Recent reviews by Ceriss

I went into this expecting to find something somewhat charming that I play a bit and then forget about, I was totally blown away! This is one of my favorite games this year, and perhaps of all time.

I'm actually not even 100% finished, I've still yet to face the Wasp Queen and Infected Brood mother optional bosses. At the start I played a shared world with my boyfriend. He wanted achievements so he had to put it down to mild to avoid friendly fire without making a custom game. He also found the spiders too difficult and while I wanted the difficulty to stay at normal at first, friendly fire really sucks on higher difficulties for non-custom games so we stuck with mild.

It was a joy to explore this unique, hand crafted set of levels. There's incredible motivation to go out and explore. Your job is basically to unshrink and to do that you need to find and explore shrunken down labs which each have their own challenges, insect infestations, incredible deep water, toxic gas, etc. Furthermore you need to take care of your day to day needs as well, you need to build shelter, have systems for food and water, and build better and better equipment for yourself. All of these systems are tied seamlessly and enticingly with exploration and combat. Finding new bugs to fight grants you new parts to craft weapons and armor, they give you more cooking recipes and more convenient ways to eat and drink.

The combat is somewhat unexpected for this, it requires some reflexes, especially for spider like enemies, if you're bad at timing blocks you might want to lower the difficulty or even make a custom game to help yourself out. I really enjoyed it, I started out with a larva dagger which is really a sword and then moved on to the spider dagger, a real sword and shield combo. It was incredibly fast and its poison melted enemies quickly who didn't resist it. Enemies have weaknesses, resistances, and elements like spicy, fresh, sour, and salty take the place of fire, ice, lightning, and earth.

The characters and story are intriguing as well, I don't want to give even a bit of it away, but this game is just incredible. Everything you do ties together in a satisfying way so no matter what you choose to do you're always making some kind of exciting progress. Cleverly there are optional areas that motivate you to explore them not just from their visual interest but because you can always find something new there. Indeed, many of these optional areas have some of the best weapon and armor recipes available to you.

While not as important, I have to mention how amazing the graphics are. I don't have the most powerful computer so it kind of chugs near my base once in a while but outside of tightly designed and object loaded player housing my 3050 (laptop, so like a 1660 really) and my i5 at 4.1 ghz with 32 gb of ram worked out perfectly fine at max settings in the yard. The yard itself is a sight to behold, plants show transparency to light, water looks perfect, lighting is breath taking. Character models and enemies are stylized but don't clash and work incredibly well with the style chosen.

If you like Minecraft but wanted it to look like it's modded realistically, don't mind the building being more restrictive, but want more interesting combat and a more tailored experience for exploration with easier co-op, this is a fantastic choice. I will most likely go back with other friends and do a custom game. I'll probably go and finish the Wasp Queen and the Infected Broodmother at some point later. I couldn't get enough of this game and all I wanted to do in my free time is play it more and more and more. Get that next weapon, build that next part of my base!

I bought this on the March 8th patch and it's been broken since that day. For me it's "technically" playable but there's an lod texture bug that causes ultra low resolution textures to load in on my character and the surroundings making the game look absolutely hideous. It's an eye sore and it's totally immersion breaking.

RT has been broken since the last patch. People with super computers (4090's and 13900ks) are getting performance problems.
This game is a travesty do NOT buy this, it has been broken since March 8th and there has been NO word about a fix or even an acknowledgement of the problem.

Are you looking for a better Pokemon replacement? This may or may not be for you, in this review I'll go through some key differences that will help you determine if this experience is for you. It's true that I have a low playtime but due to circumstances that I'll go through shortly, I've requested a refund and want to give a fuller idea of what TemTem really is.

TemTem is marketed as a Pokemon like MMO. You still battle, catch, and strive to collect Pokemon like in Single Player. There are still Gym like battled called Dojos.

Battle System

This is a mixed bag. On the positive side Tem can relearn old moves at anytime outside of battle from the Tem menu. Tem can evolve mid battle. Tem have much better movepools than most Pokemon and Tem are far better balanced than Pokemon.

On the negatives, animations cannot be sped or skipped. When asked, the Devs say this will disrupt the economy despite early adopters already having won the economy. There's already a 1% in the economy and making grinding faster for everyone wouldn't hurt the economy. The devs disagree and insist it goes against their vision, which is admirable, but it's still a poor decision.

There is no RNG whatsoever, some people might consider this a pro however this means there are no surprises good or bad. No critical hits on either side. Battles don't have as much variation due to these decisions.

While I personally have not experienced "end game" I hear AI enemies spam switching constantly which means it can be frustrating early on and then become a chore of simple prediction once you're used to it, this has been said by several players.

Exploration -

Is vastly inferior to Pokemon. For the entire first island there is no speedy option, no fly, no bike. You walk everywhere. There are no real repels. There's an item called scents which MAYBE will prevent some encounters but not all. It's harder to run from wild Tem than it is to run from Pokemon too so prepare to take hits. There's no real exciting items to find either. Everything was stuff I could get in the shop. By 12 hours in Pokemon I had found at least a TM or something. I got one in a quest reward but I never found one by exploring.

There's a LOT of time wasting backtracking that's clearly only in the game to pad your time, it's extremely frustrating and is even integrated into the actual story. If you're like me and you want to pick up the side quests and explore, you quickly get burned out from all the pointless travel. At some point I just wanted to just rush through the main content and get it over with.

Monetization - There is a cosmetic only battle pass AND an in game shop. Yes it's nothing that's p2w but in an MMO we all know that fashion matters. I don't feel that TemTem does the MMO portion very well but they clearly want to be an MMO and so this is definitely a point against them. There are cosmetics in game but they're expensive.... Which leads us to-

In game economy for SP -

Everything is hyper expensive. The entire game is designed to eat your time and in game money. Scents make it difficult to avoid wild encounters which means you can fail to run and take hits, that means you'll need to use balms, 10 of which will cost all of your early game money and maybe 20% of the money you have when you're nearly done with the first island. Revives are completely unaffordable in large amounts costing 1/10th of your money for ONE. So ten will eat 90-100% of your income by then.
So the game punishes you with tedium, you want to level your weaker Tems so they need to stay alive, trainers ALWAYS choose super effective moves so you take lots of damage all the time so you go through balms fast, this means more backtracking which means more wild battles which means EVEN MORE damage.
It's not difficult, it's tedious. It takes forever and it's plain torture.
The devs admitted that you should be spending all your money on restoratives. You could be using it to customize your character more but no, you need to buy restoratives. Cosmetics that you pay for with money you earn from trainers and the story mode cost anywhere from 6k-22k, 6-9k is about what I had at the end of the first island.
There is a sort of temessence phial which works like a one time use refillable portable Pokemon Center, but you'll still be backtracking every handful of battles, 3-5 or so unless you waste all your in game earnings on restoratives.

The MMO/co-op aspects

TemTem is an MMO in the barest bones sense. It's better than Genshin Impact in that regard but barely. You can see lots of players and yes you CAN play the story co-op which is great! However unlike real polished MMOs there's no real incentives to group with other players early on that you're told. I learned you can gain exp for Tem not used in battle but that was from a player in the forum!
New players aren't playing together because the game isn't designed for socialization. Yeah you can chat in global but local is completely and totally silent. The exp is the only benefit and they don't tell you about it in the tutorial. MMO's that are designed that way from the start use a number of systems and rewards to encourage grouping. Exp and drop rate rewards, instances that automatically group you with a party, maps that you can enter where people can join your party from a menu seamlessly and painlessly. TemTem lacks all of this. It's just a SP game with an MMO afterthought so they can sell more stuff. The problem being that TemTem has all the tedious padding and grind of an MMO without the rewarding and enjoyable social aspect.
TemTem is a game that would have been VASTLY superior if it copied Pokemon more and was just SP with some optional online battling.

Speaking of battling Competitive battling is NOT optional and their elite four equivalent REQUIRES you to engage in it. I'm the kind of guy that played through Pokemon Insurgence multiple times, but the difference is Pokemon insurgence makes it painless to gather resources and build your dream team. TemTem will make it a lengthy slog for you.

The developers are nice enough in my experience, they try to address complaints and try to give players a better experience, but they also have a vision that they will not compromise on. It's a grindy, padded, backtrack filled, tedious, meandering vision that wastes your time for no other reason than to waste it, peppered with some okay battling that would be more fun if you didn't have to walk for 10 minutes to the temporium (pokemon center) after every 5 trainer fights.
Defenders of the game confuse difficulty with tedium, under no circumstances did I get close to ever losing a fight except the very first one that is rigged against you.

Be cautious, this game has some nice features but has god awful pacing and completely disrespects your time, if you don't have time to no life yet another live service game then don't bother with this.
The devs have decided that this is best even when it isn't and they will not make any changes for the better in the near future, they've already cultivated a squad of hardcore fans that will defend the game to their own detriment and certainly to Crema's.

I really wanted to like this, but I simply do not have the patience for the constant backtracking, it's not fun at all and it's something that they added on purpose.

To start with, this is a great game with a relatively challenging combat system that for the most part rewards skill... however there are hiccups in this and those parts really ruin what could have been a near perfect game. What we have here is a great game with some glaring flaws. Full disclosure I have never played Dark Souls.

In a game with punishing and difficult combat you expect to have certain features that make the game fair and reasonable. Stuff like bosses and enemies NOT attacking offscreen or at least making some kind of sound so you know when to dodge, Balance for solo play, this game is balanced for you to play co-op or with an ai partner.. The problem with that however is two fold.
If you play with the ai partner the game will be SO easy. So very very easy. It's nice to use them when you're learning the game BUUUT they actually prevent you from really learning enemy patterns, when you go solo you will improve dramatically but you'll likely never improve enough to deal with a few key imbalanced bosses, you can use the ai for these battles but it will trivialize the battle and make the victory feel hollow, This problem is exacerbated when you go to NG+ where many attacks will one shot you effortlessly, when those attacks are offscreen it just feels even more unfair. Blade Bearer and Cannoneer are one of the worst offenders, bosses that will hit you offscreen as you deal with one, interrupting your combo potentially dealing massive damage, and causing you to get attacked before you can recover. Even if you can perfectly dodge one of these bosses you won't be able to see the other preparing numerous offscreen attacks with no tells besides visual.
The game needs better balance between solo play and ai partner play because as it stands the game is either a joke or so frustratingly unfair at times that you just want to walk away for good. This could easily be solved by eliminating all offscreen attacks OR giving VERY OBVIOUS sound cues for offscreen attacks, otherwise it's just unfair. The camera doesn't support dealing with two bosses at once as a solo player.

That said there are plenty of good bosses that are enjoyable to fight and many enemies though devastating all have a viable way of dealing with them and a way to build your character that suits those methods. Over all certain bosses just need a rework, and if you insist on having offscreen attacks then Blade Bearer and Cannoneer should not duo you and instead be separate bosses.

There's a mechanic called backstabbing that allows you to go invulnerable as you attack an opponent, this attack can be used on smaller enemies and even a few minibosses to do some damage and restore ichor and even hp with certain passive abilities. It's a little wonky though, on some enemies it's very easy to pull off and on others you'll struggle to find the right angle to make it work. I'd rather have these enemies not be drainable if the intent was to make them more difficult than the basic level enemies.
There's also parrying but it's not reliable and you are punished very severely if you don't hit the timing window. There are four different kinds of parries depending on your blood veil and the timing for them and each different attack varies. While it can pay off nicely against small enemies as you'll immediately do a drain attack with i frames, against bosses it will only stun them for a tiny amount of time.

The game starts to modulate difficulty by putting mistles (rest points) further and further away from a maps boss, personally I dislike this. When you're exploring you risk taking damage but you can find items, gain haze to level up or learn new skills, and you can use drain attacks to increase your max ichor up to a certain amount depending on your Blood Code (class). Using a mistle heals you and restores your item stocks BUT you lose any ichor increases, making using a mistle already discouraged. Though this is minor and more my personal taste.

Caster classes, mages are also severely disadvantaged most of the game and will be for the entire NG if you go for the true ending. Many vital caster skills are locked behind blood codes that are only obtainable in the bad or neutral end, if you don't have the DLC your caster build will simply remain incomplete until you for through a second run. Even with the skills, the expensive DLCs contain some fantastic mage skills and a weapon that actually lets you have decent ichor regeneration for once, without it a pure caster build is squishy, risky, and will be useless in melee range and not obtain too much ichor unless you stick to Artemis, an older blood code with weaker scaling. So some balance for mage builds would have been nice, make sure to do the bad ending first if you like playing mages.

Level design can be frustrating, with some stand out truly awful maps that will test your patience. First off, the City of Falling fire. Here you're forced to wear a blood veil with fire resistance as the floor burns you and takes your health off rapidly otherwise. In the Crown of Sand the sand will drain your ichor AND slow you, there's a glitch where you can be stuck at slow speed when leaving the sand and you will have to use stamina just to walk at full speed. The only way to fix it is to slowly fiddle with the sand walking in and out at different spots until it fixes while it drains away even more of your ichor. I find these to be bad gimmicks which can artificially force you to switch builds, I think in games of skill that the enemies are what should test you not environmental hazards which you are forced to deal with.

Basically, it's a good game with some very nasty flaws that will ruin certain maps for you either because of unfair bosses that attack you from offscreen or because of dumb environmental hazards that try to make an area artificially more difficult but simply make it more tedious and frustrating to traverse them.
If you like playing solo and hate one shots, don't bother with NG+ enhanced difficulty, certain invasions and bosses will just feel cheap. You're better off just keeping your level low as it's more fair that way.

I know this review has been kinda down on it but it really is a fun game and I'm certain you'll have an overall good time with it, it needs some fine tuning to be sure but I'll leave that to the devs for a sequel.

Okay this is NOT some hyper optimistic review fanboying to heck and back here... I AM recommending this game but never at full price. This game is worth 40 dollars I'd say and not a cent more. It's not a bad game but it's deeply flawed. Let's discuss what this game does well.


For prospective buyers, the one and only thing this game offers is a way to experience the Dragonball Z Universe that you haven't had quite in the same way before. It's pretty crazy to get into your favorite arc and fly around as your favorite character and go through what they did for the most part.
That said, while I can tell the developers did put some passion in the project, it's also lacking in other areas.
Some cutscenes are marvelously animated and feel almost as good as the anime... However some, like the Super Saiyan 3 transformation are butchered or to a lesser extent marred by strange dialogue changes. I don't really understand it. All they had to do was copy down the dialogue, instead in many iconic scenes the dialogue is severely weakened and made infinitely less impactiful. Vegeta's famous "I'm going to crush you and throw you into the wind" line is completely absent, instead replaced with a completely generic line that I can't even remember due to how generic it was.
Basically be weary, some scenes are good but a lot of them have been butchered either through dialogue or just a failure to animate everything.

Let's get to another flaw... Having to do further with the scenes, the violence of DBZ is cut down severely. The game has no problem using curse words but cutting off Guldo's head apparently is a nono. This SEVERELY weakens the brutality and strength of countless scenes and is just massively disappointing. Worse still the sound effects are often awful, for example when Fat Buu lands for the very first time in front of Gohan a pathetically weak regular footstep sound plays, Buu is a massive fat glob, when he lands from the high he landed there should be a more impactful sound unfortunately this issue plagues MANY scenes.

Finally... one more issue with the scenes is that the developers don't allow the maps to change or be destroyed outside of specific tree and rock models that are obviously added to the map later. So that means, when Tien neo tri beams Cell, instead of seeing a massive hole and Cell being battered into it, it just cuts away to Tien firing the Tri Beam and a bit of smoke... When a city is destroyed? A light or some smoke and then a cut away. The destruction is never seen and that seems SO lazy and it's more than disappointing.
The scenes are everything to this game, they matter SO much and there are so many screw ups with only a few good moments littered in. I literally had to put down my controller at several points and just rub my temples and mutter "no, no, no why?" under my breath.

I think I know why, because of the large maps. They had to build these unnecessarily large maps with no meaningful content on them for no explicable reason and because they had to do that they had no time to make destroyed versions or streamline in really good content. You don't need to explore and you won't want to explore because there's nothing out there. You don't need orbs, doing the story will provide you with enough orbs to make your head spin. You don't need zeni, there's nothing all that useful to buy and the story hands you expensive items to sell anyways. You don't need cooking. The game isn't difficult enough to warrant the food having any use and that renders fishing pointless as well.

The side content is AWFUL. Terrible terrible fetch quests and fight quests and nothing different E V E R. Sometimes the sub stories add some nice lore or a great character moment but it's not worth putting off the far superior story mode moments for it. The large overworld was a waste of development time and cost us and the developers a far superior and more focused game.

Speaking of more focus, presumably because of the oversized maps there are certain sequences which have been eliminated. You will never go to HFIL, you'll never experience anything on Snake Way. Unlike Buus Fury, there's no heaven, HFIL, Grand Kai's planet, or otherworld Tournament. No no, instead you get the driving sequence which yes it's funny but it's not exactly good filler outside of that. Out of all the filler that actually could have made for interesting combat/exploration they just picked the driving so you can play a shallow minigame over and over.
There's also no catching bubbles or bopping gregory on the head, even Legacy of Goku 1, an incredibly terrible realization of the DBZ world had that.

I'm sure you wanna hear about the combat... it's brainless. It's a button masher and the bosses aren't difficult, just tedious. Ever wanted to be unable to hit an enemy for 40 seconds while they have free range to attack you with no consequences? No? Well too bad. Many of the bosses devolve into this where they go into a super armor mode where it's simply not wise to attack them as they can cancel out of moves, fire multiple moves in quick succession and simply cannot be staggered out of anything. All you can do is dodge. It's a novel concept, I'm sure they wanted it to feel like Goku dodging Freeza's massive spammy energy attacks but it doesn't work in practice, it's just tedious in practice. It's cool to watch not cool to play.
The rest of the time you'll be facing fights with multiple enemies and this is simply annoying, the combat isn't really built to handle you focusing on more than one enemy at a time, it's not hard but it's annoying as it means you have to stop spammy energy attacks coming from multiple off screen directions constantly while you TRY to slowly pick away at oversized hp bars.

The rest of the game, the exploration, the sub stories, I already said, they're awful, pointless, and not worth the trouble. Furthermore several awful voice actors like the one's for Dr.Briefs, and Mr.Popo take you out of your immersion so quick and so hard. Like seriously they're TERRIBLE. Team Four Star did a FAR superior job and quite frankly I can't imagine if the devs didn't reach out to them that they wouldn't have done the voice work for them because jesus, some of the vas are B A D. Most of them are good don't worry but some of them will just kick you in the teeth.

The OST is bad. Look I love OG Dragonball, I do and I love OG DB's ost, but OG DB has a completely different tone than Z and the OST in here is similar to OG DB and it is awful here. There's a Faulconer mod to help but it's not perfect, you'll hear the wrong song play constantly, it works great when it works but most of the time it doesn't. It's better than the dev OST but it still will take you out of immersion constantly.

That said let's wrap up with another bit about the story scenes which are a good bulk of the passable parts of this game.

To summarize, dialogue has been butchered in many scenes, animation can be great in a few scenes but can also be terrible and done incredibly lazily taking you out of the scene, killing your immersion, and taking the bite out of the scene as well. The sound effects are good in general but in the scenes you'll see a lot of punches but hear nothing sometimes on a particularly impactful punch, it feels like an amateur developer made this sometimes. Some scenes are great but these are few and far between, most of the time you'll have to suffer through dialogue that is much weaker than the Funimation dub, some lazy animation, and just weak sound effects. It's definitely not the definitive way to experience DBZ and anyone who thinks so should probably re-examine this after they lose their hype for this game.

Like I said I recommend it on sale but be prepared for more disappointment than excitement.

Let me start by saying I'm a big horror connoisseur. If I'm watching a movie, it's a horror movie. If I'm playing a horror game, I'll generally enjoy it.

Sadly this is not the case for Outlast 2 which failed to scare me, engage me, or interest me in any regard.

Because of the character limit allow me to use Amnesia as a constant comparison to quickly explain why outlast 2's scares don't work. Amnesia fits Outlast 2 in style the most and is a prominent title, that's why it will be the go to.

Outlast 2 relies on jumpscares. Unfortunately nearly all of Outlast 2's jumpscares are predictable. You're already gonna know what's gonna happen when you see one building up which defeats the purpose of trying to build it up. For example in the school you'll see a monster at the end of the hallway. You already know it's going to come rushing at you. Because you know this, you laugh at the cliche instead of being frightened.

This is a prevailing problem in Outlast 2, a failure to create a constant atmosphere of tension and paranoia.

Amnesia is a similar game but with a much cleverer design that recognizes the limited scare from a chase on its own. Amensia relies largely on two mechanics to maintain its horror, the sanity system and the way it spawns enemies. Amnesia knows that what's scary is what you don't know and what you can't see.
The game puts you in small areas, often these areas are initially safe but a monster can spawn at anytime and in any place. Because of this, there's an underlying base of fear and tension to build upon.
Then it bolsters this with its sanity system, which is essentially a sytem that constantly forces you to choose between two uncomfortable options. You can stay in the dark to avoid being spotted easily... with the caveat that you will decrease your sanity, leading to increasingly unsettling visual and auditory hallucinations, which include sounds the game and monsters already make.
Alternatively you can avoid that and walk in the light knowing that if a monster spawns behind you it will spot you immediately.
These systems effectively build tension and paranoia and then capitalize on it with a chase. Without those building feelings to capitalize on, the chase is useless.

Outlast 2 is just that. a bunch of useless chases.

Outlast 2 instead opts to put you in series of obstacles that is so clearly designed that you can't immerse yourself. The flow of the game is as described, you start somewhere crouching safely in the dark. You observe all the enemies that are walking around in plain view. You assume that any interiors have at least one additional enemy you can't see as it's an obvious cliche. You bolt from hiding spot to hiding spot until you find the unrealistic single exit to a map that realistically would be totally open considering its location. It's not scary because you know what's going to happen before it happens. The game is almost more like Assassins creed than a horror game. It shows you the scenario and then leaves it to you to overcome it. There's no paranoia or tension. All the information you need to overcome the obstacles is presented to you on a platter and therefore there's no fear. You just go and get it done.

Outlast 2 has a colorful cast of villains that is underused. The cultist hillbillies aren't the least bit scary but they are hilarious. One particular NPC waves a dagger around while singing a song about hiding you in the blood of Ezekiel. This NPC has a covered porch with several belongings. You can steal these belongings right in front of her and she will simply merrily sing and wave her dagger around. I chuckled to myself as I imagined stealing her last loaf of bread, all her backup batteries, and her medical supplies as I pulled up a chair, slapped my knees in rhythm to her song, and recorded her using the batteries I stole. She won't attack you unless you get right in her face and even then she will only attack you for as long as you're invading her space which is about a single attack. This is incredibly comical and Outlast 2 clearly missed an opportunity to be a campy, gross, explotative fun fest. Instead we're stuck with this attempt at austere horror with a bunch of wasted characters that aren't the least bit scary.

If you're looking for a game to scare you and you're anything more than a casual player/watcher of the horror genre, steer clear. This game has a near complete lack of tension and fear save for one truly good moment that I won't spoil here.

If you're looking for an intruging plot.. this won't do it either. Unlike Amnesia which clearly lays out the history of its protagonists in two separate forms of notes that are clear and concise, Outlast 2 has several methods for delivering its story which inevitably means you will come out with an incomplete story, especially if like me you didn't play the original game.

Only buy this if you want something to play with your friends that you can laugh at. You can laugh at the predictably cliche jump scares, the kooky cultits, and the fact that the levels are so clearly designed that the developers couldn't have possibly expected you to be able to immerse yourself in the world. It suffers from poor design and predictability but damn it may be worth it for the express purpose of a comedic evening with friends.

(Review has been modified for the Enhanced Edition which is a huge improvement!)

Are Fell is a solid RPG which happens to be a hybrid of Western and Eastern styles. For example, while the character development and story is strongly Eastern flavored, the stat attribution and non-linear world is very Western.

Let's run down the quality of some of the individual pieces that make this experience.

Characters ->
The main cast is relatively likable, if you've played something like FFIV then you'll have an idea what style of development is on display here. We have Lita the main, who is a tomboyish young girl dripping with sarcasm, Adrian, the typical teenage boy who aids Lita in her sarcastic banter, Doren, a quiet and mysterious man of unknown origin, and Seri Kesu, a powerful female sorceress with lots of confidence and a love for alcohol.

I'm not about to tell you that they're the most impressive characters I've ever seen but they're perfectly solid. They can compare to old JRPG's just fine and you'll be able to enjoy your time with them.

World ->
Ara Fell takes place on an island floating in the sky, the premise is pretty standard JRPG stuff by now, you can already picture the sorts of things you'll see pretty accurately I'm sure. It can be a little generic in its level design so if you're looking for something grand and new you won't find it here. You will find a world presented with a nice art style, again reminiscent of such games as FFIV. It's solid, much like the rest of the game.
EDIT -> Ara Fell Enhanced has improved the graphics to the point where the world DOES feel a bit more alive and more unique, it wasn't a perfect fix, but considering that this is just a refinement of the previous world, I'm happy with it. I think most players won't feel like it's automatically generic anymore.

Story ->
The plot is a pretty standard plot, an unwilling young girl and her friends are thrust into the role of saving the world without warning one day and off you go on an adventure to do just that. There's a bit of lore here and there to fill out the history of the world via books and stuff that can be found on shelves and it does a passable job at doing so.
Regardless, if you're looking for a solid JRPG style story then this is just fine.
EDIT -> The Enhanced Edition adds a bit more depth to the lore and characters with the Class Change quests, it's not a TON but it's a little more to a decently rich world already. One class change quest lightly adds on my request to know more about the Abyssal magic factions, which really put a smile on my face, it's not a HUGE info dump but they're part of the world now at least and they exist outside of a gameplay element.

Exploration ->
This game encourages exploration quite heavily,
EDIT -> With the new crafting system and class change system, exploring has NEVER been more rewarding in Ara Fell, now every item can make you stronger, and new areas can net you a potential new class that can change the way you approach combat wildly. Enchantments can make or break your builds and require you to get up in those nooks and crannies!

Combat ->
EDIT -> Ara Fell Enhanced has far superior combat to the old one and I consider the new system fully enjoyable. I was able to play two full runs back to back without boredom because the class options and skills are wildly different and will alter how you approach fights very strongly. Unlike the original game, there is no singular strategy that will win fights. During most boss fights you will have to use multiple strategies all switched into at key moments to secure victory. Your stat allocations are MUCH more important than the original game, no longer can you completely ignore your def value, it should be around 45-70 for your healer/DD'ers by end game now. Bosses will test your knowledge on the skills and systems and MAKE you understand how to play. This is a very impressive overhaul for what Ara Fell was. Stegosoft games should be exceedingly proud of their accomplishments.

Music - > The score here is pretty decent all around with a couple of stand out tunes, especially in the boss fights. I really don't have any major complaints here. I don't think it's on the quality yet of the most popular FF's but it's above average.

I really could go on and on all day here but I really just wanted to hit some key points.

With the new crafting, class change, and battle systems, I expect an average 20-30 hour gameplay time for the typical JRPG/RPG gamer and that's for just a single playthrough.
JRPG fans will enjoy that Japanese inspired flavor of dialogue and character interaction, Western RPG players will enjoy the myriad choices for builds!
Ara Fell Enhanced edition is an extremely solid entry to the JRPG/RPG genre. It has a decent amount of playtime, a LOT of options in combat and gameplay, interesting exploration, and some serious challenge and careful balance in it. It's worth experiencing for any fan of these genres.
That's not to say Stegosoft games doesn't have room to improve, BUT as far as Ara Fell is concerned they've done an excellent job and they should move forward proudly, remembering the skills they've honed through their development of this title to take their future titles to even further heights.

To describe Nier properly, I'll start by speaking to the possible types of audience that this might attract.

If you're looking for Devil may Cry style combat depth and difficulty, this isn't quite it.

If you're looking for an actiony RPG, you've found a great one.

If you're looking for an expansive open world game with lots of varied side quests, this isn't quite it.

Nier Automata is much like its predecessors, highly story driven games with RPG elements and action combat.

Unlike the Drakengard games progression of strength is not only through leveling but largely through the plug-in chip system, which you might consider similar to say Materia in Final Fantasy 7 if Materia only granted status bonuses.

There are several weapons to find too of course but still, the bulk of your strength will come from how you set up your chip layouts. Every battle in the game can be made as hard or as easy as you like with these chips and the progression granted to you through them is thoroughly addictive.

I should warn new players that if they want to keep everything somewhat difficult that they should under no circumstances get their chips past +5. Anything past +5 gives you massive stat gains that utterly trivializes both fodder and bosses alike.

Very much like Drakengard on the other hand is the weapon progression, each weapon can be upgraded to level 4 and has a short story attached to it that is revealed as it is leveled. Unfortunately these weapons don't all have unique combos like in Drakengard but they do still have unique abilities, for example Spear of the Usurper can subjugate an enemy and make it fight for you, it also has a critical chance boost.

The soundtrack is both haunting and pleasant, the visuals are both bleak and rich.

The combat is relatively simple when you get down to it, one simply has to evade attacks and the window is quite generous. There is no such thing as an attack that can't be evaded and there's nothing to stop you from simply mashing the evade button.

The majority of your losses will be from new bosses where they send out a new attack and surprise you.

If you want difficulty right away, start with Hard immediately. Very Hard is a one shot mode so I don't recommend that unless you want to primarily spend your combat evading.

The story is what you'd expect from Yoko Taro. A relatively bleak story that asks you to question some deeper concept. The game is dripping in his usual techniques and it's always a joy to see.

If you're a fan of Drakengard or the original Nier this will be a massive improvement gameplay wise and cannot be missed.

Now to get on to the sidequests. They've never been the strong point of his games. They often result in escort missions, fetch quests, and general kill x y amount of times quests. That said the point of them is to add extra narrative and hammer home the questions the game is asking you to think about. On that note, they do it quite well and one should try to dabble in them a little bit at least.

Now I'll discuss the world. The world is absolutely open with no loading screens. However if you're looking for something the size of an Assassins Creed map or Skyrim, you'll be severely disappointed. No. Nier's world is much smaller and yet because of that, every single area in Nier Automata has a purpose. Every space has something to find or someone to talk to.

Finally let's describe the gameplay. As usual Yoko Taro and team have decided to go with several types of game play in one game.

You'll find a bullet hell style aerial combat, a bullet hell 2D shooter, side scrolling, and top down action. In addition of course to the default third person, free camera, action combat.

The latter two aren't really much different other than offering a different camera perspective. The former two are totally different on the other hand.

Unlike most bullet hells you do have the ability to destroy bullets, which is nice for those of us who don't like bullet hells, myself included. At least on normal these battles are simple enough.

Your chip setup actually can affect your performance in the aerial combat but not in the 2D bullet hell.

At least on normal, I found them easy enough to get through.

If you're a completionist you can expect at least 70+ hours.

If you're just here for the main story, it should clock in around 40 hours.

Overall, I enjoyed this game even more than I thought I would and that's coming from someone who leveled to max in Drakengard 1 and 2, found every single weapon and leveled them all to max, and completed every chapter.

It didn't feel as long as Drakengard but maybe that's a good thing, its ground combat though simple is very enjoyable so hunting for weapons never feels like a chore.

I highly recommend it to those looking for an action RPG to take up at least 40 hours of their time.

For anyone who insists on getting the best chips and all of the weapons, you can easily add another 30 hours to the game.

If you want to see all the side quests then I can't even imagine, I'd probably estimate that the game has 100+ hours of content for hardcore completionists.

So basically, this is a slightly naughtier Persona 3.

You're a kid in an academy with specials powers, although in this game there is no separate reality, it's all taking place in the same world so everyone knows about it, in fact it's what your academy is for.

You bond with the ladies, you make star children with them and you go into very Persona style dungeons and kill things until you meet a boss that beats that dungeon. There is no sex in this game although the cutscene for making star children is pretty suggestive. It's not that type of game if that's what you're here for.

Unlike Persona there is no actual time limit so you can train/level and bond for as long as you want.

Unfortunately it can be very grindy on your first playthrough. You'll at least want to bond with every heroine up to bond level 4 so that you can use trimating as it will be imperative for making a good party of star children.

There's also a huge difficulty spike in Chapter 7. Even if you win by the skin of your teeth, the very next chapter will test you to see if you've mastered all of the gameplay aspects. You'll need a well balanced party and you'll need at least one set of light element star children.

Thankfully in the PC version it's easy enough to get the item to make light element children but all new star children are born at level 1, so you'll have to get them up to level 40. Once again, the DLC is included in the PC version so this isn't an incredibly long task either.

No, the longest task is actually traveling through the last two dungeons. While there's a lot you can do to minimize the time spent in these dungeons, most new players will probably forge ahead blindly and really burn themselves out.

My advice is to level to 40 using Saggita quests found in the research lab, traverse the last two dungeons and do as few fights as possible while using simple or detailed maps bought in the shop to minimize this dull segment of the game.
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That aside I really enjoyed this game, once you finish the first playthrough the rest will be much smoother and more pleasant. The chapter 7 boss is still dangerous but it'll be easier.

Each heroine has their own goals, desires, and issues. They all feel like real people and bonding with them is definitely the high point of the game.

Depending on which girl you pick, you might get a relatively light set of bonding events or a particularly dark one but either way, you can make 'em all happy if you so choose.

You can even bond with them all but you can't see all of the events in one playthrough.

So far I have 90 hours in the game, I finished one girls storyline and I'm right at the final chapter ready to see the next girls ending. Less than a third of that was some admitedlly intense griding, I'd say 20-25 hours of it. I still want to get the best equipment for the girls which requires you to find an item in the dungeons that is totally dependent on RNG.

All of this said, if you're a JRPG lover and you love Persona style bonding and wouldn't mind a bit more suggestiveness then this will be perfect for you. It's really solid.

As long as you're not one of those gamers that insists everything has to be something new and fresh and disregards the fact that what matters is how well executed something is, you'll find enjoyment here and quite a bit of it.

I'd say even if you only do one playthrough, it's at least 80 hours worth of your time.

It has some flaws in its gameplay and the final dungeons do drag on but as long as you make use of all the tools available to you, you'll be able to skip a LOT of that final drag.

I'd definitely play a sequel to this but I hope they'll improve upon this base. First off, finding armor for the heroines shouldn't be rng, unless it's a really powerful secret armor.

Secondly, the difficulty spike needs to be toned down and the tutorials need to explain the mechanics a little better, it really doesn't emphasize just HOW important elements are or team skills for that matter. If you do those two things right, the game will be a breeze all the way through. If you do it wrong, Chapter 7 and 8 will force you to do it.

Finally, they should make it easier to skip battles. There are monsters that will quite literally go and block doors on purpose. If one insists on having a solid but very basic dungeon then they should be mindful of how boring it could get if one is forced to spend extra time in these dungeons.

I maxed out all of the girls in my first playthrough so I had spent a LOT of time on the game and I was burnt out by the last two dungeons. I just wanted to see the awesome ending for my chosen Heroine not spend another 5 hours trudging through another featureless randomly generated dungeon being blocked by door covering monsters.

So I hope that if there's a sequel and it comes here that they can address those problems. If they do I think they'll have a perfect game.

I've wanted to try this game since I saw it randomly in Game Stop one day, I had given up consoles entirely by then though.

Fortunately they've released it here.

The game is quite frankly addicting, the characters are likeable, the combat is enjoyable and challenging and there's plenty of content for RPG lovers who like to do a little more than the story. I'm currently 60 hours in, Levels 110-126 on my characters and have barely scratched the surface of the optional content. Most people who enjoy RPG's will at least want to collect all the equipment and finish their characters progression, I'd say I easily have another 40 hours to go before then.
You do however need the DLC to get to level 999 and have all the extra items and battles that have kept me busy. Otherwise the game is about 40 hours long with some side content that probably adds another 10-20 hours.
It's worth the price, I've been playing the game non-stop.

Now let me list and explain some things people may not like to help you with your decision.

First off, there's several repeating dungeons, that is to say the textures and design will be quite similar and there's also no shortage of pallete swapped enemies. If you're the type who needs the little details in order, this game might do too little in that regard for you to be able to play through it.

Second, it's a bit grindy, at absolute bare minimum you'll be grinding 5 levels per dungeon between/during story quests. That's the minimum, with that you'll still lose a few times and struggle a bit. It's not that bad since there's ways to level up a lot faster but it should be noted, if you don't like the old fashioned concept of having to grind a bit once in a while then this game may annoy you early on and post game, seeing as post game is essentially a huge grind for the ultimate equipment you need to defeat all the optional bosses and what not.

Third, being a first time player I noticed that early on the combat made me feel very restricted, almost like sometimes I was losing due to the battle systems limitations and quirks rather than my skill or level. For instance, there's a little indicator for the order of turns that enemies and your characters will take, a character or enemy may appear to have two turns worth but if your character attacks too many times in the turn then that turn disappears and the enemy takes their turn. It's extremely difficult to plan moves until you learn how to work around it, essentially you need to take less actions if you need an extra turn with that character and even then it sometimes still doesn't work out like I think. Later on the combat at least feels less restrictive, as you grow stronger more of your attacks become viable with the right equipment. Early on you're basically forced to do your basic combos and mix in a skill attack when possible. Later on they introduce EXE's, making your skills less valuable and then later still your regular skills become viable again once you're equipped in a manner that lets them do damage.

For example, one character may do abysmal damage due to resistances of the enemy, you may have to deal with that for a while until you can equip them with certain abilities before you can really do more than scratch these enemies. This is pretty much the experience with the boss battles early on, they have ridiculous physical resistance and more often than not your attack will not suffice, unless you've grinded more than 5 levels.

That said the first problem is not constantly present, there are a few unique dungeons, but definitely not as many as one would like, the third problem resolves itself as you work around the quirky battle system and equip your characters properly.

A good tip would be to equip all your physical characters with anything that can give them "ignore enemy traits" or "ignore enemy category" this nullifies the irritation of facing bosses with high physical resistance when your characters early on are physically based.

I've enjoyed my time with the game much more than I have most titles these past years, it's not perfect but it is highly reminiscent of old JRPG's and everything that worked in them works here, character progression is fun and rewarding, the characters push you through the story quite well, particularly the villain who actually makes you wish you could phyisically whack her with the broad side of a huge great sword. Of course this happens because the heroines are likeable and seeing them suffer at the hands of the villain makes you squirm, which is a sign of well written personalities in characters if you ask me.

Despite it's flaws if you like JRPG's there's no reason not to pick this up. If you're having a hard time, get the Plutia, Peashy, and Histoire Battle Entry DLC, they're extremely useful throughout the game and will make your experience easier if that's your thing, it certainly was for me since I only wanted to do minimal grinding during the story.

Pick it up if it sound like it's for you, there's plenty of content and challenge to be had and with a relatively large amount of characters..., Neptune, Compa, IF, Vert, Noire, Blanc, Plutia, Peashy, Histoire, Tekken, CC2, MAGES, Uni, Nepgear, Ram, Rom, and a few more whose names escape me at this moment, there's no way you won't find any likeable characters to fit in your party. There's so many I forgot the names of the ones I used the least which was due to preference. Some of those named above are also DLC but it's so cheap you might as well grab it.