Recent reviews by Takasui

It's just more anime-like version of Overwatch/Valorant with a few extra twist so far. Nothing special other than waifu/husbando material. Not sure how to collect all the characters so far but game gives you enough characters to play around each mode. Paper mode is gimmicky and kinda janky as I thought. I like the anime visual aspect of the game, but the gameplay speed and mechanics aren't my cup of tea.

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Update post 20hrs:

The mix of third person(default), ADS, and also shoulder view is clunky as heck to switch between. We need to switch to lethal/non-lethal before using. There's too much to controls to match your entire left side of the keyboard too and that's removing the emotes/comms keys. Kinda of annoying but not unbearable. Ranked mode takes FAR too long to get unlocked unless you're dedicating into playing the game. You can only play demolition(2 teams, bomb mode). Hard to solo unless you're really god with the clunky controls and your enemy team are all incompetent; the TTK is way longer than Apex. Points earned is pretty low too so climbing up the later is so...unsatisfying even if we win a 40 minute game. Maybe I'm just not used to or liking Overwatch/Valorant.

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Update post 99hrs:

Of many shooters I've played before, I've never had such a hard time with landing shots, whether 3rd person or 1st person. Despite how many config tuning and mouse sensitivity, recoil upgrades. Half the games they just don't seem to register. People lagging over 150ms ping seems to do way better and I cant land any shots while they're zigzagging or jumping, not even paper mode. I'll refrain from complaining more on this front since I'm not a pro shooter anyways and will just end with skill issue I guess.

Getting to ranked takes about 20 hours of normal mode gameplay to unlock. The following paragraph will be about ranked experience. Once you get into it you're going to be playing against sweaties at lowest rank or second lowest. There are definitely a lot of SUS players, but whatever. It's a skill based shooter and shouldn't complain and just play better as a team. Problem is in this low ranking tier, you'll be queued with unranked normies who have no idea how to even play their character let alone know what to do in the only game mode, demolition, aka SnD, you know the mode from CS/Valorant. Each team usually consists of 2-3 carry (trihards) players and 3 non-useful NPCs. Sometimes I'm the carry, sometimes I'm one of those useless. But the games are constant pain between failing to do any damage to enemy team or absolutely deleting your team in a matter of seconds, immediately turning the game into a 2v5. First few days was enjoyable since people talked in mic, but as days went on, it's just less and less and people are just not communicating nor doing anything to contribute. Literally walking around playing like TDM. I felt only 1/7 games where games are actually balanced and players arent NPCs and games were somewhat close. Get some friends to play 2-3 man queue. Do. Not. Do. 5 man. Queue. Unless you like having fun losing to another 5 man group of sweaties. You can't 4 man ranked queue, unfortunately. I've seen a few trolls but not a lot. It's been about a little over a week and half and only managed to get up 1 tier of the lowest rank. The points gained and lost is between 16-21 and draws are a few points addition. I believe the points are determined how you played that game. Basically, it's elo hell like in any other game. If you want to climb out, get someone who can 1v2-3 constantly and have a decent ping that allows them to get some lag advantage. Also, have a person use Bai Mo if you want to climb faster.

The replay and spectate mode is not accurate so people are flaming like crazy. May have to start ignoring them. Seems like the toxicity is on the rise as people are starting to "get good" and tryharding. It's already hitting in both normal and ranked, and I'm practically done with chat. Trying to tell them whats the plan, whats going on in map, or how to use ADS/Shoulder Aim, and it just results in a you're trash or similar response, proceeding to lose the entire game wasting time.

Probably could've shortened this entire review and re-reading it seems very subjective. But, a review is a review, subjective or not. Tired of ranked, tired of just playing against NPCs, and tired of getting inconsistent hit registry every other game.

Extra: Yes I have gotten use to stringifying (paper mode) and gliding. It's still a joke of a mechanic that I can't take seriously and more annoys along with the already ridiculous TTK, despite enemy players can merk me down in half a second while I dump two mags and secondary just to get down to half HP.

Final thoughts: would still be a decent fun anime shooters game with friends. Stay in regular mode and play with NPCs and bots. Better than sweating in ranked.

Finished campaign in less than 15 hours. There's a "conquest" mode I didn't play yet but will do later and if it changes my review I will update. Here goes:

Story: 6/10 - Story was linear. Straight and to the point. Good guys, bad guys, plain and simple. No animations or cut-scenes of any sort, so only voice acting to portray the story so unfortunately not a whole lot on this front. Characters are pretty likable and memorable even without dedicated story telling. Dialogues was pretty decent. My only critique on the story is that it starts to become slightly chaotic in the later half of the story and you really need to pay attention to the dialogue while playing the game to know what's going on. While I did like playing the final 2 missions, story-wise, it could've been a lot better if it wasn't...let's say random? Not sure what the right description is and also without spoiling. Could have a more thorough explanation of the what happened at the ending, but otherwise, gameplay went out with a bang.

Gameplay: 10/10 - flying was awesome in this game. Unfortunately there's no replay or camera mode despite having free flight mode and cool scenery and a lot of gorgeous sun set views. Well-balanced AA vs AG fighting so I'm happy with playing campaign missions. I have not done conquest, maybe that'll change my mind. Solid flying, solid shooting, solid guns guns guns. Only small complaint I have is the missions can be lengthy if you're trying to clear all things and taking 30 on doing a mission just to die by boss or accidentally, you'll have to restart from the very beginning of the mission. Oh, also allied fighters actually kill targets too, that's kinda neat, though I think it takes away points you could be earning, but not that it matters much.

Visual: 10/10 - as mentioned the scenery looks great, or hellishly great. Also getting to see California in ruins brings joy to my eyes.

Music: 5/10 - one of the lesser impressive aspect is the music. Some are very good and fitting, but other times/tracks, it ruins the mood with some funky ones. I don't know, half of the OST is a hit, the half are a miss.

Overall: 7/10 - despite it being just above average on story telling and lack of any cut-scene in that regards, playing through the campaign was fun and very enjoyable with the story being simple enough to follow, even if you missed some dialogues while having fun in the air. It wasn't as annoying as AC7 where majority of the fights were AG and then the remaining people were turd drones or an old man. It actually feels good to beat another fighter, rival, etc.

Recommendation: Because I expected this to be less of a story telling game as opposed to reviewing an Ace Combat game, I definitely liked like the content this game provides. Could've been great if it had multiplayer feature or co-op mode, but eh, maybe didn't have the infrastructure so I won't go too hard on that. If you are a fan of flying in the air, dog-fighting other pilots, this is a pretty solid pick.

imagine being nintendo fanbase and nintendo themselves right now. watching and waiting for their legal team to find whatever grounds to start suing to what appears to be a great achievement that nintendo did not have the balls achieve... to add weapons to monsters, listen to players' requests on more interactive open-world and more in-depth with monsters, and get it in a playable version of the game within a few years.

Overly too complicated, but once you learn the basics and get going, it's actually pretty boring. UI and controls are clunky. Very time consuming even if you add mods to make learning skills quicker. You have to really start the game at lower difficulty and learn the mechanics of the game, and only after you do that, ramp up the zombie and difficulty, but game itself has default number of days before it actually goes hard on you. Too much learning and playing around for a little enjoyment at least by yourself or another person. If you have a group it's more fun to derp around, but it's honestly it doesn't by default have a boss or story. Again, it's a simple sandbox game that gets repetitive and you need to add mods to make it salvageable. Game IS old but still being 2D only makes it pretty boring to look at as well.

I don't want to get too long into this small game. tl;dr simple (once you get basics, but has a learning curve to some advanced mechanics) repetitive, boring, sandbox, 2D isometric and non-immersive zombie game that's too time consuming for minimal enjoyment.

2/10

"CoD can't do anymore to ruin itself." -every CoD player after every iteration

Finished campaign in less than 15 hours including a few online matches. Review:

Story: 6/10 - a real bugger, the story was told in a way, by the female character Scrap Queen's monologuing which was really annoying because first half of the game I was completely uncaring for what she was going through or why she's going through because it's irrelevant to the story; I was also confused with the info dump, who were the bad guys, who were the good guys; it was just me doing what I was told; that was long and boring, too much "tell" and no "show; only when you just start to grasp the two sides and see the big picture, the game lived up to its name; Skies Unknown: you really don't who your real enemy is; literally just fighting drones; the story behind it was also pretty mediocre; there's no main antagonist so don't hope you'll find a cool main antagonist to have a face-to-face showdown against.

Gameplay: 7/10 - flight controls (not talking about HOTAS or devices) with Xbox One controller was great; flying was awesome, missile fire and gun felt great; however, clouds, clouds, and clouds; 90% of the game you'll be rekt by thick clouds; most missions are air-to-ground, most missions are hide-and-seek, most missions are vague as hell, so just "do damage" kind of objective, definitely wish there were more air-to-air combat; also I've never been so annoyed before at the targeting system in any AC games, it kind of tries to target the closes unit to your crosshair on your screen, half the time it won't and you'll find yourself trying to spam re-target button just to get the enemy unit that's right next (above) you; multiplayer is decent typical TDM or FFA.

Visual: 10/10 - indeed immersive and top quality graphics here; only minor complaint is the radar because the enemy units are white and it blurs so when it zooms out, you can't really see what's going on when 8 enemy aircrafts are looping around you.

Music: 7/10 - definitely up there, but none of them stuck with me; only the main theme I kinda got hymning a few times but not really all interested in any of them; they're mostly modern menu music that's slightly more intensive, but nothing more special; some plane cutscenes had some fitting music, but it was only 1 or 2 I remember, else was pretty typical menu music all around tbh; I might be bias though, I was expecting more of hype and intense OSTs than what's provided in this game, but again, it's not bad; I just expected more from a AC game that hadn't been out for quite some time.

Overall: 7/10 - while I had more dislikes than likes, it was a solid game; it just wasn't meeting my higher expectations due to poor story plotting/writing and boring missions, but when playing the game I did like flying and shooting things with neat new game mechanics like remote bombing, pulling the G's, and actually feeling like your squadron is following you; kind of disappointed though since I really liked shooting down enemies and hear and listen to their commentaries or sounds on the open radio, but most of the times, you're fighting drones; you kill them, you don't really feel much, kind of like "oh I smashed a bug, nice, onwards"; know what I mean?

Post-week review: this is not re-playable; after work and sitting on my computer, I can't seem to find the motivation to start this game up and rather go to sleep.

Recommendation: for an avid AC fan who LIKES to play for the story, wait until a sale; it's not worth the price, but if you just wanna fly and shoot 'em up; you can get it, but you won't be playing it for a long time.