My Time at Portia, Reverse Rebirth

This is just a follow-up to the review already written by Somaria, but I have my own things I wanted to say about this game.

I don’t really even know where to start, I’ve stated before that my love for Harvest Moon and Rune Factory runs deep, and I have been starved of both for years, I think the last Story of Seasons game came out in 2015? Stardew Valley is a good option, but it hardly scratches the itch for a new Rune Factory like game that I have had since 4, which thankfully will be seeing a re-release for the Switch later this year, but that is besides the point.

After first hearing about My Time at Portia, my interest was peaked. It really looked like it would scfatch an itch that I have had for a while, and it was being released by Team 17, who we know as the publishers of Overcooked, honestly, this was looking to have the makings of a fantastic game, and all we could do is wait. Wait while the PC version was released months prior, wait while people received review copies, wait for a release window that was promised, but ultimately came 3 hours late. Honestly that should have been a tip off of what was to come. The Portia twitter assured everyone that the game would release at midnight in our local time zones, but we didn’t get the ability to download the game until 3 A.M. and there was no transparency in between that time.

For clarity’s sake, we both played the Switch version of the game, which apparently is the worst version of the game, so take everything I am about to say with that in mind. To call Portia buggy would be an understatement. Sometimes the game would crash arbitrarily during loading screens. Sometimes you might get stuck on nothing, with nothing to do but wait for the day to run out. Sometimes you would clip through a wall in a dungeon, where time is frozen so the only option you would have is to restart the game. Speaking of restarting the game, and this is likely beating a dead horse, but the boot time for Portia is atrocious, it would take anywhere between 3 to 5 minutes before the game was done loading itself, and this was AFTER a day 1 patch that supposedly fixed the loading times.

Even though this game had a mountain of issues to work through we still put a large amount of time into the game, between both of us, we probably racked up around 300 hours, and it was because for the most part, the fun we were having with the game, aside from chugs in combat, was outweighing the games more minor issues, except for the crashes, those were really hard to look past. A patch was coming to address these issues though, so in our minds we just kept telling ourselves to wait for the patch, and that patch came nearly a full month after the game was released. Somehow it made things worse. Now every time you opened a menu the game would freeze every time you closed it, it was only about 3 or 4 seconds, but it was enough to be annoying after being left to build up. Character animations would occasionally break, on more than one occasion I witnessed the player character walking around, head tilted upwards, and the only way to fix it was to go to sleep. Sleeping by the way, was the only way to save the game, which is a flaw if I have ever seen one.

It’s worth mentioning that while we waited for the patch, the Portia twitter page, and other information site were completely silent. we never received any indication that the patch was coming out soon, until the day it dropped.

I realize I am probably asking a lot from an indie game, but honestly a little quality control would have gone a long way, The PC was out for months before the game was released on console, they had plenty of time to address issues they had with the build they knew ahead of time would be releasing on console. It is disappointing to see a game with as much promise as Portia has being left to crumble under its own weight, and there is virtually no excuse for this. The Switch may be an inferior console in terms of power, but I dare someone to look at Portia and tell me that it uses up as much power as something like Breath of the Wild, Mario Kart, or even some higher end 3rd party games like FF X.

Portia is a very bare bones game, You run a craft shop, you collect materials, you use those materials to help build up the town, and that is about as much to it as there is. The jobs the game asks you to do only vary by the degree of difficulty they have. It was fine though, we pressed on until the issues we had kept us both from wanting to play the game anymore. It’s sad, because this is exactly the type of game that I love, and I really want it to be more than it is. Maybe they’ll fix it down the line, and I can finally return to build things in peace, without the threat of random crashes, invisible trees, and just a general lack of quality control.

Don’t play My Time at Portia on Switch, I would almost urge you not to play it on console at all. Not for a long while anyway. One day maybe.

If you are like me and love the idea of a life sim game mixed with RPG elements like dungeon crawling and crafting, then I would say wait for Rune Factory 4 Special which is due out sometime later this year. Otherwise, if you can’t wait, Maybe try Stardew Valley.

Kyle

The Caligula Effect: Overdose. I Could Have Just Bought ToCS.

This is less a review, and more of a ramble. The Caligula Effect came out on the PSVita in 2016. I only really knew about the game because it made the rounds in the small JRPG community I was a part of on Facebook. The big draw to it was that it was a game created by one of the previous heads of the Original Persona games. I figured, I like Persona, what could possibly go wrong. I never bought the Vita version of the game though. I don’t really know what I was playing in 2016, but I know it was a big year for JRPG’s in general.

Fast forward to 2019, and boom, a remake of The Caligula Effect titled The Caligula Effect: Overdose is released in March. Having only ever heard decent things about the game, I was finally ready to jump on the train. (It’s worth noting that I had been feeling some serious gaming burnout due to how disappointed I was with Kingdom Hearts 3, and this seemed like the game that was gonna finally drag me out of my rut) I had a lot of faith in the Caligula Effect. I pre-ordered it in March, and waited until the game was set to come out.

One of the tings that was selling me on the game was that the game’s soundtrack was composed largely by composers I recognized and liked from the Project Diva games. I’m sorry to say that I didn’t really end up liking much of the music played. It’s not that it’s bad, but rather each Dungeon thing has a very small loop, that plays over and over.

Overall I found the game to be extremely boring, so much so that we couldn’t even finish the game. The concept that the plot goes for is interesting, but there wasn’t an English dub, and the actual written dialogue is presented in such a way that it’s actually boring to read. On the whole, the way that the games presentation was dealt with, really left me uninterested in the events taking place around me. A large part of the story can be boiled down to, The good guys want to leave this virtual world they have realized they are trapped in, and the bad guys wanna stop the good guys from doing that.

Another major selling point was that the combat system would allow you to view how moves would play out before you locked them in. This system would allow you to do a bunch of super clever things with your party members, and none of these things matter, because the game is very easy. Most of the time, you can get through battles by mashing the x button until you win, and because the game heals you automatically after each battle, any damage you take is inconsequential as long as you win.

All in all, The Caligula Effect: Overdose failed to keep me invested in the plot, nad the combat, and it feels kind of disappointing, to say the least. I had very high hopes for this game, and I feel like what I got was not what I was hoping it would be. I bought Trails of Cold Steel afterwards.

Kyle

Yoshi’s Crafted World: I Have Another Request for You

I want to state up front that this game was extremely disappointing.

I only ever buy two to three games each month, and in March, Yoshi’s Crafted World was one such game.

Apparently Yoshi games have a history of quality inconsistency, and this one happened to be one of the worse ones. Having never really bought a Yoshi game before, I have always admired them from afar. This game was perfect for streaming, it was a brand new first party Nintendo title, those are usually pretty good. And so we began.

I played the game Co-op with Somaria. We did the entire thing live on stream, and it was a disaster. We thought it would be fun to go the extra mile, and 100% the game, because if we hadn’t it would have been over fairly quickly. It wasn’t fun.

There are some good points to be had, but there are only a few, so I will cover them first. Aesthetically, Crafted World has real charm to it. The Arts and Crafts vibe that the game went for was a really pleasing experience. Trains were made of coffee cans, houses made from cardboard boxes, and platforms made from things like rubber bands. The entire game was cute, and visibly pleasing, the first time. One thing that other Nintendo games could stand to learn from this game was how it handles Co-op. In the past players would often get in each others way, and they would often harm each other by accident. The camera also doesn’t cooperate very well with two or more people on screen. This game negates that problem by allowing the Yoshi to piggyback off one another. One person handles the platforming, and the other person would aim and throw eggs. this works well, and it keeps both players from getting frustrated that one player keeps killing the other.

From here though, we go downhill.

Musically this game is atrocious. The soundtrack consists of about four different songs, and they play on repeat for each of the levels. I have no idea who okayed this, because Yoshi games have had good music in the past. The instruments used don’t to the game any favors either. Someone decided to record the main theme with a recorder, and it sounds awful the entire way through.

I miss the Amiibo support from Yoshi’s Wooly World. This is a minor complaint, but there, you could tap almost any amiibo, and get a stylized Yoshi to represent the character you used. Crafted World give you an Amiibo Box costume for pretty much every non-Mario Amiibo you use, so it feels like it isn’t worth it.

Segueing to costumes however, there isn’t really anything bad about them. You get new costumes themed around each area from capsule machines that you use in game currency to buy. They are cute, but they don’t really serve any function outside of protecting you from a set number of hits, before they fall off. Because no costume does anything different from another, it kind of defeats the purpose of buying multiple costumes unless you were going for completion, which we were, so we did.

Difficulty wise, Yoshi games are generally easier than most other platformers. The same is true here, however, there is a collectible you get in each stage for making it through the stage with full health, those can sometimes be tricky… unless you don your costume armor. The real difficulty comes from finding every single collectible in a stage. Each stage has a set number of flowers you have to find, either by finding them in a cloud, completing a challenge, or just in some random corner of the stage you would never thing to check. On top of the flowers, you had to collect 100 coins in each stage, this was never really an issue, coins are everywhere. There were also twenty red coins hidden in each stage, and these were usually the hardest to find. I can’t count the number of times that we would reach the end of a stage only to see that we only collected 19 red coins, and we would have to play the entire thing over, sometimes multiple times, just to find one singular red coin. the saving grace here is that most stages are short, and could be run through in about two minutes if you didn’t care about getting hit. Each stage also has a flipside version, in which you have to find 3 poochy pups hidden within the level, and if you get them in a certain time limit you get an additional flower.

Easily the worst part of this game though is the requests. After finish a world, a character will call you over and ask you to go find a hidden object in the stage for them. Sometimes this is a large easily found object, sometimes it is a small object, and sometimes it is multiple objects hidden throughout one level, or occasionally all levels in the area. These are awful. The tediousness involved in finding these objects brings this game down to almost unplayable levels. Each world has about 10 or so requests, that require you to go into a level, look for a thing, leave, go to another level, look for a thing, leave, and so on and so forth. It’s bad enough that these are levels you would have already played through once, but if you have a hard time finding something, you may end up having to play the same level multiple times just to find the one thing you are missing. This single-handedly added nearly 20 hours to our playtime. The one saving grace to this request system is that once you have found the last of the items you were sent to look for, the game gives you the option to leave the stage instead of having to go through the whole thing. It’s a small comfort compared to the tediousness at hand to be sure.

I am sure there is some fun to be had with Yoshi’s Crafted World, but we didn’t have it. It feels unfinished in some aspects, and the padding is out of this world annoying. If you wanted to by this game, I would say whatever you do, don’t try to complete it, it isn’t worth it, especailly since Nintendo refuses to use an achievement system.

Yoshi’s Crafted World is available on Nintendo Switch.

Kyle

Super Smash Brothers Ultimate: Isabelle is a Troll

Boy it’s been a while, my last post was a month ago, and a lot has changed around here since then. What hasn’t changed however, is my need to write about Video Games so here we go!

Super Smash Bros is a strange concept that has no right to work as well as it does. I still remember as a kid seeing that now infamous commercial of a guy in a Mario suit beating up another guy in a Pikachu suit. Those images are forever burned in my mind. Now here we are at the end of 2018, and what started as a game with only 12 playable characters, and like 9 stages, has evolved into one with over 70 characters, and over a hundred stages. Smash Ultimate is a culmination of everything that the Smash series has done to this point, incorporating all of the characters from games in the series past, and some that are newcomers, but feel like they belonged there from the start.

For those unfamiliar with Smash as a series, it typically carries itself like a party game, but beneath its exterior is a complex system that has lasted the test of time, and become one of the most watched fighting games in existence, beating out fighting game kingpins like Street Fighter and Tekken.

The systems in place in Smash aren’t particularly complex. Beat up a character until their health is high enough for you to sumo them out of the arena. Each character gets a varied set of attacks that play on their video game roots. Mario for example has weaponized his classic fireballs, while Samus can use her iconic charge beam to blast foes away. Over the years the series has added in some third party icons to match with the Nintendo powerhouses, like Mega Man from Capcom, or Pac-Man from Bandai Namco. in addition to a characters move sets, there are also items derived from various franchises, like the bob-bombs and power stars from the Mario games, or the Warp Star and Star Rod from the Kirby games. Finally, each character has access to a final smash, which can be granted in one of two ways, either by breaking a smash ball, or by filling an optional meter.

The stages themselves also prevent challenges should you want them. Mega Man’s Wily Fortress stage can produce a Yellow Devil, which will come in and attack characters indiscriminately. The stages may also auto scroll, which can keep players on their toes.

With so many things to look at, it can be kind of easy to feel overwhelmed while playing Smash Ultimate, and if I tried to cover every playable character, I could be here for a week. Rest assured though, each character brings something new to the table, well each one except the clone characters, of which there are plenty, so many that the game embraces them, and gives them the title of “Echo Fighter”.

The biggest addition that Smash Ultimate adds to the series is the Spirit system, which replaces the trophies of previous titles. The Spirits happen to also be the main focus of Smash Ultimate’s World of Light single player mode.

A new single player experience is something that fans have wanted since Brawl’s Subspace Emissary. However, where Subspace Emissary was an interesting way to show character interactions, and had a pretty interesting platformer based system, World of Light doesn’t deliver on that. Instead, World of Light gives the player a map with characters to fight, each with some form of gimmick during the battle. The map is large, the campaign is long, and honestly, I wouldn’t have done this if I were playing it alone, because I just don’t care. Special thanks to @gamesnerd for sitting through this with me. Admittedly, World of Light does some interesting things, there are certain points on the map that, in order to interact with them, you have to have a specific spirit to use. For instance, early on we found a boat, that we needed to find Animal Crossing’s Kapp’n to use. There were some spirits that were harder to get than others, but for the most part, the spirit fights were mundane, and were over in less than a minute. All the same though, the campaign lasted us a total of 25 hours, and we even got the “True Ending”. I can see where this mode would cause some serious burnout among people if they weren’t pacing themselves properly. For what it is, we had fun with it.

I’m no expert, so I don’t know if I can comment on balance, but even to an amateur, it’s clear that this game isn’t balanced properly. Some characters have advantages that make it really hard to fight against them. The AI in the game is also some of the most aggressive I have ever seen, other times though, it is the dumbest, with computer opponents sometimes just jumping off the stage for no reason.

I’ve heard the online is bad, but I personally haven’t encountered many problems with it. Nintendo’s track record with online connections is pretty poor though, so I believe what other people say about their problems.

With DLC slated to come out eventually, and the competitive scene that Smash has, I believe that Smash Ultimate is going to be in the gaming conversation for a while yet. It is a fun experience for one person, but it can be better with friends.

If you and to get in on the conversation, Smash Ultimate is available on Nintendo Switch

Kyle

Kingdom Hearts III: Seventeen Years

I don’t even know where to begin with Kingdom Hearts 3. I have grown with this series, I have lived this series for so long, and when the wait for an end was finally over, I can’t help but wonder if it was worth it all.

normally the best place to start is the beginning, but honestly, I had problems with the game before it even started. Dearly Beloved has been around since the start of the series. It is the staple start-up menu theme, and even though it is a rather simple melody, it is one of the finest pieces of music to grace an opening screen. With each game, the melody has grown more complex, with accompanying instruments, and added melodies, but the core has always been there. KH3 immediately throws this tradition away, as the core melody for Dearly Beloved is lost in a mess of other instruments. I am truly disappointed by this. The song that plays is still a good song, but it isn’t Dearly Beloved anymore.

Continuing with the music theme, you don’t get very far in the game before you hit the next jarring piece of music. “Face My Fears” is the opening theme of KH3, and it is surprisingly good considering that it was made by Hikaru Utada, the main vocalist for all other Kingdom Hearts themes, and Skrillex, who generally makes a specific type of music that I don’t like. Through some restraint though, “Face My Fears” is a really nice song, and the accompanying video, a CG masterpiece chronicling 17 years of story, is chilling. The power of this combination can’t be understated

It’s hard to talk about the story of KH3 because the game is still so fresh. But it follows the paths of its predecessors by mixing Disney worlds into a Square Enix branded JRPG, a combination that shouldn’t work, but has stood tall over the years. Each world visited in KH3 is unique save for 3 of them, though of those 3 one scoots by on a technicality thanks to a clever troll move at the beginning of the game. Some worlds are retellings of more modern Disney movies, with Sora just kind of being there. Others, seem to take place after the movies that they are based on. If you are a Disney fan, it might be nice to see some characters doing things after their respective movies. It’s after these Disney worlds wrap themselves up that the meat of the plot relevant story bits begin to shine through.

This is also where things get spoiler heavy, so I will try to move about this as elegantly as possible. If you like the characters of previous Kingdom Hearts games, there is bound to be something in this that will make you happy. The endgame is packed with story threads from previous games wrapping themselves up in a way that feels nice. I just wish there was more of it. Honestly this is where things begin to fall apart for me. Because this is all endgame stuff, the content here can feel like its moving too fast, and it can leave you wishing there was more time to fit things in, because not only are we wrapping up the plot threads of a seventeen year long story arc, but we are also wrapping up the plot threads of 10 games worth of original characters. It is a lot to sift through, and there really isn’t enough time to do it all. The game even says this itself as if poking fun at itself for just glossing over plot points. I won’t make too big a deal over how convoluted everything is, because calling Kingdom Hearts confusing is like saying the grass is green.

Also, the game is super short, my clear time was sitting at about 40 hours, but other people have reported right around 30. Mine might also be inflated due to leaving the game running, and also having to backtrack to find the important collectable in the game. It may seem like this is a big game, but honestly, Trails of Cold Steel 2 clocked in at around 60 hours for me, and Persona 5, which doesn’t hold anywhere near the same amount of cultural importance was 105. It may just be me, but it just didn’t feel like enough.

Combat wise, it’s what I’ve come to expect from Kingdom Hearts. Fast paced, stylized, Action RPG content is what the series does best, and it is no slouch in this regard. That being said, some of the additions to the combat mechanics don’t sit very well with me. One of the nice things added is the ability to equip up to 3 keyblades and switch between them on the fly, and each keyblade can be upgraded to ensure it remains viable throughout the game. Performing consecutive combos triggers a formchange, which transforms your keyblade, and give you a new move set to go along with it. Each keyblade has one to two different formchanges that make it unique. This formchange system is fun ad interesting, but it comes with the added burden of non-skippable transformation animations, which trigger frequently enough to make the flow of combat feel very stop and start. There are also team attacks that trigger randomly which can also halt combat with more animations. Finally, there are the attraction attacks, which trigger when you hit an indicated enemy in battle, these attacks are powerful, but they happen far too often, and while you can skip the trigger animations, they still manage to get in the way all the time, and they take you completely out of the combat. I found myself forcing these to stop almost every time I used them. Also, they have their own music, so each time these attacks happen, they cut into whatever battle music was already playing, and that can be jarring. There’s also summons which are even more animations that halt combat, but I never used them, so I can’t really complain about them.

Complaints aside though, the combat when it was flowing properly, felt satisfying, and the formchanges were fun ways to make each keyblade feel unique as opposed to past games where each new keyblade was just a stat buff. My personal favorite keyblades were the Wheel of Fate from The Pirates of the Caribbean world, and the Frozen Keyblade, because I am an ice hoe.

The last thing I want to mention is the ending, without specifics of course. The short version is that I really didn’t like it. Tetsuya Nomura had an opportunity to wrap up the final bits of the story that we’ve been following for 17 years, and he threw it away. The game is left with an ambiguous ending to leave the door open for sequels, because of course it was, and that leaves an extremely bad taste in my mouth. I firmly believe that a good ending is important to a good story, and the if the ending doesn’t leave me feeling satisfied, then what even was the point. This is the same problem I had with Danganronpa V3. We’ve fought this series tooth and nail to get some semblance of closure from its confusing as heck plot, and it really feels like it wasn’t worth it in the end. That is the most important feeling that Kh3 has left me with, a sense of disappointment. I never expected this game to be the be all end all of RPG’s because that would be ridiculous, but I didn’t expect it to disappoint me, and right now, as I finish writing this, that’s all I feel is disappointment, with a twinge of anger. If I did any kind of grading scale I feel like I would give KH3 a 5/10, because there are far too many things holding it down.

If you want to play Kingdom Heart 3, you can buy it on PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.

Kyle

Pokémon Let’s Go: Completely Nostalgia Baited

I honestly don’t know what I can say about the Pokémon series that hasn’t been said in the last 22 years of it’s existence. What began as a GameBoy game in 1996, has evolved into a world-wide multi-cultural phenomena, and Nintendo knows exactly what they are doing with it.

Pokémon Let’s Go bridges quite a few gaps with its very existence. for some it’s a nostalgia filled jaunt through a game that they knew when they were kids, for others, it’s the first time that they have picked up a Pokémon game in years, and yet still, for others, it is a way to ease Pokémon Go players into the mainline series, for when the main event happens next year. I remember wishing that this wasn’t just another gen 1 remake, and in some ways, I still wish it wasn’t, but from a pure marketing perspective, Pokémon Let’s Go is probably the best move Nintendo could have made right now.

Honestly, going into Pokémon Let’s Go, my expectations were pretty low, the trailers weren’t really doing the game justice. In the end I enjoyed my time with it a lot more than I thought I would, but I don’t think I would replay it a second time. This is after all the second time gen 1 has been remade, and I still think the GBA remakes handled some of it better.

I doubt there are many people who need me to go over the basics of a Pokémon game, they do that enough on their own. So I think it would be best to talk about what Let’s Go does differently from other games in the series.

For starters, and I mean that literally, these games take after the Special Pikachu edition yellow version, you’re starter is chosen for you, and it can either be Pikachu or Eevee, depending on your version.

Perhaps the most important changes come in the form of wild encounters. no longer do you randomly encounter Pokémon in tall grass or other environments, now each Pokémon has an overworld model, that shows up, and the only way to encounter it is to run into it. This is honestly how I prefer all encounters in game to be, because random encounters can be hard to balance. You no longer battle these wild Pokémon, rather, you take a Pokémon Go approach, and throw Poke Balls at them, and hope for the best. Initially when it was announced that this mechanic was going to be used, I was very apprehensive. It turned out to be not all that bad though, and it really quickens the pace at which you move through the game, when it works. Unfortunately, in docked mode, which is how I play most of my switch games, the only way to throw a ball, is by way of motion controls, and motion controls rarely work as intended. I have wasted many a pike ball because it flew off in some random direction I wasn’t aiming for. Supposedly the catching mechanic is better in handheld mode, because it doesn’t rely solely on motion controls, but I don’t really like that option. Complaints aside, I caught way more Pokémon through this method than I ever would on a typical playthrough, currently my dex is sitting at 147, of the available 153, and that is strictly because how fast and smooth catching Pokémon is now.

Thanks to this new overworld system, a lot of things have been removed from the base game, there are no longer fishing rods, nor is there a safari zone, this means that those Pokémon are now scattered across the world. additionally, there is no bike, as now you can ride certain Pokemon to move faster. these changes are minor though.

There is also a co-op mode, which can be fun. the 2nd player can’t initiate encounters, or interact with most things in the overworld, but they can help catch Pokémon, and participate in most battles, making them helpful if you are new to an RPG format, or just want to adventure with a friend. Special thanks to @gamesnerd who sat in with me for most of the 20 hours it took to finish the game.

On the whole, I would say that Pokémon Let’s Go was worth the ride, but maybe not for full price, I had some games lying around, and decided to trade them towards a copy, so ultimately I paid nothing. It definitely leaves me anticipating the new mainline game coming sometime in 2019.

For those interested, Pokémon Let’s Go Pikachu, and Pokémon Let’s Go Eevee are out on Nintendo Switch

Kyle

Tales of Blastia

Let’s talk about Tales of Vesperia.

Let me start off by saying I loved playing this game on the Switch. This is my complete biased opinion but being able to play RPGs in handheld mode is wonderful. I didn’t notice any frame rate issues and it didn’t feel clunky to play, I know that’s an issue when it comes to playing literally anything on the Switch. That being said, in handheld mode the battery life for this game sucks some major ass. I don’t even know why to be honest. I’d get like a good 2-3 hours out of it and I’d have to charge my Switch again. That was really frustrating.

I won’t get into what this game is about because it’s been done before but I will say that the story was interesting-ish. I spent a lot of time waiting for the story to actually pick up and really the most exciting parts about this game’s story was when (spoiler) Yuri kills someone or the extra tid-bits of conversation that the characters have on the side which leads me into my next point:

The characters for this game, save for Karol, are hilarious and very easy to love. All of the characters and how they interact together is really something special. I genuinely loved adventuring with them. I haven’t played most Tales games but Yuri makes it to the top of my list as one of my favorite characters in a Tales of game. I really love main characters who don’t follow the status quo in terms of being a hero. Yuri sits in the middle somewhere. He wants to do the right thing but maybe he doesn’t take the right path to get there. That sort of stuff gives us the multi-dimensional character that we need or at least that I need. I don’t want a hero like Flynn.

The battle mechanics took some getting used to. In the beginning it’s feels really really slow. Yuri starts off with 3 consecutive normal attacks and then you can use an arte after. Weapons are able to give you abilities or skills to use but you have to use the weapon long enough to unlock those skills. Some of the skills are able to help you heal throughout battle or able to add hits to your attack so you aren’t just attacking 3 times (I think I got mine up to like 6 consecutive attacks). As always you’re only allotted a certain amount of skill points to use. You’re also able to upgrade and synthesize new weapons and normally whenever any type of synthesis is involved in an RPG it goes right over my head because it’s confusing but in this game it’s really easy to forge a better weapon.

Another thing that really bugged me about this game was the lack of maps for the dungeons and the fact that i literally played the entire game without doing a single quest (I finished the game in like 30 hours or something like that.) I didn’t even know there were quests until I got lost in a later dungeon and had to pull up a guide.

A difference that I thought was interesting is that Patty’s character literally didn’t exist in the regular game for the 360 in America? So being able to play the definitive edition a lot of people got to experience her character and she’s really interesting and quirky and I love her a lot. I put her into my party late in the game and by the end I wished that I had her in my party the entire time. Her attacks are wild AF and her storyline is really great!

Overall this game was pretty good. It wasn’t the best RPG I’ve ever played but I barely put it down and I think that counts for something.

Tales of Vesperia Definitive Editon is available for PS4, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, and Steam.

Somaria

Red Dead Redemption 2: Horse Simulator

Following up Rockstar’s hit Red Dead Redemption was always going to be a tough venture. The original story opens and closes in a nice package that didn’t leave much room for expanding on. Instead of going forward, Rockstar went back. Red Dead Redemption 2 is a prequel, set about ten years before the events of the first game. Our protagonist this time around in lieu of John Marston, is Arthur Morgan, a high ranking member in the Van Der Linde gang, a notorious group of outlaws that play a large role in both stories.

Players of the first game will likely recognize many of the faces of the main cast here, as some return from the first game. Ultimately though because this is a prequel, many of these people’s fates, including Arthur’s, are all but assured.

Red Dead Redemption 2′s story is the main driving point of the game. It follows Arthur as he carries out his role as a member of his gang. As a high ranking member in a gang of outlaws, Arthur is a surprisingly upstanding person, though, it sounds like the Van Der Linde gang was originally about being a gang of Robinhood-like individuals, and less like whatever it had devolved into by the time the story gets underway. The story itself isn’t a terribly complex one. The year is 1899, and the time of the western frontier is drawing to an end. Arthur has to come to terms with that, and what is doing to his friend, and leader Dutch Van Der Linde. this threat of civilization drives Dutch to a breaking point, which happens over the course of the main story, and the aftermath we see in the first game, when John confronts him after ten years.

RDR2 was likely meant to be a window into the events leading into RDR, but this window gave us Arthur, who I firmly believe is a better character than John. John Marston was a marvel back in his first game, but many years have passed since then, and Rockstar has only gotten better at writing characters. Arthur is a caring man, looking after his fellow members like they were his family, showing concern for random citizens, building a weird but adorable relationship with his horse. It’s hard not to be invested in him as a character, and that’s what makes actually finishing RDR2 so hard: Because we know the story of RDR, we know that Arthur Morgan is nowhere to be found, his name is never even mentioned, and as RDR2 goes on and Arthur contracts TB, it’s all too clear how his story ends. It hurt.

Gameplay wise, RDR2 gives us a vast open world based on the old west to explore. Many times this world feels “too” vast. There are certainly things in it to do, like hunting, fishing, helping random people, robbing random people, and the like, but if you are trying to get from point A to point B, it can either feel like too much is happening, and you constantly get stopped from doing what you want to do, or it can feel empty, and you just get to watch Arthur ride across an empty space for minutes at a time. The entire ordeal reminds me of the Legend of Zelda Wind Waker, there the world was large, but it was also empty, leading to large stretches of time wasted on watching Link sail across a blue expanse. There is fast travel, but you still have to slow travel to fast travel points, and there is no fast travel back to your camp, which is where a large number of story missions begin. There is a cinematic camera if you just want to set Arthur on a path and forget about it, and for the most part it works well, but it isn’t perfect, and can lead to some mishaps.

Speaking of mishaps, everything in this game is too small. I can’t tell you how many times I ran into someone on the road because I couldn’t see them over Arthur, or how veering off a set path almost always ended in me faceplanting into a tree George of the Jungle style. The entirety of the game had to be played with @gamesnerd who served as co-pilot, and watchful eye as my blind ass tried to navigate the tiny mini-map, and even tinier icons on it. Thankfully, they had a colorblind mode in the settings menu, because the red trail denoting destinations did not show up well on the black map roads.

Some of the mechanics in the game were a bit of a hinderance to me. The main one was the Arthur can’t carry guns mechanic. So many times did I get off my horse and walk off somewhere, only to remember that I didn’t have any decent weapons on me.

Glitches galore, though I think that might just be a part of the AAA experience these days. Horses floating, invisible people holding wine glasses, people floating from complete other areas, horses dying and spontaneously combusting, and pelts randomly falling off horses are all just some of the things that you can experience as part of the package. These glitches don’t hamper the experience, but they sure are hilarious.

Overall, RDR2 delivers an experience that I feel rivals, and perhaps even overtakes its predecessor. Arthur Morgan makes the narrative what it is, and surprising no one,it has been nominated for many of this years game awards categories.

If you are interested in Red Dead Redemption 2, you can pick it up today on PS4, or Xbox One, if you are in the future, a next gen port probably exists.

Kyle

Square Enix, You’ve Done It Again.

Let’s talk about the Sword of Mana.

If you follow this blog you’d know that a few days ago I spoke briefly about how I was playing the Sword of Mana. Today, ladies and gents, I have finished it! All 13 hours of it.

For those of you who know nothing of the series, Sword of Mana is a remake of a game called Final Fantasy Adventure which was originally released on the GameBoy. From everything I have read online, people tend to say that the Sword of Mana is a sort of unnecessary game in the franchise because it doesn’t really bring anything spectacular to the table. I haven’t played Final Fantasy Adventure so my review will mainly be geared towards someone who either loves the game or wants to get into the series.

A little story: when you first start the game you can either choose to play as the hero or heroine (I chose hero). The only difference being that the heroine uses a staff and the hero uses a sword. That’s it really. There is n o difference in story from what I’ve read online. Basically the hero/heroine wants to stop the Dark Lord and Julius because they wants to misuse the power of the Mana Tree. Along your journey you meet wacky characters and you watch the main character struggle back and forth with himself as he comes to terms with his own heart because he is eventually fated to wield the mana sword.

Let me start of by saying that this game is really confusing, I had to play pretty much most of this game with a guide by my side. Old rpgs tend to be full of mazes and this one is no exception. When you’re traveling in the dungeons everything looks the same so it’s very easy to get lost. I also wasn’t too fond of the menu system, though it is not hard to learn, it just feels clunky. That is pretty much a personal opinion as I know this was a game for the GameBoy Advance and you’re limited to like 4 buttons. These are really the only things I had a problem with.

The game, coming from the GBA, looks STUNNING! Some of the scenes are hand drawn, even the silly little cinematics look great! The music isn’t terrible to listen to either! I found myself running around certain dungeons actually humming the tune. The game for what it is, is also not too terribly hard. If you follow the rules of playing rpgs (level up your character and level up your gear) you’ll find yourself running through the game pretty smoothly.

For my first entry into the Mana series, I can say that I had a really great time. I was hooked on the story, it’s not boring, it’s really great to look at/listen to. I can say with 100 percent certainty that I will be getting my hands on/playing the other games in the series for sure! I hope you all check this one out. This game is one of the good ones.

Sword of Mana is available on the GameBoy Advance.

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Somaria

Saving the World with the Power of Metal!

Let’s talk about Gal Metal.

Gal Metal is a rhythm based game made my Marvelous and published by XSEED.

The story goes like this, you start of as a boy who is abducted by octopus aliens who are angry at Earth because we sent a satellite of metal music into space and it basically killed almost their entire planet. They fuse you into a girls body who just so happens to be a drummer in this all girl metal band! Now you’re using the power of music to defeat the tentacled aliens and to save the Earth! This is by far one of the best story lines I have come across in a rhythm game to date. It’s kick ass!

Unfortunately, that is where all the good stops. This isn’t a traditional type of rhythm game where you look on screen and you match notes in order to play the game. Basically, you go to “band practice” and you can learn and then memorize drum patterns which you can use in songs at free will. If you’re not used to playing drums, like me, your songs will end up sounding like complete shit. The levels give you a high score that you have to hit or exceed and you can use the drum patterns at free will. My songs ended up sounding like a jumbled mess and that’s counting myself lucky because half the time the joy cons for the Switch didn’t land when I wanted them to.

Also, because you’re a teen girl, you have a select amount of points that you can spend in each aspect of your life. You can hangout with friends, or go to band practice and learn new patterns, you can go to the mall, or you can study. And where you spend your points will determine your character stats. There’s also band equipment that you can upgrade and it features kits from Yamaha and everything!

All in all I would say that the premise for this game is awesome! I absolutely love the story line and I actually look forward to experiencing it. I feel like the game fell a little short with me because of the fact that it wasn’t a traditional rhythm game. I know they did that on purpose because you’re supposed to “rock out to your own beat,” but with how shitty the joy cons respond, the music just sounds terrible and not in a cool, grungy, Metal sort of way.

Def try out this game, maybe you can play better than me because the story alone is enough to play the game. Let me know if you do try it out or if you already own it!

Gal Metal is available for the Nintendo Switch.

Somaria