Recent reviews by smudboy12213

Let's see how the love letter to Chrono Trigger turned out.

Game play -- a mixed bag. Combo attacks, check. And that's all.
Zale is easier to use because there's no basic QTEs with his skills. But Valere's main lunar ability involves bouncing a lunar disc between her enemies and herself. And it's based on releasing the button press, not pressing the button! Which means even till the last boss, I'm missing these QTEs. Now, you can call this a skill issue, but I call it boring, repetitive, twitch gaming...for a turn based game! Which also hurts my eyes because I can't blink or I'll miss an insanely quick QTE. Which is good when you're timing one hit...but not 25 in succession! Especially when all it's doing is reflecting that lunar disc faster and faster till you're just smashing the button and hoping for the best. Same with Serai's dagger throw; not fun. But Valere is the only one who can do lunar attacks, so you have to use that ability in every case you want to "break" an enemy properly. (So how do you do that with Zale when they only get broken by solar attacks?) I don't know how to fix this outside of removing it, but maybe not base it on button release?
And some enemies don't weaken their 100% strength even after taking apart their "shield." So, the potential QTE of the-Valere/Serai-tradeoff isn't worth it.

Aside from that annoying mechanic, combat is okay. Dropping magical bits to charge up your attacks is about as innovative as it gets. I found the Warrior Cook kind of lame, for all of his story focus, but I think that was the idea. The concept of foraging throughout the game worked well with the cooking system, so that was good. Also, very good balance of economics with gold being eventually needed, but scarce in general, and tied mostly to item selling. So enemies do drop gold, but not bags of it, which is a good subverted JRPG trope.

But the problem I saw with cooking: they're just HP, MP and KO recovery items. Where're the buffs? (Or the magical spell buffs/debuffs?) You'd think a game with cooking as a main game play concept would have temp buffs per meal/rest, but nope. Wasted opportunity, considering the stats of the game are so low.
Which brings us to

Equipment -- Lame and forgetful. No sense of power, or accomplishment, naming, scenario, etc. Remember repairing then getting The Masamune (and then upgrading it), Rainbow, Safe helm, Wondershot, etc., in CT? It felt awesome. Story tie ins. Meaningful...dare I say, a quest?
But in SoS...nothing. I think the best item was the Leeching Thorn which you get very early, and I still had it on Zale by the last boss.

Music -- This is interesting. Some tracks have multiple versions based on where you're fighting, so the combat theme gets remixed whether you're in Serai's world (a very cool synth style remix), or the normal one. All tracks for levels have two versions of themselves, based on night and day, which was a really cool touch. So the music in SoS is very good. But it's not great, amazing, memorable, or dramatic.
However, it seems SoS is using what sounds like the wave tables from CT. They even got Yasunori Mitsuda to make a track or two. But, for the life of me, I can't tell which. Which means that Mitsuda was calling it in, or the normal musician was good at emulating. (Seriously, Mitsuda worked on this? Was it the waterfall level?)
Regardless, these tracks don't hit home. They're not memorable. They're not dramatic. They're just passable. Which is the biggest let down for a CT fan.
CT was made by it's music. Same with Cowboy Bebop. Every piece is memorable. Every scene hits. Marle's theme is the game's leitmotif, Lucca's theme is the victory sound, Frog's theme is dramatic and motivational, Robo's is cool and fun, ...Magus..., and the main theme is unforgettable.
Sea of Stars music...I'd argue maybe the fight and boss music is catchy at times? Definitely not bad. Definitely not great. But it's just passable.

Level design -- This is the best part of SoS. A true pirate adventure? *Looks at Chrono Cross...* You can climb, jump up, jump across, hookshot, push blocks with your gust power, break the ground by falling from a tall height, and change the time of day using sun/moonlight powers. Simple, easy. Block puzzles are fun and easy, light reflecting puzzles the same. The levels are sometimes a bit off with a sense of parallax based on dimension (how far, how tall, how deep, etc. which is hard to pull off in a 16 bit world), but you figure it out. No random encounters, even better than CT, which is a godsend. The levels are brightly colored, brilliantly animated, and have a somewhat gritty + magic design. Some gorey ones, like that last level, are fun and disgusting. Great art. Design is more Zelda than Chrono Trigger whereupon you find a cracked wall and get a bomb item later, so there's plenty of backtracking.
Which brings up a huge issue later.

Sprite art -- looks cool, well animated.

The Rainbow Conches -- I got all 60. Got the true ending, etc. Needed a guide. This is bad game design. This is CT sealed black chests on stupid, angry crack. Those were fun; this is dumb. You shouldn't need a guide for collecting every item just to get the best ending. Endings should be based on your choices in scenarios, not whether you can spot a blue chest in every level, sneakily hidden behind a branch or platform, or given at the end of some obscure quest "Hey thanks, here's a seashell?" Unless there's a very good lore or story reason, which, there isn't anything explaining these things. (What are they? What's the Rainbow Star?) Oh, but you can get a parrot that tells you there's treasure/a conch in a level! That still means you're hunting down 60 things (not just chests, but entire events), going through every pixel of a level, which includes finding hidden passages, to get these conch's for some collector in some underwater city for the true ending. (And some levels like Torment Peak, are so poorly lit, you don't know where the ground is in front of you.) Which is the problem that made exploration games die out in the 90s, the idiotic logic of events and objects that lead to solutions to puzzles (did the events leading to getting Trader's Signet make any sense to anyone?)
Simple solution: tie this into the story. Give us some reason why collecting Rainbow Conches mean anything.
Which brings up another issue.

Map layout -- Where the heck is Docarri, and various other places and objects? How do I get to it? It's not easy to remember on the map, and you know it's on a certain continent...but it takes a good 5 minutes just re-exploring because there's no immediate teleport or entrance on the map. This is something the first Suikoden game figured out long ago with the Blinking Mirror. And this is all to find some trader who likes conch's, all to get the best ending. And that's the whole map/location system; it's tedious.

Base building -- simple enough, not much to say, but unfortunately, largely based on the Rainbow Conch's. You either end up inviting people to your town to be a merchant or fisherman, and they just stand around because they don't have a building to operate in, or you build an inn or spa and no one can fill it up because you haven't done your Adventure Game logic quests to find them/went Rainbow Conch hunting.

Fishing minigame -- Fun. Simple enough, cutely integrated into base building and the true ending. Which unfortunately means it's connected to the Rainbow Conch collecting. But a good JRPG staple SoS does well.

True Ending -- better done than Mass Effect's Citadel DLC.

Spoiler Time.
Story -- Weird. 2 Magical mitosis babies are literally delivered via transforming-alchemist eagle-stork. The 2 previous babies didn't like that. Fight them and the big baddie. Sea of Stars is just a drug trip. Game should be called "Garl's Cooking Adventure."

Other than that, it's awesome.

What a letdown.

I helped kickstart.

I never liked the "sword" slashing animation. it always looked like a flurry of something in someone's hand. Which means you can't see the weapon equipped, which was one of the highlights of customization in FFT. But fine. The music sounded great, the musician was cool, the sprite animation was relatively good, so I thought let's wait it out.

...5 years overdue later from kickstarter...

And it's trash. It's watered down, streamlined, babies first tactics clone.

-Story feels like it's written by a first year high school girl.
-Zoom in the camera after every action, like a basic attack. Why? Maybe a critical or something special, but everything?
-Love story that makes no sense. In media res, with two people on opposing sides, they're just in a relationship. What? Can you say conflict of interest?
-The first mission involves a scam apothecary running out of a cave, chased by magicians. He drops and breaks a flask. He runs away. Some random raccoon drinks the broken bottle remnants, and his eyes glow. Main character says something like "at least we have help!" From a random rodent wielding a...knife? But he's not in the proceeding battle? And why is there a battle? There's no association between the player's party and the mysterious scam artist apothecary? Why are we fighting some...dudes?
-The worst part: it's very difficult to click on a square when there's terrain or another character in the square closest to the foreground. Which means you have to click on some magical small area in order to register that square. Did anyone bother to test this?
-Music, though interesting, just doesn't fit at all. Were alto-saxes even invented yet? Was jazz? What is this time period and setting?
-Classes and characters don't seem to fit. Who are all these secondary characters, that we see get killed off in the intro? First, they look like a bunch of wild women for...some reason. From a royal court? Who are challenging the new queen to be? Are we in the wilderness or something? And why would we care if they're all going to die? In the first mission fight, I lost a ranger character...and just did not care.

Crimson Tactics: The Rise of The White Banner just came out on early access, and that was miles ahead of this, and that dialogue was stale as hell, with the 3D is not that great. But at least I can spin the battlefield and see where I'm going. At least I know why things are happening. At least there's some semblance to a TRPG. This is boring and feels half baked.

tl;dr not worth it, but could be someone else's cup of tea.

PROS
-Simple, fun, schmup game play.
-Pretty good acting, funny adult sex content, narrative, and jokes.
-Great character models, and some decent alien ideas, character backgrounds, and plots.
-Characters seem believable so far, despite being a semi-parody of other games.

CONS
-Game ends somewhere in Act 2. I thought this game was done, launching live on March 26? 17 gigs for this? Where are the other 4 Acts? I understood there's 10 in total, but those haven't been written yet?
-Dialogue feels drawn out. Its SLOW pacing all feels the same, no matter the characters and scene. It's as if it's either the same writer, or the the same voice acting direction. Everything is slow. There's no opportunity to fast forward at a reasonable pace (space bar takes at least 5 seconds or so.) Attention destroying.
-Too many 4th wall breaks to take game/story/game world seriously.
-The various comedy and its styles (e.g. parodies), though sometimes funny, is more of a detriment for immersion. Tim Pool, Gordon Ramsey...eh? Flesh out the universe; don't just joke around about it. Sexy jokey nice-guy main character is fine; a bunch of android suicidal sex bots is funny; but don't turn your literal galaxy into a joke. Make us care, not look at the world like it's a giant clown.
-Turn based combat is simplistic. Why no walking or running animations? Units just teleport. Enemies spawn out of nowhere, instantly after defeating a wave, making placement pretty much useless. No cover system. X-COM this is certainly not.
-No lipsynched dialogue throughout the main cutscenes (only exists in dating scenes?) Everyone stands around in cutscenes not moving their mouth, while facial expression and poses try and carry the scene. This is worse than KotOR, which at least had animated mouths. This does not work. If the characters don't emote their lines with working Dr. Paul Ekman articulated faces, I won't bother looking at the screen. Unreal has some plugins for this.
-The Pandora sex system for linking up scenes is...just tacked on. You have points, and you can unlock the scenes. Free adult Ren'Py games just use memory or recollection mode...but why even use this system? Why not just "call up a waifu" and then have certain dialogue options? What is this PP currency? That doesn't feel private or personal.
--as such, you don't feel connected to the waifu's as you would in other romance/adult games. Just use your global pool of PP and unlock sex scene. But now with NTR monsters?
--sex animations seems limited in length, despite their overall quality. The analog slider doesn't seem to denote speed/strength in certain animations (e.g. Lily's xeno one.)

I really wanted to like this game, and was hoping to play it on the weekend. But alas, there's barely any content for a full release. (2 schmup boss battles, 1 TB one, with lots of redundant planet exploration schmup & TB filler.)

Torment: Tides of Numenera, the successor to Planescap...wait, no.
Torment: Tides of Numenera, the spiritual succ...nope!
Torment: Tides of Numenera, the thematic successor? (What the heck does that even mean...?)

What is this game? Here's a better title:
Numenera: The Fluffy Tides Make You Fall Asleep (a poor attempt at Star Wars: The Force Awakens.)

Who's in torment? It certainly isn't the Last Castoff. The Tides may as well not even exist, or be referred to like something as gravity for that matter. They have no impact on game play, nor are they an ethical system, or what people think of you. Legacy is just another name for "extra screen at the ending."

So we're left with this idea: take the template from Planescape:Torment, look at it, then throw it away.
-Switch up the setting, since they can't get the license. (The setting is amazing by definition, not by opinion.)
-Create a boring protagonist who has the character of a blank RPG sheet -- minus the stats, since there are only 3.
-Forget everything from P:T that made the characters deep with their personal conflicts, faults, and philosophies, and forget putting tropes upside down on their heads in a fantasy D&D setting. Instead, create people who are simply there and have almost nothing to do with anyone (save maybe Matkina?)
-Get Chris Avellone to write the only entertaining character, Erritis, instead of putting him in charge.
--"Oh but if you give Rhin to X, she becomes tall and..."--zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
-Waste Mark Morgan's time and have him create over 40 pieces of forgettable pieces of music.
-Get, in some cases, highschool level artwork to have "meres" or memory experiences that change other castoff's memories or time or whatever (?), because that worked so well in Pillars of Eternity. So you can change your tidal affinity. Which does nothing.
-Re-invent "turn based combat" by providing dozens of weapons and armor -- armour that only you can wear -- but half the time during "Crises" you're going to be talking, or running through a group of enemies to solve the problem in a non-combat way. Essentially the strategy of running around like an armoured up A-Team truck, because a selling point will be to "go through the entire game without fighting." Thus, making combat for people who play Glaive, or of players who want to actually play a game, a chore. Thanks, endless amounts of teleporting Bloom--Predatory Echoes. (If I wanted to play a visual novel, I'd get one with sex, nudity and actual drama. Thanks, senpai.)
-Lie about in the marketing how Glaives can attack twice in a turn (note:provided your first turn killed an enemy, and you bothered to get the skill to attack again.)
-Get oddities from long sidequests that literally do nothing but clutter up your inventory
-Have a scrolling inventory of useless items -- 2 rows of 14 items at a time
-Pick up Cypher Sickness when completing a quest if you didn't choose a Jack. If you are a Jack, die.
-Bombard us with narrative fluff in an already padded out story of figuring out how to fix a Resonance Chamber, whatever that is, 95% of the time.
-Beat your daddy by telling him he doesn't exist, because he's actually an AI program. I'm not kidding.

People who were expecting Planescape: Torment? Get used to entire weird worlds of disppointment.
People who want drama and philosophy and conflict and layers of meaning and memorab-- look elsewhere.

Pros:
-I'd say the writing is on a level only slightly better than Pillars of Eternity. And Good Lord is there fluff; you'll be going through this text faster than any other Infinity Engine style game, choosing the option where you get to use your Effort.
-You can tell all your hipster friends you like narrative heavy games, because you're a smart video gamer.

"What does one life matter?" After 4 years and 5 million bucks of delayed, dropped content, I don't know, Colin. If that's your response to "what can change the nature of a man", well, I guess we all knew what we were getting into beforehand.

Like Star Wars, The Force Awakens, this is a fan made game trying to use a winning formula, only worse: they didn't understand why the original worked.