Recent reviews by Pepman

colony ship for sale, cheap can eat my entire ass

Miraculously, the community managed to make Sony back down from their foolhardy decision to force a PSN account onto everybody on PC. While I will be one of the ones to change my review to a positive one, I would exercise extreme caution when purchasing, as while this has seen a resolution, it's not impossible something else down the road could come into play.

People are misunderstanding what happened with the Epic Games Store release. The EGS version isn't a more complete version of the game that we just didn't get over here, it's a version containing some of the content of the update that they're currently working on right now. They didn't "downgrade" it to meet other platforms - they pulled a partially finished update that still needs work. There's nothing fishy or sus going on right now. All that happened is someone uploaded the build they're working on into live instead of what they intend for the public to have right now.

This version of my review is truncated from what I originally wrote. If you would like to read my uncut version, please click here.[pastebin.com]

Sisters vs. Sisters is IF/CH's latest spinoff entry into the Neptunia series, sporting all the usual things that come with that; a different gameplay style, new characters, etc. There's a lot to like here, but there's also a bunch of caveats that come with it.

World map and overworld navigation is much like any other Neptunia game, where you pick a location on a map and navigate around a monster filled level until you get to an event trigger. This game's levels are... not very good. Most areas are highly linear (this is true of most Neptunia games but you can really feel it here) and consist mostly of long walks through trenches of terrain occasionally split up by a monster or three. Sometimes there might be a fork in the road that leads you to either an item or a ladder that you can activate to act as a shortcut to a previous part of the map, a small mercy to the tedium of running back and forth across a level. Occasionally you might have to take an alternate path to push a button to open a door or lower a block, but level progression doesn't really go much more in depth than that. Visually several areas feel very muddy to look at, sporting unimpressive color palettes and textures. There's a few that look quite nice (such as Planeptune), but due to the game's nature of reusing areas they're few and far between.

Combat is... passable. Sometimes. SvS takes a real time approach to combat that isn't unlike a Tales Of game or FF7 Remake. There's a lot to like about it: whaling on an enemy with a few attacks to then quick switch over to one of your two other partners for a follow-up attack and a damage bonus to your combo feels quite nice, and being able to customize two sets of moves (these are completely separate movesets where you normally cannot go from using one move in one to a move in the other, I'll touch on that later) to fit different purposes feels very versatile, even if some moves are objectively better than others. There's a bunch of your typical action RPG stuff, like dodging and blocking, and a very inspired "Tactical" gauge that fills up passively during a fight, which lets you use special moves or items. It's not a half bad system on paper, and even in-game sometimes it works competently despite some of the repetition.

Except that everything in the system is stupid slow. If you use only one attack in your combo, you're completely locked down in the animation until it finishes. If you get hit by most attacks in the game you'll be cancelled out of whatever attack you're doing (this goes for Tactical gauge moves as well) and have to start the combo again. If you block an attack, depending on the strength of the blocked attack, you can get sent across the entire battlefield and then half to endure several seconds of delay before your character chooses to finally drop their shield, long after you've let go of the button. Enemies that have rapid attacks will throw you into stunlock with no way out, as being attacked will take all control from you until the pain animation has played out completely. You also cannot swap to your other partners in this scenario.

Some of these problems can be alleviated through the Disc Development system present in the game. For 500 of its unique currency you gather from every battle, you can input a game genre, a "Scout" character with its own genre, and an additional named item, those of which are found throughout the game. After a certain amount of real time, you'll recieve a Disc item, which contains 1-2 buffs that can be applied to a character, with each character being able to equip 4 Discs at a time. Some buffs are simple, such as increasing the damage of a specific type of attack, or providing resistance against a certain element. The most useful ones are going to be any of the ones that allow you to block/dodge out of a combo and the like. Unfortunately, the Disc system seems stupidly RNG-heavy, and I never did find a pattern to how it produces Discs. Maybe it was just my own fault, but because of that I ended up setting the entire mechanic aside about a third of the way through the game. It proved to not have a whole lot of effect on my playthrough, as barring the typical couple of unfair boss fights that a Neptunia game contains this game isn't very difficult, but refreshingly doesn't require any real grinding in the EXP department, taking more of a Super Mario RPG approach where as long as you occasionally stop on your path to fight an enemy here or there you'll be more than ready to take on whatever boss is up next.

The story is overall a decent step up from typical Neptunia fare (and even acts as an indirect sequel to VII!), but it only starts to get going over halfway through the game. Because of that, a lot of the plot's connections are dumped on you in the span of just a few hours, rapidly becoming a convoluted mess involving gratuitous amounts of time travel and paradoxes. This is especially felt due to the length of the game, being about half the length of a typical Neptunia (which I don't think is necessarily a bad thing, as it cuts out a bunch of the filler), which means about 14 hours of not a lot going on to suddenly being bombarded with 6 hours of all of the plot at once. I don't think it's written poorly, persay (I actually really enjoyed how different it was from any other Neptunia), but the pacing is pretty bad, and cutscenes frequently will end with you going "Huh?" towards the tail end of the game, and not in the inquisitive way.

There's some new characters present, and while they are unfortunately not playable (though I believe the recent Switch port has rectified that), they are enjoyable companions to listen to throughout the game, with entertaining personalities, believable motives, and actual character arcs. Even the previous cast of Neptunia characters feels like a surprising breath of fresh air, as most of them don't feel like the heavily Flanderized versions of themselves that have been thrown around the last several years, and the game is much better for it. However, me saying "listen" might be a strong word...

Because the English dub only covers about a 1/5th of the dialogue in the entire game. If you're a JP dub player this is obviously a nonissue, but as someone who has grown into Neptunia listening to the characters' English VAs it was very disappointing to hear how little of the game was actually voiced. Neptunia's English dubs have never been full coverage, but they do try to at least cover most of the major plot events. Even near the epilogue I was getting cutscenes that were completely unvoiced that were crucial to the resolution of the game's events. This game also features a good bit of mid-level/battle dialogue, and it's a huge pain to try to multitask fighting a boss and reading dialogue popping up in the corner. I can only assume that IFI's budget was super tight for this spinoff, and it shows.

So with so many flaws why the hell would I be recommending this? I think it's a mix of characters being more than one note combined with an overall decent plot despite the pacing issues, and even at times the combat itself is a bit fun when you aren't busy getting stunlocked or cancelled out of your moves. The game doesn't overstay its time, sporting a reasonable ~20 hour playthrough even with looking at side events and doing extra quests. It's certainly not a great game but I think there's enough going on here primarily with the plot and characters that it's worth grabbing if you're looking for a bit more of a fine-tuned Neptunia setting. To its credit as well, it's the only Neptunia spinoff I've played that feels like a mainline entry and not just some side project, even with the jank that comes from a lower budget and IF experimenting with new mechanics.

Pretty fun experience that does a good job of capturing some of that Zelda magic, specifically Link to the Past. Has an enjoyable roguelite approach to dungeons that, while gimmicky, does keep it a bit fresh on each visit. Minor gripes would include annoying instances of taking contact damage and largely uninteresting upgrades to gear that boil down to stuff like "+1 damage" and "+1% armor".

However, I wouldn't grab this for full price. I got it for 5 bucks on a sale and that's really the most I'm willing to pay almost purely because of the terrible netcode. If you're playing solo or local coop, great! It's a super fun game that'll keep your attention. Playing online however is a nightmare. I don't have the best internet in the world but it's definitely not as bad as this game makes it out to be. Heavy delay, teleporting, cave exits teleporting you to completely random parts of the map, and copious amounts of desync are to be expected.

3/7/24 Update

Well, after 3+ years of missed release windows Wrath has crawled its way out of development hell. Was it worth the wait?

No. I was hoping I would get to change this review to a positive one once the game released despite my issues with its dev cycle but unfortunately what's present is just not good. For the sake of brevity (and being able to keep my original review up), I'll bullet point the few things I did like and all the stuff I didn't:

-Movement is tight. It's fluid and responsive and besides some jank on slopes, it was very smooth. The movement tech with the melee weapon's alt fire, which will launch you forward in midair, is very fun.

-Weapons for the most part are a very traditional roster, but they have some unique designs and each has an altfire, though some of those altfires are much less useful than others. Ammo distribution for each weapon feels all over the place, however. Sometimes you have more than you know what to do with and sometimes you're squeezing through an arena with nothing but shotgun shells.

-Levels are geometrically complex for the Quake engine and impressive in that regard, however...

-While they are complex, they're visually uninteresting. Most levels are plagued by bland color palettes and setpieces, which is further exacerbated by the fact that each level in an episode looks almost identical to the other in design. This issue is only remedied in the final levels of the game.

-Not only are levels uninteresting, they are way too long. Each level will take anywhere from 25 minutes to nearly an hour to complete. Enemy counts sometimes rival Serious Sam, averaging 3-400 per level. Every level in the game just drags on when you put these problems together.

-Enemy variety is too lacking for how large each level is. Most enemies are introduced in the very first level you enter in the game (and weapons), with only a handful more being introduced after. Enemy encounters quickly become repetitive and forgettable, especially in levels that contain central hub areas, as more enemies will typically spawn any time level progression returns you to it.

-While enemies are visually distinct and easy to recognize at a distance, most fulfill the same exact purpose. Most enemy behavior consists of stopping to shoot some form of projectile while you're within a certain distance of them or in their line of sight. There's very little to keep you on your toes and promote more creative movement other than strafing to the side. This is compounded by borderline nonsensical enemy placements that don't seem to have any real rhyme or reason as to why they're there.

-All three bosses in the game are some of the worst ones I've ever seen in an FPS.

-The music is largely forgettable due to being generic ambience, not even being close to what Doom 64 had. This is unfortunate, as it was composed by Andrew Hulshult, the de facto boomer shooter OST guy. I'm not sure if this is just a miss on his part or poor direction.

Even trying to ignore all the flaws, Wrath is simply too generic of a retro FPS released way too many years too late. Nothing it does tries to push the genre forward, and what is there is so badly done it doesn't even work well as a Quake clone. Save your cash and throw it towards one of the many other retro shooters on the market right now, because Wrath misses the mark in almost everything it does.
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Original Review 7/19/23

I don't typically put out reviews on a product that aren't explicitly about the product itself, but after being punked out of a release for at least the fourth time I feel this is necessary to stand as a warning before purchasing this game.

Wrath currently has the first episode available in early access: 5 levels and a hub world. With its original launch window, this was perfectly acceptable; a shareware-like build with the full release coming relatively soon. The original release window was set for early 2021 (early access began in late 2019). This was delayed during the 2020 holiday season to Summer 2021. Okay, fair enough, a few months' delay for polish and finish.

Oh, how wrong we all were.

August 2021 we get a blog post stating that it has been officially delayed into "sometime in 2022". They tell us that they're now going to give us bi-weekly update posts so we know what's going on with the state of the game. Okay, kinda sucks but hey, we get to see them finish the game up now, right?

Pffffff.

The first bi-weekly updates they release showed that the game was barely developed past what is in the early access build. The boss and its respective level for the first episode are not even blocked out yet. Enemies and weapons are still being developed and tested. Levels for episodes 2 and 3 are either still in the texturing/detail phase or not even blockmapped yet. This was supposed to release in early 2021? How?

So we get these pitiful bi-weekly updates for about a year (seriously, just go to news history for the game and take a peek). September 2022 arrives, and at Realms Deep they announce their brand new release window of... Spring 2023? Wait, new window? Didn't they say the game was going to release in 2022? I mean, based on the posts we were seeing, the game didn't have a chance of hitting that release window, but seriously?

And so here we are. I waited to see the clock tick over Summer and laughed as the fourth release window was missed, over two years since the initial one. The update we apparently got from the devs in a Discord channel over the following days? A delay to sometime next year and something they probably should have just said in the first place: "When it's done." Fantastic.

So, surely they would update the currently available build with some of their new levels to hold us over while we wait, right? Nah, the developers have made their stance clear saying something along the lines of "We finished the early access roadmap, that's why we aren't going to update the public build until full release." The problem with that is that roadmap was based around a game that was supposed to come out over two years ago. If it had been the original yearish development time from early access release to full release the 5 level roadmap would have been perfectly acceptable. Ion Fury did a similar thing with its preview campaign and there was enough there to get an idea of how the game works, despite being short. Ion Fury, however, released in a timely manner after their preview campaign was dropped. Wrath has not. This game has sat as a digital paperweight since the last content update in January 2021, again, with the developers citing their "content complete" early access roadmap.

I would not be as irritated as I am now if it wasn't for how much the userbase has been led on by multiple release windows and promises. If after the first delay the developers had been transparent instead of severely overestimating their ability to finish this game I would be significantly less mad. "Hey, we screwed up, gonna be a while, we're offering refunds if you want one or don't have faith in our game." Could have been as simple as that instead of constantly raising hopes only to consistently throw it all down the tube. There are people out there who preordered $120 limited box editions of this game who may not ever see those arrive.

If this game ever does actually release I'm sure it'll be a pretty good boomer shooter strengthened by the engine it's running on. Until that happens though, do not buy this game. You're paying for nothing more than a shareware demo who's full version seems to be nowhere in sight. There are fully released, quality games that your $25 can be spent on over this.

I dislike dragging developers through the mud like this because I'm sure they're working hard on finishing the game, but this has become a gross mismanagement of a product and expectations that should not be considered acceptable.

Dave personally asked me to post a review so even though I never do that I will here.

If you've played Amid Evil you'll feel right at home here - it's not an FPS awkwardly ported into VR. Each weapon has its own level of interactivity and immersion and no cuts were made to the level design in the transition. Every secret and room is presented in full. That being said, this is quite literally just Amid Evil, but in VR. There's no new levels or doohickeys exclusive to this version, which you can take either positively or negatively.

My only nitpick with the game right now is there is not an option to disable the underwater filter that overlays the screen. I'm not super prone to VR sickness, however I found myself wanting to stay out of the water as long as possible because it was pretty nauseating for me.

Overall though I'm super satisfied with this version of Amid Evil so far; congrats to Dave and Indefatigable on the successful launch!

it overheated my pc

my friend asked if I killed kittens to play this game

Updated Review
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After playing through the side stories and discovering most of the new content, I can say that this is absolutely worth a grab if you were a fan of the original DDLC. While there may not be, say, dozens of hours of new content, there's enough there to keep your attention for a while. The new stories are both sad and heartwarming and give us a better perspective on each character as a whole Even if the side stories may have occurred in a "simulation" separate from the main game.

I'm glad I got to revisit a game I hold very dear to my heart and see some new interactions between the characters that I've cherished for years, along with gaining some closure to some more meta questions about DDLC as a whole.
Original Review
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I haven't played through the new Side Stories, but the original story has been improved upon with some tweaked dialogue and a couple new lines here and there. It's still very much the DDLC you know, just with some higher fidelity visuals and more dialogue. I largely skimmed the original story and still want to go back to take a good look at Natsuki and Yuri's routes, but I wasn't disappointed by what I saw improved on.

However, the interesting thing going on (everything that I have seen that is new to DDLC+ has been contained inside spoilers):
Instead of managing the game's files on your own now (partially because it's been rebuilt in Unity, as opposed to Ren'Py), exiting DDLC or running the game a second time will take you to what is essentially a virtual desktop. Here you can access various artwork, sketches, and promo images for DDLC, along with a music playlist. A mockup of the original game's files are present as well, though it's slightly more limited in how you can experiment with it (such as being unable to re-add Monika's character file after she deletes herself). However, the interesting folder is the "internal" folder, which contains various numbered folders inside folders, acting as a password system of sorts, granting access to various text files that seem to spread light on the mysterious nature of DDLC in-universe. I still have many secrets to unveil in DDLC+'s side stories and virtual desktop, along with checking out any new scares I may have missed.

Doki Doki Literature Club has held a very special place in my heart for several years now, and I am so happy to see that it has been given a breath of fresh air, with new content and secrets waiting to be discovered by those curious enough to look around.