Recent reviews by wadeithan

JRPGs have been my favorite genre since I was a kid in the NES days, so I've played a ton of them over the past four decades, and having finished the game once now (I'm debating whether to go back and clean up or just jump into NG+ at the moment), I can say that this game stands shoulder to shoulder with the all-time greats. The story is fresh and goes to some wild places, the characters all have depth and phenomenal voice acting which will make you feel bonded to them (but we can all agree that Lune is the best one, right?), and the combat is so excellent that I found myself grinding, not because I needed to but because I was just enjoying fighting things so much. I could go on and on about the combat, but I'll keep it brief and say that there's a lot of depth between character builds, weapon skills, Pictos, and Lumina, and you can come up with some wild synergies that seem broken until you run into something that completely disrupts that synergy and wrecks you. But then you just get to find a new one.

You can see a lot of the dev team's inspirations in the game (the weapon scaling and replenishable healing items from Dark Souls, the QTEs in combat from something in the Mario RPG family or Lost Odyssey, the slick UI from recent Persona games, etc.), but it never feels like they're just taking ideas from other games and shoving them all together. They take these ideas and often build on them or give them a little twist, so even the familiar feels refreshing. All around, it's an amazing experience that I'd recommend even to people who aren't JRPG fans.

Oh, the soundtrack is fantastic, too. I could keep thinking of great things to say, but you should stop reading reviews and just go experience it for yourself.

Take some classic Mega Man, add a dash of Bionic Commando, throw in a heaping spoonful of Mega Man Zero/ZX, and what do you get? Gravity Circuit. It's packed with great level design and combat, nice sprite designs, and a catchy chiptune soundtrack. If you like pseudo-old school platformers, you will not be disappointed.

Steam only shows I have a few hours in the game, but I also have 70-ish on Origin from when Titanfall 2 first came out, so I feel equipped to give an informed opinion. That opinion is that Titanfall 2 is my favorite FPS ever. Both the campaign and multiplayer are excellent, the movement system is unparalleled by any other game before or since, and the feeling of climbing into a Titan never gets old or passe. The shooting feels great in that way that only Zampella and co. can capture, the MP maps are all well-designed, and the campaign features some of the most creative designs in an FPS.

Overall, the game is amazing, and if you haven't played it, you're doing yourself a disservice (much like EA did by releasing it the week between 2016's CoD and Battlefield installments, but I'll save that rant for elsewhere).

To quote LL Cool J, "Whatever it is, don't call it a [Souls-like]." Despite some surface-level similarities with From Software's most popular series (sorry, Armored Core) and a comparable level of difficulty, this is a different beast altogether, and it's all the better for it. This is a game about being aggressive while also being patient, wearing your foes' defenses down until you can land that single, killing strike. There's no armor or weaponry to change, no stats to min/max, etc. It's just a matter of learning the game's systems, mastering the combat, and understanding what each enemy and boss will throw at you so you know how to counter it. The stealth attacks may be overpowered at this point, but the combat and level traversal are incredibly fluid and engaging, making the stealth a minor quibble. Overall, though, it's incredibly fun and satisfying and effectively dispels any fears that, after a decade of working on SoulsBorne games, From Software was out of new ideas.

I'm from the gaming old school, so I've been playing Final Fantasy games since the first one came out on the NES, I think FF VI is a masterpiece, and I think FF VII is--while still good--overrated. I tell you all this not to seem like a gaming hipster but to give some context to my review. I continued to play all the games in the series, and while I enjoyed them, the feeling of "they don't make them like they used to" increased with each game. That feeling stopped with FF XV.

To be clear, FF XV makes it clear that Square-Enix have no interest in "making them like they used to," and that's actually a good thing. Much like FF VII took the series in a wildly new direction while still keeping enough things to make it feel comfortably like a FF game, XV pulls a similar trick, but does so more drastically. The shift to open-world structure and real-time combat sounds like a big change on paper, but I never once felt like this wasn't a Final Fantasy game. And it works. It works amazingly well, actually.

The world is interesting and fleshed out, the characters are engaging and well-developed, the combat is fun (though a bit button mashy at times), there's a ton of interesting stuff to do, and the story was pretty strong and had a perfect resolution. I've seen some people complain about the pacing of the story or how things become somewhat linear toward the end, but those things didn't seem that problematic to me. As the story goes along, the urgency of things ramps up, so it makes sense to me that the main plot would become more of the focus. Your mileage may vary. To put it in perspective, I put ~80 hours into the game by the time I completed the main story, and the "too linear" part of the game didn't kick in until about 72 hours in.

With FF XV, Final Fantasy feels fresher and more interesting and accessible than it has in a long, long time.

I play a lot of 2D platformers, and this is one of the best I've played in recent years. It leans heavily on the standard Metroidvania framework, but the puzzles and abilities you acquire really make it feel like something fresh and unique. The art is great, the boss fights are satisfyingly difficult until you figure out their patterns, and the puzzles are often difficult enough to make you feel accomplished when you solve them without being so difficult or abstract that you run screaming for an FAQ. I could go on, but I think you get the point: there's a lot to like here.

Unfortunately, there are also a few things to be aware of going into it that might affect your enjoyment. First, the English translation is a mess. It's never so bad that you can't understand what they're trying to say, but it's obvious that non-native speakers translated it and the dude listed on the credits as "Translation QA" didn't actually "A" the "Q," which is especially strange given that the game came out in early access initially, so there was plenty of time to have those errors pointed out. If you're like me and grew up in the NES days, when broken English was the standard in video game translations, or if you don't care that much about these things, it's not probably a deal-breaker.

More frustrating was that sometimes--seemingly due to debris being at odd angles--I would land solidly on a platform, but I would just fall through it as if it wasn't something I could stand on or that I'd missed the platform. It didn't come up very often, but most of the times it did, the "non-platform" was over spikes or a bottomless pit. Even though it was rare, the somewhat finicky platforms are something to be aware of.

Overall, though, this was a great game, and the fact it isn't being talked about more is a shame.

It took me a couple of levels for this game to really click with me, but I stuck with it--largely due to the beautiful hand-drawn art and Norse mythology theme--and I'm glad I did. If you took the exploration/boss fight emphases of Shadow of the Colossus and the combat of Hyper Light Drifter (and yes, I realize Hyper Light Drifter came out after this game did), you would probably end up with something very much like Jotun, which I think is great. The levels are also well designed, and the mythological theme isn't just pasted on over the top of the mechanics. It informs the level designs, boss fights, character designs, etc.

I won't say it was all perfect. Some of the levels felt a bit too long for their own good, but it never got to the point of being intolerable, and it was only a couple of levels. Overall, if you're looking for a fast-paced brawler, look elsewhere, but if you want an exploration-focused game with good boss fights, killer visuals, and a strong mythological flavor, you're in the right place.

Based on the trailer, I thought I would end up enjoying this game quite a bit. I love retro-styled platformers, and the idea of one that incorporated a free-running movements system into a 2D platformer seemed intriguing. Unfortunately, the parkour system is a huge frustration, as it doesn't seem as if the wall running triggers reliably when it should. Pair this with the unnecessary repetition of screens by having to play every one at least twice on each level, and things get annoying quickly. There are also some issues with being able to tell when the character will grab onto a ledge or hang from a bar, which can lead to seemingly random deaths.

The game also seems to have an identity problem, as the parkour movement encourages speed and free-flowing platforming (when it works), but then there will be things inserted into the levels that you have to stop and wait for, such as drones to hide from or precise jumps to time between laser beams. Similarly, the combat sections seem to want to replicate a martial arts fight, and while you have various types of attacks, you can simply mash your basic attacks and get through pretty much any fight.

The story also makes no sense. I assume that the concept of "chuunibyou" is something that Japanese people or fans of anime and manga would understand, but I had to look it up. Once I did, though, it seemed like a simple enough idea. In the game, though, it seems less clear what is real and what is in the character's delusion. There are also times where there are sentences that just don't make any sense, and the dialogue is often awkward and unnatural (such as the time the characters are discussing the virtues of manga artists and how they should be viewed, which feels very preachy directly toward the player). It was all very bizarre.

It's really a shame, too, as it has a lot of potential, and when things work like they're supposed to, it can be really fun. I try to keep in mind that the game was only $2, so I wasn't expecting something as polished as a Shovel Knight or Freedom Planet, but the four hours I spent with the game were four of the most frustrating hours I've spent with a game in recent memory.

I really had high hopes for this game, being a fan of pretty much every genre it attempts to blend together, but it just didn't do anything for me. It wasn't actively bad, it was just very boring. The town management aspects were very simple, and you really only had to make any decisions in that regard when you unlocked a new crafting or building recipe. The quests and storylines were somewhat interesting, but felt like they were pretty much all fetch quests or "oh, you found me, but you really need to go to this other place and talk to this other person" kinds of events. The card game that you use to resolve any encounters (which is probably the aspect I was most excited about) ends up being very boring and borderline annoying, to the point that I found myself having the game auto-resolve encounters just to avoid it. That was the point that I knew it was time for a refund.

I feel like this game had the potential to be something great and refreshing, but the mechanics and the way the elements of the different genres were integrated led to a bland game that was generally uninteresting to play.

This was a great little gem of a game. It nails the classic, William Gibson-esque cyberpunk setting better than pretty much any other game I can think of (trenchcoats and sunglasses for everyone!; garrish neon, sleek chrome, and dingy gray all co-mingling; etc.), though the plot is somewhat generic "hackers vs. corporation/shadow organization" story that you often see in cyberpunk literature and media.

It plays well, reminding me of a modern, somewhat more action focused take on a Flashback-style game, with a Geometry Wars-lite hacking minigame thrown in. You run around a focused (some would say "small") open world taking on quests to help the downtrodden and fight the power while raising funds to augment yourself in order to more effectively continue helping the downtrodden and fighting the power. That makes it sound a bit repetitive, and I guess it is, but it doesn't feel that way, especially given the game's pacing and how interesting many of the sidequests are. There are even moral choices for you to make, though it seems like there are only three or four that will end up having a significant impact on the ending, which may limit replay value.

There were also times I ran into a few minor bugs, such as character portraits not changing when speakers change in dialogue or brief periods of stuttery movements from the main character, but none were game-breaking and they only happened once or twice each. Speaking of movements, while the sprites are all well-designed and interesting, there were some somewhat stiff, awkward animations at times, particularly with background characters. It was often easy to overlook, but other times, it was distracting or comical. For instance, one location featured background characters who were supposed to be dancing seductively, but it ended up looking more like they were attempting to do the Robot.

Overall, though, the good far outweighs the bad with this game, and the few bad things are relatively minor in most cases. If you like action-adventure games with a helping of RPG-like progression or need a cyberpunk fix, I suggest you give Dex a shot.