Empire of the Ants was originally a strategy game released in 2000 for PC. The game itself was based on a French novel called Les Fourmis, written by Bernard Weber. 24 years later, Microid has published a new game under the same title, but the gameplay has changed considerably. Is the new experience worth it?

You start the story campaign as 103,683rd, a red ant belonging to the warrior caste. Your ant can be considered a tactician rather than a fighter, as it will not fight other enemies directly, but will instead give orders to various legions of ants. You belong to a federation of anthills that is prosperous, but is about to face various crises threatening its balance. In order to protect your federation, you will have to complete various missions which can be divided into three categories: Strategy, Tactics, and Exploration. Strategy missions are the most common missions and make up the core of the game. They usually require you to develop an anthill and capture other nests, which will be used to collect resources, upgrade your troops, or develop your powers as a general, which will be needed to win. As you face new challenges, you will have to make good use of the strengths of your ants. The strengths and weaknesses of ants rely on a sort of weapons triangle, where warriors dominate workers but are weaker against artillery ants, which in turn are weak against workers. Two other types of units will help your troops, super predators and support units. Predators are other bugs which have been “tamed” by ants, like Dung Beetles or Hornets, which are  strong against all enemy ants.

You can only control one legion of super predators, but they make a real difference on the battlefield, and you will quickly want to have them. Support units, like snails or aphids, normally help your troops by providing a passive buff. You can control your units with a mouse or a controller, but even with a controller, the controls feel extremely intuitive. I played the game with a DualShock 4and I quickly got used to the controls, which is unusual for a real-time strategy (RTS), as the majority of RTS’ are better played with keyboard controls.

Like every RTS, the gameplay introduces resources to collect in order to develop your colony. Food and wood are generally collected by building farms in your anthills, or by sending your worker ants to collect items found in your environment, such as apples or pineapples. Sometimes, you may have to defeat some bugs, like firebugs, mantis or ladybugs. You generally win by destroying the enemy’s headquarters. Using special powers might help you achieve your goals, as you can acquire abilities that can, for example, temporarily increase the speed of your ants, give them a life shield, or increase their aggressiveness with pheromones. There are a lot of powers to acquire and they will be crucial during your battles. You will also have to pay attention to the weather, as the light, humidity and general weather impact all the troops on the battlefield, improving or reducing their efficiency as well as your powers.

Tactics missions use the same mechanics as Strategy missions, but they introduce specific conditions to win, such as having to resist waves of enemies, collecting resources in a limited amount of time, or escorting a unit. Finally, Exploration missions request you to collect information on your enemy or scan your environment. For example, you might find items used by humans, like balloons or tin cans, and have to scan them. You could also have to hunt butterflies or fireflies. While your ants are very smart, they cannot swim at all, which means you will quickly drown if you don’t pay attention. Fortunately, your ant can run and jump, which will help you overcome any obstacle.

If you struggle with a mission, you are generally free to not complete it. The majority of missions are not mandatory, and you only have to achieve a certain number of missions to progress through each chapter of the history. If you struggle with Strategy, you could decide to focus on Exploration missions, for example. The gameplay, however, is not as elitist as it can be in some RTS’ like Starcraft 2 or Warcraft 3 and you should be able to complete all missions if you persevere. I am generally not good at playing RTS’, but I was able to complete the campaign after playing for 40 hours. There is a multiplayer component, but I was unable to experience it.

Technically, the game runs fine and is well optimized. I played it with a PC using a 4070 Super NVIDIA Gpu, 32GB Ram and an AMD Ryzen 5 7600 CPU. The game should be seen as an RTS which does not try to compete with references of the genre, but more as a strategy game which highlights the beauty of nature and the incredible intelligence of ants. Since the game is based on a book, it’s important to mention that the ants you will meet are depicted as more clever than in reality, which explains why they are able to tame various species of bugs or talk about diplomacy. The soundtracks are very relaxing, and you will never find them repetitive. The gameplay might look simple at first glance, but as you play you get to learn more about the depth of its mechanics.

I had a great experience with Empire of the Ants and it might be the best RTS released this year, so far, as well as one the most beautiful and fun games of the year. The game costs $39.99 or $49.99 if you want to buy the Deluxe edition. You can confidently get the standard edition now as the game has solid content to experience.

Review Score
Overall

Game was provided by the publisher for review.

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I’ve been a fan of the Final Fantasy series since way back when it started on the NES. I’ve seen the series grow in many ways, and go in some directions that I didn’t really care for over all these years. That being said, I wanted to see how the latest entry, Final Fantasy XVI, stacked up when the PC version was released. I was also curious to see how my mid ranged gaming rig would hold up to this beast of a game. Let’s dig in and see what I found.

The story takes place in the land of Valisthea. These lands are divided into six nations that hold their power due to the use of magical crystals. Things begin to heat up when a strange blight begins draining the very Aether from the land. A young man named Clive Rosfield, who is the guardian to his younger brother Joshua, finds himself wrapped up in this conflict very early. With their kingdom destroyed and Clive made a slave, we will witness where life takes him and the greater destiny ahead of him.

While the story here was much darker than previous games in the franchise, I actually really enjoyed it by the end. Seeing Clive grow throughout his adventure and overcome the struggles of not only accepting his past, but learning from it was actually quite refreshing. This game may have the best version of Cid ever and his dialogue gives a lot of flavor to a story that is dead serious most of the time. I do feel that the latter part of the adventure seemed to drag on a bit longer than it should’ve, but in the end this is an adventure worth taking.

Final Fantasy XVI is a very linear experience. You will move from one story mission to the next, progressing through this fantastic tale through many cutscenes. That’s not to say there isn’t anything else to do here. There are plenty of side quests with interesting stories of their own you can partake in. You can get some nice rewards from some of these as well. This makes them great for not only the world building, but for the nice spoils as well.

The biggest change here is in the combat; everything here is fully action based. Clive is the only party member you fully control, though you can issue commands to your dog, Torgal, who helps you in battle no matter how crazy the foe is you’re facing. You will want to try and stagger your foes with slash attacks and access elemental abilities from Eikons you have collected. These skills are invaluable in combat since they will help you take on even the toughest foes. Skilled players can get advantages in combat from perfect dodges and parries, making things a lot easier. For those of us not very skilled at action combat, Square has included a story based mode which automates much of the combat. This mode is basically press Square and win, but if you want to mix things up you can leave the action combat on and use some of the assist items that will help you dodge, parry or even automatically use items in combat. I thought this was a great way to do this since it gives players the ability to set combat up anyway they like.

In the sound department Final Fantasy XVI is just simply fantastic. The entire soundtrack is amazing, from the high powered battle themes to the more somber themes as you explore towns or just chill at the Hideaway. You can unlock these tracks to listen to anytime at the Hideaway using in game currency, completing quests and some even are even found in treasure chests. I played the game with the English cast and I thought they did an amazing job bringing these characters to life. This game would’ve fallen apart without them given just how much of the story is told through the cutscenes, so if the actors did a bad job, you would’ve never got immersed into the story.

Now let’s talk about how this PC port performs. I have a Ryzen 5 5600x and plain ole RTX 3060, so I wasn’t sure how this was going to work when I installed the game, but I have to say overall things went quite well. I did have to run the game with FSR and at 1080p, but I was able to keep high settings and the game mostly ran around 60fps. There are some busy areas that would tank the framerate, but even then it never got below 30fps. I thought the Eikon battles might be an issue for this card, but honestly they ran really well, which surprised me a bit, but I was pretty pleased with the results overall. The last patch they put out makes it so the shadows take more of a hit when you go down to medium settings, so if you’re looking to squeeze out a few more FPS with a minimal hit to your overall look that would be the way to go.

Overall I had a pretty good time with Final Fantasy XVI on PC. I really loved the story and watching Clive’s grand adventure made me really think about things several times. The music is top tier and the very customizable combat is just a lot of fun. I haven’t had this much fun with a combat system since Nier: Automata. I put about 47 hours into the game and complete both of the DLC quests as well. I feel like fans of Final Fantasy will enjoy this one at its $69.99 price tag for the complete edition with all of the DLC. It’s another grand adventure for the franchise, and I have to wonder what the next entry here is going to look like. Will we go back to a more futuristic look or keep our medieval roots? Only time will tell.

Review Score
Overall

Game was provided by the publisher for review. You can read oprainfall’s PS5 review of the game here.

The post REVIEW: Final Fantasy XVI Complete Edition (PC) appeared first on oprainfall.

Adventures are wonderful experiences. They allow one to explore unknown regions and experience unfamiliar cultures, and the Ys series truly embodies the adventurer’s spirit. Each entry in this series has you explore brand new regions and meet new people, all while saving the day and helping those around you. And while there is a chronological order to these games, most entries can be enjoyed standalone without having played any past game in the series, making it easily accessible to newcomers. Couple this with a well-designed action battle system and a soundtrack that really gets your blood pumping, and the Ys series has really made a place in my heart as one of my most beloved video game franchises. Ys X: Nordics is the latest adventure following the red-haired swordsman, Adol Christin. Ys X is a fresh start as it does away with the party battle system seen in recent games like Ys VIII and opts for one focusing on two playable characters. And in a move I did not expect, X introduces naval exploration and combat. Knowing Adol’s rotten luck with ships, I never thought Falcom would implement something like this, but here we are. I was very much looking forward to playing this newest adventure after it was first announced. Was Ys X another memorable adventure in the story of Adol Christin, or was this one journal that was better off being undiscovered?

Ys X: Nordics takes place shortly after Ys II and before the events of Ys: Memories of Celceta. Adol Christin, along with his companions Dogi and Dr. Flair, travel to Celceta in search of their next adventure. Unfortunately, their trip takes an unexpected detour when their ship is boarded by the Balta Seaforce, a group of Normans that safeguard the Obelia Gulf region. Adol and crew end up having to wait at the port town of Carnac for the next passenger ship. Here, Adol receives the mysterious power of Mana from a voice calling themselves Lila. Oh, and he also ends up getting cuffed via Mana to a Norman girl, Karja. As the two try to figure out what’s going on, tragedy strikes the town of Carnac, and the pair find themselves at odds with an undead enemy known as the Griegr. What is the true nature of the Griegrs and what is their goal? Who is this Lila that granted Adol the power of Mana? What caused these Mana Cuffs to appear and bind Adol and Karja together? Adol and Karja set sail on the Sandras to not only quell the Griegr threat and save Obelia Gulf, but solve these mysteries popping up around them.

I found the main story to be decent, it isn’t the strongest in the series, but I did enjoy playing through it. It started off strong, but it definitely floundered midway through. But after the midpoint, the story picks up again and leads to a satisfying end. The revelations on the true nature of the Griegr and how they came to be were pretty interesting, and I liked how past events, told through Runestones, connected to current events. However, one of the things I found Ys X handled really well was the development of the main characters and other Sandras crew members. Much of the main cast is in their teens, and they’ve been thrust into an unprecedented situation due to the Griegr threat. Watching them gather the resolve needed to tackle this threat was inspiring, but that’s not all. Not only did the characters achieve the resolve to tackle an unkillable enemy, they also found the courage to chase their dreams and work to better themselves. This can be seen with the members of the Youth Brigade (Grenn, Rosa, Cruz, Rafe, Mira) and others such as Ashley and Ezer. Much of the Sandras crew’s development is optional, but I highly recommend doing their sidequests and watching their bond events. It really adds that much more to the story and how you feel about the characters. As the story progresses, you can also see the characters overcome their preconceived prejudices against others. For Karja this would be her views of non-Normans, for the rest of the crew it would be how they see Normans. Seeing them bond through the course of this journey thanks to this common enemy and extraordinary circumstances was really something. I also thoroughly enjoyed the chemistry between Adol and Karja. Adol is always ready for his next adventure and Karja makes sure to watch his back and make sure he doesn’t go too off the rails. It was enjoyable watching their bond grow throughout the story and seeing Karja grow to trust Adol more and soften her tone toward him. And of course, I mentioned earlier that most of the Ys series is accessible to newcomers, and X is no exception. Newcomers can start with this entry and not feel lost at all. While the story itself had its high and low points, the characters were a very bright spot in this adventure and carried things through.

Ys X: Nordics, like its predecessors, boasts an action battle system. However,  Falcom has done away with the system that has been a staple since Ys Seven. No longer is Adol traveling around fields with large groups of companions with different attack types. This time around, the amount of playable characters has been limited to just two: Adol and Karja. It is known as the Cross Action System, and it allows for players to switch between Adol and Karja and control them independently, but it also allows for controlling both characters at once. When controlling the characters independently, you can perform normal attacks, skills by holding the R1 button and pressing one of the face buttons, jump, dodge, and guard. Skills are powerful attacks that deplete Skill Points (SP) with each use. Dodging allows you to move swiftly out of attacks but also counter Speed Attacks (blue aura attacks). This is important as you can’t guard Speed Attacks. When both Adol and Karja are present (which is most of the game), regular guards turn into a Duo Guard, allowing you to block most attacks without taking any damage. Duo Guards also allow you to protect against Power Attacks (red aura attacks). Power Attacks can’t be guarded when solo, and dodging is ineffective against these attacks. Holding down the R2 button switches control into Duo Mode. In this mode, you can control Adol and Karja at the same time. Here, you can perform Duo Attacks on foes which involve striking the enemy at the same time and Duo Skills. Duo Skills are extremely powerful moves that Adol and Karja perform in tandem, allowing you to quickly take down the enemy’s Durability Gauge and their HP Gauge. These skills can be made even more deadly in combat thanks to the Revenge Gauge mechanic. As you Duo Guard enemy attacks, the Revenge Gauge slowly fills up. The rate at which the gauge fills up can quicken if you guard attacks at the right time. The gauge can reach a maximum of x5.0, and the higher the number, the stronger the Duo Skill becomes. The Revenge Gauge mechanic definitely comes in handy when facing stronger normal enemies and bosses. It may sound overwhelming, but once you get used to these mechanics, it makes for a very cohesive battle system.,

Adol and Karja can be strengthened via leveling up, getting new equipment, and via the Release Line Depth system. The first two are pretty straightforward, but the Release Line Depth is new to the series. In this system, there are a series of nodes where you insert items known as Mana Seeds. Mana Seeds are separated into multiple different categories: Valor, Mettle, Optimism, and Darkness. Valor increases your Strength and ability to whittle down HP; Mettle affects a character’s Defense, Vitality, and ability to deplete Durability; Optimism increases multiple stats including Luck; Darkness can exponentially increase your stats at the cost of decreasing another stat. Depending on how many of a certain Mana Seed type are in a specific Release Line Depth, you can unlock Mana Abilities for Adol and Karja. For example, you can unlock abilities that decrease damage, decrease the amount of SP used, increase damage done, etc. As you reach certain levels, more depths are unlocked, allowing you to insert more Mana Seeds and use seeds of a higher quality. Using this system, you can really have Adol and Karja specialize in whatever suits your needs. In my case, I built Adol like a glass cannon with high Strength, but lower Defense and Vitality. Karja on the other hand had overwhelming Defense and Vitality with a high Break stat. So I would use Karja to destroy an enemy’s Durability Gauge and then switch to Adol to really bring the hurt. Honestly, I really only paid attention to the stat boosts and tended to ignore whatever Mana Abilities were unlocked, but this system was very beneficial overall.

Continue the adventure on page 2 ->

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I had a blast with Persona 3 Reload when it released earlier this year, so I was pretty excited to get my hands on the DLC episode. Persona 3 Reload: Episode Aigis -The Answer- is a remake of The Answer portion of Persona 3 FES, and although I had fun with that back in the day, I was looking forward to seeing what improvements this remake would bring. Let’s see if this met my high expectations for it.

The story here follows the SEES group as they get caught up in a time loop. The group is soon visited by a mysterious stranger named Metis. She is an android like Aigis and claims to be her sister. She attacks the group saying the quickest way to end this and save her sister is to end their lives. The group fends off her attack and they are soon lead to a desert of doors. This place is called the Abyss of Time, and the group will have to explore each of these doors and unravel the mystery of this place, if they wish to break this time loop and continue their lives.

While I don’t want to delve too deep here since there are a ton of spoilers for the main story, I feel this story is a great supplement to the main one. It delves deeper into the characters’ pasts and how their Personas awakened in the first place. You really feel like you know more about these characters you already loved by the end. The overall story message is a good one as well, but I think that is something players should discover for themselves.

Graphically, this is a huge upgrade from The Answer on PlayStation 2. Everything here looks on par with what was found in the base game. Metis looks amazing now and you can even unlock some new looks for her via quests from Elizabeth. I really love the redone Persona 3 FES opening for the DLC episode here. That was just a nice throwback to the saga now being complete in the remake. The game ran smoothly on both of my PCs and I didn’t have any issues with this port.

I have to say, I really enjoyed the new music tracks they made for the DLC. My favorite is the new back attack theme “Don’t.” It really drives home that the group is tired of fighting and ready to move on. The English cast once again does a great job bringing these characters to life, and Metis’ new voice actress is a welcome change from the one found in Persona 3 FES. She just gave her a lot more personality, even if a lot of this is her fawning over Aigis.

Combat here is just the same as the base game. Everything is turn based, hitting a weakness will down an enemy and give you an extra turn. You can shift to other party members when hitting a weakness as well, which gives you plenty of flexibility in downing an entire field of foes. The Theurgy Skills skills return and can really turn the tide of battle if you find yourself in a tough spot. One thing I did notice, is the bosses are much harder when facing them on the Normal difficulty. They really thought out ways to really push you to your limit, such as giving a boss a slash weakness but letting them have the evade slash skill. Things like this, and the fact that they just seemed to hit harder, pushed me to my limits a few times during my exploration.

Exploring the doors is much the same as Tartarus. Floors are randomly generated, shadows roam freely and if you can attack them from behind you gain the advantage. After so many floors you will encounter a boss. There are usually two boss fights for each door, and the story will progress once you hit the bottom. The Monad Doors make a return here as well, but they are a bit different than in the main game. Here they will appear three at a time, the difficulty increasing from left to right. The higher the difficulty you choose, the better the rewards will be from winning. These battles are not easy though, these are some of the toughest fights Persona 3 Reload: Episode Aigis -The Answer- has to offer, so proceed with caution.

Overall, it took me right around 25 hours to complete Persona 3 Reload: Episode Aigis -The Answer-, and I had a good time with it. I love Persona 3 Reload, so getting more of what I love is always a good thing. However, I think Atlus should’ve sold this DLC separate from the pack of stuff they have it included in, since $35 is a bit steep for this content if you have no interest in the other costumes or music tracks. That being said, this is a quality release with great graphics and a good amount of story content. Players that are big fans of the base game will want to jump in ASAP, you’re going to have a great time. Everyone else might want to hold out for a sale, but I still think this one is well worth your time and coin.

Review Score
Overall

DLC was purchased by the author for review.

The post REVIEW: Persona 3 Reload: Episode Aigis -The Answer- appeared first on oprainfall.

After a long time, it’s finally time to review DATE A LIVE: Ren Dystopia. Following the release of Rio Reincarnation out west in 2019, this writer has been eagerly awaiting the next entry in the DATE A LIVE visual novel series. The reason for this being that in terms of presentation, I would argue that the visual novels have amazing storytelling moments that you just wouldn’t get from the anime. Here we are, five years later, and the question that I’ve asked before is back: How does it all hold up after all this time?

Right off the bat, I have a warning for curious onlookers. I highly recommend you play the first three visual novels prior to this. Thankfully, this is all available in one purchase via Rio Reincarnation on all storefronts as it is a triple pack. That means you can play Rinne Utopia, Arusu Install, and Rio Reincarnation. Sadly that’s not the only check on this list. I do recommend that you watch the first three seasons of DATE A LIVE, and the movie Mayuri Judgement. If you meet all these requirements, read on!

Repeating what I said earlier, it’s been five years since the last DATE A LIVE visual novels came out. Back then it felt like a novelty to be able to finally forge your own path with your favorite girl in the series. The sheer joy I personally felt being able to see Kurumi in a wedding outfit for an ending was immaculate. Not only that, I could do it three times across the aforementioned titles. Each ending then felt like a culmination of fan desires to love their girls even more than Shido could. It’s because of this that I felt renewed excitement for Ren Dystopia, coupled with the recent success of the series as it got its fourth and fifth seasons.

While that was the initial allure of the visual novels, if you dare to dig deeper (and you should), you’ll find something even better. I’m talking about the visual novel exclusive scenes with new girls that pack more emotional depth than anything else in the whole package. It’s how characters like Rinne, Marina, and Maria specifically climbed to my top girls list in the series. Those girls made the journey to achieving the true end all worthwhile. More fuel for the Ren Dystopia hype train.

That’s all well and good, but now we have to talk about the game that’s out now. If we take a peek under the hood, any person that owns the first three visual novels will immediately notice something. In terms of the UI, overworld map, art assets, and music, virtually nothing has changed. If it wasn’t for the title screen being different, and Natsumi being the first girl you see out the gate from when you start the game, I’d be doing double takes to make sure I launched the right game. The common route also plays out nearly identical to that of the other games as well.

To understand why this is a problem, you need to look at the original release dates for the games. Rinne Utopia, Arusu Install, and Rio Reincarnation all came out in 2013, 2014, and 2015 respectively. Furthermore, they were incorporated into a triple pack. It made sense for those games to be very similar given the release cycle. However, Ren Dystopia releases a whole five years later, and as a standalone that sits at the very same price point as the triple pack of all things. Noticing all this before talking about the routes is cause of concern from not just a reviewer point-of-view, but a fan of the series as a whole.

Let’s talk routes. Ren Dystopia incorporates nine main routes, one for each girl from season three. Natsumi is the sole new character of this bunch. However, Origami, due to the third season, got a writing makeover. You may be telling yourself that this is going to be a serious time sink. However, this is not the case. Each route is an hour and thirty minutes of reading at moderate pace. In addition, it also features the exact ridiculous story with minor differences. The following is what you can expect without important details. Someone will open a box, make one wish, wish affects the next day, sleep, repeat until three wishes are made. While some wishes are more romantic than others, there’s hardly that relationship building charm that existed with previous games. It genuinely feels like I’ve been handed multiple 4-koma pages rather than a visual novel.

The reason why this is all so upsetting to me is because of the game’s true ending. An ending that does require you to do all of the nine routes. Nine routes that are significantly boring to sit through and aren’t satisfying to complete. However, if you to manage to power through these routes, you’ll receive something magical. An ending that properly demonstrates what could have been from the writing team. It’s an ending that almost brought me to tears, and yet I almost missed it entirely. I want you to envision the meme of the guy almost mining the diamonds but quits before he hits it big. That’s the meme that embodies this game. It doesn’t matter how much I love Kurumi, Origami, Kotori, and even Natsumi. Ren is the star of the show and she deserves better.

DATE A LIVE: Ren Dystopia is a truly head-scratching game. A game that looks and plays no different from its predecessors. All the while presenting fans with very underdeveloped and uninspired routes. While the Live2D models look great and the voice acting is phenomenal, it just can’t carry the weight that is everything else. Even the True Ending, which is some of the writing team’s best work, can’t save this. Ren deserves better. The reader deserves better. Especially when the company is asking for the same amount of money as the triple pack that came before it. If you do happen to own this title, please work your way to the true ending to get your money’s worth. The fact that only 9% of readers, at the time of writing, have seen it drives me insane. Otherwise consider waiting for a sale.

Review Score
Overall

Game provided by publisher for review purposes. Standard edition of the game retails for $39.99 USD.

The post REVIEW: DATE A LIVE: Ren Dystopia appeared first on oprainfall.

I decided to take a look at JAST’s latest release, Dreamlike Love with Seira. I really loved the art style and I was really in the mood for a quality Nukige visual novel, and this looked liked it would fit the bill. Let’s see if this one was up to my high expectations.

The story follows a man named Haruto Watari. He is a salary man and works very hard every day with little to no recognition of his work. He keeps having dreams of a room full of doors, but they are all sealed up, until one day when one of the doors opens up. Upon entering this door he finds a mansion and inside, a beautiful maid named Seira. She calls him “Master” and says he is owner of this place. She is there to serve him and give him the support he so desperately needs. After months of meeting her every night in his dreams, he begins to feel much better about life, but will his dream continue or come to an end? Only time will tell!

The artwork in this short visual novel is just outstanding. Seira’s outfit looks amazing with plenty of fine details, but the random shots in her different color undergarments are even more detailed and extremely hot! The H-scenes are top quality as well – this is some of the best art I’ve seen in these in quite a while. The backgrounds are nicely done as well. While they are nothing special they have lots of fine details and add to the overall immersion in the story.

The music here is nothing to write home about, but it fits the atmosphere of the story: very somber dreamlike tracks during the dreams and more upbeat themes during his grueling hours at work during the day. Seira is fully voiced and the actress, Hana Kagehotaru, does an amazing job at bringing her to life. She has one of the sweetest voices I’ve heard in a visual novel. She gets really into the H-scenes as well, so you probably wanna dig out some headphones unless you want to share their glory with those around you.

Overall I really enjoyed my time with Dreamlike Love with Seira. The story, even if it is short, is impactful in many ways since it deals with how we run ourselves down in real life and just want some support. Seira is adorable in every way and most readers will instantly fall in love with her. The artwork here is outstanding and is backed up by the amazing voice work. This one is easily worth the $6.99 price tag, and I would recommend it to any Nukige visual novel fan looking for a short and sweet read.

Review Score
Overall

Game was purchased by the reviewer.

The post REVIEW: Dreamlike Love with Seira appeared first on oprainfall.

When I was given an opportunity to check out Square Enix’s latest release, Visions of Mana, I jumped on it. It had been a while since I played a game in this series, so I was pretty excited to get started. I’ve spent about 30 hours with the game and played to end of the main story, so it’s time to share my thoughts. Let’s see if this one met my high expectations.

Our story begins as the Soul Guard Val begins his journey to escort his childhood friend Hinna to The Mana Tree. She has been named the Alm of Fire and will have to give her soul to the world in order to keep the elements in balance. The pair will encounter other Alms along the way who will join their group on their pilgrimage to the Mana Tree. This will not be without incident however, as the Faerie has not named all of the Alms when the party arrives. This will lead them on adventures they could’ve never imagined, on a journey that will take them to very unexpected places.

I can’t really dig deep into this story without getting into spoiler territory, so you’ll just have to take my word that this is an adventure worth doing. I loved seeing all of the different places in this world and how each of the characters grew, the further along in the story I got. Careena was by far my favorite character here, and I dare say a cuter one winged angel. I think this was helped along by her English VA having that cute Southern accent, but she is really fun and I think most players will have a smile watching her antics.

Graphically, Visions of Mana is amazing. Each area is greatly detailed with lots of landmass to explore. As you trek across snowy fields, deserts and lush forests you will see lots of interesting things if you go off the beaten path. These include things like items that will help on your travels and maybe some ruins to explore. You will have to do most of these late game since the enemy levels are really high, but it was fun to go back and see what goodies were there. The character models are all nicely detailed as well, and I love that each different class gave them all distinct looks. The game ran at a constant 60FPS on my laptop and 120FPS on the desktop. I did encounter a few dips here and there, but it was nothing that would break immersion. I think the cutscenes being locked at 30FPS is a bit jarring and something I hope Square addresses down the line. Outside of that, this is a great PC port from them.

The soundtrack in Visions of Mana is just simply amazing. Each area’s theme inspires exploration with their upbeat vibes and you will find yourself humming along as you wander through each one. The battle themes are great as well: fast paced to get your heart pumping for the epic battle that is about to take place. I really felt this with the boss themes, and some of those battles were indeed fantastic. The English voice cast does a great job bringing these characters to life. I’m usually more of a Japanese audio with subs guy, but I found this cast to be really great so I stuck with them this time.

As players traverse each area, they will be met with lots of monsters that stand in their path. Combat is done in groups of three and is action based. While the world is big, there is no need to worry since there are plenty of waypoints you can fast travel to once you’ve explored, and plenty of map markers to guide you on your quest. The side quests will place markers as well, so you won’t be wandering aimlessly trying to find said monster for X quest since it will always point you in the right direction.

You have two main attacks you can chain together for combos, as well as special abilities at your disposal. These will come in two forms, the first is from the class skills you unlock via the Elemental Plot. This is basically a skill tree for each character that unlocks skills for each class as you spend the elemental points you’ve gained through combat and find mana points on the map. The second is from seeds you can equip. These are obtained from sidequests or treasure chests.

You can switch between any of your party members on the fly during combat, and setup shortcuts for important skills and items. You can also pull up the ring menu during a fight. This will stop all the action on the screen and allow you to decide which item or skill you wish to use at your leisure. I really liked this, since it would give me time to think about what abilites I wanted to use next in the boss battles. Do I buff my party, debuff the boss or just take some time to heal? I had time to think and strategize how I wanted things to work out.

Since classes use different types of weapons, their attacks will vary depending on the type of weapon they have equipped. Careena uses spears when she is Dragon Master or Starlancer, but a fist type weapon when she is a Warrior Monk or Divine Fist class. This gives each character lots of flexibility in combat and you will have to play around with them to see which ones fit your play style best.

Despite my few nitpicks I had a great time with Visions of Mana. The story is fantastic and watching these characters grow as the adventure went on, was pure joy. The world felt full and there were lots of hidden things to find while exploring each map. The combat is fun and having all the different classes for each character gave it lots of variety. While it took me around 30 hours to complete the main quest I left a lot undone with this one. There were plenty of upgrades, monsters and even a post story that I still need to get to. I feel this one is well worth the $59.99 price tag to fans of the series and newcomers alike.

Review Score
Overall

Game was provided by the publisher for review. You can check out the free demo for the game from Steam, Playstation, and Xbox.

The post REVIEW: Visions of Mana appeared first on oprainfall.

When one trail ends, another begins. The Legend of Heroes: Trails through Daybreak starts a brand new arc in the long-running Trails series, leaving behind the familiar territories of the Erebonian Empire and Crossbell State. This time around, the story takes place in the Republic of Calvard, one of the two Zemuria superpowers and a country which was previously mentioned in past games. With a fresh cast of characters and a new hybrid turn-based/action battle system, Trails through Daybreak leaves a comfort zone established in the Erebonia arc, the Cold Steel games.  From Rean to Van, was this new hero, cast of characters, and setting able to captivate me like the games that came before? Did the gamble with this new hybrid combat system pay off? Did Trails through Daybreak start the Calvard arc off with a bang, or did it fall short of expectations?

In the seedy underbelly of Edith, Calvard’s capital, a deal between two parties goes awry and a suitcase goes missing. Van Arkride is a spriggan, a fixer that takes on jobs that clients can’t bring to the police or the Bracer Guild. One morning, Agnès Claudel, an Aramis Academy student, knocks on the door of Arkride Solutions with a job for Van. She needs help in recovering a memento of her great-grandfather. Van accepts her request and after some conflict and tragedy, is able to recover the item Agnes was looking for. However, during the course of this request, Van unlocks a mysterious power and has a run-in with a sinister mafia group, Armata. He also learns that there are seven more items similar to the one Agnes recovered, collectively known as Geneses. With this new information, Van reluctantly takes Agnes under his wing, and searches for the remaining Geneses to prevent an ominous future predicted by Agnes’ great-grandfather.

The story of Trails through Daybreak is mostly well done and I very much enjoyed it. It has that good mix of political intrigue, matters dealing in organized crime, fantastical elements, and enough mystery in the ongoing events to keep players guessing. The game also does not shy away from more mature and dark elements like racial discrimination, murder, drug dealing, and crimes against humanity. Mix in villains that have no redeemable features whatsoever, and you have one hell of a story. Honestly, I was shocked at the lengths Almata went to in their schemes. They make Heiyue and Ouroboros look like saints. 

In past games, you always had the POV of a bonafide hero. Whether it be Estelle, Lloyd, or Rean, you were almost always on the right side of the law, you did the right thing and the public looked favorably on you and the characters’ way of life. The same can’t be said of Van. Being a spriggan, Van tends to work in a gray area, and he is open to working with groups of ill repute such as jaegers and Ouroboros. Because of this, he tends to butt heads with more just groups, like the police and the Bracer Guild. He’s not outright enemies with them, but they are wary of him. Unlike past main characters, Van is also an adult right from the get go. He’s like a seasoned veteran at this point, so he has the ability to make more rational decisions. Combine that with his profession, and Van has more ways to fulfill requests, since he isn’t bound by the law or any type of code. Spriggan requests are known as 4SPGs, and at major turning points of these requests, Van is sometimes offered two or three options. Each option can represent one of three alignments: Law, Gray, and Chaos. Van’s affinity with a certain alignment will increase significantly based on the choice made, and this is reflected in the LGC meter. Each alignment can be leveled up to a max of 5, and the level of each alignment opens more options for Van to take in the main story. The choices Van makes in side 4SPGs can significantly affect its outcome, which I found to be a nice touch. I dislike choices that don’t matter, so I appreciate how this was implemented. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for the main story, as it was clear that some choices I made at major points didn’t really matter. I actually got a bit confused at how a certain late game event panned out because I felt it didn’t make sense based on a previous choice I made. Despite this, overall, I really enjoyed the game’s main story. There were some unanswered mysteries regarding the Geneses and Van’s AI partner, Mare, but I’m hoping more light is shed upon these in the sequel.

As many may know, Trails through Daybreak is the eleventh mainline title in the Trails franchise. This may scare off newcomers from starting the series, especially this late in the timeline. I’m here to assuage those fears. Despite being the latest game available for overseas players, I felt the story, overall, was very welcoming to newcomers. You could very much enjoy the game’s story without prior knowledge of the series. At most, there may be some past events referenced, but others will eventually give a short explanation on what that event was so you won’t feel lost. Characters from past games will also make an appearance, but you don’t need to know about their past experiences to understand their role in the current story. If you want to read a little about what occurred in past games, there’s an Archive section in the pause menu. Here, you can read backgrounds on each of the past games, but they don’t give you any huge spoilers, so if you still wanted to play any of those games after reading, you could still do that without feeling like you ruined the surprise for yourself. There’s also a nifty glossary available in the Archives section where newcomers can read up on terms needed to help understand the game’s story that much more. I think they did as much as possible to be welcoming to new players, and I definitely appreciate those efforts.

A story is made stronger by its characters and Trails through Daybreak is blessed with a fantastic starring cast. Van is the chief of Arkride Solutions. At first, he seems like a total bad boy. But as time progresses, you begin to see he’s a big softy and truly cares about those close to him. He really looks out for his younger employees and tries to guide them as best he can. He also has a massive sweet tooth which others take advantage of to give him requests. Agnès is Van’s first employee and a student at Aramis Academy. Despite her youth, she has a good head on her shoulders and tries to keep the rest on the straight and narrow. She doesn’t let the pressures of her family lineage get the better of her, and she really shows off how capable she can be as the story progresses. Feri is one of the youngest in the company and a jaeger with impeccable combat skills. While skilled in battle, she is very much ignorant in the way the rest of the world works, though she is willing to learn and expand her horizons. Her curiosity tends to make for some hilarious exchanges with other characters. Aaron, like Van, is a rebel and very perceptive. He goes at the beat of his own drum, loves to party, and cares a lot about his friends and hometown. He has no filter and really speaks his mind freely, willing to call people out when needed, and poke fun at Van’s age. He also isn’t afraid to make many dirty jokes and hit on women in front of the rest of the crew. Of all the employees, Aaron is probably the worst influence. Risette is arguably one of the most capable in the company. She’s strong, intelligent, good with technology, and even good at secretarial work. Aaron likes to joke that she should be the boss of Arkride Solutions, and with good reason. Quatre is a youth prodigy and, like Risette, is great with technology. His technical savvy really helps the crew when it comes to the Orbal Network, and he gives the company more avenues to tackle work. He can be a bit shy when he has to hang with the rest of the boys though, especially at the public bath. Judith is a famous actress with one of the worst guarded secrets. She has a very fiery personality and has no problems speaking her mind, sometimes to her own detriment. Bergard is the oldest of the crew and one of its strongest. He commands the respect of many people, and due to his age and experiences, can impart lessons and much needed guidance to Van and the others. All of these contrasting personalities seem like a volatile mixture, but they actually work together quite well. They are very much like a family and they cover for each other’s weaknesses. I enjoyed playing through the story that much more due to their chemistry and how each character worked and interacted with the other. Only having eight main party members was a benefit to the story, as well. It was easier to get attached to each character, and most of them got their own time to develop over the course of the story.

It’s not just the main cast that adds to the story, even the minor NPCs in Trails through Daybreak added flavor to the world. Though they aren’t as important as others like Nina Fenly and Saara, they still help bring the Calvard Republic to life. Lashkar is a young lad with dreams of becoming a bracer, all so he can protect his friend, Annie; San is a girl trying her best to live her life as free as she can, not bound by her Eastern lineage; Huck is an old man who loves playing mahjong and seems to be carefree, but he is also a capable businessman whom many go to for advice; Selma is a heartbroken girl who gets into running after her boyfriend breaks up with her for not being able to fit in a certain pair of pants; Seyla and Lulua are idols trying to make a breakthrough in the cutthroat music industry. These are just a couple of the NPCs you can talk to throughout your adventures in Calvard. I enjoyed going around and talking to every single one, checking to see how their life is progressing. It helped me develop an attachment to the cities and locals in the country, increasing my overall enjoyment of the main story. I highly recommend talking to NPCs when you can, it can really make the story that much better.

Xipha activate! Read up on the combat and more on page 2 ->

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I took a look at the latest release from JAST, Sisters: Last Day Of Summer. This one looked very interesting since it was fully animated and featured two very cute girls. I thought this one would be pretty shallow, nothing but sexy time! That wasn’t the case however, as I found something a bit greater here. Let’s dig in and I’ll share some details.

The story here begins with an accident. A person is hit while riding a bicycle and seriously injured. Then the protagonist wakes up in small country house with a busty woman named Akiko. She is very welcoming to this young man and shares many details about her life with him, including the passing of her husband. She soon leaves the home to go on a trip and leaves him in the care of her two daughters, Haruka and Chika. While the three get to know each other, a summer mystery will unravel itself and you will learn a lot more about all of the characters involved here.

Since this is a mystery style story I don’t want to go into great detail here and spoil things, but I will say it is a very slow burn. You will wonder what is going on until way up into the story, and honestly a re-read helps clear things up a bit more. The story here is certainly more focused on Chika, but Haruka plays a very important role as well. I feel like the pay off is good enough to hang out until the end, but I can see why some would tap out early due to the pacing of the story.

Sisters: Last Day of Summer is fully animated and feels more like an interactive anime rather than a standard visual novel. Everything here is drawn very well with plenty of details for the player to catch as the story progresses. The animation is pretty smooth, but the CG house looks rough among all the beautiful artwork here, though it really doesn’t detract from the overall experience. There are some fantastic H-scenes that are fully uncensored and really drive home the emotional impact of the story, though I feel one in particular was unnecessary and kinda made the protagonist come off like a dick.

There isn’t much music to speak of here. Most of the music is played during story scenes where the characters have actual instruments. I wish the game did have more music, since what is here is top tier. Other than those moments, you are treated to some fine voice acting from the fantastic cast. They really bring these characters to life and drive home the emotional moments in this story.

In the end I don’t think Sisters: Last Day Of Summer is for everyone. If you enjoy a good mystery or high quality, fully animated H-scenes you will find a lot to love here. If you’re not a fan of stories with slow pacing you may end up putting this one down before you ever get to the best parts of it. I feel like the game should’ve featured a bit more music, but what is here is fantastic and was used very wisely to advance the plot as well. The game lasts about five hours and will put you back $24.99, which I think is fair for a visual novel of this quality.

Review Score
Overall

Game was provided by the publisher for review.

The post REVIEW: Sisters: Last Day Of Summer appeared first on oprainfall.

I’ve been a big fan of the Touhou Genso Wanderer series of games, so I was pretty excited when a new game was announced a while back. I hoped Touhou Genso Wanderer -FORESIGHT- would be as great as the two dungeon crawlers that came before it. I’ve spent 20 hours with the game and I’m ready to share my thoughts on it. Did this one live up to my expectations? Let’s find out.

The story begins as Reimu is defeated by a dark version of herself. She awakens at the shrine, but has no memory of her past. Soon many incidents start occurring in Gensokyo, and it’s up to the shrine maiden and her friends to get to the bottom of these and bring peace to the land. Although, there is something about these that seem very familiar and Reimu is just beginning to uncover the mysteries.

Graphically, the game looks like the other games in the franchise. The characters are done in a very cute chibi style. They might be small, but they have a lot of detail and character. The environments are done nicely as well. Everything from sunflower-covered fields to haunted houses is represented here. The PC requirements on this game are very low and you should be able to run it well on any modern system. I got the game to run in 1440p at 120 FPS on my rig. I wasn’t able to get it up to 4K, but this could be something on my end.

In the sound department, Touhou Genso Wanderer -FORESIGHT- is fantastic. The remixed tunes we all know and love are here. Each one is just as good as the last, and you will find yourself humming along as you crawl through each dungeon. The game features some quality Japanese voice acting as well. These actors bring our favorite characters to life and give them a lot of personality.

Gameplay here is just about the same as the other titles in the franchise. You move along in grid-based dungeons slaying all the foes that get in your path. You can still upgrade your weapons, and they added a new buff system called Izanagi Links. These are cards filled with skills which you obtain by completing quests all around Gensokyo. You unlock these skills and buffs with LP you gain from simply defeating enemies in the dungeon. It is very important you unlock as many of these as possible since they will give defense against each of the monster types found in the game, as well as attack boosts against them. If you don’t unlock as many of these as possible, you’re gonna have a really hard time with the bosses.

The main problem I ran into here is there aren’t enough dungeons to level you for the last battle. I felt like I was going to have to grind for many hours just to be strong enough to take on the final boss. The other games in the franchise just had more content, more playable characters and more dungeons to play in. So while you were probably leveling that same amount of time, it didn’t feel like it since you were in different places. They have already added some content to the game through updates, and I hope they continue to do this until it is on par with the other releases in the franchise.

Overall, I have mixed feelings on Touhou Genso Wanderer -FORESIGHT-. I feel like the game is a very approachable dungeon crawler since you lose nothing when you die, but the amount of grinding here is just a bit much. I can’t say I didn’t have fun during my playtime, and I will probably finish this at some point down the line, but it’s hard for me to recommend this one to anyone outside of hardcore fans at the $34.99 price tag.

Review Score
Overall

Game was provided for review by the publisher.

The post REVIEW: Touhou Genso Wanderer -FORESIGHT- appeared first on oprainfall.

I decided to take a look at the PC port of SAMURAI WARRIORS 4 DX. This is a very unexpected release from Koei Tecmo seeing how old this game is at this point, but I’m never one to shy away from a good Musou title, so I put about 10 hours into it just to see how this release plays. Let’s dig in and see what I discovered.

Like other Musou style games, there is a Story Mode featuring many different campaigns highlighting various battles in historic Japan. While I don’t know if I would use this game as a history lesson, some of the events are actually pretty accurate. I love seeing how all the different officers interact with each other and discovering their personalities. In addition to the robust story mode, there is a Chronicle Mode that allows you to create your own character and journey through Japan, fighting many battles until they achieve their lifelong dreams.

Graphically, the game still holds up pretty well. The models and environments aren’t as detailed as they are in newer Musou titles, but they still look good. Character models have a decent amount of details and each area has its own unique look and feel. The game features all of the DLC from the original release. This includes some of the series’ more risqué costumes, which I think is a huge plus, since we don’t get costumes like these currently.  This PC release supports resolutions up to 4K at 60 FPS, and the buttons can be remapped. I never had any hitches or crashes during my playtime.

The music here is fantastic! I always loved the soundtracks to all the Warriors series titles, and this one is no exception. Plenty of upbeat rock tunes with an Eastern flair to lay waste to the 1000’s of foes that stand in your way. You can enjoy this soundtrack anytime in the archives once you have beaten a stage playing it so it unlocks. The voice acting is top tier as well, it is all done in Japanese with no English dub option. Sound effects are pretty much what you would expect. The normal hits, special move sounds and such fill the air as the battles rage on.

The gameplay in SAMURAI WARRIORS 4 DX is exactly what you would expect from a classic Musou title. Players will complete objectives on each map to clear the stage and proceed to the next story stage. Some stages will have hidden objectives that may even give you access to alternate story paths. Completing the entire story of one faction will open up more for you to choose from. There are two buttons for attacks that you can use in tandem to create combos. You will unlock more moves for the over 55 unique officers you can play as. Each one has a couple of special moves as well that will clear a whole screen in spectacular fashion. There are plenty of new weapons to unlock and customize as well, so this really is a complete package.

SAMURAI WARRIORS 4 DX doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but it didn’t need to. This a classic style Musou game with a ton of content. I barely scratched the surface of what is here. You could easily put 60 or more hours in this one unlocking everything in Chronicle Mode and doing all of the storylines in Story Mode. If you have never played SAMURAI WARRIORS 4 or are looking for a complete edition, this is a great way to go. Fans looking for a good Musou title to kill some time with can’t go wrong with this one either at the $49.99 price tag.

Review Score
Overall

Game was provided by the publisher for review.

The post REVIEW: SAMURAI WARRIORS 4 DX appeared first on oprainfall.

I’ve made little secret about my love of the Yakuza games (and their spin-offs). It’s one of my favorite series, so I was ecstatic to have the chance to review Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, the second of Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio’s RPG offerings and a continuation of Ichiban Kasuga’s story. Joined by new friends and in a completely new setting, will this adventure charm me as much as Ichiban’s first?

Infinite Wealth Story

We pick up three years after the events of Like a Dragon and the Yokohama crew have settled back into society as productive, working adults. Kasuga Ichiban is at Hello Work trying to find jobs for the displaced yakuza following the Great Dissolution of the Tojo Clan and Omi Alliance. Masumi Arakawa’s dream for the yakuza was for them to reintegrate into proper society, and Ichiban has made it his dream to make sure Arakawa’s vision comes to fruition. Yu Nanba found a job working in a medical warehouse, and Koichi Adachi is starting up his own security business. Saeko Mukoda is running her own club. Everything is going well, but it’s about to go downhill fast. Ichiban finally builds up the courage to take Saeko out on a date, and it ends disastrously – so much so that we skip one year into the future and she’s left the poor man on read. Not only that, but a VTuber released a hit piece on Ichiban that went viral, leading to him being canned from Hello Work. Adachi and Nanba get the ax, as well.

Freshly unemployed once again, the gang learn all the ex-yakuza Ichiban spent years trying to help were also targeted by this VTuber. Hisoka Tatara has it out for the yakuza in general and Ichiban in particular, it seems, dedicating multiple live streams to our hero. With nowhere to go, the yakuza turn to the Seiryu Clan in Yokohama, which has been filling its ranks in recent months. Acting captain Masataka Ebina claims he’s recruiting the former yakuza to work at his legitimate waste disposal business as he plans to enact the Second Great Dissolution. To gain legitimacy among veteran yakuza and prove his commitment to Arakawa’s vision, Ebina pulls strings to get Jo Sawashiro out of jail early, drawing in more former Tojo and Omi in the process.

It’s here Sawashiro drops a bombshell: Ichiban’s mother, Akane, is still alive, and she lives in Hawaii. Would Ichiban like to go meet her? Ichiban of course takes Sawashiro up on his offer, though unfortunately his bad luck follows him across the Pacific. Ichiban arrives on American soil and is immediately held up at gunpoint, then drugged and left naked on the beach. He’s arrested for indecent exposure and used as a scapegoat for multiple cold cases, until he escapes and runs into Kazuma Kiryu, who is coincidentally in Hawaii on a job for the Daidoji. The two eventually make their way back to Akane’s house, encounter a local yakuza named Yutaka Yamai – who is also looking for Akane – and make a new friend in Eric Tomizawa, one of Yamai’s men and also the man who held Ichiban up the day before. Ichiban is nothing if not forgiving to a fault, after all. Once the trio are safe, Kiryu then drops the games’s second bombshell: He’s dying of cancer.

So begins Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth. In true RGG fashion, the game takes tons of twists and turns, bringing together an eclectic cast of misfits in a story that tackles finding a new beginning in life, closure in the life you’ve lived, and atonement for the mistakes you’ve made. The game takes aim at a number of issues, not the least of which include police corruption, overly burdensome and retributive laws, online dogpiling and how easily someone’s life can be destroyed by rumors, religious faith versus zealotry, economic disparity, homelessness, balancing urbanization and environmentalism, and bodily autonomy with regards to illness.

Ryu Ga Gotoku narratives have always had go big or go home energy, and that’s no different here, for good and for ill. Staging the majority of the story in Hawaii was a big hit, using this new location to explore themes that have been ever-present in this series, but to also highlight unique issues to Hawaii itself, as well as adding an international bent.

Ichiban and the gang from Like a Dragon return, and this time they’ve made some friends. The newest additions to the cast are Eric Tomizawa, a Hawaiian cabby caught up with local gangster Yutaka Yamai; and Chitose Fujinomiya, the daughter of a powerful Japanese magnate who is attending school in Hawaii. Old friends Adachi, Nanba, Zhao and Han Joongi join newly playable Seonhee and the Dragon of Dojima himself to round out the playable cast for this sprawling, dual protagonist story.

Let’s break it down a little more, as unlike previous games in this series, both Ichiban and Kiryu take top billing here. Infinite Wealth is as much a story about the search for Ichiban’s mother as it is closure for Kiryu, and the way the game handles each is at least partially reflected in their supporting casts.

Ichiban’s story takes up the bulk of the game, with the front half devoted entirely to his time in Hawaii. One of the first people he meets is Tomizawa, a down-on-his-luck cabby who holds Ichiban up at gunpoint just hours after our hero touches down on American soil. The son of an Hawaiian native and a Japanese national, Tomizawa straddles two cultures and acts as Ichiban’s liaison and interpreter as one of the few bilingual characters in the game. (This is, unfortunately, an aspect of the game that gets dropped pretty quickly, but I’ll discuss that later.) Chitose is the daughter of a big time Japanese business magnate and has been attending school in Hawaii. Stifled by her upbringing, she’s an interesting civilian foil to the yakuza families of older games. She’s also the most tech savvy of the crew, and ends up helping Ichiban widen the search for his mother by utilizing her ‘Net know-how to gather information. Ichiban’s crew is eventually rounded out by Adachi and Han Joongi, who bring with them familiarity but also new perspectives on life in Hawaii. Having old friends and new mingle was a nice reflection of Ichiban’s relentless optimism and drive to expand his world.

Kiryu’s party is made up entirely of familiar faces from Like a Dragon (which I’ll also refer to as RGG7), which feels appropriate as his story focuses more on the past. What’s new is who is playable, though. Seonhee joins the fray this time around, stepping out from her web of shadows in the Geomujul to take to the streets alongside her hero. Despite her connections to the underworld, she does not have immediate access to information the way the Florist did in previous games, instead helping Kiryu unravel the mysteries surrounding the Seiryu Clan’s connections with Hawaii and how VTuber Hisoka Tatara plays into everything. Nanba comes along as Kiryu’s physical and mental support, with Saeko and Zhao rounding out the crew. Having Ichiban’s friends pal around with Kiryu gives the cast a chance to discuss Ichiban in ways they could not when he’s present, as well as contrast the differences between both former yakuza – in particular, addressing Kiryu’s insistence on doing everything himself. Ichiban has always been a proponent of the Power of Friendship, and that is on full display here, demonstrating how he’s impacted those around him and how they, in turn, are lending their strength to Kiryu when he needs it the most.

Gameplay

Like a Dragon‘s turn-based combat returns here with some welcome tweaks. The battle system still relies heavily on exploiting weapon type and elemental weaknesses in your enemies, but has now added a free-moving aspect that allows for back attacks and team combos. In RGG7, your characters would run across the field to attack whatever enemy you chose, but you had no free range of movement. In Infinite Wealth, you now have a small area in which you can reposition your characters to either hit enemies on the back for added damage, or line up attacks to shove enemies into your friends for a bonus follow-up attack. You can also position your character near an ally and trigger a combo attack, where both will attack the enemy at once. It’s a small change with a big impact since it introduces some strategy, especially when dealing with enemies who use shields or are otherwise heavily armored. The higher the bond with a character, the more damage these combo attacks will do, and the more often follow-up damage will trigger.

Ichiban and Kiryu can also do Tag Team attacks with their crew once they build up their Hype Meter. This is represented by an infinity symbol next to each character’s combat portrait, and the more damage a character takes, the faster the gauge fills. Once it’s fully charged, Ichiban and Kiryu can then “tag” that character to perform a special combo. For instance, Ichiban and Kiryu’s Tag Team is the two of them rushing an enemy and punching them in the face; Tomizawa and his partner hurl wheel wrenches through the air; and Chitose ballroom dances with her partner to hit multiple bad guys in a line attack. Each of them are pretty interesting in their own ways. Ichiban can also use an Ultimate Tag Team that depletes all party member’s gauges but does massive damage to every enemy.

Characters have access to various jobs, which must be bought by taking part in vacation packages at Alo-Happy Tours. Each job can learn skills up through level 30, after which point levels only increase stats. These skills can be “inherited” by other jobs, giving you the opportunity to mix and match and craft your favorite possible job. Do you want your Samurai to also spray bubbly in your enemy’s faces the same way a Host can? Well, now that’s possible. Even ultimate abilities can be inherited, though you only have five total inheritance slots, one of which is for an ultimate ability. You earn inheritance slots as you increase your bond with other characters, and these inheritances will carry over to every subsequent job until you manually change which skills you’re sharing. This ends up being an excellent way to equip characters to exploit the weakness system and ensure you’ve got versatility.

Infinite Wealth has a wide assortment of jobs available. Host, Breaker, Chef, Idol, and Night Queen return from RGG7, so I want to focus briefly on the newcomer jobs: Action Star, Aquanaut, Desperado, Pyrodancer, Samurai, Geodancer, Housekeeper, and Kunoichi. Action Star is a heavy damage focused job with mostly single-target skills. Aquanaut is a magic-focused job with a decent mix of ranged attacks and healing. Desperado is a ranged attack job that mixes elemental-based damage between single and group attacks. Pyrodancer is a magic job with an emphasis on support and debuffing. Samurai is a strong physical job with a mix of single target and AOE skills. Geodancer, like Pyrodancer, focuses on magic support and debuffs. Housekeeper has a mix of physical and debuff attacks. And Kunoichi is a strong physical job. Ichiban can also access the Sujimancer job, which lets him call forth Sujimon to perform an assortment of magic-based attacks. Much like in RGG7, your unique jobs tend to be the most well-rounded, though it doesn’t matter as much here since you can mix and match skills with inheritance, so it’s really just going with the aesthetic you like the most. I would say the only exception is Sujimancer, which felt underwhelming even with high-level Sujimon.

As the Dragon of Dojima, Kiryu’s combat comes with its own flourish. He fists are his weapons, and his ability list is a what’s what of classic Komaki-style attacks. He can also access three different fighting stances at will throughout a fight: Brawler, Rush, and Beast. Much like in his own titles, each of these styles comes with its own pros and cons. Brawler is Kiryu’s default stance, and the only one in which he can use Heat Actions. You can also counter enemy attacks if you perfect guard. In Rush mode, Kiryu’s attacks deal less damage, but he has a wider range of motion, and he gets two turns, which makes this ideal for cleaning up low HP enemies or capitalizing on back attacks. Beast mode is Kiryu’s defensive stance, offering an increase in attack power, but at a significant hit to speed and range. While in Beast mode, Kiryu can break enemy guard stances without using special abilities, which makes this style invaluable against large groups of heavy types and enemies with shields.

When the going gets tough, Kiryu can also dig deep and harness the dragon within, unleashing the full strength of the legendary yakuza by literally breaking free of the game’s turn-based combat to wail on enemies freestyle. Rather than performing a Tag Team attack, by holding R2 when his Hype Meter is full, Kiryu can access Dragon’s Resurgence, giving him free range to pummel any enemy regardless of distance. Once the Resurgence meter runs out, Kiryu will rejoin his teammates in turn-based combat. Deciding between Resurgence and Tag Team can be the difference between winning or losing a battle, and I liked the versatility this offered.

Like every other character in the cast, Kiryu can also use the generic jobs (I quite liked him as a samurai, myself). But the Dragon of Dojima is honestly the strongest job in the game – absurdly so at times – and is a nice gameplay reminder that, despite the events of the story that have Kiryu significantly weaker than during his own standalone titles, he earned his Legendary Yakuza title for a reason.

Poundmates return with some enhancements this time around. Like in RGG7, you can call in support from a variety of colorful characters, many of whom you unlock through subquests. They range from the hard-hitting Chitose Holmes (not to be confused with Chitose Fujinomiya), to mainstay Nancy and her new friend Olivia, the lead singer of a visual kei band, one half of a manzai group who serves coffee, and even the Bartender from Survive. New this time around is the fact that most Poundmates you obtain will fight alongside you for three turns, rather than one-and-done moves. Those are reserved for the highest level Poundmates, most of which you won’t see until nearing endgame. For instance, Chitose will follow up all of Ichiban’s attacks with her own flurry of furious blows, sticking around the battlefield for three turns until she finally bids farewell. Having this bonus damage or healing can make or break early fights, and was a nice addition to the Poundmates system. The more money you spend on Poundmates, the higher your rank with the service, and once you max out your contributions you can unlock With Benefits options, which double the cost of a Poundmate, but also exponentially increases their base attack power. This addition was indispensable during endgame.

Along with Poundmates, Sujimon return, this time bigger than ever. Rather than just being a glorified bestiary, Sujimon now have an entire mini-game devoted to their capture and subsequent battles. Infinite Wealth makes no real effort to hide the Pokémon influence here, and if you’re at all familiar with those games, capturing Sujimon will feel old hat. After battle, Ichiban has the chance to “recruit” one of his enemies. To do so, you need to offer a gift (think Pokéballs) and then prostrate yourself to demonstrate your resolve. The sincerity of your attempt to woo the enemy is represented by a scale at the bottom of the screen, and the further along you time your button press the better your chances (though I highly recommend checking out the low sincerity). If you’re successful, the Sujimon will join you and can be used by Ichiban’s Sujimancer unique job, or fight in Sujimon Battles. They can also take part in Dondoko Island. I’ll touch on both of these aspects a little later.

Read on for Dondoko Island, Sujimon Battles and more! ->

The post REVIEW: Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth appeared first on oprainfall.

Ninetail is back with some fandiscs in the VenusBlood series. This time we have three discs from VenusBlood HOLLOW featuring the dragon sisters, Liese and Julia. A couple of these are on the lighter side of things in the AfterDays stories, but just like last time there is one Chaos route story in the DarkChronicles tale. Let’s dig into these and see if they are something fans would want to spend their coin on, shall we?

Our first story begins as the war ends and Leonhardt keeps his promise with Julia, reuniting with her after the war as her subordinate. After some of the brainwashing he did to her during the war, she is completely obsessed with him and wants to jump his bones at every opportunity, as well as rid the world of all the Black Hellbeasts that still plague the world. To get her to calm down a bit, he enlists her sister Liese to use any means necessary to get her to back off the marriage, and things get out of hand from there.

The next story focuses on Liese, Leonhardt marries her after the war and they live on the surface. It’s been one month and he has been welcomed to Archlond as commander. Despite this, he frequents pubs and brothels, always getting into fights with authority he didn’t like as well. This was overlooked since he was such an asset to the kingdom in military manners. The main problem here is Liese is not tending to Leonhardt’s needs as a man, and if you know him this is not going to stand. This leads him to some extreme measures to show her exactly what a “Man’s” needs are. This tale takes some twists and turns from here and ends up not where I expected.

Lastly we have the DarkChronicles story. Here the war rages on with the Dark Angels led by Nachtu. Having subjugated all of the dark lords in the land, Leonhardt prepares his army to fight off their invasion. His tactics have become very cruel at this point, and he doesn’t care who dies so long as it meets his ends. He is currently training both Julia and Liese with his usual tentacle method, but he goes to the point where he actually breaks their minds. As their kingdom collapses, this will show just how far Leonhardt will go when he delves into chaos!

Overall I enjoyed all three stories, and it was great to see the dragon sisters on my screen once again. Like last time, I enjoyed the AfterDays stories more than the DarkChronicles one. I’m more of a law route guy than chaos. These are pretty short at a couple hours each, but each disc has three or four fantastic H-scenes with some very high quality artwork. These are well worth the coin for VenusBlood HOLLOW fans and if the sisters were your favorite, this a must buy at the $4.99 price tag for each.

Review Score
Overall

Games were provided by the publisher for review.

The post (18+) REVIEW: VenusBlood HOLLOW Fan Discs appeared first on oprainfall.

Author’s Note: This review may contain minor spoilers pertaining to the story. The main character will be referred to as the Captain throughout this review.

I must admit, even though I love Action RPGs, I was very hesitant in reviewing Granblue Fantasy: Relink. For those who don’t know, Relink takes place in the same world as the RPG browser game, Granblue Fantasy. While I have played the browser game before, the most I’ve done is complete the prologue and roll for characters whenever I get the chance, I haven’t even finished chapter 1 of its story. So, my knowledge of the story and characters is minimal, at best. Granblue Fantasy has been around for almost a decade now, so I feared my lack of knowledge of the game’s lore and world would negatively affect not only my enjoyment, but my understanding of the events that occur in the game. So, after playing through the game’s story, was this Granblue newcomer able to enjoy Relink, or is it only for true veterans of the series?

Granblue Fantasy: Relink follows the Captain and the Grandcypher crew as they enter a brand new area, the Zegagrande Skydom. After a tumultuous entry, the Grandcyper crew finds themselves in the small town of Folca where they meet the local Mr. Fix It, Rolan. Rolan is trusted throughout the Skydom, so of course when a dangerous situation arises in the neighboring town of Tempeal, Rolan is asked to help the citizens. The Captain, the good-natured individual that they are, volunteers to assist Rolan in his efforts. However, what seems to be a straightforward mission quickly devolves into chaos as the Grandcypher runs into a group known as the Church of Avia. The Church of Avia runs off with the Captain’s friend, Lyria. Now, the Captain and crew must work to save Lyria from Avia’s clutches, and perhaps save the entire Sky Realm during the process.

Granblue Fantasy: Relink’s story is pretty straightforward; you could guess what direction the story is heading as you play it. That wasn’t a bad thing, though, as it was written well enough to keep me engaged and interested throughout my playthrough. The characters’ chemistry, especially that of the Grandcypher crew, helped keep me engaged as well. What I especially liked about Relink’s story is how welcoming it was to newcomers of the Granblue Fantasy franchise. They didn’t rely too heavily on past events, only referencing them sparsely throughout the game. And even if there were terms that I didn’t understand, I could read up on them in Lyria’s Journal. Lyria’s Journal is fantastic and can be easily accessed from the pause menu. It includes a glossary of terms used throughout the game (such as Astral and Primal Beast), information on the characters you meet throughout the game, and even gives a summary of the events that occurred before Relink. Not only that, you can rewatch past story cutscenes from Lyria’s journal whenever you want, provided you’re in town. This is great for those who want to rewatch a cutscene with a different gender Captain. And yes, you can change the Captain’s gender and name whenever you want from the pause menu, and this will automatically be reflected in Lyria’s Journal. So, you can rewatch the entire game’s story with a different gender Captain without having to replay the game, and I find that to be a fantastic addition. Cygames did not have to go out of their way to implement this feature, but I very much appreciate it.

But, you’re probably asking yourself if there’s a way to get to know the Grandcypher crew even more, outside of the Main Story and Lyria’s Journal. Well, I’m happy to say there is. Relink has a nice mechanic called Fate Episodes, and these can be accessed through the Quest Counter in town. Every recruitable character in Relink has a Fate Episode, and these tell players each of their backstories, what they did before the events of the game, and also what they get up to during Relink. Each chapter of the Fate Episode is unlocked based on Main Story progression, which Fate Episode chapters you’ve read, and what level the indicated character is. So, if there’s a character you’re really interested in, I’d suggest you focus on leveling them up first to fully read their Fate Episode. Not only do Fate Episodes develop your favorite characters, they even give you incentive to read them. Every time you read a Fate Episode chapter, it increases the character’s stats, and some chapters will increase the character’s Sigil slots. You’ll get to learn more about the character, plus they’ll get stronger too! The only negative thing I’d say about Fate Episodes is I wish there were in-game cutscenes instead of walls of text, this would’ve gotten me more invested. However, I appreciate that these were fully voiced by the character.

Most of the characters in the game did not develop much throughout the game’s Main Story, most of their development was locked behind the Fate Episodes. So again, if you really care about the Grandcypher crew, read the Fate Episodes. The one with the most development in the actual Main Story was the Church of Avia member, Id, and I did enjoy seeing his motivations and demeanor evolve throughout the story. I wish the other two big members of the Church of Avia had more screen time to develop, so I’m hoping they’ll revisit them sometime down the road. Another issue I had with the game’s story is that recruited characters don’t have much presence, if any, in the Main Story. Sure, they’ll have special dialog during certain Main Story areas, but they don’t show up in Main Story cutscenes nor are they really addressed at all throughout the Story Chapters. They’re just sorta there, and I wish they had more interaction with the main Grandcypher crew throughout the story.

The gameplay of Granblue Fantasy: Relink is very solid. I will admit, when I read PlatinumGames was no longer working on the game, I feared the gameplay would take a massive hit. Thankfully, Cygames proved me wrong. In combat, you take control of one character and have three additional party members. Normal attacks are performed using the X button, A button is jump, Y button is a special action that changes depending on the character you control, the B button allows you to initiate a Link Attack if the enemy’s stun gauge is maxed, and holding the RB button and pressing X, A, B, or Y allows you to perform Skills. I’ll use Narmaya as an example for the special action. If you press the Y button while using her, she changes stances between Dawnfly or Freeflutter. Dawnfly is great for taking on hordes of enemies while Freeflutter can be used to wail on single enemies. Other than these, you can hold the directional buttons to use items or click both the right stick and left stick at the same time to activate your Skybound Art (SBA). SBAs can only be used once the SBA gauge is at 100%, and these are super special attacks with nice animations. If you use the SBA while your party member’s SBA gauges are at 100%, they will also perform an SBA which causes a Chain Burst. The Chain Burst’s damage increases depending on how many members perform their SBA. You can change your party member’s SBA behavior in the Options menu to match your combat preferences. Once you get used to all of these options, you can string together beautiful chaos to decimate foes. I had a ton of fun fighting in Relink, especially against bosses, since each one has their own unique patterns that you have to learn if you want to be effective against them. Another great thing about the combat is, surprisingly, the party AI. CPU party members are actually very helpful in combat, using their skills at the right time and are great at staying alive. In fact, there were times when I died more than the CPU members and they had to keep saving me. It’s refreshing having CPU party members that don’t hold you back.

While I do love the combat, I did have some minor issues. First, they don’t tell you what each directional button item does. These aren’t even in the Inventory menu, so you can’t even read what they do, it’s a lot of guesswork. Next is the camera. While it is good most of the time, if you get too close to a wall or corner, the camera can get a bit crazy. Finally, I would’ve liked to have an option to change your playable character mid-combat. I do understand why that isn’t an option, since there is a multiplayer portion to this game and you shouldn’t be able to take over someone else’s character. But, it would’ve been a cool option to have if the game knows you’re playing Offline and with CPU party members.

You can strengthen characters by leveling up, using Mastery Points, equipping Sigils, and upgrading weapons. You level up through the usual methods: defeating enemies, completing Counter Quests, and completing Side Quests. Characters that aren’t in your party will still gain experience points during Main Story missions, but not during Counter Quests, so keep that in mind. Mastery Points are used to unlock nodes in a character’s Mastery Tree. These nodes can range from increasing stats to increasing a character’s resistances, and can even unlock more skills or Sigil slots for them. Mastery Points are gained through leveling up, completing Counter Quests and Side Quests, opening treasure chests, etc. The great thing about Mastery Points is that they aren’t limited to one character; they’re shared across all characters. So, if another character levels up and you don’t particularly like using them, you can use those Mastery Points to strengthen one you do like controlling. I do appreciate the development team doing this because it makes it easier to strengthen your favorite characters. Sigils are like accessories that give different benefits to your characters, such as increasing stats, increasing your critical hit rate, strengthening your combo attacks, etc. These can really give your character the extra edge they need to dominate foes. You can upgrade your weapon at the Blacksmith and even forge new ones there. Each weapon has its own special trait, such as increasing a character’s HP or increasing their effectiveness against an enemy’s weak point. So it’s beneficial to upgrade a certain weapon based on your playstyle. Additionally, you can change a weapon’s traits by imbuing it with Wrightstones. This can be done at the Blacksmith, but I didn’t find any need for Imbuing throughout the Main Story. Increasing your weapon’s max level requires materials, and most of these can be found by doing Counter Quests, and that is where most of the grinding is performed.

There are four types of areas you can explore in Relink: the towns, the Grandcypher, Main Story areas, and Counter Quest areas. Towns act as the hub area. Here, you can upgrade your equipment, purchase materials, sell any loot, accept Side Quests from citizens, recruit new characters, and even find treasure. Recruiting new characters requires a Crewmate Card, and you get more of these as you progress the Main Story or complete certain Counter Quests. There are 15-plus playable characters to choose from, and you start the game off with six of them available. An issue with the recruitment system is that you can’t try out the character before choosing them. You can only access the practice menu after recruiting them, which is rough if you end up choosing a character whose gameplay doesn’t gel with you. A way to get around this is saving before you recruit, turn off Autosave in the Options menu, recruit the character, practice with them, and then reload your save. This way, you can try out every recruitable character before permanently using your voucher. It’s a very roundabout way, which could’ve been circumvented if there was an option to try out the character before recruiting. The Grandcypher allows you to practice with your current character to tackle Time Attack and Score Attack modes. Time Attack involves destroying Sir Barrold as quickly as you can, while Score Attack calculates how much damage you can inflict on Sir Barrold before time runs out. Very simple minigames, but I appreciate them adding these options. Speaking of minigames, I do wish they had some available in the towns of Folca and Seedhollow. Give me a reason to stay in town a bit longer. There’s literally a fishing pond in Folca, let me go fishing! It just would’ve been a nice break from all of the fast paced action.

Main Story areas are the bulk of where the gameplay takes place. These are semi-open maps full of enemies, treasure chests, and other collectibles such as Archive entries and Wee Pincers. I call these semi-open since there is an obvious path to get to your goal, but you have the freedom to explore the map as much as you want before reaching the set goal. There are special monuments called Hallowed Ground scattered throughout the map, and these act as checkpoints and areas where you can save and heal. Siero, our resident adorable merchant, also magically appears at these monuments, giving you the options to purchase goods and access the Blacksmith. You can also return to town whenever you want during these stages, in case things get too rough for you. Once you return to the stage, Archive entries are pieces of information that give you some lore, and these are relatively easy to spot due to how they shine. These are saved in Lyria’s Journal after you find them. Wee Pincers are collectible little crabs you can find throughout the Main Story. Unlike Archive entries and materials, these do not shine or have a different color at all, so you really have to search the map thoroughly to find them – which comes to my one big issue with these Main Story areas: there’s no minimap. The most the game gives you is a compass at the top of the screen with a marker telling you where the story destination is. It doesn’t even mark where collectibles you’ve found are. So, if you find a treasure chest and forget to open it, you’re gonna have to search for it all over again. I do appreciate the lack of a minimap slightly, since it makes me actually look at the environment when exploring, and it does give a big sense of accomplishment once you find a collectible. However, if you’re trying to find 100% of collectibles in the game, having no minimap becomes more of a nuisance.

Counter Quests are quests you accept through the Quest Counter. These have specific goals you need to finish to complete missions, and they are also side goals which will increase your quest rating and rewards. Counter Quests can range from defeating bosses to defending Hallowed Ground to defeating all enemies. These are where you can play online multiplayer with your friends, but I didn’t try this function out since I tend to play solo. Counter Quests take place in specific areas of Main Story maps you’ve previously visited. There’s not much room for exploring in these quests, these are mostly a combat affair, which I do like, cause I do love the game’s combat. Most of the postgame content involves these Counter Quests, especially if you want to fight even tougher enemies and completely max out your characters and weapons.

Sail the skies and continue to page 2 ->

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Memories are beautiful, treasured and fragile things that give humans purpose and meaning. But are memories what make a person who they are, or do they simply add context to our choices? If someone can’t remember who they are or where they came from, can they truly understand themselves and the world around them? Sona-Nyl of the Violet Shadows ~What Beautiful Memories~, the newest steampunk alternate history title from Liar-soft, attempts to answer these questions and more in a beautifully realized tale that straddles two very different worlds.

At the turn of the 20th century, the Mega Engine City of New York ceased to exist. Every living thing vanished within minutes on Christmas morning of 1902, leaving behind only ruined buildings and empty streets. In the blink of an eye, three million people were wiped off the face of the earth. Five years later, Elysia Wentworth ventures forth into the broken remnants of New York to answer one burning question: Why?

As Elysia walks the barren streets above, deep “underground” a person is falling. Lily can’t remember anything from before tumbling into the mushroom-strewn landscape of the Underground other than his name, and that he does not want to be “her.” He finds himself on the outskirts of a bridge town named Verrazano, where he meets Milia Stoke, a “combat courtesan” with a metal arm who uses a pile bunker to protect the townsfolk from the Dark Gang – giant metal monsters who were once, presumably, human. Down here in the Underground, everyone eventually turns to metal, you see. Some just turn faster than others. That’s been the law of the Underground for as long as everyone can remember, and no one can remember more than five years ago.

Like clockwork, the town is beset by a White One, a monstrous being that devours memories and turns the people into metal. It’s been attacking Verrazano every week for five years, and Lily sees first-hand the chaos it brings when it steals away Milia’s memories of their meeting.

While in Verrazano, Lily meets an assortment of colorful characters, including a catgirl named Mao, a man with a giant metal arm named Luciano, and eventually the “airhead” A – the conductor of a one-car railway train who tells Lily he can be whatever he wants, so long as he chooses for himself. At first, Lily is against this, unwilling to become “her.” When Milia and the town are again beset by the White One, Lily decides to become “her,” embracing the inner voice she’s heard since arriving in the Underground, and harnesses A’s power for herself to defeat the monster. Now in the form of a young girl in a blue dress, Lily and A venture forth along the subway tunnels of the Underground in search of the violet horizon and answers to not only what’s happened to the Underground, but who Lily herself is. Meanwhile, above in the ruined New York, Elysia makes her way to the source of the disaster from five years ago, literally picking up the pieces of lives cut short along the way – including her own.

There’s quite a lot here that I really enjoyed. Memory makes us who we are – our childhoods, our growing pains, our loves and our losses. Without knowing where we came from, it’s hard to know who we are and why we do the things we do. So what happens when everyone is robbed of their memories yet trapped in a cycle of being they can’t contextualize? How do you deal with knowing you had a life before but can’t remember any of it due to someone else’s actions? The exploration of memory and the way it shapes a person – and how ugly and cruel the world can be when your sense of self is robbed from you – was so compelling. Lily being a blank slate gave the narrative room to breathe, to explore the ideas of loneliness, joy, sorrow, fear, grief, and love, and how those emotions can have positive and negative impacts on a person. The dual stories of Lily and Elysia also meant each idea could be explored from multiple angles. Watching as the pieces of the narrative fell into place was really rewarding. A and Lily’s relationship was especially engaging, and I loved every scene with them in it.

I found the sex scenes all well-done and tasteful, with some lovely CGs and impressive voice acting. The intimacy that comes with sexual relationships dovetailed poetically with the often exposed and raw emotions of the participants, so while the game does have an All-Ages version that removes and rewrites these scenes, this is one of those instances where I think the 18+ version better conveys the story’s themes. That being said, there are a couple instances of characters with ambiguous ages and some questionable consent, so while it wasn’t personally an issue for me, if you’re sensitive to that sort of thing, the All-Ages version might be better for you.

Visually, Sona-Nyl is gorgeous. The characters have a vibrant, sketchy quality to them, with evocative pops of color and texture. The backgrounds are detailed and varied, and I found the CGs particularly impressive. The music has a fantastic jazzy quality to it that fits the mood and time period beautifully, and I found myself humming a few tunes even when I wasn’t reading. Overall, the game has some very strong sound design, especially during the encounters with the White Ones. And of course, the voice acting here is top notch – not just in the sex scenes. I’d be remiss not to mention the fantastic localization. This has to be one of the most eloquent VNs I’ve ever read, with fantastic use of cadence and repetition. The descriptions are detailed and expressive, and the dialogue is punchy. Everything is dripping with character and it was such a delight to read.

There’s very little gameplay to be found here, with only a handful of choices bookending and within each chapter. Before each interlude, you’ll have the chance to determine how a news article covers the destruction of New York City, and your choices here determine which options are available to you during each chapter. If you choose wrong with the newspaper, you’re met with one of two bad endings and are required to make the correct choice if you want to proceed. This means there’s no real replayability to see branching paths. The game takes roughly 12 hours to complete, making it a bit on the shorter side, but it’s relatively dense, so this actually worked out well for me. It hit that sweet spot in terms of complexity of narrative and length of time to read it.

That being said, not everything here worked for me. The villain fell flat, with confusing motivation and an unfulfilling conclusion. Seeing as this is the fifth entry in a series, I suspect that has something to do with it, but I’m a firm believer that a story should have a satisfying beginning, middle and end, regardless of where it fits into a broader narrative, and the ending of Sona-Nyl did not quite live up to what came before. A handful of characters also felt underutilized – again, possibly for the same reason. These weren’t enough to ruin the experience, but they did leave me feeling like I missed out on something.

Sona-Nyl of the Violet Shadows ~What Beautiful Memories~ was my first Liar-soft VN, but I doubt it’ll be my last. The intricate story, well-realized characters, and fascinating world building all impressed me greatly, despite some shortcomings. I loved the way this story wove in a multitude of faerie tales and children’s literature, especially its heavy use of Alice in Wonderland motifs. The MangaGamer version includes the unedited 18+ version and the All-Ages Refrain, which rewrites and removes the sex scenes. The Steam version is Refrain, but you can download an 18+ patch. Whichever you choose to go with, at $35, this one is worth your time.

Review Score
Overall

Review copy provided by the publisher.

The post REVIEW: Sona-Nyl of the Violet Shadows appeared first on oprainfall.

I was pretty excited when I first saw that the remake of Persona 3 was actually real. It had been rumored in leaks for a long time, and I was very curious to see how the newly announced Persona 3 Reload would be handled. Would it be a faithful remake, or something more in line with what Square Enix is doing with Final Fantasy VII. Turns out this would be very close to the original release, but they added some new quality of life elements as well as some nifty things found in the latter Persona 3 Portable release. I’ve spent quite a while with this one and it’s time to share my thoughts on it. Did I love this release as much as I did Persona 3 FES when I played it years ago? Let’s find out!

The story takes place as our protagonist arrives at Tatsumi Port Island. He is on his way to the dorm when some rather strange things begin to happen. The moon changes color, streets fill with blood and there are strange coffins everywhere. When he arrives at the dorm he is greeted by a strange young boy and asked to sign a contract. Not really knowing what is going on, he does so and the power cuts back on to reveal his dorm mates standing around in shock. They asked him if anything strange happened on his way over, and basically try to ease any concerns he may have. Soon he realizes there is much more going on here than meets the eye when shadows attack the dorm during the mysterious Dark Hour, which was the phenomenon going on when he arrived. During a desperate time he awakens his own ability to fight these shadows, his Persona. After the attack is over his classmates ask him to join their team and fight to save the world; he agrees and is made their leader. Now they will struggle to defeat these shadows and end the Dark Hour for good.

This is still my favorite story in the Persona franchise. I love all of the characters and seeing all their stories being told in this new engine, with a better English voice cast was really great. I fell in love with them all over again – well I love Yukari the most, but that’s another matter altogether. If you haven’t played any other version of this game, this is a great way to experience the story. I know some will say Persona 3 Portable is better because of the Female Protagonist, but this is the canon story and the way it was meant to be told. I would go into why I think this has more impact, but it’s spoilers so you’ll just have to see for yourself.

Graphically this game looks fantastic. They took all the style from Persona 5 and infused it with Persona 3’s. This worked out much better than I could’ve ever imagined. The character models, environments and enemies have lots of details and you will notice new things about them each time you play. The Personas themselves are especially well done. Thanatos, Alice and many of your other favorites have never looked better. Your party members have several different outfits to choose from as well. These will unlock as you find them scattered about Tatarus or from doing requests from Elizabeth, and yes the famous Battle Panties made the cut for all three of the girls in the game, they look great! The game ran at a solid 120fps on my main rig and 60 on my laptop with no issues. These systems run on a 3060 and 3050 mobile respectively, but I didn’t have any technical issues on either machine. This is a very good port from Atlus.

Persona 3 Reload really delivers in the audio department. The new soundtrack is fantastic, the newly remastered tracks sound just as good as the old ones in some cases and better in others. I do wish Atlus had offered more features here since they sell battle themes from the other Persona titles. It would’ve been nice to have an Atelier series style menu where you could pick tracks for each occasion and maybe even have the classic OST if you wanted. That being said there is nothing to be disappointed about here, and the new vocal tracks, “It’s Going Down” and the opening “Full Moon Full Live” are simply amazing tracks you will be singing long after your playtime has ended.

Persona is one of the very few series I play with the English dub, and I have to say the new cast here did an excellent job of capturing the same emotion and feeling with these characters as the old one did. Every voice here is on point, fits the character well and in most cases I couldn’t even tell that much difference from the old cast member. Fuuka got a massive upgrade in this department, her new voice actor really gave her a lot more personality, and I was really pleased with her performance. The Japanese audio is here for those who want it, and I love we get a choice in these games now, even if I do usually stick with the English cast.

Gameplay in Persona 3 Reload is divided up into two sections: Your daily school life, and doing some dungeon crawling in the home of the shadows, Tartarus, in the evening. As you make new friends you will gain social links. The more time you spend with each friend, the stronger the link will grow, allowing the creation of stronger Personas to take on many challenges you will face going forward. There are some social links that can be done in the evening, but most of the time you will either be crawling the dungeon or spending time with your dorm mates to unlock new abilities for them. This is something new for Persona 3 Reload and these buffs really turn the tide of battle in your favor, so I strongly suggest you take the time to do them.

Tartarus itself has changed a lot since Persona 3 Portable. Not only does it have a new look that’s simply amazing, but there are also new floor types and items to find here as well. You will find most of these in locked chests which you will have to gain Twilight Crystals to open. You can find these lying around Tatsumi Port Island, by completing quests for Elizabeth, or even in Tartarus itself. I feel like these chests added a bit of spice to the formula here, since lots of folks think this the most boring part of the game. I personally always loved the combat, so I had a blast climbing all the floors again.

Combat here is still turn based, but there are some new additions to it as well. When you hit an enemy weakness, not only will you get another turn but you can do what they call a Shift. This will allow you to pass that turn to any other player that hasn’t had one this turn. Persona 5 players will know this as the Baton Pass. This added a new level of strategy to the fight, and in some cases made them a bit easy. They also gave each party member some super moves called Theurgy Skills. These are powerful moves that can turn the tide of battle in your favor instantly. Your party members will end up with two each that unlock as the story progresses. The protagonist gains more, but you will have to fuse certain pairs of Personas to unlock his.

Overall I have to say Persona 3 Reload is the type of remake I look for. It’s pretty faithful to the original, but adds enough new features to make it feel fresh. I enjoyed my run here just as much as I did when I played this for the first time on the PlayStation 2, years ago. The $69.99 price tag may seem a little steep, but I got 100 hours of great gameplay here, so I feel like it’s worth your coin. If you’ve never played Persona 3 you should pick this up ASAP, don’t put off playing this classic any longer. For veteran players, this one is still well worth your time and you will have a great time here.

Review Score
Overall

Game was provided by the publisher for review.

The post REVIEW: Persona 3 Reload appeared first on oprainfall.

I started playing JAST’s latest release, Goblins on the March: Breed all Humans, a few days ago and found it to be an interesting title. It’s pretty much what I expected given it’s a very simple title about a horde of goblins and taking over the world, but it had more mechanics than I expected and a few other surprises as well.

The story here is pretty much your run-of-the-mill isekai anime plot line. A guy is in a horrible accident and wakes up in a strange new world as a goblin. He is being led to a girl they have captured and is told to have sex with her. She instantly gets pregnant and gives birth, so the other goblins proclaim him their king. From here he explores the forest until he finds a witch named Emmy. She has a bit of a goblin fetish and is very happy to get some time in with their newly-found king. After their fun time he decides the only way home is to conquer this world and take on some magical power from the two warring factions. The Kingdom of Water is led by an elegant leader named Verina and her loyal knight Alyssa. The Fire Factor is lead by a crazy sadist named Rin and her loyal servant Yuka. These two have a big grudge with the water people because of battles that happened in the past. In order to defeat these lovely ladies, our hero will first have to gain some powers from the spirits of this land. This will help him counter their powerful magic, and there is only one way to gain their power, giving them your kingly rod!

While the story here is pretty much what you expect from a Nukige, there is some gameplay here to discuss. The game’s story unfolds in turns and on each of these you can choose an action. You can invade lands of the ladies, scout to see if you can find out more information about your enemies, breed with girls you’ve captured to bolster your army’s numbers, or explore the land in search of the spirits to gain their powers. The choice is yours, but you have to keep in mind you have a limited number of turns to break the ladies into submission in order to get the true ending.

The music and sound effects here are really nothing special but they get the job done. I think the voice acting is the standout in the sound department. These actors gave it their all when sexy times were happening and if you don’t want to share this glory with the world I would suggest a good pair of headphones.

The best part of this game in my opinion is the artwork. There are quite a few H-Scenes for each of the five heroines and one each for the five spirits, and everyone has great CG work. They are all nicely detailed and have some of the best quality I’ve seen in a more budget oriented title in a long time. As you may guess from the title, there are some extreme things in the H-Scenes and there is a lot of instant birth, but thankfully none of this is too graphic.

Goblins on the March: Breed all Humans is a pretty basic Nukige title with some gameplay elements thrown in here to spice things up. The artwork here is the real standout, but the localization deserves praise as well. They really gave these goblins and ladies a lot of character, so reading this was a lot of fun. If you’re looking for a simple but quality eroge title for $16.99, this one should fit the bill nicely. So long as some of the fetishes here aren’t something not in your wheelhouse.

Review Score
Overall

Game was provided by the publisher for review.

The post (18+) REVIEW: Goblins on the March: Breed all Humans appeared first on oprainfall.

When I first saw Custom Mech Wars, I thought it looked like a lot of fun. It reminded me of Earth Defense Force with huge robots that you should be able to customize in any way you can imagine. I finally got a chance to sit down and play through the 40 mission campaign, and now I want to share my thoughts. Was this the fun and crazy mech game I’d been waiting for, or did it just fizzle out from the start? Let’s find out!

The story takes place in a time when an enormous comet is approaching Earth. While the comet will not collide with our planet, it will cause major changes to our environment through changes to our sun and gravity. There will be large seismic, volcanic, and electromagnetic events that will be catastrophic to our way of life. Many areas are evacuated, and AI-controlled robots are left to patrol these areas. You are part of the Four-Seven Security Service. This group provides some services in the abandoned areas, such as crime prevention, repair, and putting out the volcanic fires. You soon learn many of the G-Mechs working the area are controlled by an AI that has gone haywire, and it is your task to suppress these rogue units.

Graphically, Custom Mech Wars looks pretty good. The mechs have a lot of details, and there are tons of parts you can use to build these units any way you like. There are several heads, arms, legs, torsos and dozens of different weapons you can use to load out these beasts for combat. The enemy units do not differ from the ones you can build yourself, but the AI seems to have access to many parts you cannot use yourself at that time. The environments are nicely detailed as well, there are empty fields, abandoned cities, airfields, and more. The PC port doesn’t have 1440p resolution for some odd reason, but the game ran at 140 FPS on my 3060 at 1080p, so I’m guessing you could do 4K at around a solid 60 with the same card.

In the sound department, I’d have to call this one pretty basic. There are a few music tracks that play while you’re blasting your foes to pieces. These are not terrible, but nothing really stands out about them either. There are opening and ending theme songs that are nicely done, but the rest of this OST is pretty bland. The sound effects are decent and get the job done. Many different sounds, from the guns firing and G-Mechs being blasted to pieces, fit the game well and add to the overall experience. The game has voice acting that tells the story through communications during the missions. These actors do a decent job here, but this story is so basic, there isn’t much they could do to add any flavor to it.

Gameplay here is pretty much what you would expect from D3 Publisher making a game like EDF with mechs. You will take on dozens of mechs during each of the campaign missions, unlocking new parts to build better weapons and machines along the way. This all seems good in theory, since just like with other titles, you will gain better parts for completing the missions on higher difficulties. But here, it just seems like they never give you enough parts to build anything cool. I did all the story missions on normal, and there are many different mechs in various sizes, that I didn’t have nearly enough parts to complete. While I get you don’t want players to be overpowered, in a game where the selling point was, “look at all the cool mechs you can make,” having the parts available to the player to create things should’ve been priority one. They have improved things a bit through the patches that have been released since launch, but I still feel like this could be a lot better.

When you finally get some parts unlocked, building the mechs is a ton of fun. You can attach various parts to several points along each torso, arm, leg, and various other parts. These include more arms or legs, crazy accessories, or some good old fashioned firepower to blast your foes away. These include several auto guns, melee weapons, rocket launchers, lasers, shotguns, machine guns, and many more instruments of destruction. I had a lot of fun just seeing what sorta crazy creations I could come up with and painting them various colors. You can even edit their deployment animations for an extra touch.

Custom Mech Wars isn’t really a bad game, but it gets wrong the one thing that makes it really shine by not letting players have access to the parts fast enough. It’s really fun to create some crazy mech and just go out there and blast all your foes to bits during the missions, but when you have to use the same ones for most of the game because you don’t have enough parts to make what you really want, it gets a little frustrating. I’d have a hard time recommending this one at the full $49.99 price tag, but if you catch it on sale, there is some fun to be had here. It took me around 13 hours to beat all of the missions on normal mode, and you could put a ton more in if you wanted to grind out all the parts to make the really cool mechs. Hopefully, they continue to patch the game a bit more and allow players access to more fun stuff to build their crazy creations with sooner.

Review Score
Overall

Game was provided by the publisher for review.

The post REVIEW: Custom Mech Wars appeared first on oprainfall.

I got a chance to check out JAST’s release of Ninetail’s Gears of Dragoon: Fragments of a New Era. This is actually the second game in this series, but you need no knowledge of the first to enjoy this one. I had a blast with their two VenusBlood releases, so I was pretty stoked to get my hands on this one. It plays a bit differently, being more of standard RPG with dungeon crawling, but I figured the story would be fantastic like the other releases. Let’s see if this one met my high expectations for it.

The story begins in a city called Carnas, a city of magical wonder that hides a secret underneath its busy streets. There lies the Dragonshaft, many tunnels filled with mechanical relics of the past. Machinery is considered taboo in the very magical society of Carnas, so the city’s ruling class are not impressed when powerful machines of the past are unearthed. The two factions live in a general state of peace, but there is always tension under the surface.

A young man named Rustar is an exceptional prowler, people that explore the depths of the Dragonshaft. He is different than most others in the fact he can use both magic and machinery, most can only use one or the other. His late father passed down to him a special key that is said to lead to the Sage’s Treasure, and would grant him a single wish. Having little luck, he soon encounters another young adventurer named Percy. She has a key just like his, and the two decide to team up to seek the treasure together. As the two dig deeper into the Dragonshaft, they will discover more about their world than ever before, and find some great friends along the way as well.

I have to say, I really enjoyed the story of Gears of Dragoon: Fragments of a New Era. It is pretty basic and goes how you would expect, but the characters really give this one a lot of personality. I played the Machine Route for this review which gives most of the focus to one group of girls, while the Magic Route will do so for the other. Ashley was by far my favorite girl here. A songstress tsundere dragon girl, I was like a moth to a flame. She is the main heroine in the Machine Route, but you will also spend time with the cute catgirl, Kay, the amazing scientist, Chris, an adorable machine girl, Sheirrah, and the leader of the Machine Faction, Echidna. Each of these girls were interesting, and no matter which one you choose to spend your time with, you will be entertained. Though I do wish Sheirrah would’ve gotten a bit more time. A mecha obsessed machine girl that is chunni as hell, that’s just a win!

Before we delve into the gameplay, let’s talk a bit about the graphics. The dungeons look pretty plain, but each area is well represented. From dark caverns to hellish lava filled craters, each area looks great. The artwork for the various enemies looks great as well. I do wish there were more varieties of enemies, but there are enough here to get by with. The boss monsters all look great. These beasts look every bit as fierce as they are, and are nicely detailed. All of the CG work is great here as well. There are plenty of good H-Scenes for each girl, and most of these are pretty vanilla outside of some that occur when you lose certain boss battles. I was good with this since I got plenty of crazy scenes while playing VenusBlood, so this was a nice change of pace.

Now let’s dig into the gameplay here. You will begin by taking on various quests that will have you explore the dungeon and battle various monsters in turn based combat. This is all very basic RPG stuff, but honestly I found it a lot of fun. You will have to equip each of your party members with some great gear in order to survive the monstrous bosses the game throws at you. Equipment will not only boost your stats, but it will also give better elemental attack, better defense against certain creature types, or status aliment immunities. That last one is very important because the RNG here can really screw you over at times.

Equipment can also be upgraded at your base, provided you have materials and some upgrade points. As you probably guessed this will raise the stats of the item, but I rarely used the upgrade points for this. The upgrade points can also be used to add magic stone sockets to your gear. These stones are very helpful since they add buffs and status protections to any weapon or piece of armor they are attached to. You will obtain these from the dungeon at mining points, or sometimes as random drops.

When you complete story quests you will be given some gold, guild points and a heart stone. Gold is always helpful in an RPG, and makes the world go round here. You will need that for gear and consumables, as well as upgrades. The guild points will give you various effects depending on which one you choose to spend your precious points on. The Fighters Guild will give you a damage boost with every rank and the shop will get better items. The Thieves Guild give you a full map of the dungeon without you having to find it, if your rank is higher than the dungeon’s. The Priest Guild will reduce incoming damage and let you regen a bit more health and MP while walking. Lastly, the Mages Guild nets you some better magic stones for your gear and the ability to craft new ones as well. I personally pumped a lot into the Mages Guild to start with, since the status immunities the stones can grant you are a lifesaver in battle, but the choice is yours.

Lastly, let’s talk a bit about the heart stones. These are required to view the heroine events in the story. There will be some for each girl in the common route as well as the two branching ones. The Machine Route requires less of these than the Magic one, so you should probably do that one first if you want to see everything both have to offer. You can always use the casual mode option to skip all the dungeons the second time around if you just want to focus on story, or either of the no encounters options if you want to speed along the second route a bit. Add these with the different difficulty options that allow you to casually skip battles or play a hardcore grindy RPG, and you have a very customizable game. I feel like this is an excellent way to do a game like this, since you can tailor it to your play style.

Gears of Dragoon: Fragments of a New Era is another fantastic release from Ninetail and JAST. The story is great with a ton of interesting characters, the dungeon exploration is a lot of fun for us old school RPG fans, and the game can be adjusted to fit the play style of almost anyone. Throw in some of the best CG work I’ve seen in a long time, plus a great soundtrack, and you have one of my favorite releases of this year. I wish the RNG had been a bit kinder at times and the game would tell you when there was CG scene for losing a battle, but these are very minor things. This game is worth every bit of the $34.99 price tag, and I hope JAST brings over the previous game in this franchise since I enjoyed this one so much.

Review Score
Overall

Game was provided by the publisher for review.

The post REVIEW: Gears of Dragoon: Fragments of a New Era appeared first on oprainfall.

I was a huge fan of FURYU’s Crystar when it released back in 2019. I said many times that I felt it was the most underrated game of the last generation. When a spiritual successor was announced, CRYMACHINA, I was very excited to get my hands on it. I’ve spent around 16 hours with the game and completed the main story, so it’s time to share my thoughts. Did the game meet my very high expectations? Let’s find out!

CRYMACHINA follows the story of a young girl named Leben. She is on her death bed, dying from a mysterious disease that is slowly wiping out all of humanity. As her life fades to black, she hears a voice saying she has been chosen. She awakens to find herself in a strange world greeted by a young robotic girl named Enoa. This world is named Eden, and it is run totally by machines that seek to restore humanity by creating “Real Humans.” Laben encounters two other girls like her, Ami and Mikoto. Together they all set out on a quest to become these “Real Humans.”

The story here is really amazing. There are quite a few twists and turns, which I expected from this team, but I think this one may pack more of an emotional punch than Crystar. Watching all of the girls get closer as they struggle, and just their general interactions, will make you care for them almost instantly while wanting to learn more about this world. As you collect the personality data that is obtained from the fallen bosses, you will learn about their backstories as well, and some of these will really give you a gut punch. This is some top level storytelling, and I’m glad to see this team delivered once again.

Graphically, CRYMACHINA looks amazing. The game takes place in a cyberworld and it very much looks the part. Each stage has that very “Inside of Computer” feel to it, and the enemy models are all fantastic as well. They look like Decepticons that have gotten a big ass buff. The boss enemies are even more impressive in their scope and scale. I think the lighting in this game is what really makes it pop though. The girls in their cyber bodies glow in distinct places giving them this really awesome mechanical vibe, and the environments glowing in blue and red hues, gives them even more of that techno feel. The PC version I reviewed ran very well, never dipping below 60 FPS on my 3050 laptop or 144 FPS on my full rig with a 3060. There are some options you can tweak if you’re running on lower end systems that will probably get this one to run very well on any decent machine.

I love the soundtrack in CRYMACHINA. These techno style tunes with amazing vocals really immerse you in this post apocalyptic world, and give a lot of the characters’ scenes a lot more emotion as well. It’s very rare for me to love every song in a game soundtrack, but I have to say, every track here is pure gold, and I would rank them among some of the best I’ve ever heard. The game only features Japanese voice acting, but these actors really give all of these characters a lot of life. Their performances will make you care for all of these girls right off the bat as you follow them down this crazy adventure.

The core gameplay of CRYMACHINA is that of a third-person action title. You will move along a set number of stages, defeating the boss monsters to advance. Along the way you will find secrets, such as more powerful enemies, documents with coordinates to face even greater foes, and treasures. These treasures include things such as, new equipment, auxiliary weapons and chips. You will also gain EXP to level up the girls and some EGO to spend on other upgrades as well.

Most of the stages in CRYMACHINA are pretty short, but I feel like this works to the game’s advantage since you will want to defeat each boss more than once to obtain all of the memories. I do wish the game would give you at least some EXP and EGO for defeating a previous conquered boss, but alas, that’s not how this works. At least there are plenty of challenging bosses to seek out as you find more documents and explore this virtual world further.

The girls each have four pieces of equipment. These include a weapon, head, body, and waist armor pieces. You will have to go through all of the ones you’ve obtained from personality chips and through treasures, to figure out which ones work the best for each girl. The ones you don’t need can be exchanged for EGO which you can use to upgrade the girl’s individual stats, or the combat support program Enoa can use. Upgrading this is very important as you progress, since it grants more uses of healing, more EXP, better results from your auxiliary weapons, and upgrades your ultra powered Awakening Mode. When you activate this, you will not take damage for a short time and your damage output will increase. Upgrading it will grant more uses on each stage, bigger buffs and a longer activation time.

Lastly, let’s talk a bit about the auxiliary weapons and chips. Each girl will have one of these weapons equipped on her right and left side. They come in a variety of forms and rarities. As you might guess, the rarer ones are usually much better than their lower tiered counterparts. Each one of these will be able to equip a number of auxiliary chips. These will grant these powerful weapons their skills. Some of these chips will be powerful attacks, while others may give stat boosts or protective buffs. These are activated by simply tapping the L and R triggers in battle, and you can get even greater effects from the skill in the EX slot when the conditions for it are met. Some of these will be things like do a perfect dodge, or stun enemies, and others are as simple as just having a foe at a certain range. There is a lot of customization here, and you will have to play around to see what works best with your play style.

I had a lot of expectations going into CRYMACHINA, and I am please to say it exceeded every one of them. This is one of the best games I’ve played this year, and I loved every minute of the 20 hours I spent with it. There is a bit more post-game stuff I can take on in the form of some really tough bosses that I will very likely be working on after this review goes live. This game has an amazing story and solid action. This is something you don’t find everyday in gaming these days, so I feel fans of RPGs and action games will find a lot to love here. I feel it is well worth the $59.99 price tag. If you haven’t played this or Crystar, do yourself a favor and check them both out as soon as possible. You might just find two new favorites, just like I have.

Review Score
Overall

Game was provided by the publisher for review.

The post REVIEW: CRYMACHINA appeared first on oprainfall.