in Act 2. After completing a gig called Transmission, you'll get a call from So Mi and then you can start doing new stuff.

Completely recommend Phantom Liberty. I enjoyed the base game but this feels like a complete upgrade over it. It also launched in a really polished state. One can only hope that the Cyberpunk 2077 sequel releases more like Phantom Liberty than it does the base game...

This is pretty much my first Monster Hunter experience, and it's spectacular.

The gameplay is incredibly fun, the monsters are varied, the weapons are unique and have interesting mechanics. Bringing down monsters is satisfying, and the materials you get from them allow you to craft armor and weapons for new builds and new looks. Then? Tackle the next difficulty tier of monsters. It's a very satisfying and rewarding gameplay loop. There's a handful of little side activities to do as well, and free roaming the various zones can be rewarding in its own way.

The game will have long term support in the form of new gear to grind for, new monsters to fight, new difficulty tiers, special events, minigames and more. The first big content update already came out and the game is only a little over a month old.

The big elephant in the room is the game's poor optimization. As others have suggested, try switching from DLSS to FSR 3 and enabling frame generation. I had significantly better performance with FSR 3. Fine-tune the rest of your settings as needed. If you have a decent PC, you should be able to get a decent FPS boost doing this at the unfortunate cost of some graphical fidelity.

It's a great game despite the obvious problems.