Recent reviews by IkimashoZ

The best installment in the Octopath series to date.

Easily the best MMO I've ever played, hands down.

A delightful turn-based RPG in the 8-bit style, clearly inspired by the first Final Fantasy.

Create a party of four characters choosing from twelve different classes and explore a world teaming with dungeons, treasure, and monsters, all in glorious 8-bit style. The music is a perfect compliment. I'm also particularly fond of the unique skill system.

If you like the 8-bit JRPG classics, you should definitely give Scarmonde a try.

I'm not even close to done with this game, but I want to write something now as a placeholder, because this game deserves it.

Another Crusade is a breath of fresh air. Battles are actually a challenge. If I do not stay on top of my levels, monsters will trash me. I can gain levels to become more powerful and trash the bosses back. This is how fun works.

That basic mechanic has been fun for decades, but nowadays, particularly this year, it seems as though the new maxims in RPGs are "No FoRcEd GrInDiNG" and "FiGhT EnEmIeS oN tHe MaP," which has led to a slough of terrifically boring RPGs.

Another Crusade is actually fun. Thank you for sticking to tried and true core RPG mechanics. Keep doing what you're doing. Ignore the haters.

More in-depth review to come.

Everything I wrote in the previous version of my review was wrong. I shouldn't write reviews when angry. If this game's graphical style looks appealing to you in the screenshots, give it a try. You'll probably find it fun.

* Well-crafted, well-paced story with interesting characters.
* Gameplay systems will be familiar to turn-based RPG players, but there are enough unique elements to keep things interesting.
* Graphics and music are elegant stylings of the 90’s retro motif.
* A satisfying turn-based RPG experience.

Shadows of Adam begins unassumingly enough. Kellen and his adoptive sister Astrael are traveling through a region of forest near their town, the titular Adam, that has become wildly overgrown with carnivorous flora. What they discover there sends them off into the world on adventure to find out what happened to Kellen’s father and ultimately save the world from the revivification of a magical artifact called the wraith crystal.

The gameplay in Shadows of Adam will be thoroughly familiar to fans of the genre. Characters have hit points and skill points, they learn new abilities as they level up, and they take turns using their selected actions in battle. However, there are few interesting nuances. Most notably is that skill points are expressed exclusively as a percentage, and while there are a handful of items and effects that can allow the percentage to rise above 100, generally the characters all start and end the game with the same max skill pool throughout. As a result of this change, managing my skill point balance and strategically planning for battles was indeed much more interesting. The skills themselves are also interesting and unique in their own right and remain useful throughout the game.

The graphics are done in a style reminiscent of early nineties RPGs, such as Final Fantasy 4, Secret of Mana, etc. The art style is visually appealing while fitting the retro aesthetic. The same can be said for the music, all of which is expertly scored.

It took me 13 hours to complete this game. However, I expect many players will do it more quickly, since I tend to take my time exploring everything and grinding out levels. This brings me to my one critique of the game. While I find the story expertly crafted, all of a piece, nothing extraneous, and coherent throughout, I find myself vaguely wanting more of it. It would have been nice to explore some of the characters' backstories more thoroughly, or to create situations where the characters delve into their time before the game’s story picks up properly–“Shadows of Adam” is an apt name, as much of the depth is derived from how the game’s backstory affects the character relationships in the here-and-now of the narrative.

This was a thoroughly satisfying title, and I highly recommend it to anyone who likes turn-based RPGs, particularly if you like the 90’s aesthetic.

- Same art style as the first installment in the series.
- Same superb composer has produced another gorgeous soundtrack for this game.
- Truly wild difficulty imbalances
- Uninteresting bosses
- New battle mechanics don't add anything to the experience
- Egregious narrative imbalances
- Overly short and poorly-designed dungeon
- Story so poorly written that I was skipping every cutscene after twenty hours of gameplay

Okay, so let's start with the good stuff. Artistically, the game follows in the footsteps of its predecessor, and that is exactly what is called for. The brilliant art style remains intact, and we have eight gorgeous new regions of the world to explore.

Similarly, the first game's composer is back, and he has crafted a score that is just as brilliant as the first game's.

So far, so good. Unfortunately, the rest of the game absolutely falls apart.

The game's new mechanics don't really add anything to the experience. The day/night cycle is at best ignorable, and when it's not, it's annoying (ex. a quest giver only shows up at night; a door is only unlocked at night; etc.). "Latent powers" are wholly uninteresting, not just because the powers themselves are droll, but because the mechanic is essentially limit breaks, which have already been done to death by hundreds of RPGs across the past two and a half decades.

Break and boost are still present, but the game doesn't use them well. Bosses fall into one of two camps: big bags of HP; secondary monsters create break "locks" on the boss. In 50 hours of gameplay, I didn't run into any other boss types.

This brings me to the narrative balance, which is, in fact, attrociously unbalanced. People often misunderstand the term "narrative balance," so let me be clear: this is how well the game manages the osscillation between story mode and exploration mode. Games that put the player through very long stretches of either tend to grow tedious. The first title in the series nailed this balance perfectly. However, this title is a mess. Some chapters don't have any dungeon at all, consisting entirely of one long, unbroken stream of bad writing. When dungeons do appear, they tend to be short, sometimes ridiculously short, and therefore fail to generate any sense of exploration. There are numerous other structural problems: bosses that don't have save points before them and needing pay high fares to sail off an island if you choose to start there, just to name a few.

I felt that this game's line writing was significantly worse than the first installment's. It could be that the two are equally bad, but that, due to the narrative imbalance, the gruelling story sequence make my actual experience of the story that much more tedious. Regardless, I got so tired of reading and hearing vapid, insipid, unispired dialogue that I started skipping the story sequences entirely around the 20-hour mark and simply reading the textual summaries of those scenes in the game's main menu. Side note: How, in 2023, could any writer with half a brain craft a story (one of the eight stories) that is essentially a paean to laissez faire capitalism?

And the game hasn't gotten unfun enough yet. That superb, impeccable difficulty balance they achieved with the first title? Yeah, they threw that away for installment two. Most of the early game bosses are laughably easy, which is forgivable, since it's the early game. They turn unremarkable in the mid-game, when it becomes clear that the designers are going to reuse the same two aforementioned boss mechanics ad nauseum. However, the real "treat" is waiting for you in the late-game, where chapters appear that are marked as "level 45," but which contain bosses capable of utterly trashing a level-62-average party. I checked all my equipment, all my accessories, and, stumped, looked up how one is supposed to defeat these monstrocities. The answer: take them out quickly before they can use their attacks on you. ... ... THAT IS NOT STRATEGY. THAT IS JUST CRAPPY GAME DESIGN.

Yeah, I'm considering re-enacting my personal ban on Square Enix.

Summary:
- Brilliant fusion of SNES-era 2D style with modern graphical effects
- Gorgeous soundtrack
- Battles are mechanically similar to SNES-era turn-based RPGs, but come with enough new features to not be derivative
- Battle difficulty is well-balanced
- Big world to explore
- Narrative is well-paced and the battle/story balance is near perfect
- Mediocre line writing
- Overall story is also mediocre at best

In 2010, I played Final Fantasy 13. The experience was so aggregiously apalling that, upon completing it, I enacted a personal ban on all games created by Square Enix. For nine years, the only game that got even remotely close to making me reconsider that ban was Bravely Default, but I was quite busy with other life matters when it was released, and so it passed by me unremarked.

In 2019, I noticed Octopath Traveler on Steam, and it piqued my curiosity enough that I decided to try it and see if Square Enix might once again be trusted. The experience was everything I had hoped for.

The game's art style brilliantly fuses SNES-era pixel style with modern graphical effects, such as the incorporation of 3D, particle and lighting effects, and high-definition spell animations.

Similarly, the gameplay was also a hybrid of sorts. On the one hand, it is a straight-forward turn-based RPG: your characters and their opponents each take turns acting; each character has a class which determines which skills they can use; classes are somewhat customizable and abilities grow as you gain job points. All of these have been mainstays of the genre for more than two decades. However, Octopath adds just enough new features to this mix--break and boost--to keep the gameplay interesting. Importantly, bosses are not just bags of HP. Each interacts with break and boost in unique ways.

An area where many RPGs fall down is the narrative pacing, and I feel it's important that I clarify this term. RPGs should, optimally, bounce back and forth between story segments and world exploration, with no one interlude extending so long as to become tedious. Octopath Traveler strikes just the right balance. Dungeons are neither too long nor too short. The same goes for the story interludes.

The one area I can fault the game is the story interludes themselves, which are not particularly interesting. Nor are, unfortunately, any of the characters. Other reviewers have harped on character "interaction" as a problem. To my mind, this is a mistaken analysis. According to this line of thinking, the game's eight story lines don't allow the characters to interact enough. Because each story line can be played independently, no one of the eight stories can assume the existance of any other main character in the party (it is possible for the player to simply not pick them up). As a result, no one character's story line can have a scene were its character interacts with any of the other main characters. However, all of the game's line writing is mediocre at best. Putting the characters together would not solve anything. We would simply have two (or more) characters spewing more mediocre dialogue at one another. That would not improve anything. In fact, I believe that would make the narrative even worse. The true solution to this problem would be for Square Enix to start hiring talented writers to craft their games' stories.

The overall narrative itself exhibits the same mediocrity at best. I have discussed this game with numerous individuals who believe that the game's eight stories are not connected in any way. This is incorrect. The eight stories are indeed all connected. However, in order to discover how they are connected, you need to find and follow a convoluted chain of side quests, which will lead you to the actual final dungeon, where you can read how the stories are all connected in the form of long, tedious text boxes. Oof. (This is the one exception to the game's overall brilliant balance of "a little story" followed by "a little exploration.")

I quickly forgave Octopath Traveler these faults, since it got literally everything else right. The gameplay is actually challenging, unlike most RPGs these days, and therefore actually fun. Bosses are interesting. Yasunori Nishiki's musical work is superb. Visually, the game is stunning. All in all, it more than I had hoped it could be, and I thoroughly enjoyed all ninety-five hours I spent with this game.

Summary:
- Top notch narrative, interesting and thematically coherent
- Gameplay is very fun and well-balanced
- Graphics are charming; numerous environment types
- Fun, interesting dungeon design
- Soundtrack is not so great.

This is a true gem among indie JRPGs. The big standout is the game's narrative, which excels where most all indie games (not to mention non-indie games) fall short. It is thematically coherent and well-paced throughout. The latter is helped by the fact that the total play time is roughly fifteen hours. Characters are interesting and their dialogue is engaging. The line writing is occasionally somewhat rough, but this is easily overlooked, when so many of the big beats of the narrative are so well done.

Manafinder also does well in terms of gameplay. Difficulty is well-balanced. Boss fights (and even most regular battles) are interesting and fun. Dungeons are well designed, too.

Graphically, the game consists of pixel graphics reminiscent of 1990's JRPGs. The environments show an astounding amount of artistic detail and design creativity, given the limitations of the medium. Some examples: the plain where all the flora and fauna come splattered in rainbow colors, or the jungle where floating, gelatinous cubes douse everything in rain. These are just a couple of examples of the enormous creativity on display. The battles are set up to be reminiscent of Phantasy Star 3 and 4. It all just works. It hit all my nostalgia buttons, but also provided an experience that fresh and unique in its own way.

I was not a fan of the game's soundtrack. I am not a musical expert, but some of the tracks sounded discordant to my ear, as though some core principles of musical arrangement are being violated. This is a problem for a handful of the tracks, particularly the game's battle themes. I'm also looking at Stoneway as having a particularly cacophonous music track. However, the vast majority of the music is not that bad. It is simply underwhelming and forgettable.

I wholeheartedly recommend Manafinder, even despite the soundtrack. To nail story and gameplay is enough for me, even if the music wasn't so great.

I will happily buy Wolfsden's next game. This is an indie JRPG studio to watch!

Summary:
- Appealing graphical style
- Balanced, interesting character progression system
- Derivative, unimaginative story
- Extreme difficulty imbalance (wildly easy)
- Heavy reuse of similar enemy types and maps

https://www.matthewbuscemi.com/blog/post/the-transparent-metaphor