Recent reviews by huu

Overwatch 2...I'll be the first one to say - I haven't played much Overwatch 2. This is more-so a recap of my time with Overwatch 1, why I stopped playing it, and why I never came back, even with the release of Overwatch 2.

Let's wind the clock back to 2017. I was getting very bored of Team Fortress 2 by that point. The "Meet Your Match" update, which likely released to try to compete with Overwatch, had killed the way I was used to playing the game for about 4 years at that point, ruining the experience by making it feel more "competitive" rather than a fun, casual, silly game to mess around in. By that point, I was craving something new.

Most of my friends had gone to Overwatch, so I started to want to play the game. Sometime in March 2017, Blizzard hosted a free weekend for Overwatch, which is when I made my account and tried the game. Surprisingly - I enjoyed it. So much so that I started to want to play it, but problem is - I was an 18 year old without a job struggling to finish school. So I couldn't afford it. One of my friends at the time caught wind of this and gifted me a copy of Overwatch (thank you, by the way, Hitzip). I really appreciated this, and started playing, and at that time - firmly left TF2 behind.

When I got into the game proper in May 2017, I was having a blast. I enjoyed the fact that, despite being more competitive than what I was used to with TF2, a lot of the skills I had from that game transferred over. I wasn't the best, but I was having a fun time. Being a Medic main in TF2 meant that I found my home with Mercy. Yes, I was a Mercy main, before the Mercy rework at that. There were a lot of things I genuinely enjoyed about Overwatch when it came out. The Sombra ARG, the Doomfist arc of piecing him together and even wondering if Doomfist will ever be a playable character. I was around for all of it, and following along both with YouTubers & Reddit, solving these cryptic mysteries, piecing it all together - it all reminded me of, well, Team Fortress 2. And its old updates, like Love & War and the bread stuff that came with it.

When I first got into Overwatch back in 2017, it felt like I was part of a growing, accepting community. Jeff Kaplan's videos addressing the state of the game & ways they're taking to improve things was also a breath of fresh air compared to what I was used to with Valve, who would often just sit silent and do nothing, even to this very day. Legit, it was very exciting to play & be a part of the community by then.

However, I bounced out of Overwatch in early 2018, last playing sometime in 2019 before giving up on Overwatch as a whole. And mainly because they started doing mass-reworks of, what felt like, every single character. First came the Mercy rework, which sucked for me as a Mercy main, but I could understand the logic behind it. She was stupidly easy to play and was ludicrously effective with her ultimate being a CTRL+Z keybind put into gameplay. But then came Symmetra, Torbjorn, the nerfs to Roadhog & Junkrat...it all became too much. I felt like I had to re-learn and re-adapt to what felt like every old character being tossed out and replaced with new ones everey 2 or so weeks. It became exhausting to keep up, so I tapped out.

Over the years, I saw Overwatch going in decline. Player numbers dropping. Allegations against Activision-Blizzard. Overwatch League dying - this one particularly stung, as I knew a friend of mine who was actually part of OWL and he basically lost a career out of it - and Overwatch being left in a vegetative state. All for Overwatch 2.

Come announcement of Overwatch 2. I'm sure you know by know. Overwatch 2 was originally meant to be a single player campaign game, where Overwatch 1 would be, well, Overwatch's PvP. Content from OW2 would get ported back to OW1, and the two games would co-exist.

The idea was:
- OW1 for PvP
- OW2 for PvE campaign stuff

This never happened. Instead, Overwatch 1 was effectively killed off and replaced by Overwatch 2. PvP, now instead of 6v6 is 5v5, much like CS:GO & Valorant. Loot boxes have been removed, which, at first glance - awesome! Loot boxes are a tumor in modern gaming, regardless of what company is doing it - be it Blizzard, EA, Valve - I viewed it as a positive that Blizzard was removing the loot box system, and thought they'd replace it with something better, like what Valve did for Dota 2.

Nope. Battle Pass. Two versions of it. Basic one, which gives you ♥♥♥♥-all, and a Premium one, which even has stuff like outright brand new characters. Ones that players who do not pay for it - DO NOT GET TO PLAY AS. One of the core selling points of the original Overwatch is that you buy it, and all future content - maps, events, characters - are FREE. Overwatch 2 ditches this by going free-to-play and opting for a Battle Pass system.

There are other things that drove me away from Overwatch in 2018 as well - role queues in particular just made it feel unwelcoming to play. But what drives me away from revisiting Overwatch with OW2 is the monetization model, the convoluted leveling system which feels like they're trying to reinvent the wheel for no reason, and many issues from Overwatch 1 not being addressed.

Ironically enough, I've fallen back in love with Team Fortress 2 since then. And that's probably the game I'm going to continue playing, even 11 years later. I don't see myself having the same attention span for Overwatch 2.

What a shame, really.

The music in S3&K is still muffled. Not even mad about the "Jackson soundtrack" being removed when Origins was released, they could've easily at least upped the quality of the music in S3K. They didn't.

Words genuinely cannot put it how absolutely impressive this mod is. I'd struggle to call this a mod even, this is straight up a full blown game in its own right. It's a crying shame that a project like this is absolutely free (if you own Half-Life 2), meanwhile the stain on the Half-Life community known as Hunt Down the Freeman actually costs money. If anything, it should be the other way around. Entropy: Zero 2 is a game I went in not knowing what to expect, and came out of it just absolutely baffled & shocked at the sheer quality of everything in this game. Let's get into it.

Despite not having played the original Entropy: Zero, I had no problem diving into this and jumping straight in. While some may call it a sin with the way this game breaks the "traditional Half-Life formula" with the game, at times, taking away control from the player and having the player speak, the story is told in a cohesive, interesting way. You are a Combine Soldier. You are tasked with stopping the resistance.

But you're not just any Combine Soldier. You are 3650. You are Aidan Walker. You are special to the combine, for which they decided that letting you retain cognitive control of your mind is beneficial to their goals. And the way your player character reacts to the circumstances around them, explains their reasons for hating humanity - despite not justifying any of them, you can't blame your character for any of it.

The storytelling in Entropy: Zero 2 is genuinely Valve-like. It's honestly amazing and I don't think I was bored of the story at any point, if anything - was left wanting more. There is a reason people say that this game is the closest we will ever get to a Half-Life 3, and after having played all of it - I can't help but agree.

The characterization of the character you play as is also done astoundingly well. Your character is, predictably, full of life and spark which makes playing as him fun. He's always got a funny quip to say either when killing an enemy or when reacting to his surroundings, even his own subordinates within the Combine. Seriously good stuff.

Safe to say that if you've played a Half-Life game before, you will definitely know what to expect here. Entropy: Zero 2 builds off of the gameplay formula last established in Half-Life 2: Episode 2 yet retains a lot of the core design principles of it, which is neat.

Don't expect to go into this game with a crowbar in one hand and a gravity gun in the other though - neither of those weapons are present. The crowbar is, but that's reserved for the rebel NPCs - you do not get to use it, ever. Which, for a Half-Life game would be weird to say, but at the same time I think it'd be even weirder for a Combine soldier to run around with a red & white metal rot.

There isn't much for me to comment on regarding the gameplay though. The one thing I could comment on is that some levels did definitely feel very confusing and, I won't lie, I did use a guide once or twice to actually find out where to go, especially after having combed through an area like 6 times and not knowing where the next objective is. But aside from that - the level design is great, bringing back much of the same open-endedness that Valve's own games contain. Goodies scattered throughout to refill ammo, health and suit charges a plenty, with other various neat references.

Though I will say, this game is pretty difficult. I've played and beaten all of Valve's single-player games so I thought I'd be going into this game battle-hardened enough to have a mostly comfortable time, but playing on the Medium/Normal difficulty - this game kicked my ass. Hard. So hard to the point where halfway through the game I had to switch difficulties to Easy just to progress (and then proceeded to finish the game as such because I forgot to switch back). That isn't a bad thing, by the way. The game was still sufficiently challenging enough even at the Easy difficulty so I never felt as if I made a big downgrade by lowering my difficulty, which is great.

There are a few changes I wasn't a fan of though, namely how the recoil of guns was changed in this game. The MP7, unlike in Half-Life 2, is a pain to use here. The recoil pattern being so massive that it discouraged me from really using it much throughout the playthrough, which I don't get why. The Combine regularly uses this gun in the Half-Life universe, yet I, as a Combine Soldier, can barely use it? Wonder what makes me worse than a Theoretical Physicist with less gun training than me. Instead I found solace in the MP5, Prototype Gauss Pistol and AR2 - those were the most reliable weapons in the game for me and stuck to them as much as I could. The shotgun, while still my favorite gun in the game, gets laughably little ammo in this game so I didn't get to use it as much as I would've liked to, which is a shame.

But as a whole, the gameplay is good. Really good. Well though out and genuinely feels like a Valve-made product rather than being fan-made.

It's amazing what they managed to do with an engine from 2004 in this game. The visuals are honestly stunning, with the environmental design being absolutely brilliant. A lot of assets are carried over from that game so, yes, if you look very very closely - everything does look dated. But that never distracted me from the gorgeous environmental design all around.

The sound...oh god the sound. The soundtrack is fantastic. The sound design - fantastic. The voice acting is done very convincingly. The new voice acting for the Combine just sounds like unused dialogue from Half-Life 2, whereas your own character sounds convincing as a Combine Soldier. The one thing I noticed is Judith Mossman who you can easily tell they just edited together existing lines of dialogue from the other Valve games, which is a shame, though I get it if you can't find anyone that can "match" the voice closest to Judith's from the original. Still, small potatoes for everything else this game has.

Nothing to comment on the optimization side of things. Noticed no framedrops or crashes at any point throughout my entire playthrough, ran absolutely buttery smooth in spite of everything going on at the same time. Honestly, if you can run Half-Life 2, you can run this no problem.

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ PLAY THIS. If you're a Half-Life fan itching for more and can't play Alyx like me, PLAY THIS. There's a reason this won Mod of the Year for 2022. You're doing yourself a disservice if you don't play this, so MAKE SURE THAT YOU DO.

Massive, high recommend for this. It's jaw-droppingly good.

Need for Speed: Heat is a game I was skeptical of. For an entire decade leading up to this game's release, the Need for Speed series has been on a slippery slope of multiple identity crises, pandering to nostalgia and delivering subpar game, year on year.

2015 marked a turning point for Need for Speed with Ghost Games releasing their soft reboot of the series. 2015 was not very highly reviewed but it laid the foundations for a greater game, which I think culminated in Need for Speed: Heat.

However, my excitement for the game was admittedly muted when in 2019, I was looking at more and more reveals of this game. There was one thing that dampened my excitement for Heat when it was announced. But we'll get into that. You're here to see if I recommend Need for Speed: Heat, after all, so let's get on with the review.

Shockingly, I actually really enjoyed Heat's story. It's a huge step up compared to the previous installment with likeable, memorable characters and memorable events in the story. Several of which are still part of NFS meme culture even now, which is not something I can say for Rivals, 2015 or Payback.

Heat's story is very short and it doesn't take long to get to the point. And while I really like that, I do have some sour points with it. For example, I think certain characters are incredibly under-utilized and end up feeling like they make a big splash at the start of the story and then, after one particular event, they seem to disappear completely and is never brought up again. The game does this with several characters and it's honestly a shame.

I also don't particularly like the self-insert "Player" character, but the way the self-insert handled here is inoffensive at best, and a complete cringelord at worst.

But as a whole - despite being underdeveloped in a few aspects, Heat's story is admittedly enjoyable, albeit short.

2015's handling & physics were received very poorly. Payback improved on them but left a lot to be desired with the off-road model. What about Heat? Heat's driving model is good. Properly good. For most of the game, I finally felt as though I was in total control of the car. Whatever mistakes happened were the result of me making genuine mistakes, and not because the game said so. There were a few instances where I had a physics oopsie, such as my jump being interrupted or my car bouncing off of nothing, so the car did have a tendency of feeling like it was made of Portal 2's bounce gel, but as a whole - a very good improvement on the driving & handling. Dare I say this is the best driving model from the entire decade of Need for Speed that we've had?

The gameplay does have one major Achilles' heel though - the damage system. This is the system that actually ended up with me not wanting to touch the game for a while and put it down after about 4-5 hours of playing initially. The damage system in this game is the worst aspect of it because it disincentivizes you from taking any risk during the night. Now, against traffic and most other general world structures - it's totally fine. You won't take damage by, say, hitting a traffic car at low speed, or by taking a jump and hitting a billboard, etc., however if you get rammed - you take damage. If you hit a wall - you take damage. And your health drains insanely quickly.

The damage system is what breaks the fun in any cop chases for me as well. Heat is the first Ghost entry since Rivals to finally have more aggressive cops in the game, however because of the damage system - their implementation here leaves a lot to be desired. The cops do a lot of damage, which at higher heat levels makes you feel like a glass cannon.

What made the pursuits in games like Most Wanted (2005) and Carbon so exciting is the fact that you are essentially a tank that can go through practically anything yet you weren't unstoppable - one wrong move and you're done. In Heat, they wanted to replicate this, as the police will be insanely aggressive towards you and do bring back tactics like roadblocks, spike strips, helicopters, etc., however their quantities are reduced. The most intense the chases here get would be comparable to, say, Heat Level 3 in Most Wanted '05.

The best way to play Heat, at least for me, was to install an Infinite Health mod. With that installed, Night Time racing became a whole lot more fun because I was no longer afraid of being a paperweight against the cops. And, dare I say, I actually had fun doing police pursuits. So much fun that, by the endgame I was actively seeking them out. With the mod installed, the game genuinely came alive and became a ton of fun for me.
Side note: If you're gonna use it, just remember to disable it for the final mission otherwise it's impossible to complete.

There was one sour spot for me aside from the damage model, that being the racing itself. All 3 Ghost era Need for Speed games share the same issue that doesn't seem like it was ever addressed - difficulty. Need for Speed: Heat, much like its predecessors, is way too easy. Even with the difficulty set to Hard, this game was an absolute joke in terms of racing. I don't even think I was playing particularly well either, this game's racing actively bored me and only served as a medium for me to either earn more money to buy upgrades/cars or earn more REP so I can actually continue the story. Seriously, the AI in this game is an absolute joke and the challenge they pose is trivial at best.

Need for Speed: Heat is neither a step up nor a step down from the previous entry. In fact, I think that 2015 during its night time looked way, way better than Heat does during its night time. The graphics are fine, passable even, however there's one unmistakable thing that Heat has that the previous three Ghost entries didn't - style. Heat is the first game in a long, long time that, to me, feels like it has its own identity, its own unique style and presentation, which makes the game stand out and pop. It's what lead the game to retain its popularity since 2019 and despite the release of Unbound. And for that - I cannot knock Heat. The game has a vibe to go for and it achieves it splendidly.

The soundtrack sucks. By the halfway point, I turned the OST off and just started listening to my own playlists on YouTube & Spotify, the soundtrack is legitimately horrendous, at times unlistenable garbage. But the sound design everywhere else? Top notch. Cop chatter has personality - the cops are corrupt, snarky and always eager to get you. The car engines sound amazing as well as accurate, and the sirens blaring through the night hunting you down make their presence known. It's great.

Optimization-wise, this game is a lot more stable than Payback was on my system. Runs a great deal better too. While I did encounter the occasional pop-in texture and such, there was absolutely nothing game-breaking happening like there was for Payback. The game kept a solid 60+ FPS throughout the entire playthrough, didn't crash even a single time and controller support was bang-on. Heat is pretty well optimized.

Oh and yes, this still requires Origin, much like every other Need for Speed game that's up for sale. Take that as you may.

Do I recommend NFS Heat? Despite my qualms with the damage system and the pathetic AI, I will have to say yes. Need for Speed: Heat finally feels like a true return-to-form. While the story is nothing fantastic, the game shines in style, personality and great gameplay.

With memorable characters & moments, a great driving model and overall polish all around - I think you'll enjoy NFS Heat. Even with the points I mentioned regarding the damage model.

This game is definitely worth getting.

It took me much longer than it should've (several months, literally) to finish this game, but now that I have..well, I have a few things to say regarding this game. Overall, I'd say I definitely enjoyed this game, I think it's aged well considering it's nearing 2 decades in age, but there are definitely certain areas of the game where you can feel its dated design, or limitations thanks previous games in the franchise setting a precedent for it. Without further interruption, let's get into it.

As always, my reviews will try to be spoiler free but do be warned that spoilers might still be unavoidable.

Resident Evil 4's story, to someone who has not played the previous games, is best summed up as "generic" from my perspective. Is that a bad thing? Not necessarily. Even for a 2005 game, I don't think this game's story was anything really revolutionary, though the way it is presented and written here is admittedly entertaining, if flawed.

The premise of "you go in to investigate one thing but end up involved in all this other business" is executed well and I think the game does a phenomenal job building stakes. Right from the get-go in Chapter 1, you get your first taste of it in a cutscene showing what happens to the police officers leading you to your destination. Or later on where the game shows you what sort of demonic abominations your enemies are capable of becoming. It helps build tension and the way the game introduces scarier creatures as you go is genuinely great - some of the monsters, particularly in chapters 3 and 4, made my skin crawl as to how utterly creepy they were.

What does get me though about this game is the fact that the structure of the story is predictable. Once you finish chapter 1 or 2, you can easily pick up on its structure and it doesn't really do anything to deviate from it. While not a bad thing, it does end up being a bit repetitive and, admittedly, has put me off of wanting to continue the game sometimes.

Can I just say how much I hate tank controls? I get that this is what the early Resident Evil experience is like, but god do I hate tank controls. The one thing I did not enjoy while playing RE4 was fiddling with the controls, as I thought they served to break up the action way more often than I would have liked. Of course, this is purely a habit, but I do not find it all that fun to be in a scenario where I have a group of enemies chasing me and all I can really feasibly do about it is run back a rather long way, choose my gun, wait for the game to literally lock me into place so I can go into aiming mode and only then fight back against any potential threats. I can hear the RE veterans chuckling at me for this complaint and I realize that that's the whole point, but that still doesn't make it any more fun to play as a new player, at least from my perspective. To its credit, once you do get used to the controls they're fine, but there are so many little quality of life changes that could be made here that I hope its modern remake will address. At the very least - move while shooting, or be able to hip-fire the Rifle.

Regarding the game's difficulty, I enjoyed the challenge this game provided. It wasn't exactly an "easy" game by any stretch of the word - I found the game to be sufficiently challenging and that really helped set the mood and provide the player with a sense of danger. That whatever you're after isn't exactly harmless. That's partly because most of your guns are actually rather weak - you need to take your time and be very meticulous with your shots, because one missed shot can mean the difference between life and death. And some of these enemies take an ungodly amount of bullets to kill, it can become maddening at times to kill some of them. Also, the enemies that regenerate that also look like walking body bags - actually made my skin crawl, they were just that creepy.

Though some of the bosses...I feel as though some of them had more thought put into them than others. There's a particular boss at the end of the game that gave me a lot of trouble because he dodges very often and moves insanely fast, leaving very little room to attack. I ended up wasting all of my ammo on him, barely had any health to spare and was about to call in the towel - let him kill me to reset the fight. Except he never did. So I ended up storming at him, knife in hand and just slashed away. The stupid part? It worked. I beat him. Did I mention the encounter also has a 3 minute timer? Yeah, I finished with about 15 seconds to spare, got a cutscene and for some reason the timer DOES NOT PAUSE IN THE CUTSCENES, so I ended up failing mid-cutscene and had to start the entire fight over. It just felt sloppily designed.

As for level design, I really enjoyed the sense of exploration. While the level design is very linear, there are enough secrets sprinkled throughout and clever design that rewards exploration that it made traversing the world fun, though that didn't stop me from finishing certain sections with next to no ammo anyway.

The game's visuals, I'm sorry to say, aged poorly. Even with this "touched up" PC port, the game really looks bleak, dull and ugly at times. Actually, calling it "bleak and dull" is a compliment because that's exactly what this game was going for, but "ugly" in the sense that you can...notice a lot of "of its time" things in the visual design. On a CRT in 2005 it would've been totally fine, however blown up into 16:9 with upscaled textures? Yeesh.

Sound design was absolutely excellent. The soundtrack, while sparse, is very very good and I genuinely enjoyed most of the songs. Enemy noises, gun sounds, various sound effects that play when you score a satisfying headshot - great dopamine rush. The voice acting, though...well, it's not really amateur but it is pretty entertaining for all of the absolutely wrong reasons. If anything, the stiff delivery made it more entertaining than I thought.

For optimization, I have several complaints. First of all - poor controller support. Did not expect this - a console-to-PC port having abysmal controller support? How? This game was MADE for the GameCube, then ported to the PS2, which has a standard controller layout! Unfortunately, I had to play with keyboard and mouse this time. But poor controller support aside, I frequently noticed lots of micro-stutters, several instances of the game crashing on me, particularly in chapter 5-4, and the fact that I could not, for the life of me, get this game to run in native full screen on my 144hz monitor, so I had to run it in 1600x900 windowed just to play the game. Yeah, this port is rather shoddy without using any community-made patches to fix these.

Overall I enjoyed my time with Resident Evil 4, regardless of how tiring this game was to play between sessions. The game had its charm with the goofy voice acting and presentation but the engagingly difficult gameplay had me coming back and eventually finishing the game.

If you can stomach its flaws, like the control scheme, dated visuals and at times - poor boss design, I think you can have some genuine fun with this game, even without the remake.

Honestly, if a zoomer like me was able to enjoy this game regardless of its quirks, I think you could enjoy this game as well. Play Resident Evil 4, it's worth it.

Sigh...After Mania was such a smash hit, I was hoping for Origins to be an utter slam dunk as well. I had a lot of hype going into this. The CW versions of Sonic 1 and 2 on PC, finally. Sonic 3 getting the same treatment FINALLY after Whitehead was denied doing so a decade ago, fancy new intro/outro animations for every single game to provide context for each game's story and a bunch of neat little extras, such as concept art, animatics, extra songs, etc.

All of that sounded great, even if I think the price for it is way, way too steep for games that are nearing 3 decades in age. But where does it crumble apart? Behind the scenes is where it crumbles apart.

Playing any game in Origins, you can immediately tell corners were cut. The physics, while remarkably close to the original games, still feel slightly off. For example, in Sonic 3's Launch Base Zone, you can't enter the pods if you're standing right next to them because your jump is just ever slightly too high. In Sonic 2, the Aquatic Ruin boss fight becomes weirdly difficult due to the aspect ratio, making it feel more like an oversight. In Sonic 1's Green Hill Zone boss fight, you can effectively cheese the boss by standing under the platforms (which wasn't possible in the original, you still had to dodge).

The one thing that gets me though, is the music. Yes, I'm partially talking about the songs in Sonic 3, but I just mean the quality of the songs overall. Again, launching any game aside from CD, you can just hear the compression and crunch of every song. The quality of the songs is astoundingly low quality. It feels like they're using heavily compressed 128 kbps YouTube rips for every single song, and that's genuinely a shame. You don't need to be an audiophile either to hear the low quality, you can just immediately notice it as soon as it transitions from the Origins menu to the game.

And of course, Sonic 3's changed music. Contrary to what others may think, I don't hate the replaced tracks. And if you don't know - they replaced the songs with compositions from Sonic 3's November 1993 prototype. Except, for some reason, they based the songs off of the MIDI compositions from the S&K collection on 1997. Zones like Ice Cap and Launch Base sound fine, if anything I think they genuinely recomposed the 1993 proto. ver of Ice Cap and cleaned it up, and it sounds legitimately wonderful, but Carnival Night Zone...god, it sounds awful.

And then Sonic 3's Super Sonic theme they added. It's...awful. It sounds like something ripped out of Sonic 4. The baffling bit? They included the Unused Theme in the game's Museum Mode for Sonic 3's soundtrack. Why...couldn't they just...use that? It's just baffling. They can include it in the collection but apparently not use it in the game?

I don't wanna keep going. Sonic Origins is a disappointment. I pre-ordered the Digital Deluxe edition by selling my CS:GO knife to buy it, and honestly - I kinda want my knife back now. The animation work done here is incredible and the extras they gave in the game are nice, but none of it makes up for what feels like shoddy ports of mobile games, poor audio quality and just overall lack of polish.

I read some behind the scenes stuff on Origins' development, including this tweet by Stealth on Twitter and it just saddens me how Sega continues to mistreat its developers and its beloved properties.

Shame on you, Sega. Shame on you.

This game made me cry. I don't remember the last game that actually made me straight up cry. Some games can make me feel emotions, yes - I can and do get emotional. But this game. Man, I cried like a baby to this game. I don't want to give this game a "review" like I do for other games. Mainly because I feel like if I talk about my thoughts on certain things, I cannot review it without spoiling. And this game is best experienced blind. I truthfully mean it. Blind. And no other way.

If you want to know whether or not I recommend the game, refer to the blue thumbs up on the review. Sale or no sale, this game is worth it either way. Please play OMORI.

A few words of advice though - remember to water the plants. When your friends need you - be there for them. Don't leave them behind.

And...please remember to actually level up and don't treat this like Undertale. Otherwise you'll be like me and force yourself to do unnecessary side activities just to continue playing.

That's everything. Play OMORI. I won't say any more than this.

Since miHoYo/HoYoverse actually listened to my bug report and fixed the issue outlined in a previous review I wrote, I'm changing my review from a negative one to a positive one.

Truth be told, my original comment of going into Honkai with relatively low expectations, especially how frequently shilled it was to YouTubers and streamers alike, still stands. It was the main driving force that prevented me from trying Honkai for literally years. I've heard of this game since at least 2018 but never really gave it the time of day until recently.

And my god, this game is...truly something special. At the time of writing this, I am captain level 46 and just unlocked Chapter 18 of the story. And without really spoiling anything because I don't want to spoil anything, getting through all the technical issues and general jank has been so, so worth it.

Alright, from the top. Going forward, this is gonna follow a similar format to my other reviews. If you're familiar with my style, you know what you're getting into. If you're not - read on.

Honkai Impact's story has a really slow start. Many players will echo this sentiment. The first several chapters are honestly not very interesting. They're there for basic world and character building but I think they do it rather poorly. Especially chapter 1 with its quick pacing and confusing writing. The game likes doing this throughout the entire run where it throws a bunch of characters and names at you without explaining anything about them. Starting with chapter 9 though, things pick up really fast and it just hooks you in a way that becomes difficult to detach.

Seriously, after chapter 9, I found myself marathoning this game for days and days on end, eagerly wanting more. It's insanely good in that respect. You can think of it as Steins;Gate's anime adaptation where it starts off incredibly slow, but once it picks up - it doesn't slow down, and it's great.

Granted, there are several things I find confusing but I won't get into them in this review, because, again - spoilers. But everything else, from the action packed cutscenes to the character interactions, but especially the anime cutscenes you get at the end of certain chapters, makes it all so worth it.

To a newcomer, such as myself, Honkai's story can be overwhelming. But it's about pacing yourself and taking things in one at a time. Don't be like me and immediately jump into events as a new player or into stuff like the Elysian Realm without playing the story. Trust me, you will have so many questions and not a lot of answers.

Honkai's gameplay is admittedly very simple. It's a lot simpler than Genshin Impact if you're coming from that game out of curiosity, much like I was. Or maybe it'd be more accurate to say that Genshin Impact is a more complex version of Honkai Impact? Either way, there is a decent amount of overlap between the two games in how they handle combat. Every character has a basic attack, some combos they can do and an ultimate ability.

Make no mistake though. That's where the similarities between the two games in their gameplay end. Honestly. While Genshin is more focused on exploration and discovery of the open world, Honkai is way more focused on the action. Almost everything in this game is broken up into separate missions with not a lot of room for open-world exploration. A lot of missions take place in simple, confined arenas where there's just you, the enemies and really not much else. There are some stages and places in the game where there is open-world exploration, sure, but the exploration aspect is really shallow and underwhelming.

But what Honkai does well in its combat, it does it really well. Though you can tell that things were kept simple just to appease the mobile market, as this was originally a mobile game, what's there is still enough to provide you with a decent amount of entertainment. Figuring out which characters can comfortably combo together is honestly a treat, and once you get the rhythm down - it's hard to pull yourself away from it. Combat is fast, fluid, frantic. The combos are flashy and in-your-face, and it's all full of so much personality. Though some characters are better than others - I'll give you that, but that doesn't detract from my overall enjoyment.

My biggest issue with gameplay is just how poorly explained some mechanics are. The game has what I call the "Neptunia syndrome", where their preferred method of teaching the player anything is by overloading them with tutorial prompts and a bunch of cryptic text that only serves to confuse the player. This is especially true if you venture out into events with event-specific gameplay. It's just not handled very well and it ends up usually driving me away to do other things that I'm more familiar with. Another case of where I think "show, don't tell" would've worked better. They handle this better in their future games, but in Honkai - yeah. It's archaic and confusing as all hell.

I'll be honest with you. I think that Honkai Impact looks really ugly. Even for a 2016 mobile game, the game just doesn't look good. Lots of low resolution textures. Lack of attention to detail in a lot of areas. The artstyle kind of just zig-zagging from chapter to chapter. And the overall presentation of the game really leaves a lot to be desired in so many areas. If graphics can be a big turn-off for you, I don't think Honkai will impress you in this front.

The sound & music is an entirely different story. Honkai's OST is a banger. The generic battle & menu music after a while it all just becomes background noise to me, but some of the vocal tracks in this game? Genuinely beautiful tearjerkers. Starfall being my personal favorite so far. It's legitimately a beautiful song. And Honkai has SO MANY OF THEM. I don't know why they go so hard on the vocal tracks, and especially with the animations that this game has like I mentioned earlier, but these two combined make getting through the game's story so worth it. Seriously, this game is worth playing purely for the animations and the music, I'm not exaggerating.

Optimization...well, if you saw my old review, you'll know I don't have a very positive opinion on that. During version 5.6, which is when I got into the game, I encountered so many technical issues just trying to play the game. From getting softlocked and being forced to continue playing on Android, to just certain things not working properly, I've just encountered a lot of technical hiccups. Granted, everything I've encountered has been fixed as of version 5.7, sure, but it's still something I encountered.

Another thing I encountered, and this one directly relates to the Steam version of the game, being that the game can just immediately blue screen your computer upon launching the game. Comes with a bonus side effect of corrupting your GPU drivers. As far as I know - this has still not been fixed so, for that reason alone I've decided to stick to the launcher version of the game rather than the Steam version. Though I do use this version to track my playtime in Honkai. There's also the fact that you cannot transfer your account between Steam & HoYoLab, so you're locked out of playing the game with your account on mobile if you need to.

One last thing - the control. Pretty, pretty please do not play this game with mouse & keyboard. Please use any controller on-hand, trust me on this. I don't know what they were thinking, but the default mouse & keyboard control is horrible. Just don't bother with it.

If you can get past every negative I mentioned, or if you can learn to tolerate them to experience the good parts of the game, give Honkai a try. You have A LOT to look forward to and experience with the game. It's a great game that's genuinely worth getting into.

Though I recommend the launcher version over the Steam version.

Sonic Forces is the game that taught me to keep my expectations for the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise in check. The marketing for this game prior to its release was fantastic - cryptic, epic and full of promise. A darker tone on the story? A customizable avatar character? Oh boy I wonder what's ne--oh, Classic Sonic. For...some reason. From that moment on - my expectations for Forces started to go down and down.

Sonic Forces came out and it was just...painfully mediocre. So many expectations dashed not for a lack of technical polish in the gameplay department but just in...everything. Allow me to delve deeper.

Sonic Forces' story can be summed up as "Eggman finds new shiny rock and gives it to one of his many pets to then take over the world". Seriously. This game's plot tries to be darker with statements like "Eggman's been torturing Sonic for 6 months" and "Tails has just lost it", "That's why it's called war", etc. (actual quotes from the game btw), however it falls flat on its execution.

Here's an example. Sonic's been tortured for 6 months by Eggman and is being prepared to be launched out into space to die? Yeah, well, when we see Sonic - he's wisecracking as always and conveniently has his handcuffs disabled. Cue boss fight and escape stage. Done. Sonic's out of prison and back on Earth.

The game is full of moments like these where it's insanely underdeveloped and lacking over any kind of detail. EVERYTHING in this game is being skimmed over. Tails meets Classic Sonic by PURE COINCIDENCE where Classic Sonic just comes out of nowhere through a portal (this makes a bit more sense if you've played Sonic Mania) and just bops Chaos 0 in 1 hit. Done.

Tails & Classic Sonic encounter your custom OC in Mystic Jungle, ask "Have we met before?", game cuts to black and next cutscene is Tails immediately screaming "SONIC" at the resistance base. It feels like a bad YouTube video.

This story's writing had potential but the execution is...well, sloppy would be a bad way to describe it. It's just awful. No flow, butchered characterization - it's got it all.

From a gameplay standpoint, this game is a downgrade in almost every single way compared to its predecessor - Sonic Generations. While I do applaud them for adding in a third playstyle after years of lacking variety, being the aforementioned custom OC avatar you can make, it, unfortunately, is barely any different from Modern Sonic's gameplay, with the only real difference being is that you can't boost. That lack of boost highlights the awful imprecise controls in 3D Sonic games since Sonic Unleashed.

Big difference between Forces & Unleashed, as well as Generations mind you, is that the level design in those games catered to the control scheme where levels were essentially linear corridors. Forces tries to copy this design philosophy but fails in every regard - lack of fun goodies to find and so much automation. Seriously there is a lot of unnecessary automation in this game where the entire game just feels like it's playing itself on autopilot.

The worst part about this game is Classic Sonic. I'll say it right here and now - Classic Sonic had no reason to be in this game. He adds NOTHING to the story. Nothing. Take him out of the game and the impact on the game's story is so minimal that it's laughable. His gameplay is the worst of the 3 characters you play as, which are Modern Sonic, Classic Sonic & your avatar. I have no idea what they've done with Classic Sonic but his speed, acceleration & momentum are completely messed up with an insanely low top speed and no friction on the ground while moving. He's so imprecise to control that I've had my fair share of deaths in stages purely because the idiot just slid off a platform.

Classic Sonic's weight is also a big issue where it feels like you're trying to control a rock. His jump is very heavy and lacking and kind of flow or momentum, making precise platforming insanely difficult unless you intentionally take things slow. Unlike most Sonic fans I don't mind when the game tries to slow down a bit to give the player a breather, but free--flowing control is key in ensuring a good experience and Forces fails to deliver.

The avatar stages, like I said, are just Modern Sonic stages where the boost is replaced with the doo-hickey of the day - the Wispon, which is basically your weapon. And a reason to bring back the Wisps from Sonic Colors for absolutely no reason (they serve 0 meaning to the story btw). The Wispon does nothing other than to haphazardly serve to replace abilities Sonic used to have in previous games or do things Sonic can already do. Cool idea, crap execution.

Modern Sonic stages just feel like they're on autopilot. Half the time you can genuinely hold forward or hold the Boost button if the game doesn't decide to randomly drain your entire your entire Boost gauge for no reason and you'll probably beat the stage and get an S rank while you're at it.

There are knick-knacks I think the game does well, particularly with unlockables & missions - I think it's a great incentive to get your players to play/replay your game to get unlockables, but these unlockables don't amount to much other than cosmetics for your avatar. Again - I think the idea is cool & the execution is done well, but with the rest of the game kind of being a miss in every other regard, even this feels like it has less impact than I think they wanted it to.

In terms of graphics - I think Sonic Forces looks great. While the cutscenes feel like awful upscaled from 720p videos with its borders & pixelization, the rest of the game looks great. When it comes to graphics & art style - I think Sonic Forces does it well and is very consistent throughout, including the avatar's customizable elements.

In terms of sound - I'm a sucker for the game's corny as hell vocal tracks. Please make this a regular thing in Sonic games again where some stages have corny vocal tracks - Sonic Adventure 1 & 2 had them and they're still fun to listen through all these years later & I think Forces' songs will largely have the same impact. Not all of them though - Classic Sonic's songs are just awful. Feels like they were trying to go for the Sonic Generations vibe with Classic Sonic's OST but it just feels like Sonic 4 all over again.

Lastly, for optimization - this game is optimized well. It runs flawlessly, seamlessly detecting my controller, haven't experienced a crash or glitch anywhere. If anything, Sonic Forces is technically sound. Works great, runs great, integrates well with everything.

Sonic Forces is just not worth your time. Even at the massive discounts this game comes out at, this game just isn't worth it. Anything and everything this game does has been done better in previous Sonic games.

Story? Sonic Adventure 2, Sonic 06 (yes I'm serious) and Sonic Unleashed.
Gameplay? Sonic Adventure, Adventure 2, Sonic 06 (aside from the glitches), Sonic Unleashed, Sonic Generations...
Classic Sonic? Sonic 1, 2, 3, CD, Mania.

The only thing this game has going for it is the custom OC but that's not enough of a selling point.

Please just buy Sonic Generations instead. It's better in every single regard. Don't waste your time with Forces.

I've attempted to like this game many times over the years. I've picked it up and put it down a fair few times after receiving it as a gift with all of the DLC included in April 2020 from a now-former friend. I've genuinely attempted to like it, especially after hearing positive reviews of it but I...can't. I'm sorry but I can't. Perhaps it was just me expecting too much out of this game in the first place, especially considering how much I've fallen out of love with the Neptunia series over the last few years but I cannot, in good faith, recommend this game.

This is unfortunate to say as I think the game does a lot of things right. Let's talk about those. Though do be warned - because I haven't put a lot of time into the game (you can tell by my Steam hours), there are things that I just may be straight up wrong about or lack experience in. However, at this point I am more than confident that I am no longer willing to put in any more hours into this game than necessary.

From the little amount of content that I've played, this is one area of the game I'm fairly mixed on. On one hand, because this is a spinoff and being treated as separate universe from the mainline games, I think the character establishment and characterization of both existing & new characters is fantastic. As far as Neptunia spinoffs go - this one is one of the better ones regarding characterization and writing. Certainly no Hyperdevotion Noire, that's for sure.

On another - I'm disappointed that they are yet again reusing the whole "Neptune has amensia" trope that's been done to death in so many Neptunia games at this point. At this point I feel like the writers of these games should come up with something more original because it's becoming tiresome. Sure, it helps contextualize the world around you since neither you or Neptune know anything about anything, but there are better ways of doing stuff like this. Heck, look at Victory/Re;Birth3 and you'll immediately get what I mean.

The gameplay of this game is the main reason why I've consistently put it down over and over throughout the years. I genuinely just cannot get used to the game in any capacity.

Super Neptunia RPG suffers from the same issues that every other Neptunia game does, which is odd considering that it's made by a developer that's not Compile Heart. That issue being poor tutorials & poor clarification on game mechanics. It does an awful job of properly explaining the needlessly convoluted battle system that feels like it's taking inspiration from archaic game design that was thrown out the window after Neptunia mk2 on the PS3, requiring to "generate" action points & maintain formations. It plays & feels like a cheap mobile game, with not much more gameplay substance than something like Touhou LostWord, to give a comparison to an actual mobile game.

Outside of that, there is a lack of proper direction in the game with the locations mostly just blending in with each other, causing me to get needlessly lost in the game world. The level design in this game is lazy. Neptunia itself is sort of infamous for having lazy design, having reused plenty of levels across plenty of games with little variation, but Super Neptunia RPG makes this problem much more apparent and worse when you can't tell which area is which at times.

Not to mention the control...holy crud, the control is some of the most imprecise I've felt in a 2D game in the last 5 years. Yes, you can adjust yourself to the game's lackluster controls but fact of the matter is that they're still slippery and incredibly imprecise. And when the game expects you to perform platforming challenges for extra goodies - that's when you'll find yourself wanting to snap the controller in half at times. Think Sonic 06 levels of sensitivity but on a 2D plane.

The graphics of the game I will actually give praise to. I love how this game's artstyle looks. I think the game is genuinely gorgeous - the character portraits are stylized in a way that makes this game stand out from the rest of the series & give the game its own identity. The backgrounds & CGs of the game also look on-par with the rest of the series - I love it.

I can sing the same amount of praise for the game's soundtrack - a lot of love & care was put into the game's soundtrack. While none of it sticks in my head, as is common with a lot of game OSTs for me actually, there's nothing I grew tired of in my short time playing. Again - signaling to me that there was a lot of time & care put into this part of the game as well.

As for optimization...I haven't experienced any woes myself, aside from one save file corruption that didn't really bother me as I only really lost about 30 minutes of gameplay (and that was due to a Steam Cloud error on my part), I have, however, heard horror stories of random game crashes that have gone unfixed for several years at this point. So do proceed with caution on that front.

I'm sorry to say that I cannot recommend Super Neptunia RPG. At least not at full price. The game plays & feels like a poorly made mobile game. It has great writing - certainly an improvement over the vast amounts of garbage we've gotten over the years, it has an amazing artstyle & a great soundtrack, but none of that is enough to carry the game with its awful combat system, poor level design & slippery, imprecise, overly-sensitive controls.

If you're a Neptunia fan looking for a game to play - perhaps give it a shot, maybe you'll see something in this that I don't & grow to like it. And if you do - more power to you.

If you're not a Neptunia fan though, I recommend steering clear of this game. There are better games in & out of this genre and especially in the Neptunia series itself.

What a shame. I really wanted to like this game too.