Dragon Quest XI S: Echoes of an Elusive Age Definitive Edition isn’t merely a port of the fabulous PlayStation 4 and PC game. As such, this review will be entirely focused on the differences between this version and the base game. If you are looking for a review about the story, characters, battle system, and other basic features of the game, check out my original review here. If you are at all interested in JRPGs, but haven’t played Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age because you didn’t have a system capable of it, then you should definitely pick it up. None of the added features are likely to make or break a first purchase, but they can definitely determine whether it is worth purchasing a second copy of the game. There are really only two minor areas where this version could be possibly construed as inferior to the base game. The first minor downgrade is that the graphic quality is reduced, but not to a drastic extent (texture quality and lower draw distance), and the other is that this is the only version without any trophy support, outside of the game’s own internal achievements.

Other than those minor things, Dragon Quest XI S: Echoes of an Elusive Age Definitive Edition is entirely additive. The most obvious added feature can be used right away, and that is the full classic Dragon Quest 2D mode. The 2D mode is not just classic in its graphical styling (looking most similar to the SNES era of the games), but it also features a much more traditional approach to combat. As such, some of the features that you may be used to in the base game may not transfer over entirely. There are too many examples to list, but a subtle one would be how MP restorative effects are added to the characters. In 3D mode it may do so before you take your turn, but in 2D mode it happens after your entire party goes. As such, you can find that you are using much more MP than in 3D mode, because you will not get it back if you defeat the monster before the turn is over. Another important distinction is that enemy targeting happens in the traditional way, so this mode may take a lot to get used to if the player is unfamiliar with classic Dragon Quest. You can switch back and forth between 3D and 2D at any Goddess Statue, however you will start at the beginning of whatever Chapter you choose. A side benefit of this limitation is that it is a subtle way to get in NG+ as well, because you bring your equipment and levels with you.

Fairly early on in your adventure you will meet up with an individual out in the world who will be able to send you to an entirely new area, called Tickington. This area and all quests associated with it are entirely new to Dragon Quest XI S. Whether you are playing in 3D or 2D mode in your main adventure, the graphic style will always transition into 2D when you are transported to Tickington. If you played the original version of the game, you will know the creatures that populate this area, but if you haven’t they will be a bit confusing until you reach Act 3 of the game (after the first credits). But they do offer sidequests with some fairly nice rewards early on in the game, and a couple rewards that are exclusive to them. One potential source of confusion or frustration might be that they tell you in the Quest Log when you can technically reach a new quest giver (you find them out in the regular world before going back to Tickington), but that is only when you can reach the local area. That individual may still be locked behind a door that you don’t have the key for, or need to wait for a particular story event. So if you see that a quest giver is available to you, search around that listed area, but if you can’t find them it’s best to come back later (especially after getting the Magic Key and Ultimate Key).

This town is entirely new to Dragon Quest XI S, but it contains a series of books which will transport the Luminary and his party to various different worlds. For those who have played them, it doesn’t take long before you will notice that each of those worlds is represented by a previous entry in the Dragon Quest series. This was fantastic for me, since I’ve played the entirety of every game in the series other than Dragon Quest X (the MMORPG). The Tickington content is entirely additive, so I wouldn’t criticize it too much. But there are some potential issues for players of Dragon Quest XI S, especially those who are entirely new to the series. Many of the quests given here are rather short and often don’t have a lot of direction to them. This is particularly noticeable when they send you to another area from the past. If you don’t know very much about that original game, then you may be confused by some of the names and references. And you may end up having to do a bit of trial and error before it works. But even when a quest is short, it’s still impressive that the development team took the time to re-render every game in the series in this new way. Some of the monster and character models will transfer over with little problems, but many of them don’t. That can involve making very old monsters and regions more graphically impressive or it can mean entirely recreating a 3D monster and area into sprites. That is not a minor amount of work.

Once you have completed all the quests from each tome (all of them have 3, other than Dragon Quest X), a statue will form above the book featuring the hero for that particular game. Or a token hero if the game had multiple options (true of III, IX, and X). After you have completed them all you will enter a series of completely new boss fights with some very interesting rewards. And finally after they have all been completed a new fight will become available back in the normal world outside of Tickington. This fight can happen either in the 3D or the 2D world and features the strongest boss in the game, and by quite a ways. This is a nice addition because one thing Dragon Quest XI S is missing from previous games in the series is that notorious Dragon Quest difficulty. There is still the option to add handicaps to your playthrough, which was added to the English version of the original game, but we were still missing some of the super bosses you could find in the later Dragon Quest games. The Tickington boss series definitely increases the difficulty a bit, but the true monster is the fight at the end of the whole series in the “real world”. Even with the best gear on every character I had to do a bit of Seed farming. But that was satisfying after how easy the rest of the game is.

One of the largest reasons for picking up Dragon Quest XI S, even if you already own the original game, is the 2D mode of the game. But even if you were never into those classic Dragon Quest titles, there are other reasons to pick this version up. One of the complaints in the first game was the abrupt turn the story takes between Act 1 and Act 2. You were originally told some of what happened by a prominent NPC (trying to keep it vague), but even when you reunite with your friends, some of it remained a mystery. They added a whole bunch of content between Act 1 and Act 2 this time that fills in those stories for everyone but the Twins. If they showed you everything that went on with the Twins, it would have lessened the impact of a later scene, so that omission is understandable and I really can’t elaborate on it further than that. But your party members and a few side characters really get to shine in these side stories, so it really is an extremely strong addition to the overall game of Dragon Quest XI S, and perhaps more than any other feature marks this as the Definitive Edition of the game.

There are a lot of other, more subtle additions to Dragon Quest XI S. The other large complaint with the original version of the game was the midi soundtrack, and now almost every song in the game has been given a Symphonic treatment. This can be changed at any time in the menu, and is an overall improvement, just probably not as drastic of a quality increase as many would have hoped. They also added many new items, and especially several new armor sets for each character that slot in nicely with progression and also give you some very nice glamour options. There were also some strong quality of life improvements when it comes to the Quick Menu, especially calling any mount and using the Forge anywhere. The Forge also had a massive quality of life improvement that allows you to purchase any material that is carried by a vendor somewhere in the world right from the Equipment Creation menu. Because gold is easier to come by than previous Dragon Quest games, much easier than many foraged items, this is a massive time saver. Some classicists might balk at so many quality of life improvements, but they are also optional, so realistically Dragon Quest XI S doesn’t suddenly get a Casuals Only tag due to these changes. It is still most definitely a hardcore JRPG that is extremely long, especially now with the added content.

As I said at the beginning, if you are new to this game but like JRPGs then feel free to jump right in. But even if you played through the entirety of the game in its original form, I can still heartily recommend this game. I might say that you can wait for a sale, but this is published by Nintendo and sales will be extremely rare. Was it worth playing through again for $60? Most definitely, but I cannot say that will be true for everyone. There is at least 20 hours of new content here, but realistically just having this wonderful JRPG on the go and with the quality of life improvements already made it a must buy for me. Fringe benefit is the added story content. If I was in charge, there is only really one other thing I would have added, and that’s additional skill trees. But that is small fry compared to what they did add, especially when it comes to actually getting to marry my waifu Jade (which wasn’t possible in the original).

Review Score
Overall

Review Copy Provided by Play-Asia

The post REVIEW: Dragon Quest XI S appeared first on oprainfall.

Sengoku Rance is an Adult Visual Novel Turn Based Strategy Simulation game that is 18+ and for Adults Only. The review is potentially NSFW, but steps are taken to minimize that risk. However, all official links are most definitely NSFW and are 18+. Sengoku Rance, like any other titles in the series, has content for a niche audience and features many instances of non-compliance (rape), monster on human sex, and sex featuring characters of questionable age range. As such, even if this title is more game-like than most entries, caution is advised for those who are easily offended by such circumstances, even when fictionally represented. As in any other Rance title, the debatable moral implications do not factor into my review or the score, other than the initial content advisory.

It was not without some trepidation that I approached the review for Sengoku Rance. The most prominent reason for hesitation was due to Rance 5D, which was the first game in the series I ever played. Much like Sengoku Rance, Rance 5D is a main entry in the series that feels like a side entry due to both story and gameplay element decisions. As a result, I was not a huge fan of that game and entered into Rance VI -Collapse of Zeth- with a bit of a sour taste. But Rance VI totally turned me around on the series and easily makes my top 10 Eroge of all time. So I definitely enjoyed the main series entry, but not the seeming side project. The other reason I was a bit apprehensive is that Sengoku Rance (also infrequently known as Rance VII, or Warring-States Rance) was actually the title that made the series popular in the West, due to a widely distributed fan translation. It was so widely distributed because it came out in 2006, when file sharing really started to pick up, and because of the more gameplay focused elements. Also, as I mentioned in the content advisory, the Rance series has an appeal towards a largely untapped demographic of sexual tastes. So this is already a rather beloved game to many, and it is getting its first official translation.

You need not worry about having any previous knowledge of the series in order to fully appreciate the story in Sengoku Rance. They take a hard turn from Rance VI and never look back. In fact, there are even fewer characters from the previous games that enter into this title than before. It’s best just to take this as a entirely independent game from the previous series, although a major event happens towards the end that changes the rest of the games until the end of the series. So it could also be considered the major turning point, story wise, but not in gameplay style. That being said, Rance himself, and his slave-girl Sill, are largely unchanged. Rance is still brash and headstrong and doesn’t know the meaning of the word “No”, whether it comes to any of his desires, sexual included. Sill remains his unwavering support and often the true power behind the ego. She is a very powerful mage, and that is true no matter what region they enter. While she likes to complain, it’s fairly obvious that she’s not just with Rance due to unfounded affection, she has quite the masochistic side to her. It’s more than likely that she stays with him because he behaves like Rance, not in spite of his particular quirks.

The remaining characters and locations in Sengoku Rance will ring a lot of bells to anyone who has read anything about this tumultuous period of Japanese history. The Sengoku, or Warring-States, period of Japan happened around 1467-1600 CE, and a great many examples of literature and entertainment have been crafted around it. That being said, this game takes a great many liberties with the material, even more than other games in the period often do. This should be viewed as a comedic representation first, not as historical narrative. The other games in the series don’t even take place in real countries, so this is truly an outlier. That being said, if you do recognize it as merely a riff on history, it can be fun to suss out the references and subtle details that you may otherwise miss. Honestly, that aspect of Sengoku Rance ended up being my favorite part of the whole game, which is why I take the time to mention it here. It’s not going to get you a quality grade if you wrote a history paper featuring these events, but it might be entertaining enough for you to seek out some more serious texts on the matter.

Largely due to the style of gameplay, the story of Sengoku Rance is a minor weak point. It’s not that it’s bad, just merely serviceable. A lot of this is due to how random events can occur, or due to how many options you have that drastically affect the story or characters. That being said, there could have still been more they could have done with the story itself, even if it would have been difficult stylistically. But where it does shine is in the characters themselves. There are a few enemies and male allies that are very interesting, but as you would expect with an Eroge, most of the really amazing characters are women. Alicesoft is most famous for their character designs, and that remains true here. It can still be said without any reservation that they employ some of the best artists in the industry for their characters. Honestly I hope that a lot more of these characters pass on into the next title than happened between Rance VI and Sengoku Rance. And with the major event that happens in the end of this game, Rance could definitely use some allies.

The screen you see above is where you will be spending most of your time in Sengoku Rance. So if that puts you off of the game, you might want to reconsider getting it. This is most definitely a Turn Based Strategy Simulation game, and it’s even a bit hardcore about that genre. Not only are there a great many options to choose from each turn, to the extent that two Actions per turn never feels like enough, but it’s quite easy to get yourself into a fail state. My largest advice for making it through the simulation portion of the game if you aren’t into that style of game is to maintain many different saves and try to keep track of which one you want. Because of random events, or some bad strategy, you can get yourself into loads of trouble. This is not the first Strategy Simulation game I’ve played, this isn’t even my first Sengoku period game of that style, but I wouldn’t exactly call myself a fan. I do think that Sengoku Rance does the gameplay portion well, within the genre style, so your mileage will vary drastically. It’s a very niche style of game as compared to the straight up dungeon crawler JRPG featured in Rance VI.

Army versus army battles are pretty straightforward, featuring up to 6 Battalions facing each other. You can have either major characters leading a Battalion, or minor side characters. Either way, the more you use them successfully, and the more time you invest in them with general turn Actions, the more powerful they will become. Each Battalion has a class type based on the leader (for example, Warrior or Archer). There is some diversity and strategy there, but not nearly as much as goes into choosing how to spend your two actions per turn in Sengoku Rance. That is the real killer, no matter how good your army gets. Because each Leader can only do one action per turn, you can run out of actionable troops very easily. You can gain new troop Leaders from story events or with Negotiation (particularly with Prisoners), but I never felt like I had so many that I was impregnable. This could be seen as an advantage in the game for those who are looking for a challenge within the genre, but it could also be seen as an impediment if you are just in the game to see the end of the story and unlock as many CG scenes as possible (over 100).

It can be quite a bit more difficult to unlock all the various scenes in the game than it is in other Eroge titles. This does encourage replay, which isn’t a bad thing, unless this type of Strategy game isn’t for you. However, it can get a little frustrating at times in Sengoku Rance. One reason for this is that there are circumstances that will put you in a fail state without your control. I’ll give an early example that doesn’t spoil anything. I declared war on one small nation and after ending my turn another small nation declared war on me. It wasn’t due to my action, it was a random event. I figured it wasn’t too bad because they were two small nations. The problem came when I attacked the nation that I first declared war on and they had a counterattack featuring a never ending army of panda bears. I ended up using all my troops trying to fend off the furry fiends and ended up still losing that territory that I gained by attacking. Not only that, but the other country that declared war on me before also attacked me and I ended up losing territory near my capital because I literally had zero troops left to defend (as I said, limited by one troop action per turn). I’m not too put off by a nation randomly declaring war on me, but the never ending onslaught of Pandas was a mechanic that I’m not fond of when everything else about Sengoku Rance stresses that your actions have reasonable consequences. That wasn’t the only example, but it was the earliest one in my playthrough.

There was one other issue with the game, and that’s how old and clunky the menu system feels. The save screen above is a particularly egregious example of this, you have to drag the book of your Save over to the Load Window or the Delete in order to manipulate it at all. This is something that you have to do often enough, even if you don’t Save Scum, that it gets pretty tedious. But all the menus in Sengoku Rance feel like they were from an older generation of computer games. That being said, everything was translated very well and I have little doubt that this is superior to the very old fan translation, but I haven’t experienced that version for myself. The music isn’t super memorable, but it is as fitting to the time period represented in the game as you would hope. If anything, I’d have to say that it might even be a bit better than old Sengoku Strategy games that I’ve played in the past. Still, in every way, I would have to put the overall presentation of Sengoku Rance somewhere between Rance 5D and Rance VI.

Overall Sengoku Rance is not at all a bad game, there is just simply no denying that it is not really to my tastes. As I’ve said in many previous reviews, the more randomness there is in a game, the less I’m going to like it. And Strategy Simulation games are pretty low on my favorite genre list. I’m not going to ding it too hard in the score territory for simply being in a genre I’m not that fond of, but there is still a limit to how much I can enjoy such a game. But if you are into that style of game, I can heartily recommend this title. Just don’t do so if you are just in it for the sex. The Eroge scenes are short enough that I suspect you would feel your money wasted. At $34.95, it is a little pricey for an Eroge if you are not into the Strategy elements. But if you are into those elements, that price would be a steal for how much replay you will get out of this title. I spent over 30 hours playing it and I haven’t even unlocked half of the CG scenes. It was worth me playing as a fan of the series because the next title will be no doubt influenced by the events here, but Sengoku Rance is not going to threaten Rance VI as my favorite of the series thus far.

Review Score
Overall

Review Copy Provided By The Publisher

The post (18+) EROGE REVIEW: Sengoku Rance appeared first on oprainfall.

Content Advisory: Farther than the Blue Sky is Adults Only and all associated links are 18+ and potentially NSFW. This review is also potentially NSFW, but steps are taken to minimize that risk. The game itself features consensual sex that is mostly vanilla, what I would call French Vanilla. In other words, it is a little spicier than vanilla, but nothing that most adults would consider too kinky.

Farther than the Blue Sky is the second eroge visual novel that I have reviewed from Chuablesoft. The first game I reviewed from them was If You Love Me, Then Say So!, which is a game that I liked, but didn’t love. So it was with some trepidation that I approached the review for this newest VN, although I always do my best to give each game its own shot. And I’m truly happy I reviewed it. Every complaint that I had about the previous title was corrected in Farther than the Blue Sky. That alone made it a much better experience, but then on top of that they tackled a subject that I’m also passionate about, rocket engineering. If you are at all interested in pleasant relationships with cute girls, with some good sex, and a lot of genuine science/engineering, then I strongly suggest that you just go ahead and pick up this game now. You can read the rest of the review while it is downloading.

I’ll get into the specific ways that Farther than the Blue Sky improves on the experience of If You Love Me, Then Say So! later in the review. But the most personal way that it was a better experience for me has to do with rocket engineering itself. There was a time when rocket engineering was going to be my chosen career path, with the intent to end up at JPL or NASA. In fact, one of the books that I carried around with me the most in High School was a technical book about Soviet rocket engineering. I read that one quite a few times while imagining that career for myself, but I ended up following the nuclear engineering route for nine years and then went back to school for astrophysics and cosmology. So I never did get around to that interest, although I did keep up with it as a casual observer. One of the best things about Farther than the Blue Sky is that there is a lot of genuine engineering here, and even when they fictionalize something, it’s not that far outside of our current reach.

That might sound a little intimidating for some people who are just wanting a pleasant romantic story with sex. And that is indeed a tough task to make the story technical enough to please those like me who have a genuine interest in the material, but not make it so technical to completely lose those with no interest in science and engineering. One resource that they built into Farther than the Blue Sky to help mitigate that issue is a very well implemented Glossary. The Glossary also clearly denotes which terms are specific to this game only. Mostly they are specific companies and products that would be tied to this fictional area of Japan, or near-future technology that makes sense in order to fit in with the themes of the story. There is no space magic or far out-of-reach science and engineering here. Another nice thing about the Glossary in Farther than the Blue Sky is that you can mouse click on any of the terms within the chat box and it will take you right to the definition, and you only need to exit out of the Glossary to go right back to that scene. It makes the implementation a lot more seamless and much more useful.

My history with eroge visual novel protagonists is a rather rocky one, but thankfully Otoya is not a member of the growing trash heap. While I certainly don’t get his idiot side, I’m similar to the girls, he does have many redeeming qualities. The most redeeming quality he has is that if he is really interested in something, he will work his tail off in order to excel at it. That is an especially important feature for anyone who could catch the eye of the girls featured in Farther than the Blue Sky, due to the subject matter. If he was unable to be taught, there would really be no realistic avenue for him to enter into their lives long enough for romantic sparks to light. He is, not so affectionately, nicknamed Shun by his peers. And, initially, he is an all around blockhead. But, he is also the reader’s entry into the world and the way the writers have to explain the material to the audience without halting the story completely for an instructional period. Even more than most VN protagonists, he is the audience avatar. Another redeeming aspect of him is that he’s not one of those herbivore Japanese male tropes that have all but worn thin. He knows he likes sex, he has a porn stash in his room just like any teenage boy wants, and once romantic feelings are apparent, he is willing to pursue them. It would be a little extra sad if he was oblivious of those things along with already being the weakest link on the rocket engineering front. So, they avoided that potential issue.

There is one exception to the Shun needing a route into the romantic life of the girls, and that is his childhood friend Honoka. She’s a year younger than he is, so they have spent a year apart as she was completing middle school. That has caused a temporary strain on their relationship, but when he comes to her with the idea of joining the rocket club he’s recently joined, Byakko, she agrees pretty quickly. The childhood friend character in Farther than the Blue Sky does bear one similarity to the one in If You Love Me, Then Say So!, and that is her dirty mind. Since that character was my favorite one in that game, it stands to reason that Honoka would be in this game too. Honoka has a less dirty mouth, she normally just alludes to sexual acts and makes Shun fall for her tricks, but there is no doubt that she knows what she is doing. And one area that they definitively improved on was the reason they have never been in a romantic relationship, it is actually very realistic and well-written (but is a spoiler, so I won’t say here). The strange thing is that she’s not far and away my favorite character in this game, she’s actually my least favorite of the four romance options. The reason that is strange in that it’s not because I don’t like anything about her, in most eroge she would be my favorite. It’s just that all the girls are extremely appealing in Farther than the Blue Sky. Her character route starts off a little slow and exasperating, full of romantic misunderstandings like an old Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers vehicle (for example Swing Time or Top Hat). But it really picks up after that and ends extremely well. She also has some of my favorite sex scenes in the game, so she is by no means a weak link.

Nazuna, or Natsu, is my next favorite girl overall, but she is probably tied with the next one realistically. Not that there is a wide gap in any of them, thankfully the issue with Farther than the Blue Sky is too many great girls instead of the opposite. Natsu is quirky with a capital Q, and that is even underselling it. But that ends up working really well for her both for the story and for the initial context. Like the other girls, she is also a trope, being the ditzy tall blonde Western-looking girl with large breasts. Of course, the normal problem that comes with that trope is imagining why in the hell she doesn’t have boys crawling all over her. But in this story you can easily imagine why. Not only is she a rather extreme pyromaniac, just this side of the law, but she also has a rather extreme obsession with rockets and a severe communication problem. You can just imagine the first 5-10 boys trying to get into her pants and striking up a conversation only to run away within 5 minutes, and then all other boys just knowing to not bother. They don’t even need to tell that story, just by how well she is written and performed, the backstory writes itself. She also happens to be extremely wealthy and well-connected as the daughter of the chairman of the rocket industry across the island. But that lifestyle also fits well into her personality and the things that she is totally oblivious to. Much like with Honoka, Natsu transcends those tropes and becomes someone truly special. And while her large chest does play into the relationship a little, and the sex scenes, it is actually her communication issues that come to the forefront. That almost made her my favorite character.

More Rocket Waifus on Page 2 ->

The post (18+) EROGE REVIEW: Farther than the Blue Sky appeared first on oprainfall.

ATLUS is most widely known for their Shin Megami Tensei (SMT) series of games, particularly in the West for its offshoot Persona franchise. That being said, for anyone who pays attention closely enough, the developer actually has quite a diverse portfolio of games. Even their internal studios are given a lot of leeway to make daring new projects, from the extremely old school design of Etrian Odyssey, to the very strange Virtual Boy exclusive, Jack Bros. Catherine definitely belongs to that daring project category, particularly in Japan where video games are usually targeted to a teenage demographic. Even when it was first announced, Catherine was made to speak to adults about adult problems. Of course, they can’t go so far as to make the game rated AO (and prevent it from being sold in stores or digitally), but they largely succeeded in that effort. With Full Body, Catherine gets a chance to reach a new crowd and to add some content to make the game even better overall.

Even when Catherine was first announced, there were rumors that this game was an experimental project that would test out their new Persona engine. And, now that Persona 5 has been released, you can see some of the hallmarks that bear out that theory. Even in the initial release there was a certain Persona flavor to the whole package, especially with the art design and music. But even though the themes were more focused on adults, there was also a heavy mythological component. With Catherine: Full Body, there is even more of a Persona element to it now that they were given the time and resources to add even more narrative elements to an already fairly story-rich game. While I did enjoy the original quite a bit, I probably would have scored it slightly lower than our original reviewer did. My three largest problems with it were that the story seemed too black and white, Katherine seemed to be rather unappealing even though she was ostensibly the “good choice” while Catherine wasn’t all that appealing as the “bad choice” either, and Vincent was difficult for me to relate with. With all the added content in Catherine: Full Body, they were able to address those first two issues very effectively, although the third one remains an unavoidable outcome of just two extremely dissimilar people.

Vincent, the protagonist, is one of two main characters who have changed the least in the Full Body remaster of the game. You get to see him when he was younger more this time around, but those scenes are primarily focused around another character. His interactions with Rin do round him out a bit more, but they only verify that he’s just a fairly nice guy that is a bit of a coward and generally afraid of change. Just like in the original, he is much better towards the end of the game, but he will always be a character that will strongly depend on your own personality as to your reactions to him. That can be seen as a sign of strength though, because they made some strong decisions with him instead of being a very milquetoast character meant to appeal to as wide of a demographic as possible. Many games, particularly with a high budget, are guilty of that latter point. Both in the original and in Full Body, the more you interact with optional conversations, the more you are likely to enjoy Vincent, because some of the best dialogue scenes are not required.

The other main character that hasn’t really changed much in Catherine: Full Body is the titular character of Catherine. That is rather unfortunate because they could have used this chance to do something a lot more with her than they did in the original. She is still cute and she still has great voice work by the wonderful Laura Bailey, but that is about all she has going for her. Perhaps to someone looking for responsibility-free dating she might be more appealing, but that just doesn’t do anything for me. As an agent of temptation she works fairly well, but as a well rounded character, not so much. Where they did do a lot better was with your girlfriend, Katherine. She also wasn’t too appealing for me in the original game because she just seemed to be always too serious and you had a hard time seeing what Vincent ever saw in her. But they did give her a lot more backstory and a little bit extra in the present as well to round out her character more. Now it’s more obvious why she is ostensibly the “good choice”, even though you could also argue that there is not cut-and-dry morality judgement in the game, particularly now in the Full Body remaster with the addition of Rin.

While it may seem obvious that the most significant change is a 3rd romantic option for Vincent, there is more to the addition of Rin than just that. First I’ll go into a general overview of their character in Catherine: Full Body, but in the next paragraph I’m going to have to go into spoilers. So, if you want to avoid any spoiler information, feel free to skip that part. I just need to discuss it in a review because it affects my review score and also because it could either cause someone to purchase or not purchase the game due to the presence of Rin alone. First I must say that Rin was integrated into the game quite a bit more than I was expecting. Not only is the very first cutscene in the game about how Vincent met them, but Rin also plays into the mechanics of the puzzle dungeons much more than the other two romantic interests. That already makes them more appealing than the other two, in my opinion. Rin plays the piano both in the real world and in your dream world. So, in the real world there is an enjoyment factor of having them in the bar all the time, but in the dream world the piano playing can save you from the rampaging boss monster levels by calming the creature for a short time. Rin is a neutral romantic choice, so they do address an issue in the first game where you had to go all in one way or the other to reach the true endings of either Katherine or Catherine. But, if anything, Rin seems to be a much more kind and “good” person than Katherine is, so it also throws a bit of a wrench in the idea of the meter being expressly a morality judgement.

Get Ready for Spoilers on Page 2 ->

The post REVIEW: Catherine: Full Body appeared first on oprainfall.

Like with Stormblood, there are two new Classes/Jobs added with Shadowbringers. This time the two new ones are a new Tank, Gunbreaker, and a new Ranged DPS/Support, Dancer. I’ll start out with talking about the latter. Ranged Physical DPS occupies an interesting subset of skills in Final Fantasy XIV. They tend to have lower overall damage than pure DPS classes (ideally), but they add overall Party and Raid utility by adding buffs to other people, particularly damage buffs. This is even more true for the Dancer. When you successfully complete a Dance Step Routine, you will add a (up to) 5% damage buff on yourself and (after level 60) one Dance Partner of your choice. The buff lasts long enough for you to continually keep it active during any combat situation. Additionally at level 70, you will gain the Technical Step Dance Routine which will add an additional DPS buff to any party members in a 30y range. These dance routines also do massive damage to a single target, with diminishing returns on enemies surrounding it. Beyond the dances themselves, you throw chakra weapons from a ranged distance while looking very stylish doing so. You have a lot of AOE moves (attack over environment) from a very early level that will do some pretty good damage to crowds. It is a very fun class and is extremely maneuverable, the only real issue is how much RNG (Random Number Generator, colloquially the random chance that something will activate) there is to their major burn DPS phases. There are long cooldowns you can use to mitigate some of the RNG, but it does lower their DPS significantly compared to other classes at the highest levels. But because of their constant 5% buff to someone with much higher damage than you do, and your 120sec cooldown raid wide damage buff, they are a very popular support class. The leveling process was fun and the story was engaging, but overall the highlight to the class was just how much fun they are to play and how maneuverable they are.

While Dancer did surprise me a bit with how enjoyable it was, Gunbreaker didn’t really surprise me that much. But that is not a negative, it is just because it feels more like a hybrid of the other 3 Tanking classes in Shadowbringers (Paladin, Warrior, and Dark Knight), only with a slight upgrade in DPS. That being said, it is quite fun if a bit squishy as you are leveling. Once you get to 80 a lot of the extra damage goes away and you can just concentrate on doing the best DPS rotations. Where the class mechanics themselves lack in surprise, the story is actually quite a bit more interesting than Dancer was, in my opinion. Part of that is because we have seen Gunblades for a long time in the game, they were always just part of the Garlean Empire. And you get a lot of backstory for why that is and why it is now changing. Also I generally think the main NPC’s in the Gunbreaker storyline are a bit more interesting. Between the two new classes I am probably going to end up playing Gunbreaker more, but that is because I have always been primarily a tank, no matter what MMORPG it is. For now I’m still a Dark Knight main, but after I get my next DRK tanking achievement, I’m thinking of switching to Gunbreaker (Paladin has been my previous most common main class).

During the process of my Shadowbringers review I leveled up Dark Knight to 80, Dancer to 80, Gunbreaker to 80, White Mage to 80, and Black Mage to 80. Dancer and Gunbreaker start at 60, but the rest I already had to 70. In fact, the only class/job that I have under 70 is Blue Mage, but that’s because their level maximum is fixed to 50 until a future update (later during this expansion). I did also at least mess around a little with every class to check out their new feel and new rotations. There was a major combat rebalance with this expansion, much more thorough than we have had since A Realm Reborn. The previous change to add major Job actions in Stormblood was interesting from a UI perspective, but really didn’t change the class operation all that much. And it was all additive in that circumstance. But with Shadowbringers, they have taken away a lot of previous skills and combined other ones in order to make the combat a bit more streamlined and also to reduce some skill creep. Paladin still has more skills on a skill bar than any other Job, but if they wouldn’t have combined skills, it would have started to be a real issue across the board. That does change the way some roles perform however, so it does take some getting used to. Two of the largest changes are that healers don’t have access to Protect anymore, and tanks don’t have access to a mass taunt. But to counter that, healers have more healing skills and especially more instant heals, and tanks have much better AOE aggro skills. That being said, healers do require a bit more talent to bring out the best, not only to be cognizant of spike damage, but to get in DPS when it is safe. The Jobs that have changed the least are Crafting and Gathering, but their major additions are coming later on in the Expansion when they start getting Story Quests to restore Ishgard (from the Heavensward expansion events). They will also get a Beast Tribe series of Daily Quests later on, so while you can level up those Jobs to earn a lot of money, I would really advise you wait a while and focus more on the combat classes. Overmelding and Master Recipes will take a while to become a major focus of the end game as well, so there is plenty of time for those Jobs later.

My largest concern going into the new Shadowbringers expansion was when it was announced that they would be forgoing individual Class Quests and instead transitioning to Role Quests. Previous to Shadowbringers (and still from levels 60-70 with the two new classes), there was an individual quest line for your class. This gave some extra story and experience while you were leveling, and at the end of that particular quest line you also got some high level gear. Originally you would also earn special Class and Job Skills from the quest giver that you would be unable to obtain until completion. That part of Class Quests was removed, however, and now you can earn those skills just by leveling. Role Quests have taken the place of all those separate quest lines now, and they are split up between 4 quest chains; Tanks, Healers, Physical DPS, and Magical DPS. Given how many different Jobs there are in the game, that is a pretty obvious reduction in quests and writing. That becomes even more apparent when you level up a second Job of that type, and you don’t have access to that continuing quest line or the bonus experience (such as when I leveled Gunbreaker after doing the Role Quests with Dark Knight). However, what they lost in overall story, they more than made up for in depth. Each of the Shadowbringers Role Quests are designed around a hunt for a Sin Eater that is the reanimated body of one of the Warriors of Darkness. You briefly got to know them when they were on the world of the Source, but these Role Quests really allow you to dig into their story and their personalities. So even if the quest structure change was ostensibly to lower their work load in that area and concentrate it elsewhere, I think they ended up bettering the game story overall. I will be very interested to see how it will change in the future now that you won’t have those 4 pillar stories to rely on. But it is fairly obvious that they want to continue with this style, they even give you a close out story quest at level 80 where you go back and tie up any loose ends from your previous 1-70 Class/Job storyline.

Even more Shadowbringers on Page 2 ->

The post REVIEW: Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers Part 2 appeared first on oprainfall.

I have been playing Final Fantasy XIV off and on (mostly on) since the public beta for 1.0. I want that to be the first thing you read in the review, because it is important for perspective. I fell off during the 1.0 era because it just was not very fun to play, but came back with A Realm Reborn and never really left for more than a few months to take a break. As such, this review will be mostly from the perspective of someone that would mostly be considered a hardcore player. You are not going to get much perspective on what it is like to jump into the game fresh with this expansion, but there are several places on the internet to find that view. In fact, there is practically a cottage industry that has been formed around the perspective of World of Warcraft refugees switching over to Final Fantasy XIV in the past year. Another part of my perspective to put out there is that, while single player games are my favorite and that is especially true for the Final Fantasy series, I was a veteran of MMORPGs even before Final Fantasy XIV. I didn’t really like Final Fantasy XI much, but my first really active MMORPG was Star Wars Galaxies, and I also played a little of Ultima Online and Everquest. There has actually been very few MMORPGs that I haven’t at least touched a little. That being said, few have really stuck, and overall (especially with the new expansion) Final Fantasy XIV is probably my favorite of the whole genre. The largest reason for that is quite simple; story. And that has never been more true than it is now with Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers.

I have never taken the time to write a review for any MMORPG or expansion, mostly because it is such a monumental task. Games in this genre are not just built to appeal to a certain crowd, they are built to be basically a way of life for that crowd. Ostensibly there is enough to do for you to not grow bored enough to just quit playing it. Granted, a lot of that heavy work is done by the ability to interact with your friends, but even in that environment stale content would have people fleeing. But the downside to the multiplayer and community aspect has always been that developers were just able to focus on flashy gear and busy work, and mostly let the communities make a lot of their own fun. Character building, world building, lore, story, and many of the features common to single player RPGs have often taken a back seat in these games. Some games have done a better job of integrating those aspects; Star Wars: The Old Republic has some really great characters, World of Warcraft has some great lore, and Tera integrates possibly the best fighting system. With Heavensward, the second half of Stormblood, and especially now with Shadowbringers, Final Fantasy XIV has set a new standard for storytelling in MMORPGs. In fact, I would say that this is probably my 4th favorite story in any Final Fantasy game after only Final Fantasy VI, Final Fantasy XII, and Final Fantasy Tactics.

To describe what makes the story so amazing would be nigh impossible in a small review, even if I was able to engage full spoilers. However, it is worth having some overview so people know what they are getting into. Basically, during a calamity the world of the Source, which is where you reside, was split into 13 different mirror worlds. They are each based on the Source, but have their own differences, much like alternate dimensions. Since that major split, there have been a few calamities on those shard worlds that have also impacted the Source itself. One of the most major and most recent was an Umbral Light calamity which befell the world called the First. During the Heavensward expansion of Final Fantasy XIV, we got the first hints of what was happening on the First when a group of adventurers named the Warriors of Darkness invaded our world and tried to take out the Warrior of Light (ostensibly your character in Final Fantasy XIV). Between Heavensward and Stormblood, tragedy befell the Scions (the group you are a part of who protect the whole world without falling under the sway of any particular country) and your leader Minfilia was absorbed by the Crystal of Light named Hydaelyn. She was tasked with becoming the voice of Hydaelyn and the Oracle of Light. The Warriors of Darkness thought that by taking out the Warrior of Light, they could prevent the Flood of Light from engulfing their world. The Oracle of Light informed them that this was not the case, but promised to join them on the First and aid them in trying to prevent the end of their world. That is the last you heard from either the Warriors of Darkness and the Oracle of Light for quite a while as war with the Garlean Empire loomed on the horizon and you helped two regions gain their independence from the Empire. Unfortunately, right as war seemed all but inevitable, all your Scion friends started falling into the deepest of comas, as if their very souls were sucked out of their body. And a voice that no one else could hear kept calling on the Warrior of Light to heed his call.

That is the barest hint of story that leads into Shadowbringers, but if you are a player who is thinking of jumping into this game, it is important to know that you should never skip story scenes. Either just let people wait, or go to the Inn and view any scene that you missed. Not only is the story in this game good, but they know it’s good, and so they always build on previous events. Nothing is ever forgotten, even if some events are more important than others. The Warrior of Light does finally succumb to the call from the First but brings their body with them and transports fully, instead of just transporting their soul over. A device found near the Crystal Tower (the location featured in the 24man raid series from A Realm Reborn) found by the Scions helped you finally get a complete connection with the Crystal Exarch and allowed you to teleport over to the First with your body. However, once you arrive you discover that not only is the whole world covered in an oppressive light, but time also works differently in the First. The most recent Scions that were pulled across the worlds were only gone for a few weeks in your world, but 6 months had passed for that person. But when it comes to the first pulled over, it has been a couple years. And while it seemed like so long ago since you faced the Warriors of Darkness, it certainly wasn’t the 100 years that have passed in this new world. It turns out that group and the Oracle of Light were able to have some success on not letting the Flood completely obliterate the world, however only Norvrandt, a small subcontinent, has survived. And even then, in the last 100 years they have been continually oppressed by the light and are slowly being converted into Sin Eaters one by one. Sin Eaters are minions of Umbral Light that have the ability to create new ones, either by destroying any living creature or by imparting their own light into that being after death. It seems like the entire First has only had a stay of execution, but it is on a slow march to oblivion.

While it is mostly new people you are surrounded by initially (although the Exarch seems to know you), there is a very important person that greets you when you first arrive on the First. The leader of the Warriors of Darkness (although in this world they are called the Warriors of Light, as an insult) shows up as something of a ghost or projection in your inn room during what passes for night in this light stricken world. He expresses shock that you are here in his world but is even more shocked when you respond to his comments. It turns out that he was left in this state specifically by the Oracle of Light. He wanted to join her and his friends in pushing back the Flood, but turned him into a projection and told him that he had another duty to fulfill. And in the 100 intervening years, no one has been able to see or hear him until you. Obviously that thread takes a long time, practically the entire release content, until it is finally resolved why he was left behind. But in the meantime, you also meet up with the latest avatar of the Oracle of Light. It turns out that ever since she came to this world and helped to hold back the Flood, new versions of Minfilia have been born and spend their lives trying to keep the world and its people safe until she dies anew in tragedy.

More Shadows on Page 2 ->

The post REVIEW: Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers Part 1 appeared first on oprainfall.

Kickstarter games are at a fairly dour place currently when it comes to public perception. Some of the first rumblings of real trouble began when Mighty No. 9 ended up disappointing the overall gaming public, even many of their own backers (myself included). But that event pales in comparison with the recent controversy surrounding Shenmue III, where a chosen platform (Steam) was made unavailable after the developer took a monetary influx by a competing platform. If you can’t trust the companies or individuals creating the Kickstarter to back up their promises, then the whole system comes falling down. There were also some rumblings of similar issues with Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night. Not only was the game seriously delayed, but some of the early builds caused concern, and then there was the dropping of support for PS Vita and Nintendo Wii-U versions of the game. However, both of those consoles are also not even being supported by their own manufacturer any more, so more leeway was given. ArtPlay and Koji Igarashi did earn some goodwill with the release of the 8-bit side project, Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon, especially because it turned out to be such a fantastic retro game. But all that would have evaporated in an instant if the main game would have turned out bad.

All four of the playable characters from Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon have returned, even if the alternate universe events have no real bearing on this story. However, instead of Zangetsu being the primary character, it is Miriam. Gebel also features prominently, but this time as an antagonist. Because of the style of Metroidvania, it makes a lot more sense for the two Shardbinders to take the spotlight. While Koji Igarashi is rightfully famous for Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, in many ways Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night is more similar to his GameBoy Advance and Nintendo DS entries in the Castlevania franchise. The structure of the castle and story is most similar to SotN, but the combat style and character building is most like Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow. Whether that is a good thing or not depends on personal taste, but for me that is a very good decision. For as much as I love the style, music, and characters of Symphony of the Night, I do consider the monster ability system to be a pretty serious improvement to the overall formula.

As a Shardbinder, Miriam has the ability to transform a defeated demon into an ability shard and then to absorb that shard into her own body and increase her power. Gebel also has that ability, but apparently he tried to absorb too many shards or one of sufficient power seems to have corrupted him. Miriam, driven by a previous promise they made to each other, is now on a journey to save her friend from himself. As a gameplay mechanic, the shard system is fairly deep. The shards themselves have a fairly low drop rate (most hover around the 5-10% rate), and then once you obtain them they can be leveled in two ways. Certain characteristics of the shards can be improved by gaining more shards of the same type (up to 9), and then another set of characteristics (usually attack power) can be improved by leveling up that shard using materials at the Alchemist. The materials to upgrade shards from Rank 1-4 are usually pretty easy to come by, the 5-7 materials are slightly more dear, and the 8 and 9 Rank materials are almost always endgame. While that system is certainly a little on the complex side, the important result of this system is that you can find an ability that you really like and then farm up all the materials you need to make it an endgame viable skill. There is no real one way to get through the game, and only the navigational abilities (almost all of which come from bosses) are totally necessary.

Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night doesn’t only copy over the skill system from games like Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow. In my opinion, it actually improves on it in subtle ways. You can have up to 5 different shards bound to Miriam at any time. They are divided up into different classes; Conjure, Manipulative, Directional, Passive, and Familiar. Conjure are single button use abilities that can vary from something protective (such as the amazing Welcome Company, which surrounds you by a shield of poltergeist paintings) to some highly damaging boss abilities that fill practically the whole screen. Typically the more flashy offensive abilities in Conjure use the most MP of any shards, but you can make a high MP and INT build for Miriam that will make your nukes a lot more efficient and powerful. Manipulative skills are a strange set that you must hold down a button in order for them to be active. There is an important traversal skill in this category, but mostly it is to buff Miriam in specific ways. They are typically pretty low on the MP cost, but they drain it continuously while holding down the button. Directional are aimed with the right analogue stick, and are mostly offensive ranged abilities, but a couple very important traversal shards are also bound to Directional. Therefore it is probably the most important shard slot to have different versions bound to your Quick Select menu. So that when you reach an area where you need to get past a specific obstacle, you can do so without having to go through all the menus. Familiars should be familiar (pardon the pun) to anyone who plays Igarashi games, but as you would expect they also have a level combined with their Rank and Group upgrades that you see with other shards. Basically, they have their own AI and attack/buff/defend Miriam with increasing skill the higher their level is.

I skipped over Passive shards because they are important to address separately. A very subtle mechanic that you only learn from being observant is that there is a major characteristic of Passive shards that is totally different than all the others. When you Rank a Passive up to 9, you will notice that you gain a passive buff that applies to your character whether she is still equipped with that shard or not. Additionally, by gaining a larger Group (more of those shards up to 9), a larger percentage of that buff will be applied to your character. That buff is still not as high as it would be if you equip that shard actively, but they do stack on each other. What you see above is the result of having every Passive shard in the game ranked and grouped up to 9/9, and then equipped with an extremely powerful weapon that you can only get through some serious Alchemy. And Alchemy represents the most important system overall in the entirety of Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night. Not only do you upgrade shards, but you can create new ones, as well as all the best weapons and armor in the game and even crafting food.

One system that is entirely new to Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night (at least to my knowledge) is their food system. Sadly they don’t exactly explain it very well, and initially it seems like you only use food for emergency health restoration and to complete a series of quests (to be fair, that quest line does have fantastic rewards). Once you eat a food for the first time, you will see a mark to the left of that item, and that is because each time you imbibe a food for the first time, it adds a Passive buff that you see in the far left of the screenshot above. Once you have eaten every food in the game, you will see a Total Bonus that you see on the far right. One of the coolest buffs is that 8.0/sec MP Quickcharge. It makes many really nice Manipulative shards like Accelerator free to use with effectively no MP cost. Getting all the ingredients for all the food and all the weapons and armor that you can craft represents the largest long term challenge for any real completionist out there (like myself), but it was also very satisfying.

More Shards on Page 2 ->

The post REVIEW: Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night appeared first on oprainfall.

Author’s Note: This Eroge Review is for an Adults Only/18+ game and is potentially NSFW, but steps are made to minimize that. However, all associated official links are definitely Adults Only and NSFW. The sexual scenes depicted are mostly vanilla straight sex scenes, with a couple minor exceptions. However the primary relationship is considered taboo and potentially statutory by many people both for the age difference and for the power dynamic between the two in question. So if that is something that offends you, it might be best to avoid this visual novel and the review.

One disadvantage to being a massive fan of eroge visual novels is that there is a major filter between the American market and the Japanese source. As such, it is out of your hands which visual novels get localized (although that is starting to change with some fan polls and Kickstarter campaigns). One of the results is that some styles are over-represented, and even if you are a fan they can wear a bit thin. One aspect that is strongly overdone is the trope of a clueless high school boy who suddenly finds a harem of high school girls forming around him. While I have more tolerance for the harem style than many others do, I have a lot less tolerance for the clueless high school boy protagonist. The thing that attracted me the most to the newly localized eroge, The Most Forbidden Love in the World, was the foregoing of that trope entirely. Instead, the featured male character is a 28-year old Japanese salary man.

Yoshimura Osamu does feature some common tropes, the most obvious being that he is a bit clueless and spineless at times. But being a 28-year old salary man, instead of a high school kid, most of his energies are focused on his work. Initially the focus is on him getting re-employed, since he was summarily fired from his old company after taking the fall for a major financial scandal. It certainly was not his fault, but he’s someone who would fall on a sword for his company. But once he gets a new job, this visual novel features a lot of office politics. My largest complaint for this visual novel overall is that even though he is different from the more common tropes of this genre, he is still someone that I could not really identify with. Karōshi is not something I can identify with at all, but that culture of working yourself to death plays pretty strongly in this story no matter which route you go. So while I do give this eroge points for having a very different character view, it is still something that may not resonate well with a Western audience.

The other main character of this eroge visual novel is the high school girl (approximately, since Japanese schooling has a different structure), Mitoko. While Osamu starts out the story pursuing her mother, after she quickly departs the story, Mitoko becomes the focus. It takes a long time before Osamu sees her as a potential mate, but long before that Mitoko wants him to be her romantic partner. Because her father has never been around and her mother takes off with some wealthy guy she barely even knows, Osamu initially decides to try to look out for Mitoko. When issues of guardianship start to come up at her school, he makes the fateful decision to try to become her guardian. As such, your mileage with this visual novel will vary. While you don’t have to pursue a romantic relationship with Mitoko, it is fairly obvious throughout that it is the canon route. And it isn’t just that they have over a 10-year age difference; he also turns into a sort of father figure and guardian to her. That is where The Most Forbidden Love in the World gets its title from. There is frankly nothing else about this story that gives any other reason for that, but for many this relationship is more than enough to give this a hard pass.

The ancillary characters in The Most Forbidden Love in the World make the comment several times that they aren’t quite sure who is the older one of the two main characters. While it is not quite as drastic as in some other stories, such as the fantastic movies City of Lost Children or Leon: The Professional, it is a characteristic that plays strongly into why they would be attracted to each other beyond guardianship. However, for as mature as she can sometimes seem to be, Mitoko can also be quite irrational and temperamental at times. As such, even though I thought she would be my favorite character, she ended up sliding down to number two or three between all the women in his life. But her maturity and Osamu’s spinelessness does give some pause to those who might throw out their relationship out of hand merely due to physical age.

Even though she really rubbed me the wrong way initially, Mitoko’s best friend Himeo ended up being my favorite of the potential relationships for Osamu. She is a couple years older than Mitoko, but she is possibly even more naive. Initially she puts up a very serious front that is difficult to break through, but once you do it’s pretty hilarious to see what she is trying to hide behind. She is from a very wealthy, and not so savory, family that puts a lot of pressure on Himeo and the relationships she is able to cultivate. However, she did end up surprising me in the right ways. It takes a lot longer for her to figure out that she actually has feelings for Osamu, but when she does it becomes a serious hurdle for her that Mitoko already does. Frankly, in almost any other eroge, Himeo and Mitoko would have ended up as a yuri couple. But the Himeo route was worth going through and ended up being the most satisfying for me in The Most Forbidden Love in the World.

There is also a major reason why I think Himeo is just a better match for Osamu overall, even beyond personal taste. While she is definitely young and pretty and pleasantly naive, like her best friend, she can also engage the protagonist in ways that Mitoko cannot. And the primary reason for that is that she ends up working with him. As such, she can engage with him on an equal level both at home and at work. And if there is one thing Osamu loves more than anything else, it’s not the sex, it’s the work. And for someone like Himeo, who has a golden heart that she tries to seriously hide, she also matches well with someone who also has a golden heart but has enough world experience to try to protect her from herself. While this can be a serious story at times, Himeo also provided most of my favorite humorous moments as well. And while I never really enjoyed any of the office politics or salary man story lines, once she entered that picture it made it far more bearable.

Himeo joins Osamu’s work later in the game, but you do have a potential work-related relationship much earlier on, and that is Kaya. She is a pretty nice girl and is thankfully quite forward with what she wants and is a bit on the immodest side (which I consider to be a good thing, personally). She is by far the first potential romantic relationship in the story, and the only way you are going to see any sex in the first 20 hours of the game. While this is an eroge, it is a very long way from nukige, and one of my chief other complaints is the sparsity of anything sexual. But the nice thing about Kaya is that she represents the least complicated of all the relationships in The Most Forbidden Love in the World. There is extremely little doubt about how she feels about the main character, and there is also a lot less baggage than with the other potential partners. The sex scenes with her are also quite nice because she is a bit of a freak, and she is okay with that. That alone almost made her my favorite of the girls and Himeo only overtook her at the end.

But if you want baggage in a relationship, you can more than get your fill with the Asami relationship. Kouno Asami is the homeroom teacher for Mitoko, and as such she has the primary responsibility for her well being, her future prospects and her guardianship status. Unfortunately, Asami also happens to be Osamu’s ex-wife. While Mitoko initially blames that on the man, in her typical immature and temperamental way, it becomes quite obvious that it was more her fault than his. Honestly the story line of how and why she left him never quite added up for me, even after I had all the information. Granted, relationships end for a variety of reasons in real life. But as a fictional narrative, it just never seemed to really gel for me. But also it had a hard time connecting with me right from the get go because personally I cannot handle having even casual conversations with anyone that I previously dated. It’s just a personal quirk that I’ve never gotten over, even as old as I am now. So their whole relationship was not fun for me, and overall I just didn’t appreciate her character very much. That’s not to say that everyone who plays The Most Forbidden Love in the World is going to feel the same. But at the end of the day, reviews are personal opinions and that is one that I just can’t get over.

What I do appreciate a lot about this game is the super high quality of voice acting. Not only are all the main characters well voiced, but so are the side characters and all the male characters. Anyone who plays enough eroge games know that male voices are rare in anything that is not yaoi, let alone for even the protagonist and side characters to have voices. All the dialogue is generally well written as well, but the sex scenes are a bit short for an eroge. It seems like the type of visual novel that has an eroge version, but is built so any sex scenes can be cut for a potential anime adaptation. Granted, the game would be much lesser without them in my opinion, but that is just what it stylistically feels like. That being said, MangaGamer still did a great job with the translation and especially with the colloquialisms (which can be the hardest part to accurately convey). The music is decent, but not particularly memorable, and can seem to lack a bit of variety considering how long this visual novel is. But the art is consistently good and the full-motion sex scenes are particularly impressive. They are animated well enough that it almost looks as good as a full hentai animation, even if they are a bit on the short side.

One potential issue for completionists is that I had a difficult time figuring out how to get all the CG scenes unlocked for the game. Most of the branch point choices are fairly obvious, but there are a few that seem to have nebulous outcomes. But that is to be somewhat expected for a harem eroge visual novel, especially one that is easily 50+ hours. My first time through the game it took me a good 30 hours to roll credits, but that is also because I was pursuing the Mitoko relationship. The length will vary with each relationship, but it is a pretty long visual novel no matter which one you go with, and it more than justifies its $34.95 price tag. If anything, it was a bit longer than I was expecting based on the price. The story was definitely not for me, but as I said in the beginning, it is nice to see something that breaks the mold of what is localized for the West. The Most Forbidden Love in the World didn’t quite live up to its title content wise, but it was still worth all the hours I spent going back through to reach the different endings.

Review Score
Overall

Review Copy Provided By The Publisher

The post (18+) EROGE REVIEW: The Most Forbidden Love in the World appeared first on oprainfall.

I have been greatly anticipating the Western release of Dragon Star Varnir ever since it was announced. Seeing Idea Factory and Compile Heart together in the credits will definitely get my interest, but when I also saw the art style and the studio Galapagos logo, they upgraded to having my attention. While Fairy Fencer F had some issues on its initial release, Fairy Fencer F: Advent Dark Force has become one of my favorite JRPGs of this console generation. In fact, I now own that game on PlayStation 4, Steam, and the Nintendo Switch. Even if what I really wanted was a sequel to that game, I was still interested to see whether they could recapture some of that magic in their new title.

The main character of the story is a Knight of the Empire named Zephy. He has an extremely tragic past where his mother disappeared and his father was eaten by a dragon while he was still a child. As such, he trained hard and joined the Knight Brotherhood in order to rid the world of Witches. That may seem like a leap of logic, but in the world of Dragon Star Varnir, Witches give birth to dragons out of their own bodies. Basically Witches are born with dragons inside of them, and when the dragons have consumed enough sustenance to reach maturity, they tear their way out of their human form. The dragons retain very little of the Witch’s memory and none of their personality. So ostensibly the Knights are there to prevent dragons from forming, but the torture and murder and glee with which they do their job tells a different story. Obviously this brings elements of the Witch Hunts from our own history into the story, so don’t plan on a very pleasant tale most of the time.

The Witches Minessa and Karikaro come upon Zephy after he is attacked by a dragon while lost in the forest. By all rights they would have left him to his fate or killed him themselves, but unfortunately their Coven member, Laponette, had been captured by the Knights. So in order to rescue her from certain torture and death, they wish to save Zephy and engage in a prisoner transfer. Of course, they overestimate how much the Knights would care about any single member of their order. But that is because, as you can imagine, the Witches are much more upstanding and moral people than humans generally are to each other. But Zephy does not respond to traditional First Aid, and in an act of desperation Minessa feeds him the blood of the dragon they killed while protecting him. This is something that should only ever work on Witches, but it seems to also work on him. Not only that, but he gains the power to fly and cast magic just like the Witches. To say this is shocking would be an understatement, in the world of Varnir Witches are only ever female.

Now that Zephy can fly and use magic, he is obviously not welcome within the Empire anymore. So he has to become the first male to join the Coven of Witches. There used to be many Covens and quite a number of Witches, but a major event that the Knights did not even know about happened in the recent past. One of their fellow Coven members destroyed hundreds of Witches and obliterated many Covens. There is a balancing act that Witches must engage in. If they don’t eat enough dragon meat or blood, they will eventually go insane and start attacking and eating anything indiscriminately. But the more they eat, the quicker the dragon inside of them grows. It is thought that the Witch who destroyed them all went insane for that reason, but it’s fairly obvious that is an unlikely reason. While you see an early example of the madness, a single witch being that powerful at the time of madness doesn’t really check out. But likewise, Zephy’s past doesn’t really check out, or his reasoning that the dragon blood suddenly made him have powers without him already being a Witch. So instead a journey is begun where he and his new Coven try to discover the truths hidden around them and to save all the Witches from the curse they were born with. Meanwhile they have to beware of the Witch of Hellfire (who disappeared after killing all those Witches), the Empire who hunts them for who they are, and the nebulous group of mercenaries called The Ravens. The world of Dragon Star Varnir is not a pleasant one, and you should probably not go into the game expecting a light and airy story. Fairy Fencer F: Advent Dark Force had its dark moments, but this game turns that up to 11.

There is frankly too much doom and gloom in this game for my particular tastes, but at least there were some moments of reprieve. There is an affection system like you see in many Compile Heart games where you can give Presents to the Witches in your party. How they react to each gift will depend on the recipient, with rare exceptions that are universally appealing. With each new level of affection, you earn a side story moment with each of the women and the later ones tend to have a slight romantic appeal to them. This is also the route to achieving the individual endings for each of the girls as well. There is a Normal Ending, a Madness Ending (more on this later), and then individual endings for each of the girls that you max out their affection. However, the five Witches in your party are not the only ones at the Coven, there are also the three Little Sisters.

The three Little Sisters unfortunately represent my largest problem with Dragon Star Varnir. It’s not that they are awful to look at or poorly voiced or poorly written, quite the opposite in fact. That they are so adorable explicitly works against you. As I mentioned before, Witches have to eat dragon enough or they will go mad. But if they eat too much then the dragon inside of them will mature and destroy the Witch. This strongly applies to your Little Sisters. While they don’t have the same affection gauges that your party members do, they have a Madness Level and a Dragon Growth meter. You have to feed them enough dragon flesh or blood in order to keep them from going mad and leaving the coven but not enough that the dragon inside of them bursts out. If either happens, you will have to defeat them in the dungeons. In practice that means you can’t spend so much time in a dungeon that they go mad in your absence, and you can’t spend too long playing the game itself or they will need too much food to stay in human form. That would be frustrating on its own, especially for someone who is a notorious RPG grinder like me. But what makes it even worse is the skill tree system in the game.

More Dragons on Page 2 ->

The post REVIEW: Dragon Star Varnir appeared first on oprainfall.

The day has finally arrived where the final major release for the 3DS family of systems has come out in the West, Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth. There will likely be a few more small indie games released for the system (much like there still are for the equally doomed PlayStation Vita), but the system is effectively a relic of the past. While this is a bittersweet moment, at least Nintendo already has a portable system out there to replace it, even if it is not in the same way. My larger concern is what is going to happen with this sub-genre of Dungeon Crawler RPGs, which has had a major Renaissance with both the DS/3DS family and PSP/Vita family of systems. Not only does the portability fit well with the heavy grinding required of the genre, but the touch screens have also made a fascinating impact by allowing you to draw your own maps. This has been particularly the case for the Etrian Odyssey series of games and their two spin-offs, Persona Q: Shadows of the Labyrinth and Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth.

For the Persona fans out there interested in giving this series offshoot a try, you should be aware upfront that it is primarily the Etrian Odyssey team at ATLUS who makes these games. As such, all the story beats are from the Persona games, but all the actual combat and exploration is from Etrian Odyssey. It works well, but if you are a fan of one and not the other, it is something to be conscious of going in. There is some small amount of auto-mapping that you can select from the Config menu, but that merely shades in where you have been and walls that you have stood next to. Any other map features, and there are quite a few, will need to be added by you. Thankfully in Persona Q2 they have made the map making even better than it was in Etrian Odyssey Nexus. There are more contextual symbols in this game that will alter on your map according to your actions. In other words, not only will you see whether the switch has been used in the above screenshot, but it will also show you if the Electric Gate is open. This adds the benefit of making the map even more useful, but it also allows them to have even more variety in the dungeons than in previous Etrian Odyssey games or Persona Q: Shadows of the Labyrinth.

Wandering around in the dungeons is first person but anyone who has played Persona long enough, or the main Shin Megami Tensei series, should be familiar with that style. It wasn’t until Persona 3 and SMT 3 that they went away from the first person style, and several offshoots like SMT: Strange Journey Redux still use it to this day. Also like that latter title, the battle takes place in classic dungeon crawler style where you only see your characters when they enter the screen to attack briefly. They still use their signature Personas to cast magic, but never quite as obviously as they do in the main Persona series. Like in the first game, Persona Q2 takes place in an alternate world to any of the main story events. One of the primary ways that affects the gameplay is that the power of the Wild Card (featured in each series protagonist) no longer allows them to switch their main Persona. Instead it spreads across the whole team and allows everyone to equip a secondary Persona. The second one adds the primary benefit of being allowed to use a wider variety of skills, and it also adds a HP and SP buffer proportional to the power of the secondary Persona. The HP/SP Buffer is extremely functional in such a grind heavy genre because you enter every battle with those bonuses exceeding your normal stats and therefore can use an ability or two without it eating into your main HP/SP pool.

Because of the design philosophy of the developer, both Etrian Odyssey and Persona Q games tend to be a bit on the difficult side. As such it is even more important than in the normal series that you exploit the enemy weaknesses. If your characters hit an enemy with their weakness, that will cause the enemy to be Knocked Down. It will also allow that character to act first in the next round and use any skill with no HP or SP cost. If all enemies are knocked down in the same round, your party will do their standard group attack that you see in the previous three Persona games. Unfortunately if the enemies are not able to be killed with the All Out Attack, or you don’t knock them all over in the round, they can attack your characters back and also knock them out of their enhanced state. So you would miss your opportunity for a free skill next round.

In Persona Q2 the main cast is centered around the Phantom Thieves from Persona 5. As such it was important for them to bring over as much of the new combat systems as possible. They did have to remove the Guns from each of the main cast, because that would not work with all the other characters from Persona 3 and Persona 4 (Guns were a part of the first two Persona games, and most of SMT however). But they did bring over the new Fusion and Psychic elemental attacks as well as Holy and Curse attacks that are not just instant kills. As such, there is a much wider variety of weaknesses for the shadows to be susceptible to. That can be a little dangerous when you meet up with a new shadow, even if they aren’t a wandering FOE (optional mini-bosses observable on the map) or zone boss. Thankfully they have expanded the Support Strike system that has been used since Persona 4. A Support Strike is when a character not in your battle party joins in at random to knock down a random enemy on the battle field. This typically only happens after a character knocks down all but one remaining enemy on the field. But now they have added Unison Strikes, which can happen at any time even if the attack didn’t knock down the enemy. Support Strikes are typically only for pitiful damage, but Unison Strikes are some of the most powerful attacks in the game.

More Persona on Page 2 ->

The post REVIEW: Persona Q2 appeared first on oprainfall.

I’m happy to finally be able to review CrossCode for Operation Rainfall. While I was too busy to play it at the time of release, it was a game that had my immediate interest. The Action-RPG combat style combined with an MMORPG story had me intrigued. And the pixel design definitely did nothing to dissuade me, reminding me of the fantastic Cosmic Star Heroine. But I had to hold off due to time commitments. What finally convinced me to jump in was watching speedruns of the game. As someone who is fairly involved in the speedrunning community I like to keep up with hot new entries, and CrossCode has had one of the most active running communities for a new game not developed by FromSoftware (shout outs to The Messenger community as well). I don’t personally speedrun the game, but I have played through it casually twice and have watched at least a dozen speedruns. I was a little surprised that we didn’t cover the game at the time of release, but now is a great time to cast some more light on it, especially with the recent release of the major 1.1 update.

There are two different narratives that are occurring along the same timeline during CrossCode. One is an MMORPG story within the game world. The other is a story about the game world, its creators, and what role the player’s character plays in the overall story. There is an opening scene where you will have no idea what is going on. Then after that, at fairly frequent intervals, there will be scenes flashing that give more of a theme than any real answers. These occur when Lea, the character you play, ostensibly “logs out” of the game world. It becomes quickly suspicious that instead of seeing her enter the real world to eat or sleep, you only see these short flashbacks. Within the game world the only things that make Lea really stand out are that she gets attacked by someone very powerful claiming to know her and that her speech functions do not seem to work.

One of the early plot points that rears its head is how virtually impossible it is to tell the difference between the AI NPCs and the PCs. In practice, the only real way to tell is usually how invested they are in maintaining the structure and narrative of the game world. But you could also easily imagine RP gamers (role players in an MMORPG) taking on those same tasks even in the current generation of games. So the story and the game world work on multiple levels, both as a faux MMORPG and as a commentary on the genre itself. Because of the way you build up your character and the world opens up in traditional games of this genre, it provides a ludonarrative structure that keeps you invested in both the game’s story and Lea’s progress in discovering who she is and where her memories have gone.

If these multiple layers of story sound like a whole lot to take on in one game, you are not wrong. One of my minor complaints about CrossCode is that it tries to do so many things with the story that none of them end up being as fleshed out as they could be. Each element is good in their own right, but never quite reaches the level of great. As you would expect with an MMORPG, even a faux one, there is a whole lot of optional dialogue that can help flesh out the world. But because they are trying to do both things, even that dialogue tries to work on both a narrative and meta-narrative level. The only other issue I have with the story is the giant digression that happens midway through the game. It halts the game world story entirely and goes on for at least an hour too long. Granted, you do learn a whole lot about what is actually going on with Lea and the game world during that time, but it is far from a smooth transition. To make the disjointed pace even more apparent, the last half of the world story seems a little rushed as compared to the first half. This is particularly true when it comes to dungeon and world design.

Wandering around the CrossWorld is fairly open, with large discrete sections of the map having multiple exits into differing sections. In that way, as well as some of the artistic design, it is strongly reminiscent of Secret of Mana. However, there are obstacles and gates that are blocked off by either keys or abilities that you will have to come back for. In that way, it also has a pervasive element of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. Where CrossCode truly stands out from those two games is the parkour element of traversal. Lea will automatically jump a certain distance when you step off the edge of a drop. You cannot jump up, only horizontal or down. This is an important part of traversal and will be required for dungeon navigation as well as optionally required to obtain very nice treasure chests scattered throughout the world. The only good way to avoid grinding for parts and money to upgrade your gear is by mastering the parkour locations that are on almost every map screen.

It is quite unnecessary to grind for levels; you really only need to do so in order to get items to trade in or to complete side quests. In speedrunning even that is unnecessary. There are two reasons you don’t need to grind for levels, like you do in most actual MMORPGs. The first is that the required fights in dungeons, and particularly the bosses, give you more than enough XP to ensure you are a high enough level to beat the game. The other reason is because levels only give you Circuit Points (CP) and a little bit of power. Most of your combat power comes from the equipment you find or purchase. In particular, the modifiers you see below your general and resistance stats above will factor into your damage quite a bit. The 25 percent assault damage bonus on the vest I have equipped will make that item useful well past its level 13 label.

The Circuit Board, where you spend your CP, is one of my favorite parts of CrossCode. It reminds me a bit of Final Fantasy X and Path of Exile, in that it is a very large chart that features multiple routes through it. One of the differences is that the chart is split into five sections, and each section has multiple routes which do not cross over between them. The sections are split according to the five different elemental attacks that you will gain access to. The initial Circuit Board is for non-elemental attacks and for baseline character stats. Along the path of the world story you will also gain access to new elemental Circuit Boards in the following order: fire, ice, thunder, and wind. Each element takes advantage of a particular monster weakness as well as providing certain traversal benefits, whether that is melting ice, creating paths through lava, powering electronic devices, or teleportation (the less obvious wind function). Thankfully you can spend all your CP independently within each Circuit Board, so there is no reason to hoard them. As soon as you unlock the next element, you will gain all the CP for that board that you had for the others. Additionally, at any time you can go into the board and swap sections of the skill tree that are labeled swappable (like you see above) in order to change the active combat skills to suit your current needs. In other words, some are more focused on single-target combat while others are far better for large groups.

While an action RPG with these elements is not particularly surprising, where CrossCode begins to set itself apart is with the variety of puzzles involving the Ricochet Shot. In combat most enemies are better defeated in melee, but some require the use of your long-distance shots. In dungeon puzzles, however, you will be using almost exclusively your distance shots to either time switch hits well or to ricochet to somewhere out of reach, or even to add elements onto your bullets using dungeon-specific devices. Maneuvering platforms into place and then getting the correct angle and timing in for shots will end up being the lion’s share of your gameplay. And in that way, above any other, this is not a game for everyone. In my opinion they overdid it a little with the shot puzzles. They certainly display some inventive ideas, but they are an extreme pain point which will cause many players to simply give up on the game. While the game does have options to make it easier, it is nigh impossible to effectively change the puzzle difficulty other than slowing down the bullet times more than they already have in the patches post release.

My last minor complaint is that there weren’t more dungeon bosses. There are several mini-bosses that help prepare you for that final dungeon fight, but you still only have the major Ice Dungeon boss, the major Fire Dungeon boss, and then the Thunder and Wind Dungeon boss are combined into one fight. Other than that there is one large main story boss, but that only really left me wanting even more. But to be clear, the bosses are so well designed that it was a want for more fun rather than a major complaint about lack of content. But that is my last minor complaint. The pixel art is wonderful to look at even after having played and watching it being played so many times. Also the music is consistently really good and memorable. I never felt the need to mute it while playing through the game even when I was replaying it this time for capture footage.

Last year was such an amazing year for indie games that it felt like CrossCode got a little lost in the shuffle. I would strongly suggest people who missed out on the game initially check it out now. The 1.1 update added some free content including a major arena mode that adds even more longevity to the game. Casually it can run you between 10-20 hours depending on how much of the sidequests you want to engage in. While the NMG (No Major Glitches) records are currently hovering just above two hours, it’s also a fun game to just take your time with like you would in a real MMORPG, and for $19.99 that is frankly a steal. While there are obvious comparisons to be made (story-wise) to the massively popular Sword Art Online, the gameplay was a whole lot tighter. As a result, with a whole lot of practice, Lea feels much more like a real badass who responds exactly to how good you are at the game itself.

Review Score
Overall

Review Code Provided By The Publisher
CrossCode is part of the ID@Xbox program.

The post REVIEW: CrossCode appeared first on oprainfall.

This article is potentially NSFW, however steps are taken to reduce the chance of that. The game itself is 18+ and Adults Only, any links to the official website are also for Adults Only and NSFW. The interactions in the game are almost entirely vanilla other than a serious focus on lactation and unrealistic sized bosoms.

For better and for worse, Funbag Fantasy: Sideboob Story, is exactly as advertised by its title. But that is almost entirely for the better, especially when it comes to Eroge Visual Novels. Most people who enjoy these types of games really want to know what they are in for. Human sexuality is widely varied, and unlike more popular genres you are not going to see a lot of pre-release coverage telling you what to expect when it comes to your particular kinks of choice. Even more than the original Funbag Fantasy, which I wholeheartedly loved, the focus here is on massive breasts and anything that can be involved in them. The only part of the title that might be a little misleading is the Sideboob Story. While a clever alliteration, you might be surprised to see just how long this side story really is. There are only 3 different endings, with one being very obviously the canon ending, but all together the story took me around 30 hours to complete.

There are a few reasons that I wanted to cover this game a year after its initial release. Unfortunately I was involved in other things at the time, so I missed my chance to review this game originally. But now it has had a release on Steam a few weeks ago, and MangaGamer is also hard at work on releasing the full sequel. So I wanted to finally get around to, what I expected to be, the 1.5 entry into the franchise. Funbag Fantasy: Sideboob Story ended up being much more involved than I was expecting. It wasn’t quite as long as the massive original game, but the original is also one of the largest Visual Novels I’ve ever played. So even if this one is shorter, it’s still longer than most other Visual Novels are, whether Adult or All Ages. The story may be considered a side event, but there are some fairly major things that happen in it. The canon ending they are continuing from the first game is the Harem Ending, which makes sense as a king. If anyone is going to get away with having a harem of wives, it’s a ruler.

The one fair criticism I could see of the story is that Lute himself does not really make much personal growth, he’s more superhuman than he even was in the first game. But they do also make enough hints to basically outright say the reason for his excessive power. And it certainly does set up the story to go some interesting places in the future. But when it comes to world building and political intrigue, this Visual Novel is at the top of its class. The story expands past the borders of the two nations that were involved in the first game and starts to involve other countries and this world’s equivalent of The Vatican. There are just enough fantasy elements thrown in to make things interesting, between magic and demons, but at a fundamental level this is very much like the late Middle Ages to early Renascence Era of Europe. From there, it doesn’t really focus on any historical figures or events, but it does place interesting people in that world to see what would happen.

All the major players from the original game make appearances in this one, particularly all the wives and concubines that Lute has gathered around him. While there are certainly sexual reasons for them to all be there, that is not their only purpose. His harem makes him an extremely powerful ruler, and his ability to forgive the transgressions from the first game have benefited the kingdom he rules. That is a nice touch in a genre that can often show a more cynical side to storytelling. While there is a lot of story and sex devoted to playing out the events in the aftermath of the previous game, there are also several new characters and regions now at play. The first major ones are trying to get revenge for the fall of their country in the previous story, Sir Argent and his magician Nellis. You can really take one good look at Nellis and have a good idea how it is going to play out, but to the writer’s credit, it has interesting twists before you finally get to the expected result.

Some of the more interesting and harsh commentary on this world (and ours) comes with the involvement of the Vatican. There is very little redeemable about that organization in this world, and they are mostly trying to take down Lute for daring to marry a demon. Given that Shamsiel is basically the mascot for this series, you can imagine that is not going to go well for them. In general, anyone who goes after the King’s women is in for a bad time. But in the process there are some pretty biting critiques of their organization that may not please some people who are fans of that real life organization. And I’ll leave it there without engaging in the dangling Catholic Priest joke. This arc of the story does however introduce some interesting new concepts about Lute himself and also builds on the mythology and monsters that populate this world.

If the story left off with just that first half, it might have been exactly what I expected from a side story. However, that is only the first half of the game. The second half involves the rising tensions with their neighboring country of Fronce (very obviously a stand in for France of that era). The Queen of the country is a very good ruler, but she has an issue with the counselors that she chooses. They think that they can manipulate her, and sometimes they are correct. But hiding behind that heaving bosom is a woman that is more than she appears. So in the process of challenging Lute’s leadership ability, Fronce ends up digging up their own dirty laundry. Like all of the women in this game, they may be ostensibly there to have a sex scene for the viewer’s pleasure, but they are not just air-headed sex dolls either. Aphrodia also has the benefit of knowing her own heritage, which will shed even more light on Lute’s mysterious past.

For the most part Funbag Fantasy: Sideboob Story gives a chance for women who had fewer scenes in the first game (such as Gladys and Emeralia) to get more character development and a lot more sex in. Along with the two new girls, Nellis and Aphrodia, that makes up the lion’s portion of the sex scenes in the game and the story development. The one exception is with Lute’s succubus wife, Shamsiel. She is once again a major focus which shows that the studio considers her to be the main heroine of the series. That’s understandable, even with a harem of exceptional ladies, it’s good to have a cover girl and a focus. But you can also tell with allusions to Lute’s hidden backstory, that she is likely to become very important for the future of the story as well.

That brings up my first criticism for this game. If you had a favorite from the first game that wasn’t Shamsiel, Gladys, or Emeralia then you might feel that they were a bit under-represented in this game. My series waifu is Isis, and she ended up with only one sex scene and only a few dialogue interactions. To be fair, she had a lot more to do in the first game, so it does balance out when taking the two games together. But if one of those girls who are less seen in this game is your primary reason for playing this, you may end up a little disappointed. The other criticism I have is that this game is extremely focused on one kink. That kink is extremely large breasts that are lactating. There is no variation in breast size, and there is actually not all that much penetration sex in this game when compared to all the Paizuri (Japanese word meaning breast play) and milk drinking that goes on. There are quite a few Eroge scenes, which definitely is a good thing, but when the variety is so low it can start to run together or even become tedious.

However, those are really two minor complaints. The artwork definitely helps alleviate any doldrums from similar sex scenes, it is quite amazing in both games. Additionally the writing is great for the political intrigue, world building, and the comedic cut away scenes that help break up the pace and keep the story light. I didn’t hear any songs that weren’t there in the first game, but the music is still good, so there were no complaints. Hopefully they do add some more variety in the full sequel, or that may be a complaint going forward. The voice acting is once again stellar and everyone is voiced in the game except Lute. Even the minor guard positions and male characters have some good voice work, so there was an obvious focus there. The Fronce people have some ridiculous accents in their voice work and in the English translation, but it works for the story they are telling. It wouldn’t have been easy to find a satisfactory way to represent that, but MangaGamer did their usual good job of providing a quality translation.

As a 1.5 entry into a series, this game did its job quite well. It expanded on the story and the world while getting me excited for the true sequel. Most importantly the main character, Lute, remained likable and with enough mystery in his past to still provide some surprises. His harem of women grows by the game, he now has a new wife and two more women that are dedicated to serving him. But if they continue to balance them well, that won’t be a problem. All of the characters have distinct looks and very distinct personalities, so keeping all the characters around is the best plan moving forward. The price of the game is $44.95, which seemed like a lot before I started. But that was when I thought this would just be a short side story. As I have said, that is decidedly not the case. And when it comes to artwork and voice acting of this quality, I’ll happily pay a premium price every time. This Sideboob Story did its job admirably, I am very excited for the next entry.

Review Score
Overall

Review Copy Was Provided By The Publisher

The post 18+ EROGE REVIEW: Funbag Fantasy: Sideboob Story appeared first on oprainfall.

Rym 9000 was a very difficult game to review. Not necessarily because the game itself was difficult, although it is. But more because I had a difficult time enjoying the game due to an artistic choice by the developers. I will say up front that the game looks better in action than it does in screenshots, so I would strongly suggest that any readers watch the trailer at the end of the review before they make any purchasing decisions. Still, for me, it was difficult to get into the game because of the frenetic art style without clean lines.  At the same time, I do still applaud the designers for trying something new instead of being like every other vertical shooter. This is a genre of games that was fallow for a long time, but has had quite the resurgence during the indie boom of the internet era. So it can be difficult to stand out, and Rym 9000 does stand out even beyond the visual style.

The story of Rym 9000 is pretty far out there, but it is strongly reminiscent of anime plot lines like Neon Genesis Evangelion. If they left the story at just the few paragraphs in the opening, it would be a mere footnote. But they do fill in a lot of details as you go through the game by tying story unlocks to the achievement structure of the game. For instance, if you kill every enemy of a certain type in a level you will not only get a trophy, but you will also be able to read several more paragraphs of story that will fill in the world and story surrounding the game. While this wouldn’t necessarily work for every game type, for a space shooter it makes sense. It’s a genre that is built from the ground up to reward perfect play amidst brutal difficulty, it just gets ignored by those complaining about difficulty in games currently because the genre isn’t as popular as Soulsborne is. But in genres where the story is more central to the experience, I could see this system being more frustrating than rewarding.

Once you get past the story opening, you reach the launch menu screen. The initial impression Rym 9000 gave me from the menu screen was that this was a cell phone game ported to the PlayStation 4. If you press right, you go to the options menu. If you press left you go to the global score leaderboard and the rewards menu (where you can read more about the story and set your background style). If you press down you can select which stage you start on and pressing up launches your fighter into the game. That is basically also how cell phone games work, so that’s why I thought this game was a port from there. It turns out that Rym 9000 started out as a Steam Greenlight game, so my impression was mistaken. It is a very good thing that the game features an easy to access stage select, however, because you will want the ability to skip right to a stage you are struggling with. This isn’t like so many other games in the genre, you only have one life and there are no continues.

The easiest way to describe the action of Rym 9000 is by first laying out what it isn’t. There are not multiple ship types, there are no speed upgrades, there are no bombs, there are only two types of weapon upgrades, the weapon upgrades are very rare, and you have no shield meter. You do have a shield of sorts, though it works differently than any other game I’ve played. Basically you can get hit once and your ship will react by giving you the most powerful shot combination in the game. If you get hit again while you have that ultimate shot, then you die. However, if you can last long enough with the ultimate shot, a + icon (you can just make it out in the screenshot above) will appear and by absorbing that you can return to your normal shot and regain that single use shield. You may choose to just keep the ultimate shot power, but it’s risky to be only a single blow away from death and a game over. When you have your shield up and your normal shot you will rarely come across a weapon upgrade point that will let you choose between a spread shot or a vertical missile barrage shot. So there is also incentive to do a no hit run as well. Unfortunately that can be very difficult because of how slow you move compared to how large the enemies are on the very small screen real estate.

Due to the large bullets, large enemies, and slow ship movement the playstyle of the game comes down mostly to memorization of the stages. Once the enemies are on the screen you do not have a lot of time to react to what they are doing, you need to already be where you are supposed to be. This is especially true of the enemies that come from behind, but it works out from the front as well. The enemy ships are quite a bit faster than you are. There is a certain rhythm to the combat that will be attractive for certain types of gamers, but I personally prefer a more reactive game than one that focuses on memorization. But the developers did some interesting things with this style, especially when it comes to the bosses.

In SHUMPs bosses always feature very prominently in the gameplay, it’s a genre staple. The memorization style of Rym 9000 makes the bosses perhaps more interesting than some other entries in the genre. Because you do need to practice them enough to read their tells and get moving to the safe point before they arrive at the destination. Initially this was frustrating to me, especially after playing so much Sekiro, but I learned to enjoy it. The bosses have multiple stages and require so much damage to kill that they end up being around half of the entire stage length. So the balance of the game ends up being that you treat the stages as a cooldown period between boss fights. The one knock I have against the bosses is the same as I have about the rest of the game as well, the art style obfuscates their actions and their hit boxes enough to prompt frustration.

Before I list off the negatives for Rym 9000, I want to focus on the largest positive in the game, its soundtrack. The soundtrack to the game was composed by Roex, which is featured very prominently in the opening scene (as you see above). This is for good reason, this is not a rhythm game but the music is very forward in the sound mix like a games of that genre. And quality wise, this is one of the better soundtracks you will hear, even in a genre known for killer music. Honestly I would have enjoyed the game more if it was a just a visualizer with that art design while doing nothing but listening to the soundtrack. That doesn’t speak well of the gameplay, but it is my honest reaction to the game overall. So I hope that this is only the beginning of Roex contributing music to games.

I had to take a break from this game and come back to it twice for review. So it ended up taking me a lot longer than I planned, even though the game itself is only 5 stages and is only around 30 min to an hour long overall. One reason for that is not the game’s fault, it’s because this was the game I was reviewing after Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, and I really was not in the mood to play anything else but that game for several days after (even after getting the Platinum trophy). So that was my first break, and I came back to Rym 9000 when I felt more ready to give it a fair shot. Unfortunately I bounced off it again due to the art style. As I’ve said several times in the review, it just is not an art style that really speaks to me. But I do appreciate what they were going for, so I am trying to not be too critical of it. Where I will be critical is that the fuzzy lines and color pallets tend to wash together and create situations where you didn’t see what killed you. And the more complicated the background or the more occlusion there is on the screen, the more likely that is to happen. And given that the game does not have multiple lives or any continues, that makes it even more frustrating when it happens.

I think the developers largely succeeded in achieving their vision for Rym 9000, so I don’t want to come down too hard on it. It’s not like there are any bugs or real problems with the game, the speed of the ship and the art style just really make it not a game that I enjoyed very much. The 5 stages do offer some good variety, even if the game is rather short. While it may take less than an hour to play through the game, you are very unlikely to be able to complete it until you have put in at least 5 to 10 times that amount of time. It’s hard to argue with the $7.99 price point, the game is worth it for the soundtrack alone. But if you are going to actually play the game, you may want to watch the trailers, which will give you a better idea of how the game plays than I can with screenshots or description. Even if it didn’t work overall for me, I have a lot of respect for the developers bringing a different artistic aesthetic to a very crowded genre.

Review Score
Overall

Review Code Provided By The Publisher

The post REVIEW: Rym 9000 appeared first on oprainfall.

It cannot be understated that I am a massive fan of the Soulsborne series of games. It is perhaps unsurprising for those who have read my previous Dark Souls reviews. But it is worth bearing in mind, because this review is very much from the standpoint of someone who loves those games. In fact, Bloodborne is one of my favorite games of all time. Not only do I love those Souls-like mechanics, but I’ve been a huge fan of Lovecraft since the mid 80’s, when I first started reading his horror fiction. Another interest of mine is Japanese history and mythology, so I was very excited for Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice ever since it was first announced. But before I dive head first into what this game is, and put a score on it, it’s constructive in this circumstance to start with what it isn’t.

You will notice in the genre section of the header I labeled Sekiro as “Action” and not Souls-like, Rogue-lite, or Action-RPG. What exactly this game’s genre is will perhaps be a matter of debate for some time. There are certainly elements of its Souls heritage within the game, but not really enough to even call it a Souls-like, in my opinion. And it’s definitely not Rogue-like or lite, or even enough RPG to be a sub-genre. In most ways this is like a cross between Tenchu or Ninja Gaiden (modern) and Bloodborne. Losing half of your XP and money per death is more Souls-like, but you don’t have any stats but Health/Posture and Attack Power. You also don’t have different sets of equipment, only different Prosthetic Tools that are situationally used. Experience is used to gain Skill Points, and those are used to only for investing in Skill Trees (until the extreme late game, but more on that later). The vertical movement and stealth will clue players into the fact that they are not playing a Souls game, but from the ground up there are a lot of differences.

It is important for prospective players to understand that you are only ever going to have a sword. The prosthetic tools are limited use and very situational, they will not kill anything but minor peon enemies (such as dogs). Soulsborne games have always allowed you a major variety in the way you play the game. In Sekiro you will have some options on the way you fight named bosses, but nothing major. If you are not interested in being a Ninja, this game is not for you. You cannot play as a Wizard or a Tank or any of the various builds you had in other FromSoftware games. Initially that can turn off many players, and may even cause them to not like the game, but that also works strongly in the game’s favor. By focusing on a specific style of fighting, Sekiro manages to fine tune that fighting style to a precision art. But to get that focused fighting style to click, you are going to need to break some Soulsborne habits.

Some fairly minor but rapidly obvious changes are the ability to really stealth (unlike the quasi-stealth of Soulsborne) and the use of the grappling hook to gain the high ground. Stealth kills will one shot kill any enemy that is not a Boss or a Mini-Boss. But with Mini-Bosses specifically you will often be able to stealth in and immediately deplete half of their health pool. Gaining the high ground to kill from above with your grappling hook is not the only major use for it, but the extra traversal options will make getting back to where you died much quicker than in Soulsborne games of the past. So make sure you are watching out for shortcuts and unlocking any doors back to Buddha statues that you find. Most importantly, new players and Souls veterans need to understand that Dodge is not the friend you may think it is. Sekiro looks like he has very little armor on, but he dodges like a heavily encumbered tank from the previous games. There are only a couple frames of invincibility. Not only that, many moves are specifically tracking to prevent you from dodging them at all. Other than a few specific boss fights (generally beasts or anything without a weapon), dodge is not your friend, deflect is.

When you are combating an Boss or Mini-Boss, you will be tempted to keep an eye on the amount of health they have left. That seems natural in most any game, but especially after being trained by Soulsborne. But that is not the case in this game, that is actually the last place you should be looking. The first place to watch is the enemy actions, because they do enough damage to where many moves can 1 shot kill you, and pretty much anything can kill you in 2 shots. The second place to look is the enemy’s (and your own) Posture Bars. That bar is far more important than the Health Bar. Lower health will cause enemy posture to go up quicker and take longer to fade away, but you cannot defeat them until you break their posture. At first it may seem that the Posture Bar is a way to “cheese” an enemy for a quick kill. But that is not the case, you cannot depend on wearing down an enemy by slowly whittling down their health. The bosses in this game, even the mini ones, are not balanced to that. You need to stay aggressive, you need to deflect with good timing, and you need to stay on top of them in every case but emergency heals. Even when you obtain the full 10 uses of the Healing Gourd (you only start with a single use), there is not enough healing in the game to wear down bosses. And many of the major bosses will have extremely dangerous moves that they will only use if you get far away or stop constantly forcing them to guard.

You katana is your most important weapon, and deflecting an enemy’s attack is your best way to build up their Posture Bar. However, you will have some secondary tools that will augment your standard attacks and help you either do special types of damage, or offer you get out of jail cards. Your Prosthetic Tool arm starts out with very few options, with just the ability to fire Shurikens and to grapple. But as you find new items around the world (or purchase them), the Sculptor will be able to fit all new Tools to increase your secondary options. You will also eventually gain the ability to upgrade those tools in the chart you see above. Enemies will drop crafting materials, and you will use those materials and a cash investment to unlock new versions of those tools. But because the types of damage are so specific and have so many options to them, you can use any version of that tool that you have available. For instance, you may not want to use the Lapus Axe if you are not fighting an Illusory Enemy, you may want to use the Fire Axe instead on a Red Eye enemy, or the Spring Loaded Axe on the Armored Warrior (those are hints, by the way, feel free to use them). So every upgrade in the Prosthetic Tool Upgrade menu is quite useful depending on the circumstance, but I would strongly suggest you shoot for the Golden Fan first (towards the bottom), as it will allow you to farm materials from enemies easier.

That may sound a lot like RPG mechanics, and if those were your main weapon you were upgrading I might agree. But where this game further goes afield from the Souls formula is the Skill Trees. Sekiro has five different Skill Trees, but he initially only has access to one. You gain access to Prosthetic Arts as soon as the Sculptor builds your third Prosthetic Tool (ideally this should be early in the Hirata Estate). Ashina Arts is gained by a doing a quick quest for the Tengu NPC, and the Monk Arts scroll is found by looking in a very out of the way location where there are a lot of monks (trying to avoid spoilers while offering some general hints). The fifth skill tree you are unlikely to see until very late in the game, it’s only unlocked after you’ve completed one of the Skill Trees to the end. Some people have expressed discontent that there is no Respec option for your skills (like in Soulsborne games), but that is actually unnecessary in this game. You actually do need every Skill, they are all useful depending on the situation. It took some farming, but I was able to easily complete every single skill tree in my first playthrough.

The Combat Arts you gain through the Skill Tree will often seem underwhelming. But they are quite situational, much like the Prosthetic Tools. In general Combat Arts that are multi-hit are for locking down small enemies, wide area ones are for taking on groups of small enemies, and powerful single or double shots are for bosses. But you can still experiment and make use of them how you see fit. You will always need to play like a Ninja, but there is room for experimentation within that. Ninjitsu are very rare skills that you won’t find until you are rather far in the game. They are only used during deathblows and they typically cost a lot of Spirit Emblems to use. Since the maximum number of Spirit Emblems you can carry at once is 20, making wise use of them between Prosthetic Tools, Combat Arts, and Ninjitsu becomes a very important aspect from the mid to late game. You can generally gain enough when you are making your way through an area full of small trash mobs, but always make sure you have maximum Spirit Emblems when you know you are about to face a Boss or Mini-Boss.

Mini-Bosses serve a very interesting function in Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. Their most obvious function is that by defeating them they will drop a Prayer Bead most of the time, and a very special use item the rest of the time. When you have gathered 4 Prayer Beads, you can form them into a Prayer Necklace, which will increase your overall Health and Posture. There are a few Prayer Beads that can be found in very hidden locations around the world, but most of the 40 total are from mini-bosses. The (around 40) Mini-Bosses also help teach you techniques and moves that the major Bosses will make use of later. If you are not learning how to use Prosthetic Tools and how to dodge grabs, Mikiri Counter thrusts, and Jump Interrupt horizontal swings, then you are doing it wrong and you will end up dying a lot to the major bosses. Thankfully with each major Boss you defeat, you will be able to meditate on that memory at any Buddha statue to increase your total attack power. If you find the 3 pieces of the Heavenly Mask, however, you will also eventually gain the ability to trade in 5 Skill Points to also increase your attack power. This is quite unnecessary until you have filled out all the Skill Trees, but it’s important for the NG+-NG+7 lifestyle. Once you have the 40 Prayer Beads, you cannot raise your Health/Posture any more past that, but Attack Power can go clear up to 99 (even though you will typically have around 10-15 maximum your first time through).

The game definitely gets more difficult each time you go through the story, up to NG+7. Also like other Soulsborne games, there are multiple endings that you can reach by the events you see and the choices you make. Interestingly, I found it much easier to get the secret endings in this game. Perhaps that is because I’m a Souls veteran and know what to look for. But it also had to do with the NPCs being much more clear with their wants and intentions, and out of the way locations being more clearly marked (especially with grapple points). But in every case the story was much more present in the game, there is still plenty of world lore and item descriptions that are interesting. But the story is much more up front and the characters have more understandable motivations and personality than in recent FromSoftware games. Sekiro gets his power of resurrection from his Master, instead of some nebulous world event. And you will be interacting with all the major players in the current Civil War.

Neither method of writing is necessarily better or worse qualitatively, but each style will have its fans and detractors. I personally liked both styles of storytelling, so it was pretty much a wash for me whether the change in style was a good thing. While the events take place in a fairly small area of the world, there is actually quite a bit of diversity in environments starting around the mid point of the game. Overall the graphics and the artistic direction of Sekiro hit me in the right spot. It was strongly reminiscent of that period of Japanese history, but it also had just enough fantastical thrown in to make it compelling and surprising. You could certainly turn the corner to find some headless monster that you needed to defeat before it killed you with Terror. But you could also turn the corner to find autumn leaves falling in a beautiful forest. I was also impressed with the Japanese voice acting (the default option, and much preferred due to setting) and music. Of course, you would hope that a Japanese company would get those cultural aspects correct. But making compelling music that sounded both very Japanese, but still effective and memorable to a foreign ear, is no small feat.

The last thing I really have to talk about is the difficulty of the game. Of course, there has been a steady stream of complaints about how difficult the game is. Unfortunately those people are also co-opting in the accessibility argument in with the difficulty one. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is actually the most easily accessible game in recent FromSoftware history. What makes it accessible is that there are UI options and sound options and captioning options and voice options and especially complete button mapping. That being said, this is also probably the most difficult game in FromSoftware’s catalog. Soulsborne games are not really difficult, they just require you to pay attention and learn enemy patterns. But you can actually just farm up Souls to power level past enemies, or you can summon friends or even NPCs to help you with bosses that you are struggling on. You cannot power level your way through Sekiro, and you can never summon in friends. There are certain Mini-Bosses that you can get NPC help for, but that is very few and far between. The game teaches you how to play and how to win, but if you are unwilling or unable to learn, then this is not the game for you. I would frankly enjoy the game less if it was made easier, so I’m glad that the developers stuck to their guns and made their vision. The game is extremely finely balanced, and it may be a while (or never) that some players may find out just how tight that balance is.

But one thing to understand is that the game is already on Easy Mode. If you want a bit more difficult of an experience, make your way past the first Headless mini-boss (at the very beginning of the game near the Chained Ogre) and you will find a Demon Bell to ring that will increase the difficulty and drop rate. Also after NG+ you can turn in Kuro’s Charm to make the game even harder than that. Is this game for everyone? Definitely not. But that also makes it even better for those who it really is for, because they didn’t focus group it out of existence. As surprising as it is Activision seemed to have been very hands off. There are some nice quality of life improvements like better menu descriptions of skills and a training partner that has both a story reason for being there and a very real benefit to helping practice your moves. But even with the difficulty I really didn’t die that much until the last optional boss (Demon of Hatred) and the last story boss (Sword Saint, real name removed to avoid spoiler). Those two bosses killed me off more than every other boss in the game combined. But they were also training. After defeating those two I was able to go through over half of NG+ before I died my first time. I can do that on Souls games as well now, but it took me far longer to get to that point. Once you practice, this game truly rewards you for that time spent, and you feel like an extreme bad ass ninja.

I have no complaints about this game. There is perhaps room for improvement in a sequel, but this is a masterpiece. It’s extremely unlikely that there will be a game to come out this year that will unseat this game for my game of the year. Of course, as a Soulsborne fan, that was a likely outcome. But even I was surprised at how well this turned out. Honestly it is pushing on Bloodborne to take my favorite FromSoftware game. But time will tell, I do still have 2 more endings to go before I have the Platinum trophy. For my first time through, exploring absolutely everything and defeating every single boss and mini-boss available, it took me just over 60 hours. Of course, the game can be finished in much less time than that if you know exactly where you are going and you don’t take the time to farm all the materials for every Prosthetic Tool upgrade (except two which will require NG+ to get more Lapus Lazuli). Either way that is a whole lot of game for the $59.99 asking price. I would have easily payed double for the game. But if difficult games are not for you, or if you are totally turned off by being a ninja, then this may not even be a game for you no matter the price. The game is punishing, but for those with the courage to put in the time and effort, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice will reward you for it.

Review Score
Overall

Review Copy Was Self Purchased

The post REVIEW: Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice appeared first on oprainfall.

As a fan of the space shooter (or SHUMP) genre, this has been a fantastic console generation. Many very rare examples of the genre have made it onto much more widely accessible platforms (such as Ikaruga and Deathsmiles), and many entirely new entries hearken back to classic design and add new wrinkles to the classic genre (such as DARIUSBURST: Chronicle Saviors and Cuphead). Between those two extremes, there has also been a string of smaller indie titles that just want to give a concise experience that will make you feel like it was a forgotten gem from that actual time period. And to that growing list of titles comes Devil Engine. It does not really seek to innovate, and it’s not a game that is from the late 90s, but it does everything it can to feel like that. Of course, that is both to its benefit and to its detriment.

The immediate draw of Devil Engine comes down to its art design and 32-bit graphical style. The strongest influence on this game seems to come from the Thunder Force series of games. In fact, the soundtrack composer of that series also provides the music for this game. Thunder Force was a series that was exclusive to the Sega consoles, but eventually made it to the PlayStation (where I first encountered it) and rare ports elsewhere. The pixel graphics are especially stunning in the opening cutscene, but most of the six stages are also extremely well designed (like the one you see above). However, there were two stages that felt rather underwhelming compared to the others. Thankfully the boss design was consistently strong throughout the game.

This game is about as vanilla in gameplay as a space shooter gets. It auto-scrolls to the right, you can’t shoot behind you, you can’t turn around, and your movement real estate is limited to what you can see on the screen. You can raise your speed up to three stages, but really I found no reason to change it mid-stage or have it anywhere but maximum. You have the three classic shot types available to you and each has its own bomb type: spread shot, laser shot, and homing shot. The bombs do a lot of damage, hence why they are limited, but unfortunately they do not clear any enemy bullets and they do not make you invincible during the animation period like most other shooters. Thankfully you can gain new bombs fairly frequently with score progression, so you can use them a little more often than in other shooters, or they would feel extremely underwhelming. Like most shooters, attaining the highest score is the end goal, and this one has a multiplier that has the most interesting mechanic tied to it.

Once I set the speed, I never touched it after, (You can also set it in the menu to start you at the highest speed.) and other than that you have the buttons for shoot and bomb and the last one, burst. Burst is the most complicated part of this game and it is the mechanic that ties to the multiplier. The multiplier (on the top left of the screen) builds up as you strike enemy ships while not getting hit yourself. This increases your score by that multiple when you destroy enemies. Two things can lower that multiplier, getting hit or using burst. Burst is an action that absorbs all the enemy bullets around you. The trick is that the higher the multiple is, the larger the zone will be around you that collects bullets. But there is a short cooldown that you have to wait for between each burst and each one also lowers your multiplier significantly. Honestly the system was a bit clunky and not well explained, but it added a bit of variety to a game with extremely limited shot types.

Probably the one thing that will turn off casual fans of the genre from this game is the difficulty. Initially you can only play on Very Hard, but after your first (likely quick) death, Very Easy opens up. While this seems like a fairly funny nod to hardcore fans of the genre, that joke may wear off quickly. One problem with it is that Very Easy is actually harder than most other examples of the genre on Normal mode, and Very Hard is quite aptly named. Several things make this game brutally difficult; your ship is large and so is its hitbox, enemy bullets are large, most standard enemies are bullet sponges without using Laser Shot, bombs have no invincibility frames, and you cannot fire behind you even though the enemies can fire at you from that direction. While I enjoy a lot of hardcore space shooter games, this one seemed a bit excessive and really could have used more difficulty options. The progressive unlock system helps a little, but I suspect that it will not help the difficulty enough for most people.

As you die repeatedly your score will be added to an overall total. That overall total score will gradually unlock new game modes, new ships, new UI and graphical styles, and very rarely some changes to the number of continues/lives/bombs that you have available each run. There is also an entirely different Challenge Mode that has very difficult sequences that are much quicker to play through than a standard stage of the game. These challenges will also unlock new modes and elements to the game. This does add more replay value to the game and extended the amount I wanted to grind it by a significant amount. While attaining a high score is still the gist here, since there is no online connectivity for scores. They are really only used for this purpose.

There are plenty of gripes to have about this game, but overall it’s a very positive experience. Not only are the stages long but they feature multiple bosses in them. And each of the bosses get consecutively more interesting as the stage goes along. Most of them are massive, but some of the small ones (like you see above) have even more interesting mechanics to them. It’s a shame that there isn’t a really easy mode so that even casual fans can see some of the later bosses, it is truly the highlight of this game. The other major highlight, along with the very obvious art design, is the music. As I said before, the composer of the original Thunder Force series has returned for this game. I only played one game in that series before, but this game has even better music, and makes me want to check out his other work even more. For the Steam version of the game, you can even buy the soundtrack bundled with the game (which I would recommend).

The aspect of the game that held me back from loving it the most was really the lack of variety in shot types. Three different types that can only be upgraded twice is quite underwhelming. Most other space shooters that have that few of different types and upgrades at least have other space ships that change the shape of the shots at least. I do like the burst idea and the progression system is also innovative (although not without precedent). So I would still overall recommend this game for hardcore fans of the genre, and the 5-8 hours I spent with it more than made the $19.99 price worth it. But I cannot recommend this game to casual fans of the genre, you are likely to get your face smashed in. There is no doubt that it is beautiful in the visual and sound department, though, so at least check out some gameplay footage to see if it’s right for you.

Review Score
Overall

Review Copy Provided By The Publisher

The post REVIEW: Devil Engine appeared first on oprainfall.

This will be my third time reviewing Fairy Fencer F: Advent Dark Force, which is both a good and a bad thing. It’s good because I certainly know what I’m looking for when playing the game. But it’s bad because I also have direct experience with other ports that, as you will see, are better versions of the game. That being said, there is a lower limit any review could be for a game that has such a great foundation and has provided me with hundreds of hours of entertainment. And that is the takeaway that I would like to express for this review; technical difficulties aside, this is still a fantastic game at its root.

For those who have not played either the original Fairy Fencer F or Advent Dark Force for the PS4 or Steam, I will do a brief synopsis. However, if you want a much more detailed overview of the mechanics and story to know whether you would like to purchase the game for the first time, I would highly recommend my original review here. Fairy Fencer F was released for the PlayStation 3 and eventually ported to the PC. It had some fans, myself included, but it was met with fairly middling reviews due to its brevity and a rather perfunctory story. But there were still some good fight mechanics and the characters had a lot of personality that we would have liked to see mined further. Thankfully those criticisms were taken on board with a new version of the game, Fairy Fencer F: Advent Dark Force, which was released for the PlayStation 4 and then also ported to PC. This new version of the game had three distinct storylines, improvements to combat, more party members, and a lot more exploration of the characters (especially in the new True Goddess Route).

The construct of the game with visual novel style story scenes and third-person dungeon roving will remind you a lot of other Compile Heart/Idea Factory games, but this one still has enough to differentiate it. Each party member has a specific primary Fairy that imbues all of their weapons. They can also equip a supplemental Fairy card that will modify their overall stats and also give them unique abilities, or resistance to damage types, etc. The original release limited combat to three party members, but ADF increased the party members to six. It can get a little hectic, but the battle arena is large enough to accommodate that many party members, and battle was also tuned for the larger parties. The Goddess vs Vile God story was decent in the initial arc, but it gets better with the addition of the Vile God path and a whole lot better with the True Goddess path. Even though I’ve spent around 400 hours playing this game, the characters still remained fun and the story interesting.

Like with the PC version of the game, there is a slew of DLC that the game comes with for no additional cost. For your first time through I would recommend playing without the DLC items, or if you download them, only use them in an emergency. That is because the Ultimate and Veteran Fencer sets are extremely powerful, likewise with the S Rank Fairy cards that are added to the game. There is nothing wrong with just blowing through the game with them, but it’s better to struggle a bit your first time through, in my opinion. The difficulty is still adjustable at any time out of combat and the only thing it changes is the XP/gold you get as well as the item drop table for the monsters. It won’t affect the story in any way. That being said, for those who have already been through the game and want to get right into the end game and the other routes, the DLC items are perfect for that.

From here it is mostly bad news when comparing the Switch port to the other versions of the game. The visual novel style scenes are still quite crisp, even if they were slightly downgraded to 720p, unlike the PC and PS4 versions. But where you really notice some graphical issues are in the dungeons, and especially the old original Fairy Fencer F dungeons. The graphics can appear quite fuzzy and muddy, whether you are playing on a TV screen or portable. Also a few of the in-game engine cutscenes looked decidedly last generation as well. In addition to the graphics downgrade, the sound and music seemed a bit muffled at times, which is understandable given the much lower quality sound chip in the Switch as compared to the PS4 or PC. The voice work is still really good, though, and it comes out a lot more clearly than the music does.

The other major issue with the port is crashes. There were a few crashes on PS4 and PC, but nothing like I experienced on the Switch. They have patched the game significantly since its original release, but it is still a constant problem. I was never able to play for more than two hours straight without a complete crash of the game. The frequency makes me wonder if there isn’t a memory leak somewhere in the game, where it just can’t keep up after a certain period of time. But either way, it can be quite frustrating to lose an entire dungeon of progress due to a crash. There is usually only one or two save points per dungeon—it is not a save anywhere type game—so that makes the issue even more noticeable. Even though it is better than it was in its first month, I would still like to see another patch or two giving even more stability.

That is a lot of negative all at once, so you may be surprised that my overall review score is not lower. If you treat this almost like playing a retro game, it’s a lot easier to overlook some of the issues like graphics and sound. The only real issue is the crashing. But even beyond all those issues, the characters are truly memorable and the story is quite good. Also the Nintendo Switch is not exactly a haven for JRPGs as of yet. Really, other than Xenoblade Chronicles 2 and possibly Octopath Traveler, you are not going to find better JRPGs on the system. So would I still recommend this game for on-the-go playing or if you haven’t played it yet? Certainly, especially for $39.99 and the potential more than 100 hours of playtime getting through all three endings. But you still need to realize that this is definitely not the best version of the game; the best version is on the PC followed closely by the PlayStation 4.

Review Score
Overall

Review Copy Provided By The Publisher

The post RE-REVIEW: Fairy Fencer F: Advent Dark Force (Nintendo Switch) appeared first on oprainfall.

Author’s Note: Lilium x Triangle is an Yuri Eroge Visual Novel that is 18+ and for Adults Only. The review is potentially NSFW, although steps are taken to prevent that. But all associated links are definitely NSFW and 18+. The content of the Visual Novel is entirely Yuri (Girl on Girl), but is quite vanilla beyond that premise.

Lilium x Triangle represents the first short Nukige and first exclusively Yuri Visual Novel that I have reviewed for the site. But that is not to say that it’s my first experience playing either. In fact, short Nukige can feel like a really nice palette cleanser after a long and involved Visual Novel (much the way a short indie game can after a long AAA experience). The interesting part of this particular story is the mixture between Yuri sensibilities and Nukige style. The latter represents a Visual Novel that is entirely focused on the sex. But the former tends to be either focused on cuteness or focused on drama. It ends up working out quite well for Lilium x Triangle that it just focuses on the cute side of Yuri but has the sex focus you are expecting. The only things that were really cut out were a long build up story and any sort of real drama.

The story premise for the game is extremely slight, even compared to other examples of this Visual Novel sub-genre. There are really only about 3 lines of exposition informing you of any particular backstory. Haruka is a Succubus who was discovered by two sisters while she was very weak. They nursed her back to health and so Haruka decided to come to Earth and stay with them from then on. It does not really explore why Haruka was weak, but it does mention that she grows weaker if she doesn’t suck the energy out of humans for long enough. This plot device isn’t really used for much of anything other than passing reference. It also doesn’t explain why the two sisters are living alone in a very nice apartment while they are going to school. But as you would expect with a Nukige, that does not really matter that much. What is important is that a love triangle has formed where Haruka has to decide which sister she wants to be with romantically.

The older sister is your basic stereotypical blonde airhead that is super popular and very gentle, but needs to be taken care of by those around her so she doesn’t get into too much trouble. That being said, for such a short story it’s not so bad to have some very common character archetypes. And since this is meant to be a drama free story, having such a good-natured love interest without any major skeletons in her closet is a nice idea. She is a bit aloof and hard to read, but once she and Haruka establish a relationship she can be open to pretty much anything. So that makes her a nice change of pace from some of the more prudish examples of the stereotype in other Visual Novels. As you would expect with the airhead older sister, she depends on her younger sister to take care of her.

As you might expect from a younger sister who has to take care of her ditz older sister, Sana is a bit of a tsundere. But, like with her older sister, there is not meant to be any real drama here. So while she can be a bit of a hard case at times, she is not nearly so bratty of a tsundere to make things too difficult. In fact, no matter which direction you take the story, she is always the first one to confess her love. But that also fits her personality. Sana is not always consistent (not that any real human is either), but her headstrong nature is a distinct aspect of her personality. Thankfully even if Haruka chooses to not return her romantic affections she still is completely okay with it.

If this all sounds super gentle and not much like other Nukige, then that is very much the point. It’s not that there isn’t explicit sex, there are 3 scenes per couple. Also they were able to remove (almost) all of the mosaic censorship. But the standard styles of Yuri stories still apply here, as well as the conventions of Romance Novels. I should probably define that for people who are not quite so aware of what the romance conventions are. When you write a Romance Novel, you are allowed to call male genitalia pretty much anything that you like, however you are never allowed to use crude terminology for female genitalia. Even describing the sex will usually only involve that word or “making love”. Also, almost all sex is entirely vanilla with maybe some light bondage at most. When you make an Adult Romance Novel, however, you can start to use the more explicit terms, you can use a little less vanilla sex, and (even though it’s still rare) you can call women’s genitalia more descriptive things. In this story, it leans far more to the Romance Novel side of the spectrum than the Adult Romance Novel side. And that may put off some people who are just looking for a standard Nukige, or it could potentially attract others.

The character designs are pretty average, and the art design overall is just good. It’s not great, but it does get better during special scenes (like the one above). I would say the voice work suffers a little more than the art, but that may also be personal taste. Sana is mostly good, as is Haruka, but Yuuna is bit overboard on how airy she sounds. There are no real sound effects in the game, even during the sex scenes, but the dialogue during those scenes is okay, if a bit lacking in variety or surprises. The music is probably a little better than either the art or the voice work is, but there is not a large array of songs (as you would expect from a short Nukige). The only real issue I had with any of the artistic choices were that the story is a bit boring and they missed a few frames when they removed the mosaic censorship. However, missing those small bits still made for a much better experience than if they had chosen to release it fully censored.

This is a very simple Visual Novel to just download and play. There are choices to make, but only a couple of them, and it’s quite obvious where they are leading. The story is extremely short, at just over an hour each and around 3 hours overall, but you get what was advertised as well. It’s just a short, sweet, and sexy story of Yuri love where you have two girls to choose from. The game is only $11.99, so realistically it’s difficult to argue about it being a bargain. If you are at all interested in a gentle (but still pervy) story about these girls ,then that is a low barrier of entry. And for me it will not be extremely memorable, but just a fun experience to smile about.

Review Score
Overall

Review Copy Provided By The Publisher

The post (18+) EROGE REVIEW: Lilium x Triangle appeared first on oprainfall.

Author’s Note: This is an Adult Visual Novel for 18+ only. The review is potentially NSFW, although steps are made to prevent that, and all links are Adults Only. The scenes featured are entirely straight and mostly vanilla.

The word that I kept on coming back to, over and again, when playing If You Love Me, Then Say So! was “competent”. It’s not a word I use very often in a review because it can definitely cut both ways. But for a game like this, I think that word is apropos. MangaGamer’s recent Eroge Visual Novel and Dating Sim is certainly a competent game in that it succeeds at what it sets out to do. But it also never really rises above that or becomes anything memorable. That is not necessarily a bad thing, but set your expectations accordingly, and you might even end up liking it more than I did.

The main character, Souta, is unseen and unvoiced (as is common in most Eroge of this type). Also the overused trope of the character being a beta male is in full effect. However, they did play with that stereotype a bit in that Souta considers himself too pathetic to even be a beta, more of a delta or even a gamma. Also the women around him, especially his best friend, constantly point out how badly of a beta he is and have a sense of humor about it. The other way they play with the trope a little is the entire premise of the game. This game is more of a dating sim than most Eroge are. There are aspects of this story and game design that could be considered almost a real life tutorial for beta males in Japan. As the title suggests, the crux of the game mechanically revolves around spending a lot of time with a girl of your choice and determining the right time to “confess” to her. The apple fairy that seems to think it’s a love fairy is really the only fantastical element to the game, other than so many sexy women having a crush on the same pathetic guy at the same time.

There is a calendar that shows major upcoming events, such as holidays or school trips, but most of your decisions will happen on the after-school time management screen. It is there that you will decide which girls you will interact with for that day. Initially you will only be able to choose a couple of them, but when you grow attached to more girls, the groups will grow more diverse. Within those individual events you will also have standard Visual Novel selection events that can help a girl grow more or less fond of you as well. Unfortunately you can’t just go all in on one girl, most events will not repopulate once you’ve done them once. And sometimes an event with another girl entirely will open up something new with the one you are after. If that sounds a bit confusing, you are on the right track, unfortunately you can miss many events even in a full playthrough only picking the same girl over and over again. I went through the game many times and there are still a whole lot of CG scenes that I have never seen and I have no idea of how to unlock. So if you are OCD/Autistic like I am, that can be a source of frustration.

Usually (with only a few exceptions) you will reach the weekend and see the screen above. The first major feature of this menu is to have your unreliable fairy determine whether the girl of your choice is open to a relationship with the “Love Fortune” option. In general it can’t tell you whether the girl will say yes or not, but it can tell you if there is a chance that they will. The other major feature of the weekend menu is the “Confess” option. If you confess and the girl of your choice agrees to be your girlfriend, you will enter the last third of the game. The dating game using After School Time Management represents about the first two-thirds of the game, and the last third is actually dating that girl. I should also mention that all Adult Content is relegated to after you are officially dating a girl. In fact, there is even a credits scene in the interval, almost like they are two separate games. Cupid Flowers are just used to set the reputation of a girl to a set level and are only useful after your first playthrough. Phone is used to slightly increase reputation with a girl of your choice and Sleep is when you want to just do nothing but pass time.

The best friend, sickly girl, loli, catgirl, and popular girl tropes are all here in full effect. But fortunately it’s not all entirely bland and free of any surprises. For instance, your totally hot best friend Yuki has probably the foulest mouth of any VN girl I’ve ever encountered. She is a font of dirty jokes that is rather impressive, and was one of the few things that will remain memorable to me after this game. The lolita is also a bit interesting because Souta had already dated her briefly in the past, so she has a bit of an ex-girlfriend thing going for her, even if she seems far less mature than everyone else. But beyond that she is still easy to anger and a bit of a baby, as you would expect from the trope. The character design and voice work for all the girls is also good but not great. Yuki has Adult scenes that are a little less vanilla than the others, but as I said before, I haven’t been able to unlock every scene yet.

Considering their prominence in the art of the game, you might think that Rinka and Chiho are the two main girls of the game. You may be disappointed to learn that you cannot date either of them until at least your first time through the game. Chiho is the cat girl, and you will meet her briefly during your first time through the game, but she will be a little difficult to try to date once you have gone through the game once. Rinka is seen on TV early in the game, but she is basically absent your first time through. And even when you can date her it was extremely difficult for me to get that relationship to work. I don’t mind having some rare dating scenario to be in a game, but it’s strange to feature the art so prominently when she is so hidden. It also doesn’t help with the frustration that she is probably the most memorable of all the five girls that you can date.

I have to reiterate that you can only date five of the girls in the game. The reason I want to make it clear is because my largest frustration with the game was that I could not date Maya, even though she features very prominently in the story. The extremely shy friend of Yuki cannot be dated either, nor can your sadistic club president. All of these girls are developed enough and have interesting enough art designs that it seems like they simply ran out of time or funds to add them to your dating pool. Maya was the true tragedy for me, because of all the girls I liked her personality the most. But really I would have enjoyed dating any of those side girls.

The localization and translation was very good, as we have come to expect from MangaGamer. They were able to mix in both Japanese and American colloquialisms to good effect, adding both personality to the girls and some much needed humor. Honestly without the humor in the translation I would have liked the game a lot less, it would have made the game boring instead of just competent. The music was overall very bland, but it wasn’t bad. It is one where I just turned it off for beyond 3 or 4 playthroughs and put on my own music. There were a couple stand out songs, particularly in humorous one off sequences that are difficult to reach in the story. But for the most part it all ran together. As you can tell from the art design, that is something that is common to the game overall. Good in short sequences, but pretty bland overall.

I don’t want to come off too negative, which is why I tried to reiterate that competent isn’t necessarily a bad thing. This game isn’t bad or buggy or broken in any way. It’s just simple and bit unremarkable. It is an interesting idea to make the focus so much on the confession tutorial and dating sim style. And in the end, you can spend a great many hours trying to unlock all the various CG scenes that you cannot reach in a single playthrough. For my first time through the game it took around 10 hours, but I’ve easily spent at least 3 to 5 times that trying to find all the myriad routes to unlock the rest of the scenes. Does that justify the $44.95 price tag? That will really depend on how much you like the girls. It would have been a lot easier for me to recommend if those other girls were dateable, especially Maya, but it’s still a large game for an Eroge Visual Novel. There are better examples of the genre out there, but that doesn’t take away from this title, which at a minimum is just a good game.

Review Score
Overall

Review Copy Provided By The Publisher

The post (18+) EROGE REVIEW: If You Love Me, Then Say So! appeared first on oprainfall.

Games that represent a series culmination can be difficult to review for a general audience. Ideally they should be built, from the ground up, for the fans of that series. That also hinges on how much of the development process was entered into knowing that it would be the final entry. All too often in any genre of entertainment, the cancellation of a series is sudden and there ends up being a perfunctory ending (famous examples being Metal Gear Solid V in gaming and Firefly on TV). But when you do know it’s going to be the final entry, you can build upon the entire series and come out with a satisfying conclusion (such as Uncharted 4 and Return of the Jedi). Of course, endings don’t always work out and can end up besmirching the reputation of the series as a whole for some fans (Mass Effect 3 and The Sopranos come to mind). Etrian Odyssey Nexus is the sixth continuous entry of the series, and the eighth if you include the two remix games. So there is quite a series history to compile into one final game entry.

It’s entirely possible that this may not be the absolute last thing we see from the Etrian Odyssey series of games. But by all indications it is, and even if it comes back it will have to change its form in some ways. The reason ATLUS appears to have developed Nexus with the explicit intention of creating a final entry has less to with series sales and more to do with the hardware that they are on. Almost more than any other series of games, the EO games are built from the ground up to take advantage of the Nintendo DS series of hardware. One of the primary appeals of the series has been using your stylus to draw out the dungeon maps as you explore. This is a modern take on the original style of dungeon crawler RPGs, where we used to use graph paper to draw out our own maps. With their new hybrid handheld console, the Nintendo Switch, the company is showing signs of discontinuing production of all SKU Nintendo 3DS models. And even if they were to still keep the handheld consoles going for a bit longer, there is no question that the audience has almost entirely migrated over to the Switch. So while I do hope that they find a way to make the series work in the future, there is no question that it will have to change if it’s going to. ATLUS knows this more than anyone, so they made Etrian Odyssey Nexus as a capstone to the best dungeon crawler series is many years, if not the greatest of all time.

From the start of the game you will be on a flying city heading to the Yggdrasil Tree in order to unearth a sacred treasure said to create infinite prosperity for a country. Of course from the ground up that sounds quite suspiciously too good to be true, but it will be a long time before the foundation mission will be directly addressed. As a dungeon crawler series, the Etrian Odyssey games have always focused more on the dungeon design than the story, but there is a bit more story here than in all but the two remake games. In the previous games you are usually in a similar city, and also trying to climb the World Tree, but you will discover that this game takes a hard turn from that in interesting ways. Once you leave the confines of the city you will discover that there is a world map that will spread out all the various different labyrinths, slightly reminiscent of Etrian Odyssey IV, but without the ship travel. And, story-wise, you will also discover that the labyrinths surrounding the Yggdrasil are strongly reminiscent of some areas that you have seen elsewhere in the world. After several of these zones the player, and the NPC characters, will start to wonder why all these regions are suddenly appearing together in one place.

My largest issue with Etrian Odyssey V was that they seemed to take a step back from the innovations of Etrian Odyssey IV. It was still a really good game, but I really missed the overworld travel and interactions. And most of all, by separating the various dungeons, it made them seem more diverse and interesting. Even from the beginning the dungeons of the EO games did change about every 5 levels or so, but it was still all just one major dungeon dive. With Etrian Odyssey Nexus they have made even more discrete dungeons than in any prior game. There have been some people complaining about the reused enemy designs and labyrinth looks, but that not only makes sense story-wise, but they also change the monsters enough to make it interesting. It ends up being a call back more than just a cost or time saving measure, which is an important distinction to make. Altogether players will be shocked at how many dungeons this game has, 14 main labyrinths and 10 side dungeons. The main labyrinths can be as many as 5 levels deep and the side dungeons are always 1 level but usually very large and with severely upgraded enemies that are most definitely optional (but feature some very strong upgrades as a reward, as well as new side story sequences). They also brought back many of the series classic dungeon mechanics and designs, but remixed them in interesting ways that will make you use your head.

More Nexus on Page 2 ->

The post REVIEW: Etrian Odyssey Nexus appeared first on oprainfall.

The previous game from DrinkBox Studios was quite a departure from what the studio was known for. Severed was a really solid dungeon crawler, but many people were hoping they would eventually go back to the series that made them famous, Guacamelee!. And now that time has arrived. Guacamelee! 2 is a direct sequel to the first game, picking up immediately after the events of that story. Unfortunately the game came out during an extremely busy period for releases, even for me it was sandwiched between Octopath Traveler and Spider-man. So as much as I loved the first title, I did not have time to play it until now. And I am very glad that I finally did get around to playing this fantastic example of the Metroidvania sub-genre. And with the title being released on the Switch this month, it’s a perfect time to give the game another look.

It wasn’t just the release timing that have caused this game to struggle a little to get press coverage. This was also a very big year for Metroidvania styled games. Dead Cells and Hollow Knight had very popular Switch releases that garnered a lot of sales and critical attention, and then there were the much anticipated releases of Chasm and The Messenger. So even if the sequel to one of the best games in the genre was coming out, there was still an air of “been there, done that” around it. Which I feel did the game a bit of a disservice. For as much as I enjoy the new things all those other games brought to the Metroidvania sub-genre, Guacamelee! 2 does a lot of things better while also hewing much closer to the traditions that have made the genre so popular in the first place. It also eases you into the story even if you haven’t played the first game. Taking a page out of the Castlevania: Symphony of the Night book, the game begins with the final fight from the first game. Also, like that classic game, they make the fight a lot easier so that even new players shouldn’t struggle with it.

Like many other sequel games in the genre, after the opening there is an event that causes the hero to lose all the power that they had previously obtained. But the comedic overtones of this series work very well for it, and they just fast forward a decade until Juan has a beer gut and is just a father taking care of his wife and two kids. He is very clearly a hero gone to seed, and that works even better than some contrived story beat that causes an enemy to steal their former power. The call to action occurs when a group of goat sages from other dimensions call on him to save the entire multiverse (called The Mexiverse) from an evil and powerful luchador named Salvador.  He and his minions are out to find the ultimate sacred guacamole, which will gift him ultimate power over all dimensions of The Mexiverse. And apparently Juan is the only hero who survived the previous adventure, so all the goat sages are relying on him to save the universe.

While there are real consequences to the people that Juan cares about, no matter which timeline he travels to the overall tone of the story is humorous. This tone works out very well for a couple reasons. They use the humor as a way to insert a ton of references without having to worry about taking the player out of the game. The dimension skipping especially works out in this favor, and you will find yourself entering dimensions that are inspired by many other video game properties (which I don’t want to spoil for people by listing them). But that humor and fun also provides a counter balance to the sometimes brutal difficulty of the game (more on that later). I can see where some of the humor may either go unnoticed by some people or even offend some people of a particular political persuasion. But since this is a game that is very Mexican focused, it would have felt dishonest to totally avoid some of those subjects. And personally it endears me even more to the game.

For those who didn’t play the first game, you should know that this game is much closer to the Super Metroid side of Metroidvania than the Symphony of the Night side. There are several discreet dungeons that are mostly self contained, and you will find a new ability in each dungeon that will not only help you tackle the final boss of that dungeon, but it will also help you access the next dungeon. There are also items and abilities spread out in the overworld while traveling between the dungeons, and that is also where most of the story takes place. There is no loot in the game other than very rare costumes that you can find and heart or energy containers to raise your health and stamina. But what the first game added, and the sequel expands, is that all the traversal mechanics are also used in fighting luchador style. So fighting large groups of enemies, or enemies with tricky mechanics, using combos and fighting game moves are a large part of the game.

While there is no loot in the game, the skill trees do make Juan a lot more powerful by purchasing new abilities and making the ones he finds much stronger. One of the very cool things they do with the skill tree in this game is that each branch of the tree is a master that he finds out in the world. So in effect they are training him up in that particular style of luchador wrestling. All upgrades require a lot of gold to purchase, so I would strongly suggest you focus on anything that builds up your gold faster first. But there are definitely a lot of options for which order you want to tackle the skills in. They unlock left to right, but you will find the 5th master long before you finish any of the previous trees. You will also notice in the screen above that Pollo Powers has a skill tree all it’s own. And that is one of my favorite new additions over the first Guacamelee! game. You could still change into a chicken in the previous game, but that was only for traversal. Not so in this game, now Juan has true poultry power.

Around the world you will find dungeon entrances that are a giant mechanical chicken head. You may be surprised to discover that they are entry ways into a whole advanced poultry civilization, one that is far advanced over the humans above. Then you will learn that there is another story going on besides the one with Salvador, and having to do with two of his henchmen and their attack on the Chicken Illuminati. Yeah, you read that correctly. It goes quite off the rails, but in a delightful way. A more important gameplay consequence of your dealings with the chicken empire is that they also have a set of statues that give you new chicken abilities that allow you to fight quite deadly as a chicken. There are some enemies that can only be fought as a chicken, and then there are several late game enemies and bosses that you will have to switch between both human and chicken form to be able to tackle.

The chicken civilization shows off how much they have updated the graphics in the sequel. But that is not the only place the new designs shine through. The art style still retains that simple design flavor from the first game, but they were able to add a lot of very pretty bells and whistles to it. While dropping the game from Vita was a bit disappointing for those who played the original game there, the visual flair makes up for it in my opinion. But it wasn’t just the pretty design of the chicken levels that stands out, it was also the music. Most of the game has very fantastic mariachi style music, which is even better in the sequel, but the chicken levels also have a very techno sound to them. The all around sound design of the game is very good, you can really feel the punches and especially the special moves hitting their targets, but the music is still the highlight.

I did not play it multiplayer, but you can play this whole game with up to 4 players co-op. You can also switch to the other players at any save point, if you prefer their design (I generally prefer Tostada myself, unless I’m playing for the story). Playing the game co-op would be fun in general, but I do wonder how it would effect the traversal. My one issue with the game is that some of the traversal sections are so brutally tough that unless you are a hardcore gamer you might just bounce off this game. The fighting can be occasionally difficult, but you can always bring in a co-op friend if you are struggling there. But even as someone who plays a lot of difficult games, I have to say that this sequel is much more difficult than the first game of the series. Expect to have to make split second moves one after the other. The most difficult sections are just leading to health/energy upgrades or outfits, but even the required sections can get really tough towards the end. You better know the buttons on your controller extremely well, because you are going to have to make split second shifts using almost every button on the controller (don’t bother playing mouse and keyboard, this is not the game for that).

If you can get past the difficulty of the game, there is a real gem here. And they did not skimp on the content. I finished the game at just under 11 hours and with just over 60% of the map completed. Like other Metroidvania games, you are encouraged to go back to previous areas with new abilities that you have unlocked. Thankfully the map system makes it fairly easy to see which areas you have not completely explored, and also clearly label paths that require a specific ability to unlock. I hope that this game does not remain largely missed in the greater gaming landscape, it is truly a great title. But to be fair, I didn’t even know about the first one until I played the Guacamelee! Super Turbo Championship Edition. But I can say this one is one of the better examples of the Metroidvania sub-genre, and is easy to recommend at it’s $19.99 asking price. DrinkBox just doesn’t seem to be interested in making a bad game or a cash grab, for which they should receive all the support in the world. Hop in and save the Mexiverse, who wouldn’t want a taco truck on every corner?

Review Score
Overall

Review Copy Provided By The Developer

The post REVIEW: Guacamelee! 2 appeared first on oprainfall.