Recent reviews by 「GEAR † HEAD」

Imagine GG1 levels of balance but esports-ified and with none of the aesthetic, fun or soul. That's Strive.

Don't worry! Surely the next balance patch will fix it for real this time! I promise!

As of April I have fully completed Labyrinth of Galleria: The Moon Society. This includes finishing the main story, getting the true ending from the post-game segment, collecting any noteworthy equipment and having 100% of all map tiles in all dungeons filled in. I am keeping the original review intact at the bottom of this page because everything I wrote there is still mostly relevant.

What You NEED to Know Before Buying
In the original review, at about 10 hours into the game, I expressed that the dungeon design was a significant step up from the previous game, Labyrinth of Refrain. While that part of the game still holds true, the most important thing to know and understand going in is that the first dungeon is not indicative of all other dungeons in the game.

After a certain point in the story, you will be tasked with exploring a sequence of new dungeons for the rest of the game. With the exception of two small areas near the end of the game, the new dungeons from this point on are completely randomized with procedural generation combined with several checkpoint floors that stay static. These procedurally generated dungeons make up the majority of the game's content. Story beats will unfold when progress to certain floors are met.

While the idea is interesting as a kind of side content option, like the Item World in Disgaea, I personally grew very tired of the random dungeons very quickly. The reason why this is important to bring up now is that the reason why the game switches to random dungeons 1/8th of the way through is because the game is literally unfinished and a deep dive into the game's files show that A LOT of content was cut over the course of development. While I don't personally see this as a deal breaker, if that does not sound like something you would enjoy, you should stop reading the review now and avoid purchasing this game. If that doesn't bother you, then I still very much recommend Galleria.

That being said, Galleria feels like "one step forward and two steps back" from Refrain. For all the QoL improvements Galleria has over Refrain, Refrain feels like the more completed game.

Who I would Recommend this to

• People who are fans of NIS developed games (Disgaea, Makai Kingdom, Soul Nomad, ect. ect.)
  
• People who have played/enjoyed the first game in this series; Labyrinth of Refrain.
  
• Fans of the DRPG genre (Stranger of the Sword City, Etrian Odyssey, mainline SMT games such as Soul Hackers and Strange Journey ect. ect.) that are looking for another game to enjoy in what is ultimately a niche genre.

Who I would Not Recommend this to

• People that found the first game too complex.
  
• People who can't deal with a game having blatantly unfinished content.
  
• People who strongly dislike procedural generation in games
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• People who do not enjoy finishing all side-quests in a game (Galleria's side quests are NOT optional, despite being presented as such)
  
• People that hate having to have a guide open in another tab when playing a tricky/complex game

I am still playing this game and have not finished it yet. I will give a more detailed review when I am finished with the game. If the game length is comparable to the first game; Labyrinth of Refrain, then this will take some time. However I am 10 hours in at the time of writing and feel confident enough to give this game a basic recommendation so far. I have played the first game to completion and much of what I am currently writing assumes that the reader at least has a passing familiarity with that game. This review may look very different by the time I complete the game.

What I like about the game so far.
1. Character creation has much more options for character builds, most notably the ability to pick two natures to affect growth rates instead of one.

2. Lots of additional options for aesthetic customization at the character generation screen like the ability to select alternate color pallets or write in a character's favorite creature/food/item/behavior/misc.

3. General re-balancing of certain classes compared to the first game. Classes that were nerfed for being too overpowered in the first game are re-balanced but still feel strong. Most notably so far are the Theatrical Star (Dancer) and Marginal Maze (Wizard).

4. New mechanics such as Liberation add much more team building options as well as add another layer of depth ontop of the combat system that the previous game had created as a base.

5. The over all art direction is fantastic and what I've come to expect out of Harada's work by now.

6. The Soundtrack is equally as fantastic, as fitting for Tenpei Sato; the composer of many NIS game scores and one of the best musicians in the industry IMO.

7. Voice acting in both the dub and sub are good. I am currently playing with the dub but like the first game, Galleria had actual voice direction which helps it avoid the pit of Funimation style mediocrity that most English dubs of Japanese media find themselves in these days.

8. From what I can tell, the translation seems to be faithful to the original Japanese script. Although I had noticed a singular instance of a monster named "The Unsettling ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥" translated as "Chinhead". It feels less like an instance of censorship and more like a bilingual joke using a certain innuendo regarding a word referring to the male genitalia in Japanese and a similar sounding word in English (please correct me if I'm wrong about this in the comments, while I am learning, I am not fluent in Japanese yet). The art itself is uncensored as are all art assets that I have discovered so far. Faithful translations are becoming an issue for those that enjoy Japanese media these days and I am thankful that I have not noticed any issues with this game so far, in that regard.

9. While I am still early on in the game, so far I have noticed an immediate jump in quality with how the dungeons are designed. Refrain had good but basic dungeons with a few notable standouts such as the Towers of Umbra. Galleria matches Refrain's peak right out of the gate and the dungeons have an intricate "puzzle box" style of design and progression that I personally love in this genre of game.

10. You can leave custom notes on the map as well as browse the grid on the map with a cursor for easy navigation.

What I don't like about the game so far
1. There is significantly less space for flavor text when creating characters as well as certain special characters such as † no longer being supported by the in game text. While this isn't a big issue and most can safely ignore it, roleplaying identities for the characters you create is a huge draw of the genre for me and the previous game; Refrain, was able to accommodate a larger character limit for this same purpose.

2. Much like the first game, I wish the FOV when exploring the dungeon was wider. The screen is a bit claustrophobic for my tastes and it can lead to me resorting to navigate solely by the minimap at times. I doubt NIS would add this as an update, but I would really appreciate an option to reposition the HUD and FOV to both make the dungeons more visually easy to navigate and allow me to take in the environment design aesthetics that the devs worked so hard to make.

It's the same great game it's always been, but as of right now the price is beyond ridiculous.

For reference, NIS has also been porting remasters of their PS2 library to Steam, however their pricing model is significantly better.
For example, Disgaea 2 PC contains a complete remaster including all content from every edition of the game including content previously only available to the Japanese version of the game. This is all on a PS2 game with an average of 100+ hours of playable content for $19.99.

What SMT III Nocturne offers is the same PS2 release with updated lighting effects, upscaled resolution and content from different editions of the game chopped up into DLC making the price for the completed game $69.99. Which is high on the scale of pricing for new AAA games released today but for a PS2 game that can still be purchased digitally on other storefronts for less than 1/3rd of that price.

I want to support Atlus in porting their old libraries to Steam, but this price is pure exploitation. When it drops to about $29.99 or equivalent, then it's an instant recommend but as of right now I cannot in all good faith recommend the game at this time.

Literally all they had to do was not censor or change anything and it would have been a perfect remaster. But I guess that was just too much for them. I'm genuinely not looking forward to Skunkape games touching any other season of the Telltale run of Sam & Max.

That being said I do think it's still worth playing this version with the Bosco VA restoration mod or downloading the optional free launcher to play the original version which has been optimized to work better on modern Operating Systems.

This game is dumb, Bioshock 2 is better and I fugged Ken Lavine's mom :DDDDDDD

Remember kiddo, you're only casual if you give up.

At this point I highly doubt this review will add anything that you don't already know from other reviews but it seriously merits repeating.

REmake 3 outright did not actually "re make" about 60% of the content of the original game and replaced it with nothing. Resulting in a full price $60 game that most people will finish in 4 to 5 hours only to realize it has no replayability. I finished my first playthrough on hardcore mode in about 6 hours so please keep in mind that my review is based on that.

I'll just get straight to it and list what was outright not included from the original (expect spoilers):

- Most of the city streets (Gas station, parking garage, pharmacy, almost every alley, City Hall) the demo shows off about 90% of the streets area in the final product.
- Clock Tower, you see it and have a boss fight right outside, but the entire map was cut.
- Raccoon City Park
- The Graveyard
- Dead Factory (the finale is replaced with Nest from REmake 2, it's even literally called NEST 2 in the game)
- The RPD building is still in but you go there as Carlos instead

- Brad's death. He gets bit and turns off screen then shows up later where he bites Marvin in a George Lucas tier "things that didn't require an explanation" tier moment
- Nemesis shooting down the escape chopper outside the clock tower
- No secret ending where Barry gets a cameo at the end (no ending changes at all)
- The handgun is not the STARS Samurai Edge Beretta 92FS (technically not a moment but that was the gun that got me interested in firearms IRL so I'm counting it here)
- Original intro cutscene from the PSX game is not remade and a FMV news cast is used instead.

- Crafting ammo with gunpowder will not create advanced versions of ammo after a certain amount of times crafted like in the original. If you wanted to do a run with a shotgun only with the exploding shells like in the original, or any other kinds of mono weapon runs then you're ♥♥♥♥ out of luck.
- Freeze grenades were cut entirely
- as mentioned before there are no alternate endings, if you wanted to see Barry at the end then sorry he's not in the game at all
- no scenario changes (Mikhail dying early, ect.)
- enemy spawns are not randomized from two to three different encounters like they were in the original. The way an enemy group spawns in a room will always be the same. This severely effects replayability.
- No black and white freezeframe choices, while I'll admit this was never an amazing feature of the original it added some degree of playthroughs proceeding differently which is something this game definitely needs as it's starved for content enough as is.

The one thing people were looking forward to the most after REmake 2 was comparing how a hypothetical Nemesis would work compared to Mr. X in REmake 2. Sadly Nemesis also suffers from barebones design.

- Nemesis can only spawn in at certain points in the story to stalk the player. This only happens twice and he cannot spawn in at random in some areas like in the original
- Nemesis will only use the rocket launcher as a specific setpiece chase that lasts less than two minutes
- Nemesis will not use weapons at all outside a boss fight and the above mentioned setpiece
- Nemesis is much easier to down than in the original games. The items he drops are attachments to already existing guns instead of parts to a new weapon
- Nemesis in general is barely in the game he appears for two very short sections before mutating into a more animalistic form, thus wasting his one unique quality as being a zombie with semi-sentience
- Nemesis has very awkward animations with his new gimmick where he uses his tentacles to swing around like he's Spiderman.
- He doesn't seem to aggressively stalk the player at all and his AI is very passive

- Gravedigger
- Brain Sucker
- Drain Demos
- Sliding Worm
- Giant Spider
- Infected Crows
- Hunter β (To be fair hunters as they appeared in RE1 are present instead)

While zombie dogs were not cut, only four appear in the entire game on hardcore mode. Two of which are during a scripted escape sequence, the other two of which are at the very end of the game.

That about sums it up really. While the dodge mechanic working and even being fun is nice, the game is too rushed and incomplete in all other areas so the few enjoyable parts of the game are in service of nothing. The first and final red flag should have been how quickly this game was announced after the success of REmake 2 with a release date alongside the announcement.

It's a real shame that RE3 has to be the one with the bad remake because it's not only my favorite Resident Evil game but in my top 10 list of favorite games made in general. It's essentially a remake that doesn't actually *re make* more than half of the original game.

Maybe if this had more time to be finished and released sometime next year it could have been something good. But unless Capcom is about to take the game off the store page and spend the next 4 to 6 months actually finishing the content, then I STRONGLY suggest that you avoid this game. It's starved for content and not worth even half of the $60 price tag.

There is absolutely no reason to play this over the original, which is still widely available in digital formats as well as a fan made restoration of the PC port floating around online for free. If you really insist on giving Capcom any money for a remade RE game, then your money and time is better spent on the Remastered version of the first Resident Evil Remake.

(Review text hidden)

Have you ever played an H game and just let the window stay open in the background so you can listen to the dope ragtime OST from the recollection room? Well it was a first for me and while I've played a a lot of hentai games, my dudes, I ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ love me some ragtime.

Time spent playing for intended purpose:

• 30 minutes

Time spent listening to ragtime while ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ on /biz/:

• 4 hours

Final Score: 10/10 - The game itself is also pretty good.

Ever wonder what fighting games look like through the eyes of a sniffposter and/or a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥? Well wonder no longer, SNK Heroines Tag Team Frenzy will reveal this forbidden knowledge once and for all!

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Story
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A gripping tale of one man's futile struggle against the cruel restraints of a cold world that crushes hopes and dreams alike. Romance, shocking twists, avantgarde characterization for only the most intelligent and cultured gamers, one very ominous tea set, and much more await you in this adventure of the human psyche. I will avoid spoilers for this review.

Story Score: 10/10

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Graphics
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Yes.

Graphics Score: 800,085/800,085

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Gameplay and Features
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• Pretend you know SNK Lore!
  
• Unique two button system with no low attacks or crouching lets you play one handed for unparalleled multitasking.
  
• Kukri is the best written and most relate-able protagonist in human fiction. He's like the Count of Monte Cristo but better and with sand.
  
• Lots of sand.
  
• Nobody is online which is perfect for a solitary badass that has no need for companionship, such as yourself.
  
• ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ endlessly about your main from <insert old SNK Fighting Game> that you totally played for real (no seriously) on Korean Moving Picture forums. Effectively derailing discussion and adding cute and funny pictures of said main to your collection with other, like minded patricians and men of culture.
  
• Become an SNK Veteran in 2 hours of playtime, then never touch this game again!

Overall Score: 10/10 and has earned the "It's pretty good" seal of approval.