Recent reviews by bansama

TL;DR:
The good: It's an official Konosuba game in English!
The bad: It's a sequel to a game that will never be released in English.
The ugly: There are far too many errors in the localisation that either change meaning, lose nuance, alter character, or (worst of all) show a failure to grasp the meaning of the original Japanese. Problems that a proper quality control check could have fixed prior to release. Not to mention the typos, too.

--Full Review--
This is the first of the nine Konosuba games (not counting the smart device game Fantastic Days) to get an English release, and we can only hope that this does well enough to make releasing at least two of the other eight games yet to be released in English viable. In particular the two Entergram published dungeon crawlers (which in their own ways provide an even more authentic Konosuba experience than a visual novel style game can).

Here's the thing, though, much like Kazuma himself, we're off to a bad start, held back by Bad and Ugly; two party members that make Aqua look like a genius.

Bad is a party member we simply cannot shake. A product of modern "western sensibilities" and the inability to separate fictional girls from real ones. As such, although Clothes of Desire is a follow up to Greedy Game, we'll likely never see an English release of Greedy Game. Certainly not from a UK based publisher who already fell afoul of a nanny state, that had to protect adults from anime girls by banning the English release of Omega Labyrinth Z.

For you see, in the events of Greedy Game, Kazuma is afflicted by a cursed ring and, well, he "accidentally" Steals a bunch of panties. The problems arise when he tries to figure out who each set belongs to. The first, a tiny black ensemble of mostly air, are the one and only pair of panties in Megumin's possession. Now, Western sensibilities and modern audiences, can't distinguish an Isekai from Earth. They expect all worlds, real and imaginary, to abide by their own laws, which makes Megumin a minor... And this same reasoning already led to the aforementioned banning of Omega Labyrinth Z.

So, like Darkness, we'll just have to accept we're stuck with Bad and shove him out front to take all the flak for only getting half the story.

Now, Ugly, on the other hand... Ugly, could have been replaced with a much cuter girl called Astounding. Alas, Astounding has never seen the outside of the noble home she's been raised in. But Ugly, he's a street urchin. Unwashed and unloved. And he just refuses to go away unless you're firm with telling him to hop it.

Sadly for us, no one bothered. So we see Ugly rearing his, well, ugly face, every few screens. He shows up in the form of typos and in the manifestation of poor localisation.

To non-Japanese speakers, he's most recognisable on one of the tutorial screens. But to Japanese speakers, he's all but everywhere.

A list of example appearances can be found here:
https://steamproxy.com/app/2349140/discussions/0/4199112956963019664/

But the most worrying appearances in the first 30 odd minutes of playing are the following.

JP: あと、石板をむやみやたらに使わないこと。
これを守れるなら......。
OT: Try not to use the slab thing too much, okay? If you can keep it safe...

JP: ちょむすけもただいまです。
良い子にしてましたか？
OT: Chomusuke’s back too. Were you good today?

Both show that the Japanese was not understood and that this lack of understanding was not noticed before the game released.

The first of these confuses two meanings of the word "mamoru", (to protect something/someone and to observe rules). The second indicates a mixup between "I'm home" and "welcome home" which are generally two phrases those just starting to learn Japanese are introduced to. So we have to ask ourselves, 'how do professional translators mess up beginner level Japanese AND not notice it before release?'

Konosuba Clothes of Desire is not on the cheap end of the VN pricing scale, so such oversights and lack of checking should not be acceptable. PQube you can and should do better.

I can live with Bad. But Ugly, he's an annoyance that detracts from the experience. Perhaps if we steal Aqua's favourite wine we can persuade her to exorcise Ugly away in some QoL patches. We've seen simillar occurrences with other localised games when problems with the translation were noticed after release (Samurai Maidens, for example).

Now, to be fair, PQube aren't the only ones to mess up quality control. Megumin has a magically vanishing choker that Mages. should have noticed and fixed. Also, some of Kazuma's voiced lines are woefully quiet. Even with the music turned to the lowest audible setting it can drown out Kazuma. But neither of these issues have as big an impact for English audiences as those of the localisation.

Okay, bottom line, despite its flaws, Konosuba Clothes of Desire (English release) is going to make Konosuba fans happy--it'd make them happier still without the problems, but that's a given. At the end of the day, with a nice glass of bubbly in one hand and your mouse in the other, you're going to be in for a good time whether your main squeeze is Aqua, Darkness, or Megumin.

First blind playthrough completed in 40 hours. Total play time tracked by Steam is around 70 hours (with another 40+ playing offline...)

What I'm saying is, I can't put this game down. I've completed it a silly amount of game, and I STILL come back.

If there was ever a 99.9% perfect game, this is it.

Make that 123 odd hours tracked and 60 played offline. Yeah, even the DLC was good despite it's over reliance on certain overdone laser puzzles in poorer parts of the new levels. But the rest is brilliant, so don't let lasers stop you!

March 2024 Patch Update:
Still a broken mess.

And like many others, I'm really wishing we could all just get mass refunded for what still should be an early access beta.

SECOND UPDATE:

We're 11 or so patches in and the game is now the worst it's been.

All I can say is steer clear. This is, hands down, the worst game I've played in 2023.

*** Original review and first update:***

As full release I simply cannot recommend Alaskan Road Truckers in its current state. And it pains me a lot to say that. I've wanted a decent "Ice Road Trucker" like delivery experience since the original Extreme Truckers game from SCS turned out to not be that extreme.

There was, since its original announcement, a lot of potential for Alaskan Road Truckers to fill this void. Alas, it fell into that void and is still falling. Steam tells me I have 3.3 hours played, around 2 hours of that is being stuck constantly in the Low 3 gear until I get fed up enough to relaunch the game. 15 minutes of that is fighting overly aggressive turn indicators that stop blinking the second the wheel recentres, even if that's in the middle of a turn. I don't bother indicating anymore. Well, there's not much point in it. The second a car smashes into you, or stops suddenly so you rear end it, and you're the one fined. So why bother with road rules? You're punished whatever you do in that respect!

I really want to enjoy this game, and I look forward to the day that the developers either fix the L3 bug or provide a reset button (like the camera view reset) that can force the truck out of Low 3, without having to quit the game to fix it. It would be nice to be able to finish at least one delivery in a single sitting without reloading the game.

So bottom line, I'd be fine with bugs of this extent IF Alaskan Road Truckers had released as Early Access, and in its current state it really should have. This is not fully functional release, While I'm glad the developers are trying to fix things, quickly, this has been a huge disappointment in the long run.

So for now, it's big old red thumbs down. =(

We've had a few more patches since I wrote this and I'd love to say problems are solved and the game is great. But no. That would be lying. The same bugs that have been there since release are still there. The patches have done nothing to make the game playable.

I don't like to "review bomb" but when a company decides to steal your paid for product with no reasonable reason as to why, well, they deserve the negative feedback.

When installing this title via Steam, the user agreement you MUST agree to does NOT grant Ubisoft the right to revoke access to the purchased license for any reason other than the USER breaking contract. There are no other stipulations that grant Ubisoft the right to revoke. As such, Ubisoft, by denying access to this purchased title from September 1, will be in breach of their own agreement.

And if they cannot be bothered to uphold their OWN agreements, I will no longer give them my patronage.

Now, if Ubisoft don't want to lose the custom of people who have been purchasing their titles since the early days when Ubisoft was newly founded, then they know what to do. Abandon this anti-consumer move and find a better way to handle their (silly) need to shut down servers.

Spend that time and money on patching out auth servers, or lose any potential of making more money from people like me permanently.

Can be played with an Oculus Quest if you use a Steam VR streaming solution such as Virtual Desktop (sideload build). Making this the best fishing simulator available for the Quest.

So I haven't played for long yet (just an hour there's about), but Grim Earth is so far everything I could have hoped for. The story is charming, the characters cute. The enemies... stupid. And mean. Especially the ones that have eyes! Gameplay is traditional 2D sidescrolling platforming. The likes of which I used to enjoy back in the 16 bit era.

The gameworld is split into numerous stages which is great. You only get one health bar with health packs hidden around but usually only a handful per area. Likewise weapons are also scarce; unfortunately pockets and bags have yet to be invented in Grim Earth, so ladders and signs banning carrying exposed firearms both mean losing your weapon. Stupid ladders. Stupid signs.

The challenge, for me at least, was spot on for what I was hoping for -- a fun, relaxing game. But others might want it to be beefed up a bit. Dying simply means restarting the current section, losing some points, and XP (which seems to be based on accumulated points). Although I've yet to see XP used for anything. While I died frequently, and to replay sections over, it never felt unfair or annoying thanks to the frequent check points.

I've yet to beat the boss near the end of the stage currently available in Early Access, but it's just a matter of time, learning its move set, and managing the limited ammo available for the fight. There are currently no difficulty options, and asides from perhaps offering a higher difficulty, I don't currently feel Grim Earth needs easier enemies.

Some accessibility options, on the other hand, would be nice -- such as automatically picking up health and ammo. Thankfully, the Grim Earth appears to have a system in place that could provide players with accessibility features in the form of codes. Although a menu for them would be nice to have eventually.

Lastly, it's great to see that Grim Earth retains the graphical presentation I've come to love from early Clockwork Pixels games. Clean, crisp, vibrantly coloured, and with a lovingly hand drawn aesthetic. I'll never get tired of this graphic style.

I'm hoping Grim Earth does well on enough Steam that Clockwork Pixels with consider selling their earlier games here too.

Yomawari: Midnight Shadows is an unnervingly brilliant tale of loss, regret, and high tolls to pay. It is not a happy story. But it is a shining example of Japanese horror. As a sequel it has attempted to build on the world established in the original and does so wonderfully. The developers clearly used their knowledge of (Japanese) cultural and religious beliefs (such as those of Shinto) to help create a world that could very easily mirror our own. Many of the locations present could represent any street or shrine found throughout Japan. Even the mountain forest retains echoes of a similarity to Aokigahara — an area infamous for being a place where Japanese go to end their lives; even a similar sign is included urging those who read it to treasure their life and seek help.

See full review: http://www.j-ga.me/s/review-yomawari-midnight-shadows/

Bot Colony appeared rather promising when it released on Steam as part of the Early Access programme last year. It aimed to be the first game where you truly interacted with the characters through holding conversations with them. But it wasn’t until this month that the potential of this system was was hinted at through an update that introduced a need to pry information out of one of the characters .

The task was to gain access to 14 recorded videos in an attempt to piece together the events of the last 48 hours in the home of a Nakagawa Robot Corp. employee. To do this required talking to Jimmy, a robot servant left in the house. And when I say talking, I actually mean talking. Either through speech recognition with a microphone or typing, Jimmy was capable of responding to questions posed in naturally flowing English.

This certainly makes a refreshing change to only selecting from predefined dialogue options. And had the potential of revolutionizing interaction with game characters. Unfortunately, Bot Colony will cease to be playable in mid March. The result of not enough units being sold to cover the cost of running the server that processes the speech input, let alone paying for further development.

There was a lot of promise in Bot Colony, and anyone interested in seeing that should check the store page on Steam. While no longer purchasable, one of the videos does cover the story as it would have unfolded. It is a shame that Bot Colony slipped under the radar, a likely victim of Steam’s increasing release schedule and lack of promotion. Had it done well it could have been a hit. When the game shuts down, I’m going to miss my conversations with Jimmy.