Recent reviews by Arrow

The movement is a floaty, janky mess.

The story, characters, music, and environments are utterly absurd.

There are a bunch of collectibles all over the place that are often times a challenge just to figure out how to get close to.

In other words it's perfect, feels like I'm playing the sequel to jet set radio future I never thought I would get. And yes, i still suck at it just like I did when I was a kid.

10/10.
This game is beautiful.
The music is varied and incredibly well done.
It has fantastic atmosphere.
The combat system feels great, is very customizable and gets better as you advance.
It does a great job of making you feel more powerful as you progress, get new abilities, and upgrade things.
There are plenty of little things to find and it even goes out if it's way to to lock you out of anything.
It's exactly what i want out of a modern metroidvania title with some extra flare and uniqueness thrown in.

8/10.

NieR: Automata is my favorite game of all time. And so I was very excited to get a chance to finally play it's prequel. Replicant is by no means a bad game. It has a lot of the charm i would want with it's writing, characters and music. The improvements made to the gameplay over the original seem to be very significant from what I've seen. Unfortunately the game is held back by being so old. There is a lot of tedious elements that are core parts of the game design and while there are decent excuses made for them it keeps the game from holding up well, especially when automata does everything replicant does but much better.
I'm glad this game exists and i'm glad I got to experience everything it had to offer at least once, even if it doesn't quite measure up to my high expectations.

And yes I had to spend 30 seconds on release to manually set an FPS cap in the nvidia control panel. This was not a problem in the slightest. Later on I started using a mod that allows the game to run above 60fps without issue.

Absolutely beautiful. 10/10
Does a fantastic job in all of the in all of the core areas (gameplay, sound, music, story, graphics).
Really satisfying as a fan of the first game.

8.5/10
- A few technical issues: frame drops when loading things, a few areas that just don't run as well as the rest of the game.
- Some annoying level design elements: randomly not being able to go certain directions despite having all required upgrades, stupid slow sections that you character has to squeeze through while you just hold forward.

+ Combat feels great
+ Upgrades both from the story and from the skill tree make you feel more powerful as you progress
+ Story is really good, especially for one where you don't make choices that affect the outcome.
+ Graphics are pretty.
+ Sound design is fantastic, using all the familiar star wars sounds.
+ Customization has a good amount of options

I absolutely recommend this game to anyone who is a fan of digimon.

Getting to train up all your favorite digimon is a blast. The game does a great job of giving both the digimon and human characters personality. The story is nothing too crazy and some of the leveling systems are kind of tedious.

A frustrating experience that constantly punishes the player for progressing and daring to do things you would normally do in a metroidvania (explore, look for secrets, etc). If you really want something that feels like the original metroid but much much harder, and much more questionable game design choises you might enjoy this.

My main points of frustration:
1. You character barely has any health, and you can only get so many health upgrades at each progression point.
2. Exploring is actively discouraged because often times when you go back and use the new powerup you just got to enter a new room or area you just end up gated by yet another powerup you don't have yet.
3. There is very little to actually find in the world. As much as people might complain about the crazy number of missile tanks in metroid, it feels so much better than this game where there is very little to find.
4. Balance is weird. Certain bosses feel very overtuned and often times it seems like the developer expected you to have gone and collected every possible upgrade that you could at that point. That isn't to say you can't just 'git gud' and beat things anyways, but it's not something you really want for your first experience.
5. Progression often punishes you, either by making the entire game harder in some way just because you did something simple, or by making your route back to save your progress more difficult. There are even times where you can die pretty easily after just barely defeating a boss and have to fight them all over again.
6. The postgame, and it's associated content. It's incredibly frustrating that certain things are locked behind actually beating the game. It's even more frustrating that most of that content is very difficult and actively prevents you from doing or using certain things to do so.

With a solid soundtrack, interesting characters, challenging puzzles, and crazy boss fights CrossCode is a game I highly recommend. It does a fantastic job of establishing it's setting and making you feel like you are actually playing an mmo, all the grinding, silly sidequests, and odd dialog included. It's packed to the brim with references, both subtle and much more in your face. You get a ton of playtime for your money, even if you decide you don't want to do any sort of grinding. The story is well written and does a great job of being a slow drip, giving you little bits and pieces to try and figure things out and then dropping the occasional bomb on you. The entire ending felt very satisfying and really makes all the time you spent playing feel worth it.

If you are a fan of 2d zelda, .hack, or other oldschool action RPGs you will definitely find something to enjoy in crosscode,

Easy 10/10

This game short, sweet, and to the point.
Tight controls, an intuitive and fluid movement system, fun powerups, varied and interesting levels, fantastic boss fights, and a jamming sound track make this game an easy 10/10.
It's fun from start to finish. There is never a dull moment and it's really easy to 100%.
What are you waiting for? Buy this game and experience the amazing journey.

I went into this game thinking it was going to be a terrible port after reading all of the reviews.
Thus I was stunned when not only does the game run flawlessly but also feels great.
I have no issues with the music or other sounds stuttering, the game appears to run at 120fps (1440p resolution) for me, I have only experienced a single instance of the game freezing right after the prologue, and the game doesn't seem to be needlessly taxing my hardware.

I have made it all the way to the second chapter and didn't even experience the crashing people reporting having with the fishing tutorial or events after that. I'm not sure what the deal with all the reviews are claiming that the game is a terrible port. I have had almost 0 issues with it. I will update my review if any major problems occur.

For Reference my specs are as follows:

CPU: i7 7700k
GPU: 1080 ti (AORUS/ Gigabyte)
RAM: 16 GIGs DDR4 @ 4000MHz
Storage: 2TB Sata SSD
Monitor: 1440p, 144Hz, Gsync Dell
OS: Window 10

I ran the game with all settings turned on other than fxaa and depth of field as I am not a fan of those. I also used borderless windowed mode.

I also used a wired xbox one controller.

Update 1:

I experienced significant frame drops in the main camp after bringing a person back. Switch to fullscreen mode immediately fixed this. Was likely a g-sync issue. Will be playing in fullscreen from now on.

I also experienced the white flashing in one area. This is a known bug. It's rather distracting but not unplayable. The devs have promised to try and fix this soon.

Update 2:

After the first patch I had a strange issue where resolution was improperly set to something very low but would still display in stretched fullscreen. Toggling a few of the display options fixed this.

I have now experienced 2 crashes. The first while backing out of a dialogue with another character. The second while trying to open a menu immediately after a boss cutscene. I haven't been able to get either to repeat yet.

Update 3:

The second patch is out and it's been smooth sailing as usual. No additional crashes have occured. I found one additional area that has the white flashing issue but much like the first one it was completely playable and should be fixed soon.

Update 4:
I have experienced 2 additional freezes, one when transitioning between areas and one when activating an extra skill.
I have now switched to the preview branch (betas tab in steam). Have yet to experience any other issues.