Recent reviews by Enthasius

On a mechanical level, there's a lot to like about Indivisible. The platforming's solid, although how you gain some of the traversal abilities are dumb, as you'll just spawn the ability to get over/around an obstacle, just because, but only when you're in the right location and it's simply the right time, I guess.
The combat's interesting once you get used to it. It's simple, pushing a button corresponding to a character and holding up or down to do different moves with different attributes, and you get enough characters to mix around to help keep things engaging, especially learning how to combo their moves together.
The game's visually pretty as well, no denying that, and I like the art style. The sound and music are alright, although some of the voice acting (notably from some specific characters) leaves a lot to be desired, coming off as flat, whereas most are solid. Nothing exemplary, but it works.

The main problems I have with the game are the fact 90% of the side missions are fetch-quests, and since the quick travel is quite limited, this can lead to frustrating moments where you think you've cleared an area and even completed some side missions in some far corner of a location, only to discover later you need to go back there for another reason. While it's fine once or twice, as often you've discovered some new movement mechanic since you last visited so it gives you a chance to find the game's only collectable (which double as a way to permanently buff your offensive and defensive attributes), it caught me out several times rather than feeling like it flowed especially well.

Overall, it's an enjoyable game, with an okay story and solid mechanics. Recommended, but expect flaws.

As a header, or perhaps a TL;DR, this is a finely written game with some very interesting mechanics and really is worth playing if you have patience, especially for anyone who enjoys story-based games, some degree of stealth gameplay and puzzle solving, but it's not without some gameplay flaws and hitches.

Right, now for the real meat of the review.

Ghost of a Tale is a well presented, very interesting in its world building, undeniably pretty game. As a whole we should cover some details on both the positive and negative scale, because it'd be easy to say one crucial thing and ruin the review despite how true it is, so please read on after this; Ghost of a Tale's stealth system isn't very good.

If I haven't scared you off or offended you (in which case, I'm sorry), but it is very barebones. It functions alright, literally a line-of-sight detection effect mixed with motion and proximity. However, a core mechanic of having items of clothing offer bonuses means that it doesn't take long for you to find things that allow you to almost entirely circumnavigate the sneaking aspect, albeit if you actually do a solid job at exploring and finding said items. Even if you are spotted, the AI isn't especially bright, and very easy to escape from.

I should also provide another criticism here that I did encounter some glitches, such as falling through the floor a couple of times, including a repeatable one involving an elevator late game, as well as a (thankfully) single crash to desktop.

RIGHT, enough with the negatives. Yes, the gameplay mechanics are lacking....beyond that though? I could sing this games praises for hours and still think up other things to compliment.

So, for context; You're a mouse in a world where all manner of smaller creatures have civilisations, legends, heroes, lore and just a little magic in the mix. You're imprisoned and seperated from your wife in a fort run by rats, who compared to you are towering thugs, more than twice your height who you have no realistic hope of fighting. However, you soon find some folk who're willing to talk to you and you begin getting involved in all manner of goings-on around the fort in the hopes of finding your wife.

You're a mistrel/bard, a musician and traveler (your wife a dancer to add to the show), and a core part of the games is both a repetoire of songs you can sing/play, while learning more as the game goes on, often the game making you pick appropriate songs for a given moment based on the folks you talk with. As you'd imagine you don't/can't fight, but with wits, sneaking, guile, the occasional thrown bottle at a rat guards cranium and some puzzle solving, you engage in a number of tasks for the various figures around the fort who aren't out for your blood. The world isn't huge, literally a fort and the grounds around and below it, and I was glad to see a great deal of interconnectivity with it.

The graphics are very solid, atmospheric and fitting. There's some good details, which really does show off what the Unity engine is capable of. Lush foliage, pretty well detailed character models, gorgeous god-rays and the like. It's marred by some odd seams in the textures and ground rubble here and there, but it's easy to ignore unless you're especially critical. The lighting's pretty solid too, as there are times and places where you really do need to use the light sources provided.
What I adored the most visually is the art for the characters when talking. Very well drawn and coloured, hugely expressive and very fitting.

The sound's good. I found it very quiet to begin with for some reason, but tweaking the volume mixing fixed that. The game has no dialogue, which goes the same for the 'singing'. However, each song has a tune that you can fit the lyrics into. Otherwise it's fairly minimalist, good environmental effects and the like.

The story seems simple to begin with, but rest assured, it was one of the things that really stood out as things went on. There's a fairly limited cast of characters, what with it being based in a fort, but every one of them is very unique and has a lot of hidden bits of dialogue based on certain outfits as well as other lines in terms of the story. You'll frequently find yellow tinted text in conversations that you're given a prompt to look deeper into which yields very interesting morsels of lore and history in what's a very surprisingly fleshed out world. I really do hope a sequel is on the table, because there's so much more of this game that makes it seem special.

With a bit more refinement in the gameplay and a little more polish in the seams and textures, if another game is made by this group, I will buy it in a heartbeat.

I'll save a lot of people a bunch of time and state the obvious; This DLC doesn't change anything you're not already aware of from the original game, its DLC, and the sequel. If you didn't like them, you won't like this.

Right, with that out of the way; if you have enjoyed Dishonored thus far, including some of the minor tweaks and changes the main sequel did, you will probably enjoy this DLC. In the interest of keeping this brief, let's go over the general, fairly simple facts;
It looks and sounds like Dishonored 2, including assets and the like, and takes place in the main games location of Karnaca, it lastly features one returning location but everything else is new for the DLC. I can't say if it runs better or worse than the original since it's technically a seperate game and I've upgraded my PC in the meanwhile. It may have some of the old issues or hopefully it's made from the same stock and patchwork the main game had.

Back to the actual game proper, and its differences; Billie, your character for Death of the Outsider, has a suite of new tools, and some returning ones, as well as some new powers that are unique to the DLC. I don't want to dig too deep into them, as I'd say it's something of a spoiler, but said powers are few in number, but are technically fully upgraded from the outset. This produces an interesting difference where you don't evolve your character as you go, but I did find myself creating my own strategies due to the three powers having a degree of meshing that does reward adventurous play. This averts what I generally found with the games so-far where I tended to stick to simple methods instead of the clever multi-power usage you often see in videos online, at least for my initial run

Bonecharms return as well, and many of them are unique to these powers as well as acting as facsimiles to other powers and abilities. Your non-power tools can be upgraded at the black market as before, although you can't find more blueprints, so what is available will largely be where your coin goes as you go through the campaign.

There's a couple of unique aspects to the game as afforded by the new powers and tools. A few puzzles can be solved with greater simplicity by being smart with your tools and powers. Largely though the game handles as you'd expect. I feel it isn't quite the change of pace the first games' DLC campaign content was, but ultimately, I felt it did well enough to certainly earn a recommendation.

Be warned, at present, technical issues are still a factor, poor framerates seem rife with most rigs, apparently Nvidia graphics card based ones specifically. Ultimately though, and to keep this a somewhat more brief review than I'd normally go for, I found this Spirit of Sanada a very fun divergent to the usual Samurai Warriors game.
The gameplay is very much as you'd expect, very little goes against the series grain. Likewise, as a port it looks okay but it's nothing stellar, and if you've not gotten into a Warriors-esque game in the past, I find it unlikely this will change your mind.

That being said, across the 40 hours I spent with this, with only a small amount of grinding for resources, the real meat of this game is that of the full stretch of (mostly) Yukimura Sanada's life in the Sengoku period, dabbling a bit before and afterwards thanks to his father and the survivors after said conflict.
This is actually a very different style of Warriors game due to this focus, and a great deal more time is spent on the various people and politics of the era. You will get to know a lot more about the figures therein, and this really does make this game a worthwhile play for anyone interested in the era along with a general enjoyment of a solid hack-and-slash game. Mild crafting and a couple of very simple minigames are hidden within but it's not worth considering for those reasons.

Before I can say anything about Dishonored 2, if you decide to buy and play it based on any aspect of this review, do yourself a favour and make sure everything's patched and updated. At present the game patch is in beta, but it does massive improvements on (fairly modern) PC's and I cannot stress how much of a difference nvidia drivers and the beta patch have done to improve the performance, at least on my rig.

Now, with that said, I can happily say that this game DOES have a lot of strengths and some weaknesses. As with good and bad news, let's get the bad out of the way.
We have the aforementioned and widely known technical issues. We have the very familiar gameplay, the fairly mediocre story and it really doesn't tread new ground.

If you're still reading, I can happily say that it's again a great journey into the grim world of Dishonored, many issues of the first game have been addressed, and that the power combinations available in this game go extremely well with the multiple run throughs this game like the first did in regards to the chaos system.
You'll never get all powers in one run through, and there are a number of ways to handle the missions, so I'll happily still be playing this game some time down the line and likely not find all the fun ways to blend abilities to get the most out of them, even while I carve a bloody path through or subdue and cautiously infiltrate each of the games sizable missions.

The low chaos toolset has been improved to put it far more on par with the high chaos one. New darts and combat abilities lend themselves well to even an in-your-face combat style, by shooting kneecaps or deft parrying then choking your foes or stomping their faces to the marble floor. Just the same, playing a complete phantom who causes nary a whisper of suspicion in the guards is always an exercise in patience, just as you can execute everything on route to your foe in total silence.

Visually, it's an upgrade on the previous game. There's more detail without sacrificing the first games exaggerated inhabitants and detailed locales. It's not a HUGE upgrade though, which made the requirements and troubled launch all the more confusing. I certainly had to work at getting it to look halfway decent, and certain settings aren't clear in terms of what they do, with no tooltips when highlighted. It is likely worth doing some research if you're not familiar with what each thing does, because the game does still look impressive, especially for environmental detail.

Sound is currently a mixed bag at the time of this review. I found locations that enemy footsteps and chat would cut through walls and floors where others wouldn't. I found places outside where merely looking up and down would cause substantial changes in volume to nearby talking guards, but besides this, the sound design is fitting and interesting. Music features to a degree as well, whether by nearby audiograph or even bands, but it's used sparingly.
Voices for the most part are great, love to see Stephen Russell take up the formerly silent Corvo, and most characters sound the part. Disappointed to see the change for the Outsider, although the new actor does a solid, if very different approach to the character.
One character, who you meet a couple of times I found their voice grating and very hammy, I'd say more but it would likely be spoilerific. Let's just say they're formally introduced in the introduction and his bombastic tone just seems to clash with the more subdued range elsewhere.

Overall I still really recommend this game. The adventure of it, the broadness of the powers for both characters and the subtle touches based on how you handle things in missions really does work well, just like the first, only moreso. If you have a modern rig and follow my advice to tune up your drivers and either use the beta, or if you're reading this after the actual main patch, do a bit of research on how to squeeze the best performance out of the game as possible, the game is still awesome fun. Exploration is rewarded well, the stealth is actually challenging, and while once again certain powers do make the game a bit easy, self imposed challenges are not only worthwhile, but suggested! There is an option to ignore the Outsider and play the entire game with no powers at all.

If you enjoyed the first, you will likely enjoy this one. If you weren't impressed with the first for a lack of variety in abilities/tools/etc then I feel safe in saying it's worth a try due to the improvements. If you didn't like the first overall, this won't change your mind. I only hope more people update their reviews with the patches as I feel it would be a huge disappointment to see this game painted with the same brush as other titles who never bothered rectifying their games. Progress is being made, and the latest beta patch really does help tremendously.

I'd heard many things about Undertale before playing it; connections to things like Homestuck by way of its creator to it being something of a throwback in feel to Earthbound.

Having never involved myself with either of these attributes, I was nonetheless enamoured with what I'd seen of the demo and how the game would know about whether you'd reloaded a save file to do things a different way, and judge you on your more direct actions rather than simply give you a choice and pull everything from that.
Between that, hearing some of its soundtrack and seeing a video or two on how the game played, I figured I'd play it myself.

I really can't say I'd played anything like it before, so let's break things down and go over why I think Undertale is a real gem.

Not a huge amount to speak of graphically, so let's get that out of the way immediately. It's a simple, pixelated game, although manages to work on both ends of the detail spectrum in equal measure. Some areas/characters are well detailed, others seem rather simple, but it always conveys what you're observing well enough. Environments are especially pretty when it needs to be.

Sound is pretty stellar throughout. The apparently simple at first glance soundtrack manages to have a great deal of catchy, memorable and well matching tracks. I especially love how motifs are used, familiar pieces in otherwise very different portions of the game help tell a story in places when simple words just wouldn't suffice. Connections can be made through these musical numbers and they're a real joy to listen to.

Gameplay is fairly simple as a whole. It's mostly represented with basic JRPG type rules; Hit points, levels, EXP, attack and defense, healing items, weapons and armour. Defense is the most unique aspect, and it's somewhat difficult to describe. Some call it a bullet-hell styled system, but while some enemy attacks do borrow from these games, not all do, and are more often designed to reflect the type of enemy you're facing.

To elaborate, when defending, you can move symbol, a red heart, around a square. You avoid white objects set in the style of your foe, so a frog enemy early on has a bunch of flies buzz from one edge of the square to another in lazy angles and you dodge it, like a bullet hell game....but they also have an attack where a frog is sitting on the bottom of a box and will leap at your characters emblem. Prediction and pattern memory are key, but reactions and dexterity are required. Many enemies later in the game really do change up this simple attack style, often using the games humour as a vehicle to give birth to some truly bizarre attacks. This especially gets hectic on some of the bosses, who have fully unique ways of keeping you on your toes, as well as multiple enemies, which merge their attacks into truly frenetic reaction battles.
Speaking of attacks, we should elaborate on this, but you simply select attack, you get a bar of which you time a button push when it reaches the middle for maximum damage, but this is also not always the best way to run the game;

In fact, as specified in the trailer; nobody has to die. Opinions on self defense aside, you can spare any and all enemies you come across, which like the defense section, is just as unique per enemy. Each is like a minor puzzle, and figuring out how to dissuade your foe so you can spare them. You learn this early on from the tutorial, and learning how is crucial to get everything from this game.

This brings us to the story as a whole as well; Whether you play like a traditional jrpg, fighting and killing everything in your path, or taking the route less traveled by attempting to talk your way out of everything is the centerpoint of the game; whole areas can and will change if you pick one style of play over the other. Characters react differently, and cleverly even restarting from a previous save can yield peculiar results if you try and change proceedings.

Beyond this, and so long as you don't go fully into a kill-everything approach from the getgo, you'll find Undertale presents a surprisingly funny, interesting world, with even funnier and interesting characters. They range from peaceful and humourous to surprisingly menacing. Set pieces really help push you through the betweener parts, as well as lore building locations, signs, and the like. There are only roughly five main locations with areas joining, but all locations are vital and have their own feel. Puzzles aren't just present in combat as typically you'll encounter some brainteasers as you proceed from A to B, but never anything too complicated.

The game as a whole is reasonably challenging. I think I died two or three times for its duration and most of the time each death was due to failing to learn an enemy pattern quickly enough. That said, the later game foes can be a real challenge, so be sure to expect some reloading.

As a general recommendation though, I really can't sing this games praises highly enough. It was a memorable experience that I clocked in 8 hours with. I could have squeezed more out with another playthrough, but without spoiling too much, some people might not want to do everything possible....some avenues are worth ignoring to get the most out of this game, but I'm well aware that said path has its own memorable portions. I have my memories of the game well in hand, and I need but listen to the soundtrack to recall most of it.

If you like interesting, unusual games with fairly simple mechanics and some unique reactions to your playstyle, I believe a playthrough is in order. If you simply want a fun game with some honest humour; again, you're well in hand. I appreciate it may not be wholly unique, but in a world of technically impressive but often soulless games, Undertale stands out.

Having not played a Dragonball Z game for quite literally the better part of ten years, it was a combination of nostalgia, a PC release and the create-a-character feature designed plot that drew me to this. I bought the game as a pre-order on a bit of a gamble, and I'm happy to say that while at the time of this writing that the online's still busted, the singleplayer game is a real fun time-sink. The long and short of the story is that the typical Dragonball Z canonical story is being changed by sinister forces, and you're summoned to help save the day by going back in time and interfering in the bigger battles in DBZ with odd twists due to the aforementioned changes.

Let's get the biggest drawbacks out of the way from the outset; besides the online issues, some difficulty spikes, some questionable voice acting, subtitle errors and all number of smaller quirks, this game was a joy to play. The graphics are solid, fitting the design of the original works in good, sharp 3d. There's an arena based on Namek's impending explosion that's a real treat to look at. The create-a-characters do look a bit on the generic side, but that's just the nature of the beast; All create-a-character games suffer from this, but thanks to the sharp cell-shaded graphics, your avatar certainly looks the part, especially when you get the right outfit.

Sound-wise, the game certainly has the full breadth of the Dragonball effects; flying, charging, impacting blows all sound hilariously old-school, but in a way that works to the games benefit as a fan-focused title. That said, especially playing as a melee focused character, longer combos would trigger the heavy-impacting sounds which in fast-striking combos would make a real racket. Like I mentioned earlier, voice acting is quirky in all the ways DBZ and anime as a whole can be. The Japanese and English Voice casting is good though, pulling a lot of old talent back to reprise roles, but be warned; while the Japanese voices sound better as a whole, part of the joy of the game is the banter that occurs in-combat, and when you're fighting for your life, reading subtitles is less than ideal.

Let's get onto the real meat of the game; the gameplay. Having not played a DBZ game for a while, I know a lot of people took issue with what's considered a 'simplified' combat engine but I felt it was fine. You're essentially given a three-district city-hub; an industrial/shop area, a side-mission and online central area where you both do offline and online vs battles and 'Parallel Quests', which consist of the small 'what if' missions that don't factor in to the main plot.
The last area is an odd one; consisting of where you make wishes with the eponymous dragonballs, enter an area where the main story advances and you can re-do old story missions, and an area for local vs combat and another online 'World tournament' stage.

Fundamentally, you start the game, do a few of the canonical bigger fights as Goku vs the villain of that arc with a gradual interjection of the plot's time-changing aspect triggering, before the plot allows you to make your avatar. You only have one slot to begin with, so be sure to give some thought as to what you want to play as, and it can be worth doing a little research about what races, and indeed genders, have what effect on your ability to fight. That said, as someone who played as a female saiyan (apparently one of the worst melee types in the game), who went out of his way to make as balanced a character as possible, with some specialising in melee late game, I never felt too hampered by my choices; indeed, with a blank outlook to start with, I learned how to handle the melee combat and only very rarely abused any of the games less balanced aspects.

Being predominantly a fan-focused game, your avatar can be equipped with a lot of character specific outfits, as well as some new ones that are colour customisable, and a great deal many of the more (and less) famous moves in the game. Ever fancied having both a kamehameha AND the gallick gun? Go right ahead. Part of the fun of the game, and an aspect that detracts in a point I'll make later, is learning and adapting based on the skills you know and find as the game progresses. It took me a while to learn how to get good at the melee game in Xenoverse, but sure enough by the time I hit level 50 or so out of 80, I had some attacks that I kept for the rest of the game and I could fight off pretty much any enemy with ease, and smart tactics let me win when outnumbered.

As mentioned though, you only get one character slot to start with. Once you finish the story, THEN you get the other slots, of which there are enough to make one of each race, and of each gender if the species allows it. The problem I had in this regard though was you have no option to re-do the actual story from scratch with a new character. While you can in fact replay these missions, the fact you have all the outfits and moves unlocked really dampened my will to do another 'play-through'. I'm sure there's a way to reset your save, but I don't want to lose my initial female saiyan character, I just want to learn and develop like she had me do rather than starting as a low stat master with the best skills.

Still, while I don't know the exact time I played this game for, as I had to play with Steam in offline mode to play the game due to the broken online, it lasted me a fair long while. Part of this is because of the randomness of some of the gameplay aspects. It's both a blessing to some and a curse for all. Side-missions have extra objectives that vary from task to task, commonly things like beating it in a short time-frame or beating certain characters in order, but both generally improve the items you get from a mission (special moves, clothing, items you can use to make buffs and healing items for tougher missions and z-souls, items that grant unique abilities in particular circumstances, like buffs when low on health or slow health regeneration and the like). Thankfully few missions use the full extent of the typical 15 minute time-frame, but considering I still have, at the time of this writing, a side mission where I cannot get the bonus objectives to trigger despite doing it to the letter. I've tried this mission some 20+ times to the point where trying it now, the mission is hilariously easy to beat but the frustration of it never triggering the extra objectives leaves a bitter taste in ones mouth.

The story missions are thankfully a fair bit easier, if only because they're pretty straight-forward. So long as you dedicate some time to do all the parallel missions a couple of times each I found my levelling met the pace of the plot quite handily. Make no mistake though, if you so choose, you can grind relentlessly until even battles against the most powerful villains of the Dragonball world are weaklings. I much prefer it this way; even if I didn't use it, you never know when someone might struggle and having an ability to reward patience with a slightly easier shot at the mission by becoming more powerful is a useful tool. Odds are even if you don't explicitly enjoy grinding, you'll likely accidently do it due to wanting a particular move or outfit.

All in all I recommend this game, although I would advise caution due to the presently broken online, and the nature of the game being guilty of the usual anime-game trappings with the voice acting and not being for the typical player-base, fighting games or otherwise. If you're interested in a longer-term, slightly grindy fighting game with cool visuals, enjoy developing a character into powerhouse suited to your own play-style, and enjoy a unique Dragonball Z plot with you as the hero fighting alongside the majority of the heroes and villains, then I'd certainly recommend it.

I've played my share of FPS games, and I'd long since given up on the vast majority of the more popular titles due to how samey they are. Gunslinger comes out of the blue in being not only a very entertaining shooter, with a number of interesting mechanics strewn throughout the narrative, but also succeeds in being a really interesting narrative title too.

Told in the form of various flashbacks; rife with hyperbole, embellishments and dubious accounts of an aging bounty hunters tales. You will witness the world change and flow in different ways as those listening to his tales bring their own accounts into play, and it certainly left an impression on me.

Dishonored is one of those games that constantly reminds you of older, classic titles like Thief, Deus Ex and the like. Between the mild upgrade system (for both gear and powers) and the way the game handles, it clearly is at its best as a stealth game, even if the majority of the gear upgrades would suggest a more direct, violent approach.

Nonetheless, this is a game well worth playing through a couple of times in differing ways, from the unseen ghost, to the violent psychopath. Swordplay is functional, the gadgets are cool and the powers varied enough that no single playthrough will allow you all abilities, and the subtle changes in the missions based on how quietly and merciful, or violent and up-front you are make this game a worthwhile purchase for anyone favouring a rich world, a solid story and great, multi-pathed gameplay.