Recent reviews by キツネ

BAN Chinese Games. No joke, this game company supports the genocide of Taiwan. Can't even make this up.
Stop supporting these awful communist companies! BAN Chinese Games!

Better than any "souls-like" game. EOS.
I've always considered this game to be the father of Rebel Act's illegitimate child FromSoft. However, after going back to play it, I take it back. I honestly believe the true father of what people wrongly call action RPG mechanics, "souls-like", is the early Prince of Persia games. Re-playing Blade of Darkness, I have come to the unmistakable realization that the combat mechanics of this game are incredibly reminiscent of the Prince of Persia 1 and 2 games. The whole idea of BoD's combat mechanics revolves around slow, deliberate movement, follow-through, distancing, choosing which button combo attack, and making the decision to commit or dodge. This technicality is exactly the idea behind the original Prince of Persia games.

Anyways, how's the game? Absolutely wonderful. I ask you this, 20+ years later, in a FromSoft game, can you lop off an enemies limbs by aiming at them with your sword, pick up the limb, and beat them with it? No? Well in Rune, you could, and you can also do it in BoD. Heck, in Rune, you could pick up your own limb and use it as a weapon. In a FromSoft game, can you use precision attacks to target parts of enemies not guarded by a shield without rolling, staggering them or chopping their foot off? Not really? Well BoD you can. As you can tell, I am not impressed by the "Oh, in FromSoft games, you can do more damage by hitting different hit boxes." For good reason, I get agitated by people claiming how awesome FromSoft games are, when in reality, the game-play mechanics have drastically regressed over the years. As much as it sounds, I'm not a complete FromSoft hater, I think they're relatively decent games, but only in the bargain bin.

That all off my chest, I'll say that this is a nice remaster, with one glaring issue... the memory leak. FFS, please don't release a game with a more-than-obvious memory leak. As for the fun-factor, I believe BoD is an acquired taste, it's not for everyone. If you are looking for an older action-rpg style game, Rune and Rune Halls of Valhalla, in many regards, are better games. Even if the combat is not as technical, Rune's level designs, story, fluid movements, and the unreal engine make it a more enjoyable experience than BoD. However, BoD offers a level of technical combat that really hasn't been tried in very many titles. If you like the combat of say, something like Kingdom Come Deliverance, I would give BoD a try if your are in a retro mood. I'd also buy it on sale.

30 minutes in and it's great.
As someone who's beat the original metal slug games multiple times, I can tell you this is a authentic adaptation. I have always loved Akio's art style and any alternative to cyberpunk is highly appreciated because there's not a whole lot of steampunk games out there, let-alone dieselpunk.

I'd like to make a small correction to some of the other reviews. While this may feel like a FF Tactics Advance adaptation, it really isn't. The strategy of this game is based around movement and snowballing your adrenaline points by aggressive assaults, where FF Tactics is heavily centered on team composition, defensive positioning, and counter striking. But, let me just say, I enjoy both and if you like FF Tactics or Ogre Battle, getting this game is a no brainer for you.

I see why people like this game. It has it's strengths:
- Accommodates different builds/playstyles
- Pretty colors
- Simplistic but functional mechanics
- Unique bosses
- Detailed art that has a lot of thought put into it

Elden Ring is known and heralded for it's art style. And, for a renaissance art style influenced by elements of Miura Kentaro and 16th/17th century artworks, they do get the "art" part down at least, more on that later. Of course the meat of the cake is their tried and true action RPG combat mechanics. So, you might ask, what is there not to like?
Well, if that's all you're into, then, you're set, have fun. However, if you are like me and are not easily amused, you'll find this game is lacking severely in significant areas.

I would equate playing Elden Ring as logging into a Black Desert or <insert-generic-action-mmo> that has zero people playing, except you. The world is dead, not only lore-wise but also the feeling of the world. The NPCs don't move around or regularly engage in scripted events. For example, in Skyrim, a character could chop wood one moment of the day, go to the tavern in the evening, and then go to sleep at night, and that's NPCs the player does NOT interact with, at a minimum. In Elden Ring, they just stand there like an RPG from 1988, and many of them, just like an ancient RPG, have one line of dialogue. The enemies just stand their as well. Sure, some of them walk back and fourth but when they see you, they b-line it toward you and will straight-up walk off a cliff, no nav-meshing, no AI, just brain dead "I see you, I walk toward you."

Speaking of NPC interaction, the quests are the same. Two lines of dialogue, NPC disappears and reappears in a new spot, and then sometimes not even then. Sometimes the NPC is at both spots at once, which is really confusing. When doing quest objectives, there's no cutscenes, no significant animations, nothing except "item received". Also, when it comes to RPGs, I'm hoping for a little more than just hack-n-slash and low-tier quests. I want side stories with factions and the opportunity to be involved with how those side stories play out. While yes, the lore of the game does explain the different factions and there is a bit of side stories with the pot jars, it's limited at best, and what we do get, the player has no real chance to make an effect on those side plots. Think about the game Mass Effect or Kotor and how they did the side events, then compare it to Elden Ring... yeah, Elden Ring has nothing.

Now, I get the overall mood of the game is supposed to be melancholy, but Elden Ring is mostly set up to be dark and brutally sadistic. Many of the side quests you do out of the kindness-of-your-heart end up in a horrid ending for the NPC. A lot of the thematic art uses occult signage, skulls, death, decay, putridness, or rotting flesh as it's base print. There's no contrast, no silver lining, or levity to balance it out. It reminds me of Goya's black painting series or Utagawa's Spectre. I'm not a fan in the slightest of their chosen art style. A melancholy story is similar to a noir. Noir increases the contrast of some of life's most sensual or intimate elements, but a melancholy story focuses on one aspect of beauty, outlining it with sadness and/or darkness, but only subtly, giving the focused aspect of beauty a certain profoundness. Gone with the Wind is a great example doing this correctly. The Lion in Winter is even a better example of doing this correctly. In Elden Ring, there is no ray of beauty. Interestingly enough, if you read the earlier Beserk comics, one of Elden Ring's inspirations, it had the same problem, nothing but darkness and misery, but at least they had a cool protagonist with a clear motive. And, much like Elden Ring, the Beserk manga is overrated af. That said, I do acknowledge Kentaro as an artist worthy of renown and can be a good source to draw from at times.

Getting into the story. I keep hearing the words "masterpiece" and "wonderfully detailed story". It irritates me to no end that people use these descriptors but can't logically back them using a comparative argument. How is this story a masterpiece? What are you comparing it to? Fate/Stay? In that case, it's about the same. An incongruent heap of ideas jumbled together without any forethought. This story writing of Elden Ring is bad, real bad. The unexplained, or convoluted stories that Japanese frequently use in their games is simply lazy writing. It's what a writer does when they don't want to create an evidence board or a functional timeline. If you leave everything ambiguous and don't explain anything, that's concept level at best, no where close to being the final product. Now, if you have a solid timeline and the character relationship web plot out, you deliver it in spades, then okay, you can embellish the solid story with some additional ambiguity to allow the player to come up with their own reasoning for certain character motives and what-not.

However, in Elden Ring, the story is all over the place, although, to be fair, some of it can be put together with significant work from the player. As an example, the actual "ring". Why was it shattered? No reason given. Why is the player restoring the ring? Because for some ambiguous reason, a certain type of people are exiled from midgard because they lost grace, grace being a unexplained story metric, from an ambiguous god that exists outside the realm of good story writing, and then for some unexplained reason, that god gives you the ability to restore the ring and return grace back to midgard, because oopsies, the removal of grace sent Midgard spiraling into destruction. The motive of the protagonist is muddled at best. But wait you say. The implied motive is that the character restores the ring and rewrites the laws of the land. Oh ho ho, but I say to you the endings tell another story entirely. And, oh, and the endings... Oh the endings. They provide no resolution to the story, they don't explain anything that the player doesn't already know, and after about 30 seconds of cutscene, roll the credits. The only thing the endings do is to overwrite the assumed protagonist motive with a counter story, the divorcing of Midgard from the outer-existential gods, giving the ring's power to a demi-god that sure af don't deserve it or... or keeping it for yourself and leave you with an unanswered ending. Look people, a proper story needs a hook and a crystal clear motive at the start of the adventure. If you were to ask people who have never heard anything about Elden Ring what is the motive of their character mid-way through the game is, 100% of the players would reply with a wrong answer.
"You're just someone who wants the author to hold your hand and walk you through their story." YES!!! I don't want to ****ing write your ****ing story for you!! I DON'T want to have to diagram out your discombobulated story, something the writer should have done in the first place, only to connect 30% of it together, to assume 30% of it myself, to leave 10% in the wind, and to be like WTF for the rest of it!

That said, I had a lot of fun playing this game in co-op mode. If I just run through the game with a friend and kill everything in sight, treating it like a hack-n-slash, it's an above average hack-n-slash game and for that I'd recommend it. But, I have fun playing co-op in even the worst games. This is not a saving factor. People, Elden Ring isn't the GOAT as Asmond says it is. This game may attract lovecraftian sycophants perhaps, but I'll be more than happy when we return to making proper RPGs and stop hyping FromSoft games. The day is near when players will see FromSoft for what they are. A company that produces mediocre titles to a niche group of souls-like simps. And, can we stop calling it souls-like? Blade of Darkness did this style of combat first. Codemasters deserves the props.

It's okay, maybe a bit better than okay, but there are some definite things missing that need to be implimented.
First, they need to put either a one way portal or a one way door so that your adventurers don't have to go back through the dungeon.
Second, they need an objective to say when a player beats the game.
Third, like simcity, they need more external factors that alter your dungeon, loot goblin is not nearly enough.
Finally, the game is bare bones basic. There's no intricacies or fun discoveries that need to be in these builder sim type games. One thing they could do is have a monster level up off of killing adventurers and then goes rogue, then have a bounty on that monster.
A final thought, ideally they could make a system where you could build your own adventure groups and assign them levels at which they are allowed to explore, so they don't die. Death should permanently kill your adventurers in such a scenario.

TLDR - Potential is here but at it's current state, there's not a whole lot of detail that is required for these types of games.

We should ban Chinese games from the marketplace. They have one goal in mind, get whales, get money, and then move on to next project. Everything they do is generic, everything they do is soulless, and everything they do has already been done 10x over. This game is GACHA 100%. It'll also be dead in 6 months or less, and even if it isn't, it's not like Overwatch or Valerant, because the devs will move on to the next GACHA trash and just trickle feed this one as it slowly dies.

That said, I and many others do like the idea of an anime shooter and many of us were hoping that this would be it, but not in the hands of the Chinese. And yes, you can get some quick dopamine out of it, which is what I'm doing but don't spend a dime on it, you won't even play it long enough to show off your cosmetics in the future.

** Day #2 **
Last 3 games I played. Cheats started pouring in. I looked up the aimbots and yeah, looks like they got done with the beta aimbots/wallhacks and there's no anticheat. So, whatever fun there was, it's over folks.

Night Dive thinks Trump supports should "go down with him." - Nightdive

You know I have strong opinions too. Mostly based in reality, unlike Nightdive, but if I owned a game studio, I'd still keep them to myself. That said, once your studio goes bankrupt, you might be able to get Tencent to buy you. They apparently are interested in failed commie studios.

BG3 is... well... Let me ask, do you know what ruins all good things, no matter how good they are? Allow me to answer this very quandary.

The combat in BG3 is sooooo good, the attention to detail is phenomenal, the character development is grade A, the world building is exemplary, and the devs don't hate modders, awesome. So what ruins it? Pushing leftist degenerate politics in every orifice.

Spoiler, do you want to know what happens when you play what Larian considers the "good guy" and save everyone you come across? IMMEDIATELY after you save helpless victims, they engage in gay butt sex with each other. Not even joking, and it's not even funny like a South Park episode, they just rainbow each other in the rear, every single time. Also, romance should be a choice in a video game, it's highly uncomfortable when every companion wants to peg you, both body type 1 and type 2, because genders no longer exist in D&D. It doesn't just end with the "pride" scenes, it touches on every leftist talking point.

The Tieflings in the grove are just allegory for those poor misunderstood young male immigrants, -ahem-, mean refugees, who have a robust diet of surprise sexing under-aged school kids in England. Now, either through act of sure genius or perhaps more of an idiot savant moment, Larian outlined the issues with unwanted immigration with these Tieflings. One, the druids willing let them in, protected them, yet the Tiefling "refugees" brought their "culture" with them, and when the druids don't appreciate the problems the Tiefling "culture" brings, Zevlor, the Tiefling leader, plots to overthrow the druids, and he is not alone. Not only that, the Tiefling's brought crime to the grove, got the grove caught up in foreign wars, and destabilized the political structure of the grove. It's too bad that I think this was mostly an error in Larian's attempt to coerce sympathy out of the player for illegal immigration policies, because, if they were really based, they'd allow you to kick the ungrateful imps out and save the grove, oh well. You know, I could go on, about how they initially made all of the characters and player avatars look like DMV workers, but you get the point.

BG3 could have been a work of art, but in actuality it's pure, unfiltered ♥♥♥♥ that probably tastes like pure bliss to a leftist. That said, I did find a way to enjoy this game. Lone wolf honour mode. BG3 is surprisingly much better when you can sleep soundly, knowing nobody is coming for your booty and you don't have to listen to snide boss ♥♥♥♥♥ comments every waking moment.

Originally, this was a big "Meh" but I see the love put into it over the years and it reminds me how games used to be. A passion project. For that, it deserves a thumbs up, no regrets buying this game.