Years ago when I watched Love Live! Sunshine!! I was very taken with Yoshiko Tsushima, AKA Yohane. I thought she was by far the cutest member of Aqours and her chunni antics just made me love her even more. So I was very excited when I found she was getting her own spin off anime project, Yohane the Parhelion: Sunshine in the Mirror, and even more so when Inti Creates announced they were making a Metroidvania title based off the anime, called Yohane the Parhelion: BLAZE in the DEEP BLUE. After I enjoyed the anime series, I was very excited to dig into the game to see where this story continuation was going. Let’s see how everything turned out!

The story here begins as a strange undersea dungeon suddenly surfaces near the town of Numazu. It quickly becomes all folks in town can talk about, so Yohane’s friends each begin to explore the dungeon one by one, but they never return. Yohane decides to venture into the dungeon to rescue her lost friends with the help her faithful dog Lailaps. What mysteries lie ahead of her in the dungeon, and will she be able to rescue her friends?

The story here is pretty basic, but for those who enjoyed the anime this is a great side adventure. I love seeing the girls interact with each other, and the Easter Eggs they threw in here for fans of the anime and Aqours in general. This one isn’t going to blow you away with amazing storytelling, but if you’re a fan of Yohane or Love Live! Sunshine!! you will have a good time here seeing all the girls in action once again.

Graphically the game is done in that fantastic pixel art style Inti Creates is known for. The character sprite works still comes out quite detailed this way, and all of the girls’ sprites were very cute, down to the last details! Enemy models look great as well, with a pretty good assortment of them. There are still re-colors, but I felt like there were less here than in some of their other games. The boss monsters really shine with their huge size and impressive looks. You can tell the team put some love into each one. The environments themselves are great as well. Each one is very detailed and you really get immersed into the type of area, from lava filled volcano to fluffy candy style areas. The game ran great on the Switch from start to finish with no frame drops.

In the music department, Yohane the Parhelion: BLAZE in the DEEP BLUE really shines. Each area has amazing theme music that fits the feel of it. This includes a mysterious sounding theme for the temple and more upbeat theme as you begin to explore this underwater dungeon. The theme song, “Deep Blue”, is an amazing tune that got stuck in my head for a long time after I stopped playing this one. I wish Inti Creates would’ve included an in-game music library, or something for completing the game, so you could enjoy these tunes on the fly, but there was nothing unlocked post game. Which is one of my complaints here: it’s pretty bare bones overall outside of the main game.

The gameplay here is very much that of your standard Metroidvania title. You will explore each area of the dungeon, battling enemies and bosses as you save your friends and gain new abilities. Each girl has two unique skills, one you gain as soon as you free them, and the other when you find a hidden item in the dungeon. All of these skills can be used to slay enemies in the dungeons, such as Dia’s electric slash and Hanamaru’s adorable rolling attack. These skills can also be used to solve puzzles in the dungeon to gain access to new areas as well, but players should also look out for special items in treasure chests too. These will give Yohane some new skills and allow her to equip more accessories as well.

Yohane can purchase a number of healing items and items that will buff your stats from her fortune telling shop with in-game currency. These help you out in a pinch if you need to restore your health or Darkness points. The latter is what you use to call out your friends to help you in combat or use the variety of weapons you can cast. That’s right: you can cast a variety of weapons and accessories from the materials dropped from defeated monsters.

Weapon casts include several different types of bows and swords, each with different properties, so you can choose whichever fits your play style the best. Cloaks and accessories can be cast as well. These give you various buffs that will keep you alive during the harshest areas of the dungeon. Some will give immunity to status aliments while others may cut down different types of damage. Each one will give Yohane a boost in HP and Darkness points, so you will have to balance her out as you see fit. I went with a big HP build and tanked a lot of the bosses, but this is totally up to you.

Overall I had a great time with Yohane the Parhelion: BLAZE in the DEEP BLUE. I loved exploring the dungeon and seeing all of my favorite Aqours members once again. Each girl’s skills were very unique and suited them very well. Hanamaru having a laptop fall from the heavens to make it explode with a single touch made me laugh out loud since I got the reference from the original anime, and this is what games like this should do. I feel like the package is a bit light on extras since there is nothing to do after completing the game. No new game plus with more difficulty, unlockable galleries or even a way to listen to the music post game. It will take you around eight hours to see everything the game has to offer and I feel like it is worth the $29.99 price tag for fans of the anime or Yohane, but everyone else might want to wait for a sale to snatch this one up. While I loved everything here personally, I was a big fan of the series going into this, so I know I got a bit more out of this than those just looking for another Metroidvania to pick up. That said, I have no issue telling fans to snatch this up ASAP, it’s a lot of fun with girls you know and love.

Review Score
Overall

Game was purchased by the reviewer.

The post REVIEW: Yohane the Parhelion: BLAZE in the DEEP BLUE appeared first on oprainfall.

I have never played a fashion game like this before. I know syn Sophia is the developer behind the Style Savvy games that were on the Nintendo DS and 3DS, but I’ve never played them. What caused me to take on this review is the fact that, regardless of my lack of experience with games focused on fashion, I do love dressing up my character in various other types of games which allow it. I’m that player who will sacrifice a bit of stats to make sure my characters still look good. Thus, I was very intrigued by Fashion Dreamer and wanted to try it out. Not to mention this is yet another more chill casual game, which is what I’ve been tending to lean towards when taking on reviews lately.

Fashion Dreamer is a pretty basic fashion game. By that I mean, there aren’t a lot of concepts or things going on. At the start of the game, you get a Muse to dress up. A Muse is what your customizable character is called. You can pick your hairstyle, nose, eyes, height/body type, skin tone, hair color, lips, etc. There are quite a lot of options to choose from. I should mention, though, that the body type options are limited. You basically just pick a height from the selection they have available and certain proportions change a little bit depending on the height you choose. There aren’t any sliders to decide how slender or curvy your character is or anything else such as that. You can choose from a few different face shapes, however. Anyway, once you’ve created your first Muse, it’s time to jump into the virtual world of Eve.

The game takes place in this virtual world, Eve, where there are four different Cocoon areas to hang out in. Well, there is only one Cocoon to start and you have to unlock the other three. The goal of the game is to become a fashion influencer and spread your brand. You’re able to like other characters’ outfits to collect usable clothing pieces. There is also a pop-up area where the most popular clothes and clothes other people have shared show up, so you can also hit like on those to collect them as well. In the game’s offline mode, there are pre-made CPU characters who will be around town and ask you to create Lookits for them. A Lookit is essentially a new overall outfit. Sometimes they may also like what you’re wearing and copy your outfit. Either of these will give you random rewards, such as gacha and bingo tickets and color palettes. The color palettes you can use to create your own items. You’ll need E-Points to unlock and create different clothing pieces. Creating your own clothing essentially just requires you to change the colors of pre-existing styles of clothes, and the more color palettes you unlock, the more choices you have.

E-Points you’ll get for anyone liking your outfit, liking your shared clothing pieces that pop-up in their game, stuff shown in your showroom, and so on. Your showroom is a small space you can decorate and display clothing in however you like, in addition to other items you’ve collected. The game contains both an online and offline mode. While you can collect E-Points offline, the process is extremely slow. This game is a lot more fun and active if you play online. Online you’ll see other players’ Muses in your game and be able to create Lookits for them as well, plus you’ll be able to visit their showrooms and see clothing items they’ve shared which you can then collect. The CPU characters are also present in the online mode in addition to the real player Muses. Each Cocoon area has its own gacha machine and two bingo machines. The bingo machines simply give you E-Points as a reward. The gacha machines are different in each Cocoon. They all have their own unique styles of items you can unlock randomly from using your gacha tickets. This will unlock certain styles in the clothing creation menu, so you can recolor them how you like.

There honestly isn’t a lot going on in Fashion Dreamer. The more likes you get, the more popular of an influencer you become, and as you get to higher ranks, you unlock more Cocoons. You also have a brand rank to raise from creating items. You can customize your brand symbol that goes on clothes you create and the more you create, the higher that rank will raise, which will then unlock additional clothing styles you can customize. Oh, and you can take photos, both at a photo booth spot and wherever you’re at in the Cocoon. For the photos at the photo booth, or Photo Egg as the game calls it, you’ll be able to add little decorations to and save.

Like I was saying before, there isn’t a lot going on in Fashion Dreamer. You make a ton of outfits, you travel between the three different areas of each Cocoon, dressing up other people’s characters to fit their preferences, hit like on whatever you like or want to collect for yourself, and you create clothing items over and over again. Also, after collecting a ton of stuff and creating so many outfits, I found some of the options weren’t very vast or unique. Hats for example, there are a lot of beret looking hats. The variety isn’t super vast. Not to mention, there also weren’t any bags, nor any gloves or necklaces that are separate rather than stuck as a part of certain tops. The game is really fun as a short bursts type of game where you get on only for a little bit, as a break from other games with a lot more going on. I thought the music, sounds and overall atmosphere were pleasant too. But, I don’t see it as a good game for sitting down and playing for hours on end. I was really into it the first two days I played, but after a few days, it became something I only checked in on for a little bit at a time. I played for over 15 hours, reached the platinum influencer rank and saw the credits. I believe there may be a diamond rank seeing as I still saw other players at a rank higher than me, but I imagine that would take a very long time to reach in comparison to the lower ranks prior to the game credits.

Ultimately, in the game’s current state, Fashion Dreamer wasn’t bad. I had a ton of fun dressing up my character and collecting different clothing. But, it also didn’t have much of a long gameplay life, I simply wasn’t extremely into it for more than a week. Although, you should know that this isn’t the game’s final complete release. By that I mean, various upcoming free updates have been announced. These are simply my thoughts on the game as is, before any updates have come out. I had fun with Fashion Dreamer for what it is, but it could’ve been a lot better. I don’t think I would pay the full $49.99 price for this. As it is now, I definitely would recommend waiting for a sale if it sounds like something you would enjoy. I might possibly write a follow-up in the future, should the game be substantially different or receive a lot more substance after all of the updates are out.

Review Score
Overall

Review copy was provided by the publisher.

The post REVIEW: Fashion Dreamer appeared first on oprainfall.

I love the Like a Dragon (nee Yakuza) games. Like, a lot. I started playing them with the PS2 original and have adored following Kiryu’s journey all these years. So, of course a side story starring the Dragon of Dojima was right up my alley, and considering it’s a between-quel (interquel?) of Yakuza: Like a Dragon (also known as Yakuza 7) and Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, I had to see what our favorite Fourth Chairman was up to. His cameo in Yakuza 7 was a standout moment in a game I thoroughly enjoyed, so getting the full rundown on his activities leading up to that moment was something I absolutely needed to see for myself.

As noted, Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name is a side story that plays out concurrently to the events of Y7, so if you’ve played that game, you know how this story is going to end, at least in broad strokes. If you were coming into this looking for high stakes, you aren’t really going to find them. What you will find is a surprisingly interpersonal drama exploring the ramifications of giving up one’s identity and grappling with the losses that come with it. When you’ve spent your entire adult life trying to remove the yoke of institutions from around your neck, how do you come to terms with submitting to a shadowy cabal that strips you of everything you’ve ever held dear – all so you can protect the ones you love the most?

Unlike Y7‘s turn-based RPG battle system, Like a Dragon Gaiden returns to the real-time brawler style the Yakuza games were known for. This time around, Kiryu has two fighting forms he can swap between: Agent and Yakuza. Yakuza style is a pared down version of Kiryu’s Dragon of Dojima style – heavy hitting, strong counters, will grab you by the head and slam you into his knee types of moves. It excels in one-on-one fights or against blocking opponents, since his basic moveset includes a stance break attack. Agent is new to Gaiden and gives Kiryu an assortment of fun gadgets to use during combat. Spider uses wires to bind enemies in place or fling them around the arena; Hornet gives Kiryu control of autonomous drones; Serpent lets Kiryu zip around the arena on rocket shoes; and Firefly is an explosive cigarette that’s great for clearing out crowds. Honestly, Agent is best for crowd control until you level it up enough to wreak havoc in EX Heat mode, at which point I was using it on single bosses as well. I found no end of delight in grabbing five or six guys with Spider and flinging them willy-nilly around a fight. Great stuff.

The battle arena returns here as well with the Coliseum, and it comes with a fun twist: Hell Team Rumbles. Throughout the story, Kiryu will have the opportunity to recruit several characters to join his Coliseum team for group matches. Unlike large scale battle content in previous games, such as Yakuza 6 and Kiwami 2, the Hell Team Rumbles here are real-time slug fests where Kiryu will fight alongside up to 10 NPCs against groups of enemies. You can also play as any of the characters in your roster, not just Kiryu. Characters are broken into three categories: fighter, tank, and healer. Each character can perform a special attack – raising everyone’s attack and defense, healing the whole party, etc. – but so too can enemies. You can raise teammate’s levels to 20 and their bond to three, with a higher bond leading to special effects lasting longer. Hell Team Rumbles can get pretty difficult in the Platinum tiers, so having a solid team of attackers, defenders and healers is a must, and I found Agent style really excelled here thanks to its stronger crowd control. Kiryu can also take part in standard solo fights, and you’re going to need to do a mix of everything if you want to see the Coliseum’s story play out in full.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a Like a Dragon game without a ton of side content, and despite being a side story itself, Gaiden does not slack in the mini-game department. Returning are the gambling staples, mahjong, karaoke and golf, as well as Pocket Circuit, everyone’s favorite miniature car racer. While the story isn’t nearly as involved this time as it was in Yakuza 0 or Kiwami, it’s still a fun way to spend a couple hours. The new Pocket Circuit spokeswoman is Ran, a bubbly girl with adorable twin tails who recruits Kiryu to join CourStar, a Pocket Circuit location catering to adults who played during their youth. As with several of the substories in this game, there’s a strong through-line of reminiscence and handing over the torch, and I found it really well done. Nothing about the actual mini-game has changed from previous games, so it’s easy to jump right in if you’re at all familiar with Pocket Circuit. As for karaoke, this time around it’s basically all old-man hits, including Baka Mitai, TONIGHT -restart from this night-, hands, and the new song, Sayonara Silent Night, a catchy little diddy with just enough melancholy to really hit you in the feels. It felt very fitting.

Also returning are cabaret clubs, though this time around all the cabarets are a new “immersive” experience, with full motion video of women performing the hostess roles rather than in-game models based on those women. You have five girls to choose from, including streamer Kson. The cabaret plays out exactly the same as in previous games, with the girls answering Kiryu’s questions and chatting with him until you raise their affection level sufficiently to earn some alone time with them. I found the experience mildly novel, though felt there was too much delay in the video playback of each woman, giving every encounter a bit of an uncanny feel. It’s nothing insurmountable and didn’t distract that much, but if you’re used to the more seamless experience of previous games, it might take some getting used to. It was neat to see the women be themselves, though, and I always appreciate Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio’s commitment to using real industry members, considering how often the stories in their games attempt to dispel negative stereotypes around red light district work.

But Leah, you’re asking, how is the story? Honestly, it’s fantastic, though I feel that should go without saying. It’s a Like a Dragon game, of course the story is good. But like I mentioned earlier, the stakes here are not particularly high by Yakuza standards. Since Like a Dragon Gaiden takes place concurrent to Y7, we ultimately know where Kiryu will end up. This story isn’t about that, though. It’s focused entirely on Kiryu’s relationship with Hanawa, his Daidoji Faction handler, and the tight line Kiryu has to walk in order to keep his identity secret. It’s all about how Kiryu struggles to keep his part of an unfair bargain in which he gave up everything – even his name – to protect Haruka, Haruto and the Morning Glory Orphanage kids’ health and happiness. As a puppet of the Daidoji group, Kiryu – now going by Joryu – has no freedom, though Hanawa seems to do his best to give the former Dragon of Dojima leeway. That can’t last forever though, and when an unknown group stages an attack against the Daidoji, Kiryu’s conviction and morals are put to the test.

The basic setup is simple enough. The Daidoji are hired to assist the CIA in helping some unnamed terrorist group from another country. They’re supposed to provide cover for a gold bullion hand-off, but it turns out to be a front and the Daidoji group are blindsided by a surprise attack. Hanawa tasks Kiryu with looking into a possible connection between the attackers and the Seiryu Clan in Yokohama, which goes nowhere, but does give us a concrete time period in which this side story takes place. What Kiryu does find in Yokohama are the Omi Alliance, who are up to no good, and after some back and forth with Tsuruno, the Watase Family lieutenant, Kiryu is given a red dragon and a single clue: Akame.

Back in Sotenbori, Kiryu ends up under the wing of Akame, an information peddler. Akame acts as both a big story player, as well as Kiryu’s base of operations throughout the game, taking on an assortment of odd jobs from the city’s “jack of all trades” to help keep the streets safe for the homeless. Despite her ties to the Omi Alliance and other underworld entities, Akame has nothing but the best interests of Sotenbori in mind. She’s a fantastic addition to the pantheon of Yakuza characters and I love her. She’s fiery and a bit of a smart ass, but she’s savvy and resourceful as well. She’s also incredibly cute. The entire cast in Like a Dragon Gaiden is fantastic, though, and you’ll be hard-pressed to not find someone here who isn’t at the very least interesting.

For all my love of this side story, there were a few issues. I played on the PlayStation 5, and performance was overall quite stellar, but I did notice a lot of pop-in when running around Sotenbori, and on occasion when I loaded back into the street from an instanced area (Stilj, CourStar, some substories) the game would hang on the gray loading screen for an uncomfortably long time. There were also some really noticeable typos throughout the game and a very unfortunate open font tag during the climactic cutscene. It will likely be fixed in a future patch, but felt out of step with how clean previous titles have been regarding the text. And this is admittedly a “me” problem, but there were so many menus when doing Pocket Circuit that I felt really didn’t need to be that excessive. There’s no reason the main races and rivals at the very least couldn’t be nested under the same menu instead of having to exit out of the mini-game entirely every time.

Overall, Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name is a standout entry in this storied franchise. Agent is a fun new addition to Kiryu’s fighting styles, and I really loved the Coliseum this time around, especially the Hell Team Rumbles. Playing dress-up with Kiryu was a ton of fun, and every game should give him the opportunity to walk down a runway. Akame is a wonderful character, and her integration in both the main story and the substories made her feel integral to this snippet of Kiryu’s life. I found the interpersonal drama with Hanawa compelling, as well as everything involving the Omi Alliance. This game also packs a serious emotional gut-punch and features perhaps the best acting I’ve seen from Takaya Kuroda to date. If you’re really craving that old school Yakuza combat and storytelling, Gaiden is a solid experience. It took me a little over 30 hours to complete all substories, finish the Coliseum, complete the main races in CourStar and defeat the lion’s share of rivals. It’s well worth your $49.99 USD.

Review Score
Overall

Review copy was provided by the publisher.

The post REVIEW: Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name appeared first on oprainfall.

I heard a few things about the series a while back when it was just a light novel series. I didn’t really get into My Next Life as a Villainess until the anime began. For those who aren’t familiar, it features a character who is reincarnated into an otome game called Fortune Lover. She recovers her memories and realizes she is now the character Catarina Claes, who in game is the main antagonist and for most endings is killed or at the very least exiled. From there Catarina does her best with her limited skills to change her fate.

This game is a new story that is set after Catarina believes she’s avoided her death flags. Catarina and her friends end up on a voyage on a luxury ship called the Vinculum. What seems to be an enjoyable trip ends up going awry with pirates boarding them, but also other plots are in the works. The new development reminds Catarina of an old fan book and a fan disc she never had a chance to play. While similar to the scenario, things are still quite different. It doesn’t take long for Catarina to realize she might have more death flags to avoid, and she doesn’t have the advantage of knowing as much as she did about the base game here.

As the main protagonist, Catarina is just as simple minded, gluttonous, and oblivious as she ever is. These traits do reflect in some of the choices that come up, which are are funny at times and may differ from some choices that might typically be seen in these games. If you are not familiar with the light novel or anime, it might be worth noting that Catarina is a pretty dense character who can compete with the best for not noticing romantic signals. While the current Catarina is different than the original, I do like the moments where she embraces the villainess attitude. If you are not a fan of the series, this could be an area you might not appreciate as much from your own tastes though.

Bakarina never changes.

It’s probably not that big of a surprise that this is definitely for the fans. It is a new story that does feel like it would belong in the series. All the the characters are voiced with the voice actors from the anime returning for their roles. That being said, I will say even if you are not familiar with the source, you won’t be too lost. The game does a good job recapping the main points worth knowing. At a few points there will be a flashback to the past, usually once from Catarina’s memory and the perspective of another character. If you are new you might have trouble figuring out which choice to make for some characters to build affection. Then again, that is also why they have auto-save.

Who to go for?

Routes in these games usually have several chapters, though some routes can conclude within three. The first two chapters for any route will play out more or less the same as Catarina and the others board and enjoy themselves. At the start there are four suitors: the princes Geordo and Alan, Catarina’s adoptive brother Keith, and Nicol, the brother of Catarina’s friend Sophia. Once you finish one of these routes, two more open up for the new characters. These two are original characters named Rozy and Silva. Rozy is an engineer on the ship who quickly befriends her through food and Silva is the head of the Weiss Pirates that take the Vinculum. The two are interesting, though unsurprisingly Silva gets quite a lot of time due to his role. Rozy has fewer parts overall unless you go for his route, which is a bit of a shame. While the scenarios they go through have some similar motions, there are some differences. They can range from what actions are taken, what characters appear, and what details are revealed, among other things.

While there are about six main routes to choose from, My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! -Pirates of the Disturbance- boasts a total of 25 different endings. These endings include different ones for each route, another ends, and doom endings. The game features a number of galleries and libraries like most games in the genre. Unlocked endings, music tracks, CG scenes, and cutscenes can be viewed from the special menu. The CG scenes look pretty good and the music is also pretty fitting. If there is anything that I would say as a negative about the music is while the tracks are nice, none really blew me away personally. Another thing to collect along the way are memory scenarios. These are unlocked as you play through, and may also depend on what choices you make. These scenarios are not available as you play through a route, but are accessed through the special menu. While they don’t really do much for the main scenarios, they explain some past events and memories of the characters. They are not really important to the overall plot, but they are nice to have.

My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! -Pirates of the Disturbance- is a game that is very true to the series. The story, setting, and new characters are not something that would be out of place in the original story line. With the series taking place in a world of an otome, it’s only fitting that the game is a solid example of one also. The characters are unique and each route differs enough from each other to keep things interesting. If you are a fan of the series I can definitely recommend this, and if you are not but are looking for a more light hearted otome, then I would say this isn’t a bad choice for you either.

Review Score
Overall

Review copy was provided by the publisher.

The post REVIEW: My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! -Pirates of the Disturbance- appeared first on oprainfall.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Review Score
Overall

Game was provided by the publisher for review.

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

A while back I remember saying I would cover it, should EastAsiaSoft ever put out a “real mahjong game,” as I put it. I had already reviewed one of their mahjong solitaire games before and wasn’t interested in covering numerous other nearly identical mahjong solitaire titles. And thus, being that I’m a huge fan of Riichi mahjong these days and the fact that EastAsiaSoft was finally localizing a Riichi mahjong game, I decided to take on this review.

Now, I am by no means an expert at Riichi mahjong. However, I have been playing it a lot these past few years, mainly against other people via apps on my phone and at this point I’d say I’m a proficiently skilled amateur. I can’t look at a hand and know immediately how many points it’s worth in total, I don’t have every single unique hand memorized and I never do too well in tournaments. Nonetheless, I know what I’m doing when playing digitally and can at least hold my own against much better players. Now with that being said, let’s get into discussing Another World Mahjong Girl and what I thought of the game.

Another World Mahjong Girl is not your typical Riichi mahjong game. It’s been formatted as a two-player affair. The player, you, are there to teach various girls of assorted humanoid species how to play mahjong. You’ll take control of one of a few different girls and play others across a magical world. There isn’t more to the story than that. You simply go from place to place, chapter to chapter, taking on girls in mahjong. You can read a bit about each girl before you battle them and then you’ll face them in numerous rounds until you whittle their points down to 0. If your own points hit 0, you fail and simply have to start over against whichever girl you were facing. You’ll have to face almost every single character two times, for multiple rounds each time. I didn’t find this to be the most exciting Riichi mahjong game, seeing as they made it a two-player thing. Typically, Riichi mahjong is played in either three or four-player matches. This could’ve been better had you played multiple girls in at least three-player matches.

In between facing these characters in mahjong matches, you can “discipline” the girls available for you to play as by buying and using items to raise their stats. This is where some of the game’s ecchi aspects come into play. The girls make sounds as you discipline them. Other ecchi aspects of the game come into play when you take away their points at the match results screen and in the gallery where you can touch the girls and they’ll make some sounds and cycle through one of three different lines. I don’t normally tend to play ecchi games, I took on this review for the mahjong, but I know there are much better ecchi games out there than this. The ecchi content seemed to be bare minimum.

That wasn’t the only issue I had with Another World Mahjong Girl. I felt like there were numerous issues throughout playing. First of all, from what I know about Riichi mahjong, this game doesn’t seem to have the standard romanization for the different Yaku. Yaku are essentially hand patterns and/or win conditions. If you break apart your hand and don’t go for Riichi, then you have to have a Yaku to win. A lot of Yaku require you to go for Riichi though. Anyway, the romanization choices were less common and I just found it to be strange. I also thought it was odd they seemed to use a white dragon tile which looked more like the one used in Chinese mahjong. But I suppose this is a fantasy game, I mean neither of these aspects are necessarily wrong, they’re just unique choices.

I did run into various legitimate mistakes and glitches as well though. In some of the character bios there were huge spaces after any quotation marks or apostrophes. Another mistake was whenever I was on the results screen at the end of a round, if a Yaku/point description took up two lines, then the next one would overlap it rather than being on its own line further down. Not only that, but when I started the game for the very first time and was sitting inactive on the difficulty choice screen, trying to decide if I should go with Normal or Hard, the game completely froze my Switch in a way I’ve never had happen before. My controller was still on but it was totally unresponsive. I had to put my Switch to sleep using the power button on the main system and hold it for a few seconds to get my Switch to light back up and be able to shut down the game. One final issue I had was the incorrect use of Ron. Any time I got a winning tile from the wall, which is a Tsumo not Ron, the prompt to call my win was displayed as Ron. Whichever girl I was using, her voice actor would correctly voice Tsumo. Tsumo would also be displayed in the match results afterwards. But the option to call my win during the match was incorrectly displayed as Ron.

In the end, I personally would not recommend Another World Mahjong Girl, not to fans of Riichi mahjong, nor lovers of ecchi games. The mahjong aspect wasn’t super terrible. I mean, as you went through each opponent they gradually got better and the chance aspect was never unfair, it wasn’t hard to get good hands. But the two-player part of it wasn’t as fun as playing regular three- or four-player mahjong and there are much better sources for enjoying Riichi mahjong, some of them free-to-play and against real people. Also, as I mentioned earlier, the ecchi features in this game were very bare minimum. You can find much better ecchi in other games. I simply found this title to be priced too high for what it was. I got through the whole game in only about five hours on Normal and in my opinion, it’s not worth the full $10.

Review Score
Overall

Review copy was provided by the publisher.

The post REVIEW: Another World Mahjong Girl appeared first on oprainfall.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Review Score
Overall

Game was provided by the publisher for review.

The post REVIEW: CRYMACHINA appeared first on oprainfall.

I’ve finally finished my playthrough of Disgaea 7: Vows of the Virtueless and it’s time to share my thoughts on it. I had mixed feelings about the last entry due to way too many features being automated, the lacking difficulty, and the damage numbers being pumped up for no reason, which was very annoying. I was really hoping this latest entry would fix some of these issues, so let’s dig in and see if this was the case.

The story here follows a young rich otaku girl named Pirilika. She is obsessed with the Bushido life style, so she travels to a group of Netherworlds called Hinomoto in order to experience this culture first hand. To her dismay when she arrives, the Bushido culture has been long suppressed due to the rise of the evil shogun, Demmodore Opener, and his magistrates. She soon encounters a young samurai named Fuji who agrees to help her, if she pays him a large sum of cash. His daughter, Ao, has caused much destruction in this Netherworld, and he has to foot the bill. He agrees to help her recover the legendary Seven Founding Weapons and overthrow Opener in order to restore Bushido to these lands.

I have to say, I enjoyed the story in Disgaea 7 quite a bit. It had a lot of that Disgaea humor and charm I’ve come to expect after many years of playing these titles. The new cast of characters were interesting, and their interactions with each other were a pure joy to watch. I felt this crew just had a much better vibe than the one from the previous title. This felt like a return to form for the franchise, and that’s a great thing.

Graphically, Disgaea 7 retains the 3D art style found in the last game. While I know this is divisive for some long time fans, I’ve liked it quite a bit since the last game. I think the models here look a bit cleaner with a few more details, so they look better than ever. The environmental details look great like they always do, and the character portraits and CG work is top tier as well. I didn’t run into any issues while reviewing the PC version for well over 40 hours. I got 120 FPS pretty consistently across both my machines with some dips here and there that really had no effect on gameplay. This is a quality PC port from NIS America.

Not much really changes in the sound department in these games. The characters do have some new quirky voice lines as they go into battle. The Signboards are still my favorite with their monotone “Oh.. I died.” The music here is mostly that whimsical Disgaea music we have all grown to love over the many years of the franchise, but there are few more somber tracks thrown in for those emotional moments. Overall, everything here still works great, and there really was no need for them to mess with a working formula. My only real complaint is they never voice the the lines for the DLC stories. I feel like at around 60 bucks for all the character pack stories, NIS should foot the bill to bring back some of the old actors for these. It would add a bit more value to them for the money.

The gameplay in Disgaea 7 is very much a back to basics approach. This is exactly what the game’s director, Shunsuke Minowa, said was one of the main goals, and they certainly achieved this. I feel like this was the right call as this felt much more like a Disgaea title than the last game did. Lots of the features from Disgaea 6 do return here such as the Juice Bar, Auto Battles and more, but they all feel much more refined this time around. The random item worlds return, and there are a tons of ways to customize the over 40 classes at your disposal with weapons, accessories, armor and passive Evilities skills.

This doesn’t mean new stuff hasn’t been added here, as well. Two new classes have been added: the Maiko and the Zombie Maiden. The Maiko will put all of the male enemies at a great disadvantage with her variety of skills, while the Zombie Maiden will power up all your other units on the field when dying. The other big new addition is Jumbify. This will become available once the meter is filled, and one of your party members will grow huge for three turns, allowing them to do massive damage to enemy units. Each of the unique characters and classes give different bonuses to the rest of the field when they are Jumbifed as well. These can range from stat boosts, to being able to avoid attacks from higher ground. The enemy units can use this skill as well, so you have to keep a balance. Do I deploy my big unit now and try to wipe them out, or save in it in case they decide to use one of theirs against me? This adds a new layer of strategy to the game and I felt it was a great addition. Unique characters in the game will also have a Hell Mode. This is a unique skill linked to their weapon that will give them access to overpowered attacks and other buffs. The DLC characters get some really crazy ones. These won’t be needed for the main game, but they are very helpful when taking on some of the much more challenging post game content.

Disgaea 7: Vows of the Virtueless is very much a return to form for the franchise. It improves on the last game in almost every way possible. The story is great, the characters are some of the best the series has seen in a long time, the combat is fun with some new classes and features that add a lot to the experience, and the overall feel here is just better. It took me around 40 hours to finish the main story and some of the extras. If you want to explore everything this title has to offer, it will easily take 80 hours by the time you min-max your stats and get everything ready to take on the post game challenges. The DLC pack for the characters and their extra stories is a bit pricey, but honestly unless you are a huge fan of the franchise, they don’t add much to the overall package here. You get plenty of bang for your buck at the base price of $60. If you’re an old fan of the series questioning whether or not to purchase after the dicey release of Disgaea 6, don’t hold back here as this is a much better series entry. This one is also very welcoming to newcomers, so if you ever wanted to try out a Disgaea title, this is the perfect place to jump in.

Review Score
Overall

 

Game was provided by the publisher for review, but the extra character and story DLC was purchased by the reviewer.

The post REVIEW: Disgaea 7: Vows of the Virtueless appeared first on oprainfall.

Last month, I had the opportunity to try a preview build of the latest game in the Fate franchise, Fate/Samurai Remnant. After my short time with the game, I was impressed with the taste I had of the game’s story, characters, and combat. Now, I’ve had the opportunity to play through the full version of the game. Was Fate/Samurai Remnant able to meet the expectations I set for it, or did the full game dispel any positive feelings I had from the preview build?

Fate/Samurai Remnant takes place in 1651 Edo, Japan and follows Miyamoto Iori, a student of the famed swordmaster, Miyamoto Musashi. After a run-in with a powerful Servant, Rider, and their Master, Yui Shousetsu, Iori finds himself dragged into a conflict known as the Waxing Moon Ritual. He, alongside his Servant, Saber, must now navigate this contest, battling powerful foes and making allies along the way. Will Iori and Saber be able to protect the peace in Edo while contending for the Waxing Moon, or will this ritual consume the city in the flames of conflict?

I enjoyed my time playing through Fate/Samurai Remnant’s story. The game did a good job explaining how the Waxing Moon Ritual came to be and developing some of the characters involved in the conflict in my first playthrough. The story gave me genuine moments of shock and awe, but there were also some moments that may have been a bit predictable, but I still enjoyed it nonetheless. Rider’s True Name reveal and Iori’s showdowns with certain characters probably stuck with me the most. Iori and Saber, being the stars of the show, had the most development throughout the game. Iori became not only a competent Master, but he grew to be a powerful swordsman, capable of holding his own against monsters and Servants alike. Saber grew to care about Iori and the city he lives in, and soon saw Iori not as a weakling that needed protection, but a capable partner. You also come to learn the motivations of the other masters, such as Zheng Chenggong and Takao Dayu, and I really sympathized with them. Unfortunately, there are some characters that didn’t receive as much development as others, like Chiemon and Dorothea. For these characters, I was given some background info, but I never really learned what their motivations were. What did they want to wish for?

Earlier, I specifically mentioned my first playthrough Fate/Samurai Remnant and its story. This is because at certain points in the main story, there are decisions that you can make that will change the direction of the plot. For example, there are two locations you can go to, but you only have time to go to one of them. So, while I am disappointed some characters didn’t get as much development as I would’ve liked, their development may actually be in the routes I didn’t choose. Having a branching story gives the game much more replay value, and while I didn’t have time to do a second playthrough before writing this review, I am looking forward to seeing what occurs in the paths I didn’t choose, and learning about characters I didn’t learn much about in my first playthrough, such as Rogue Saber. I’m also interested in seeing if the game’s ending will be affected if I choose different options. A helpful option that unlocks after you complete the game for the first time is the Completed Story section in the main menu. This gives you percentages on how much you’ve completed of each chapter and optional Digressions. So, if you want to make sure you’ve seen everything there is to see, you can always go back and check this section.

Speaking of Digressions, these are optional side stories focusing on characters involved in the Waxing Moon Ritual. While I call these optional, I highly recommend doing them so you can get the most out of the story. These Digressions can take place in the past or present, and can help develop not only the main cast, but also characters who don’t get much screen time in the main story, such as the Rogue Servants. So if you want to get closer to characters such as Rogue Rider, make sure to do their Digressions. They also show you events leading up to characters meeting Iori and Saber in the main story, which may only be mentioned in passing but not elaborated upon if you just play the main story. For example, Iori runs into Berserker at a crucial part of the main story, and Iori questions why she’s there. Well, you can find out exactly how Berserker got there if you play the Digressions. You want to find out how Berserker met Takao Dayu? You have to play the Digressions. Not only will Digressions help flesh out the story more, you can also get some nice rewards too, such as currency and items. This is also the only way to unlock a Rogue Servant’s True Name and Noble Phantasm, so if you want to get the most out of them in battle, you have to play the Digressions. There’s a time limit for how long you have to complete certain Digressions, but the game gives you a helpful notification if a Digression will go away if you continue the story. The name of the Digression will also be colored in red to show you which one will disappear, so you can focus on those. Of all the Digressions, I enjoyed Rogue Ruler’s (Boss) the most as it gave me a good chuckle every time because of how ridiculous he is. 

A helpful section I touched upon in my preview of Fate/Samurai Remnant is the Logbook. This will document all the information you’ve compiled on the characters in the game as well as some terminology used. Again, this is fantastic, as there are a lot of words used that may confuse people new to the Fate universe, so it’s helpful to read through it. The Logbook also contains some information not spoken about outright in the main story, such as background information on Masters, and information on Servants after their True Name is revealed. I will say you should be careful reading the entries for one of the characters. You’ll know which character as they are related to Saber. I found one of the entries for this character spoils Saber’s True Name, before it is explicitly revealed to the player in the main story. So, I would just be careful reading about any entry or character relating to Saber, everything else should be fair game.

Fate/Samurai Remnant has four major gameplay portions: preparing at home, exploring Edo, combat, and Spirit Font Conflicts. When at home, you can help Iori prepare for the perils of the Waxing Moon Ritual. You can rest in bed to restore HP, maintain your swords, carve statues, choose which Rogue Servant will accompany you, and renovate your mage workshop. Maintaining your swords starts a simple minigame, and you can get an EXP bonus depending on how well you do and what materials you use. So, if you do it perfectly and with the best materials, your EXP bonus can be increased by 20% and for eight battles, which is very helpful. Carving statues is a way to not only gain some EXP, but it’s a way to make some good money as well. You can take the statues you create and sell them to the Boss at Babyloni-ya for a good chunk of change. After a certain point in the story, your home will be where you can choose which Rogue Servant will accompany you. So, make sure you have your favorite one accompanying you before you go out to battle. Renovating your workshop can give you permanent buffs (increase your Valor Gauge fill rate, increase Affinity Gauge fill rate, etc.), give you more options at your workshop (ability to upgrade your sword mountings, option to craft gems, etc.), give you benefits when exploring Edo (decrease price of goods at shops), and even give you the ability to switch out your Rogue Servant outside the house. Unlocking these benefits will cost a good amount of materials and currency, so make sure to save up!

Once you’re out in the town, you can purchase materials and recovery items, stop minor squabbles between townsfolk, fight monsters and ruffians, pet your favorite cats and dogs, and complete Local Trials and Commissions. You’re not limited to staying in Asakusa, you can open the Edo map most of the time and go to a different district if you want, unless the story limits you at the point you’re at. Stopping squabbles and petting animals both help fill your Affinity gauge, but only petting animals will restore some of your health, so you know which one to do. Local Trials are objectives you can complete in each Edo district that can be completed for currency and materials. These are relatively simple to do, such as defeat a certain amount of enemies or pet a dog or cat a certain amount of times. Once you complete all of them, you get a Town Completion bonus, which is even more currency and materials. Commissions are like Local Trials, but they’re not limited to specific districts in Edo. So you can make progress on these no matter where you are in Edo, and they usually give much bigger rewards than the Local Trials. I do wish there were one or two more minigames to break up all the action, some that need a little more input from the player, because stopping squabbles is way too easy. I think they could’ve added a fishing minigame in here, since you’re allowed to visit ports in the game. It’s not a big deal, just a minor nitpick.

Combat in Fate/Samurai Remnant is an action affair. You can use regular attacks with the square button, heavy attacks with the triangle button, jump with the cross button, utilize Valor Strikes with the circle button, and dodge with the R2 button. The L1 button allows you to expend Gems to use spells or switch Iori’s current Sword Style. The R1 button accesses the Servant menu and allows you to use Affinity techniques and switch out with Saber, or your chosen Rogue Servant, if the Substitution gauge is full. Saber’s gauge and the Rogue Servant’s Substitution gauge are separated, so you don’t have to worry about choosing one over the other. Valor Strikes are similar to Musou attacks, in that you expend the Valor gauge to perform a special attack which wrecks all the foes around you. When controlling a Servant, the Valor gauge turns into the Noble Phantasm gauge, which in turn changes the Valor Strike into a Noble Phantasm. You can only utilize a Noble Phantasm once you find out the Servant’s True Name, so make sure you do Digressions for those Rogue Servants! I thought it was interesting how Iori could change up his Sword Style to fit the combat situation. My favorite Sword Styles were the Water Style, which emphasizes speed, and the Fire Style, which gets stronger as your health goes down. I found combat to be fair, with a mix of easy fights and those that will challenge you. Most of the challenging fights will involve enemies that have a Shell gauge. These gauges prevent you from dealing a lot of damage to a foe unless it’s broken. This can make these enemies a bit tanky, but it isn’t too bad if you’re patient.

In order to make fights easier, you can obviously level up, but you can also spend Skill Points you accumulate to unlock buffs and abilities for Iori and your Servants. These buffs can include increasing your damage against Servants and monsters, increasing your Shell gauge depletion rate, and even unlock an ability which revives Iori after getting KO’d once in battle. If you don’t have enough Skill Points to unlock an ability, you can spend items, such as Skill Jewels, to gain points needed to get the ability. Other than unlocking nodes in the Skill Tree, you can also change Iori’s Sword Mountings. You can change four different aspects of your swords, and each will give you different benefits depending on the mounting used. Benefits can include things such as healing your HP after defeating an enemy, increasing your damage against Servants, etc. You can upgrade your favorite mountings at your workshop, so you can keep using your favorites as the story goes on. Also, your mountings actually change the appearance of Iori’s swords, which is a very nice touch.

You know you’re about to enter a pretty important battle if a Spirit Font Conflict starts. In Spirit Font Conflicts, you have to make your way usually from Asakusa all the way to your destination in a certain amount of turns, all while taking, and defending, Spirit Nodes from your opposition. Taking specific Spirit Nodes will give you buffs, such as increasing your attack. You can also work alongside Rogue Servants you’ve bonded with throughout the story to make the Conflict easier. You can also split off Saber from Iori, effectively giving you two or more units to take Spirit Nodes with. If you run into an enemy in the same node, this starts a battle. You have an optional time limit to take out the enemies within, and if you defeat them within the time limit, you get extra rewards. If a Conflict is ever giving you difficulty, you can utilize a Support Mystic Code, which can give you different benefits, such as transporting to a node under your control or giving you additional actions within a turn. You can also click the right stick (R3) and ask Gramps for advice if you’re really stuck. What I liked about Spirit Font Conflicts is if you run into an enemy with Saber or a Rogue Servant without Iori, you can control them with no limitations. This is a good opportunity to really let loose and smash your foes. I don’t have a problem with the time limitation when controlling Servants normally, as it adds an extra challenge to battles, but sometimes I just want to wreck foes with reckless abandon. Honestly, Spirit Font Conflicts were a bit too easy for my liking on Sword Fighter (Normal) difficulty. It would’ve been nice if you needed to put a little more thought into moving your units, but the game tended to hold your hand throughout the process.

Continue Iori’s quest for the Waxing Moon on page 2 ->

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When XSEED Games first announced Silent Hope, I wasn’t really impressed with it. I thought the game looked like a pretty bog standard dungeon crawler with some crafting and farming shoehorned into it. Looks can be very deceiving when it comes to games, so when I got an opportunity to check it out, I jumped on it. Let’s see if this game is as plain as I first thought it was, or if it was more than what I was expecting.

The story here follows a peaceful kingdom that was hit with a great calamity. The people became disheartened and started to lose faith in the king. They felt he was only out to protect his daughter, the princess, and the others close to him. The people became violent and things fell into chaos. The king used a powerful spell to seal everyone’s voices away. Then he hurled himself into the abyss without saying a word to his daughter. The princess, broken with grief, cried until her river of tears encased her in a giant crystal teardrop. Years passed by, and the chaos of that day was long forgotten, when suddenly, seven bright lights emerged from the abyss. These seven lights are the heroes that had answered the princess’ cries for help. Her hope now rests with these seven heroes as they explore the abyss to find out what happened to the king, and why he had sealed their voices away.

Silent Hope‘s plot is pretty basic, but I found it enjoyable. It was interesting to see the story unfold as you progressed through each layer of the abyss. It was like watching a good mystery unfold as you found out exactly what happened in this kingdom and the king’s motivations. There is a bit of a post-game story as well, and I haven’t finished all of that as of the writing of this review. But, I’m curious to see how all of it plays out.

Graphically, Silent Hope looks good. The heroes all have lots of details on their character models. The different classes you can unlock have distinct looks, and I love that all weapons have a different look. Each one of these are unique, and it’s a real joy when you find a legendary drop that not only looks amazing, but is totally badass. Each layer of the abyss is from a different event in the kingdom’s history, and they are designed to look the part. You may be at a festival on one layer and a harsh winter in the next. Monster designs look good, but they probably could’ve done better with more variation and less recolors. However, I thought the boss designs were great, with lots of details. The PC version I reviewed ran great in resolutions up to 4K, and I had mine running at 120 FPS with no issues.

In the sound department, Silent Hope is pretty solid as well. I loved the dungeon themes quite a bit. I found myself humming along as I slayed every monster in my path with extreme prejudice. The game features both an English and Japanese dub, and I found both of these to be pretty good. You will hear the princess’ voice mostly, since, well, she is the only one with a voice in the game. Though you may discover more as the story unfolds.

The gameplay in Silent Hope is what you would expect to find in your average top down dungeon crawler. You go through each level, laying waste to your enemies while picking up memories to make weapons, and materials to craft them with. You will also find seeds to plant crops to make food dishes with. These dishes will provide you with important buffs as you traverse the many floors of the abyss. Defeating monsters will not only drop materials, but Magistones as well. These stones will not only give your equipment some buffs, but will change the element of your attacks and defense too. This is very important, as it will give you the advantage over enemies of the opposite type during your time in the abyss.

The materials you gather in the dungeon will have to be refined in order to use them to craft weapons. You have two shops in your hub that will do this for you, but it will take some time to get things ready. Players can start the process before entering the abyss, and the work will continue while you explore. This is the cheapest method of doing this, and it will save your precious runes for upgrading weapons, growing crops, and other needs. If you’re in a real hurry, though, you can spend runes to get these materials instantly, or the precious Sands of Time you find in the dungeon. These are pretty rare, so you should save them for hard times. You can do this with crops and food items as well, if you’re in a real hurry to have yummy food in the dungeon.

Lastly, let’s talk a bit about the seven heroes. Each one of these heroes is a different class of fighter. They are pretty much your standard RPG affair with a Fighter, Mage, Archer and so on. I did think it was neat that they gave you a heavy fighter and a more nimble one with a shield. The farmer was very unique as well, having a pitchfork as a weapon and some lighting quick attacks. You would think this wouldn’t work, but it really works out well. Each of the heroes has two other classes that you can unlock as the game progresses, and each one will grant you three more skills to slay your foes with. These skills are, of course, your standard attacks, but some are helpful buffs as well. These skills will upgrade with points you gain as you level up the characters. I really loved the archer class more than I thought I would. There is something oddly satisfying about raining bombs down on your enemies and watching them pop. The only real flaw I found here is sometimes, you will get mobbed by the monsters and end up with a few unfair deaths due to being stun locked. This is pretty rare, and since you only lose a few items, it’s not that big of a deal.

Overall, I had a great time with Silent Hope. The combat is fun, the story is interesting, and I felt like the dungeon crawling was fair with a good amount of checkpoints on your way down the abyss. The music is very good, and the way they work the voice into the actual story is very unique and something I’ve not seen in my many years of covering games. I feel like fans of dungeon looters will have a great time with this one at the $39.99 price tag. There is a lot to love here with the solid gameplay and loads of different weapon options to keep players busy for hours. I’ve spent over 30 hours here and still have the post-game to go. Casual players shouldn’t be afraid of this one either, as the normal difficulty is pretty fair and easy to get into. Now, if you dare challenge the harder modes of the post-game, that is a different story, but that just adds more value to this great title.

Review Score
Overall

Game was provided by the publisher for review, and no in-game purchases were used.

The post REVIEW: Silent Hope appeared first on oprainfall.

Back in 2012, Japan saw the release of Nayuta no Kiseki, an action RPG spin-off in the Trails franchise. Unlike other entries in the franchise, the game was not set in the continent of Zemuria, meaning past games released had no bearing on this title’s story. As a fan of the franchise, I was at least familiar with Nayuta no Kiseki’s existence, and was interested in playing it at least once. But I realized the difficulty in this due to the game being a Japan PSP exclusive and having no overseas release. However, something happened that finally gave me a chance to give this game  a try. Nihon Falcom decided to remaster Nayuta no Kiseki for modern platforms, and NIS America surprisingly announced that they would be bringing this remaster to overseas fans for the first time as The Legend of Nayuta: Boundless Trails. How would an action RPG spin-off in this famed franchise fare? Would the story be as strong or complex as others with the Trails moniker? I enter this brand new land with these questions in mind.

The Legend of Nayuta: Boundless Trails starts as two young men, Nayuta and Cygna, return to their home island of Remnant Isle for summer vacation. As they start to re-acclimate to their hometown, a strange tower ruin falls from the sky and lands on the coast nearby. Being the adventurous lads they are, the two of them explore the tower. At the top they run into an unconscious fairy and two strange men: one clothed in black, the other armored with a greatsword. The two strangers take an item from the fairy and leave, and Nayuta takes the fairy home to recuperate. The fairy is named Noi, and she hurries back to her homeland to chase after the man in black. Nayuta and Cygna follow her and find the mystical land of Terra, the land Nayuta knows as Lost Heaven. The two young men must now help Noi retrieve the four stolen Master Gears and help restore peace to Terra. 

Nayuta’s story is pretty straightforward. You gather items and try to save the world, all while trying to understand the motivations of Zechst (the man in black) and his right hand man. As you play the game, you can probably make a good guess on how the story will unfold, and some of the twists you can see coming from a mile away. There were some revelations that intrigued me, but none that really blew me away. I will say there is nothing wrong with the story being simple and straightforward. Sometimes, I like to pick up a game and not think too hard about how a story will unfold, I just play. And not being related to other Trails games actually helps The Legend of Nayuta, as you won’t have to play multiple games to understand the plot or characters involved, making the story easily accessible to newcomers and veterans alike.

I did like the main cast in the game. Nayuta is curious, loves to learn, and is a good-natured young man who grows considerably throughout his journey; Cygna is Nayuta’s best friend and an older brother figure with tremendous sword skills; Noi is Nayuta’s guide throughout his adventure and comes to accept humans through her experiences with Nayuta and his friends; Eartha is Nayuta’s doting sister and a great cook; Lyra is a childhood friend of Nayuta and has a hard time relaying her feelings to him; Creha is a kind and mysterious girl Nayuta meets in Terra who opens up more as she spends time on Remnant Isle. I personally liked Nayuta and Noi the most in this story. Nayuta goes from a boy just curious about an unexplored land to a young man with the conviction to do anything to save his friends and loved ones. Noi goes from despising humans to enjoying their company and loving the world they come from. The two of them also make one heck of a team, much of their success being attributed to their trust in each other. I also found a soft spot for the NPCs on Remnant Isle. They’re like one close knit family and care a lot for each other, and seeing them band together in times of crisis was a sight to behold.

Gameplay is mostly split between two sections: preparing on Remnant Isle and exploring Terra. On Remnant Isle you can purchase new equipment, items, and cook delicious food to bring with you on your adventure. In addition, you can take on handyman requests from the Remnant Isle residents. These quests reward you with mira (currency) and other items that are helpful for your journey. In addition, you can also learn new sword skills and gain special equipment from Master Orbus, but this requires accomplishing certain things in Terra. But best of all, you can get a dog for Nayuta’s house. Not only is it just comforting to have a dog, Nora will bring you collectibles occasionally after you return from Terra. Who doesn’t want a good doggo in their lives?

In Terra you explore four different continents, all featuring different monsters and environments. This is where the bulk of the gameplay takes place. Each continent is split into multiple stages, and each stage has three goals for you to accomplish: clear the stage, collect three big crystals and all treasures, and another optional objective which differs in each stage. This last objective can range from not getting hit a certain amount of times to defeating a certain number of enemies. You can gain a maximum amount of three stars per stage, and these stars are added to your Swordsman Training Book. If you gain enough stars, you can learn a new sword skill from Master Orbus to help you on your journey. So, while you can progress the story by just clearing the stage without doing the optional objectives, it’s recommended to try to get more than one star per stage so you can unlock new skills, which in turn will make your journey much easier.

Combat takes place in the land of Terra most of the time, and unlike other games under the Trails banner, The Legend of Nayuta features an action-based combat system. You perform attacks with the circle button, dodge with the triangle button, and jump with the cross button. The square button is used for Noi’s Seasonal Arts (magic). If you played a game in the Ys series, like Ark of Napishtim or Seven, then you’ll have a pretty good idea of what you’re getting into. In addition, you can unlock Gear Crafts for Noi, which are special abilities that can help you in combat and exploration. For example, the Gear Shield can nullify enemy attacks and let you run normally over difficult surfaces such as lava. Utilizing Gear Crafts drains the Craft gauge, and if it runs out, Noi will become incapacitated for a short amount of time, preventing you from using Seasonal Arts and Gear Crafts. The combat system wasn’t too complicated, and I found you could get through fights pretty easily on Normal difficulty. I enjoyed hacking through foes and blasting enemies with Noi’s Arts, it was pretty satisfying. However, it may have been too easy at times, even boss fights. I found I could win most of the time without thinking too much. Another complaint I have is that new skills were locked behind completing stage objectives and not leveling up. It’s kind of ridiculous you have to unlock the ability to guard, that seems like something that should be available from the beginning of the game. I understand it’s a way to motivate players to do these objectives, but I found it kind of annoying at times. Another thing that happened to me is that enemies would be able to hit me even though I was on a higher, or lower, platform than them. If you saw the height differences, you would think there’s no way an attack would hit, but it does anyway. This wasn’t just a negative, though, as I could also take advantage of this to damage foes. You could call it a double edged sword.

Exploring stages in Terra also involves a plethora of platforming. You have to do a lot of jumping and running to get through these stages, and sometimes you will have to backtrack and redo a stage to finish all the objectives. This is unavoidable, as there are times when you’re too early in the story, and do not have the needed Gear Craft to get to a treasure chest or big crystal. This was a minor annoyance, but still frustrating all the same. Most of the platforming wasn’t too difficult, just needing some good timing to get through.

Nihon Falcom always delivers when it comes to a game’s soundtrack, and The Legend of Nayuta is no different. I appreciated how the stage music progresses as you get further in the story, it gets more epic as you continue your journey. The boss music is stellar too, matching the monstrous foes you have to face at the end of each continent. It would’ve been nice if each of the continent bosses had their own unique music, but that’s not a huge issue. The event music ranged from somber in the sadder scenes to ominous in the more serious scenes. I have no complaints there. The opening and ending themes were also quite good, Kanako Kotera did a great job singing both.

Continue Nayuta’s journey on page 2 ->

The post REVIEW: The Legend of Nayuta: Boundless Trails appeared first on oprainfall.

It honestly doesn’t feel that long since the debut of the manga, and yet here we are, about to discuss the already wrapped up Season Three of the anime adaptation of Mairimashita! Iruma-kun. As an avid reader of the manga, I’ve had opportunity to experience the ongoing journey and growth of Iruma, a once fearful fourteen year old Japanese boy who is transported to the Netherworld, and is now discovering friendship and personal ambitions as he continues to forge a path forward in his new life. In the manga, Iruma had already overcome many trials; physical, mental, and emotional; and continues to set and achieve personal goals all the while keeping in mind his friends and loved ones when doing so. He has grown much and matured, though, unimaginable silliness, pure chaos, and unsought attention still follow him close by. As for Season Three, we rewind a bit in Iruma’s story, privy to the animated telling of the second to last event in Iruma’s first year at the demon school Bablys; the Harvest Festival. I came into this season with expectations of action, energy and tension, as I prepared to once again experience Iruma’s endeavors through what is arguably still one of his greatest trials in the demon world.

Mairimashita! Iruma-kun Season Three covers the Harvest Festival arc, which begins with the announcement that Iruma and his misfit classmates must all raise themselves to daleth, rank four, before the end of the year or face eviction from their prestigious classroom: Royal One. An impossible task on their own, they are then informed they will be assigned elite, renowned demons as tutors to refine their particular skills and traits. While the others are broken into groups of two, Iruma finds himself on the receiving end of individual attention by his tutor Bachiko, a magenta clad archer with attitude. Iruma and his classmates endure grueling training throughout the weeks before the Harvest Festival, and once the fated day arrives, they emerge pensive from their hellish training and ready to put to use those personal hells in full force.

Don’t let that innocent look fool you

This is certainly one of the most exciting story arcs in the series and there’s plenty to love here. In the manga, scenes are full of emotion, energy, and pressure conveying the stresses of combat-filled battles and internal struggles, as well as the joys and reliefs of reunions and successes. Regarding Iruma specifically, this is a transitional moment for him, as we see him dialed into his desires for, and truly working towards, a life in the Netherworld. Training under Bachiko and the twists and turns of Iruma’s individual route through the Harvest Festival allow for his personality to shine, and nurture his ongoing emotional growth. We get to see his selflessness towards others, and his drive to succeed and make proud those who have helped him get this far. We also get to see his genuine fears. Not the joke-like spooks he used to face at the start of his story, Iruma will realize and must endure the true depths of his fears regarding identity and place among those he has now come to love. Thus, through his desires for acceptance, wanting to remain close with his friends, and wanting to see them grow alongside him, Iruma’s character will ultimately receive praiseworthy advancement.

The other classmates have their moments too, as throughout the arc, when they encounter each other, all of their particular peculiarities come out in full, as they argue, fight, or scheme for themselves. There’s also a subplot, in which the misfits find themselves with an additional rival, Coco Orobas, adding even more tension, as Coco’s, and a mysterious companion’s, intentions go damningly beyond the scope of the Festival. It all comes together for a nice bit of storytelling and character development for several of the classmates. And with all that happens within the arc, in its entirety, the results are an appreciably immersive and satisfying experience.

As for this arc’s anime adaptation, overall, I am pleased with the outcome. I think the production does a noteworthy job of capturing similar moods and tones to character specific scenes like discussions, planning, arguments, and similar, as well as capturing all of the particulars regarding the misfits’ personalities. The raucousness of arguments, the silliness of over-the-top schemes and demands, and the heartfelt actions by friends stepping up, these are what keep the manga charming, and I believe the distinct moods and tones of those key moments are markedly recaptured here. Indeed, I think these communicative types of scenes are Season Three’s greatest strengths, as they best recapture the original natures and intentions of these scenes from the manga.

Regarding the more energetic scenes, such as battles, these have far more intensity to them compared to the manga, as expected, yet also compared to similar scenes from Seasons One and Two. I’m pleased to say that this intensity works incredibly well throughout given the nature of this story arc, delivering satisfying levels of zeal and force when called for. This is especially true for nearly all of Asmodeus’s scenes, as most of his scenes are action oriented this season. While this story arc provides growth for Iruma, it does so for Asmodeus as well with him tapping into the higher gears of resolve, power, and passion that he’s unlocked. And so, his scenes are intense, yet the purpose for said aggressiveness and emotions are not lost, keeping with his character depth from the manga. In these and similar action sequences, the higher levels of intensity work incredibly well.

Intensity really is the theme this season

Despite the overall impressive efforts, I do have some issues with Season Three. My main issue regards the action, in that several situations tote the line between authentic and cliché. As I said above, I’m mostly pleased with the action sequences however, some do drag on longer than necessary. Also some have terribly flashy moments that feel exaggerated, as if I’m watching other shounen series that also overuse these stylizings. And I get it, this production is meant to attract a wider audience who may prefer the over-the-top demonstrations of power. Yet, I cannot help but feel these instances take away from the charms of the original work and intentions of the author in favor of forced attempts at reaching more potential viewers. Personally, they broke immersion, taking me out of the experience for moments at a time. Although not an often occurrence, it’s a repeated issue that sticks out for me.

Another issue, though more a comment on my part, is that I would have liked to have seen more of the training before the Harvest Festival. In the manga, the training is not much of a focus, as we are introduced to each group’s hardships and see small snippets of their ongoing training. So I had hoped we would see more of that training here in the anime, yet this training component is treated the same way. This is one instance I wished the producers had added extra. Lastly, those musical scenes, which have become an anime staple, yet which I still do no care for in the slightest. Like with Season 2, since I knew they were inevitable, I was somewhat prepared. Personally, I can still do without. My personal feelings aside, from a professional standpoint, I will say they are fun additions for viewers that appreciate them, and they add mood and energy to the scenes in which they are featured. Perhaps it’s because they seem shorter than in previous seasons, so they add without fully taking over scenes or drastically altering tone. And, even with my biases, I can see that they are more a help than a hindrance in context. As a whole, the smaller issues will be negligible to most, and if you don’t mind the over-the-top moments of pure shounen marketing, then Season Three’s flaws are easily departed from.

Moving on to its aesthetics, Mairimashita! Iruma-kun Season Three looks as great as previous seasons. The artistic reproduction is once again remarkably accurate, capturing the styles and uniqueness of the manga. Backgrounds and environments, character designs, and character expressions all possess the unique styles, personalities, and charms of their manga counterparts. Animations are smooth and detailed, bringing new, and appreciated, vividness to interactions, struggles, and triumphs. And again, the action is mostly appropriate for this story arc, bringing expected intensity. Visually, Season Three keeps with what was done right in the first two seasons, continuing a trend of solid, expressive animation and authentic adaptation.

Thought few, Amelie has her moments, too

As for the audio, this is also a mostly strong effort. Starting with the voicing, I previously felt several of the classmates’ voices were too deep. Now that I’ve become more accustomed to this cast, I don’t find them as much of a distraction as I used to. The distractedly deep voice of newcomer Coco however, is enough for me to comment on it. Other new characters such as the tutors, have serviceable voicing that fit their personalities and never detract from the experience. I am especially impressed with popular voice actress Junko Takeuchi as she lends her talents for Bachiko’s voice, which I felt perfectly fit the character’s personality. The pink-clad, rambunctious, blunt badass that is Bachiko sounds great, with a voice amiably fitting her brand of crassness.

As for music, ignoring the main theme, which is just more shounen pandering, the soundtrack is fairly strong, with its mix of old, new, and remixed music. The tracks from previous seasons are never overused and are always fitting to the scenes in which they’re used as are the new tracks, though they are noticeably less of them in comparison. The remixes are most impressive, especially Asmodeus’s remixed theme, which perfectly matches his raging intensity in one of his particular scenes early in the Harvest Festival. This specific moment stands out as one of the best this season, made satisfyingly dynamic by the music and voicing. Voicing and music together make for a solid audio effort which mostly helps, and rarely hinders, the overall presentation. And so, the visual and audio aesthetic efforts of Season Three are thoroughly noteworthy for their abilities to capture the style and magic of the manga’s scenes while also enhancing and bringing new atmosphere to them.

Mairimashita! Iruma-kun Season Three does well by its source material, faithfully adapting one of the most exciting story arcs from the manga. The story, with all of its twists, action, interactions, and unique tones and moods, is satisfyingly portrayed throughout. Iruma and his classmates are also conscientiously adapted, accurately depicting their individual thoughts and emotions, as well as their growth through their personal trials. Add in the advantages of strong animation, authentic artistic recreation, and satisfactory sound work, and you have a viewing experience that is energetic and engaging. An easy recommendation given its equally imaginative, immersive, and entertaining as its source, Mairimashita! Iruma-kun Season Three is an absolute blast to watch.

Review Score
Overall Story
Art & Animation
Music & Voicing

Mairimashita! Iruma-kun season two is available on Crunchyroll

The post ANIME REVIEW: Mairimashita! Iruma-kun Season Three appeared first on oprainfall.

Developer(s): AstralShift
Publisher(s): SQUARE ENIX
Platform(s): TBA
Release Date: TBA

Official Website

If there is one game that my mind keeps going back to from my brief time at PAX West 2023, it has to be Little Goody Two Shoes. Set in the town of Kieferberg, you play as Elise – an incredibly expressive woman who dreams of riches who discovers a red pair of shoes that will change her destiny. The game itself is split into two parts. First, there is a daytime portion where you’re in the town, playing mini-games, exploring romantic interests, and trying to allay suspicions of your fellow townies. Second, there are the nighttime portions where Elise is solving puzzles and navigating dungeons with enemies in them. Both halves couldn’t feel more different, yet they are clearly meant to be integrated into one whole.

Described to me as an homage to JRPGs, Little Goody Two Shoes has beautiful graphics that remind me a lot of the anime sprites from the Sega Saturn classic Magic Knight RayEarth. The character designs are sharp and expressive while showing off a range of emotions. The city of Kieferberg itself is gorgeous too, and it is a city that would fit well in with any number of classic JRPGs from the 1990s. Even the horror-filled night sections are darkly cute, and they are extremely stylish in a foreboding way as the enemies try to kill me.

My Little Goody Two Shoes demo dropped me into the first nighttime dungeon of the game. Remarkably, the game doesn’t tell you what to do or how to proceed. This is, again, an homage to classic JRPGs. I instead had to try out everything to get an idea of how to proceed. I ended up checking the mirror, letting it crack, picking up a key from the floor, unlocking a treasure chest near the bed, and finding another key inside that let me unlock the door to escape that room. As I proceeded to a room where I had to find four keys to unlock the central door, I encountered candles that would trigger and try to harm me as I came within range whenever I went from corner-to-corner opening chests. While it wasn’t obvious on how to survive them, I ended being okay if I ran away from them before they could spin around and damage me. It is very weird not having a way to defend myself in a dungeon, though it definitely managed to amp up the scare factor because of it.

When the demo moved along to the daytime, it was then that I was told about the Hunger mechanic in the game. Elise, like people in real life, has to eat. And I ended up snacking down on some food in my inventory to help keep her well-fed. As I quickly progressed through various conversations in the daytime, I couldn’t help but be struck by how expressive Elise is. She is not a meek, mute protagonist. Instead, she is a fleshed-out woman who wants money, can be selfish, and is a real go-getter.

There is a different type of gameplay during the daytime in Little Goody Two Shoes, but it doesn’t make the game any less scary. (Images owned by AstralShift/SQUARE ENIX).

As I went around town, I ended up helping one of the townies to chop wood. What I was not expecting was a full-blown mini-game that required me to chop a bunch of wood under a time limit while also not chopping literally anything else that appeared. This mini-game was depicted like a yesteryear mini-game with limited buttons and pixelated graphics inside a faux arcade cabinet. And honestly? It was fun and simple, which I am guessing was the whole point.

“AstralShift has managed to pull off different types of fear and tension in a spectacular way that left me desperately wanting more than what this demo had to offer in this gorgeous world.”

The real show-stopping moment for me of the daytime portion was when Elise launched into a full-on musical song cutscene that, if it was on Broadway, would have been her “I want” song. The music and singing were fantastic, it told me so much about her character, and the graphics kept switching from anime-inspired, to a doll spinning in circles that the developers made in real life, to all these different styles of graphics. It was insane to watch, and it made me giddy with excitement for how unexpected it was. It was like I was transported back into the world of LUNAR: Silver Star Story Complete, Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure, or even Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon on the Nintendo 64. I am a complete sucker for unexpected musical numbers, especially ones that help to further the underlying plot, and this one delivered on the concept.

As I was running short on time at PAX West, since we were closing in on the final minutes before the show shut down for the year, the developer assisting me told me to skip along to the final dialogue section of the Little Goody Two Shoes demo. At that point, Elise was trying to allay the townspeople’s suspicious about a woman that had come into town that the extremely superstitious townspeople were wondering about being a witch. I found myself having to select different dialogue options – all of which sounded good – to help explain how I knew this mysterious woman. As I kept selecting dialogue options, I honestly felt a lot of the same foreboding that I felt during the nighttime portion of the game as I was realizing that I wasn’t fooling anyone and that they were going to see through us both. Sure enough, by the end of the conversation, it was clear that the townspeople didn’t believe my wildly spun tales of her being family and I saw that the town’s suspicion of me had gone up.

And that is where the brilliance of Little Goody Two Shoes shows up. It is so easy to build a tense game by stripping away your character’s weapons and dumping them in a world that wants to kill them. After all, it is scariness that is happening to you. It is much, much harder to build that tension by taking that same character and inserting them into a situation where all the bad things can happen when it is completely in your control. I had to weigh the dialogue options and choose the lie that I thought sounded best. It was clear that things were spiraling out of control very early on during my conversation with the townspeople, and it scared me just as much as any candle attacking and draining my health could do. AstralShift has managed to pull off different types of fear and tension in a spectacular way that left me desperately wanting more than what this demo had to offer in this gorgeous world.

I cannot wait for Little Goody Two Shoes to come out, and neither should you. This game is being published as part of the SQUARE ENIX Collective, and I cannot wait for it to come out.

Are you excited for Little Goody Two Shoes?

What do you think of video game musical numbers?

Let us know in the comments below!

The post PAX West 2023 IMPRESSIONS: Little Goody Two Shoes appeared first on oprainfall.

Developer(s): Cygames
Publisher(s): XSEED
Platform(s): PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, PC
Release Date: February 1, 2024
Official Website

Before I started my hands-on demo of Granblue Fantasy: Relink, I had one question: “Do I need to have played either the mobile game Granblue Fantasy or Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising, as I saw during EVO 2022, in order to understand this game?” The answer was simply “No.” Granblue Fantasy: Relink can be played as a standalone title.

With that out of the way, let’s dive right in.

Granblue Fantasy: Relink is an action RPG that can have up to four players playing at the same time as they hack and slash their way towards Estalucia, which is billed as “a fabled island beyond the end of the skies.” In my demo, there are multiple characters I could play as, and each had a different skillset. For example, Katalina, who is one of the easiest characters to play as, performs combos by using the Square and Triangle buttons, while Sigfried (one of the most difficult to use) requires you to carefully time your Square button presses to power up his attacks, and successfully timing all the attacks in a combo unleashes a powerful finisher. For my demo, I chose to try out Katalina.

The Granblue Fantasy: Relink demo itself was fairly simple: clear some trash enemies, take on a boss, and then – if I have time – take on an extra secret boss. This was clearly meant to be a demo to show off the gameplay combat, and it definitely did so.

Combat itself is fairly simple: attack with the Square and Triangle buttons, combo when I can, and hold down the R1 button when I want to use my cooldown skills. I was able to push my way through the trash enemies at the start until I got to the demo’s first boss battle. When it came to my first boss, Gerascene (a giant skeleton) monster, I quickly realized that button mashing would only carry me so far. I started to have to Dodge with R2 as I learned how to read the various attacks, and I would strike whenever I had the opportunity. By the time I was able to clear that boss, I had managed to fulfill all the optional criteria to go into battle against the Rock Golem extra boss that I was unable to beat before the demo’s time limit expired.

Granblue Fantasy: Relink is a four-player (real or CPU) co-op title that is designed as an action RPG. (Images courtesy of XSEED).

The combat itself, despite me never having played before, was easy for me to grasp and make me feel powerful. I hammered the various basic attacks that Katalina had while throwing in the various skills (naturally on a cooldown timer) that she also had available with the additional press of a shoulder button.  The combat itself was silky smooth, and I felt like I grasped it quickly as I was able to button mash quickly through the first few rounds of enemies. Dodging was extremely responsive, and I liked how I didn’t have to expertly time it like some other video games out there in order to be successful.

I mentioned at the top that you have three additional teammates while you play Granblue Fantasy: Relink. These CPU teammates fade, clearly purposefully, into the background somewhat. They are strong enough that I didn’t feel like I had to babysit them in any of the battles that I was in, yet they clearly were not going to be the deciding factor in whether I win or not. I couldn’t, for instance, hide away in a corner of the battlefield and let them simply take on my enemies for me. While the CPU teammates did contribute to the overall battle, I was expected to do the lion’s share of combat and to carry my team to victory.

What my teammates were extremely useful for, though, was for Link Attacks and Chain Bursts. When you and your teammates hit an enemy, their stun gauge goes up. When the stun gauge is full, and your party’s link gauge is full, all four of you can perform Link Attacks that slow down the enemy during ‘Link Time,’ give you bonus effects, and cause great damage to the enemy. Chain Bursts are when you use a Skybound Art in conjunction with your teammates in order to do great damage to your enemy. The Chain Bursts are big, flashy, and come with a miniature cutscene that you can get watch as each character pulls off their move in turn – assuming that, of course, you can hit the appropriate buttons in the fairly generous time window that flashes on screen for it.

It was a real surprise to me that both the Link Attacks and the Chain Bursts happened fairly frequently during combat and it felt more than coincidental that my teammates always seemed to have their Skybound Arts ready to go whenever mine was ready to go. This was a good thing, as it really made me feel super powerful and it felt like my foursome was unstoppable as I would be pulling off crazy fun Chain Bursts and Link Attacks often enough to add a lot of flavor to the combat without completely taking it over and making it just purely combat cutscenes.

There is one more thing that is really worth mentioning: this is a beautiful game with gorgeous character models. Cygames has really gone all out in making a game that is stunning to look at. I kept being impressed with how pretty it all was, especially during combat. The graphics are also sharp enough that I never felt like I was getting lost in combat or what was happening on screen. It also felt like a natural evolution of the 2-D graphical style of Granblue Fantasy: Versus fighting game as it was transitioned into a 3-D world.

Overall, I enjoyed my time with the demo of Granblue Fantasy: Relink at PAX West 2023. If the full game is anything like the demo, then there is going to be an action RPG game that a lot of people are going to enjoy. I certainly wouldn’t mind fighting my way through in a copy at launch.

Who do you want to play as in Granblue Fantasy: Relink?

Have you picked up any of the other titles in the franchise?

Let us know in the comments below!

The post PAX West 2023 IMPRESSIONS – Granblue Fantasy: Relink appeared first on oprainfall.

Developer(s): SQUARE ENIX
Platform(s): PlayStation 4/PlayStation 5
Release Date: TBA

Official Website, X, Instagram, Facebook

In the waning hours of PAX West, I was able to queue up to try out FOAMSTARS at the SQUARE ENIX booth, and I found quite the fun multiplayer shooter that is anything but a Splatoon clone.

First, the basics: FOAMSTARS is a multiplayer title where you pick a character, go into an arena in one of several game modes, and shoot at each other. The guns you use are filled with colored foam that reminded me a lot of soap suds. The mode we were able to try at PAX West was four-on-four and called ‘Smash the Star.’ In Smash the Star, your team tries to kill off seven of the opposing team. Once that happens, one of their members is marked as the ‘star’ and gets buffed up some. If your team can knock out their star before their team can knock out your star, then your team wins! There is also a gameplay element that the foam can stack up on each other. This means that if you are strategic, you can help barricade part of the course to be a lot less friendly to the opposing team with how you shoot your foam out.

In FOAMSTARS, you play as characters who shoot colored foam in a brightly colored, neon-dripping, world. (Images courtesy of SQUARE ENIX).

During the entire time I was demoing FOAMSTARS, the one thought that kept going through my mind was how amazing the soundtrack was. It had that cozy lofi/chillhop with a bit of pop feel to it that will have an easy future as part of a gaming music’s YouTube streaming channel. It is rare that I play a demo and think ‘Oh, I am buying this soundtrack,’ but FOAMSTARS did it for me. I really, really hope SQUARE ENIX will put it out for me to purchase at some point in the future, or at least on a streaming service.

The graphics are quite gorgeous and uniquely stylish too. In my FOAMSTARS demo, the world, characters, and foam all popped with neon colors that really stood out against the darkened environment. FOAMSTARS is clearly one of those games that you will be able to tell what it is just by glimpsing a little bit of the gameplay. The stark contrast in colors also made it incredibly easy to tell your team’s foam color from your opponent’s foam colors. And honestly? I loved it.

The colors really stand out in FOAMSTARS, and it would be nearly impossible to mistake the graphics as from a different game. (Image courtesy of SQUARE ENIX).

Of course, FOAMSTARS rises and falls based upon the gameplay itself. During the two rounds I played, I purposefully picked out two characters that had wildly different gameplay styles. First, I tried out the Baristador, who carried a portable cannon-like device. This character worked better at a range, as I would be able to shoot at opponents further away from me and I found myself quickly adapting a more supportive role to my teammates who were shooting up close with other characters. In my second round, I played Soa. She is a close-range weapon user who fires her foam from pistol-like weapons. With her, I naturally found myself pressing hard against the other team in order to kill them as soon as possible. Each character also has to reload their weapon with foam occasionally, and that is accomplished by hitting a controller button.

FOAMSTARS has a lot of different characters to play as, and each plays differently in the game. (Image courtesy of SQUARE ENIX).

It would have been very, very easy to make these characters more or less clones of each other and make them fairly interchangeable. Instead, SQUARE ENIX smartly made the characters, at least these two, have wildly different strengths. I tried at one point to charge in with the Baristador, and I found myself getting slaughtered almost immediately. I also tried to hang back with Soa, and I found her to be completely useless at a range. This diversity in combat roles will only serve to enhance the overall gameplay and ensure that people cannot just spam one type of character and win it all over and over again. And in fact: in the second match, my team had a variety of roles on it, and we faced a full four-person Soa team. While it did get close at times, we ultimately did wipe out the Soa team because they simply didn’t have an answer for those of us who were hitting them from a distance.

The controls handled well, and I was mostly pleased with how the foam shooting went. I did die quite a bit, though I freely admit that I absolutely deserved it when I did. By the time the second match rolled around, I was even able to get a few kills myself. If there was anything I didn’t like, it just was that sometimes I felt like the foam ran out a little too fast, and I hated having to reload- even though that was quick as well. I also took my time to stack up the foam, and although it sometimes felt like I was just building into a foam mountain, it absolutely had a purpose in helping to hinder the opposing team on the field’s movement.

When you first see the gameplay, your mind will go to the other multiteam shooter game out there: Splatoon. Having spent way too many hours playing Splatoon, I can safely say that these two games play nothing alike. In Splatoon, Nintendo made the focus of the game to be covering the arena with as much paint as possible in various modes while shooting the opposing team is a secondary measure to help hinder their progress. In FOAMSTARS, just from my short demo, I could tell that the opposite was in effect: you were to spend your time hunting down and killing off your opponents, and the environmental effects were just a side effect of you shooting out foam. In broad strokes, these two games are different from each other in such a large way that it would be hard to confuse the two.

I am pretty excited to see what modes FOAMSTARS has when it releases, as the overall game is deceptively simple to learn yet clearly is not so simple to fully play. There will be inevitable comparisons to Splatoon, but the emphasis on combat and the potential for vertical foam-building makes this game anything but a copycat. Instead, FOAMSTARS manages to stand on its own as an independent title. Unfortunately, the game does not have a release date yet. If the end product is anything like the demo, then it will be hard to not recommend it to everyone.

What do you think of FOAMSTARS? What kind of modes do you hope to see in the game?

Let us know in the comments below!

The post PAX West 2023 IMPRESSIONS: FOAMSTARS appeared first on oprainfall.

After I reviewed EastAsiaSoft’s release of Mugen Souls a few months ago, I was really hoping they would pick up the sequel, Mugen Souls Z, and I got my wish. I was very much looking forward to checking out this game again, and having all of the CG’s and bath minigame intact would just be icing on the cake. That time has finally arrived, and I’ve spent about 40 hours playing the game. Now, let’s see how this port turned out, was it as good as the last one? Let’s find out.

The story here begins as Chou Chou is exploring space for a world to conquer. She soon spots twelve shiny worlds that seem to fit the part. Upon exploring these worlds, she soon runs into the newly-awakened Ultimate God Syrma, who has a strange coffin with her. Chou Chou, as we know, has to check out everything she find interesting, so she begins to examine it. She is suddenly sucked into the coffin and her Undisputed God powers are absorbed, making her tiny. The only way to restore Chou Chou to her normal form is to absorb the powers from the other Ultimate Gods, spread throughout the twelve worlds.

I think the story of the first game is a bit better than Mugen Souls Z, but I really love the new characters introduced in this game. The well-mannered Bertram having a huge crush on Alys with her idol status is just funny, and Reu is just a wild child that gets super close to Shirogane, making Tsukika a bit jealous. All of the other great interactions the old cast has with the new cast really make the story a lot of fun. If you were a fan of the original, you’ll find more to love here as well.

Graphically, Mugen Souls Z looks about on par with the previous game’s Switch release, but I do think this release looks a bit better. It’s not the drastic upgrade it was on the PS3 between the two games, but you will notice. The character models look great, and each of the Twelve Worlds has a different look and feel. The CG artwork is certainly a highlight here as well, be they for the bath minigame or the story based ones. The performance is pretty good on the Switch as well. The game runs at a solid frame rate docked or handheld, but you will notice some dips when playing in handheld. It’s very playable, but not quite as smooth as it is docked.

I think, over the years, I have gotten a soft spot for these classic Idea Factory tunes, since I found myself really enjoying the soundtrack here. I know there is nothing special about it, but I found myself humming along as I slayed 100’s of foes and having a great time doing it. The game is voiced in both English and Japanese, but just like last time, the bath minigame is voiced in Japanese only. I think I like the Japanese cast a bit more, but the English crew does a good job giving these characters life as well.

The gameplay here hasn’t changed a lot from the previous game, so rather than retread old ground this review, I’ll focus on the new things. The combat is mostly unchanged from the last time. The captivate system returns, and again, each enemy will have a personality with some sort of fetish they like, and you have to pick a personality and pose to change into in order to capture the peon. This system is somewhat improved this time, since it shows you what the successful outcome of each of your actions will be before you do them. This really helps you gather peons faster, since it’s much easier to get the outcomes you want.

The other major change to combat is the Coffin Skills. When an enemy is turned into a peon, it will trigger a Coffin Skill from Syrma’s coffin. These range in effects from stat boosts to HP recovery, and you can set this to whatever skill you wish. The Peon Ball back, but is now known as the Ultimate Soul. This is a joint attack between Syrma and Chou Chou. It powers up in exactly the same way, based on the number of Shampurus you have collected throughout the game, though you will have a limited number of these to use on each world before returning to base. This limit will increase with the number of Shampurus you have as well. The damage for Ultimate Soul will get a nice buff if you have a ton of Peon Points banked from doing actions during a battle, but this will deplete all your PP when you use it. The overload rate increases when anyone is KO’d in battle, and if the overload level goes too high, just like with the Peon Ball, it will blow up in your face usually resulting in death. The last new feature is Damage Carnival. If you do enough damage during a battle, you’ll get bonus points at the end of combat. You can upgrade this to make it require more damage to activate, but provide a bigger bonus.

As you complete worlds, you will gain Ultimate Fusions. These are field skills ranging from the ability to snag floating chests to the ability to swim. When you capture certain Peon Points, you will gain power ups to these skills. These include Ultimate Vault, which allows you to jump higher; Ultimate Snag, which allows you snag locked floating chests; Ultimate Hunt, which allows you open locked chests; Ultimate Warp which allows you to use certain warp points. These are all boosted versions of the Ultimate Fusion skills. Years ago I said this was the most annoying part of this game, and I still stand by this. They spread these skills all around the maps in a way that makes for endless backtracking. You may have one skill needed at the top of the map, but the Peon Point with the skill may be on the bottom. This made for a lot of needless running around, seeing as you will be visiting all these worlds multiple times as these skills unlock to start with, this just seems very tacked on.

While Mugen Souls Z does have some issues, it’s still a really fun game. The combat is still very unique, the story is great with a lot of fun interactions between the characters, and the bath minigame finally being uncensored is a great addition to the game as well. I spent about 40 hours with the game and got the true ending. I have also done some of the absurd post-game battles thanks to the crazy amount of included DLC that will make you very OP starting out, but these post-game battles are still a big challenge. I feel like this one is well worth the asking price of $39.99. It’s not perfect, but fans will find a lot to love here.

Review Score
Overall

Game was provided by the publisher.

The post REVIEW: Mugen Souls Z (Switch) appeared first on oprainfall.

Developer: BattleBrew Productions
Publisher(s): Marvelous Europe, XSEED Games
Platform(s): Windows
Release Date: November 9, 2023
Website / X

Cuisineer is a game that you play as Pom, a young adventurer who has to manage the family restaurant, which is mired in debt, after her parents leave a note that they are going on a trip around the world. Pom takes this responsibility cheerfully on, but restaurants take a lot of work. Pom has to purchase and place furniture in the restaurant, pick out decorations, and of course…go out into the rougelite world around her to find ingredients. After all, if Pom doesn’t have ingredients, then she cannot make dishes for customers, and if she cannot make dishes for customers, then she cannot wipe away the restaurant’s debt. In the short 15 minutes that I spent with Cuisineer at the beginning of the game, I found a title that oozes cuteness and charm. Pom is extremely adorable, and I loved how her bubbly personality seemed ready to take on any and all challenges that come her way as she tries to bring the soon-christened Potato Palace to life.

There are two halves to Cuisineer: the cooking and city side of things, and the world exploration and combat side of things. You have the freedom to pick how you want to spend your days in Cuisineer: you can run the restaurant all day, you can farm items in the outside world all day, or you can do a mixture of the two by cooking in the morning and then going out exploring the procedurally-generated world after you close the restaurant.

The game functions as more of a restaurant management system than any kind of deep cooking simulator. For example, a customer would walk into my shop. If I had the ingredients for what they wanted to eat, they would come sit down and I would make the dish by pressing a button at the nearby cooking pot. In a few seconds, the dish is ready and you bring it over to the customer. The customer eats, pays, and leaves while you collect the money. This is not a simulator game like Cooking Mama where you have to actually prepare the dish. Instead, you’re running a restaurant and trying to make sure that you have the ability to give the customer what they want in an efficient manner. While I only was able to serve a couple customers in my short demo, I felt like this could be a hectic but fun aspect of the game once I’ve really expanded the Potato Palace and I’m trying to serve up 10 or more customers at once and give them that great restaurant experience they deserve.

Cook dishes for customers in the Potato Palace and head out into the world at large to farm up the necessary ingredients. Cuisineer has a gameplay loop that genuinely works for it. (Images courtesy of XSEED Games).

However, you cannot just run a restaurant as you need to farm up cooking ingredients in order to make the recipes your potential customers want to buy, and this is where the roguelite aspect of Cuisineer comes out. I equipped my spatula weapon, which allows me to attack enemies, and I head into a world to slaughter whatever I can as everything gives me different ingredients I need. As I wandered around the map that has a 2.5D overhead perspective, I found myself quickly gathering a variety of ingredients while occasionally getting the random gear drop. In my run, I wound up with a nicer spatula that I obtained as part of the storyline and a pair of boots. The combat was very snappy and responsive, and I quickly learned the attack patterns of the cute enemies I came across. When I got damaged, I would down a bit of boba tea to recover my health. When I died in the field near the end of my demo, I did not lose all of my possessions but instead only lost some of them. All of this made me feel like the different mechanics, especially the death mechanic, makes Cuisineer is a fairly forgiving title that new players to the rougelite genre are meant to enjoy. I particularly liked that I didn’t feel pressured to run away from the slightest hint of danger, as I knew I wouldn’t lose all the progress and items I’ve gathered since the last save point if I did kick the proverbial bucket.

And honestly? All of this works.

The thing that surprised me the most about my demo of Cuisineer at PAX West 2023 was that I was more incentivized to go out hunting in the roguelite world around me not for gear drops to better fight with, but for ingredients to run my restaurant with. I can see myself easily opening the Potato Palace for a few hours, running low on ingredients, and then heading out into the world (I explored the Green Ruins in my demo) to fight and gather up what I need to re-open the next day. More sales means more money and that your restaurant’s reputation rises so that even more customers will come.

Pom can recover health out in the filed by consuming boba tea that she can buy in town. (Image courtesy of XSEED Games).

Roguelite games are all about finding that (slightly more forgiving) gameplay loop for players to explore as they work their way through the game, and Cuisineer definitely figured that part out. I absolutely adored the various inhabitants of Parell, the city your character is based in, and I wanted to push my exploring out as far as I could to the outer limits of the roguelike area. Cuisineer is definitely onto something potentially great here, and I am excited to see where Pom’s adventure sends her with this title releases in early November.

What kind of dishes do you want to serve to customers in the Potato Palace?

Let us know in the comments below!

The post PAX West 2023 IMPRESSIONS: Cuisineer appeared first on oprainfall.

Developer: Nintendo
Platform(s): Nintendo Switch
Release Date: October 20, 2023
Official Website

The single most exciting part of Super Mario Bros. Wonder is also the part of the game that I want to write the least about: the Wonder Flower.

In various levels, whenever Mario, Luigi, Princess Peach, a Yoshi, or Nabbit touches a Wonder Flower, the entire world around them changes from the standard course to a crazy and magical experience, and it shows exactly why Nintendo has been the company leading the gaming industry since the Ultra Hand was created by Gunpei Yokoi in 1966. In the 15 minutes I played the demo, I saw multiple Wonder Flower effects that showed off the insane creativity of Nintendo, ranging from herds of blue buffalo charging across the bottom of the screen to shooting stars raining down from the sky that invoked the opening of Super Mario Galaxy. Everything I saw made me smile in some way and I wished that I could just drink in the full experience instead of continuing to plod along in the course.

Whenever you collect a Wonder Flower, everything in the Super Mario Bros. Wonder world changes to something unexpected and unique. (Photos courtesy of Nintendo).

It also puts the Wonder in Super Mario Bros. Wonder, and I absolutely do not want to spoil it – or any of the other special stage effects – for anyone else who is reading this. I believe that the Wonder Flower is the ultimate selling point of Super Mario Bros. Wonder, and it is why it will be a day one purchase for me and many others: because once you see it in action, you will become a believer in this game.

During my demo at Nintendo Live 2023: Seattle, I played with two other people who I competed with just as much as I cooperated with. I played Luigi, one played Princess Peach, and the third played a Yoshi. I picked Luigi purposefully to see if he got a higher jump like he previously did in Super Mario Bros. 2/Super Mario USA for the NES/Famicom or Super Mario Galaxy for the Wii, and I was a little disappointed that he didn’t, as almost all of the characters instead seemed to play identically. The world’s graphics were gorgeous as always, and this definitely felt like a natural graphical follow-up to the 2019 release of Super Mario. Bros. U Deluxe, itself a re-release of the excellent 2012 Wii U game Super Mario Bros. U.

The most interesting character concepts were the various playable Yoshi and Nabbit. If you select one of those characters, you cannot take damage and you can do things like ride Yoshi (which I repeatedly did!) and they had their famed flutter jump. To compensate for this, however, Yoshi characters and Nabbit cannot transform when they receive a powerup item. The inclusion of Yoshi/Nabbit is clearly an attempt by Nintendo to ensure that players who aren’t great at platforming games and who want to simply see all that Super Mario Bros. Wonder has to offer are able to do so. And it is honestly a smart inclusion of Nintendo to do so, since it only widens the potential family gamer pool of who can play all together.

You can hop onto Yoshi’s back in Super Mario Bros. Wonder and the player controlling Yoshi can lead you around the map. (Image courtesy of Nintendo).

I mentioned earlier that Super Mario Bros. is all about competing as much as it is cooperative, and that is the absolute truth. When I was hit by an enemy and I turned into little Luigi, I was still often competing with the other players to get various powerups to get back into the action. I also competed with other players to get coins, the three large purple coins in each course, and even who could land the highest on the flagpole at the top of the course. It didn’t feel vicious at any point, but instead was more fun than anything. There was also a lot of cooperation at play too: At one point, we wanted to get to a purple coin, but it was trapped by a large set of smashable blocks. We ended up working together to get an elephant powerup (more about that in a moment), and then let that player smash those blocks so we could then get the coin. There were other moments of teamwork in luring one of the buffalo creatures over to smash other blocks, and hitting each other’s ghost (when you die, you turn into a ghost that you can control on the screen) to bring that player back to life. There is a real constant tug-and-pull between being cooperative and being competitive that just simply works.

“I believe that the Wonder Flower is the ultimate selling point of Super Mario Bros. Wonder, and it is why it will be a day one purchase for me and many others: because once you see it in action, you will become a believer in this game.”

Another feature I, with the patience of my other players, explored during my Super Mario Bros. Wonder demo was the Badge system. Badges are a feature familiar to anyone who has played Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door on Nintendo GameCube or Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga on GameBoy Advance or Nintendo 3DS: you equip a badge, and you can get a special effect that can change your character’s gameplay. I went through several badges that ranged from a badge that let us jump higher after charging for a moment to getting coins whenever we kill an enemy. Intriguingly, I led my party to a course that had a simple goal: learn how to use the Wall Jump I Badge, clear the stage with it, and get the Wall Jump I Badge to potentially equip in the rest of the game. I loved having a real reward for clearing a stage instead of just moving onto the next level, and I hope Nintendo has these types of winnable badges scattered frequently throughout the game.

The Elephant Powerup proved to be useful during my Nintendo Live 2023: Seattle demo. (Image courtesy of Nintendo).

If you watched the Nintendo Treehouse video linked above, or checked out any of the other screenshots here, then you can tell that Super Mario Bros. Wonder looks like a beautiful game. I loved all the little details in the world, and the bright colors that really popped out of the screen. Even though the Nintendo Switch was released in March 2017, making this console seven years old, it still can produce jaw-droppingly beautiful graphics.

Finally, there are the powerups. During the demo, I was able to experience the Super Mushroom, the Fire Flower, and the new elephant powerup. The Super Mushroom lets you become regular-sized Mario/Luigi, etc., from their smaller form. The Fire Flower changes your character’s outfit and you can throw fireballs to kill enemies. Both of these have been series mainstays since Super Mario Bros. on the NES, and no one needs me to rehash them. The third powerup, the elephant powerup, was definitely a lot of fun to try out. As a stretched-out pachyderm, your character can swing at enemies sideways, shoot water, and more. It did not feel like a game-defining powerup like the Super Bell in Super Mario 3D World that turned your character into a cat, and I was a bit thankful for that. These 2D Mario games tend to always have various new powerups to try and explore, and I was happy that the one I was able to enjoy definitely did not feel like a retread of what had come before.

Overall, I loved what I found in Super Mario Bros. Wonder, and it made me want to see what all it has in store. I really hope that Nintendo puts a demo out on the Nintendo Store for people to try, as I think you’ll find that you’ll want to grab every single Wonder Flower out there like I do and buy this game immediately at launch.

What do you think of the Wonder Flowers?

Are you as excited to see what all they can do as I am?

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As I stated in my preview a while back, I’d never played a Rune Factory title until I decided to take this one for review. I had no idea what to expect going into this, I didn’t know if the farming would be too complicated, if I would enjoy the combat or if the story would be something I could get into. I’ve spent over 30 hours with Rune Factory 3 Special, and I have my answer to all of these questions. So let’s see how my first experience with this franchise went!

The game begins as a young girl named Shara is dragging a collapsed monster into the village. Her grandfather is very upset she has brought a monster into their home, since monsters and humans haven’t gotten along in a very long time in this world. She is very keen on helping the poor creature out, but the next morning the monster has disappeared! He transformed into a young man, and of course with any good RPG our protagonist has amnesia. The young man has no idea how he got to this town or that he can transform into a monster. As he leaves the house he encounters a red haired girl who is very quiet and named Raven. She is in front of a huge tree they refer to as the Sharance Tree. He attempts to talk to Raven but to no avail when suddenly, he sees Shara. She takes him to the heart of the tree, and explains he will be staying there for the time being. The tree hasn’t bloomed in a very long time. He will soon discover the mystery of why this tree hasn’t bloomed as he quests to recover his memories and more.

I have to say the mainline story here feels a bit thrown together. It’s interesting to learn about this world and why humans haven’t gotten along with monsters in a very long time, but everything plays out exactly like you would expect. It seems like an afterthought to the stories of all the game’s amazing Bachelorettes and other residents of the world. From Collette’s obsession with food to Pia and Sakuya or Sophia’s backward talk, everyone here is very interesting and I loved learning about them. The newly added Newlywed Stories will unlock once you complete the game, and features a cute after story for your new wife. These are pretty short, but include some new animations, and I thought Raven’s was especially cute since she was my girl of choice here.

Graphically, Rune Factory 3 Special looks great. The characters have a lot of detail and the little emotes that appear over them as they converse with each other add a lot of personality. There is some Live 2D work when the characters are talking as well that I feel really gives them more life. The monsters have unique designs as well and a good amount of variety. The dungeons found here each represent a different season, and the graphics very much reflect this. Vale River is the winter dungeon and is full of ice, while Sol Terrano Desert is blazing hot like the summer we’ve had in my neck of the woods. Shields and Weapons all have different looks as well, and I really loved some of their designs.

I think this game has one of the most soothing soundtracks I’ve heard in a long time. The comfy home theme is great and you will catch yourself humming it hours after you stop playing. The themes for each of the four seasons are great as well, and they really fit the vibe of each one. The summer theme is really upbeat and warm, which is a stark contrast to the winter theme that is much more laid back with a much cooler sound. The game is voiced in both Japanese and English and I think both casts do an excellent job of giving these characters life.

I had never played a Rune Factory game before, so I didn’t know what to expect in terms of game-play. What I found here was one of the most laid back and comfy games I’ve ever played, but with a surprising amount of depth. It’s pretty much left to the player how they want to spend each of their days. Players start out each day with a certain amount of RP (Rune Points) and every activity you do will consume some of these. You may want to do some farming, you may decide to crawl the dungeon, or spend the day crafting. The more you do each activity your level will increase, and this will decrease the amount of RP consumed by doing each one. You will also gain RP and HP as your overall level increases.

I didn’t do very much farming during my play-through, as I made most of my money crafting items since it was pretty easy to gather any materials you need in the dungeons, and that helped me build up my craft and smithing skills quickly. I was able to make better equipment for myself and do more upgrades to the weapons and accessories I had as well. Though if you want to go the farming route, recruiting some monster friends will help you greatly. You do this by giving them gifts in the dungeon and if you give them something they like, they will join your team. You can have them do chores on the farm, or have them help you in a tough dungeon. Just be sure to take care of them by brushing them and feeding them plenty of yummy fodder.

The combat here is done in a top down fashion much like the the classic 2D Legend of Zelda games. You have a few different types of weapons to choose from. These include a one handed sword and shield, axes, spears, two handed swords, rods and duel blades. Each one has a very different fighting style and special moves you can obtain by leveling up your skills. In addition to all the weapon types, players have a variety of spells at their disposal as well. These include attack spells, buffs, healing spells and some that will let you escape battle altogether. I mostly stuck with the healing spells and double blades, but there is no wrong way to go here, and I love how much variety this gives in making your character fight exactly how you want them to. In addition to all that, you can transform into your monster form and do combat as well. As a Wooly you only have some punching attacks, but you’re very fast and do a lot of damage. Some of the lovely Bachelorettes can accompany you in dungeons as well, but be aware they start at level one, so you will need to help build them up.

Overall, I really enjoyed my time with Rune Factory 3 Special. I can see why people love this series; its laid back game-play is welcoming but it has enough depth to keep you coming back for more. I had a blast figuring out the best items to give all the Bachelorettes, seeing their reactions to them, and watching their stories unfold. The combat here is a ton of fun, and I can certainly see myself wanting to take on the extra dungeons and challenges at some point down the line. The game is well worth the $39.99 asking price, and I think any fan of the series should jump on this day one. If you’ve never played one of these games you should give them a chance. I didn’t think this would be up my alley, but I was mistaken. I look forward to checking out Rune Factory 4 Special sometime in the near future.

Review Score
Overall

Game was provided by the publisher for review.

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I am always up for a visual novel filled with cute romance and plenty of sweetness, so when I saw that Sugar Sweet Temptation was being localized I knew I wanted to check it out. I loved the character designs right off the bat and after looking at very deary games not too long ago, I was ready for something much more lighthearted. Let’s see if these adorable girls can bring the sugary sweetness I am looking for.

The story revolves around a pastry shop called Folkroll. This shop is known for making the best cakes around, but the owner has fallen ill and the shop’s future is very much in question. On the magical night of fairies, the chef’s granddaughter, Meru, and her best friend Kōri make a wish to save their shop. Soon after a stranger with amnesia appears, and the girls decide to take him in. They grow close to him quickly, and as it turns out he is a patissier, so he decides to help the girls save the shop from being shutdown by the mayor. They do just that, and now we will see how his daily life progresses with each of our three heroines.

I really loved the overall story here. It had a good amount of comedy mixed in with some more serious notes and some very heartwarming moments between the protagonist and the girls. The side characters are very important to the story as well, since they show just how close knit the town of Fueya actually is. Everyone there is like family in this snow covered town, and this makes it feel very warm and welcoming. I also loved there was lots of lore surrounding this town from the Night of Fairies to the wish granting diamond, which you will learn about as the story unfolds during our heroines’ routes.

The common route here is pretty short and most of the story unfolds during our heroines’ routes. Each girl is very unique: Meru is very childish and almost like a puppy dog. She is the granddaughter of the Folkroll’s chef, and she loves sweets. Kōri is always scolding her to keep her in line like and old sister despite being around the same ago. Their interactions are priceless and provide much of the comedy found within the game, but also some very heartwarming moments as well. Overall I felt Meru was just a super sweet girl that you couldn’t help but fall in love with. This route is the most comfy of the three by far.

Chocolat is the daughter of the president of a large company who has come to take over Folkroll; however, after eating one of the protagonist’s cakes she decides to help the shop out. She wants to become a patissier herself, and is quite knowledgeable about baking in general. Her and the protagonist help each other out often during her route. She also loves history, and she wants to learn all she can about Fueya and its mysterious history, including a wish granting diamond. I thought her route was pretty good, even if it ended suddenly. While most of the girls’ H-scene are pretty vanilla, one of Chocolat’s gets pretty spicy due to an accident with a collar.

Kōri lives and works at the Folkroll. She decided to live there since it was very close to a school she wanted to attended. She is a very shy girl who wants nothing more than to help our protagonist regain his memory, since she thinks he should return to his family. Her route does dig into some darker topics than the others, and it reveals more of the lore surrounding the town. I would suggest playing her route last so the story flows better, even though I consider her route the canon route. She is the best girl as well, but that’s my bias talking!

There are no choices in Sugar Sweet Temptation that affect the overall story, other than which girl’s route you choose. The only impact from these choices will be different variations of H-scene CG you unlock. Each girl has at least three H-scenes and the CG work here is amazing, just like all of the artwork in Sugar Sweet Temptation. The backgrounds look amazing, the character sprites are detailed and give off a range of emotions. I liked the artwork here so much I want to check out the two Amairo Chocolata titles as well since the artist worked on those as well.

The music in Sugar Sweet Temptation isn’t anything special, but it does set the mood for the game nicely. The game mostly has a comfy laid back vibe and these tunes help you feel that. There are some more somber tracks for the game’s more emotional moments and I felt those worked great as well. The real credit in the sound department should go the voice actors for our heroines. They all did an amazing job bringing these girls to life and making you instantly fall in love with them. Some of the best character work I’ve heard in a long time.

Sugar Sweet Temptation isn’t a deep visual novel that will have you pondering many of life’s crazy questions for hours, but it is very much comfort food for those looking for a laid back sweet experience. That’s not to say there isn’t plenty of substance here: the routes here cover topics like following one’s dreams and figuring out exactly what makes you happy in life. I feel like we all should take more time to search for these answers rather than delving into darker areas of life. The game will set you back $24.99 and will take you about 12 to 15 hours to cover all of the content offered here. Players opting for the Steam version will need to download a patch to access the H-scenes, and you could fully play this one without them, but I feel like you wouldn’t get as much out of it, especially in Kōri’s route. I have no issues recommending this one to fans of laid back visual novels or those looking to spend some quality time with some cute girls. You will find this sugary sweet purchase well worth your coin.

Review Score
Overall

Review copy was provided by the publisher.

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