Recent reviews by 🌸🌈彼夜🌹🍀

Just give us Zero with the same mechanic, I will support this franchise until the world ends.

This is a dying wish from a noob master in China. Holy Grail, grants my wish

Extremely bad game due to no controller support. I believe this game wouldn't be this clunky which made me wanting a 3rd arm if it had a proper controller support. Who would play a game using K&M in 2023 apart from some certain genre like RTS??

About the game itself, despite the game's saying the vampire mistress is attracted by sound, however whether you couch, walk or run makes 0 difference. It's a one-off deal, if you got spotted, you're dead. If the thing were just this simple, but no. It is very hard to tell which direction she comes from judging by the sound of her footsteps. Remember, you can't be spotted or everything's too late.

Have zero idea about how this game's mechanics work even in the very early stage of the game which made me have no choice but to give it a thumb down. Devs, you'd better fix the game with major controller support and the existence of check points otherwise I don't see there's a way I'd recommend this game to anyone. It's not about price.

Ada put 00 agents to shame in this blockbuster DLC. It’s really good, you gotta play it yourself.

Capcom’s on fire these years.

一般来说，我对国产游戏都是持支持与宽容的态度，所以很少会给不推荐。但是这是一款要求我不拿出十足的干劲就无法通关的游戏，那既然认真了，我的测评自然会非常严格。先说说这个游戏的优点吧。

最大优点：价格。
作为一个文字体量相当大，全程超95%以上的文本都拥有双语配音的游戏，58块钱的价格是远低于目前全球的游戏价位的。这样的游戏一般90～100多属于平均水平。这里看到了制作方薄利多销的诚意。也是我第一时间入手的重要原因。

其次：游戏的故事主体并不差，看到了作者结合当下中国社会的一些实事热点现象并将其巧妙的融入进魔女这个奇幻题材的奇思妙想里，是件有趣的事。如果这是一个像coffee talk这样悠闲的纯VN游戏，给个好评实属名之实归，我不会犹豫。

但是问题出在：这不是一个纯VN游戏。
作为职业单机玩家，之前跟不少业内人士也提过建议，与其做一款面面俱到的缝合游戏，不如在自己专精的领域把一个元素做到极致。对游戏而言，一个领域好玩足矣，游戏真不需要太“多样”。面面俱到，实则没有一个方面比的过这个类型专业的，这就如同做了一桌满汉全席，然而每个菜品吃起来都非常一般甚至个别还非常难吃一样，对食客而言，到最后并不会认可你的满汉全席。玩家诚如食客，而这个游戏的问题就出在塔防这个核心玩法上。

下面来说说缺点。
第一：塔防的策略深度不够。游戏虽然全程给了很多的卡，特别是算上npc羁绊所得的那就更多了。但是一个舞台最大能够携带卡片只有8张，对于卡组变化来说数量太过吃紧。这样就延伸出了单个舞台策略很有限的问题。

第二，第一点引申出了游戏最大的问题：游戏里不少重要关卡只有“唯一解”（我所有舞台的关卡除塞缪尔最后一关由于时间不够没打外都挑战完了），不使用特定卡组，特定套路就没有办法获胜。这在前期表现不明显，但是到了后期就特别明显。举例：游戏的第三个boss难度较之前，一下子上升好几个梯度，我卡了很久才打过。事后想想，应该是我没有理解到这个舞台的“唯一正解”。而一个优秀的策略游戏，不是让玩家去揣测制作者的解谜思路，而是玩家通过自己的思路，去破解制作者设计的谜题。这里我说个题外话。我推荐关卡设计师们可以去玩玩跟你们差不多时间出的一个游戏叫shadow gambit。也许你们会说这是即时策略游戏，跟我塔防游戏有什么关联。然而，优秀的策略游戏不管是什么类型，有一个共同点：设计者能提供玩家用无数种不同的思路去化解其设计的关卡，绝不会因为没想到某一种解法就卡关。而那个游戏，正是这个道理最完美的例证。在核心玩法上，很遗憾，AFFOGATO是不成功的。

第三：我个人虽然不是塔防游戏专精人士，但是我认为一个让人满意的游戏最基本的前提：在玩家选择了普通/一般/这样的难度下，在独自，不查询攻略的情况下，能够顺利打完游戏为最起码要求。放眼现代意义上的单机游戏（2010年以后的）无论什么样体量的优质游戏，在这个思路上基本都是一致的。真正要求对游戏无论是理解，还是操作都有极高要求的体验，留给一个最高难度足矣。普通难度下，关卡难度设计过高，卡主线时间过长都不是明智的选择，因为最后只可能为游戏的整体印象减分而不会加分（那个分身boss，我卡了有差不多两天才想到思路，如果我不是职业玩家或者没有不打完一个就不玩下一个的信条呢？）
进一步说，其实玩家更能接受的是游戏一开始比较难，但是随着进度深入，玩家操作水平的提升和游戏资源的积累，难度逐渐下降。而往往不是开始很简单，随着游戏深入最后越来越难，最糟糕的情况是卡在最终boss很久过不了。这样的游戏最后往往都会落入风评不佳的下场。所以看现在大部分单机游戏，临近结尾守关dalao或者最终boss一般都不会为难玩家。这并不是随意设计的结果，而是一个简单的人类心理学常识。

第四：细枝末节的一些问题，但同样很难忽略。游戏策略单一，还体现在由于获得潘塔的方式太过于局限，又加上能携带的卡牌数量极其有限，所以费高的卡除最后一个舞台是必须外，绝大多数关卡都不好用。卡牌的升级应该让高费卡能有降低费用消耗或者惊人的破坏力或者强大异能，这样的特点只有太阳这张卡相对于接近但也不完全一样。异能如女皇这种，费用太高，复活成本也太高，除最后一关外基本毫无出场的机会。。。卡牌之间的平衡性有一定问题。另外，部分支线舞台难度极高，而获得的卡牌却并不强力。。。努力与回报不成正比也是很。。。的设计，难道不应该反一反吗？最后，部分关卡的自动存档（记忆点）太少，游戏又存在bug，最恶劣的就是那个8人同时在场，在地板间隔较短，密集转换方向的地方行走，极容易卡住不能前进。在潘塔吃紧boss打一半的时候被卡住，导致失败又要重打碰运气，这有多闹心，应该不难理解吧？



总之，这游戏VN加制作咖啡部分，50/50
塔防核心玩法部分，非常遗憾。10/50
所以总体60/100。
就像我一开始说的，如果你就是塔防游戏并且这部分足够好，我出200也没问题。
如果是纯VN游戏，这游戏的品质，即使是90的价格我也会推荐。
但是结合在一起成为一个整体却问题不少，最后两头尴尬，很难推荐。这是设计思路的问题而不是价格的问题。

在深思熟虑几天之后，决定给2代一个不推荐。原因如下：尽管二代就游戏内容上进行了丰富的扩充与增容，我在仅差最后一章即将完成游戏的进度上来说，目测体量是一代的4X，可能还有的多。然而，巨肝的大型游戏副本-童话乐园，超量的可用角色阵容在加上种类繁多的小游戏，并不能掩盖二代故事核心非常空洞的事实，以及剧情编写上给人感觉随心所欲，未能精心设计（比较之前的系列作品），才思枯竭，黔驴技穷的窘境。大大降低了我对Falcom作品的评价。

写给Falcom（有少量剧透，故事内容没有剧透无法评论）
1.制作团队是迷上吃鸡了么？一代弄个吃鸡的剧情勉强算是新颖，二代又来？坚持做自己的特色不好么？做不了很流行的游戏没有必要强求。何况，流行的东西就一定是好的？我如果喜欢玩吃鸡，就不会70美刀买你绯红之罪，还在这里苦口婆心认真写测评了，你说呢？

2.我不反对时间回溯这样的功能，我也认同游戏开场以这样的方式拉开帷幕很震撼人心，但是……反反复复在游戏里出现许多回，那就不是那么有趣的事情了。一方面，滥用这个概念，最后新颖的感觉消失殆尽，留下的只是令人厌烦、反复出现的“dead end”。另一方面，从玩家体验角度上讲，在没有误操作的情况下，总是在剧情里“死死死”，也不是什么很有乐趣的事情。

3.英雄传说系列一直以来的老毛病：不怕没有内容，就怕体量控制不住，冲过来像海啸一样让玩家躲闪不及。平心而论，黎之轨迹1代可用角色达到8个，已经跟闪轨系列VII班阵容基本持平，养成方面属于非常肝但是勉强能应付的状况。到了本代，直接增幅到15个可用角色……虽然我理解官方的初衷大概是希望玩家能够玩到更多的角色，顺便给系列的核心女性角色再来一波广告，如艾蕾因，静名，塞莉丝，蕾恩，这些一代没有机会游玩的角色。可是，这肝度已经堪比那些大型养成手游。一方面游戏时长大幅增加，但是全花在了打怪刷晶石材料，刷钱，购买装备上，却不是剧情或者分支任务上。时间久了，说实话非常无趣和疲劳。徒增游戏时长而已。另一方面又要说了，如果我喜欢这种养成手游的模式，大概率也不会出现在这里了。个人认为：单机游戏的体量一定要适度，要懂得控制，不要什么东西都往里塞。流程长≠优秀。精简内容，适当呈现，一直以来是这个系列没有掌握到的设计精髓。传说系列就像一个很talkative的人， 你不怕它跟你没话聊，就怕它一开口就收不住，说的你耳朵巨疼，这作依然如此。

4.完全没有必要的游戏改动。二代对游戏玩法上也进行了调整，特别是针对S-craft的触发机制进行了变动。现在的S-craft触发一次以后需要在解除完全增幅状态以后再次进入完全增幅，才能再次发动。简单来说，就是植入了冷却时间。不在像1代一样，只要CP足够、能量条足够就可以连续发动。这个改动看似虽小，但是对nightmare难度，会产生不容忽视的影响。冷却时间的出现，大大增加了噩梦难度的攻略难度（特别是前期，游戏1～2章的时候）。为什么这么说？官方的目的可能是希望玩家在对战boss级别敌人的时候，活用各种战技而不是盯着CP数疯狂发动S级必杀，这个意图很好懂。但是，Falcom你有没有想过，s-craft的作用仅仅是物理伤害天花板这一个作用吗？并不是。它更大的作用是抢turn。设想一个情景：当敌人即将发动强力技能甚至是S-break的时候，头上带着惊叹号，然后我们惊讶的发现，身边所有站场角色都处在S-craft冷却状态，唯一一个不是的，是奶妈。然后现在不是你的turn，你不能切换角色……Falcom你自己说，这情景尴尬不？不要觉得这样的情况不太可能可能发生，在噩梦难度里司空见惯，该难度boss都有海量的HP，S-craft一圈打下来boss还有半血很正常。这个机制不仅使得原先体验平衡的噩梦难度一下徒增莫名其妙的“随机性”，玩家适应需要很久。更重要的是，让前作没有太多感觉的能量条消耗翻倍，经常在boss战里要多次消耗行动次数平A，借以等能量条回复的窘境。除非有女1号亚妮艾丝释放神圣之花技能。那不用亚妮艾丝或者剧情原因她不在队伍里的时候呢？能量条也不是只用来发动S-craft，这不用我多说了吧。由于其战斗中紧缺，跟boss的消耗战里，还间接削弱了魔法攻击的作用。二代里基本上没什么机会给魔法攻击角色进入增幅，因为魔法攻击再厉害，伤害强不过S-craft，而能量条给物理角色增幅都经常不够用。

写给云豹
本来按照道理来说，本地化跟游戏内容没有太直接关联，批评应该是扯不到本地化上去，但是二代既然涨价了，那么我们至少希望本地化不说更好，至少维持一代的水平。然而结果却不是这样，非常遗憾。a)跟一代相比，二代出现了多次随机闪退的问题（一代记忆里1次都没有出现过），很频繁，不然没必要在这里写。b)游戏里碰到过恶性bug：在对黑月一战里，作为支援角色的AI黄金蝶，释放S-craft居然会打自己人，给自己人赋上自己打自己的debuff，导致头上三个问号，输的莫名其妙。载入重打没有再次出现，所以推测是恶性bug。c)切换场景载入速度是真的慢……虽然是感谢云豹加快了PC本地化的速度，让包括我在内的PC玩家能尽早体验黎之轨迹新作。但是如果必须要在质量和速度上做选择题，那我宁可等更长的时间，而不希望拿到的游戏本身有这些很影响游玩体验的优化问题。

总结，黎之轨迹2绯红之罪虽然大大增加了游戏的玩法和对已有内容的二次扩容，但在故事剧情，核心玩法的要素上缺乏考虑，不够严谨，使得到手的完成品大大低于以往系列作品应有的优秀水准，价格还涨了。即使是作为系列粉丝，也实在难以以原价推荐。如果喜欢黎1，也实在想玩，等打折吧

7/10

I don't know what ♥♥♥♥ the developers did with the new patch, to me, nothing improved, but they broke the game by several ways:

1. now the game will frequently crash at random spots, mainly happens at the fast traveling while loading maps. which NEVER happened even once for me when the game was launched.

2, Merlin trials: when doing jump trials, the FPS drops like crazy that made I often missed my step because of the serious lags.

3, Now I can' t even progress the main story because on ROOKWOOD's trial, on the second puzzle before the fight, I can't move the pillar which blocking my way because the pressure pad does not working, which is a game-breaking bug.

I have games pilling up on my end, I have ZARO extra time to wait a fix unless they do it like right now. By the time they have another patch, I've already moved to another game, won't come back again.

Not recommended, mysterious confusing changes I've never seen from a developer

Possibly the best One Piece RPG you meet once in your life time.

In this game, developer has nailed everything you could anticipate from one of the legendary JP animes in its history, while twisted a brand new story that fit the world of One Piece so perfectly. This game’s the real sight who has opened the curtain of gaming 2023, not SE’s Forspoken disaster.
Before I start the review, I’d like to take a few lines thanking the community who had helped me successfully decide pre-ordering the game when I had doubts about it, otherwise I would have missed this master piece by my faulty assumption. Thank you very much.

Pros
+Story
Just like it’s anime, One Piece’s story will never disappoint you, this game’s the same. It combines real emotional moments from the anime with the story acting on its own. The purpose is clear: to help someone who never watched any anime of One Piece would still be able to know what have happened ‘in the past’ in order to enjoy the story as much as possible. For the fans, to review these memorable moments from the anime in the game, is a special treat. Not only have they opened sentimental feelings you had with the anime once more, but also gave you a new path towards ‘salvation’ which probably many of you wanted so badly when there was nothing you could do in its original ’place’, myself included. This is the furthest I can say about the story part, play the game to find all the secrets and eastern eggs within the game!

+Combat
Who said turn based combat can’t be fun? It’s glad to see the tradition of JRPG returns when the video game industry today totally shifted into ARPG a bit too much. Not only a fresh wind it is in the gap of mountains of ARPGs to me, but also it designed so well that leveling up don’t feel like grinding at all. Plus, not all the games need to be as hard as Dark Souls or Elder Rings to enjoy, OPO shows another route to enjoy the gameplay at its fullest by simply let you be ‘ invincible’ without cheating.

+Semi-Open World
Despite it isn’t completely a JRPG with open world, there are still plenty of things you can do in the game: Tons of side quests, collectables; cooking dishes; party to gain buffs before battles; make combat equipment...you can be pretty busy in the game depending on how you like to play the story out.

+VAs
All from the original anime, wanted to emerge yourself in the world of the One Piece pirates one more time? They surely heard ya.


Cons
-Side Quests
The issue with side quests mainly in the game is, after you accepted the missions, the mark of the NPCs who assigned the quests on your map will be vanished. You gotta have a real good memories about where they were located or only take a few in case you forgot whom was whom, and where were each one of them. Developers could have simply marked the quest- taken NPC with a grey symbol like any other open-world RPGs, then we would have less hard time to find the quests-givener while trying to do multiple missions at the same time. Also, another issue with side quests is: objective aren’t marked on your map, you will be given a rough idea about where to go by NPC lines or description, and...some of them could be pretty difficult to find at times. Either gives more hints when players couldn’t find the objectives for a long time, or mark them on the map, in my opinion would be a better design choice. It won’t destroy the fun to finish them, really. The legends of Heroes franchise marked all quests and exactly where I needed to go, I never got bored or thought they were too easy to complete :)

-Collectables
Again, for a completist(because I can’t love this game more) like me, it’s a nightmare to find out I’ve missed some of collectables after the journey’s end, when none of the ones I’ve collected are marked on my map. So there was no way to know which one I missed and where it could possibly be, all I could do becoming either running all maps all over again in hope of finding the missable ones I’ve left out which takes seriously time and effort or I had no choice but to look at a guide for help(facepalm). It could be much better if the map didn’t regenerate the empty jars, only left the ones I didn’t notice on my first walkthrough, or simply marked collectables’ location that I have gotten on my map, then I know where I need to search and where I don’t.


Overall
Few Cons, nothing related to the main story couldn’t possible ruin the bright sides of this game, and One Piece Odyssey has passed far from the bottom line of merely satisfaction. On the contrary, it’s easily one of my favorite games of all time, and it also becomes the first game I decided completing with 100% in 2023 to pay the respect that Bandai’s team had done a great job to craft this new pirates’ world, charming and unique for whom keeps calling me coming back once for more.

P.S if this game would have a sequel, I will be glad to support it regardless. I love Adio, he’s my favorite character, his past is like what a grown man could have faced, and he had my sympathy

If the entire game industry were a mega sized ceiling, then the big titles were the large pillars there to hold it firmly. Usually because the sizes of these pillars were so massive, few cracks on the surface, we’d let it slide, because unlikely, cracks would result pillars to crumble. However, the cracks on Forspoken are largely enough not to ignore. When I brought this game, I was fully aware I will be a beta tester for the community, that wasn’t the problem, as long as the quality of the product I’ve received were guaranteed. SE, when you charge people buying a game for a price no one else dares to set before within the industry, you better be as good as an alien technology could do. Or you will see this coming naturally.

I didn’t play this game for long, not only because it didn’t make out alive for the 2 hours expectation test, but also I don’t want missing the refund insurance I have when purchased games from Steam. Okay, here’s the dark side of the game I’ve seen for this 101 minutes.

The Character
I still have a hard time to believe a company who’ve created Cecil, Rosa, Kain, Aerith, Cloud, Tifa, Zack, Yuna, Tidus, Rikku, Lightning, Noel, Serah, Prompto, Aranea… countless incredible characters from the past, managed to make a gorgeous actress in real life to be so ugly to look at in a video game. In case people misunderstood me for a ‘racist’, no, I brought Forspoken purely because Ella Balinska(Fray) is in it. I enjoyed her films, television shows and was a fan of her. However, SE literally made me go to her social media and clicked unfollow after the short course with Forspoken. Frankly speaking, Square never had a game so desperately need a mod until this game was out. ‘Someone please…just replace her with a 2B mod that my eyes could stop bleeding for a moment…’ This was what I was constantly thinking in the game. Anyways, video games are unreal, it’s not much different to make a daily street girl go to a magic world or a film star to do the same thing, none of these will happen in real life regardless. The difference is: if Square made a film star venture into Athia, we kept Ella’s stunning looking as Fray, Forspoken would have one less issue to talk about here.

Gameplay Mechanics
Despite I couldn’t go too far off in the game, but the combat honestly in my opinion, seems won’t last being interesting for long. Why? Because all you do is range attack. I started the game with highest difficulty due to I’ve played way too many ARPGs, and experienced too for this genre. On the beginning stage, all Fray’s skill is this magic arrows, all you do is keep your distance and shoot your foes to death. The thing is: when Fray takes damage, you do not block, the cuff reduces the damage taken automatically. And when the difficulty level is hard like I was in, due to boss’s damage is high, keeping the safe distance and shooting it seems the safest strategy to battle. I never doubt that close combat magics will unlock in the later stage, but, there seems still far less to do in this game than a normal ARPG often does, because how the game mechanics were designed. You parkour(dodge), you shoot, when target’s down, close the distance, blast some serious damage, stay away from enemies, then repeat, what else? I could be wrong on this maybe, but from what I’ve played, this isn’t the best Square can do, wanna an example? Recall what you did with FF XV in first 2 hours.

Visuals
There’s a new genre called Ultimate PC Rig Tester, just in case you’ve never heard of. This game is one of them. A confirmation of friends from PlayStation 5: this game cannot turn all graphic settings on ultra levels without frame rate dropping(when over 60), losing texture details, blurred environment sight while parkouring that any eyes can easily notice. Hopefully Sony learned its lesson, better stop carrying bricks(exclusives) around next time, in case it dropped and hit your own toes. So Forspoken isn’t ‘the one’ for PS5 unfortunately, the marriage is always better with PCs. If you have a high-end PC, the game is an excellent tool to test whether there were any hardware needed a replacement or not. However, even the visual which sounds like the brightest part of Forspoken, has problems: you can’t turn off HDR for unknown reason, which resulting me can’t take a screenshot( not HDR form), otherwise I would compare the scenery in game to other triple A games in this review, to prove the graphic isn’t that good compared to some other similar production value games, although everything has been turning on ultimate level with 4K. E.g the story started in NYC at night, yes? Then, see the night landscape in Sony’s Marvel’s Spider-man, then return to Forspoken again, sorry Square, Forspoken is not really on the same level. The first boss is a dragon yes? What we get here is a very blurred figure of a huge black dragon that we can barely see the detail of the body… Then how about we get back to the fight in God of War, remember that dragon we fought in the mountain? You see every scale of its body which looks so real as if the creature is alive and being motion captured. What is hard to believe, you can almost get two spiddy games or one Spider-man, one God of War equals the price of Forspoken Deluxe Edition like I’ve done here. Why I said Forspoken DE? Because you will miss some content in standard version and still have to buy DLCs later for a completed game, no? No choice but compared the DE which is 90 USD imao

Price
Square’s market strategy is confusing to read. After it have delivered a brilliant game (FFRIVII) last year which restored some faith and trust of me to them. I brought most of SE’s new titles after: some were good, some were not so much, but generally satisfying. I never leave an unhappy review to them. Then, it gives me this half-baked triple A game with the same price. And resulted the trust Square has stored to me has lost again over a night. I don’t know what SE thinks, but if I were FFVIIRI, I would be quite embarrassed for being equaled the same value of Forspoken.

First game-ball match kickoff this year, I kicked a rock instead and hurt my feet. Had to sit on the grass and howl ouch for a while. What a sad story. Get myself up and had to refund.

Despite I’m hurt from Forspoken while still try to write a comedy to make sure you: evade this mine/ amused you after reading my review. More importantly, saved your bank accounts from becoming someone else’s treasures!! Edit: it's good Square finally give you a demo to try this game out, see for yourself if you still believe this game is as good as to pick it up right away. 1 hour gameplay should be more than enough to have a gist of it

As I have promised my friend MOJI to write a review for SM a while back, so here I am. Despite usually, I don’t write a review for a game if itself is caught between good and bad these days, I’d only make a review either the game’s extremely enjoyable or horrible to play, there’s no between. If the game’s content is too subjective, recommendation would also be hard to evaluate.

To sum up, the mixed reviews on the game’s store page is very accurate. SM has its charms along with some hard to ignore problems.

Good Part
Gorgeous art, not too much to explain
Excellent voice acting, 4 girls, 4 total different personalities, VAs have managed to make them sound real enough
Light humor between girls, if you’re into girls’ himitsu’, those sort of things. The writings is kinda fun.
No bugs, like zero

Bad part
Horrible level design, repetitive like a hell. You often need to speed run a level to reach the highest score once. Then do it agin for objectives like killing certain number of enemies, finding hidden treasues within the level for other gold ratings & achievements. The dumb part is, minions are only continuously summoned around elite creatures or bosses. In order to kill enough enemies, you’re forced not to kill these monsters until you have enough kills. But these bad guys aren’t there for the show, their attack value are high, sounds like a challenge to do? In reality, not as romantic as it sounds. There are 27 levels in the main story, 3 different difficulties across all of them, not to mention 15 bubble pockets levels for characters which are extra stages. So you’re not doing this just a few times, it's a large number. Now you can imagine how tedious the gameplay is.

The level designs are pretty much forced you grinding, in order to farm materials for weapon upgrades while doing these gold ratings. If you have no interest to do so, the later stage’s enemies would be too powerful to beat.

Battle, the control is clunky. The auto lock up an enemy’ has issues. Boss battles are the worst. When there are too many enemies around, the aim of the locker isn’t accurate enough to focus on whom you want to attack, it sometimes switches automatically for whom you facing in front of you. It's pretty useless again mankind bosses, when you're too far away from the boss, you lose focus. If boss does jump attack, you lose focus again. It's horrible.

My advice: if you’re looking for an anime ARPG similar to this game to play, I’d suggest play Scarlet Nexus, Tales of Arise, Samurai Warrior 5 Onee Chanbara Origin or Neptunia x Senran Kagura: Ninja Wars instead, because all of them did way better in terms of an ARPG or H&S genre. Gameplay wise speaking, Samurai Maiden isn’t a good showcase at all here. Unless you’ve done all these 5, and still interested in SM, then considering buying it when the price is right for you. Full price is still too high for the value SM offers from my perspective.
After all, game isn’t an anime or movie, if it’s not fun to play, art style can’t cover all the cost you’ve spent on it, this is the vital problem of this game.


*Some side note I just want to add: I like the concept of anime girls, maybe it’s not my place to say this, but ARPGs or H&S genres might be popular these days, they’re not some kind of fancy genre without flaws. They have two major problems: One, there’re too many in the market these years. Just 2022 alone, I’ve completed 47 games, 30+ were ARPGs, I can pretty much call myself a master of this genre, but even it’s me, after a year’s ‘training’ like this, I get very tired, and prefer to play other genres with the same concept instead of ARPGs if possible. Two, it’s not a genre that easily can be made by anyone or any group. A good one is nothing short of a hard achievement. Despite I am not a professional video game developer, however, from a player’s end, I know what a great ARPG is when I played one. If we talk about japan only, all the real good ones almost all coming from companies who have the traditions and years of history of making them. E.g Bandai Namco, Capcom, Koei Tecmo. It took Square years’ effort transforming from a turn based on rpg maker to an ARPG developer. If you consider Nier Automata not a story-driving game but an ARPG, it would be another problematic unfinished product. FFVIIRI is still considered being a semi-arpg for many occasions. Lately FFVII CCR is good enough as a true ARPG like FF XV have done, but look at how many years Square has been spending on developing this genre alone? If we talk about outside of Japan, why Batman Arkham series are so positively received as an ARPG? Because the combat moves are very accurate, you never miss a hit because the lock system ‘accidentally ‘ locked the wrong target; moves connected to each other flawlessly resulting the entire combo flow can go as long as you like if you don’t make mistake yourself. Why Marvel’s Spider-Man is overwhelming rated? Pretty much for the same reason.

You want a game with anime girls? Nice. In Sengoku era? No problem. But does it have to be an ARPG? From the product we’ve brought and played, the answer is really not so. You know, Yakuza Like a dragon abandoned ARPG tradition, went to a turn based on combat style, it doesn’t stop it becoming a critically claimed title for once more. SM could have be much better game if it were a pure VN. It has gorgeous art, brilliant VAs, interesting story, but not the action part.

Before I write about my own ‘view’ of this game, I’d like to state something very important to you all about this ‘Legacy of Thieves Collection’ first.
As the title describes, the game is a collection, there’re two different ‘projects’ under the same title in the game with different directors directing the stories. One’s called ‘ A Thief’s End’ which is an adventure of seeking legendary pirate’s treasure with Nathan Drake being the protagonist in the story. The other one is called’ The Lost Legacy’ which is based on Indian mythology, the protagonist in this journey is Chole Frazer. Despite ‘the Two’ have some certain casts appearing in both campaigns, the two protagonists: Nathan and Chole will never bump into each other because it’s not the same story with a different time. Moreover, the gameplay also differs, A Thief’s End is a linear campaign with 60% focusing on gunplay, hand-to hand combat, 40% with exploration the environment such as climbing, puzzle solving, item collecting, etc. The Lost Legacy is a mixture of open world and linear(point to point) adventure that giving you a chance to spend more time on exploring the world they’ve crafted with side missions, complex puzzles, collectibles etc. The gunplay and battles in the other hand, are less heavier, less often.

OK, now we’re clear about the different concepts of the campaigns, let’s talk about them with my own insights. I am being completely honest to say, when I did A Thief’s End, I wasn’t planning writing a review for it at all simply I wasn’t impressed. Why? Despite the game delivers stunning visuals, cinematic cut-scenes, they’re triple A standard, no question here. However, A Thief’s End, had a very disappointing story right from the start, ‘Seeking a pirate treasure’(I don’t go to the point beyond this, spoilers free review). Believe me, as a 30+ years old full-grown man, I’ve at least heard & watched & played more than couples of similar stuffs from radio programs to films and video games, though the details could be different, the idea itself isn’t original. It will be quite hard to impress me by this idea I’ve known pretty too well. I had my gut feeling at the start and it failed as I guessed. What’s worse? Compare to Chole Frazer, Nathan was pretty boring to me ( sorry boys) for the most of time. If this wasn’t enough, in his story, certain characters’ certain decisions and actions they’ve done, I found it’s difficult to acknowledge. Can’t go with the detail, in short, the story was a big letdown. The gameplay is linear, it wasn’t the problem bothering me, the real problem is: the game’s very repetitive aside from sightseeing, all you do is reaching to a place, found a clue, fighting some enemies in a frequent bases. Once short objective was reached, repeating the process in a different place. I’d only recommend this game (if it were A Thief’s End alone), to players who enjoying sightseeing(a beast rig is a must to achieve this goal), gun-fighting, cinematic visuals. Unfortunately, this is not my definition of a magnificent game should be. In quite the opposite, they can simply design a pixel graphic game with some original creative ideas with a well-written story that could easily win my recommendation, none triple A standard were required. On the contrary, all these eyes candies were bring together with a dull story is like talking to a beautiful woman with a boring soul, I don’t think she will keep my attention on her for long, so it was the same with Nathan’s adventure.

The ultimate fact that alternatively changed my mind to write a recommendation for Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection is Chole Frazier’s story alone: The Lost Legacy. I must say, girls have done an excellent job this time than boys had. 1st, as I mentioned a little above, her campaign is based on Indian mythology with directors’ own visions of creativity. The idea itself is very original, I’ve never heard nor seen a sophisticate story of this in the first place. I’ve searched my memories, in Tomb Raider III, Lara Croft went to Indian jungle, but aside from some fights and minimum sightseeing, nothing deep down to the mythology or Indian culture itself, nothing in comparison. In TR Underworld, Lara went to Thailand, despite sharing some similar landscapes like South-East Asia mountains, jungles, Buddha(Shiva)statues, again, barely scratched anything under the surface of Buddhism or Indian mythology. The Lost Legacy however, have done it terrifically, not only with the excellent storytelling, but also the amazing landscape to travel around. 2nd, compare to Nathan Drake, Chole Frazer is a much more interesting protagonist to play with, I enjoyed her British accent which woke some good memories of my old days, with a sense of her dark humor, characteristic personality, she was nothing short of fun to tag along. Just as she said,’ no one is perfect’, the good and bad thing she had done, made her ‘a real person’ who walked into my heart in her own way. She reminds me of Catherine Zeta Jones’ performance in the film: Entrapment, though the subjects were not the same. When a game somehow managed to establish a link connecting my real life events, I would no longer treat it as if it were someone else’s story, it undoubtedly got my full attention now. 3rd, gameplay-wise speaking, unlike A Thief’s End, The Lost Legacy approached players by a different path: by encouraging players to explore the world with some clever design’s help, the game came together as a whole new world to adventure. For example, by completing some certain side missions which will reward you ‘an easy way’ to find all the missable treasures scattering across the land. While in ATE, all 100+ treasures have no hints, it’s impossible to find them all on your first run unless you have a guide at hand. E.g. Reducing repetitive combat which weren’t much creative room there to work with. Instead, focusing on well-crafted puzzles that take some serious time to study with then solve. These examples showed the development team does seem to take some time experimenting if they were players, what would be fun to do in the game? (When you design some hidden treasures in the game, you don’t want players eventually couldn’t find them, do you?) Little by little, this was what makes the difference in the end. 4th, I could even say, A Lost Legacy has done better than any piece of new Tomb Raider Trilogy had done. It’s a quite difficult compliment to earn. Especially comes from someone who have played TR first, not the other way around due to Sony’s delusion of what exclusives could have brought to them.

But one thing A Thief’s End did better than The Lost Legacy is: it has few crashing issues for the entire long game and none of them are game-breaking. TLL in the other hand, have some serious issues I have to mention here as a fare warning. It crashes to desktop so often, literally in the 2nd half of the game, every water scenarios, it would crash for unknown reason. Some of them are close to game- breaking because they did happen in the same spots multiple times in a row which almost stuck me from progressing the story. This is a red flag no kidding. I have a high-end PC, 4K unlimited FPS with Render Scale set to 180%, I have no idea what kind of advanced setting inside could have caused this, likely, the problem is not on my end. Look, I am not saying crash issues definitely will happen to you too, but just in case, there’s a potential risk here if you ended up purchasing this game right now. Just keep this in mind. Well, it doesn’t affect my purchase decision by now since I have already completed the game, but it will do for my future orders from Sony: e.g I won’t buy The Last of Us Part.1 in advance knowing full well from the same studio, I could experience the same issue which ultimately could break my game if I were not so lucky next time. I surely have no desire to take the risk.