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Recent reviews by Stormo

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1 person found this review helpful
34.9 hrs on record
The Short of It

AI: THE SOMNIUM FILES - nirvanA Initiative (hereafter abbreviated as simply "nirvanA Initiative") is the second installment in Spike Chunsoft's AI franchise, a sequel to the also quite amazing detective visual novel AI: The Somnium Files. Like its predecessor, it is a horror visual novel soaked in dark humour, its zany and silly moments contrasting with and complementing the more horror-oriented plot and its darker elements.

The Long of It

nirvanA Initiative is a twisting and turning ride through a series of murders, fraught with horror and mystery, and some comedy along the way. When Kuruto Ryuki, a rising star in the secret government agency of ABIS, is confronted with a series of murders where only half of the victims' bodies are found, the case leads him on a bizarre path of alternate realities, skewed time, madness, and so many other things. When six years later, the other halves of the bodies appear one by one, his successor Date Mizuki, now a grown woman, is the ABIS-agent who takes it upon herself to solve the mystery once and for all.

As always with ABIS-operatives, their greatest weapon is the Psync, a way to enter the person-of-interest's dreams and search for answer that they themselves will not - or cannot - divulge. Somnium, the dream worls, is a twisted and warped version of the world, skewed and wrenched by the Psyncee's emotion and perception. Through its strange logic (and some trial-and-error), the Psyncee will reveal more and more information, leading to revelations impossible to obtain through regular police work. But can things sometimes play out differently depending on the choices the Psyncer makes during Somnium... ?

The Right of It

There is a lot right with nirvanA Initiative. Its winding, twisting and constantly remoulding plot will keep the player guessing and interested. The game throws mysteries at the player left and right, and yet never falls into the trap of turning the whole game into one bizarre heap of incomprehensibility. The plot is just the right amount of obscure, keeping you wondering without making you throw up your hands and give up trying to understand it. Its implementation of alternate timelines, like in the original game, makes it so that players will reveal new information to themselves, piecing things together while the characters themselves might not.

The Somnia, too, are captivating and special, and while the game sometimes errs into trial-and-error play, like its predecessor, all the Somnia are able to be solved on the first try if the player is attentive and clever enough.

Lastly, the humour is, as always, the right mix between dark and silly while still maintaining the overall mood of the game.

The Wrong of It

As mentioned before, sometimes the game does dip its feet firmly into trial-and-error gameplay, and it can be frustrating to fail a Somnium even though you made the intuitively correct choices. Still, since every part of the story, and every Somnium, may be retried or skipped back to, this is a minor inconvenience.
There are also some small plot holes, but that is only to be expected from a story this complex.

The Last of It

Like its predecessor, nirvanA Initiative is great and you will not regret buying it unless your preferred way to play video games is running through the same maps over and over, clicking the shooty button and shouting racial slurs into your mic.
Posted March 20, 2023. Last edited March 20, 2023.
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17 people found this review helpful
1 person found this review funny
8.6 hrs on record (4.1 hrs at review time)
The Short of It: Sigma Theory: Global Cold War is not without its faults, but it is a challenging, tense tactical strategy game with a pleasant board game feel. It doesn't always do a good job of explaining itself, and a heavy reliance on the Random Number God may put some people off, but to others, this simply adds to the tension.

The Long of It: In the not-too-distant future, superpowers fight a sneaky, underhanded war to secure technology rumoured to make its owner omnipotent, but their skulduggery will not be without consequence as nations' selfishness may bring about nuclear armageddon and end the world.

Appointed the Director in charge of espionage by their home country, the player will need to send covert operatives to the other nations to steal their technology, dig up dirty little secrets, convince scientists to defect, perform dangerous exfiltration missions, hack drones, and much more. The player must beware, however, exposure of their agents will cause international relations to degrade, and the threat of nuclear war to loom ever closer and ever darker.

Sigma Theory is turn-based, requiring strategic planning and careful risk/reward considerations, making gameplay almost purely cerebral. However, this does not mean situations cannot get intense or urgent, as you are constantly in a hard-fought race against the other countries, as well as the doomsday counter, and any wrong decision can very quickly cause events to spiral out of control.

Only the country that secures the most scientists, most securely protects its own assets, and best sabotages the rival nations will attain the Sigma Theory - or at least have the meaningless honour of facing nuclear fire with the highest score.

The Right of It: As mentioned before, gameplay can get very tense even though play itself is turn-based, and the fact that things can go wrong even with the best of preparations makes sure the player can never become complacent or play on auto-pilot. Every decision matters, every time, and rival nations can often snatch victory from your jaws near the end of the game.

The player constantly needs to juggle the needs of many interest groups, and alienating some of them may cripple you in certain fields or even cause the game to end. Even your own government can fire you if you do not throw enough bones their way during your frantic quest for world peace (or domination). Your decisions may gain you advantages in some fields, but they may have unintended consequences that make your position much more difficult. There is no sure thing in this game, and it makes for very high-stakes and tense gameplay.

The covert agents, too, have their own personalities, portraits, traits and quirks, and this makes the player's personal investment that much greater, and as you get to know them, you'll be able to wield their skills more effectively - and feel much more affected by their loss should they perish.

The Wrong of It: Many people complain about the fickleness of the Random Number God, and they're not always wrong. However, I found that with careful preparation, and the right agent on the job, things tended to go my way much more often than not. Naysayers do have a point when they bemoan the lack of transparency concerning player choices, particularly during exfiltrations. The game checks certain stats when the agent encounters obstacles, but it's never clear which, making it very difficult to make an informed decision, and sometimes it's pure guesswork, making it slightly frustrating when your choices suddenly backfire.

Another legitimate point of criticism is the game's unwillingness to explain many things. Gameplay elements like ransomware, diplomatic dialogue, and others are poorly explained and require leaps in the dark to learn how to use them - not forgiving during a game that essentially has Ironman Mode permanently on.

What also bothered me was the waterfall-system the game uses - it creates a positive feedback loop by making it easier for nations that are ahead to remain ahead. The first nation to research a technology (and it's never you) will gain tremendous advantages that make it easier for them to attain even bigger advantages. Some of them can even cause disasters for the player directly and instantly, like stealing all your scientists at once, making agents suddenly defect, or smacking the doomsday counter up by a terrifying amount.

This last thing leads me to me final gripe with the game, and that is the A.I., which can be spiteful as Hell. Rival AI will target you almost exclusively and leave each other undisturbed, and some are not above deliberately causing the world to be annihilated by nuclear fire just to stop you from winning. In my first game, I was literally two turns away from victory when the Chinese suddenly felt it wise to unleash a terrible technology on the world and boost the Doomsday counter to half past armageddon, killing the entire world just so I wouldn't win. That's a shame.

The Last of It: Sigma Theory is a clever, challenging game that keeps the player constantly on his toes. If only the devs could iron out some of the bothersome kinks, like the obscurity of some choices and the spiteful A.I., then many more people would buy and enjoy this title. As it is, though, it's certainly worth picking up if you like a board-game-style experience that keeps you constantly on your toes.
Posted December 12, 2019. Last edited December 12, 2019.
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16 people found this review helpful
135.8 hrs on record (61.5 hrs at review time)
The Short of It

Thea : The Shattering is more of the same with a fresh coat of paint, but that's certainly not a bad thing, in most regards, as the predecessor was already a very good game, though some new mechanics are a bit questionable.

The Long of It

As the world shattered, six great islands were formed, the world was made anew, and even the pantheon of gods was reshuffled, some of them destroyed or missing to make room for new ones. As the Chosen of your god, it is up to you if you will di his or her bidding and restore his/her portfolio, or if you will reject the gods and strike out on your own. You begin with a small and inexperienced group of travellers, some even children, and must explore the world, gather resources, fight all sorts of enemies in all sorts of ways, in order to hopefully create a lasting legacy.

All challenges are resolved through a card game, with different characters being good at different challenges. Your warrior, for instance, may be good at hacking down enemies, but she will struggle when faced with magical beings who try to enchant her, whereas your zerca will be good at tackling magical threats, but will be chopped into cordwood by the first random orc he sees. This necessitates a diverse group of characters, even more than in the first game, since now combat can't solve everything, plus social and mental challenges can now actually damage and even eliminate your characters.

You also have the option to build a town (and you really should), which can erect buildings, generate resources, provide a place for your expeditions to rest, lets you craft better items and food, and so forth. This, too, is pretty much the same as it was in the original game and it's still enjoyable.

The Right of It

Thea 2 plays mostly like the first game did, and there are only a few real differences of note. Thea 2 has all the strengths its predecessor had and is still very enjoyable to play overall.

The card system has also been overhauled. No longer is it randomly determined who goes first (and thus who has the advantage), but now characters actually have an initiative score, and the battlefield looks different, as well as the rules. Still, the card game remains challenging and interesting for those who liked it in the first game.

The Wrong of It

One thing that's been changed is the world map and allocation of resources. The world is now divided into six islands, and every island has its own biome, meaning that the more rare resources are restricted to one island, per type. This will make it necessary for your band of adventurers to travel to and fro to collect goods and materials. It's not exactly clear to me why this was done, since it feels like this adds a bit of unnecessary tedium. Travelling takes a long time, and gathering is rather slow, meaning you'll spend lots of turns either getting from one place to another, or camped out and waiting for your people to gather the next bit of mithril. A lot of playtime in Thea 2 is static, and you need to be able to enjoy this particular type of game.

Thea 2 is also ill in the same bed as its predecessor was: a lot of the mechanics are obscure and in need of explanation. Crafting, especially, with its essences and challenge types, can be dizzying to understand. It also has the very clunky and unintuitive UI its predecessor had. There is an unnecessary amount of clicking involved in every action, and this can be irritating.

But the biggest fault to find with Thea 2 is the Lightbringer faction. Hoo boy. These luminous pests turn up on every island, and they are far too strong for a beginning group, which means you'll spend a lot of time hoping that they'll pass by you without engaging you and wiping your whole party. Trying to get rid of the spawn points is even worse since these are usually level 7 or 8 challenges, impossible for a smaller or less experienced party. They are a massive annoyance and in dire need of a nerf, especially in the early game.

The Last of It

If you enjoyed Thea: The Awakening and think you'll enjoy more of it with a new sheen, you should be fine buying Thea 2. If slower-paced turn-based games aren't your thing, give it a pass because it's not a game for the player who wants quick results.
Posted July 3, 2019. Last edited July 3, 2019.
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4 people found this review helpful
139.7 hrs on record (19.0 hrs at review time)
The Short of It:

Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night is a nostalgic, but at the same time modern Metroidvania with RPG elements that remains challenging and enticing to play through, without ever making its difficulty unfair or unnecessarily punishing.

The Long of It:

After greedy alchemists perform ritual killings to unleash demons on the world, only two people escape the sacrifices. One of them is Miriam, who remained in a coma for years until she is finally reawakened to apply pedal force to demon posterior. To do this, she must infiltrate a castle, brave its halls, depts and heights, and acquire new abilities, weapons, and equipment to aid in expediting the forceful connection of her feet to demon rears.

The game itself plays much as a standard Metroidvania, with some key differences. One is the heightened focus on equipment, inventory and crafting, giving the game RPG elements (though never making it a true RPG, which requires influence on story and characters). Another is the mechanics of shards, random drops from enemies that give Miriam all sorts of gluteus-kicking abilities.

The Right of It:

Bloodstained is a perfect blend of nostalgia and modernity, a game that will make older players feel like coming home, and will make newer players realize just what it was that made previous generations of video games so special.

Miriam’s fighting styles are also quite diverse, with many different weapons handling in distinct ways, making it possible for the player to choose his preferred playstyle, with only a few weapon types being less useful. From the slow, but powerful overhead wallop of the greatsword to the short, sharp kicks delivered by weaponized boots, all kinds of weapon styles let you fight your own way, with plenty of room for experimenting.

The difficulty, too, is refreshing: it’s genuinely challenging, even to a veteran player of video games, but it’s never unfair and does not succumb to the temptation of trying to be the next Dark Souls Of, like so many products try to do lately. The game keeps you on your toes, but you will generally only die if you overreach, attack mindlessly, or get complacent. There is no need to memorize every single enemy’s attack patterns, and even bosses can be successfully engaged by using one’s head and having sharp reflexes without needing a hundred tries or looking up attack patterns on a wiki. All bosses are perfectly beatable on the first try (I’ve done it) if you’ve levelled somewhat decently, prepare sufficiently, and keep your head in the game.

On the technical side, the game is more than decent. The graphics aren’t AAA-quality, but they’re certainly good enough to keep the game enjoyable, and the music, too, is quite adequate at maintaining the atmosphere. Miriam's constant yelps when she attacks are a bit grating, but I s'pose that comes with the territory.

Another positive thing is the ‘grindability’ of enemies. Not only do they respawn every time the player leaves the screen, but their random drops also occur sufficiently frequently to make farming a viable possibility. There is no 1-in-256 Danjuro in this game – at least not that I’ve encountered.

Lastly, the game is simply lots of fun to play, the castle is exciting to explore and even though things can take a long time, they never get tiresome or tedious.

The Wrong of It:

There is little wrong with Bloodstained, but a few things did bother me as I played. The controls are not always equally responsive and the game tends not to always react perfectly to button presses, especially where it concerns jumps. I also noticed that the game has the inverse of coyote time: sometimes Miriam runs off a ledge before it runs out so you miss a jump. Not game-breaking, but a bit annoying. The Lili form especially can choke up during a sequence of intense jumping and kicking.

Another thing which is a bit bothersome is the tendency of enemies to ‘hug’ the player, projecting their hitboxes over the player’s and basically immobilizing them with constant scratch damage, which is irritating for players who use slower weapons, since with larger enemies, even backstepping doesn’t free them. Enemies being able to clip freely into walls and off screen edges is another small annoyance, since this lets them escape attacks or makes their loot inaccessible.

Lastly, the story is very flimsy and serves merely as a backdrop, which is a shame since more could have been done with it.

All in all though, these are small things and the game is still extremely enjoyable despite them.

The Last of It:

Bloodstained is worth every penny, and will provide a player with many hours of enjoyment, and being a Metroidvania fan isn’t a requirement, nor is it necessary to be le hardcore epic true gamer hero (though Hard and Impossible modes do exist for the masochists). No one but the most extremely jaded cynic will be disappointed.
Posted June 27, 2019.
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100 people found this review helpful
6 people found this review funny
52.8 hrs on record (9.1 hrs at review time)
The Short of It:

If you loved Valkyria Chronicles, the original, then you'll love this one too, it's more of the same, with only small elements added or changed. If you haven't played the original, then this game is for you if you like more casually-oriented strategy games and can stomach the occasional typical Japanese eye-rolling story and dialogue elements.


The Long of It

When a dictatorial nation called The Empire (of course it's called The Empire) goes to war with the Federation over the continent of Europa, the smaller nations in between get dragged into the war. Claude Wallace, the commander of Squad 7 and inhabitant of one of those nations, finds himself and his squad joining a final desperate attack by the Federation Army to capture the Empire's capital and hopefully put an end to the war.

Valkyria Chronicles 4 uses the same system as the original game did: battles are fought on maps, in turn-based order. Your soldiers make their moves and fire upon the enemy, then the enemy gets to do the same to your people. The system itself is a bit awkward at first (characters only come under fire while they're moving and can stop and aim at their leisure), but it actually does work very well when you actually play the game. It's not very realistic, but it's still an efficient way to get the feel of battle across, and it makes you think carefully where to deploy your scouts, shocktroopers, lancers, engineers, snipers and grenadiers.

When your characters aren't shooting faceless and dehumanized enemy soldiers, they spend time in headquarters, where you can spend XP and cash to upgrade troops and equipment, read soldiers' bios, review the story and more of that, in the book interface used in the first game.


The Right of It:

Valkyria Chronicles is, without question, fun to play. The streamlined battle system makes things tense without being overly simplistic, and headshotting enemies never gets old. It's also nice that the game kept the old system of having soldiers with depth, backstories, and positive and negative traits, with those traits evolving as they earn XP or complete (sometimes hidden) objectives. It's much more fun than playing with generic units, even if those stories and soldier appearances can be a bit cheesy now and then.

The art style, also, is retained from the original, although it's been adapted to more modern hardware. The game still has its extremely charming cartoon feel, which keeps it from becoming a grim killfest, and there are still waifus and husbandos aplenty for those who take an interest in that sort of thing. Controls are fluid and intuitive, and having keyboard and mouse as an option allows for some precise aiming, which is also an improvement.

The story's a bit cheesy, as is the series' wont, but it gets the job done. The dialogue is also passable, but expect some typical Japanese constructions and delivery, and of course, it's all about the Power of Friendship! Still, the writing is decent and with a few exceptions, never gets in the way. Also very nice is that the game occasionally takes you on a side chapter to explore the stories of some of the squaddies you've been using often, complete with a battle map to deploy them on. It's a very nice touch and further helps the player to bond with his soldiers.


The Wrong of It:

Valkyria Chronicles has always been for a bit of a niche audience, and this one's no different. Expect no historical accuracy and no meta-game so complex it feels like an Excel-sheet. It's not a game for people who unironically use 'casual' as an insult or people who want to study novel-sized treatises on the game mechanics. If you're careful and have half a brain, you'll usually succeed in missions with no problem. In fact, I've gotten an A on every mission so far from the first try. Also, 'S' is now 'A'. For some reason.

The writing, while mostly decent, does have its embarrassing moments. It's a Japanese game, first and foremost, so expect some cringey dialogue and the classic unfunny scenes of the main character accidentally staring up the love interest's skirt and the childish sidekick getting punched for grabbing the hot quiet busty girl's butt*. It seems Japan loves to have the same damn tropes inserted in its stories in every game, and it gets grating. It's something the player has to get over.

Another headscratcher which carried over from the original game is that battles are ranked based on nothing else than duration. Advancing carefully and tactically, keeping your soldiers safe, scoring many kills, it's still not worth the spit on a Valkyrie's boots, all that matters is speed, and it's still very unintuitive to have to make a mad dash for objectives, charging through enemy fire like a madman and winning the map with half of the enemy's units still standing around. The game does seem to be a bit more forgiving when it comes to CP, though, so you can at least spend *some* CP creating a safer battlefield.

And yes, the game still uses the rather clunky book interface used in the first game. It's been streamlined a little bit, but it's still not very user-friendly.


The Last of It:

Buy Valkyria Chronicles 4 if you loved the first one, like I did, also buy it if you like JRPGs or light strategy games. Definitely buy it if you're a waifu/husbando kind of person, or if you're simply looking for a game that provokes careful thinking but doesn't punish you for not knowing every single statistic or making a single suboptimal decision. Perhaps steer away from it if you want games to be a truly cerebral challenge or if you can't get over some of the more tiring Japanese storytelling tropes.

Definitely don't buy it if you get irrationally upset at the question why nobody has ever thought of armouring a tank radiator before.


(* it must, however, be clarified that Kai has a butt to go to war for)
Posted September 28, 2018. Last edited September 28, 2018.
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2 people found this review helpful
92.8 hrs on record (40.2 hrs at review time)
The Short of It:

Graveyard Keeper will be a relaxing Harvest Moon-clone with a fun twist for some, but it will be a slow, tedious grind for others. It's extremely ambitious and has a lot of fun features, but at times you'll really wish it got a move on. What Graveyard Keeper offers in complexity, diversity and atmosphere, it lacks in transparency, pacing and player-friendly design.


The Long of It:

When he crosses the street, distracted by a loving message of his lady, a man is struck by a car and killed. He rises again in a strange fantasy world where a talking skull reads the message tattooed on his back, uh, I mean, happily informs him he's the new Keeper of the Graveyard. His life, from now on, will consist of preparing dead bodies, interring them, decorating their graves and (for the most part) working his behind off to find better ways of doing his job.

As the Keeper, maintaining the graveyard may be your core business, but it's only part of your job. You will also need to befriend townspeople, perform quests for them, research new technologies, build and craft things, find new recipes at your alchemical table, delve the dungeon under your house, and even hold religious services for the town, as just a few examples. Perhaps through creating the best graveyard in existence, the Keeper might finally return home...

Graveyard Keeper is another in the steadily-growing line of Harvest Moon simulators, and even though it's clear where it got its ideas, its unique setting makes for a fun change from the classic 'cruddy farm my Pa left me'-formula. While it might seem a bit strange to some, Graveyard Keeper actually approaches the whole business of cutting up corpses and turning a graveyard into a cash cow with enough humour and wit to keep it fun and light-hearted.


The Right of It:

Graveyard Keeper is all about building a nice home, a beautiful graveyard and a lovely church. It's got all the elements that'll keep a farming sim enthousiast busy for hours. Resource gathering, farming, crafting, researching, all the beloved elements are there, and they're all fun to do. The amount of crafting facilities you can build is ludicrous, as is the wealth of resources you can gather and process, and the game world is large enough to keep you exploring. It's also well-written, humorous and concise, with no tedious lengths of pointless dialogue to sit through. It also offers a few fun new twists on the genre, with prayer masses, book writing, and of course body preparation and graveyard decorating.

Graveyard Keeper also has no time limit. You're not racing against competitors and you've got no reason to worry about investing every minute of your time just right. The weekdays pass, and NPCs are only available on certain days, but if you miss the day, you can just carry on and wait for the weekday to come around again. It's fun to be able to just enjoy the game without a whip at your back.


The Wrong of It:

Strange, then, that the game's strenghts are also its biggest weaknesses. The game does not bore the player with long-winded dialogue, but it also provides very little explanation and no way to review conversations if you've missed something. And this game really does need some explanation here and there, some mechanics are so unintuitive players find themselves looking things up on the wiki.

But the biggest point of criticism that can be directed at Graveyard Keeper is its extremely grindy nature. The game makes you work for every bit of progress and then some. The points you gain towards research are very sparse, especially near the mid-game when Blue Points in particular are terribly slow to accumulate, so you'll often find yourself creating literally hundreds of materials you don't need just so you can gain the blue points necessary for a new tech.

Especially with the Keeper's slow walking speed and all crafting and gathering spots so far away from each other for no reason, this becomes very tedious. Another incomprehensible source of annoyance is the Keeper's energy bar. Mind, Graveyard Keeper has no time limit, so it requires next to no time management, and yet, for some reason, the Keeper has an energy bar which drains with everything he does, extremely quickly so. This means that after two or three tasks, you're constantly interrupted by energy being drained, which means you need to slog back all the way to your house to rest. Food does alleviate this somewhat, but that's only in the midgame onward.

I think the main problem with the game's tedium is that it's unnecessary. There is no added value to the Keeper's slow movement, or his low energy, his tiny inventory, or the areas being so far apart. It's just there to make the game longer, and that's a shame, because Graveyard Keeper could be a golden entry into the farming sim genre. As it stands, it's tarnished silver.


The Last of It:

If you love a good grind and just like cosy gathering and crafting whilst unlocking new things at a slow pace, with the game making you work for every bit of progress, it's definitely a game to consider buying. If you think games should have a brisk tempo and provide a constant, tangible sense of advancement, it's not for you. Graveyard Keeper is among the grindiest of the Farm Simulators, so make sure you really want to play this kind of game before buying it.
Posted August 22, 2018. Last edited August 22, 2018.
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11 people found this review helpful
3 people found this review funny
44.3 hrs on record (16.0 hrs at review time)
The Short of It:

Etrian Odyssey, is that you? And is that a horror jacket you're wearing with some icky fanservice cologne? The jacket suits you, but ditch the cologne, it's pretty naff. So yeah, your fans will like this new version of you, but other people won't be eager to be seen talking to you at parties.


The Long of It:

Jack, a young inmate of a nightmarish prison known simply as the Jail, spends his years being tortured along with his best friend Alice, held captive since he can remember by twisted creatures known as the Marchens. One day, he is suddenly freed by a mysterious genki girl who breaks into his cell and frees the prisoners, with recruiting Alice being her primary objective. Turns out Alice is a cheesily-named Blood Maiden, which gives her the power to defeat Marchens, though she must be always wary of corruption by Marchen blood, which would drive her and her fellow Blood Maidens berserk, plunging into a destructive madness of fighting friend and foe alike. And while being almost completely naked, because it is a Compile Heart game after all.

The Blood Maidens' objective is to grow the Jail to such heights that they can escape to the surface, and this is accomplished (somehow) by clearing dungeons. Mary Skelter: Nightmares is a dungeon crawler with not much else, as its inspiration Etrian Odyssey is. Almost all of the game's time is spent slogging through unnecessarily complex dungeons and grinding, grinding, grinding. Every once in a while, a Nightmare comes along to ruin your day unless you can escape it in time. Players who resent either grinding or dungeon crawling should read no further and pass on the game outright.

In between grinds, you give gifts to the girls to, as Japanese video game tradition requires, bribe their pants off (literally). You also change jobs, buy or strengthen gear, and witness the occasional visual-novel style event.


The Right of It:

If you love grinding and exploring winding, twisting, labyrinthine dungeons, then you probably own several Etrian Odyssey games already and shouldn't be needing this review, since the differences are mostly cosmetic: more horror-oriented and with cute girls as all the characters. Fact is, Mary Skelter: Nightmares is a fun dungeon crawler with a decent atmosphere and adequate music. Sadly, it's not much more than that, and has quite a few negative aspects.


The Wrong of It:

Mary Skelter: Nightmares is a game with some flaws. Firstly, it's quite repetitive. Enemies tend to show up every so often, but they're always the same enemies with the same weaknesses for the entire dungeon, the only difference being palette swaps with higher stats as the dungeon goes on. And you'll be fighting them often: there is lots of backtracking, lots of mandatory grinding, and lots of puzzles that make you slog around and trigger even more encounters. Expect the difficulty to be all over the place as well either. You can be strong enough to dispatch all the monsters in a single dungeon without taking any damage, but the boss will somehow still be able to one-shot your characters when you encounter him, making it impossible to know if you're underleveled and need to grind more against monsters that have become too weak (and give too little XP) for you.

As with (sadly) many Japanese role-playing games, you really shouldn't play it for the writing either. It's a truckload of undiluted stale cheese, with the classic "we're friends, let's do our best!"-theme and a story that's wafer-thin. The dialogues are weakly written and uninteresting, and the characters are classic JRPG archetypes. The main character in particular is infuriatingly weak - and useless - to the point of being completely unlikeable.

In true Compile Heart tradition, there is fanservice, but where it tended to be tongue-in-cheek in games like, say, the Hyperdimension Neptunia series, in this game it's even lost its self-awareness and just becomes a cringey hentai-like embarrassment. Needless almost-nudity and typical Japanese tripe ("main character trips and falls face-first onto busty girl's boobs") are rampant and extremely bothersome. The Purging minigame in particular, where you rub blood off the girls' bodies while they rapid-fire groans like they're pooping their pants, is awful beyond words.

Apart from that, Mary Skelter: Nightmares is really nothing but a reskin of the tried-and-true Etrian Odyssey formula. There's the square-turning, the grid-based automap that only fills in what's directly beneath the party's feet, the invisible party members during battle, the obstacles in dungeons that need certain abilities or switches, and so forth. And of course, even in a Compile Heart game, F.O.E.!


The Last of It:

If you have a DS, just play an Etrian Odyssey game, really (or Persona Q). If you love the series but only have a PC, then go ahead and buy this one if it's on sale, but if you don't love either loads of grinding, or cringy pseudo-erotic fanservice (if you do love the latter, I suggest getting out more), then be very skeptical. I recommend this for hardcore dungeon crawler fans, but not for the vast majority of video game players.
Posted August 3, 2018. Last edited August 3, 2018.
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30 people found this review helpful
3 people found this review funny
28.2 hrs on record
The Short of It:
Slime Rancher is a cosy, relaxing farming sim brimming with adorableness and having just the right amount of tedium to keep you busy but stress-free.

The Long of It:
When Beatrix LeBeau inherits her granddad's ranch, on a planet far, far away, it's up to her to turn the derelict grounds into a thriving farm by wrangling slimes and selling their plorts for cash. The world outside her ranch is teeming with all sorts of slimes, each with their own quirks and needs, but all sharing the same degree of utter adorableness. Beatrix must capture slimes in her vaccuum gun and corral them, breed them with other slimes, and feed them their favourite foods, all the while taking care not to make mistakes lest she sees her precious slimes transform into the vile Tarr, wicked predatory slimes that can consume an entire farm in minutes. With some effort, she'll soon have many pieces of slime poop for selling on the intergalactic market.

Beatrix' life on the farm is interspersed with exploration, and her journey will take her across all sorts of biomes in her search to find out what really happened to her grandfather. Meanwhile, she will fulfill requests from her neighbours on nearby ranches, upgrade and expand her farm as well as her own faculties, research new devices and bring home new food types for her slimes. Or just sit down and read the starmails she receives from her soulmate Casey. It all keeps the player busy, but with no time limit, there is rarely any stress or hurry, and players can just take the game at their own pace without having to worry about taking their time or making bad time management decisions.

The Right of It:
As said before, Slime Rancher is wonderfully cosy, and it's feel-good gameplay at its finest. Spending time with your slimes is just fun to do, and even the tedious parts of ranching are just relaxed stress relief. The art style helps a lot in this as well, with the environments being colourful and vibrant, and the inhabitants being, with only the exception of the tarr, absolutely adorable. And even the tarr are cute in their own way. From the boom slimes' stupid faces after they've blown up, to the tabby slimes little headbutts and food-stealing, every slime is just completely huggable, even when they're committing all sorts of mischief on your farm.

The research and upgrade system is simple, but gets the job done without excessive complexity (did I mention this game is a cosy stressless experience?), and watching your farm grow is a satisfying experience.

The Wrong of It:
Despite Slime Rancher's many positive points, there is some tedium here and there. Most notably, your plots tend to be so far apart that you'll spend a lot of time just running to and fro to suck up food, feed your slimes, gather their plorts and chuck them into the market, and this will eventually lead to the player wasting all his hard-earned teleporters on simply providing means to get around the farm quickly.

Some of the world can be confusing as well, and it can be easy to get lost or not find a place again after you've left, making for some irritating running-around as you try to remember where the Hell it was you found that Tabby Gordo parked when you had no meat in your vac-gun.

But honestly, those are small nitpicks, more to find something to put in my 'negative' column than anything else.

The Last of It:
Slime Rancher is a lovely piece of adorableness, a great stress reliever and an overall relaxing experience that never puts on the pressure or makes you feel rushed. It's worth playing for anyone who is looking for the simple joys of building and exploring. If you find cosy, relaxing or cute games childish, then maybe I suppose you should pass on this one, but I do feel sorry for you.
Posted May 1, 2018. Last edited May 1, 2018.
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14 people found this review helpful
7.9 hrs on record
The Short of It:
Frostpunk is a breathtakingly gorgeous city survival sim with a lot of wonderful elements, but little replay value and an unfortunate lack of freedom.

The Long of It:
Frostpunk has the player managing a small colony of desperate survivors, huddling around a massive generator they dragged with them all the way from the city of London, when it froze over in the year 1886. Your torn and dismayed group of citizens will urgently need food, shelter, and especially warmth to survive the deadly cold to come. As the leader of the shivering and hungry remains of London, you will be forced to make many difficult decisions to ensure survival, sometimes at any cost.

Once your colony's basic needs are met, they will need to ensure long-term resource supplies and explore the Frostlands around them. You will have to decide where you apply your very limited materials and workers to try and turn the negative balance into a positive one, hopefully succeeding in securing the supplies necessary to survive the horrendous cold still to come. At the same time, your engineers will have to race against time to develop new techniques and machines to give your small society a fighting chance against the hunger, the discord, and especially the cold.

The Right of It:
Frostpunk is gorgeous. It's an absolutely beautiful game and you can almost feel the biting frost coming at you through the screen as the wind howls, the steam generator vomits smoke and the roofs of your unfortunate colonists' houses get covered in snow. The circular building style also lends itself very well to the atmosphere, making your city truly look as if even its buildings huddle around the generator in the terrible cold. Its steampunk art style completes the picture and makes Frostpunk a wonder to look at through the entire duration of the game.

Just like the art style, the game itself brings the survival aspect across very well, and it will constantly challenge you to sign new, controversial bills, exert your overworked labour force even further, and even respond to incidents by lining some people up against a wall and shooting them. Being a benevolent, generous leader will not benefit your colony in the long run as lawlessness and permissiveness will send your society into a tailspin of rioting, starvation and despair. The game does not play nice, and neither should you, and the game is absolutely upfront about that.


The Wrong of It:
There is a lot of rinse-and-repeating from one point on, when you've got your colony into a stable situation, and you're becoming mostly focused on simply increasing resource production in one area after another in order to meet the demands of your colony's expansion. Production feels to be the be-all, end-all of everything, and as long as you get enough facilities up and running, all you have to do is slowly increase the number of resource gathering facilities as your colony grows. Especially building resource stocking posts becomes tedious as your resource limits constantly get reached. In the end, you'll have about fifty of them, all increasing stockpile limits for one resource or other, and that certainly could have been handled differently.

A common, and valid point of criticism is also the limited replayability and the lack of a sandbox mode. The area given to the player for building is not limitless, and the game itself only lasts about thirty days on the standard scenario. A good nine hours and the game is simply over and there is little reason to play it again, as there is really only one strategy for surviving. In the case of a replay, all you'd be able to do is do the same things all over, except a bit more efficiently or on a harder difficulty setting.


The Last of It:
Frostpunk is short and not very replayable, but the time you do get to spend in it is a wonderful experience. Waiting for a sale or an expansion pack is a good idea, but even ten hours in this frozen, beautiful world is worth the full purchase price as well.
Posted April 29, 2018.
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3 people found this review helpful
13.9 hrs on record
The Short of It: Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice is not for everyone, but those looking for a profound narrative experience will not be disappointed. Those who feel a game should be purely a test of their skill, a challenge to beat, or who feel there is no time for calm, gradual storytelling in games should look elsewhere.


The Long of It: Senua, a Celt warrior departs on a quest to Hel, the underworld of the Northmen, to search for her lover, sacrificed in a Northman ritual. Hel, by its nature, does not welcome or tolerate the living, and she will have to make her way through illusions, puzzles and enemies, all there to stop her from reaching the Goddess Hela, who holds her lover's soul.

Senua is not your typical hero, and Hellblade is not your typical heroes' tale. Instead of unwavering determination, inhuman levels of stamina and absolute moral virtue, Senua is a broken figure, even pitiable at times, struggling with a warped and failing sense of reality, sometimes kept together only by her love for Dillion. Her mental state is in such disrepair that there is no telling what is real and what isn't anymore, and the voices she hears in her head constantly assault her with contradicting information, sometimes helpful, sometimes hindering, and mostly distracting.

The challenges Senua faces reflect her poor mental state, usually simply looking at the world differently is enough to realize the obstacle wasn't an obstacle at all until Senua sees it for what it is, and this design makes the journey much more convincing and succeeds in bringing Senua's tenuous grasp of reality across. Similarly, the ghosts of the Northmen Senua fights can only be fought efficiently when she has enough mental fortitude to focus fully on them, sometimes even needing to focus to make them materialize at all.

All these elements combine to make Senua's Sacrifice an experience that is much more in line with a vision quest, rather than a test of player skill.


The Right of It: As already mentioned, the challenges, obstacles and threats Senua faces are all very oriented towards illusion, deception and focus (or lack thereof), keeping them very well in line with the overall thematic of psychosis, presenting an obstacle for the player without overly breaking immersion or reminding him/her that (s)he is in a video game.

Of course, Senua's Sacrifice' biggest strength is its storyline, delivery and depth. Melina Juergens' portrayal of Senua is, even with the ramifications of motion capture, extremely convincing, and very unconventional, steering away from the typical Hollywood delivery of mental ilness. She manages to put down a character that is at the same time believable and alien, pitiable and relatable, strong and deeply flawed. Modern video games, with their insistence on making heroes (and especially heroines!) infallible, or with 'pseudo-flaws' should take note. The acting does occasionally flirt with the overdramatic, but this is inevitable when dealing with this subject matter.

Another thing which struck me as pleasantly surprising was that Senua does not fall into the trap so many heroes fall into, where they are depicted as supposedly haggard and worn, on the skin of their teeth, but still manage to look rather attractive. Senua's torment, both physical and mental, is clearly and brutally apparent, and as her body and mind reel from the blows and rot from the corruption, she really does look more and more wasted and sallow. Ninja Theory have clearly set out to break taboos on mental ilness and to do so without sugarcoating its effects.

The world, too, is stunningly rendered, and some environments are simply jaw-dropping, all possessing some kind of beauty, some wondrous, others terrifying. In fact, the entire game is a treat for the eyes, and the photo mode, which lets you freeze the action and freely move the camera and apply all sorts of effects, makes for some impressive screencapping opportunities.

The storyline, too, keeps the player interested without becoming opaque, and leaves the player guessing without becoming completely opaque. Like Senua, the player is left wondering what is real and what is nothing more than the hallucinations of a broken mind. Overall, Senua's Sacrifice succeeds very well in its storytelling, and the game mechanics and challenges support this very well.

The game also deserves credit for providing a fresh perspective to a historic setting which is rather saturating media these days, and for not buying into the whole Vikingophilia that is currently so rampant, but actually showing the Vikings as the r*ping, murdering, genocidal maniacs they were, rather than the romantic and inaccurate stereotype modern media love to bring forward of bold and brave warriors of pagan virtue.

However, Hellblade's heavy attention to storytelling does mean there are other aspects which weren't the primary focus.


The Wrong of It:

The most important caveat any reviewer should give to people interested in this game, is that it is not, by any means, an action-packed thrill ride full of flashy combos, ardenaline-fueled suspense, exciting dangers and mind-blowing explosions. Some of the more hyperbolic critics fault the game for having 'no gameplay at all', which is of course an absurd exaggeration, but the fact is that Senua's Sacrifice will have many times when the gameplay most closely resembles a walking simulator. This is something you will have to be very aware of before purchasing this game. Ninja Theory have toned down the action and focused more on the story experience, so don't buy this game looking for another Devil May Cry- or Heavenly Sword-like actionfest.

Speaking of which, the combat is functional and adequately entertaining, but do not expect any profound easy-to-learn-difficult-to-master combat systems which other games so proudly tout. Most battles can be won by keeping your head in the game and relying on A-X-X-X-Y-Y combinations, and sometimes the fighting does feel somewhat repetitive. It gets the job done, but with that, everything is said.

Since Senua's Sacrifice focuses on slow-paced storytelling, you will also have to accept that the puzzles are meant to make you take your time, and take your time you will, since many puzzles rely on some backtracking and experimenting, and Senua's slow walking and running speed might make things a bit tedious at times. The fact that almost all the hard obstacles in the game are played-straight versions of the Insurmountable Waist-High Fence trope can add to the impatience. Sometimes, you wonder why Senua makes a two-hour detour instead of just climbing a knee-high rock, wading some waist-deep water, or stepping between the unimpressive remains of a palisade. This requires some very active suspension of disbelief on the part of the player.

Again, Senua's Sacrifice is a story-telling experience with challenges thrown in. It is important to realize this. Another small point of criticism is that it's rather short. It can be completed within twelve hours without hurrying. Then again, the price reflects this, as Ninja Theory were aware that its shorter length merited a lower price, making it a decent cost. If it comes on sale, the deal will be even better.


The Last of It:

Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice is an extremely well-written, well-delivered tour de force of storytelling and worldbuilding, and despite its occasional overdramatic moments, succeeds in truly providing the receptive player with a convincing, gripping, and even moving experience which he or she will not likely forget. Those tiring of the bog-standard, safe and lazy pseudo-storytelling of most triple-A games and their done-to-death, cardboard-copy protagonists will do very well not to pass this one up. Those who consider story and depth to be only minor aspects of a video game believing gameplay is the absolute criterium on which a game should be judged are better to direct their money elsewhere.
Posted August 21, 2017. Last edited August 21, 2017.
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