Recent reviews by agrajag

i'm not that far in, but i'm having fun. the atmosphere and the environmental design is awesome, the different types of guns are neat. my main complaint is that there seems to be a bunch of stuff that feels totally extraneous, like the weapon levelling and mod stuff. it's relatively minor but it does feel distracting to me from the core game design.

this is fun up except when they start throwing invisible notes at you, which in every rhythm game that features it is inevitably the worst part of the game

thankfully there aren't that many songs that meaningfully use them, but i have yet to play most of the impossible charts so i guess we'll see if that changes

a little conflicted on this, but overall positive and optimistic for any future games in the setting. i came in not wanting to carry dgr baggage (as a huge fan of 1/2/v3), but rain code makes that hard to avoid. it does stand on its own if you haven't, but kodaka is still using the same narrative structure from the dgr games which in particular invites comparison, and certain moments in the narrative hit so much harder if you have played any of them before.

my main complaint is that the labyrinths can feel rather clunky and bogged down at times. class trials had a similar issue when you figured out the case ahead of time, but i think the rapidfire debate structure of the still gave it some kind of propulsive momentum, whereas in labyrinths its just you, shinigami, and your +1 of the case wandering around. they still manage to do some cool things with it though, so i'm optimistic they'll improve on it if they do a sequel. the other thing that really stuck out to me was that the writing in the prologue case was uncharacteristically weak, like it was written completely separately from the rest of the game. thankfully, it does rapidly get better after that to a consistently high standard.

the voice acting is pretty great all around, but i have to single out koyasu in what is i think one of his best performances. really goofy but strangely melancholic and beaten down, i think the closest point of comparison is something like his hans christian anderson in fate, but this is still distinct from that.

more like this please

the ux felt weirdly messier than the first one, but still overall good. the narrative is quite a bit more complex than before but i really liked the way it all pulled together in the end, looking forward to the dlcs

seems like an interesting synthesis of tis-100 and spacechem

translation a bit janky at times, but a very charming adventure mystery.

cute incremental game that is basically the perfect length, you should be able to figure out a coherent plan to end it right when you hit the top tier of prestige upgrades. also has an extremely funny ending

it's been a while since i actually played this, but i feel like this has to be one of the most important puzzle games of the past decade, certainly one that is never far from my mind. the sense of discovery as the game teaches just what you're able to accomplish with your weird ♥♥♥♥♥♥ fork thing is basically unsurpassed.

you can see all the little details that descended from the soulsborne lineage, but it soon becomes its own strange little offshoot to the point where it's practically not the same family anymore. mechanically, i don't think from has ever made something that makes you feel as much like a god as doing mikiri/jump counters, lol.