Recent reviews by Final Vent Card

It's a bit hard to review Future Fragments because the game just released. It's still in Early Access so there's a ton of content that's still being worked on and finalized, and a few wrinkles need to be ironed out (especially in the later levels). The good news is, the quality is there: levels are cool, animations are great, graphics and sound are great. Once all of the kinks have been worked out and the bugs have been squashed, this game is sure to be a must-have.

This game has been described to me as "video game crack".

They're not lying.

I see the gems when I close my eyes. My heart races when I get the chests in the hopes that the two extra items pop up.

This is a game that is absolutely worth the $5, PLUS the DLC. It's the perfect serotonin box, without any disgusting itemization. Hop in. Kill absolutely everything. Watch as your therapist notes your progress.

Dragon Cliff is not a very engaging Idle RPG. You lead a party of blank slate characters through a number of stages consisting of waves of enemies. These give you EXP and items with which to gain new equipment or level up your characters. You can also recruit new characters of different classes through the Inn.

The worst parts of mobile games are present, though; items you forge can randomly be of Rare, Epic, Legendary, or Ancient tiers--as can the random party members that come through the Inn. Progress can quickly become gated simply because the characters available to you are too-common of a rank.

Dragon Cliff's basic interface is also lacking; the translation is amateurish and features several typos, as well as a bizarre formatting error where apostrophes are followed by big spaces.

This game just isn't worth it.

Sweet Dream Succubus is a visual novel made by Doxy, starring a fictionalized version of real-life model Swimsuit Succubus. You play as an individual being accosted by her in what seems to be an endless loop of the same three days; how you progress is up to you.

There are a variety of fetishes and scenarios to explore, but this game lacks some basic funtionality. To wit: this is a visual novel with no save feature, no skip function, and not even a gallery mode. The additions for "Nightmare Edition" amount to a few redrawn CGs and a handful of new scenes.

All in all, this game lasts about 20 minutes, but the numerous endings and multiple playthroughs needed to get the good/best endings *scream* for a skip function. At $2, you're getting what you pay for--hopefully, this game can be updated with basic quality-of-life functions, but otherwise you might as well pick it up.

A lot of hullabaloo is made over this game having been "censored" or whatnot. And you know what? This game doesn't deserve an ounce of it.

Because this game flat-out isn't worth the trouble in the first place. It's a third-rate JRPG.

The "naughty" component of the game consists of a mini-game where you tap buttons or slide on the D-pad to simulate BDSM scenes on 2D images of girls (that have been very convincingly edited in Live 2D to look fully animated). These sequences cost *way* too many points, and even though this version features new add-ons like ball-gags or blindfolds it's just *not worth it* because you need to invest more points into that. This minigame is necessary for your party members to learn new skills, and it just gets boring. You grind for points in battles that go on for way too long, with party members whose actions you can't control directly, all for a thirty-second minigame where a fictional girl who doesn't even look like she started puberty is whining and crying and panting and heaving. Stay classy, NIS Japan.

Yes, battles are dull. The maps you explore aren't that much more interesting. And skill progression *could* have come hand-in-hand with a fun minigame if the minigames were fun and not, y'know, skin crawling. You pantomime spanking a little girl with a riding crop while she's wearing gym clothes and she's trying to cover her crotch--for a lot of people, this isn't just "fun" but "a cultural activity" and "ETHICAL".

Me? I can't begin to list better JRPGs you could find. If you need a simple, quick-and-dirty RPG, Steam has no end of them. You can get the Atelier games. You can get Gurumin. You can try Recettear or Helen's Mysterious Castle or Princess Remedy in A World of Hurt. You have a mountain of Hyperdimension Neptunia games you can try. Hell, Phantasy Star IV is available on Steam for 99 cents (that game used to retail for $80). And if you need sexy games, there's no end of them that you could play that wouldn't merit being on an FBI watchlist. Get Melty's Quest, get one of the Senran Kagura games, get Mutiny!! or Loren the Amazon Princess or Nights of Azure.

There's a big twist later in Criminal Girls where you break through to the girls you've been leading through hell and you learn that the angry woman in your party is angry and was sent to hell because she was sexually assaulted. That's the smartest thing this game can throw at you, the extent of its creativity and handling of sexuality. When the original PSP game was brought over, many decried the censorship and argued that by bowdlerizing the minigames there was no point to the game being brought over. Having played this for as long as I have, I'd argue that minigames or not there's no point to this game having been brought over, *period*. Criminal Girls: Invite Only now ties with the SNES Magic Knights Rayearth game as the worst JRPG I've ever played.

I desperately wanted to love Legacy of Kain Defiance. But I played this game far too late.

Amy Henning's phenomenal writing bleeds through. The fantastic voice acting from luminaries like Michael Bell and the late Tony Jay are a delight. But the game's repetition, repeated levels, backtracking, and shallow combat just wear away at you.

In 2004, this game would have been a delight--and it most likely was. But age hasn't been kind to it. Its levels feel too simple. Enemies feel too cheap and numerous. Objectives can be unclear.

The story is still worth it, even if it ends on that damnable cliffhanger. Legacy of Kain: Defiance is a hard game to love, but the meat is very much worth the time. You may want to wait until it's on sale, though. Those statue enemies are just way too numerous for how unfun they are to fight.

Freedom Planet is charming and colorful. Its three characters play differently, but their different controls all lead to fun ways of traversing environments. There's no hiding its roots as a Sonic the Hedgehog fan-game, and that's okay: this game plays as you remember Sonic the Hedgehog, not as it was. It leaves enough of its own mark on Sonic's established concepts that it is never hindered by its legacy. In fact, in many cases (such as Sonic's momentum while moving and cheap deaths by bumping into enemies), Freedom Planet improves on its origins.

This leads to some major struggles during bosses, however. Freedom Planets' solutions to much of Sonic's problems can cause headaches when you fight against its many bosses. Having all the speed in the world means nothing when bosses put you through inescapable bullet-walls, or are impossible to hit during their periods of invulnerability. At first glance, many of FP's bosses are intimidating and exciting at first glance. It's hard to keep that when you die against the same one for the thirty-second time after yet another cheap death.

Also, while the game proper is charming, the cut-scenes suffer from some major attitude problems. Unfunny jokes and overwritten dialogue are already a problem in most mascot platformers; being tongue-in-cheek about your bad jokes doesn't make them funnier.

In spite of all this, it's really hard to work up any actual hate for Freedom Planet. Pick this game up.

Valkyria Chronicles commits one major sin as a strategy game: it expects you to follow a certain order of steps in order to complete any given map. You *can* beat the maps in a variety of ways--and the game will rate you poorly for it. Setting up chokepoints with scouts, blitzing with soldiers, sabotaging enemy tanks with Lancers... you can be as smart as you want, VC won't like you unless you play how *it* wants.

If you can get past that, you'll find an amazing title here. Lead artist Raita is a little odd in how he draws women (boobs do not work that way, good sir), but there's no faulting the amazing visual style and setting for this game. For something set in as mined-out a concept as World War II, Valkyria Chronicles is far more engrossing in its visuals and music than its concept will make you think. Gameplay-wise, Valkyria Chronicles is also quite inviting in its combination of real-time third-person action and turn-based gameplay.

Many of the fun content in Valkyria Chronicles--different weapons for recruits, for example--are hidden in out-of-the-way areas and will need a guide to be found, and the odd sense that you're not playing as the game wants you to will haunt you, but Valkyria Chronicles is a game that is definitely worth your time and money.

Blade Kitten is a competent side-scroller--but not a particularly phenomenal one. While it plays amazingly smoothly, controlling protagonist Kit Ballard feels completely iffy; it never really feels like she's going where you want her to, but where it's most *convenient* for her. Jumping puzzles and combat really suffer as a result; you never really feel like you're doing more than mashing buttons.

Progress also greatly suffers when your upgrades are all unlocked from a menu. In-game cash is earned and spent in your Pause menu for health bonuses, new weapons, and even new costumes. It never feels like they matter much, however. In spite of all the doodads you can find in each level, it'll never really feel like it comes together.

And yet... this game still feels oddly pleasant. Climbing the walls and ceilings feels effortless--this alone makes exploration tons of fun. The strange alien locales also feel oddly inviting. The awkwardness does bring this game down heavily, but Blade Kitten is totally worth picking up if and when it's on sale.

Dungeon Hearts is a decent-enough cross between a RPG, a rhythm game, and a puzzler--but your patience may be tested by the ridiculous hoops this game puts you through. All modes of this game are a gauntlet where, in short order, you will find yourself swarmed by negative icons, straining to keep up with the pace. You earn a pittance of EXP during any of the modes, making progress a total chore. Also, for a musical game, there aren't many great tunes.

The visuals are charming enough, and there is promise with this game's Match-3 setup. It's also nice how every character can affect battles in different ways, from the warrior dealing direct damage to enemies to the ranger dealing status ailments. Consider this game--provided it's on sale.