geniunely not trying to put words in ur mouth im geniunely asking: what do you actually like about persona 5? from all ur rants im just wondering why you didnt drop the game bc it seems (again, im not trying to put words in ur mouth) that it simply not for you? i geniunely have not felt any of the issues you bring up outside of the writing ones and i cannot tell if i'm just easily pleased and not good at discerning what a good game is or we simply have dif things we enjoy in a video game. i hate getting tone across text but im asking out of geniune curiosity im not trying to attack your opinion (;-;)

Nah, i dont feel like ur attacking me, and I hope u dont feel the same when u see my complaints! Lmao. In my defense, I am replaying the game for the first time after completing my first file back in 2020, so alot of the faults i kinda shrugged off in my first playthrough are now glaringly in my face now that I no longer have the confusion and interest in learning the main story to keep me occupied. The game is clunky all the way through, and at some times, even frustratingly so.

But despite that, i do like this game. Alot! Its probably one of my top games ever if im being honest!

This ended up way longer than I intended, so im putting it under a readmore to keep the post short on dashboards

If i had to describe what I liked about the game in the simplest way imaginable…I think I would say, I like how the game makes me feel :) I like the music. I like the vibe. I like the immersion from city to city, and I like the premise! I like the characters and I like the connections you make with these characters! As im replaying this game, i am most excited to see Akira and his comments about the world :) i like hearing everyones voices, I like their little interactions in Mementos, and I like seeing them fight!

P5 is the first game I played in the series; its the game that introduced me to SMT in the first place! And it (smt) is a series that my longtime best friend LOVES and never thought hed be able to share with me! It is a game i keep very near to my heart; it has influenced me in ways i did not think would happen in the short couple of years since i first finished it. It genuinely keeps me awake some nights thinking about the world this game has created, and I think that is a testament to the impact its had, be it good or bad.

The joke about wishing theyd make a persona game that was Good is that despite all of its numerous flaws, the games manage to snatch your attention and pull you in anyway. Imagine if they made a game that had all of those things that i mentioned I loved, but done Right and executed Properly?? Where I got to have a story that made sense and didnt need to be spoonfed to me (in like an HOUR of dialogue and scenes; an HOUR!), and characters that talked and bonded beyond the tiny snippets of interaction theyre allowed to have in mementos? Combat that let me use PERSONAS i liked instead of BUILDS that stop me from getting instakilled throughout the entirety of the endgame, and a Persona building mechanic that didnt feel like I was shooting in the dark looking for possible fusions that end up not even being useful in the endgame.

Ive mentioned it before, but I complain so much bc I have seen what a good p5 game looks like, and its Strikers almost to a T. Combat is still your typical warriors-esque style combat, but it is at least different from the turn based strategy of the main game. Characters talk to each other freely, they hang out and comfort each other in a way that feels more connected that the base game. Strikers implements the ability to see ALL possible fusions with ALL registered personas, not just the ones in your Stock, so you can fuse easily without having yo consult a guide. The story feels like it makes SENSE with antagonists that feel morally grey and sympathetic. Genuinely, alot of the complaints for p5 I had were almost immediately rectified in this game.

But please also know that the praises I sing for this game is only bc of the groundwork laid by p5 and the world it created. Thats what I like about this game, that it had such a captivating premise and cast of characters, that a DIFFERENT company was able to hit the ground running with them. P5 had alot happening in that game, but i think what it had most was potential. The effort put into this game is astronomical, and the possible connections you can outright MISS if u arent paying attention was worth the money and time to implement; even if it meant that it could be considered a waste of resources to higher ups.

Books and games and part time jobs???!! Silly little cutscenes that add nothing to the game PLOTwise, but define and flesh out the personality of your protagonist. There was alot of love put into this game, and its evident by the fact that we have NOT seen a new persona game released; they bank on existing titles bc they are unwilling to make a game like this from scratch again. They dont want to ‘waste’ resources on good voice acting and a complex, overarching story; they dont want to waste money on scenes a player may never see, on routes a player may never get to experience. Making a game that gives u even the slightest bit of freedom means more money in programming and detailing that freedom. This has been an issue for a WHILE, and its a miracle that the gaming landscape had space for a colossal title like p5!

I complain bc I want better, and I do not think that is inherently at odds with my love of this game. In b4 im told to get good; ive played on hard and tested out merciless (its NOT fun, im making godbuilds again and its boring 😞). Its not the most accessible turnbased rpg; theres no colorblind modes, and the affinity system is convoluted and overwhelming. Combo moves are hard to keep track of and it can be incredibly frustrating to see your turns being skipped or seeing characters take extreme technical damage without understanding WHY it happened. The fact that they KNEW the game was desperate for qol improvements by the time royal came out, and instead of updating the base game to have those improvements too, they just pushed the royal edition out for people to play instead. It sucks! Customers and fans deserve better than being forced to shell out money for a game they already played !

As the gaming climate gets more and more hostile and unbearable, I think it is good to look at your games critically, and understand why products come out subpar. Persona 5 is a fun game that has a nice cast and an interesting premise, but it is ultimately tied down by its refusal to build on existing building blocks regarding its combat, and it insists on having insulting and downright out of character dialogue and scenes to appease the audience its designed to be targeted to. It is easy to forget sometimes that queer ppl are infact NOT the prime target of these games, its cishet gamer bros from aged 16 to 40 who will laugh at homophobic comments, who drool over a 16 yr old girl with a 16 yr old mindset and a grown womans body, who need to be placated with constant sexual comments to deal with a convoluted story that will inevitably make zero sense until its laid out for you before the literal end of the game.

Its bad. Its good. Its so shallow and its unbelievable that they thought having the plot twist make ZERO sense until they showed CUTSCENES of YOUR character discussing Goro and his connections to the metaverse for endgame SHOCK VALUE was more important than just having your team be smart and piece it together over time. Its shit. Its literally amazing. It let you FUCK your teacher ??????????????what the FUCK. They also let me shoot a god in the face w the best looking ult persona in the world so i can ignore that shit. And ultimately that is how i got through the game. Lol.

I watched The Untamed on Netflix and fell in love. Much to my delight I found out that there’s an entire genre of BL shows and series that I never knew existed!

Now I'm neck deep into BL dramas and I can't contain it any more. The people who follow my main blog have forgiven me for the 147 The Untamed posts that I stuck in my queue, but I doubt they'd stick around for the 500 posts about all the other dramas I've watched recently.

So... I’ve made a side blog, yay!

(My personal ratings: loved it 💜, liked it 💚, won't watch it again 💔

Shows I'm currently watching:

Noblemen Ryu's Wedding - 1/6 I love literally every second of this show already... but. I feel like we're only getting half the seconds! Every scene just jumps from one to the next without any transitions or explanations in between. It's like the writer's had a whole bunch of little scenes they wanted to create, but no actual way of tying them together. It's a bit discombobulating. Now don't get me wrong, this is a historical fake relationship story, with two great actors, comedy and a touch of sensuality that was done *chef's kiss* so beautifully! I love it... but it's definitely missing a lot. 💜

Fish Upon The Sky - 2/12 I'm liking this one so far. It's silly, and there have been more than a few cringey moments, but it stays in the 'cute' side of that more often than not so it's okay. I like the three main characters (the side ones are there for comedic effect only, so I'm trying to judge them only on that, they're where most of the cringe is coming from) and the story is moving along at a good pace. This is true University BL at its finest. I'd put it squarely on the lower end of 'loving it'. 💜

Lovely Writer - 8/12 Well, Aoey is back to being a boring, one dimensional antagonist with no actual story of his own. And I finally realized what frustrated me so much about Sib. He always makes sure to get consent and be respectful of Gene PHYSCIALLY, like asking for kisses, telling people not to take his picture without permission, etc. But he doesn't respect his agency in any other way. Refusing to leave the apartment when Gene asked him to, following him to his house despite being told Gene wanted space, MOVING IN NEXT DOOR after Gene asked for him to leave so they could start over and Sib could earn his trust back... none of that is respecting Gene's choices or personal agency and it bothers me so much! Also that comment Sib's brother made about Gene not being able to escape Sib was disturbing. 💚

History 4: Close To You - 5/? I love literally every second of Muren and Licheng and Xingsi... and every time the brother comes on the screen I want to start throwing things. It is such a dampener to the rest of what is actually a really good show. I'm disgusted that Xingsi forgave him and that the show is referring to r*pe as 'taking advantage*. Uhg. But I'm loving Licheng more and more and his pursuit of Muren is adorable and sweet and very sexy. So I'll keep watching. And thinking about the perfect poly triad that my boys could have been if the writers hadn't been awful. Think about, no one has done a three way friends to lovers story before! That would have been way more intriguing that r*pe apology. (Despite the fact that I love and adore 3 of the 4 main characters and one half of the couples I still can't give this a higher rating than the broken heart. What the brother did was unforgivable and it's so gross that they're portraying it in a romantic light. Most BLs keep their consent issues in the realm of 'dubious'. This one crossed a line I just can't forgive.) 💔

Y Destiny - 3/15 Okay, definitely liked this couple better than the first one. Although, despite the fact that this is supposed to be comedy, Nuea breaks my heart a little because he is obviously desperate for attention and it seems like the only way he knows how to get it is with his money or his sexuality. But the fact that Sun went from 'this kid is an arrogant brat and I can't stand him' to COMPLETLEY ENAMOURED with him in all of like 20 minutes was cute as f*ck, so I'm looking forward to the next episode. 💚

Hidden Love - 4/? This show is so fucking awful why am I still watching it?!! 💔💔

Manner of Death - 12/14 If I never watch the last two episodes, then I never have to admit that Tul and Max are probably never going to work together again, right? 💜💜

Shows I've watched so far:

(ones with links will take you to my personal in-depth reviews, this link will take you to a general review of all the shows I watched in 2020)

The Untamed 💜💜

Until We Meet Again 💜💜

Love By Chance 💚

Tharntype 💚

Why R U 💚

Together With Me 💚

Where Your Eyes Linger 💜

Because of You 2020 💜

HIStory 1: Obsessed/Stay Away from Me/My Hero 💔

HIStory 2: Crossing the Line 💜

HIStory 3: Trapped 💜

My Engineer 💚

Mr. Heart 💚

YYY 💔

Tien Bromance 💔

Roommates The Series 💚

En of Love 💔

#MyDay 💔

Quaranthings 💔

The Effect 💚

Dark Blue Kiss 💚

Theory of Love 💜

3 Will Be Free 💜

Craving You 💔💔

My Gear and Your Gown 💔

Like In the Movies 💜💜

He’s Coming To Me  💜

Oxygen 💔

Wish You 💚

Cherry Magic 💜

Life - Love On the Line 💜

Ingredients 💜💜

Color Rush 💚

Follow My Sunshine 💔💔

We Best Love: No. 1 For You 💜💜

To My Star 💜

Sotus 💜

Nation’s Brother 💔💔

You Make Me Dance 💜

A Tale of Thousand Stars 💜💜

We Best Love: Fighting Mr. 2nd 💜

Shows I want to watch:

2gether/Still 2gether

Sotus S

Bad Romance/Together With Me: TNC (maybe. i've heard things about these ones that are 😖 but also MaxTul have such amazing chemistry so I'm like 🤷‍♀️)

Long Time No See

A million more that I can't think of right now

Shows I need to come out immediately:

Between Us (WinTeam was the beginning of my intense love of side couples, so getting a whole series focused on them is a dream come true!)

KinnPorsche (I am so freaking excited about Jeff and Gameplay being together again! And Mile and Apo have incredible chemistry together. If they don't go too camp with this show, it's going to be amazing!)

Not Me (OffGun reuniting for a series that's not set in uni? Sign me the f*ck up!)

Bite Me (this looks really cute and I'm excited to see Mark in a role that doesn't make me hate him 😆)

Golden Blood (I've been intrigued by this one for a while, but that trailer... oh man, this looks right up my alley! Please give us a released date!)

Any way! Come into my message/ask box if you want to talk about literally anything BL related!

A statement on Rooster Teeth, my own history with their products and their future.

This... is going to be something different. Usually my posts are either somewhat stupid, a little ranty or heartfelt.  (This was written on the 18th of July, 2020.) When I first started the blogs I use today, one being oblivionsfavourite and the other being this, they were literally RWBY fan blogs. I can’t remember the name this side had, but oblivionsfavourite (fav, as I’ll call it) was originally known as recklesslyshadowing, followed by jersey-diablo. But I started as a small, no-one-cared-about-me RWBY fan blog. But let’s go back a little further, because this isn’t about RWBY. It’s about Rooster Teeth.

I’m 19 years old. 28th of June, 2001. That’s when I was born. In...I believe mid-to-late 2012, I was first introduced to a series that I’ve come to love to this day: Red Vs. Blue, created by Rooster Teeth. I would have been 11. And I watched through what I could of it. I, admittedly, have never finished seasons 1-5/”The Blood Gulch Chronicles”, though I’ll get around to it soon. I watched Out Of Mind and Recovery One. I watched the Recollection and Project Freelancer. I was completely hooked on this... insane, baffling series that comes from gameplay of the Halo franchise. And then I sort of sat there in limbo as I waited for them to release what would end up being the premiere episode of the Chorus trilogy of seasons. And I thought it was good, but I dropped off between seasons 11 and 13, I think. I stopped following as religiously as my own life changed. By the time I’d got back into Red Vs. Blue, RWBY was on its third volume and... I had yet to watch it. I’d read a lot of Monochrome fanfiction, a little bit of Bumbleby fanfiction too. But never watched the show, an odd twist. When I finally took the plunge, another big change had happened in my life - the circle of ‘friends’ (they really weren’t, I don’t talk to a single one of them today) I’d had were slowly... losing interest in me. But they’d been harassing me about RWBY for months. So one of the last things I’d done with them was watch RWBY - at this point, PvP had just aired. I actually roleplayed as Sun (who I now hate) and Neptune around this time, before I ever really began to like any characters beyond Blake. And then I dropped off of Red vs Blue, stopped watching it religiously for good - or so I thought, given that I’ve recently started to rewatch it - and moved onto RWBY. I don’t think I’ve missed an episode whatsoever since Volume 5 ended, and I’ve tried my best not to since Volume 4 aired. And then there’s gen:LOCK. I love that show, too, although I didn’t start watching it until... I think the finale had just aired or was about to. Something like that. But I never really invested in RT’s other affairs, never cared much about the people behind the characters I’d grown to love and/or hate. Even now, that still kind of applies. I sort of follow Arryn Zech, Barbara Dunkelman, Anairis Quinones, Kdin Jenzen, Cristina Vee and, to a lesser degree, Gavin Free. But something’s been nagging at me for a long time, and it isn’t about Rooster Teeth. It’s about us, the fans. The people that brought this company together. That kept it afloat for what, 17 years? And the people that now seem to... want to tear it down. At the time of writing this, I’ve just watched a video which roughly describes the death of Monty Oum and other acts occurring around the same period as being the ‘end of the golden age’ of RT. I disagree. If there was a golden age, we’re still in it. Yes, the company’s probably made some rough choices, yes, there are statistics to prove that things aren’t going as good as they once did. But the company is still pumping out a whole fuck ton of content, even during the coronavirus pandemic. Yes, Rooster Teeth has changed. But so have we, as people. We have to stop acting like the company is falling apart because people are coming and going. Change is part of life. They’ve been going for 17 years. You don’t have to like the direction things have gone in for one thing or another, but respect what this company is - it’s built to cater to a community that held it up for 17 years. It’s built to provide a hub where staff can pursue their projects in the hopes of it one day being the next Red Vs. Blue, or the next RWBY. They care about us, and they care about each other. Rooster Teeth isn’t dying, or in a downfall. They’re just going through a rough patch, a really rough one. And they’re still just as reliant on us, the fans, to help them through it. So what, your favourite member of the crew isn’t around anymore. People move on! People change! People make stupid choices, in the case of a certain former Red Vs. Blue voice actor or two! But that’s life. And just because those people are gone, doesn’t instantly make something bad. Just because Burnie’s left the company, doesn’t mean Red Vs Blue is going to be awful. Some of you might have disliked the direction it was going in beforehand, be honest with yourself about it! Same for RWBY since Monty died, don’t put the blame on ‘oh he’s dead it’ll never be the same’. If you had an issue with the show, you had an issue with the show no matter who was handling behind the scenes. And that is OKAY. That’s FINE. Don’t pin disliking something because of your tastes and views on the people putting hard work into making something they already know not everyone is going to like. That’s the nature of their business, and they still try their best to appeal to everyone that they can. Rooster Teeth isn’t to blame for your disliking something. They’re telling the stories THEY want to tell, and if they do something that will end up causing discourse, that’s still not on them. Because THEY WANTED to tell that story so SOME people would enjoy it. Art is subjective. Not everyone finds the same thing beautiful. But respect the artist, because they still put the time into it, even if you don’t like it.

Doom Eternal (PS4)

Rip n’ tear!

Rip n’ tear!

Rip n’ tear!

5 stars.

End of review.

Nah, just kidding, but that does more or less summarize my feelings on Doom Eternal, the sequel to the masterpiece soft reboot of Doom that came out in 2016, other wise known as Doom 2016.  On a side note, who would have thought “Doom 2016″ would have ended up being an omen of the following four year?  Weird.

Anyway, speaking of Hell on Earth, Doom Eternal’s plot revolves around an all-out demonic invasion of Earth, with humanity’s only hope being the DoomSlayer (aka, the Doomguy).  A lot has changed since he last thwarted Hell’s efforts on Mars, such as the DoomSlayer’s swanky new mothership known as the Fortress of Doom.  Where did he get it?  That information is probably provided in the loads of codex pages you find throughout the game that fill in the gaps in the lore.

Which brings me to my first problem with the game - too much story getting in the way of my ripping n’ tearing.  I know, I could skip the cutscenes, but that ain’t really the point.  Part of Doom 2016′s charm was its middle finger to story intensive gameplay and obnoxiously extensive game lore.  What minimal story there was in the game was carried out organically during gameplay, similar to Half Life 2.  Nothing ever felt like a cut scene or a complete interruption of the game.  Also, the story pretty simple - you are a legendary badass who has been resurrected to save Mars, and by proxy the Earth, from the forces of Hell.

Doom Eternal tries to expand on the lore by giving Doomguy a backstory, involving him belonging to a race of demi-gods known as “Sentinels” who have stood in opposition to Hell throughout the ages.  That’s pretty lame, as the appeal of THE DOOMSLAYER to me is that he’s just a regular dude who is so good as slaying demons at will, they’ve built a mythology around him as an unstoppable killing machine and the only being demons fear.  That’s enough for me - I don’t need him to be part of a lineage of “Slayers” or some shit like that.  YOU’RE OVERTHINKING THINGS BETHESDA! 

I won’t lie though - there were some cutscenes I enjoyed, such as any time Doomguy interacts with other humans, who all scurry out of his way in fear or are just paralyzed in awe. 

Another issue I have with the game is THERE’S TOO MANY WAYS TO KILL THINGS!  I know, it’s an odd complaint, but bear with me here.  So you have 8 standard weapons, but each weapon, except the Super Shotgun and the BFG, have two mods each that fundamentally changes them into new weapons essentially.  So counting the mods, and the chainsaw, you have 21 weapons to choose from!  That’s... a lot of goddamn weapons.  I envision Doomguy comically approaching a demon fight, both hands full of so many weapons they clatter to the ground as he tries to pick the best one for the fight.  Then there are the frag grenades, the ice grenades, the flame thrower, the “Blood Punch”, and eventually the one-hit-kill sword.  All this results in me either pushing the wrong button for what I want (”Ah shit, I meant select the sword, but I accidentally switched my frag grenades to ice grenades!”) or getting pounded by projectiles in slow motion as I go through my weapons and try to figure out the best one for this particular encounter. 

Oh shit, and then there are the Runes, which give you different abilities while equipped AND you can upgrade the Praetor suit.  Oh, and you can upgrade your stats by finding crystals along the way.  It’s just too much, and a little overwhelming to juggle at first.  I just wanna shoot things, Doom Eternal!

Well, fortunately the game has plenty of that and then some.  The combat is just as intense and frenetic as Doom 2016, with “glory kills” still in full effect and a nice variety of demons to maul.  There’s nothing quite as satisfying as the visceral thrill of tearing a Cacao demon to pieces.  Doom Eternal can also be extremely challenging, especially if you dare to venture into the harder difficulty settings.  I tried playing through it on “Ultra-Violence” (the Doom equivalent of “Hard”) and got my ass humbled back into “Hurt Me Plenty” (aka “normal”) pretty quickly. 

While Doom Eternal might be a little too bloated, like a Mancubator on a Golden Corral binge, it’s still, at its core, every bit as fun as its predecessor.  The graphics are amazing, especially the lovingly crafted, ultra detailed level designs.  There were many instances, in between battles of course, that I would just stand there and take in the environments.  So if you loved Doom 2016, and current events make you wanna tear things to pieces, preferably virtual things, then Doom Eternal is a solid playthrough.

  UPDATE

Since posting this review, I have gone on to play the online “Battlemode”.  Normally, I don’t care for online multiplayer games.   Playing games have always been a solo activity for me - a way to take a break from people.  Also, playing online games seems frustrating in that you almost always start with a huge difficulty curve as you often play against people who LIVE AND BREATH the game 24/7, and therefor, have the uncanny knack to destroy you utterly and immediately before you have a chance to move, much less “get gud”. 

Anyway, I started playing Battlemode solely to pop the PS4 trophies associated with it so that I can Platinum the game.  I must admit, now that I’ve taken the “PS Plus plunge”, I’m curious to check out other online games people seem to be nuts about like Rocket League (which honestly looks fun as hell, I must admit) and Overwatch.  So I figured it was only fair to edit my review to include my impressions of Doom Eternal’s online mode, which is thus..

My usual gripes about online death match difficulty curves aside, “Battlemode” is incredibly lopsided with its premise of 2 player demons versus one player Slayer.  Not only are the odds stacked against you as the Slayer, but the demons also have the ability to summon minions to pester you, make your loot disappear (thereby making health replenishment a pain in the ass), and they respawn if you don’t kill them both within 20 seconds.  As the Slayer, when you are up against two players who are extremely good as demons, the round can be over in seconds, which is infuriating and not remotely fun.   

Meanwhile, playing as a demon is much easier for all the reason listed above, despite some demons handling better than others.  The only difficulty is that the Slayer is inherently faster and more agile than any demon you can choose, which is the only real advantage a Slayer has.  None of this would be a problem if you could just knock out the trophies as a demon, even though it’s a bit of an irritating grind, except one trophy REQUIRES you to be the Slayer - the Weapons Expert trophy, wherein you must kill player demons with each of the 8 weapons at your disposal, including the BFG, which you only have the option of using should you survive to Round 4 (which odds are you won’t).  It’s an incredibly frustrating task, but I got lucky and found a lobby where the player demons were either exceptionally bad or were away from their controller a lot.  So I was able to knock out this trophy at my convenience then, but only after several incredibly frustrating failed attempts.

The only other trophy where being the Slayer is ideal is the “Blood Bath” trophy, where you must kill 200 opponents.  This goes by a lot quicker as the Slayer if you can manage to consistently kill both player demons every round in every match, but you’ll be lucky to kill even one.  However, even then, that can work to your advantage because when they respawn, you can kill them again and rack up another point towards the trophy.  Trying to pop this trophy as a demon is less of a headache, but still sucks because it’s too slow and possible your demon ally will get the deathblow, thereby stealing your point.

So the point of all this is to say I hate Battlemode.  I hate it with a burning passion not unlike the fires of Hell.  I wish the online feature of this game could have just been a good ol’ fashion Death Match.  It’s also bullshit that the game even has trophies you can’t pop unless you play online, because what if you’re a late comer and nobody is playing Battlemode anymore?  Does that mean you just can’t Platinum Doom Eternal?  It’s also mild extortion in that it forces you to pay for PS Plus if you don’t already have it.

So there you have it:

Doom Eternal solo campaign = good

Doom Eternal Battlemode = bad

Happy slaying!

I decided to make this a separate text post because i have a lot to say and a lot of tea to spill. So i need the read more.

Imma spill the tea right now and remember these are all OPINIONS and people are bound to get BUTTHURT. You can agree or disagree with me I couldn’t care less. I just need to let free of those things that I’m holding in before going on break.☕☕☕☕☕

I personally really enjoy it and don’t get much of the bitching around tbh? And this is coming from someone who doesn't really like sci-fi too much.

The LIs look amazing ( although Titania is bugging me the wrong way and Meridian’s arms are far too bloated. This aint a swimming aid). Even the ones of the siblings.

Moving on, I do not really get the comparison to RoE??? Except that the main characters has siblings tbh. I expected it to be more like Endless Summer (without tons of stuff to buy or relationship meter) or TcaTf and so far my expectations has not been proved wrong at all. The plot finally settled in lately and I can expect a train of feels to rush over the next few chapters.

I think the reason why people are complaining so much about it is because they expect it to be like your general romance story. The book is not introduce Li -> romantic scene with them -> introduce next 2 LI -> Event -> romantic scene and rinse and repeat. This book follows a clear story line and sets the romance on the back burner. I’m pretty sure if TCaTF would have been released right now it would face the same criticism tbh. About it be RoE like because you can also control Dom etc…

This is what I love personally. I’m not that big on romance stories so having a more adventure style is amazing. Now before you come and say “why are you playing choices then???” Well Hon, this is Choices STORIES You Play, not Choices romance you play or Choices pixels you fuck

Back to where I was, I love it even more since it has a morality meter. I love these in games especially when they severely alter gameplay and stories like in your usual Shin Megami Tensei games. But knowing choices, the alterations would be very minor if not that would mean the writers would have to make 3 chapters a week as opposed as one. Plus keeping the choices super drastic will make it hard to get a sequel book to it because the writers would have to write again 3 chapters per week and ATV2 will be essentially 3 books.

I also get the complaints that MC does not get much to act and we get to play as the siblings more. First of all I find this questionable but mind you i haven’t counted the scenes. Anyway I’m pretty sure MC has more scenes but the thing is, they are just not as remarkable as those with Pax and Eos. You are just so used your regular cut of mill MC that they no longer feel special and rhe scenes with the siblings feel different. They might not let you feel awe constantly but they amek you feel something else and you have to adapt to fit the new perspective you are playing as.

Now the Zekei thing… I actually think if you love Zekei that is actually an amazing situation you are in because think of it. You will be basically getting 2x more Zekei scenes if you romance him both on MC and Eos. Remember that you are the one controlling both of them, it is not like there js another person beside you and the two of you are in competition to win Zekei’s heart. And if you do not want X to romance him, just don’t romance him. No need to be cry babies and claim Y stole your man when you are clearly the one that led up to these actions 🤷‍♀️

Now Pax and Eos themselves…These characters are definitely flawed but thing is … I remember people asking PB for more morally grey and flawed MCs. Now you get them and just diss them out??? Conclusion : you ain’t really for morally grey characters and should try not asking for stuff you can’t handle. I think playing as them is actually a good thing to be honest. I’m 100000% sure that eventually the family will separate as Eos goes complete Vanguard and Pax goes Jura. The different perspective during the war will help lean the players to either side and also pull the strings of the player as they will be opposing the siblings’ own blood. Unfortunately I can’t really explain what I mean through words so I’m just going to summarize it by this:

ATV is definitely neither a romance or adventure book and sci-fi is just the setting. The true nature of Across The Void is a familial tragedy imo and it will shine if it continues delivering in that essence.

This is an entirely new genre PB is going for and a really interesting one and I sure hope they go in that angle. If they do continue like that it might actually end up at my favorite choices book and trust me, I love ILITW so much that there are barely any books that come close to it to me.

However, I won’t deny it. ATV does have glaring weaknesses. Namely:

1.Too many shades of purple. Purple is a beautiful colour but in such excess it feels a bit nauseating.

2.Eos X Lyra is a car crash that will be really hard to salvage. It is super cringy. I’ll be doing anything in my power to avoid it. Eos X Zekei is super fluid and natural though and I’m really liking it.

3.Labelling your twins as annoying. This is bad marketing. Naming people that the users are going to play as annoying gives people a bad foretaste and will obviously affect their future experience with them. I think if they didn’t call the twins annoying, people would approve of them more. But Pb already seeded the annoying mindset in people’s mind and so it because hard for some to enjoy them because of it.

4.I’m probably going to get a lot of flame for it but Titania. I’m not really liking her and her design to be honest. Like one of our previous confessions said her appearance is very strange, even for the book she is in. Plus she is giving me Drake vibes (minus the whiskey) who is someone I do not really approve of.

5.Too much going on!!!! This time I’m not talking about plot wise, this time I’m talking about content. You have 4 Lis ( possibly 5 if Zekei is available to MC too) to give time to for MC. Plus each sibling I’m guessing has at least two. I’m guessing Zania and Holmes for Pax and Zekei and Lyra for Eos. You have the robot and bartender sub romance going on. Passenger and Crew Management. Moral Alignment. Huge story that requires a lot of time to properly bloom. Eventual sex with LI option that probably 60% of you have been lusting for. There is just too much to fit in just 1 book! And repeating what I said far above, with the Moral Alignment thing, it will be hard to get a sequel. The book is already at its 6th or 6th chapter. If they intend to wrap everything up in this book we will end up with probably a 35 chapter book and thats just redundant by choices standards. I think the highest amount of chapters a book has is 22 i think with RoE2 and any book with 20+ chapters feels too long so yeah.

6.Also talking about Zania she should have already got a proper introduction when we are using Pax because the gears of the plot are already turning unless they want it to be a super slow burn but that would be a bit redundant considering how she is after Pax based om the chapter in which she is introduced.

7.The most glaring weakness though had to be the lack of lore and background information. We are thrust into a fictitious world with no information about it will alienate the player (no pun intended) and make them less likely to be engaged. No background information worked in the case of endless summer as the cast also didn’t know about what was going on. Noth the player and the characters understood what was happening at the same time. One way they could have set it up is that …. Do you guys remember the Sol, Kepler etc… teasers? Well instead of showcasing the LIs they should have posted lore bits. Like say for the Devinee (did I write this right? Its the tree people). They make an image with Lyra, or any other devinee on it and explain the race, their characteristics and tid bits about their planets. They could even go further and add another button, just like the one for the closet that would bring you to another menu where they would have all this information plus other general important ones like what exactly are the Vanguard and Juras. Why the war is exactly happening. Artemis and her company and stuff and get even more background information as we complete more options. Plus if PB wanted money they could even monetize them like they did in ILITW with Mr.Red’s origin stories that you got from the crow. It is entirely optional and not need to understand what is going on but is still interesting and puts things under a different microscope.

Anyway thats all I had to say. Again it is all my OPINION you are very welcome to disagree. I won’t be replying to anything so if you intend to attack me and stuff well then, congratulations you lost 5 minutes losing your shit and attacking me. Now I’m going on break, see you guys when I’m back. I’m sure I’ll have an amazing break since i emptied my trash!

thank you for sending this question @choices-addicted by the way!

-Mod Frosty

Fire Emblem Heroes Book III,Initial Trailer First Impression: Spooky Scary Skeletons are 4 edgy 8 me

the long and short of it is that im pensively optimistic about what’s in store, especially from a story angle, but that theme song can go suck a donkey’s tit.

anyways, book III and it seems were gonna be doing the tango with spooky scary Victorian skeleton warriors and a scary lady with a big ass scythe. Fuck Yeah!

so ignoring the theme song since it’s just... fuckin awful or at the very least unfitting, lets get into this by first talking about

THE TRAILER

So I gotta admit, i enjoyed this one a lot more then book II right off the bat.

opening on some flowers, we immediately know that shits gonna get fucked but my story telling instincts are telling me that this might possibly, probably, definitely, be a metaphor for this characters happy childhood in her kingdom when it was not fucked however

shit got fucked, unsurprisingly. instead of the villain looming ominously overhead like fucking doctor claw or no-heart however, we get a shot of our new hero twirling into the villains strangely comforting embrace by accident which does get me curios since it might imply, heaven forefend, that she willingly sold out her kingdom or home or whatever to the devil here and now has to fight to get it back and correct her own mistake in some sort of possible and interesting character arc here? just my take on it anyways.

moving on, we get these idiots in the woods as the fuglyness of them gives me whiplash from the actually pretty rad looking duo earlier. I kid but seriously if lokis a 0-2, alfonse a 3-5, then the hero and villain of book 3 are at an 8-10 each. my point being, there is quite the contrast in my opinion. anyways, alfonse is looking sad lost and afraid and loki’s pouting since she probably gonna be barely relevant yet fucking intrusive again.

also sharenas there in a similar state to her brother.

also veronicas just kind of there, and im getting a bit worried since we just got lokis douche smirk a few seconds ago and veronica just seems to kinda be there again.

the promotional shot, so shits about to get real again!

we get a nice shot of these two new lovely faces, doing the naruto run for a bit when the leading runner decides to pull out his fancy sword with an intense close up, definitely indicating that hes probably gonna be a blood knight of some sort. anyways he and alfonse begin to fight with blood knight pushing alfonse back and red energizer lady decides to fight

alfonse as well. man it is not alfonses day here is it? anyways, psychidelic drugs kickin at this point and the floor dissapears under alfonse as he starts to sink into sticky black goo well reaching out to sharena as-

oh?

oh! well, sharenas dead now and alfonse just can’t take the death of such a... memorable sister... and so he crys well the black goo decides to try and eat him if hes not gonna sink himself. this transitions us nicely to

our new hero looking into her dagger to see sad alfonse, and then she begins crying on a battlefield of weapons, with the heroes trios main weapons clearly in the fucking foreground implying they all died horrible deaths. quick, happy flashbacks to imply she, or you, or someone is thinking of all the good times!

there we go.

i did not kill her it’s not true, it’s bullshit, i did noooot

oh hi mark

we get this nice panning shot of a battlefield littered with weapons, implying corpses, as the hero and villain of book III stare each other down with the villain being a smug fuckin asshole and the hero clearly ready to cut a skeleton bitch.

our hero does a slight turn of the knife, and looks determinedly ahead as the trailer cuts out.

so, aside from the theme song being kinda out of place in my opinion (like, i guess it works for being unsettling but it really does feel like some marketing exec being 8 edgy 16 me cause he thought the kiddies would like it) i rather enjoyed the trailer. it set up a lot more and teases a lot more interesting story elements and ideas then book II did, its grim oppressive atmosphere is nicely out of place in comparison to feh’s other stories, it’s just better shot and paced as a trailer, and the characters look like they have an interesting history going on. speaking of looks...

THE LOOK

cause i was not expecting to be digging the look as much as I do. well the fiber glass looking stuff, that i feel was intended to be spoopy etheral light, on the villians looks a bit cheap and silly and hides the skeleton bones a bit much requiring a second closer viewing to catch that they are spoopy skeletons, the overall look im really liking. 

the sword general especially has a get up that reminds me of a reanimated suit of armour and if they had leaned into that by giving him a helmet i think it would have been even better, but for what it is he looks pretty good and threatening. the other major complaint i have aside from them not leaning into him being a reanimated suit of armour by giving him a helmet is that his face looks to much like alfonse’s which annoys me. mind you, it could be leading into some sort of plot twist later on so if it is, all i can say is i hope it’s a good one.

the lady general looks the weakest of the three in terms of visual design, but thats not as bad as it could be since she still looks a hell of a lot better then anything book II produced. still, the red stuff hiding her skeleton bits looks the most like plexi glass. Although thats about the only thing i outright dislike on her, aside from not leaning into spoopy skeleton territory more, it really does hold her design back in my opinion. i mean, fucks sake make it look more like ethereal light, add some armour here and there if need be, and boom it would be another winner of a design.

hel here, the big bad, has no such problems however. I love every bit of this lady, and i dont even care that if the glowy bits of her were actual skin she would have a design that’d comfortably fit in with kill la kill. she’s a lady villain, which isnt a requirement but something im damn well happy with especially if she ends up being well written, and she has many things i love in villains and characters in general. grim reaper theme, Victorian goth aesthetic, a black, white, and purple colour scheme, tattered flowing cloths, long wavy hair, a threatening appearance and most importantly shes a spooky scarcy skeleton. a purple spooky, scary, skeleton. I will cherish you forever, and i am crossing my fingers and praying to you that your well written and entertaining. plz be good, plz be good, plz be good...

oh right, and the mandatory good guy/gal of the book. well that bit sounds dismissive, i honestly gotta say that im digging her a lot as well. shes not a spooky scary skeleton sadly, but the victorian gothic elements of her design work really well, and shes nicely distinct from the heroes trio this time unlike fjorm who was basically sharena 2.0. im gonna hope shes well written as well, so that i can seriously grow attached to the new hero this time cause from her design alone.

so yeah, looks wise im digging this a lot more and though the artist for this is clearly Yusuke Kozaki, an artist ive vocally disliked in relation to fire emblem for a while now, i feel ike his style works to much better effect here with the ridiculous bdsm Victorian gothic style and the darker colours.

GAMEPLAY STUFF

nothing particularly interesting to note, mythic heroes definitely sounds like a dumb cash grab and i dont feel the aether arena quite has the pull in terms of gameplay to justify hinging a new summoning type gimmick on.

on a much more important note though...

beast units, huzzah!!  and tibarn and nailiah seem to be some of the first ones up which is even better! not sure what the gameplay video is implying on how their gonna play though, since it seems a bit gimmicky and raises the question of how that gimmick might effect manateke units, but they are here so thats cool. bird pirate king is ready to roll!!!

OVERALL

all in all, from the look and what the trailer hints at alone, i am optimistic, but the caution comes with what sounds like very lukewarm gameplay deals which might not keep people hooked for very long. idk, im looking foreward to it but im not gonna be heartbroken if its third verse same as the first.

Palkyrie here, what about 1-5 for the video game ask meme?

Oh boy Im a huge video game nerd so this might be long.

1. All have good points really. Just as a general rule I prefer PC to the ability to get high quality out of my games, and mods are the big selling point. I feel like handheld games can be good as long as they apply to their strength. Low iteration time used to be a thing but with 3DS and Ps Vitas ability to pause the game while in sleep mode, I think a bit more commitment isnt an issue. Its just scope. A handheld game only has the ability to do so much compared to console, so why try and compete in scale? Making a game with commitment time but small scale, say a grid based Rpg, works wonders on hand held! But entire generas like shooters are general ot the table. Same for open world. Just dont bother.

2 I would guess RPG but thats kinda a sub genera now a days. Being a bit more specific I guess story driven action. Things like last of us, god of war, things that offer a long game with a compelling story but high intensity moments for the adrenalin fun. Runner up would be skill games. Things that offer you lots of fun for mastering the system. Bayonetta, DmC are the first to come to mind.

3. Shooters. Its a pretty basic answer but there is no innate fun in shooting things. I like skill expression or complex fighting system. The only shooter I have liked is super hot.

4. This is super hard to answer. Like Im gonna cheat and make two lists. One is my emotional feeling and second is my long term involvement and love of a series. My emotional connection to these games are personal and I don’t even think they are good games. 1st The World ends with you. To me this game was a fucking masterpiece. The gameplay was fun at both a casual level and with lots of skill hidden beneath it. The story is wholly unique and original and the characters feel very real. There is an emotional attachment to them when the game really goes south. 2nd Would be oblivion. Just how much time I spent in this game as a kid exploring the world and characters felt so free and big and fun. I dont know if I ever finished the game but I have hundreds of hours in it. 3rd Fallout 3. Second worst game in the series (FUCK fallout 4) but I somehow just can’t give this game up. I love all of the characters and all of the side quests and even the main quest, barring the ending. It is just such a game that I am emotionally tied to regardless of how awful it is. Moving onto the more practical list. 1st would easily be blood borne, best of the soulsborne series and my reasoning is essays long. Point is it is the perfect souls game. 2nd is for honor, not a perfect game but I have 800 hours in it. What else can I say? The fighting system is pretty unique and I feel like they could really do more with it if they put the effort in. Im actually writing down a for honor like game, same fighting system but a more fantasy esq feel to allow to really push the system from for honors realistic-esq approch. Ive got a couple dozen pages stored away about it on my laptop. 3rd is League of legends. The game falls flat lore wise but the wide selection of characters and every new twist that comes with them keeps the game very alive in my eyes.

5. Games based on movies are just bad. I really can’t think of one good one. The reason is shovelware. It means to make a game or an app based on a brand, but to catch the wave of hype the game or app is made within 6 to 8 months. Maybe 10 if lucky. So it will release a couple of weeks after the first showing.

Games with this amount of time are just awful, and sell solely on obsessive fans or parents who don’t know any better and just buy a game based on the brand name for their children. With such a low amount of time world on them the cost is low and they can usually make their money back on the first bulk sales to the public. Best way to stop shovelware is to stop supporting it. If you want to know more I recommend watching Extra Credits on youtube, they have a very good episode on shovelware, in fact they have very good episodes on any topic for video games you might want to know. Less than 10 minutes an episode and you can really learn a lot so check them out!

End of the Year 2019: Games of the Year

Hello everyone, it's that special time of year again! Time for me to shower praise upon some games that I absolutely adored, while mentioning some games that I liked, but not really enough to put on this list. For a remarkable change of pace I have a full list of ten for the best of 2019, however I only have four for the pre-2019 so that's a bit disappointing. If you notice any glaring omissions for the best of the year the simple explanation is that I probably just didn't play it, or I didn't play it enough for it to enter consideration. I also didn't really play anything this year that stands out as particularly bad, there was maybe one game, but I don't have it in me to write a full length thing to expound upon its terrible state. There are also some games that I'm disappointed I didn't get to play, but hopefully I'll be able to in 2020.

Honorable Mentions:

God Eater 3. I've sunk almost twenty hours in to this game, but I haven't played enough of it to really make a declaration that I think it's good. I still intend on playing the game to the finish, but for all I know the game could take a real nose-dive in quality towards the end. I have a desire to go back and play the previous God Eater games as well, so I guess that could be considered an endorsement. I like the visual style in this game, the models all look very nice, and the monster designs are pretty neat to look at as well.

Remnant: From the Ashes. I never quite got to finishing this game, but from what I played this was a pretty fun little co-op shooter. There are some things that the game does that I don't particularly care for, some of the one-shot enemies in the swamp level, the confusing design of this one dungeon in the desert area being particularly troublesome things I remember. I would love to go back and finish this one, but as it stands it'll have to stay with an honorable mention.

King of Fighters XIV. I'm not great at fighting games, but I still enjoyed this game a whole hell of a lot. But like I said I'm not great at the game, but it's a fun one to pop in every once in a while just to get annihilated by all the killers online.

Death Stranding. Please don't post spoilers here. I've greatly enjoyed my time with this game, but as with Remnant and God Eater 3 I didn't finish this one. I've played maybe about twelve hours into this one, but I don't know if that's enough to really comment on the games overall quality. As with God Eater 3 for all I know it could take a real nose-dive in quality.

Hollow Knight. I played a very little amount of Hollow Knight, but I liked what I've played so far. Hope to go back and finish this one before Silksong comes out.

The Elder Scrolls Legends. I quite liked the Alliance War and Jaws of Oblivion expansions. It's a shame they've cancelled all further expansions for this game, because I liked the story based ones they've put out in the past and I was hopeful for more sets in the future. It was never a particularly great game, but I liked what they had going for the longest time.

Pre-2019 Games of the Year

04: Death Mark

This is a fun little RPG/Visual Novel horror game that came out in 2018 that I got a chance to play back in May. It's an investigation game where your character and a host of other characters are trying to solve the mystery of their death mark. A strange design that looks like a bite that materializes on their bodies one day. If they don't get to the root of the problem they die a horrible grisly death. I like the episodic nature of the game with each chapter revolving around a mystery involving a different type of vengeful spirit than the other chapters. There is a small combat element that happens toward the end of each chapter that isn't particularly deep to deal with as it's more puzzle-based rather than being an actual combat engine. It doesn't feature much in the way of blood and gore, but what's there is frankly mortifying to look at. I played it on the Switch, but the game is available on the PS4 and PC as well. Death Mark is definitely worth playing through at least once.

03: Monster Hunter 4: Ultimate

I'm ever so slowly going through my 3DS backlog and finally played through this one. I can understand why people say that 4U is their favorite Monster Hunter game because it is just an absolute blast to play through. I really like the design of the monsters in this game especially Gore Magala and Masharu Magala. I don't know if I would recommend it over World or Generations Ultimate but I had a hell of a time playing through this game.

02: Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen

I love the way the combat in this game feels. I love how you can climb on the monsters and start stabbing away at them. Magic and ranged combat feel really good, and I especially like the Pawn system so you can keep trying out other player's pawns until you hit that sweet spot of the type of combat you want to have for the game. The story is a little basic, kind of your typical "slay the evil dragon" storyline even though it's great how the game gives you a personal reason to want the dragon dead. Guy stole your heart after all, literally ripped it from your chest. I liked the story towards the end when you actually face off with the dragon and all that occurs from then on that was great fun. I played this on both the PS4 and the Switch port that came out earlier this year (I guess I could've put this in the 2019 category), and I was surprised at how well the Switch was able to play the game. The game doesn't look completely awful in handheld mode, and it kept a stable framerate throughout my playthrough. The PS4 and PC versions look better of course, but the Switch version keeps the spirit of the game rather well and is just as good to play there as on the other consoles.

01: Nioh

Bill Nioh's adventures in feudal Japan was a great time. This game made me consider the notion of a mission/loot based Diablo done in a Dark Souls style to not be the worst thing I've ever heard. My only major complaint with the game is that there's too much vendor trash in this game. There's also the problem that you'll be constantly switching from one version of your weapon to another with barely any time to gain "familiarity" with your weapon. Familiarity means you hit slightly harder than you would with another version of that weapon, but with how many variations on whatever weapon your using you'll constantly be scrapping older versions of your weapon and armor without really raising your familiarity. I wish that the game would've gone with an experience meter per-weapon deal rather than loading you up with a million variations of each weapon. Like a leveling bar for Katana, Dual-Blades, Nodachi, and so on, there's already a skill-tree for each weapon, so I think an experience meter for each weapon would work better. It's not a deal-breaker by any means, but I think it might work better.  I like the mission-based focus of this game rather than being a pseudo-open world affair like most Soulslike games. I still need to play through the expansions before Nioh 2 comes out.

Games of the Year 2019

10: Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night

This was a good Metroidvania to play through, and certainly better than I thought it was going to be. I enjoyed the various weapons you can acquire throughout the game, the spear and great swords were particularly fun in my playthrough for instance. I have some minor complaints that arise towards the end of the game, but they're not major issues. A boss fight or two will just absolutely destroy the framerate while you're fighting them (I can only imagine how they play on the Switch if the game was dying on the PS4 Pro). I liked some of the extra bosses you can fight like the Millionaire's Bane and the bonus boss that's Definitely Not Simon.

09: Untitled Goose Game

An amusing game to play, and I had a fun time playing it. It's definitely not the deepest or longest game to come out this year (from start to finish the game is maybe four hours long), but it's a fun enough "nuisance simulator." It reminds me of playing a game like Hitman, cause Goose Game is definitely a stealth game, even if every time I completed an objective I unfurled my wings and honked to assert my dominance over the people in the village.

08: Samurai Shodown

As previously mentioned I am not good at fighting games. Yet despite my being bad at them I find myself constantly going back to SamSho just to get obliterated online. I positively adore the art style in this game and the completely vicious gameplay. Unlike some other fighting games you can be destroyed within mere seconds of the match starting. If you play super poorly your opponent can cut your lifebar down from 100% to next to nothing with one or two moves. It's very exhilarating when that happens, or when they do a super that just destroys your lifebar. It reminds me a lot of samurai movies in that way where guy does the move and the opponent just stands there for a second then falls over dead. I get the impression that this is going to be a "small pond" scenario where there's the handful of godlike players and everyone else will just get bodied everyday, but I really love this game. I absolutely despise the final boss in the arcade mode.

07: Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice

Speaking of games that are absolutely torture to play. Sekiro is really insidious, the first half or so of the game is relatively easy, but then you hit a certain boss and the game decides its done toying with you and will just start absolutely and utterly destroying you. Every single boss fight from that point forward are some of the most brutal and agonizing fights that have been put in a video game. I had to give up on playing this game for a few weeks because I was getting too tired of throwing myself against the wall in the hopes that this time I'll get the best of this bastard. After finally killing the final boss I had vowed to never play the game again. Then two days later I started a new-game plus playthrough. Whoops! I love the verticality of this game, being able to jump and use a grappling hook was absolutely great. Despite my complaints about the sheer difficulty of the bosses  I love the combat in this game. It is particularly exhilarating when a guy makes to stab you with a spear and you stomp it into the ground and take him out yourself. Masataka Oniwa and the Divine Dragon are hands down the best fights in the game, with the final boss being a particularly noteworthy bastard of a fight. Oniwa and the Dragon are great because of the sheer spectacle of the fights, whereas the final boss is great because of he is a great amalgamation of everything the game has thrown to you at that point. I liked this game a lot, but I certainly don't hold it against anyone who decides the difficulty is too much.

06: Nioh 2 Beta

Meanwhile Nioh 2's beta was an absolute gem of a thing that I played this year. Sadly I didn't get into the private alpha towards the start of the year, but I did download the public beta and proceeded to sink nearly thirty hours into it. I love the new weapon they added to the game the switch glaive, which is a combination knuckle weapon/spear/scythe depending on your stance. In low stance it's a lot like Bloodborne's switch-axe or spear in that the blade covers your fist and you punch it into enemies. Mid-stance it turns into a spear, and high turns it into a scythe and I had great fun trying out all the forms in this beta. I adore the fact that the game gives you a devil trigger for your spirit animals, and I love the fact that this game has a character creator. It seems like they're keeping the volume of the drops to the same level as the first game, but that's fine. I cannot wait to get my hands on the full version.

05: Devil May Cry 5

This was a great game, filled to the brim with some amazing set-pieces and great moments. It very much feels like a "greatest hits" version of Devil May Cry combining all the elements from the four original DMCs and also bringing over some stuff from DmC. I was worried a bit about the game being similar to DMC 4 and splitting the action into "Here's the Nero section, here's Dante's, and V's" but it worked out pretty well. It gives you a mission or two to get used to how the characters play but not too much time that it feels like "you've learned this character, but screw that learn Dante." It all blends itself really well. They each have their own feel which works really great with their differences in character, but for my money Nero is the best to play as. The story is also really fun to play through, it has some amazing moments even if some of the stuff is really silly. Also the game gives us Nico, and she's really great.

04: Monster Hunter World: Iceborne

The jump in difficulty from the High-Rank quests to Master-Rank was crazy. Maybe it's because I got rusty, not having played World since roughly February, but I was not really prepared for the increase in difficulty. That said I still adore this game, plus they added both Zinogre and Stygian Zinogre, the only way they could've made an already great game even better is if they were like "and here's Gore Magala and Masharu Magala." I like the new hunter's hub, and they made the game so much better with all the variations of monsters they added to this game. I like the Seething Bazelgeuse and Blackveil Vaal Hazak a lot, and the Ebony Odogaron has an amazing looking set of armor. My only wish was that they add some variations to other monsters, I would've loved to see a variation to Kushala Daora or Teostra and Lunastra. I like the clutch-claw very much even if it's the reason my deaths in hunts has skyrocketed. I can't help but wonder what they're going to do for the next Monster Hunter. What can they do to improve this for the inevitable PS5 and Xbox versions? HD version of Gen Ultimate?

03: Blasphemous

The past couple of years I've grown really dismissive of pixel-art 2D games. Just something about the way they look made me grow weary of them, and maybe I've missed out on some amazing games. Then I believe it was E3 2017 I saw a trailer for Blasphemous and I was instantly drawn to it. There was some combination of the religious horror and gore that just made me very excited. Then the game more or less disappeared, then I laid eyes on this game's trailer and I was instantly back in. This game is absolutely wonderful to play, I love the unlockable moves the game gives you as well as the amazing bleak tone and atmosphere in this game. I like the fact that the more you die in the game the more the game covers up your available MP meter, that's a nifty little mechanic, and I liked the paying money to cure yourself from that problem. It's flavorful, and fits with the tone very nicely. I plan to one day go deeper into why I think this game is as good as I think it is, from both a gameplay and aesthetic sense, but I don't think here's really the place to do it. It's a very good 2D exploration game, and I love it to pieces even if I do think some of the bosses aren't good.

02: Fire Emblem Three Houses

Aside from Monster Hunter and Samurai Shodown I probably spent the most time with this game. One campaign playthrough took me over a hundred hours, and I'm presently ten hours into a second playthrough (of four). I went with the Blue Lions for my first playthrough and I really liked the story the game presented to me. It's not without its faults but overall I quite like what it did, I felt that it was a nice upgrade from the storyline from Fates. I get the distinct impression that there was originally going to only be the Red Eagles and Blue Lions routes but then someone at IntSys just went "give the Golden Deer a path" and so here we are. I don't entirely understand why there's the weapon degradation system in this game, for the relic weapons sure, but for your standard weaponry it doesn't make sense. That said I do really enjoy the missions in this game, there aren't any that really stand out as horrible. I like most of the characters in this game, and it kept me gripped for the entire length of the campaign. A ton of fun this game.

01: Resident Evil 2

I played through this game six times in a month, and once more while I was writing this list. I really, really enjoyed my time with Resident Evil 2 and it is positively astounding that Capcom did such a great job with this game. There are some minor complaints I have with the game, the second run having the completely silly and superfluous handgun with its own ammo certainly stands out. However the game is positively gorgeous, sounds phenomenal and is just ridiculously fun to play. In addition to the wonderful base campaigns there's also the revised 4th Survivor and Tofu modes, then in the summer Capcom released the Ghost Survivor DLC missions which are fun little challenge modes to play. I love everything about this game Capcom really knocked it out of the park with this one, and I cannot wait to see what they do with Resident Evil 3.

The real game of the year was all the War of the Spark pre-release, and the drafts I did. Both IRL and in Magic Arena and Online. That and Core 2020 Pre-release.

Review - The Evil Within

Release: 2014

Technical Score: 7

Enjoyability Score: 7

              Were it not for being released at precisely the right time, in the wake of the horror revival caused by The Last of Us, The Evil Within might have flown under the radar. The game has little to recommend it other than that it scratches the itch for old-school survival horror gameplay and tropes. There is precious little innovation here and the story doesn’t do much to make up the difference. Gameplay is very similar to that of Resident Evil 4, the game’s insane asylum meets dimension-hopping story is a little stale, tragically undermined by awful dialogue and game design that falls into old mistakes. It doesn’t help that the PS4 port I played for this review seemed to enhance only flat character model textures, jerky animations, and framerate drop issues. There is a great deal of throw-back charm here, but the game is also caught in the same limbo survival horror had been largely trapped in for the last several years: the game isn’t sure if it’s a shooter or a stealth game, if it’s psychological horror or b-movie jump scare/body horror.

              To describe the story too much would be to give major spoilers as the core of the game’s plot is the main character’s quest to figure out what’s happening and reunite with other people he knows. The player steps into the curiously old fashioned looking shoes of Detective Sebastian Castellanos. He, along with his partner Joseph and a trainee named Kidman, have been called to a disturbance at the local mental hospital. When they enter, they see an absolute bloodbath as staff, patients, and responding officers have all been massacred. Soon after, every surviving person is transported into a series of strange worlds infested by zombie-like creatures.

              Generally, the aim of each of the game’s chapters is to explore to try and find clues to what is going on and/or other non-hostile people. Different worlds have different themes, though it’s not uncommon to visit the same ones repeatedly, slightly changed. Alongside the linear story worlds is a mirror universe that can be accessed at will by looking into certain mirrors. Inside the mirror universe, Sebastian finds himself in what appears to be a small mental hospital. Therein the player can manually save the game (otherwise only available at the end of chapters), read some newspapers that give insight into events occurring outside the strange mental hospital, and use keys hidden around the game to open storage lockers. The lockers contain ammunition for Sebastian’s weapons and bonus bottles of a mysterious green gel, which acts as the currency to improve Sebastian’s skills. Finding these keys adds incentive for exploring the game carefully, if finding the documents and audio-recordings that add context to events going on around Sebastian weren’t enough.

              Green gel is the key to advancement, and perhaps the only truly developed-feeling feature of gameplay. Sebastian begins the game as weak as a kitten, sprinting like an overweight chain-smoker, and with the inventory capac3ity of a baby holding things in their clenched fists. Gel, and the ability to customize Sebastian is, therefore, the most precious resource in a game with extremely limited resources. Gel is hidden around maps, and occasionally dropped by enemies, but is ultimately much more limited than a player would like. The player will be forced to customize their play style via upgrades as the gel controls everything from Sebastian’s health and sprint speed to his weapon damage and inventory space. Upgrades are all very specific and there are many of them. To pursue a balanced approach is to be master of nothing, which is a dangerous line to walk.

              Most gameplay is a mix of stealth segments and combat. Ammunition is very limited and quite easy to run out of, so the idea is to use stealth systems and environmental features to maximize deadliness and minimize ammo expenditure. Like many stealth-shooter hybrids the system shines in some scenarios and feels horribly awkward and forced in others. Crouching and sneaking up behind enemies allows Sebastian to kill most basic enemies without expending resources. However, later in the game enemies can be briefly blinded or stunned and then stealth killed, which involves sprinting up to the enemies, running behind them and crouching before being able to deliver the coup de grace, which wastes the precious time before enemies aren’t vulnerable any longer. Like many games in this genre, there is the ubiquitious “throw bottle to distract enemies “ mechanic, which works as well as it always does: about half of the time. It doesn’t help that one usually has to leave cover to toss the bottle, and with enemies’ line of sight being unpredictable, it’s just a toss up whether the player will get the desired result or a frustration headache instead.

              Another of the game’s systems is based on fire, and particularly matches, another consumable resource. Basically, all enemies in the game are extremely flammable, which makes fire a potent weapon. Some environmental objects can be set on fire, but more importantly, the bodies of enemies that are either actually dead or just laying in wait can be set on fire. With good enough timing, lighting a body on fire can also light up any enemies around it or that walk over it. This is a useful mechanic, and occasionally it’s literally necessary to get through the level. So it’s major bummer that having things that should burn not prompt the command to light a match is probably the game’s most common glitch.

              Another fun gimmick is traps scattered throughout the levels. Most troublesome are the hard to see trip-wires and the pipe-bombs, which involve a minigame to disarm. Failing the minigame results in the bomb going off in Sebastian’s face. Every other trap can be disarmed without so much drama, though, and salvaged for materials. Said materials can then be used to craft bolts for the Agony Crossbow, the game’s signature weapon. While all the other weapons have one ammo type the crossbow has an assortment of bolts cycled via the reload button. Each bolt has a different effect and tends to be very useful both in crowd clearing and boss fights.

              Combat is otherwise fairly standard, and leans to the high-stakes side. Enemies do a lot of damage, Sebastian does comparatively little. For example, taking a headshot only lends a certain (upgradable) percent chance of a critical hit. Most enemies are just fine after having their head blown off without the critical. All weapons, including the thrown ones, use the left trigger to aim and the right trigger to fire. Sebastian also has a melee attack, but unless an enemy is prone, it’s more useful for smashing open crates than damaging enemies. Generally, the combat system feels good, but occasionally bogs down when large groups attack in small spaces.

              Mechanics are fine. What unfortunately undermines the game the most is some truly horrific scenario designs. The game likes to have the player sprint away from something, turning the camera to face Sebastian’s front so that the player can see whatever’s chasing him, but not the obstacles they’re supposed to be dodging. Likewise, the game likes to have set-piece traps where the player has to do or shoot the right thing before getting gruesomely killed. Often the solutions to these situations are unintuitive, and the auto-save system doesn’t always pick up the slack. This is a shame because when the game doesn’t rely on gimmicks and set pieces it does put together some good sandboxes for using stealth tactics, or provide boss battles with environmental features that can be used to defeat enemies with guile instead of brawn.

              The is the kind of game that comes out and people shrug and say merely that the intellectual property has potential. And this one does. The Evil Within took advantage of a space in the market for a new horror franchise, but it didn’t manage to carve out its own unique identity or nail any particular gameplay feel. All that really sets it apart is a somewhat incomprehensible plot that sometimes features and sometimes manages to obscure moments of good writing and/or game design. The game feels a bit too long, a bit too stagnant, and a bit repetitive. But it’s not bad. It’s just a bit too unpolished. What it is, also, is potential for a survival horror renaissance that sees big developers turn a more thoughtful eye to scaring players with ambiance and plot instead of jump scares and the newest, most detailed blood effects.

Game Dev Update | 6.9.17

Who is that? What’s he so sad about? What’s that on his head? Read on...

Welcome back to the Exiles Game Dev Update, wherein we cover all things happening in the world of the game and its development. 

Last time, we covered a bunch of content, gameplay experiments and visual evolutions on the Exiles UI. This Update goes across the board with a look at the way we’re setting up battle environments, a new NPC, lootz (as always) and an introduction to the fellow that will guide you through your early experiences in Embermark. 

ENVIRONMENT BREAKDOWN: VANISIR

We’ve mostly shown our classic foresty Wildewoods battle environment in the past (or the Arena), but we’ve been quietly working on many different Battle setups for different Zones and situations all the while. This time, let’s take a look at Vanisir, the southwest Zone known for arid land and DANGER (ok, fine, every Zone in Embermark is dangerous-- it’s a fantasy-post-apocalyptic landscape after all). You can see from this setup that we’re taking several 2D paintings and arranging them in UE4 to achieve our 3D-but-hand-painted look:

AMA TRANSCRIPT

We had a rousing discussion in our 2nd-of-many Ask Me Anything a few weeks ago on the Exiles Discord Channel, with subjects ranging from Abilities to Stats to World Events & Houses tackled. Besides lively banter, several Exiles won coveted items when the game launches via “rolls” in chat. 

In case you missed it and want to get all the info & shenanigans, you can find the entirety of it here for posterity (our gratitude goes out to community stalwart Drakythe for capturing the AMA and posting the transcript).

BANDITS!

A Faction exists in Embermark that doesn’t really acknowledge (or respect) any leadership other than its own-- the Raiders. If called to fight as a unit or untied Faction, they probably wouldn’t fare well, but when encountered in Quests or random encounters in Exiles, they can be deadly.

Of medium build and questionable (read: awful) morals, the bandit can be found in Wildewoods and Askala among other Zones. 

Don’t like the red bandanna? FINE...

Now, a significant constituency of the Exiles community are Rogue-friendly (yes, that is a term), and I’m not saying this Bandit here is reminiscent of what you might expect your player-Rogue to be like... OR AM I.

What I can say is that because we’re using the player models for creation of NPCs, we have the ability to appropriate their equipment for YOU. So a shout-out to you Rogue-friendlies out there-- consider this gear a bit of a preview to what kind of gear you might outfit yourself when gameday comes... 

ABILITIES UI REDESIGN

UI 2.0 is on its way as we watch people play the game and discover optimizations ourselves. One we attacked this month is the switching of Ability Sets (remember, Ability Sets in Exiles can be 4 Abilities in the basic combat we’re testing and 8 in the “Deck” version we’re also testing). Using a list view to toggle between what becomes quite a few saved Ability Sets for an advanced player becomes cumbersome, so we added in some additional options for ease of use:

Ability Set title at the top

Arrows (and swipe, of course) for switching between your saved Ability Sets

Pips below the current Ability Set to show both which one is active and how many you have

This underscores some things that we’re experiencing in play sessions 

THE ELF IN ACTION

We’ve shown the evolution of Exiles’ wood elf characters since the beginning of this project (here, here & here), so having him in the game now is really exciting for us. We’re doing a little extra fudge factor to get his arrow to do different things (stay tuned for additional VFX we’re working on), but you can see his Sharpshot Ability here:

With a sideview of same here:

And Gunslinger’s animator-extraordinaire Andrew even used the arrow as a comedy device in the elf’s death:

Found all over, but concentrated in Wildewoods, Feral Moon and Askala, these wood elves are no fans of their brethren in the southern island Zone of Queviel. Those elves made an exodus during the Collapse to get away from the destruction, leaving their wood elf cousins to fend, adapt and evolve into the wilder, more martial elves that you will encounter often. 

HELMS & TELLS & TUNICS

Each month, we increase the Exiles library of loot and show a few choice pieces to illustrate both our stylistic choices as well as our experiments in gameplay. As we turned the dwarf I showed last month into a formidable foe (and sometimes ally), his gear was adapted into player-wearable items, and we gave it the color-tell treatment (go here for explanation). We’re in the process of figuring out how far we need to go to get the effects telegraph across to players, cuz where this helmet definitely says “green” to the opponent...

...this one has a certain style...

You’ll see where we landed when closed testing begins, and I will likely address this whole system in a later update.

It also occurred to me that we’ve never shown (or even mentioned) TUNICS before, and what’s a fantasy RPG without that word (or item)? Well, it’s not going to deflect much in the way of damage, but here are three tiers of a mage tunic for your wearing pleasure:

And of course, the latest in power-fashion magery:

All of the items that I’ve shown in the last few updates are now in the game, and we’ve been upgrading and improving our backend system that pushes content into the game in real-time. I’ll be starting to post video of more extended gameplay and battles once we get more finish on the feedback systems,  but for now, take a look at another GIF of equipping, featuring the Spear, Axe, Shield and armor set show in the past 2 or 3 updates. Please note the now-working rarity icons!:

(click here for a much longer and better GIF unbound by Tumblr’s file size limits)

THE NARRATOR (& HIS MANY HIDDENS)

The backstory and Lore of Exiles has been a fun and evolving part of the project, and as the preview stories started coming together with Bound, we realized the need for creating a character who acts as the voice (check out the Pocket Gamer article on Bound’s announcement of award-winning writer Andrew Saxsma as the talespinner on Exiles). We needed bit of a narrator. So we went through a process of coming up with who/what we wanted him to be and do. We went through many iterations of look and feel and reference to get something that nailed the tone of someone who would engage in telling you these stories...

(With great respect to GRRM, who sees Jorah Mormont in the above? Which one?)

Then we started playing with the type of fellow he might be, what he would be equipped to do, to survive and to know...

Until we arrived at a backstory and personality that we’re pretty excited about, but...

...then we SHROUDED HIM IN MYSTERY.

Har. So I’ll say little else other than there are no less than 2 major signals about who and what our Narrator is in this illustration. We shall reveal those items in due time. For now, I give you:

NARRATIVE - A GLIMPSE

There are quite a few episodes of the Exiles storyline in the can now. If you’re just joining us, we’re telling some of the backstory of the game before it’s available, and once the game launches, we’ll be telling the story of YOU. By that, I mean we’ll be reporting on the storyline as players play out their adventures, using the data from the game and the choices you make to direct the ongoing narrative. 

Very soon, our friends at Bound will release early episodes of the backstory (told by our haunted friend above), so now-- have a read through of the very first mid-episode snippet from our coming Tales...

A farmhand and his wife, who had been pulling behind them the few belongings left of their home, mentioned in passing that there had been an attack against House Resolute that morning, before the sun had risen. 

They described a horror of the loudest thunder and the hottest fires that rained down from the skies over the gulley of central Siege, barraging the fortress at its heart. Mages, it was rumored, of a rival House had rallied against the hoarding House Resolute. These Mages, I learned, wanted retribution for the deprived territories and as I neared the mountain’s peak, I witnessed fires devouring the countryside and ash falling as snow from bloated dark clouds.  

Though Hurinyl withstood its aggressors, neighboring encampments were leveled and homes and farmland for miles vanished.  

More troubling was that a message of blood and destruction was delivered that morning, one which would resound for ages to follow. That message, my friend, was quite clear: Man had lost his abundance, his satisfaction. His eyes, and all they desired, had turned upon his neighbor. 

The rise of the Houses was signaled. War was coming.

What?! What was Resolute hoarding? What mages? Who’s the “bad guy?” Who had the power to engulf the whole countryside? Stay tuned, Exiles...

REMEMBER

We’ll keep sharing details as we head into testing (remember to PM TheWizard on the Exiles forums with your device type if you want in on closed testing & beta later), and you can count on early impressions from the testers throughout our various channels.

If you haven’t already, follow along with the Exiles development on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. And if you haven’t, I’ll find you. And SMITE you.

THERE’S CHAT CHATTER EVERYDAY AS WE READY TO BATTLE

If you want to hear about the game, ask questions or connect with others who are helping the development team think about features, design and narrative, hop into the Discord Channel for live chat and say hi– it’s a friendly lot with plenty of daily shenanigans (there’s even a Shenaniganizer).

THE BONUS: A TURNAROUND

Lots of “Fs” in this one...

The way of the samurai has been fantasized for generations. If you walk the path of the bushido, you are supposed to be a warrior of honor. Many stories of warriors standing off against one another only fueled by the desire of combat. Here we are with Samurai Shodown also known as Samurai Spirits which came out on June 25th, 2019. This is a prequel to the famed SNK series, but does it live up to the legacy? 

Story of Samurai Shodown

It is the year 1787 and things are going through a change. However, there is a darkness looming over the lands figuratively and literally. It is up to the newly appointed Shogun, Matsudaira Sadanobu, as he ushers in the new era, but first, he is going to need the back up of some willing warriors. Through these 16 warriors, who will it be to reign fury or bring peace as the world reshapes? 

I started off the story mode with Darli and Genjuro both having their own agendas naturally. Genjuro has been a personal favorite of mine because he is fueled by his own desire to spill the blood of enemies. At times I think he is thirsty for a defeat looking for a worthy opponent. He is kind of an Akuma of the SNK world. 

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The newcomer Darli looks straight out of Monster Hunter sporting a huge weapon that is a huge saw blade. Her story is simple, she was raised by both pirates and carpenters and is trying to build an unsinkable ship to venture off and seek a new journey. 

But all 16 of our warriors are drowned to this darkness, this death that looms over all. 

Gameplay:

You can’t go into this button mashing mostly, it has a level of patience and tact. I am currently on the PS4 with some simple buttons where you have square for light, triangle for medium and circle for heavy slash. The X button is your kicks. The should button will utilize the combos of the face buttons in which you will need to press to perform your power moves.

If you hit R1 you can dodge attacks, while R2 can cause a grab that will stun your opponent so you can do a devastating move.  You have an ultimate finisher which is a last resort slash that can end your opponent. Once you hit the L2 button you will burn your meter completely, if you hit L2 a second time you will perform a slash that will instakill your opponent. If done right, but it seems it is a bit nerfed online as an opponent I faced used it on me with my health at 65% leaving me with 15% left. 

             When you go through the story mode it will take an average of 15 minutes or less depending on how you execute your kills. The end boss who is this scary demon lady going through something. She has a funky fight system switching to fully armored floating lady in a Kimono to a naked shy spirit. You do the most damage in her vulnerable form by forcing by using heavy attacks constantly on her full form. Be mindful of her fighting fans that can do deadly damage. 

The Modes of Play

Every fighter should have enough modes to give you the right experience in longevity. Samurai Shodown features the following. 

Story: Self Explanatory

Dojo: You can practice, fight your ghost or download others ghost to improve on your skills and make a better ghost. 

Online: This includes ranking and casual play.

Ironman Challenge: Take on 10, 50 and 100 opponents in this survival mode. 

There will be an online leaderboard as well as an offline leaderboard. If you want to appreciate the art style of Samurai Shodown, you can stop on by the gallery area to see movies you unlocked and other artwork. There is not much else going on, but if you play through the modes you can unlock titles for online battles. 

I highly recommend going through the tutorial mode which you can learn all the outs and ins of combat. You will learn how to dodge attacks which is one of my favorite features or disarm your opponent. You can fight without your weapon, but you will not do as much damage. Hit Light attack to pick back up your weapon just an FYI.

All Around Art Style

Samurai Shodown hits the right points showing an upgrade from the 2-D style that we all know. Honestly, I feel a game like this deserves the anime style of Arcsystem Works. With the flashy moves and exaggerated characters, it would have been better in an Anime style to give it more flare. 

Sound quality is on point especially when you clash with weaponry or perform the perfect block. You have the option to turn on or off how mature you want the battles to be. While I had the mature content turned on, you can see battle damage of each fighter. The blood splatter across their bodies and faces as well as a fierce finishing strike that will leave you in awe. Not bad if you ask me. 

The Bad:

First off the price tag is too high for this game, it feels a bit underwhelmed while playing. There was a lot of drag and drop not really standing out on its own as a must-have. There is something lacking either in the presentation or the art style (which is a personal opinion), but just felt bland, like an unseasoned piece of Fried Chicken. Looks good, but there is little to no flavor. 

Also, the Ironman Challenge. I get there are only sixteen fighters in the game, but why in the 10 opponent challenge I am seeing duplicate fighters either showing up 3 or 4 times. That is so weird, I can understand the fifty or hundred trials but ten? 

Conclusion:

Samurai Shodown has the potential to be a great game, but again that price tag doesn’t feel reasonable. Also, what is up with the weird gap with the DLC? 2 characters this year and 2 more in 2020 sounds awkward to me. I do believe they could have opened up this prequel with 10 more characters making it a nice 26 character roster. In the end, I have to give this a rating of RENT IT. 

I picked up Samurai Shodown at J&L games in NYC and no I am not affiliated with them or getting a commission. This beast just giving props to the local stores. Check them out for all things import copies and domestic gaming. – Beast Out – 

  Beast Review: Samurai Shodown The way of the samurai has been fantasized for generations. If you walk the path of the bushido, you are supposed to be a warrior of honor.