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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Being a fan of the Neptunia franchise, I was pretty excited to finally get around to Neptunia Game Maker R:Evolution. I had some health problems earlier in the year, so I missed out on the previous releases, so I was more than happy to take a look at this on Xbox Series S. Let’s see if I created fantastic video games with the girls, or if the entire game is just one big bomb.

The story here follows Big Neptune as she has once again wandered into a new dimension. This time games rule everything and the makers keep the world in balance. She soon finds herself as the CEO of a defunct game studio run by some failed Goddesses. Can she help restore this studio to its former glory and help these Goddesses on their road to redemption?

Overall, I really had a blast with the story this time around. The new characters Jagaa, Pippih and Reedio were all great additions to the fantastic Neptunia cast. In case you can’t tell from their names, these girls are based on failed consoles in Japan. Jagaa is the Jaguar, Reedio is the 3DO, and Pippih is the Apple Pippin. They bring this front and center throughout the story as Jagaa says “Do The Math” constantly, which was an old ad for Jaguar even here in the states. The girls interact with each other very well and Big Nep adds a great dynamic to this foursome. Which is good since we see a lot more from them than our beloved Consoles Goddesses and their Sisters. Though that is kind of a shame since I think those girls playing off each other is always the best.

Graphically, Neptunia Game Maker R:Evolution looks pretty good. All of the character models are nicely done and stages have plenty of details, as well. Though, you will notice a lot of these have been reused from the Sisters VS. Sisters game that released a while back. Personally, I don’t have an issue with this, but some folks that don’t like reused assets may take issue with it. The game ran great on the Series S with no frame drops on my 4K TV.

Now, let’s dig into the gameplay. The first thing you will want to do as the new president of this company is make some games. This is where disc development comes into play. You will choose some developers based on their skills in the genre you’re trying to make and create game discs. The more skilled these creators are and the more upgrades you’ve unlocked, the better the game is you create. These will be packed with skills that can be used in combat if equipped on the girls just like in previous games, so it pays to make a few good ones as soon as you can.

Next, you will want to explore dungeons in each area to establish trade routes to increase your shares. This is pretty simple, just explore each one to the fullest, and I would suggest clearing out all the treasures while you’re in there as well. Once fully explored, you unlock time trials for Big Nep on her bike or races against one of the enemies in the stage. Winning these will grant you some rewards that help you develop better discs.

Combat is a lot like what was found in Neptunia: Sisters VS. Sisters. Players can equip moves to either the X or A buttons and thrash your enemies to pieces. There are a bunch of different moves to choose from and you will unlock these as you level up. You can tag in other party members after so many moves to continue the combo by pressing one of the four directions on the D-Pad. Doing this will get you a lot of bonus damage and help you defeat even the toughest foes, but if you ever need more, each girl has a big EXE Drive they can use when the Link Gauge is full and can also transform into their Goddess mode for even more damage during attacks.

Overall, I had a great time with Neptunia Game Maker R:Evolution. The story was great, I love the new characters, and even if the combat hasn’t changed from the last game, it’s still a lot of fun. I spent about 30 hours with this one and completed the main story. You could invest a lot more time in this if you wanted to do both of the towers and all of the fights in the battle arena, so I feel like it is well worth the $49.99 price tag. I do think it’s a bummer the swimsuits are once again locked to the Special Edition release at $69.99, they should allow you to purchase these separately and I hope they do at some point. Still, Neptunia fans will find a lot to love here, and this is also a good jumping in point for new fans on the Xbox as well.

Review Score
Overall

Game was provided by the publisher for review.

The post REVIEW: Neptunia Game Maker R:Evolution appeared first on oprainfall.

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.

Oh how innocent I was a few weeks ago. I haven’t been following Orange Season too closely honestly, but I do believe I was following the game’s official account on social media for a while and when I’d see the occasional screenshot, I was pretty intrigued. I thought this would be a fun, relaxing fall review I could enjoy spending a few weeks on. I won’t waste any time keeping you in the dark. I don’t have much good to say about Orange Season. I spent all of five hours on it and was already regretting asking to review this one after only the first 20 minutes of playing it, due to the issues it has.

First, let’s discuss what kind of game Orange Season is. Orange Season is an indie farming game. Like other farming sims, your character moves to a new town to live the charming, rural farm life. You’re dropped off at your farm, told to greet everyone in town and take care of your farm, of course. I went into this review assuming there would be some big goal like most farming games have: for example, making the town more popular and bringing in new tourists, or restoring a community center. Well from what little I was able to put up with playing Orange Season, I never actually found out if there was some larger goal beyond making your farm a success. I started off cleaning up the area you get for planting crops and got stuck at least once in the middle of a rock.

After planting a few starting crops and cleaning up the area some, I spent my time hunting all over town looking for new characters to greet and introduce myself as the new farmer in town. This is where the biggest issue came into play and a large part of why I refused to spend anymore than five hours on Orange Season. So when the map is actually working, it’s not the most helpful. The main town area where most of the characters live and hangout regularly is quite large. I don’t know that I’ve played many farming sims with a town this large. Now you’d expect that the map would help you locate characters around town; however, as you can see in the picture above, you’re merely told who’s in which section of town at any given time and I found no way to actually pull up a legitimate diagram of the town to locate these people. You only know which separate, large section they’re in and seemingly if they’re in a building or not. I saw some of the characters had a blue house symbol so I figured maybe that meant they were in their homes. Still, a majority of the houses were seemingly locked at all times as well. I imagine this could be a feature where you have to get to know the characters better to be allowed into their homes, but it was quite obnoxious and made tracking them down near impossible.

Anyway, not only was the map an extremely bare minimum of any use to me, but it constantly would glitch and become 100 percent useless. I could open the map and it’d be fine, and two minutes later open it again and the map was completely blank. No section would be highlighted, I wouldn’t see any faces of who was in the area and the cursor to move between the sections on the map was gone. Plus, the map glitching like this required a full game reset. By that I mean, I had to close out and re-open the game to fix it, only for it to glitch again less than five minutes into starting the game back up. This is a farming game where characters are constantly giving you requests to complete and you need to be able to reliably track them down. I found myself spending multiple game days simply trying to find them all at least once and greet everyone for the first quest. Then there were four characters who told me to come find them once I had and they would give me new quests, which again, I’d have to track down various characters for later to complete.

The map glitching out was only one of two big issues I had. You may have noticed earlier I mentioned getting stuck in the middle of a rock. My character got stuck quite a lot as if there was an invisible barrier all around and I’d have to wriggle my way out as best I could. I got stuck on rocks, I got stuck in a circle of trees and I often got stuck on houses. Houses you can even phase into while wriggling around trying to escape. To get off the house, away from the invisible barrier, I’d have to go up into it and then keep coming back down trying to dislodge my character. I’ve included a clip above of one occasion where this occurred. Then when I accidentally opened my map while randomly pressing buttons to try to get unstuck, the map had gone blank yet again. I even once got stuck at the very edge of the fishing dock on a lake and went on an adventure walking across the lake. The lake has this treasure floating on a wooden plank and I thought to myself, “Why not go get that treasure while I’m stuck out here?” But alas, another invisible wall made this impossible and I was not allowed to go check out the treasure while stuck on top of this lake. So I went back to the dock and wriggled all around trying to get back on and away from it.

Aside from the two big glitches that made this game completely unplayable for me, I still didn’t really enjoy it otherwise. Planting crops and growing stuff worked alright. But only the watering can and hoe had any guide for which square on the ground they were targeting. Also, trying to target anything properly seemed like you had to be at a very specific angle to do so. When I would walk right up to doors they wouldn’t activate very easily, neither to let me open them nor to get the being locked notice. I would have to move my character around a bit and come at them not quite right up front and be at the perfect angle. Not only that, but planting seeds doesn’t even have a targeting square, you kind of just hit the tool button as you walk around the dirt you used the hoe on and hope your seeds plant in the spot you want. One more issue I had was that I couldn’t cycle through the calendar and check the dates on the calendar page of the menu. It seemed there was no way to do anything with that menu, the only thing viewable is when the next festival is. I couldn’t figure out a way to physically move a cursor across the dates.

I truly went into this thinking it would be a fun farming game for fall. Even after I was disappointed and regretted asking for it in those first 20 minutes of gameplay, I still thought I could at least get through a full game year and then make my judgments after I gave it a shot. Unfortunately, the main two glitches in this game made it the most frustrating, impossible disaster I have ever reviewed. Now, I wanted to give the developers the benefit of the doubt, but then I went and looked up how long the game had been in Early Access on Steam. This game came out as an Early Access title in early 2017 and now over seven years later it’s finally received a full retail release, and they’re charging $29.99 for brand new console versions of the game. Sure, they may fix these issues later and it can become a game worth playing. Truthfully, I loved the atmosphere and I thought Orange Season was a very attractive game visually. I also had fun with the fishing gameplay. But the fact that after seven years of testing and polishing, this is the game they’re charging 30 bucks for, is utterly ridiculous. I refuse to waste anymore time giving this game and the developers the benefit of the doubt and I cannot recommend Orange Season whatsoever. I believe fans of cozy games or farming sims specifically are better off spending their money elsewhere.

Review Score
Overall

The post REVIEW: Orange Season 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 ->

The post REVIEW: Ys X: Nordics appeared first on oprainfall.

When I first saw Thunder Ray I thought it looked like a decent Punch Out! style boxing game. I was always a huge fan of games like this, so my interest was piqued enough that I wanted to try this out for myself. I mean, we have a man here that has bested all the best fighters on Earth, so now the universe wants to challenge him! Let’s see if I found another great arcade style boxing game, or did I just got punched in the face?

Graphically, Thunder Ray looks great. The fighters featured in the game are all huge in scope and size. You will encounter huge robots, mutants, a witch and even a tiny alien that looks harmless at first glance. These characters are greatly detailed and each has a variety of special moves that are very well animated. The game runs at a solid framerate on the Switch, and this is a good thing seeing as you are expected to dodge attacks with quickness and precision.

The game features at total of 11 fights. Eight of these are in the main game and the additional three are in the Origins DLC included in this package. Each fight has different gimmicks for you to overcome. Some fighters will cast spells or have magical barriers, while others may give you status effects like confusion that reverses your controls, or poison which – as you would figure – constantly drains your health. This makes it very important to either block, duck, or dodge whatever these foes throw at you and counter attack. Once you knock your opponent down three times you win and Ray will end them in an over-the-top and gory fashion. But if you get knocked down, you lose and will have to try the bout again. The real problem is the controls here feel very heavy at times, and I had a very hard time dodging some of these. The last bosses in each mode gave me a ton of trouble even on the easiest setting.

With so few fights found here I feel the value in this one is being able to master these controls and get through the game on higher difficulties with better ranks – which I guess is the goal of most games made in this style. I still think the price tag on this is bit high at 1999¥ for this Asian release of the game. There is some meat on the bones here, but once you get used to the controls you can breeze through the first eight fights in right around 30 minutes. Now how many hours you’d have to put into this to get that good really depends on the player, and I’m too old and don’t have that kind of patience anymore.

Overall I think Thunder Ray is a decent game for players who enjoy this genre of game. The difficulty here was a bit too much for me personally, but I know a lot of players really enjoy a challenge in a game like this. Still, I think the price tag is a bit much for what you get here, so I would wait for a sale before stepping in the ring.

Review Score
Overall

Game was provided by the publisher for review.

The post REVIEW: Thunder Ray appeared first on oprainfall.

A while back I had been in the mood for some otome and when 9 R.I.P. was announced for localization, I decided I would review this one. I didn’t know much about it going into things and typically I am extremely picky about the otome I’ll play. But, it sounded like it was a longer game than most and had a lot going on, so I was intrigued enough to take on this review. Was 9 R.I.P. worth the time investment? Or was it simply a failed horror show not worth the price of admission? Keep reading and find out my thoughts.

The main character of this one, Misa Isshiki, is at a loss for what to do with her future. She recently received this career path survey at school and is expected to fill it out with her plans. Misa lives at home with her mom and her older sister, as her dad passed away when she was little. Misa’s sister, Tsubasa, followed her own path in life. Now their mother expects Misa to follow the route she wants for her. Ideally, she wants Misa to become a doctor like her father and constantly pressures her to do as she wishes. Being lost in life and unsure what to do with this survey, not to mention constantly pressured by her mother, Misa ends up spirited away to one of a few different dimensions.

In one route, Misa ends up trapped in her school in a sort of limbo realm full of the dead. In another route, Misa finds herself in Hell. In a third potential spiriting away, she ends up a ghost herself. And finally, the last potential outcome is being haunted by spirits in the regular old mortal world, still a human herself. Regardless of the outcome, Misa Isshiki is expected to go through the challenges awaiting her and ultimately figure out what to do with her life. Each of these four routes contains two different potential romance options for you to get to know and you’ll make various choices along the way. In these initial common routes containing two love interests each, make the right choices and whoever you’re closer to by the end is the one Misa will end up falling for. After this, you’ll be lead to their specific route where you can get even closer with them, or find yourself doomed should you take a wrong turn.

9 R.I.P. has a lot of overlap between routes. I found myself tired out pretty early on. You’ll often be revisiting routes and have to skip over the various common route content you already saw to get to the choices you have to do differently. Despite that, this otome was relatively straightforward. If you leave on the option to see when you’ve raised a character’s affection, or you constantly check the status screen as you make choices, you’ll find it easy to go in a decent direction. However, I did find out that you can reach more than one good ending in a lot of the routes and trying to go back to get the best ending can prove difficult until you figure out how things work completely. Not to mention the game also has this insanity meter in some of the common routes, but I found it extremely difficult to even raise it naturally during a first playthrough. It wasn’t hard to avoid a lot of the bad ends. Also, these bad ends aren’t a true full ending like other otome with bad endings. They don’t have their own special bad end CGs or anything like that, it’s more of an abrupt fail. I got a few bad ends to see how they went, but typically I just went back through the game’s log and rewound a smidge to wherever things went awry. You’ll know relatively quickly when you make a bad choice, since most of the routes don’t make it too hard to figure out.

I really enjoyed my time with 9 R.I.P. Though, I do believe it was somewhat lacking in comparison to other Idea Factory otome. I mean, between all the events going on, most routes don’t have a ton of romantic parts. It’s kind of lightly dispersed between other happenings. Also, the horror wasn’t anything major. Some of the love interests in their initial common routes were cheerier and lacking in scary moments. And the ones that were more horror filled still weren’t anything crazy. I think my favorite of all the romanceable partners you can go after was definitely Koyo. His route was really fun honestly, mostly the beginning common route shared between both him and Sena. I had a hard time picking between them at first, but after going after both of them, Koyo was definitely my favorite.

I think the atmosphere in this otome is the best thing about it. It has a really good soundtrack, especially all of the ending songs. Hibiki, one of the love interests I was least interested in, I think actually had the best music theme of all of them. Each guy has their own unique music theme which will play often. While I’m on the topic of the game’s music, I should discuss the different extras in 9 R.I.P.‘s menu as you complete routes. It doesn’t have a significant amount of extras, there aren’t any additional stories following up on endings or anything like that. Still, like other Otomate titles, there are some special extras. The main extra content you’ll unlock from finishing routes are these voice lines for each guy. They each have a menu with different voice lines, some of them featuring aspects of your time with them after the story ends. In addition to that are the standard otome extras, like how you can listen to the soundtrack, check the glossary of terms from throughout the game, or look back at images of Misa with the different characters from throughout the story. You can also of course revisit specific chapters you’ve gone through to make different choices and get other endings, even starting with an already filled affection meter if you’d like. And finally, you can re-watch various videos as well, mainly the end credit music bits for each love interest.

I didn’t happen upon too many issues. Performance wise, 9 R.I.P. played smoothly for the most part. There wasn’t a true abundance of grammar mistakes or typos. Honestly, I now expect there to be some in all of these localized otome, they’re never flawless. Nonetheless, I do think Idea Factory International is a ton better at the quality control than certain other companies that localize these games. The biggest error I found was in the videos menu. The bars with the name of whatever should be the highlighted video you’re going to watch didn’t match up with what was pictured in the center and what the video ultimately ended up being once selected. I’ve provided a picture above of this issue. You’ll see the bar I had selected says it’s Sena’s video but in the center it shows it’s Koyo’s. That specific menu was pretty messed up and was the biggest issue I ran into.

When I went into this, upon looking up how long the game was – seeing as it’s already out in Japan – I was expecting it to be a bit longer than it actually is. But with so many different love interests and multiple endings for all of them, it still has quite a lot of content. I spent over 35 hours on this otome and completed six different routes, plus unlocked various alternate endings. I still have a couple more routes to go. In the end though, 9 R.I.P. was a fun time. It’s nowhere near the spiciest otome you can play, but the atmosphere and music is fantastic. If otome are your thing, you’ll enjoy yourself. I do believe it’s worth the price of admission. 9 R.I.P. releases on the Nintendo Switch Oct. 15, 2024.

Review Score
Overall

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It’s not often I associate “comfy” with murder, but when it comes to the Famicom Detective Club games, that’s the word that comes to mind to best describe them. Sitting down with one of the 2021 remakes is like curling up in your favorite chair with a cup of your favorite warm beverage and just vibing. After close to 30 years, would the newest entry in this series, Emio – The Smiling Man, give me the same feeling while also delivering a great mystery?

Rather than focus on the supernatural and ghosts, this time around our intrepid Boy Detective finds himself investigating the murder of middle school student, Eisuke Sasaki, that ties into a local urban legend. Emio – known as The Smiling Man because of the characters in his name – supposedly appears before crying girls while wearing a paper bag on his head emblazoned with a smiling face. If the girl laughs, he leaves her alone, but if she cries, he strangles her. So why, this time, would Emio appear before a boy, and why would he use a rope instead of his bare hands? And what relation, if any, does it have to a series of unsolved murders from 18 years ago?

Despite being the newest entry in this series in decades, Emio – The Smiling Man plays exactly like its predecessors. It carries over the visual style and voice acting from the 2021 remakes, which themselves retained the point-and-click adventure style gameplay of the original Famicom releases. You have a choice of several options in each scenario, including calling out to nearby people, talking to them, examining the surroundings or specific areas with your cursor, taking items, using your phone, and thinking about the situation. Each of these actions is meant to put you in the shoes of the protagonist and engage in the case the way a real person would. Unfortunately, it also results in a lot of cycling through options searching for the correct course of action. There were at least three times when I had exhausted every option and couldn’t figure out how to advance, so I just kept hammering my choices until something finally happened. There was also at least one instance where the correct option was to investigate a specific area, but I clicked the wrong part of the object and did not trigger the next event. These weren’t enough to ruin my enjoyment of the story, but it did lead to a lot of frustration.

Fellow Utsugi Detective Agency members – Shunsuke Utsugi and Ayumi Tachibana – return from previous titles, and this time you not only follow the protagonist, but you finally get to see Ayumi in action, as well. Throughout the investigation, you’ll keep notes to review, including important names and information you uncover about each person of interest. Periodically, the protagonist and Ayumi will review their notes, testing your knowledge of the case before deciding where next to go in the investigation. Having them both pursue different avenues of questioning gave the game a bit more breathing room to explore the story from multiple angles, as well as introduce a broader, eclectic cast. My personal favorite was Tsubasa Fukuyama, Ayumi’s former classmate and current middle school teacher at Eisuke’s school. Other notable newcomers include Junko Kuze, the serious detective in charge of Eisuke’s case, and Daisuke Kamihara, her jovial and easy-going partner. Each character is brought to life by some absolutely fantastic voice work, and Megumi Ogata especially deserves some kudos for her performance as the protagonist. She was a joy to listen to.

As for the story itself, I found this entry very engaging, with enough twists, turns and red herrings to keep me guessing for a significant chunk of playtime. The pacing was breezy and scenes never felt like they overstayed their welcome. That being said, the ending left me feeling somewhat unsatisfied, with one too many contrivances hampering an otherwise strong narrative. There is also an epilogue that ties up a few loose ends that packed an emotional punch, but the game rightfully warns you that it deals with some distressing content, so just keep that in mind if you’re at all sensitive to some of the broader issues explored in the main story.

Emio – The Smiling Man was a comfortable, familiar experience that both benefited from that familiarity and suffered from it. I loved revisiting this world and the characters, and the overall excellent writing was engaging and entertaining; however, retaining the same point-and-click nature of the previous games lead to some frustrating play sessions and unintuitive courses of action. The presentation was gorgeous, with beautiful background art, detailed and emotive sprites, excellent voice work and an amazing soundtrack. It took me roughly 20 hours to finish the game, and while the Fukuyama’s Report Card extra does give some minor incentive to replay for a higher grade, there isn’t much else, which makes it slightly more difficult to recommend at the $50 price tag, especially since you can get the twin pack of the first two games for only a few dollars more. To be clear, I really enjoyed my time with Emio, and if you liked the previous Famicom Detective games or really enjoy mystery visual novels, then this is a surefire title to grab. Due to its dated gameplay and shorter length, if you’re more of a casual enjoyer, I’d wait for it to go on sale. If you’re unsure where you stand, there’s a free demo available so you can test the waters yourself.

Review Score
Overall

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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.

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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.

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I discuss plot points and details of storylines and character arcs which could be considered minor spoilers. Also, one spoiler which could be considered a major one, the one the cover also depicts, must unavoidably be discussed, though I shall do so while revealing as little as possible.

In three volumes of Seirei Gensouki: Spirit Chronicles, by author Yuri Kitayama, we readers have been introduced to a vivid story of survival, emotional turmoil, endurance, and self-discovery painted upon a fantastical backdrop of magic, hierarchies, and strives for power. We have watched the unfolding story of Amakawa Haruto, who is born again into a new world as his soul is merged with that of the orphan Rio. And over three volumes, we have experienced this new Rio’s exciting, dramatic journeys as he crosses kingdoms and countries, meets new people, and forges lifelong bonds, all the while facing inner struggles and enduring growing pains and those of the heart.

From glimpses of Haruto’s past life before his death to the instant of his merging with Rio, we have witnessed their two souls becoming one and the progression of this new life from that fateful moment. We have watched as the new, merged Rio leaves the slums, completes his academy days, and later befriends Latifa and the Spirit Folk. And after traversing the isolated Yagumo Region and learning more about his past in this fantasy world, we are now ready to see Rio, at last, return to the Strahl region.

Yet upon his return, a world-changing event begins. A prophecy predicted ages ago has begun; individuals from Haruto’s world have been summoned as heroes to this fantasy one. Almost immediately, these heroes become affiliated with the major factions of Strahl, and will play vital roles in their politics and power struggles to come. Such a tremendous event will undoubtedly upheave the current balance of noble society and will have long lasting ripples across the kingdoms and this world.

As for Rio, he soon becomes entangled with an unforeseen consequence of this prophetic summoning of heroes. It seems three innocent bystanders were caught up in the summoning along with their companion and intended target. With that fated hero nowhere to be seen, the three find themselves alone and helpless. Soon after, they have an unfortunate encounter with slavers. Before long, Rio happens to cross paths with these slavers, who foolishly threaten him, and when hearing a call for help in Japanese, his once-native tongue, he swiftly intervenes and releases the three from their brief capture. It is soon thereafter Rio discovers that one of these individuals, beyond possibility, beyond belief, is Ayase Miharu. The very Miharu that was once Haruto’s closest friend, first and only love, and who had mysteriously disappeared shortly after starting their first year of high school. How, in all possibilities and potentialities, is Miharu, Haruto’s Miharu, standing before this version of Haruto now? And what destiny awaits her and her two companions who now must work past all tumult and begin new lives in this magical world?

Spirit Chronicles Volume 4 – Eternal You offers quite the story. Intrigue and mystery abound as this volume introduces another isekai instance, though this is a summoning rather than a rebirth into another world. Also, this summoning was predicted, observable, and immediately influential, and so poised to change many aspects of the regional political and militaristic landscapes. Despite all of that, this volume’s main storyline is mostly a microcosmic focus on Rio and his three new companions. Similar to Volume 3, in which there is a distinct focus on the orphan Rio half of the new Rio; his history, family, and relationships; Volume 4 focuses on the Haruto half. A past life full of memories, feelings, and relationships come to the forefront of Rio’s mind and his Haruto half is not making it easy for him to acclimate, process, nor reconcile. It sets up for a wonderful inner journey, as he figures out how to best take care of and prepare the three newcomers to life in a new world.

Regarding the three newcomers, we are privy to a wealth of character development as high schooler Miharu, along with middle schooler Aki and her elementary school stepbrother Masato, must now adjust to this foreign world. As Rio is the only one who speaks and understands Japanese, he begins teaching the three the common languages, and prepares them for the transition from modern day Japan to a world where magic, slavery, and medieval rules are the norm, including a harsher take on survival of the fittest. And during this time, we see the range of emotions experienced by the trio, from stress and fear, to resolve and determination for the chance of reuniting with their other summoned friends.

Overall, the story is mostly pleasant and enjoyable, if a bit predictable in the latter half, while the character development is impressive. Introducing three new characters and providing strong background and personalities is quite the task, yet author Kitayama again displays remarkable skill in doing so. Although the three do possess shades of archetypal personality traits, these traits are added to and expanded on in meaningful ways. This is mostly through their reasoning over their situation, coming to terms with it, and what goals they wish to set for themselves. As for Rio, the Haruto half of his character is also further expanded upon, as we are first reminded of why Haruto’s personality was the way it was up until now. And, presently seeing him work through old feelings and new circumstances provide praiseworthy immersion, though, I am detecting hints that his inner turmoil will be resolved and set aside quicker than I’d like. I feel there is much potential here, but I fear a resolution will be swift and lacking, so I do hope I am wrong. Regardless, what we’re offered in Volume 4 all makes for an intriguing chapter full of memories and rekindling feelings, as well as deep background and new growth. Lastly, I very much appreciate the way in which author Kitayama has the story and characters lend themselves to set a tone or inkling that this volume is the cusp of major events to come. It’s a wonderful setup for a hopeful return and continuation of those overarching storylines that we’ve seen in development since the first volume.

The achievements of Spirit Chronicles Volume 4 – Eternal You are many, mostly through a satisfactory story enhanced by notable character introduction, development, and poignancy of their emotions and feelings for one another. However, this volume is made tougher to grade due to a few standout narrative decisions. On one hand, you have the interactions between Rio and Miharu; a familiarity full of vivid feelings, as a bond between the two is slowly formed anew. We are provided wonderful moments of solid storytelling, reminiscence, and the building, or rebuilding, of a long ago relationship. On the other hand, because this storyline and its characters demand so much attention, most everyone and everything else from the previous volumes is, again, sidelined. A major complaint of mine with Volume 3, author Kitayama has chosen to marginalize too many of the storylines and characters introduced previously for a second consecutive volume. Although I can reason out and understand the decision, as there are limits to who and what receives attention in a single volume, I think adding to an already full cast and story have made things even more crowded. I understand that not every character will be crucial to the plot, and many are needed to fill story or narrative gaps. My present fear, though, is that Aki and Masato, who are already treated as side characters to Miharu, will soon receive the same treatment as so many of the other side characters – as in, we won’t hear from them for such long stretches of time that they challenge irrelevancy.

Another issue I have with Volume 4 regards the execution of what should be a significant character moment, one in which Rio shares his thought process about how he will treat relationships beyond friendship. Rio essentially makes the hard lined decision to not, at least for now, pursue any kind of romantic relationship. My issue is that I feel this needed to be expounded upon, since it’s a major decision for him going forward. The reasons, while sound, are also simplistic and come off as blunt. They lack emotions, even though the reasons themselves are fueled by emotions. Not to mention, it’s all wrapped up in a paragraph or two. It’s such a core moment for the character, yet the delivery fails to impact. Furthermore, the decision clashes with the unignorable sense of a harem eventually forming, as discussions about Rio and romance are terribly plentiful. Whether this is meant as a pause to the discussion, a red herring, or an actual resolution, the scene ultimately falls flat, leaving me with a feeling that nothing has actually been decided on at all.

A final criticism of mine relates to the speech styles of the new characters, in that they all sound, or read, far too similarly. This is due to their dialogue having been written with near identical syntax and diction, including slang, abbreviations, and such. Understandably, characters that come from similar backgrounds may sound the same; however, it’s to such an extent that it becomes difficult at times to tell who is speaking. Also the overly similar speech makes certain moments of dialogue between characters awkward and unnatural. If I were to speculate, perhaps this is a translation issue, in which the translator or editors failed to re-introduce the differences in word choices or structure. Elements like nuance and implication can be easily lost in translation, and so I do expect an effort to be made to retain them. Or, perhaps this is a misstep by author Kitagawa, failing to have each person speak in their own way. Sure, you can argue that similar characters, those who live in the same community or environment, and who share similar experiences may naturally share speech patterns. However, the extent to which this occurs is both too much of a stretch and, as a result, awkward to read. At its worst, it resulted in my loss of immersion on some occasions. Having said this, these and the issues I discuss above were thankfully not enough to stop me from having an enjoyable read overall.

Spirit Chronicles Volume 4 – Eternal You is a tough one to grade. Its strengths are praiseworthy, which include a wonderful reunion and palpable feelings between Rio and Miharu, and a pivotal plot moment, the summoning of heroes, which will hopefully bring new energy and conflicts to the storylines to come. Also, this volume offers some of the best character development seen in the series thus far. Unfortunately, its issues cannot be easily ignored. These include the neglect of previous characters and storylines, the way in which Rio makes his big decision concerning romance, the questionable decision to add even more characters, and the narrative missteps. None can be easily dismissed, and so in its entirety, I rate Volume 4 a 3.5 stars, though I will say that it only just misses a 4 star rating. This volume is an easy recommendation to those who have found enough to enjoy in this series, as well as those who, like myself, may have found themselves questioning whether or not to continue reading after the previous volume. Simply put, Spirit Chronicles Volume 4 – Eternal You has more than plenty to like, and I am hoping that the tones I’ve picked up throughout the read, those beckoning of major conflicts, reunions, and excitement foreshadowed, do indeed come to fruition in Volume 5.

Review Score
Overall

English translation of Spirit Chronicles Volume 4 – Eternal You and all volumes of Seirei Gensouki: Spirit Chronicles by J-Novel Club. Digital versions of Spirit Chronicles Volume 3, and all volumes, made available through affiliate shops like Amazon.

The post Light Novel Review: Spirit Chronicles Volume 4 – Eternal You appeared first on oprainfall.

Natsu-Mon: 20th Century Summer Kid is not a game I had been watching or was expecting to do a review for. However, when I was informed we had a copy for review, I decided I could use a relaxing summer game to play. Last year, I took on a different game for review that I had hoped would be my relaxing summer game, and it was not that, whatsoever. But Natsu-Mon looked like it could actually be what I hoped and thus, I decided to take it on. I spent 32 hours playing this game throughout August and I’m now finally ready to give my thoughts.

The game takes place during this kid’s summer break in 1999. Satoru is an elementary school kid whose parents have been running a traveling circus troupe. They stop by Yomogi Town where they’ll next be setting up the circus and doing shows later that summer, in the middle of August. Satoru is pretty much left to his own devices while enjoying his summer break in Yomogi. Right from the start you’re sent out to explore the town.

The game is an open-world adventure where you control Satoru and do all kinds of stuff. See, your ultimate goal is to study whatever you want for your summer research project, which all the elementary school kids in town find themselves doing for summer homework. To complete this project, Satoru is provided a study set, which includes a sketchbook and colored pencils for making a picture journal to document his adventures. Throughout the game you can either activate the sketchbook documenting whenever you want during the day, or let it happen automatically when you go to bed each night. Either way the pictures appear on their own, but you can choose how in depth the text goes about the latest events and choose a stamp for the corner of each picture. Satoru draws scenes for events he finds significant that occurred during the day and also all fish and bugs he catches are documented when you newly catch one. Fish, you never really know what you’re catching before reeling them in. You can kinda guess based on the shape or size of their shadows, but otherwise it’s a bit of a mystery. Bugs, you’ll know if they’re brand new ones you haven’t caught yet because new bugs will have white circles around them, and old ones you’ve caught previously won’t.

You’re mostly free to explore and discover stuff at whatever pace you like, since you can change the time speed in the game’s settings to a much slower pace, or a quicker one. One of the circus members, Tokotoko, will collect you each night at 5 for dinner, and also you’ll have to go to bed by 10. If you send yourself to bed before you pass out at 10, you can get up early and do the radio exercises at the local shrine. You’ll get a stamp card to fill out each day that you go. Also, between those hours of 5 and 10 at night, you can’t explore the whole map like you can before dinner, only nearby areas closer to the Ashitaba Guesthouse where you’re staying.

Some of the activities you’ll find yourself spending your August days on are: fishing, catching bugs, climbing stuff, swimming and even helping the local elementary school kids investigate mysteries around town. The fishing rod you won’t get until a few days into the game, and there’s also an acorn shooter you can buy with money you earn. You can sometimes find coins out and about to fund your purchases, but it’s usually mere pocket change. You can get more cash by locating and collecting various colored diamonds in the area and selling them at one of the available shops. Plus, there are other various items laying around worth a bit less, like the numerous plastic and glass bottles laying at construction sites or near rivers. Eventually, you’ll also find dig spots where you’ll either get junk in varying degrees of quality you can sell, or fossils to donate to the local museum. You can donate these fossil pieces to the museum, in addition to very specific rare fish and bugs whenever you manage to catch them. Satoru will get paid for the stuff you donate to the museum too.

I had a lot of fun exploring all over the place, climbing stuff, finding new secrets and investigating the mysteries throughout Yomogi Town. There’s even a neighboring town called Tonari Town. You can take a train between the two towns, or you can take a bus to numerous bus stops across the map as you find and activate them. Also, in the beginning of Natsu-Mon, you won’t be able to climb very far or run for too long at once. Satoru is limited by his Sticker Gauge. This Sticker Gauge is essentially a stamina meter. There is a limited number of stickers you’ll be able to collect and you do this by completing the different tasks available in the game. You’ll get stickers for donating rare bugs to the museum, for playing with a little ghost girl a certain amount of times, for locating very specific ancient treasures, and many other goals found throughout the two towns and surrounding areas.

Atmosphere wise, the game is quite pleasant. There isn’t a lot of music in the game, mostly you’ll be hearing the sounds of nature. For example, the sound of nearby ocean waves rolling in, or the cicadas buzzing on trees. Every now and then though, at certain spots on the map, a bit of pleasing music will play in the background. Visually, the game is a very simple cartoon style. You’ll also see stuff cut-in now and then as you get closer. Although, I’m not sure if this is simply an aspect of the game no matter what, or if you’d also see it on PC. This review is strictly covering my experience with the Switch version of the game.

Ultimately, I truly enjoyed the time I spent on Natsu-Mon: 20th Century Summer Kid. It was fitting to play this game slowly throughout the month of August and it was definitely the carefree summer adventure I was looking for. One last thing I’d like to mention, while on the normal time speed, the game days can seem to move a bit too fast to accomplish much. Despite that, I really do suggest enjoying the game at your own pace and playing it as carefree as possible. A new game plus mode is included, where you can transfer your sticker energy and quests you’ve already completed over to a new path. I wouldn’t worry about getting everything possible done in one playthrough. Also, the game has a $15 DLC expansion with more to do and some extra story revolving around a radio station. Unfortunately, I don’t yet have that DLC and can’t tell you whether or not it’s worth the cost. But, if a relaxing slice-of-life summer adventure in a Japanese town back in 1999 sounds like a fun time to you, then I do highly recommend this game. I should also mention that while I did spend 32 hours on the game, I spent most days on the relaxed time speed. So, your playtime with this one may vary and you’ll have to decide for yourself if you think it’s worth $40 for the base game.

Review Score
Overall

Review copy was provided by the publisher.

The post REVIEW: Natsu-Mon: 20th Century Summer Kid 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.

If you’re a FINAL FANTASY XIV Online fan, then Eorzea Café is a must-visit stop in Akihabara. You can check out the latest menus online here and make reservations for the Akihabara location here.

If you want to see a spoiler-filled review, then jump to the next paragraph below the photo.

I went to the Akihabara Eorzea Café location in July 2024 as part of my recent trip to Japan, and I booked my reservation 30 days beforehand on the Eorzea Café website. Unlike my prior visit in 2015 which required me to visit a Lawson’s store in Tokyo and navigate a Japanese-only menu to make a reservation (or just show up and hope for a free time slot), this time around the reservation was effortless to make and book in English through Table Check. After clicking through about if I had any food allergies and if I wanted to eat in the café or in an un-themed karaoke room, I was all set for my lunch time seating.

Finding Eorzea Café was fairly easy in Akihabara. The restaurant is just a few minutes’ walk away from the Akihabara metro station, and they smartly have large signs outside that let you know where to enter at and what floor to go to.

When you go up to the correct floor, you’re greeted by a reception area that also has a LOT of FINAL FANTASY XIV Online merchandise for sell that I looked through after checking in for my visit. As you can tell from the pictures, everything there is also available on the different SQUARE ENIX stores. The highlight for me was that it was nice to finally get to smell the different room diffuser scents in person. My favorite? Sharlayan. There is also a spot for taking photos with small signs to hold up and a place where you can write and post small paper notes for your fellow adventurers.

When the reservation started, we were escorted into the Eorzea Café itself. It is a decent sized room with a bar in one corner, TV screens that show game clips on a wall, and tables smartly arranged in the room. Relic weapons from A Realm Reborn adorn the walls (and they were there during my 2015 visit in fact!), and there are copies of the High-Precision Art prints on the walls for sale too. The middle of the restaurant shows off the different Primals and Jobs as stone coasters behind glass, some life-sized Moogle statutes, a FINAL FANTASY XIV Online themed-PC that you can buy, and more. Finally, there is FINAL FANTASY XIV Online music playing nonstop throughout that included everything from A Realm Reborn to Endwalker.

Overall, you could tell that a lot of heart and charm went into designing the Eorzea Café room itself, and it felt genuinely charming. While no one said it outright, this café location is clearly meant to take place in Gridania based upon the backwall design, and it felt like I was really stepping into a place unabashedly meant for FINAL FANTASY XIV Online fans. I was caught off guard by Flow playing midway through my visit, and I found myself catching more small cute details everywhere I looked. All that said, despite being there during the launch of the new expansion, I was a little surprised to not hear any music from Dawntrail despite the restaurant celebrating the expansion’s release.

Photos by author.

When I first sat down at the table, I was given a slip of paper to select my cover-charge included drink and coaster pair. The drink list included one for each job (including Viper and Pictomancer!), a set of drinks themed after the Scions, and a special Dawntrail beverage. There was also your standard sodas and alcohol options. You can also select coasters from the different jobs and Scions.

After placing that paper order, I leafed through the menu. Instead of physical menus like in 2015, it all now takes place on a tablet. The menu had an English language option, and it was easy to navigate through and order from. There are a lot of different drink, food, and dessert options to pick from, and you’re welcome to order as much as you want. There was also staff present who can speak decent English, though it was by no means universal among everyone who was working there.

July 2024 Menu. (Photos by author).

About 10 minutes after we were all seated, what I can only describe as a hypeman took the microphone and held a Cactpot drawing in Japanese after much excitement. Each seat has a number attached to it, and three numbers were drawn. Third prize gets one of a set of mini-tin badges, second place gets a Cactpot-themed mat, and first place gets a HoneyToast dessert. We won the second-place prize, and therefore got the placemat! Additionally, we also got a Dawntrail-themed placemat for attending the café. It was quite cute, to be honest.

While looking through the drink selections, I was struck by how much Eorzea Café clearly focuses on sweetness over anything else. I did not see any options for a spicy, bold flavoring or even a sour/tart focused-drink. Instead, all of the drinks have some type of fruit-based syrup or fruity involvement in them. I am also going to point out here that with each additional order item, we were given an opportunity to select a random sleeved coaster out of a basket.

In celebration of Dawntrail, there were a Golden Passion Soda and a Dawntrail parfait for sale. There is also a Monthly Drink Special based off of the Twelve going on, and I was there in time for Byregot, the Builder’s drink option. Between the two of us, we ordered the Byregot drink, both Dawntrail beverages, and the Pictomancer drink. We considered ordering the Viper beverage, but the three drinks and the parfait was enough sweetness already.

The Pictomancer drink came with three syrups to squeeze into the drink: sakura syrup, bulgar syrup, and passionfruit syrup. The syrups are clearly meant to invoke the Pictomancer painting elements, and the menu encourages you to make your own ‘masterpiece’ by squeezing them into the drink that is a purple haze syrup. I did as instructed before drinking it. I was…not impressed. The drink tasted like a mish-mash of cold super-sweet syrups, and I could not pick out any particular flavor from the four syrups that were now mixed together. That is unfortunate, as I loved the idea behind the drink, but I would never order it again.

The second drink we tried was the Byregot, the Builder beverage. This came with the same purple haze syrup as the Pictomancer, but this time it also had an energy soda and some candy to be added into it on the side. This was surprisingly good. The energy soda was citrusy, and it blended well with the purple haze syrup to add that right amount of sweetness. The candy ‘popped’ in my mouth as I drank, but it did not overpower anything else. There was no taurine bitterness like you’d expect from an energy drink, and I did not feel a ‘jolt’ of energy from the soda itself, which makes me wonder exactly what kind of energy drink they included in it.

Finally, there are the two Dawntrail drinks. The Golden Passion Soda has blue lychee and passion fruit syrups, soda water, champagne gold jelly, and a slice of lemon. This actually was my favorite soda overall. The blue lychee and passionfruit both clearly came through, and the soda helped to cut through the flavors and prevent it from being a sweet mish-mash like the Pictomancer drink. The champagne gold jelly came in small chunks that I kept sucking up through the straw that reminded me more of boba than anything else. Finally, the lemon added just the right amount of citrus flavoring to off balance everything else. I drank most of this in a few moments, realizing what I was doing, and then offered the rest to my partner.

The Dawntrail parfait is not a drink despite being listed in that section. It comes with champagne gold jelly, custard whip, mango fruit, sponge cake, orange sauce, vanilla ice cream, orange slices, white chocolate, French parsley, and a wafer. This parfait was not just ‘good’ in comparison to everything else, but a genuinely good dessert dish in its own right. The sponge cake mixed with the gold jelly, mango, vanilla ice cream, and orange sauce to create something that reminded me exactly of a breaded dreamsicle. It was sweet and creamy, and there was just the right balance of everything for the parfait. That said, the white chocolate and parsley was quite superfluous, and it did not add anything to the overall parfait.

As for food, I ordered the Adventurer’s Taco in honor of G’raha Tia, and my partner ordered the Mabimabi Fish and Chips. Both foods arrived fairly promptly, and we dug in. Unfortunately, the food was the worst part of the entire experience, despite both being a filling meal portion.

The Adventurer’s Taco is a single, plate-sized taco, and was served to me cold. It came with lettuce, taco meat, cheese, salsa, red onion slices, and tortilla chips inside of a flour tortilla. As I ate it with a knife/fork set, I found myself thinking that there was no seasoning added to the taco meat whatsoever. Serving this dish cold was also a baffling decision, as it did not help to cohesively blend the flavors together. Instead, I could taste each food ingredient on its own even while being eaten together. It did not taste bad, don’t get me wrong, it just was extremely bland and mostly flavorless.

The Mabimabi Fish and Chips didn’t fare much better. The chips (‘french fries’, really) were regular cut and crispy, but they tasted unsalted and unseasoned. The fish did taste like fish, but they were fairly lightly battered without any seasoning added to them. The sauces (tonkatsu, tartar, and ketchup) included with them were fairly unremarkable as well. That said, it was a filling meal portion for this dish as well.

Despite my partner’s initial reservations on if we would be able to really spend an hour-and-a-half there, we did. Because we had ordered the parfait and split it, we did not order any additional dessert. Instead, we just hung out and chatted while enjoying the music and decorations. When time was up, we filed out into a line and paid. The checkout process was unremarkably smooth, and while they had a stamp rally going on at the time, we definitely did not order anywhere near enough to warrant us winning anything from it.

Ultimately, I am giving this place a four out of five stars. That is odd, considering the quality of the food at…well…a restaurant. For me, the ultimate question was: Is Eorzea Café worth spending your time at when you’re visiting Japan? For fans of FINAL FANTASY XIV Online, the answer is yes. The process of getting a reservation is simple with multiple time slots during the day, it is simple to get to the café location, and it is painless to order from even if you don’t speak Japanese. The theming is incredibly on point too, and I loved being immersed in a place that is tied to a video game that I adore so much. I just wish the food itself was better, unfortunately. I am guessing this is meant to make sure the place appeals to as many people as possible by making the palette as simple as possible. All that said: my trip to Eorzea Café was easily slotted into my overall time in Akihabara as our lunch meal, and I am personally glad that I did so.

Review Score
Overall

Have you been to Eorzea Café? What do you think of the food and drink selection there?

Let us know in the comments below!

The post REVIEW (7/2024): Eorzea Café in Akihabara is a Gorgeously Themed FINAL FANTASY XIV Restaurant 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.

Tickets for FINAL FANTASY VII Rebirth Orchestra World Tour are on sale now.

If you’re reading this review trying to decide whether to go to see FINAL FANTASY VII Rebirth Orchestra World Tour, then the answer is ‘Yes’. All the new music you love will be in it, and it is all performed amazingly by the ShinRa Orchestra and ShinRa Chorus.

Surprisingly, you also do not need to have played FINAL FANTASY VII Rebirth in order to enjoy this concert. The cutscenes paired alongside the music from FINAL FANTASY VII Rebirth Orchestra World Tour very, very loosely retell the plot of the game but without any more spoilers in context than you would get from watching the game’s pre-launch trailers.

Finally, the concert is around two hours long with a 20-ish minute intermission after the first hour or so, and it was all quite tightly paced together.

If you want a more detailed review, jump below the following picture to see on.

Review Score
Overall

Spoilers Start Here

I attended the world premiere of FINAL FANTASY VII Rebirth Orchestra World Tour at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, and I really loved what I saw and heard as this tightly timed concert very loosely follows the plot of FINAL FANTASY VII Rebirth from start to finish over just a bit more than two hours. It opens up with music playing over the game’s prologue, and it ultimately finishes pre-encore with the ending fights of the game. All of the in-game chapters in between – the Grasslands, Costa Del Sol, Gongaga, Golden Saucer, and more – are very much represented here both on screen and in music.

What really surprised me though was how the music was arranged, as around a fourth of FINAL FANTASY VII Rebirth Orchestra World Tour was performed as part of one medley or another. It would often seem that we were spending far too short a period of time with one piece or another before it would seamlessly shift into something else. For a nearly 20-minute segment of the performance, all of the field region pieces, which included Grasslands, Hollow Skies, Junon Region, With Heavy Heart, Mt. Corel, South Corel, Jungles of Gongaga, Cosmo Canyon Region, and Nibel Region, were filed down to around two minutes each and played one after another more or less seamlessly.

Thankfully, the majority of the pieces, such as Galian Beast and Queen’s Blood, were played in full. As a Queen’s Blood fanatic, I thought the live ShinRa Orchestra pulled it off perfectly, even though the deck in the videos that accompanied it was maddeningly simple considering the wide variety of cards and strategies available for people to select and play with. It was also a lot of fun to see the Grand Parade mini-game played in full with all the correct button presses during Rufus’ Welcoming Ceremony, and I could actually watch the parade happen for once instead of trying to keep time with what buttons I am supposed to hit next on the PlayStation 5 controller.

The ShinRa Orchestra played all of this music masterfully, and it was almost indistinguishable from the music heard in FINAL FANTASY VII Rebirth. This is a truly professional orchestra, and one that knew we wanted to hear the music we fell in love with in the game. I was sitting in the second row from the front, and all the different sections worked beautifully in harmony together, as conducted by the revered Arnie Roth, without overpowering each other. Despite what Mr. Roth said was a compressed rehearsal schedule, they played all of the music like seasoned professionals and there was a lot of heart to it all. I do want to especially point out the horns section during Welcome to the Golden Saucer: they really elevated themselves above and beyond everyone else present.

Surprisingly, the only thing that outshined the ShinRa Orchestra was the ShinRa Chorus. I have attended concerts for many years now, and this was probably my favorite chorus so far. The moment I was most eager to hear in person, the music from the Gongaga Jungle, had the perfect amount of haunting vocals present, and I honestly would have believed it was faked if I didn’t seen the people singing firsthand. And this was not a one-off situation, either. Whether Loveless Symphonic Suite- Gift of the Goddess or Sephiroth Reborn Symphony was being performed, the ShinRa Chorus was crisp, easily heard, and blended so well together they overshadowed everything else in a positive way.

Towards the top of this review, I talked about how FINAL FANTASY VII Rebirth Orchestra World Tour does not spoil the plot of the game beyond what you would see in the pre-release trailers. And this is quite true. While you will undoubtedly recognize the different areas of the game if you’ve only seen the trailers and maybe played FINAL FANTASY VII when it came out for the PlayStation One, you will not be spoiled on this new game’s story in a significant way. In fact, the heavy story beats from the last fourth of the game, including the moment from the apex of the story that I most wanted to see, is not present at all. If you’ve played FINAL FANTASY VII Rebirth, then you will know what I am talking about content-wise.

For me, this…was surprising. A lot of the biggest, heartfelt moments in FINAL FANTASY VII Rebirth come from this absent content. To see so little of those big emotional story beats from the last part of the game, other than perhaps a little bit in the medley of A Portentous Sky and End of the World and in the encore, surprised me. I was fully expecting to cry during this concert from the one part of the game that made me gasp and do so, and I was surprised that didn’t happen. (And yes, I am being purposefully vague, but you know what I’m talking about if you’ve played the game.)

FINAL FANTASY VII Rebirth Orchestra World Tour ultimately made me feel like SQUARE ENIX wanted to err on the side of caution to not fully spoil the game for people who either haven’t played it or haven’t finished it yet. Even of the new content FINAL FANTASY VII Rebirth plot-heavy cinematics present, it felt definitely like it was made up of clips that you wouldn’t quite grasp without surrounding context. Considering that other SQUARE ENIX concerts previously did not shy away from indulging in spoilers to great effect, it makes that choice here all the more baffling for me. After all, if you’re coming to a video game concert, you assume that you’re going to be spoiled on the full game.

One other, minor, issue, I had with the cutscenes was that it felt like some of them didn’t know quite where to end and so more or less just cut themselves off. Without spoiling everything, I was surprised that Towards Mt. Nibel and Main Theme of FINAL FANTASY VII- Battle Edit ended the way they did on a slightly weird note. That said, there are others, like Galian Beast or Cosmo Canyon- Sanctum of Planetology, that ended perfectly in a fully satisfying way cinematically.

Finally, one other issue I had with the concert was the performance of No Promises to Keep- Loveless Version. To my great surprise, it was presented as only an instrumental. While the strings section was clearly intended to replace Loren Allred’s voice in the performance, I think they struggled to do so here. This was an especially jarring choice since they played the full game cinematic against it where the song is in fact vocally performed. While I understand that Ms. Allred can’t come along for a full worldwide tour, I was surprised they didn’t have a guest vocalist to fill in.

Now, all of this does not detract much from the concert. Far, far from it. SQUARE ENIX and AWR Productions have managed to create a breathtaking concert that shows off a lot of the new music in FINAL FANTASY VII Rebirth over slightly more than two hours. And honestly? I adored it. Jungles of Gongaga, even though it was part of a medley, was everything I wanted to hear in person, I loved Loveless Symphonic Suite- Gift of the Goddess, and Galian Beast is probably one of the best pieces that HAS to be heard and seen live.

There are two encore numbers, which shouldn’t surprise anyone as they have been mainstays of any FINAL FANTASY orchestra performance for over a decade-and-a-half now. And the reason they always fall into those encore slots is because they are so beautiful to hear in person and so strikingly different from each other that everyone has to hear them at least once in person.

Ultimately, if you love FINAL FANTASY VII, and even if you haven’t quite yet gotten around to playing FINAL FANTASY VII Rebirth, you should attend FINAL FANTASY VII Rebirth Orchestra World Tour.

Review Update (September 19, 2024)

Since the original publication of this concert review, I attended the Munich, Germany performance of FINAL FANTASY VII Rebirth Orchestra World Tour at the Olympiahalle. At that performance, Eric Roth (who previously conducted the A New World: intimate music from FINAL FANTASY concert that I reviewed in 2022), conducted the ShinRa Symphony Orchestra. While I would say there was less cosplay at the Munich show than at Los Angeles, the cosplay that did show up was no less amazing.

The concert was still absolutely amazing to watch. The overall setlist was the same as during the Los Angeles debut performance, but the changes that Arnie Roth discussed with me during his interview to shift the Golden Saucer songs starting with Bare Your Soul to after the intermission was implemented for this performance. In my opinion, moving both that song and Welcome to the Golden Saucer to after the intermission really helped to even out both halves of the concert in a very positive way.

Eric Roth was energetic, and he kept stepping back and forth on the stage while working his magic upon the orchestra. Both him and the other conductor, Arnie Roth, are excellent in the conducting roles and I honestly do not prefer one conductor over the other. Eric Roth also interacted with the audience between a lot of the different pieces being played, and he made sure to introduce the different musical numbers after he finished conducting them. I enjoyed his light banter, and I could tell he really loved conducting the music on stage.

Something I also experienced for the first time during this show was the use of stage lights. Each song performed had a different color of light or lights backing it up across the stage and the Olympiahalle. For example, Queen’s Blood had a mixed blue and red motif, Galian Beast was solid red, and Aerith’s Theme was white. These lighting elements really enhanced the orchestra performance by adding a visual ‘pop’ of color to the audio/video components already present. I really hope this is something that FINAL FANTASY VII Rebirth Orchestra World Tour and AWR Music will be implementing whenever possible at future shows.

If you asked me what performance was better, I would be hard pressed to tell you. Both the Los Angeles and Munich ones were fantastic, but I really think the edge goes to Munich solely due to the rebalancing of the setlist before and after the intermission. If you can attend this concert somewhere in the world, and you’re a FINAL FANTASY VII Rebirth fan, then you should definitely go – whatever issues I listed elsewhere previously in my review notwithstanding. I certainly wouldn’t mind attending a third time, if possible.

At the close of this updated review, there is one last thing I want to point out. When the opening notes of Aerith’s Theme played in Los Angeles, there was what I would describe as a ‘gasp of happiness’ that overcame the crowd. You could tell that a lot of people in attendance were excited to hear that particular piece live – most likely for the first time ever for them. When I went to Munich, I was definitely surprised to hear that exact same sound wash across Olympiahalle during those same opening notes. There is apparently something absolutely universal, no matter what country you’re in, about Aerith’s Theme for fans of FINAL FANTASY VII and FINAL FANTASY VII Rebirth.

Review Score
Overall

Tickets for FINAL FANTASY VII Rebirth Orchestra World Tour are on sale now.

What is your favorite music composition from FINAL FANTASY VII Rebirth? 

 Are you planning on attending one of the upcoming concert dates?

Let us know in the comments below!

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Back in 2017, I reviewed Tokyo Xanadu on the Vita and had a blast with it. I never got around to playing the enhanced Tokyo Xanadu eX+ version that released on consoles sometime later, so when Aksys said they were bringing over the Nintendo Switch port of that version I jumped on a chance to check it out. Let’s see if one of my favorite Vita games plays just as well on the Switch.

The story takes place in Tokyo 10 years after a massive earthquake wreaked havoc on the city. Many in the city perished on that day, but the city slowly rebuilt to its former glory. There is a dangerous shadow that hangs over the city known as the Xanadu. Kou Tokisaka and a group of his friends get drawn into investigating the Xanadu, and this will lead them on an adventure that will test the very fabric of their beings.

While I really enjoyed the story of the Vita release, I felt the extra chapters in the Tokyo Xanadu eX+ version really did flesh out these great characters even more. The story itself is pretty basic and most people will see where it’s going right off the bat, but the interesting characters will hook you instantly. You cannot help but keep playing to see how everything is going to turn out for Kou and his friends.

Graphically, the game looks great on the Switch. All the character models are nicely detailed and the enemies all have unique features as well. Some will be palette swaps of course, but the boss monsters are all huge and imposing. Environments look great as well, even if they aren’t quite as detailed as the monster and character models. Tokyo Xanadu eX+ runs at a very consistent frame rate on the Switch dock or in handheld mode, so there is nothing to worry about in the performance department.

The soundtrack was one of my favorite parts of the Vita version and that hasn’t changed a bit with this new release. They added a few new tracks to the mix that were just as good of quality as the previous ones, making a great soundtrack even better. The voice acting is all done in Japanese and the actors do a great job bringing these characters to life.

Since the gameplay here is largely the same as the Vita release, I’m just going to talk about the new aspects. I know this one has been out before as well, but this was my first time playing it, so it was new to me. If you want to know more about the basic gameplay, please check out the Vita review.

First up, let’s talk a bit about the revised localization. Now it’s been a hot minute since I played the Vita version, but I did notice the tone of this release is more inline with what you see from other Falcom games. The terminology matches up with what I’ve seen in the Trails series, so I think this adds consistency to these releases, which is a good thing. I did notice a few errors here and there like the one pictured below. If the text is complaining about emotes, you should probably actually put them in the text on the phone. That said, overall I think the team did a pretty good job here, outside of a few glaring errors.

Overall I enjoyed my time with Tokyo Xanadu eX+. It played just as great as I remember and the new additions really helped me get into these great characters that much more. I love the new music tracks and the voice acting is top notch as well. Players just picking up Tokyo Xanadu eX+ should snag this version ASAP. If you own a previous release of this version, I don’t think the new localization is enough to justify a purchase on its own, but the game does come with all the previous DLC, making it somewhat of a good value at $49.99.

Review Score
Overall

Game was provided by the publisher for review.

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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 was pretty excited when Atlus announced Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance a few months ago. I love the vanilla release, so adding an all new storyline, with new characters and demons sounded like a great time to me. I’ve spent around 40 hours with the game, and achieved one of the many endings. This means it’s time for me to share my thoughts on this one. Did it meet my high expectations? Let’s find out.

This release contains all the story content of the original game, and a brand new Vengeance path. This path will introduce you to a new character named Yoko Hiromine. She goes to a different school and seemingly has the power to fight the demons as well. She is a very grounded girl and looks at everything through a very objective lens. Like the previous story, our young protagonist will bond with his Nahobino ally and fight to save this world from the demons.

The new story path is more interesting than the vanilla one, but honestly it’s the character and demon interactions that make this one really shine. The writers went above and beyond to give everyone a lot of personality and it really comes through in the writing. I think fans of the previous release and new fans will find a lot to love here. The localization team should get a shout out here as well, since without their work a lot of this gold would’ve been lost.

The gameplay here is very similar to the vanilla release. You will still explore each area of the game, taking on side quests and collecting demons to fuse into stronger ones for combat. That doesn’t mean there haven’t been some additions and QoL improvements, though. First off, you can save anywhere now. I really loved this feature cause I’m always afraid my console won’t wake up from sleep correctly and I’ll lose some progress. There are new demons for you to collect, two new locations to explore in Shinjuku and Shakan, and you can interact with your demons in the Demon Haunts. Interacting with them will improve their stats and gain you some powerful items as well. Other new features include a compendium fusion system, guest characters that can be used in combat and much more. With all this, even old players will have plenty of new stuff to play around with in this release. If you want to know more about combat and gameplay features that didn’t change, please check out my review of the original Shin Megami Tensei V.

Graphically, Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance looks fantastic. The amazing environments and highly detailed character and demon models make it one of the best looking Switch games out there. The new demon designs are top notch as well, especially Nahobeeho, as cosplaying Jack Frost is just a win!  The game runs at a steady framerate, but there is some graphical pop in every now and then. This doesn’t take away anything from the fantastic experience though.

There are plenty of new battle tracks to enjoy in this release. I found myself rocking out to each of them as I slayed all the demons that opposed me. The new areas have some great new themes as well, Shinjuku’s really stands out with some creepy chanting in the background that really immerses you into the overall atmosphere of the area. The voice acting is all great; no matter if you go with the Japanese or English cast, you’re getting top quality VA that really brings these characters and demons to life.

Overall, Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance took an excellent release and just made it better. The new areas are great, new demons spice up the already crazy roster you could obtain and the Vengeance story path really shows off the game’s characters in a new light. This game is well worth the $59.99 price tag for anyone who doesn’t own the initial release, and even if you do I still think there is enough new content here to warrant a purchase. Now if you will excuse me, I have some post-game demons to round up!

Review Score
Overall

Game was provided by the publisher for review.

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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.

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