Cosmic Star Heroine Review

I'm not really familiar with turn based games outside of this and Child of Light. I remember being so mesmerized by the game at the time. A turn based game with a combat system I was really into, the soundtrack, a shorter RPG with quick action movie style pacing. It really did nail a lot in spite of not being familar with the genre in question and haven't really played many afterwards.

The story is interesting in that it's a bit of a double edged sword. RPGs are known for being long games and a time sync and this is game that gives you a quick and to the point experience. It's refreshing even now with only games made by the same dev and the occasional new release doing it.

As a result, the pacing goes by quick and there isn't too much meandering with the exception of going Rhomu and trying to get a macguffin there. The ealier parts and after do have the pacing go back to normal.

This can be a double edged sword like I said earlier. It's essentially what if a JRPG was paced like an action film? In action movies, you more or less expect the film to have charismatic characters with some depth thrown in here and there. In an RPG especially JRPG especially how long they are, it's expected that by the end, you have come to learn more and went on a big journey with them.

As a result, many of the characters at least on the main questline can feel like you don't know much about. It's like they're just there for the ride. It's charming but can also feel weird.

The soundtrack is amazing especially when I first listened to it. They add a sense of adventure and whimsy to the locations you are in. They are also catchy tunes in their own right. They can also be very chill to listen as well.

Combat is where things get interesting. You got the style system. What especially is interesting is how JRPG turn based battles can be infamous for how long they can last. Cosmic Star Heroine subverts this by encouraging the player to finish battles quickly. The longer they go on, the harder they become. The more fighting wears on, the less damage your characters will be able to take.

What helps with all this is hyper mode and when to time it right with your stronger attacks. There's also different enemies being weak to certain elemental weaknesses too or how you can give damage buff on a character one turn before a hyper mode activation.

To add to all this, there is different team up moves you can do with various party members. Depending on how experimental you get, you can end battles in wild ways too. Like for example, if you widdle down a boss' health down enough you can do a devastating attack that could to finish the fight but a risk is that you could have low HP. You can also finish fights by even using status aliaments too. You can charm enemies and even prevent them from attacking for one turn.

Two issues to level at the game is that the game requires you to play with certain party members so abilities and powers you were used to by that point are now taken away. You get to used to fighting with the new party members but then you swap again. By the time you get to freely swap, it starts to feel awkward since it's been so long since you used them. With a game as short as that, it's hard to get experimental with certain team ups too.

Second issue is that fights can go on for too long especially when you get a decent while into Rhomu and into the swamp level. Normal enemy battles have large amounts of HP and they start to feel like bosses. As a result, when you fight bosses especially when they can attack you twice in one turn, it becomes a game of them of constantly comboing you and then die. The game can get challenging even on easy at times.

Prior to the that the battles went on at a reasonable pace.

Overall, I still do enjoy the game and still give it credit for exposing me to a turn based combat system I find interesting. There are issues I notice a lot more now when replaying the game but there's lots of positives to balance it out.

Mafia II Review

Oh Mafia 2. I recently replayed the Definitive Edition of the first game after I recently finished The Old Country. I recall being lukewarm when I initially beat Mafia 2. The game seemingly didn't have the open world that Mafia 3 would be infamous for. If it didn't why was so I lukewarm on Mafia 2 but really enjoyed the first game's remake? Playing it again, I understand better.

I recall really enjoying to Mafia Definitive Edition and still do after replaying it. Mafia 2 on the other hand was a lot more hazey by comparison. I can see why that is now. I see on some parts on the internet that Mafia 1's story is cliched and Mafia 2 is more interesting due to being more ambitious. I disagree with that notion. I prefer a simple story that is well presented over a poorly presented complex one.

Mafia 1 was following the story of Tommy Angelo who starts off as a lowly cab driver but then discovers the mob, rise through the family ranks becomes disillusioned then tries to leave.

Mafia 2 tries have more subplots and be told over the course of multiple years and eras. A big issue is how there are a number of plot points and threads that ultimately go nowhere. Some examples include the hinted romance between Vito and the hooker. It seems that they're going to happen but once he goes to jail, this sub plot is dropped.

Vito's sister in Francesca shows up and here and there but has no promient presence in the story. A particularly ergregious example is during a chapter, you think everything about to wrap up but then out of nowhere she calls him about her cheating boyfriend. After this? Gone. In the same chapter, you get attack by the irish and get your house burned down out of nowhere considering the boyfriend subplot was disconnected from this.

Late game there's someone who is revealed to be a rat for the feds and the character is so underdeveloped that the twist can come out of nowhere.

No joke, on the last mission of the game. Vito's father who by this point in the story has accepted that his dad was a deadbeat loser turns out his death was actually a murder and he was standing up for his fellow workers. I usually try not to use the term "retcon" when something feels out of nowhere in a story since they happen with prequels and sequels but how out of nowhere this was, it can feel that way.

Don Clemente is also just randomly comes back in the story after seemingly is written out.

To top off all this, the ending can feel like a cliffhanger and is a massive step down compared to the first game's very well written conclusion.

After all this, what prevents me from being harsher on the story? The voice acting is very good and the chemestry between Vito Scaletta and Joe Barbaro carries A LOT of the game's story. Their interactions are very fun to listening to and the journey the two have together is the one narrative thread that persists throughout the game. If you cut this aspect out, I wouldn't even get to the end.

Gameplay is where it's really easy for me to get harsh on. Yes, Mafia 2 seemingly has the structure of the first game and it's remake where the open world is optional...but that is deceptive. Most of your time in Mafia 2 is spent driving. It's almost 60% of the game. If not 70%. You watch a cutscene that lasts less than 5 minutes and then 5-10 minute driving sequence then watch another cutscene and back to more driving. They changed the police system this time but considering how long driving to the next destination is, the cops can feel more like an annoying progression roadblock.

Compare that to the first game where car rides went by quickly and the car chases happened during big story moments. In Mafia 2, it's easy to call it downtime driving simulator. At times, it felt like the plot points dropped were supposed to be their own quest lines in a traditional open world.

Fist fighting is just kind of there. It doesn't have much going on to really go into detail on.

Then there's the shooting. Oh the shooting. I originally played on normal difficulty and thought easy mode might make it more bearable. It didn't. You can get down to critical health very fast on easy mode too.

A big issue with cover combat is that the higher you raise the difficulty or the more that is added, the longer time is spent waiting for health to regen. Mafia 2 is this. The big challenge of the shooting is hoping you can kill an enemy fast enough before they hit you and your health goes down to critical. Die? Do it all again since checkpoints aren't that frequent.

So much time is spent just waiting for health to regen and trying to land a shot on an enemy. Third party controller did add extra issues I will admit.

A good aspect of combat is that weapons kind of feel punchy. Sound design could be better.

Overall when looking back on my time with Mafia 2, I can't help but say to myself, "oh my god I spent hours of my life doing boring car rides and drawn out cover shootouts. I don't want to touch this again."

Devil May Cry 4: Special Edition Review

As much as I have a soft spot for this game being one of the big titles that got me more into gaming that went beyond licensed games and the occasional Ratchet and Clank, playing it now made me realize more than ever the amount of flaws there is. When it comes to combat, visuals and music. DMC4 comes together but it is marred by so many other issues that undermine those qualities too. I'm going to try to be as quick and concise as I can be regarding how lukewarm I am on this game.

The story comes first and to put it kindly, it's remarkable how a plot for an action game like this can be hard to follow and underdeveloped at the same time. I'll give the game credit for it's moderately well done opening with the nice angelic choir song and later with Dante showing up shooting a religious figure in the head and the game starting off with a fight against him. Everything goes downhill after that. The story afterwards tries to have an overarching conspiracy plot that is very half baked with underdeveloped characters to partner it.

It's easy to tell since after Credo orders Nero to go after Dante. The thing is, you are searching all around for an empty town with no idea where he could be, his last sighting or where he might go next. Just hope you wander around for a while and he pops up. Compare that to DMC3 and even 1. In the former, Arkham attacks Dante and Vergil summons a tower, you go to that tower and fight him. DMC1 has Dante be hired by Trish who uses the face of the former's mother to encourage him even more to go there.

There's a locations that make me wonder why they are even there. There's a castle in the snow but also one in a forest? Why is there two locations that are both are a home base?

The characters are underdeveloped like Kyrie who is just soft spoken childhood friend of Nero's with nothing else to flesh her and is just a damsel. Credo is supposed to be Nero's equivilant to Vergil and Nelo Angelo but you only fight him once and then in the next scene after Santcus kills him. For a game that already reuses bosses, it's rather bizarre how quickly Credo is gone despite his importance to the story of being a rival to Nero.

Nero is a stock standard generic protagonist you could find in a shonen anime with not much making him stand out.

Wait, Devil May Cry already had an established protagonist, it's Dante. To give the story some credit, he's easily the best part. Watching the more flanderized version of him 3 but now more powerful than ever in 4 is fun to watch. Watching him taunt and make fun of his enemies is a joy to see. His personality, the way he acts, it creates a ludonarrative harmony with the gameplay....unforuntately, this version is more along the lines of Jack Sparrow. He's a supporting character in someone else's story and that is Nero. Why do we need the him? Dante's is already very powerful and it's not like he ages like a normal human.

Santcus is a unsurprisingly is an undercooked villain and with how powerful Dante is now. He's somehow supposed to get Dante into his statue of doom. With no worf effect on Dante and how powerful he is protrayed, it almost feels like Dante didn't want to finish off Santcus as a way being nice to Nero. Santcus has some vague plan on having the world worship Sparda but no idea how it was going to occur.

I've been going on about the story but it's just awful that it's hard not to write this much about it.

Gameplay fares better...when it comes to combat. Nero is initially fun to play as with using Red Queen combo A, B and C, alternate to buster, using snatch, going up in the air, hitting the enemy then charge Blue Rose up to do a powerful shot. However the only new ablitiy in combat Nero gets is Devil Trigger and the rest are puzzle items and navigation abilties.

Dante of course is better. You got style switch, different weapons and different guns to use and it's better than Nero's limited arsenal but Dante only has 7 missions and everything is given at a rapid fire pace. You know it's crazy when Dante gets a new fighting style and he's fighting a puzzle boss for his final level. DMC, a game acclaimed for it's combat having a puzzle boss. That's quite a low.

So you got more missions as a character with less and less missions with a character with more. There's also the whole thing of backtracking to the start of the game fighting the same bosses but that's been said to death.

The proud soul system is terrible. You only get a significient amount after a mission so Divinity Statue visits during missions when not buying items is pointless. You can't buy anything until a mission is done and get a good number of points to buy anything. This problem goes double for Dante since he has 7 missions.

The platforming and puzzle sections are unnessecary since it's combat focused but outside of a terrible one with spikes in Fortuna Castle, they aren't too annoying. The dice game bad.

Overall, good combat but a weak campaign surronding it.

Ruiner Review

This was a game I played a while back due to me liking the way it sounded. A twin shooter with over the top glory kills? Sign me up. I decided to play the game again just to see if I still would and I still do enjoy it. If anything, I consider Ruiner so much fun to play that I wished it was longer since the 4-5 hours it takes to beat the game can breeze by so quickly. Maybe 7-8 hours would be fine for me.

Ruiner is quite the charming game. It's an overly violent cyberpunk twin shooter that can almost resemble various cyberpunk anime. It even has Susumu Hirasawa of Berserk fame doing some of the tracks in the game. Speaking of that, they are quite good especially the overworld theme. It has much of his singing you can find in the 90s Berserk soundtrack although it shares some resemblance to the tracks of the Dreamcast game. The end credits theme is also quite good, I'm a little surprised I didn't spot him the first time I beat it.

The story is quite minimal but it does try to have more going on with it having what is seemingly an unreliable narrator. It's sort of vagely intriguing. There was one part of the game where a boss was called "TrafficKing" which can be almost too on the nose for me.

Gameplay is what is you'll primarily doing. Shooting and blasting your way through hordes of enemies. It does share similaries with Doom 2016 almost to the point where it feels like what if that was a twin stick shooter. Ruiner does have a dash mechanic a few years before Eternal would adopt it.

You can attack through melee and shooting. Attacks are mostly projectile with melee users. Battle are a fun ballet of using your Ruiner Gun which is similar to Robocop's Auto 9 with it's burst fire. You'll be switching between many guns with no reloading or two weapon limits either. Similar to how Neo was using firearms in The Matrix. That and constantly dashing and eventually doing the glory kills on downed enemies like I mentioned earlier. This is encouraged to get back health and be more aggressive in combat.

I did wish melee played a bigger role, I mainly did it occasionally on normal difficulty.

There's also a skill tree system that allows different for play styles and abilties. Not a big fan of this since I prefer to have it be structured in a more linear and universal way. This can sort of create "replay value" since I went with abilities I didn't get in my first playthrough. In this one, I unlocked and put points into a slo mo bullet time style ability similar to Max Payne and FEAR. It can help moving away from projectiles easier and aim shots with the sticks since I played on PS5.

You can also pause the screen and time and chain dashes but considering how fast and frenetic combat can be partnered with the bullet time ablity, actively using does feel like it would slow things down even more.

There also random deaths because a dropship landed and it instantly kills you.

Bosses are just okay and kind of feel like spongey fodder enemies.

With all this said, my only big issue is the length since it all this can feel so quick and breezy. This could be me having so much fun that I wish the game was slightly longer. The issues I mentioned are just minor in the grand scheme things especially with how enjoyable the action is. Since the pacing is so fast and it checkpoints so often that the super annoying parts never last long enough to feel insufferable.

Overall for a game I decided to just randomly feel like playing again. It lived up to my initial thoughts I had about it which is always a sigh of relief for me since it tells me I know my tastes well.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider Review

The best way to describe Shadow of the Tomb Raider is "arc fatigue" the game. The signs were already there in Rise of the Tomb Raider where Lara is learning the same lesson she learned in the 2013 reboot. Everything about the game feels like we should just move on already but let's drag things out furthur. It can be seen in the story and gameplay. As a whole, the whole title feels like making a new Tomb Raider for the sake of it but at the same time, she can't "become" the Tomb Raider she's destined to be just yet.

Story is a good example of this. Rise already shoehorned a bizarre rivalry between Lara and a secret organization bent on world domination known as "Trinity". This game is here to quickly wrap it up. It's easy to tell just by the way it starts. The after credits ending of Rise protray them as a group is very secretive and shouldn't be messed with. At the start of Shadow, Lara already manages to figure out who the leader is. Speaking of this "leader", he is super dull and uninteresting to the point I wonder how he's even a "main villain". I almost wished they went all the way and had Natla be the leader. The series did sort of play at her being the Lex Luthor and James Moriarty of the franchise and it felt like one big missed opportunity to not have everything come together and come full circle. Not that this would single handedly save the game's story but Dominguez has no screen presence and never does much of anything interesting other than, "I'm trying to save the world" monlogues.

There is an interesting premise of Lara indirectly causing the end of the world and has a sequence similar to Protragual from Assassin's Creed Rogue. It's squandered by much of the game taking place in Paititi where Lara spends much of the game chasing after one specific macguffin that ends in her not getting it. Much of the game is trying to get it with not much really happening. The only thing connecting all this is that Dominguez just so happens to the leader of the cult you are going up against in these parts.

It doesn't help that they retcon Lara's backstory again where Richard was still seeing his wife before his death and Ana from Rise isn't even there. She's still shook up over her father's death.

Things do pick up towards the end with a fake out death of Jonah and then Lara finally becomes the Tomb Raider...for real this time. It's hard to get enthastic towards this story since there's much of nothing in it.

Gameplay is much of the same. TR 2013 and Rise had combat, climbing and puzzles be broken and spread evenly throughout both campaigns.

Shadow on the other hand has shooting be downplayed considerably. The best way of describing the gameplay is that it wants to be a TR of yester year really badly. Much of the game is spent just doing platforming and puzzles. It might not be bad on paper but the DNA of the first two Survivor games are still here. You still have the scrap system and skill tree. Why would you want to use scrap to upgrade weapons when there isn't as much combat anymore? Why get combat related skills when the combat itself is much easier and downplayed?

Speaking of combat, the design of itself has been gutted. Stealth does seem to be improved with actual suspicion bars and a last known position system but this fall aparts when the guards notice you very quickly, are clumped together and have a hivemind system where one guard detection means the whole area is on alert. Gas arrows are gone and fear arrows come in late in the game. You can use mud to hide but the guard AI issues hold that bad too.

Combat itself? The arenas mainly just squared rooms with about many 4-7 guards that can quickly be gunned down. Where's the melee and shielded enemies, enforcers, armored enemies, enemies that throw grenades and molotovs, or enemies enemies from furthur distances? It's just the same machine gun wielders clumped together in a squared room. Drum mag assault rifle later on makes it more trivial

The hardest section is when you lose all your guns and you have to use stealth to get by but the AI issues especially the hivemind AI holds that back. Fear arrows are interesting but they come in too late.

Much of the game is puzzles and climbing. The latter especially. It does have more going than Uncharted does but having so much of the game be this reveals what little depth there is and how scripted it can be. It was always like this but Shadow dedicated much of the run time to it makes it more obvious so many deaths because it wasn't exactly what the game wanted me to do. It doesn't compare to the simple and elegant tile and grab system from the Core Design games.

Puzzles are "fine" but the over reliance on them just makes it feel like it wants to be the aforementioned TR of yester year. They are supposed to be downtime but after them it's back to more dull and more climbing again.

Overall, I've beaten Shadow 3 times over the years and it always manages to be a lukewarm game every time.

Scarlet Nexus Review

I heard of this game back when it came out and especially how it tried to have more ambitious combat than a lot of JRPGs would try to have. It took awhile but I finally did play it. As a whole, there are things about Scarlet Nexus I enjoy and has aspects that have more going than a lot of action RPG combat but it's held back by so many things. It personifies the entire game. What is interesting on paper is held back by lackluster execution. I wanted to like the game a lot more than I did. There's still enjoyment to be had but it gets tedious the more it goes on.

It can be seen in the game's visual presentation. It has very nice cel shaded look and very well animated cutscenes...sometimes. Much of the game is spent watching these visual novel style sequences when you aren't in combat. I get it since there's a lot of dialogue and you can't animate every cutscene but it kind of makes the clean and crisp visual style not stand up as much.

The story is an interesting aspect of the game to talk about. The game has two routes with Yuito and Kasane. Both sides show different sides of the story when the two aren't together. It's interesting on paper but the cracks start showing in how Yuito's campaign while having it's interesting characters is rather dull. It's often said by many who played that you should start with Yuito first and do Kasane after. That can really test one's patience since both routes take about 20 hours to complete. There's no epilogue chapter recontexualizing everything and to add the final nail, Yuito and Kasane are together for the last 4-5 hours of the game making a second playthrough eventually become a slog. According to the trophy list on PS5 less than 10% of people actually did that so it's even less encouraging.

What also doesn't help is how Yuito's campaign writing is "fine" and is carried by the side characters. The writing in Kasane's route curbstomps it so much to the point where I wished I played as her first and skipped over Yuito entirely. Kasane's more cold, stoic and her initial refusal to care about anyone other than her sister makes for far superior character interactions. She has a more concrete motivation of wanting to protect her sister and the urgency she shows in wanting to cure her. The main antagonist Karen Travers is much more promient and has more screen time and Alice gets far better foreshadowing. There's also a much better narrative hook to kick off her side of the story too.

Yuito's campaign is mostly carried by side characters like Gemma, Luka and Arashi when she joins up later. Kasane's campaign has more going on by comparison. I could talk about the rest of the story but I can't help but feel a little "tricked" after looking up Kasane's cutscenes.

Gameplay falls in the same line. On paper, Scarlet Nexus SHOULD be a game I really enjoy. It foregoes many of the tropes found in RPGs. No gear or loot systems, XP is relegated to the skill tree, and stats don't really matter at all. You got interesting power like pyrokinesis, clairvoyance, a Crysis like maximum armor ability, teleporting and being able to speed up while time around you slows.

You got enviromental interactions to hurt enemies and stun them. This helps get an enemy's core out faster and do a quick finishing kill rather than killing them by widdling down their health bar. You can put oil on enemies and dose them with flames or find parts of the enviroment to use your psychic powers on them.

These powers are encouraged in gameplay too. Invisible enemies? Clairvoyance can help you see them. Use pryrokinesis to burn enemies to do more damage and destroy armor. Use hardened to take more damage than usual. Use teleportation to close the gap on enemies before they hide in their industrutible hiding spot. There's also a perfect dodge and a few different ways to do more damage like a rage mode when clicking the sticks. The optional "social links" missions even unlocks more interesting abilities for your party which made me want to do them even more.

This sounds great right? It does but then the game reuses most of the same enemy types for much of the game. Add to that the stages can drag on for ages and since they are less RPG stages and action game ones, it can really start to wear thin. You see so much of what the game has to offer early on. The tedium can really start to get mind numbing especially how I wrote describing what I liked about the combat. Add the challenging bosses and the stage lengths wearing out my healing items, I eventually lowered to easy and just went through the rest of the game.

For a game that had this much going on for it's combat, it's disappointing I wanted to lower to easy just to get it done faster. I don't even want to say that but that's just much steam the game loses after a point.

Overall while I did like Scarlet Nexus enough to finish it, everything about it feels I should like way more than I do.

River City Girls(Playstation 5) Review

Decided to randomly play this game again. I got a free PS5 upgrade path with the digital PS4 version I bought years ago. It was short enough that it was worth quickly going through again. I remember it being the "the wacky 2D beat em up with solid voice acting, great soundtrack and dumb ending" and it was just that.

The best parts of River City Girls is everything involving visuals and audio. The visuals are vibrant, crisp and colorful. It's some of the best I've seen when it comes to modern 2D pixel art.

Voice acting does a great job at selling me on the over the top and silly premise the game has. The VAs are acted and directed in a way that they know exactly what kind of story they are in. An over the top campy excuse plot to go beat up a wide array of goons.

Soundtrack might be one of my favorites in gaming or at least when it comes to "recent" releases. The snyth wave soundtrack with Megan McDuffee's singing gives the game a bizzarely chill atmosphere as you go around beating up dozens of bad guys. There's some good 8 bit sounding songs too. Whenever I think of this game, the soundtrack is what I often think of more than anything.

Gameplay itself is on the "fine" side. It certainly feels like a 2D beat em up of yester year where it's more reliant on the collision detection and hit boxes being line up perfectly for you to consistently do damage. Enemies also spongey and get spongey the more the game goes on.

To counter this, you get XP and level up to improve base stats. You also get new moves upon levelling up as well being able to buy new ones at dojos with items to help you out too. The game autosaves frequently too and madatory waves you only have to do once upon completion.

As a result River City Girls feels less like a game where it feels you are getting good and more so a series of safety nets and band aids are in place to prevent the game from being overly frustrating and difficult.

There are also bizarre platforming sections here and there. Mainly just 2 or 3 but they feel out of place whenever they happen.

It can lead to a massive issue I have with the game is that when you start running, it feels like you are being magnetically pulled back but after a little while, the momentum you are supposed to get from a running animation finally kicks in.

A big reason why I'm not as positive on the gameplay as I could be is due to the amount of fetch quests you have to do to progress the story. Every chapter there's at least one or two fetch quests before fighting the boss instead of just getting to the end of the stage and then fighting them. It can make this already short game feel padded. This is a bigger issue in the sequel with that said.

Bosses are a strange case where most of them are easy especially if you know to buy food at the various shops especially buying lots of Double Merv Burgers. The continue system can feel like a cheap way of adding stakes since you lose money and all the used healing items after dying to them or any enemy encounter.

Hibari is by far the hardest fight in the game since she's the only flying boss on top of having bullet hell attacks. She also spawns in a bunch of goons as she tries to fire her needle at the player and in turn has to predict where it will bounce back to her to do damage. This boss can feel bizarre in that even using food items would still not be enough to beat her.

Once you win, it's mostly smooth sailing.

The ending is pretty dumb. I do know Wayforward changed the ending after initial backlash. I have a hard time telling which of the specific ones were. It's not good but it only lasts about a less than 3 minutes so it's not get attached to how "bad" it is.

Overall, River City Girls was exactly what I remembered. It was a solid if not an overly enthuastic trip down memory lane. The PS5 version did come free so I'm not complaining.