Recent reviews by KaiserKevin

Started playing Touhou Project and think I lucked out when I picked HSiFS as 1st game of the series to play. LoLK has a fantastic game 'gimic' that allows you to essentially replay a section of the game as many times as you want w/o having to restart the whole game. This allowed the game to be much more difficult than normal, even amongst Touhou games. It was used to good effect on several very clever puzzle sections that were quite rewarding to figure out. Sadly those high marks for me are far overshadowed by several sections that required 20-30 replays to accomplish frame perfect inputs. Multiple attacks by the final boss required precision movement, and nothing else. Repeating these sections over and over felt like a Sisyphean task; appropriate as several antagonists are from hell.
The game adds some new features that could have been great, but literally end up causing headaches. To help the player see incoming threats, bullets will change color. That's great! Seriously if it just changed to a different or inverted color that would be awesome. Instead it changes to a slightly darkened version of itself, which makes some of them even harder to see. Additionally, they shake. This is the headache inducing part. Literally hurts to look at the screen sometimes. Visually this game suffers the most from cluttered screen as there are several screen just covered in blue; blue background, blue bullets, blue power-ups. This is the only Touhou game where I have found this frustrating, might just be other gameplay as well.
This game feels more like bragging rights for the most die-hard of fans to beat. Maybe I just need to get better, but really feel at my limit. Would not recommend to new players. Can and should be played by hardened veterans who can take the frustration, but if this were the 1st Touhou game I played it would likely have been the last.

2nd Touhou game I played. Again to get English translation requires use of 3rd party. The characters, story and lore of Touhou series deserves much wider appeal, and would be if English audiences had easier accessibility. Gameplay is less challenging than others, which is skilled about where I am at anyway.
My minor complaint in this game is that by the end, I really feel like I was the bad guy, which makes the various failed runs more bearable.

Wrote a more in-depth and pretentious review regarding my thoughts on this game here: https://imgur.com/a/BewzO7e

Great music and gameplay. This really isn't saying as much as I'd like. This soundtrack was quite moving. Still get goosebumps when 'Concealed Four Seasons' starts playing during Okina's dialogue.

Would like English translations more readily accessible. Was difficult learning what certain items/moves do. Learning the story and lore was also not easy, but well worth it. The world of Gensokyo is incredibly imaginative and inspiring, and I wish more people could have access to it.

This was the first Touhou game I played, and it really made an impression on me. There aren't many games I played where winning a battle didn't also mean killing the opponent. There are fewer games I have played where after beating the boss, she congratulates you on your victory instead of grumbling or cursing the player. This was a small change that makes a huge difference in the spirit of the game. It contrasts so well with the difficulty of the game. For me this is the main reason I fell in love with the game, and series.

Game is like Civ in space. Unlike Civ, the game makers release more frequent free updates. Mods are not as in depth, but easier to make customized experiences than Civ. For perfectionists that like to micro manage, game gives a lot of opportunities to optimize.

Aside from adding techies, an overall improvement from dota 1

So I've played Civ since Civ 2 and this has got to be the first I was genuinely disappointed in.

Looks almost exactly the same as Civ 5, which I enjoyed greatly but if I wanted to play Civ 5 I'd play Civ 5... this could have been a mod for Civ 5. They put hardly any effort into changing much of anything, diplomacy looks exactly the same, happiness has been crudely changed to 'health' while every other aspect remains the same. They didnt bother putting in seperate leader animations for different actions (such as spies dieing, or favor asking). Think there are 7 animations total for each leader. Speaking of leaders...

8 is not an acceptable number of options for types of civs u can play. This really is the worst of it, played thousands of hours of civ prior because each game was unique, could play up to 24 civs each with different strategies. On my 10th game of Beyond Earth atm and already feels stale, guess partly because I am done with Civ 5 but also because there is so little options to do. Have the nerve to ask money for dlc just to have the normal map options back, sure they gonna have a $15 dlc come up later to add like 2 new civ options.

Game had so much potential, just thinking back to old civ mods, the Civ 4 Final Frontier was so much more epic in terms of space exploration and this game could have been set up like that... actually exploring space instead of being stuck on one planet. Instead we get a rehash of Civ 5 with less options and less immersion even.

If you haven't played Civ 5 before this game could be fun. If you have prepare for a much less entertaining version of Civ 5. Really hope this isn't the new norm for Civ but I got a bad feeling about whatever gets released next...

Also Firaxis, putting your name on the spaceship you take and naming the most valuable resource after yourself is poor taste. Awfully arrogant of you to think you will be around after the apocalypse.