Recent reviews by Nitro

So my original review at the time of purchase was just a riff on the paywalled Premium Adventure mode but now that I've completed it, proper review inbound:

Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth is the latest in the Yakuza/Like A Dragon series, and a direct sequel to Like A Dragon from 2020. For the uninitiated at its basic level the series is a third person open world exploration game with roleplaying elements, but that doesn't really do it justice. It's a very quirky, very Japanese series with consistently incredibly strong writing and characterization. To make matters more interesting Like A Dragon took a bold gamble by reinventing the series' real time combat into turn based combat, which worked way, way better than it should have.

Infinite Wealth builds successfully on everything that worked about Like A Dragon, and it's a fantastic followup to what I already consider one of the best games in the entire series alongside Yakuza 0.


Positives:
-The turn based combat is back and better than ever, incorporating a lot of helpful quality of life improvements that streamline everything. Movement during your turn is a nice touch, as is the ability to instantly win against weak enemy encounters.
-Honolulu is an amazing new location! It was bold to have a location outside of Japan given Kamurocho is often a series mainstay, but it pays off wonderfully. It's beautiful, vibrant, colorful and feels satisfying to explore with tons and tons of stuff to do. Yokohama and Kamurocho also make returns and not much about them has changed, which is why Honolulu feels so different and fresh.
-The story is stellar. LAD has always had a talent for great stories but they can get ridiculously convoluted at times. Infinite Wealth's story is much easier to follow and much better paced even as it features a lot of the intrigue and treachery that's come to characterize this series.
-Substories (side quests) deserve a special nod as different ones are both hilarious and genuinely heartfelt. There's a tremendous amount of heart and soul in this series and Infinite Wealth is no exception.
-Lots of amazing side activities. There's a food delivery game Crazy Taxi style that's a ton of fun and I put way more hours than I should have into the dating app, Miss Match. The standouts are Ichiban managing his own resort island, which I spent at least ten hours on, and Kiryu's bucket list activities. For the latter, without going into detail the way Kiryu is worked back into the game is fantastic.

Neutral:
-This one's more of a personal thing but I couldn't get into Sujimon. I like how they expanded it but I couldn't click with it. It just felt more distracting than anything.
-Dungeon design isn't objectively terrible but it actually feels like they could have done more with them.

Negative:
-It would have been nice to have a "save and quit" option mid-dungeon, as you can only use save points and a few of the later dungeons can really go on for a while, especially considering how tough the fights get.
-New Game+, aka Premium Adventure Mode, is paid DLC. For a feature that's been a trademark of the series for years it's lousy and incredibly disappointing.

Additional Details:
As of this review I've cleared the main story and Happy Resort Dondoko Island in about 55 hours and I'm still planning on going back for more. This is easily a game with 100+ hours of GOOD content - not just repetitive busywork, and the amount of things to do in the game really is staggering.

Optimization is great - I played this game on an RTX 2080 with an i7-9700k and the game never stuttered or lagged at all. As long as you meet the requirements you'll be fine.

Final Verdict (Anyone Should Buy, Genre Fans Should Buy, Wait For Sale, Avoid): Anyone Should Buy. It may be best to play the prior game first, but this is an amazing follow up and a worthy sequel!

Cavern of Dreams is a fun, indie spiritual successor to 3D platform mascot collectathons of the N64/PSX era such as Banjo-Kazooie and Spyro. The genre holds a place in my heart and I've played many, many of them. It's a shame that it feels like a dying breed sometimes, with only a few games being made by big budget studios such as Mario Odyssey or the Ratchet and Clank games. Fortunately a vibrant indie scene for platformers has sprung up to fill this void, and Cavern of Dreams feels like homage, tribute and spiritual successor all at once. It very much wants to forge its own path but hasn't forgotten its roots.

Positives:
-Gorgeous graphics! This is the sort of game that perfectly encapsulated how people perceived N64/PSX graphics back in the day, similar to what Shovel Knight did for 8-bit graphics.
-Level design and stages are a lot of fun. There are relatively few worlds (the hub world and four level worlds) given that this is an indie project without the production values you'd expect like Yooka-Laylee, but they're creative and fun to explore, especially the airship level.
-Lots of fun ways to collect eggs and other collectibles. Levels are detailed and have lots of signposting for you to mark something you might want to come back to later.
-Interconnectivity between the levels is cool and something none of the platformers of the N64/PSX era did.
-Very accessible. $13 is extremely reasonable as a price point and just about anyone can play this game regardless of skill level. Spec-wise this game can run on a potato so don't worry about needing a beefy PC.
-Without spoiling, the reward for getting all 40 eggs is a ton of fun.

Neutral:
-I'd have liked to see more emphasis on platforming. The platforming sections are some of the highlights of the game, and having as few of them as there are feels like missed potential.
-The music isn't bad, but it's not particularly memorable either. It makes the game feel a little muted compared to games like Banjo-Kazooie but it's not a dealbreaker by any means.

Negative:
-Even for third party platformers the camera has a habit of being your worst enemy and will get you killed.
-Controls are a little sticky, like the double jump ability seems to not trigger sometimes.
-Some of the eggs are very difficult to find and hidden in really obscure places to the point of seeming unfair.
-The final world felt a little padded and involved some backtracking to the point where it started to slog a little even with how relatively short the game is.
-Really minor but achievements don't seem to trigger, or at least they didn't for med.

Additional Details:
As of this review I've cleared the game after finding all 40 eggs in about six hours. If you don't care about completion you can clear it in 3-5 hours. I do plan on going back and collecting the trivia cards. Graphics options are limited but as I mentioned earlier the game run on any kind of PC under the sun so don't even worry about compatibility.

Final Verdict (Anyone Should Buy, Genre Fans Should Buy, Wait For Sale, Avoid): Anyone Should Buy. It may not be the most sophisticated 3D platformer but it's a wonderful way to get into the genre and I hope to see more from this developer!

The Heavy Bolter basically turns this entire game into the minigun scene from Terminator 2.

The most adorable ritual murder simulator ever.

It's okay everyone, Immortal Empires is out, you can forget all the pre-IE bad reviews!

If you're looking to just blast through the story mode you can do that in about 2.5 hours but there are a lot of really fun challenges to complete, plus there's arcade mode and three difficulties which does a lot for replayability. That being said come on, it's a side scrolling beat em up, it's really not fair to treat this as though it was going to be a 100 hour plus Bethesda game. It's a ton of fun and really feels like the long awaited successor/sequel, and it runs great!

We have a true successor to Harvest Moon now.

A wonderful sequel to the original!

I've been a fan of the Yakuza games ever since I played Yakuza 3 on a whim and fell in love. I adored 4 as well. I haven't played the later games in the series yet but I could kick myself for how long it took me to get to Yakuza Kiwami. It's like reuniting with an old friend. Kamurocho is rendered in the same style as the modern Yakuza games, and yes, while they did mostly copy it from the later games Yakuza isn't saturated enough to desperately need innovation. The game does a great job of balancing out tense, intriguing plots with epic Japanese silliness. It's a game that feels incredibly steeped in Japanese culture, much like the Witcher games are rooted in Polish-Slavic culture.

If you really want to see the scope of this remake, though, you should open up a PS2 longplay of the original Yakuza. When I compared the two side by side my mind was absolutely blown. Sega went all out on this remake to an insane degree, and it's great either for series fans or people just arriving since it's the first game.

Also, it has Goro Majima crossdressing.

Brilliant