Recent reviews by Noel

One of the best multiplayer Gundam games when the servers actually work.

GOOD WORK OUT THERE

I feel very bad about being the first person to leave a negative review, but I didn't particularly enjoy my time playing this game. I'm very sorry to the devs, as I can tell a lot of love went into this game over many years (I've been following it myself since 2018 or so), but it wasn't really for me. I will keep this as spoiler-free as possible for those who still wish to play, though!

To begin with, the story was decent enough. No major highlights for me, but importantly, there weren't really any low points either (besides at the very end, during the final boss rush. Felt sort of anticlimactic and out of nowhere.) It was paced excellently, though, gotta give it that. Nothing felt like it dragged on for too long.

Characters were mostly good for me, there weren't many I disliked. Designs were decent all around, none that I'd call bad. The main problem for me here, though, was that a few of the more major ones had personality traits that I personally find can be annoying to be around for extended periods of time (one of them is excessively snarky and cracking jokes CONSTANTLY, which can be fun in moderation, but not when it feels like it happens every other line.) I was, though, pleasantly suprised to see a character that shared both my name (Noel) and gender identity (non-binary (I myself am agender, the character's exact identity isn't stated from what I could tell, but they do use they/them so they're somewhere in the enby umbrella.)) I do wish that they (or some other GNC character) could have been a party member (non binary lesbians exist too!). On that note, a characters tab in the quest menu would have been helpful, as gender identity/pronouns for side characters are often not stated clearly enough.

Writing is where the game begins to fall apart for me. Characters seem to talk like how people speak over the internet, not how they talk when in person. That's just my interpretation of it, but it doesn't feel super natural. There is tons of lore and backstory to learn for the world and its inhabitants, which I will commend.

The graphics are probably my favorite aspect of the game. They're very colorful, detailed, and you never feel like you're treading through the same area twice. My only criticism is that I feel all of the hand drawn assets (party status images, monsters, cutscene images), would have been better off as pixel art to keep stylistically consistent with the rest of the game.

The music was just okay for me. I think the compositions are pretty good overall, but the arrangements don't make the songs sound as good as they possibly can. Maybe throw some violin in there? Additionally, there is a vocal track, which, while mostly sounding good, does have a few issues that could have been fixed. Notably, the singer's voice can be quite breathy at times, and there are instances where they can be heard audibly breathing during parts where it seems like it should just me an instrumental. That breathiness is fine during a live performance, but this is a song that was recorded in a studio (at least I'd presume), so unless that was intentional, there shouldn't be a reason that couldn't have been fixed in editing. To finish up (and to not have an additional paragraph just for audio design), a lot of the bitcrushed noises didn't really sound like they'd belong on a SNES/PS1 (the era of RPGs SLARPG is trying to emulate). Those older consoles have a certain sound to them and more effort went into making the compressed sounds still sound good, while anything trying to mimic that in this game feels like it went through a bitcrush filter with no touch ups or anything. And considering a point I'll get to in a bit, stuff like the fire spell which you'll be hearing constantly can be a bit grating on the ears. The text noises are unpleasant as well, but thankfully those can be turned off so I won't be counting that in my review.

Before we get to the main reason I play video games (the gameplay), the economy/resource management should be mentioned. And by that, I mean it barely exists. As long as you don't skip a ton of battles, you'll have way more than enough money to buy whatever you need when you reach the next shop (besides one of the last shops that sells the some of the best equipment, which are very expensive as they should ideally be.) The main problem here is the ether situation. They're handed out like candy from chest loot and monster drops, and are WAY cheaper than they generally are in those classic RPGs this game is embracing the style of. Having to focus on using MP wisely is completely thrown out the window when it's so easy to just chug ethers down from your likely huge stack of them, which is a disappointment for me.

The gameplay itself is the weakest part of the game for me, which makes it difficult for me to recommend the product as a whole. I played on normal mode for the majority of the game, and only switched to easy mode at Zinnia's area, not because the game was challenging or anything (it wasn't at all, really, I only ever lost paarty members due to poor enemy targeting RNG), but because enemies becoming increasingly bigger HP sponges as you progress, and the flow of combat grinds to a halt as you whittle down a random encounter that has the health pool of a weaker boss. Neither me or the enemies were doing much damage to each other and it wasn't exciting at all. Additionally, every character fills an extremely specific niche, with not much flexibility. The spellbooks seem to try to alleviate this issue, but they aren't made equal and most aren't worth using. Magical Girl, for example, should be on Melody at all times. Not doing so and therefore locking your healer out of her only multi target healing spell is an awful idea and should only be done for potential challenge runs. On the topic of Melody, while her class is definitely listed as a Paladin, she plays WAY closer to a traditional healer/White Mage. She will have the worst damage capability of the party for basically the entire game, which leaves you (the player) to use her only as a healer. Unfortunately, there will be a lot of situations where nobody particularly NEEDS healing, and she doesn't really have any buff/debuff spells to speak of, so she'll just have to do chip damage to the enemy that turn. Same deal applies to the other party members. Allison should be using whatever her strongest attack is every single turn, Claire (because of ethers being so abundant) should be constantly abusing enemy weaknesses. and Jodie should be attacking just like Allison. They all do have bigger toolkits than what I've mentioned, but the game is so easy that it's faster to just spam attacks. It's extremely unengaging for me and was hard mentally to get through.

Overall, I think your enjoyment of this game will come down to what you're expecting and what kind of gamer you are. If you're like me and want solid, engaging gameplay, I'd spend your money elsewhere. If, however you want a mainly story focused game about cute anthro women being gay with each other, I can't think of a better game for it, and you'll likely enjoy it. Despite my disappointment with this one, I do look forward to whatever the devs have planned next. Definitely a lot of potential here!

Yet another great game from my favorite developer, tri-Ace! Has everything I could want from a Star Ocean:
-extremely exploitable mechanics
-high fantasy story that turns into extremely detailed spaceship battles and plenty of philosophical discussion
-Sakuraba going crazy on his synth in a banger of a prog rock soundtrack
-main story is always just the right length with plenty of postgame to explore
Please put 2 and 3 on Steam so I can force my friends to play them.

50 hours and i still havent made that damn donut