Recent reviews by Xengre

Can't pause these long cutscenes. This is absolutely reason enough to not recommend for me. Respect my time.

The base game was mostly good aside from being simply too short. They consistently run short of content to a degree its hard to say quality > quantity because you at least need a certain amount of quality "quantity" to be satisfying.

The DLC, however, could be simply called nothing short of a money grab for its price and limited content.

It consists of:
- 3 main missions, of which only 1 is even remotely decently designed while the other two feel simply thrown together.
- 3 mini missions comparable to about 1/6th or so of a main mission to act as interactive connecting points for the three main missions. One of those mini missions is, in fact, not a mission but a walking simulator cutscene.

The story that occurs is not particularly good or entertaining, feeling less as a dive into Aiko's past and character and more of simply nothing less than an "excuse" for the DLC to exist. Its extremely minimal and rough, leaving me not recommending it ever at full price and even on sale it really depends on just how much you really like the game...

I don't really advocate for supporting this kind of behavior from developers as its nothing less than Code Vein's DLC all over again. The price is, frankly, insanity at full price for no effort to develop. It, literally, costs half the price of the main game for something that likely took them less than a 10th of the effort to create compared to the main game.

Is this a terrible game? No, but I would not recommend to most.

Story: The story was written for kids. No, I'm not joking and this is not an exaggeration. It was truly written for kids 10 and under. I'm completely serious. This ranges from plot elements to dialogue. It is too basic and childish with an extremely reserved story and dialogue. Don't expect much from the story. Due to this issue among others the pacing is incredibly poor, so much so the game is frequently termed "play for an hour before bed slow burn" by its community. I'm not going to call it outright awful, but mediocre and probably not to most people's taste when better options exist, or just period, mark it unappealing. There are also times where the story simply makes major mistakes like the handling and transition of events leading to being jailed leading the player to range from being confused to extremely so making best judgement assumptions about the situation due to poor handling.

Characters: Main character is totally silent leading other characters, notably Erik, to produce supporting dialogue that comes off almost redundant, obviously as intended for a younger audience to clarify events/story. Character's are not awful but are certainly absolute tropes and rather bland if not obnoxious. It should also be pointed out that English dub dialogue and voice acting come with an extremely overwhelming Engrish accent prejudiced on less educated communities and not something you would see typically in modern times in most areas. It comes off as incredibly jarring and obnoxious, but also has a bit of natural warmth so mileage will vary to extremes from player to player. Dialogue is also very kiddy styled.

Combat / Gameplay Mechanics: Combat is very easy, so much so that the famous recommendation is unanimously set the game to harder mode. Unfortuantely, this requires you to progress hours into the game to unlock it then restart then and there and make up hours of progress to get back to that point and continue on hard. Let me put it this way... You can control all characters but the default setting is you only control the main character while the AI is set to automatically pick its moves on its turn plus the AI doesn't know how to use skills correctly at all (such as inflict status effect then transition to skill x6 dmg on status induced foe, but rather just spams x6 dmg skill on no status effect for x1 dmg output instead... or doesn't use it ever if target has status effect applied). Despite this the game is hilariously easy and practically impossible to lose during combat. Its mechanics are also inconsistent like how AoEs are handled and it has a constant spam power up mode (kiddified I kid you not, feels like power rangers vibes) via Pep Up which happens overly frequently while being uncontrollable random except very very later on. The grid skill system is virtually unengaging and further troubles the game's pacing issue with its own design and slow burn growth and low impact vs very extreme impact unlocks. World exploration is visibly nice but clearly designed from a sheer padding intent rather than truly meaningful, immersive, or fun.

Music: Very loud. Unless you want to go deaf you will have to turn it down when you start playing. Personally, I had to turn it from 100% to 30% just to bring it even remotely close to 100% other sound/dialogue because it is so uneven and so absurdly loud. Music is also totally and utterly unimpressive as well as forgetful.

I'll not call it a bad game, but I would certainly not recommend it. Most likely, kids or already established fans are the type of audience it will appeal to most. I've always avoided the franchise until now precisely because I had these very concerns about this and I'm sad to say despite coming in with a fully open mind it proved me far more correct in my initial concerns than I could have ever believed. Perhaps the other games aren't all like this but this one has done enough damage to deter me from the rest of the franchise without considerable reason to change my mind in the future.

Good idea, dreadful execution.

I've finished the majority of the game on my no kill playthrough, also my first playthrough. Here are my thoughts:

Story - miserably uninteresting. What you're actually here for is the world and its various character plots. Unfortunately, these are not much better. Nearly every existing character is screwed up in some way. There are almost no 'normal' characters in this world. I'd go so far as to say 'almost' everyone is either a terrible person, or at the very least not that good of a person. I do not feel passion from this story but as if it was just something acting as a means to an ends to support the world/gameplay elements.

Lore - they try. They certainly do, but it is rarely applied in a meaningful way and just serves as a backdrop to a rather flat story and cast.

Characters - Terrible if I were to be completely frank. They're all quite terrible, aside from the main character, Elizabeth, and Charlotte to an extent... but they have their own problems. Perhaps my biggest issue is this romance that sweeps in from total left field and is so awkward and unbelievable I can't help but laugh. Perhaps there was suppose to be so much more to the story but it got cut in development so this didn't develop properly, like at all...? One could only wonder, but I legitimately could not understate how nonsense the romance is.

Gameplay - Playing most of the game in vampiric vision mode to see enemies, that can teleport and do massive dmg so they don't get the drop on you, and for finding NPCs, blood, and other stuff is a real downer. They could have designed the vampiric senses so much better. This severely hurts the game's atmosphere and enjoyability and leaves you half blind due to the grayscale visuals in a dark world. Loot and finding stuff is a seriously uninteresting loop. NPC quests is simply as bland and seemingly unrewarding as it gets never once feeling worth my time or interest.

Combat - Doing a pacifist playthrough means you are cranking up the difficulty because almost all of the exp is from feeding on finite named NPCs. NPCs are worth a rather extreme amount of exp to the point of total overkill. Meanwhile a pacifist run might earn the exp of 5-10 NPCs in an entire playthrough. A rather staggering difference. Despite this, most of the upgrades are actually rather terrible so this doesn't impact difficulty much as the game remains quite easy even as pacifist. Often a base point or two in something is all that really matters and beyond that is a waste. Exceptions are health and stamina, both of which are absolutely mandatory to heavily upgrade and make massive difference despite being passive elements. Take the offensive skills for instance. They have nice damage, or so they appear, but the scaling is heinous after the first point despite the amount of exp required to level them further. The final upgrade is merely "soso" despite being a considerable upgrade from the immediate prior skill level indicating just how poor scaling is until that final upgrade. That final upgrade is also locked behind character level so you can't even rush it meaning even earlier in the game it isn't good to learn them aside from 1-2 points. Most skills, including the AoE shadow skill, are simply inferior to melee weapons and guns which do really strong dmg when upgraded properly and are simply superior later on. You're better off simply rushing health + stamina to absolute max and then health recovery meaning virtually all unique vampire skills/tactics are moot in a vampire game even if you did have the exp. Combat is basic attack/dodge loops and there really isn't a ton of thought necessary on how to proceed. There are a ton of rather considerable flaws with the combat I could nitpick but I can't be bothered to waste my time here.

Bugs - This game has too many glitches all this time later. They're small ones but they are annoying. The worst one I encountered was the no rats bug and the face away from enemy bug which couldn't be fixed without dying (no matter lock/unlock my character would always forcibly face away from the enemy during one encounter and I thus couldn't actually hit them so I had to eventually just let them kill me to fix it).

The game feels like a prototype for an idea that could have been more and thus feels unfinished along with the clearly missing quality unenjoyable enough that I don't think I will finish the last little chunk of the game. I cannot recommend the game. Maybe they will improve on their next title, but the lack of passion here leaves me doubtful.

A unique taste... but not necessarily good.

I had been excited to try this game but kept forgetting about it. I decided to try it out and had read some very mixed reviews about it but player hype gave me the impression stuff was exaggerated on all accounts, especially with the very positive score. Thus I finally tried it out and... I was completely disappointed.

The art is good, if not for some caveats with the quality of some of the art. The music is acceptable. The rest is... very mixed to bad. In fact, it was so outrageously bad, with some caveats, that I actually did not get far into the game before quitting and writing this review and I will try to be unbiased in my presentation because in most circumstances a very incomplete review can be unreliable and often biased.

The dialogue, and what I was seeing of the story, is bad. In fact, it is so bad it almost warrants being illegal and its own meme for bad, and then furi bad. Surely I'm exaggerating right? YouTube it if you don't believe me. Even worse, the game's boss fights are split up in such a way that you are forced to deal with it as only a few tiny segments can be skipped while the rest you must hunch back old man style slow walk as the awful dialogue spews out, with the horrible camera angles, and uneventful snorefest commencing.

Then you have the combat... This could absolutely change later on so keep a reserved opinion about it but from what I've tried the game is not at all "difficult" and, in fact, calling it difficult because of actual designed difficulty would be an insult to the concept of difficult games. Keep in mind this is on the default Furi (normal) difficulty because, for some reason, the game locks Furier out until you beat this bland game at least once. Counters and boss patterns are incredibly forgiving. In fact, 90% of the combat is just knowing the boss patterns (which explains why they supposedly change it up some on Furier to give new patterns and why it seems the consensus is that, from what I've read, furier isn't much harder just new patterns...).

The game throws out some artificial difficulty by things like... The patterns change and the boss will simply enter an invulnerable (yellow) state and then jump off screen and then moments later teleport on top of you in a cutscene style pounce animation where she then hits you for multiple hits to your health bar. There is no visual cue playing out after she vanishes. This isn't clever design. You simply are almost guaranteed to eat the hit and then you have to "guess" and "test" at a possible risk of being hit again, or dying, and guess correctly with half random timing. Ta-da! You found out if you wait an estimated 0.5s and press dodge you dodge the ability! You likely took damage during this process at some point learning this pattern! This is just poor design. Fortunately, at least in Furi difficulty the game is very lenient on health, even ignoring the ability to heal in right conditions, and it even heals you up after beating a phase of the boss (one of its life bars, I think you have some as well under your own it looks like but never confirmed). Still this is not good design and if it happened during the end of a life you would simply die to it and along with other stuff it can add up. The physics detection is very bad with dash which causes another artificial difficulty increase. I don't have an issue with the delay like some, nor am I making a mistake and getting hit by bad dashing. The dash, in fact, is definitely taking hits at times when you've cleanly dodged and it is very visible because your body isn't anywhere near it especially if you record and slow down and watch the non-existent contact. In addition, it should grant invincibility frames during the dash but it definitely does not to certain attacks which can, I found in testing, consistently hit you even with very long range dashes vastly overstepping their collision area but the game tells you otherwise and there is no way to know what can be dashed and what cannot without trial and error similar to the prior complaint, free dmg potentially being built up and thus purely about patterns and information of quirks... The parry, at least on Furi, is cool and very forgiving with a noticeable delay and white glow when it is something that can be parried but, again, a boss might have a phase where it does 3 hits and then suddenly it will do 3 plus a very fast 4th hit in its pattern. This isn't a pattern mix-up but simply it shifts to the 4 hit pattern and exclusively uses it from then on but nothing visibly obvious like a phase shift leads into this change so it is... once again a really odd free source of dmg from the boss.

There are other sources of frustration with the mechanics that just make it less fun and more ideal to play in safer manners. The Strike charge is rarely worth the effort in normal movement phases, and often in restricted still feels like a gross waste (especially since normal attack combos are so effective there anyways) due to the boss often breaking it with a teleport or gaining instant invulnerability because it is pissed you took the effort to make this strike charge and found an opening to land it on them. The AI, quite literally, cheats to avoid it making it often not very effective in my testing compared to normal combos. There are odd cases in the melee restricted phase of the fight where the enemy uses its 4 hit combo pattern but then will stop after 1-2 hits randomly like it had an actual brain freeze and just stand there which is extremely jarring and lets you get free hits on it, though it often then breaks out of your combo (which is also jarring) in anywhere from 1-4 hits (even if you land all 4 hits for dmg it often will not take the mechanic knock down that is stated to apply and simply teleport...).

The first boss was easy enough, but the second boss was really bizarre. Due to its art design I initially thought it was a random turret type mob and not a boss and was very confused until I confirmed its health bar and then it changed patterns after losing its first life. It was excessively weak until its final life at which point it was still absurdly weak but some of the physics collision issues with dash came into play which was a bit annoying but not a big deal. The fight felt very wasteful. I also noticed a significant issue with the melee in the game which is that it randomly whiffs the air which caused some phases to take a tad longer than should. It seems like it typically tries to somewhat intelligently melee at the boss when you are near but there are times it forcibly melees at an odd angle going past them and no matter how you try it can take several random angle whiffs before it starts going back on the boss. This was very bizarre and outright annoying.

The final phase of the boss is just you dodging until its pattern ends (you aren't allowed to hit it due to permanent invulnerability) and then after its pattern is survived you hit it once for a cutscene and win which is very anti-climatic tbh. It is basically the game's final rush attempt to make you auto lose with a large scale frenzy spam of insane attacks, that are more intimidating than bite. This occurred on each boss I tried and was lackluster finale.

The game isn't something I'm going to say is outright terrible, but it isn't something I can readily recommend to others, either. I would prefer a neutral rating than a no but Steam does not allow this and I do not feel it warrants a yes without being informed for the average consumer.

What I came in expected was a boss rush type of experience with a it of dialogue in between. What I got was excruciatingly horrible between battle cutscenes/story and slow walking that took way the heck longer than I was okay with (and I love Metal Gear Solid and Xenosaga scenes, but at least they aren't awful) and then battles that were often very bland, well overstaying their welcome as they have like 12 phases

One of the only games I've ever given a negative review. The hype surrounding this game by critics appears to very possibly be paid for because it doesn't make sense and the reviews do not match the game.

The story is terrible, supported by some good world building in documents and character Mr. Darling's video documentaries. Atmosphere is pretty bland, aside from the world building and some of the layout based on that world building.

The actual level design is exceedingly bland and repetitive.

Enemies are very basic and boring requiring very little strategy, especially with the existence of the very overpowered Launch skill and Rocket Launcher. This typically results in the following basic strategies:
- Launch spam to instantly nuke everything.
- Launch spam on tougher enemies to nuke them quickly coupled with rocket launcher/sniper/shotgun to assist in damage, stagger, and bring down or keep shields disabled. No dodging necessary as this stunlocks them and most attacks can be caught with... you guessed it, launch, and thrown back.
- Upgrade launch as a priority over everything with +10% energy to spam it 3x quickly and eventually recover energy. Nothing else can match this DPS except the rocket... launcher (see a correlation here? lol). Any other upgrades to energy add nearly no extra benefits and every other upgrade is second strictly to launcher, even more so now that the DLC adds further enhancements to it....
- Flying targets spam launch at them as they spawn and they die instantly most of the time. If they don't snipe them as they will try to dodge and usually 1-2 shot them. Proceed to mow down everything else per usual.
- Flying targets all have a basic attack pattern. Either they float there and charge up two projectiles (which the lowest level unbuffed shield perfectly blocks always) followed by you returning fire (this strategy is identical even with base unlocks at start and end of game). Alternatively, one type will physically charge to your location to body slam you which shield still stops...
- Rocket Launcher with large blast radius simply obliterates everything and with dmg buffs and dmg on kill buffs the damage simply outlcasses every other option, aside from launch. Factor in that its damage remains potent both in groups and single target and regardless of range while having three quick recharging charges and the only negative is the large range can nuke you if you underestimate it (completely non-issue in play).

Yes, the combat is that simple. You don't really need to dodge. You only use block for flying targets or the rare launch enemy if for some reason you didn't already stagger and/or kill them. 100%, not 99%, not 80%, etc. of the combat is literally standing in one spot (or levitating in one spot out of range of enemies) and nuking them or blocking a 1-2 hit attack on rare occasion (from very specific enemy types with slow patterns so it isn't even twitch based) and then nuking everything to oblivion while you stand there. That is all. If you are moving, dodging, using other methods you are either intentionally playing suboptimally for some unique taste of fun/challenge or you just aren't playing efficiently.

Weapon balance is very poor. Pistol/machine gun are truly awful (esp machine gun). The game doesn't lend well due to very odd targetting issues for headshots, despite multiple mods oriented towards it. Machine gun has ammo capacity issues which further hurt it utilizing some mods that could otherwise really boost it up. Sniper is good, but only because other options are so terrible by comparison. Shatter ranges from decent but inferior to other options to "did it glitch against that boss good?" Launcher starts out subpar but once you get a good enough blast radius upgrade it becomes incredible and it only gets more out of control as you get better upgrades to the extent nothing else is even remotely competitive aside from the launch power. Which would you choose for late game hordes of 30-50 enemies? Killing them one at a time, probably at mid range or up close on the ground in their range or having to dodge because you kill slowly with subpar single target damage? Or launching 5-10 rockets as things spawn in supported by some launch ability usage and killing everything before it can become a threat, aka the best defense is a good offense that kills everything instantly.

Powers, upgrades, mods? Boring. There is no thought here. Energy scaling is very poor. Since launch requires "up to 50 energy" you can thus launch with less. Therefore, the default 100 energy grants two launches and +10% energy (the first upgrade) grants a third launch. It will take almost a full energy skill tree upgrade to gain even one additional launch... and that amount of energy has no other benefit then arguably spamming dash... Health upgrades are great, but unnecessary especially since enemy design is so poor and everything should be dying instantly aside from bosses, which are also poorly designed. Shield needs the lowest level unlock and no upgrades as explained prior. It grants a dash hit effect that is... for really inefficient play. Use it only if you want a specific roleplay/limited inefficient playstyle. Levitation only needs the most basic unlock and upgrading it serves virtually no benefit even for combat due to lack of cooldown and terrain design in game. Launch goes from 1-shotting to guarantee 1-shotting and boss/mini-boss class nuking levels of damage, to AoE and nuking anything and everything galore later upgrades. Ground slam? Lol you are joking. Right? Mind control sounds cool except enemies that are controlled are very inefficient at both drawing aggro and even more at dealing damage, not to mention frequent terrain/obstacle constraints. In addition, their damage is very bad compared to yours and even with seize upgrades still puts you a bit at risk wasting time taking control when you can just kill them and be done by the time you take control of that one guy. Rare is it that you have enough enemies spawn to benefit from controlling vs simply wiping out the group of mobs. In addition, they got to be low enough HP to take control and most big guys require exceptionally low HP to the point you are more likely to accidentally kill them attempting this then taking control of them and anything else will be dead instantly anyways. The one exception, which isn't needed to begin with but you can if you reaaaaally want to is the giant orb can be controlled to grant infinite HP regain while fighting. Unfortunately, battles are too short to really care for this and you should be running the +HP recovery pickup mod anyways as it is the single most important one in the game and common since the very start and so many healing shards drop plus once you get used to combat everything dies before it can fight back anyways. Other mods... Actually, you could leave the other two mod slots on your body empty and it wouldn't matter with everything mentioned. Sad, really.

Graphics are highly praised but the extreme texture bug, that has a mod that can "maybe fix it" but also probably not and even cause problems which is why barely anyone has used it, makes the game look ancient. The game perpetually looks like it is from the wrong era. Old pre-2000 games look better than this game most of the time due to this bug if you play on DirectX 12, which is required to use ray tracing, so you get to pick between ray tracing with awful visuals or no ray tracing. This isn't a hardware limitation but a well known bug they have refused to fix.

A great example of a quality strategy stealth game that just barely misses the mark due to a lack of refinement.

The game offers a unique surprisingly high quality action stealth game that isn't forced into some turn based/grid system while also offering, arguably, both a superior tactical and stealth experience to most (or all) other similar games.

The game features a rather solid cast of good and bad characters, though the bad characters aren't quite as fleshed out. In addition, the story is interesting enough with some decent (though possibly somewhat obvious to some) twists to grab your interest.

Level design is fairly stellar offering a plethora of routes and playstyles with various achievements for the especially hardcore fans to pursue for additional playtime/challenge. The depth in the tactics, routes, and four combined characters and mechanics, assisted by the shadow mode, result in a lot of depth. Level design maintains surprisingly strong variety, balance, and opportunities. Each character features their own strengths and weaknesses that is well honed making no single character seeming to be particularly lackluster compared to the others.

The quick save and three recent saves system is very convenient, especially considering some bugs and other random incidents that it can help alleviate that would otherwise at times feel utterly unfair to some players.

In terms of flaws... The game struggles with controlling where characters move at times due to somewhat poor translation of cursor to ground when near various obstacles/walls, especially at certain angles to said subjects. It can also cause issues even when clearly clicking on an enemy. It isn't so severe you will struggle with it constantly but it is definitely a common enough occurrence that you will at least learn to work around it, without choice, and I doubt any player will be able to completely avoid it by sheer luck... almost even on a per level basis. Fortunately, ample quick saving/back up saves can alleviate problems that result from the messes this can create at times.

Pathfinding can be questionable at times as can enemy AI but mostly isn't an issue.

The shadow mode is a neat and useful feature but more advanced tactics, especially with certain actions and character specific unique delays post action can make things very awkward and cumbersome at times especially if you don't know why the game isn't doing what you think it should be until you realize things like the pistol's potent post action delay or Yuki's post kill delay compared to other characters. Juggling several characters at times can be a chore as can even performing multiple back to back quick actions on a single character, even when timing it properly with animation in mind, as the game seems to struggle at times swapping command or character properly. I wont claim it to be a horrible issue but it definitely can provide a fair degree of annoyance in some more strict timing scenarios and it isn't for a lack of PC specs/lag.

While no character feels lackluster or undertuned two characters definitely stand out as being excessively strong for the average player, though I argue value can shift for more challenge oriented/harder difficulty players due to exploitive tactics. Mugen's AoE and lure as well as his ability to deal with Samurai are all clearly a step above what other characters offer. In addition, Mugen can not only carry two characters but run to quickly hide them which is very useful at times despite his lack of stealth body carrying. This isn't even everything he offers. Takuma has the single, by far, greatest lure in the game aside from some extremely abusively exploitive tricks with Yuki that most will not notice or bother to try and use. It is an AoE long duration distraction that pulls guards, easily holds for an extended period of time, has massive range, is easier to use in shadow mode than any other lure, and has some other benefits. In addition, he basically grants the equivalent of "Pass go and collect your $200" when you encounter a difficult situation with his long range sniper rifle being largely a get out of stuck card. In fact, despite the fact that Takuma is so overpowered I went out of my way to avoid utilizing his sniper as much as possible and maintaining less than a 0.5 kills average over the course of the game I still found him to be 2nd only to Mugen. He does have some design limitations to make him not seem excessively ridiculous but they don't typically mean much at all. In addition, he can allow speed running or really easy solutions to some of what should be hardest moments in the entire game virtually bypassing chunks of levels or a boss outright if you can figure out how to capitalize on him. Despite this, I don't think this will bother most players but I felt it is worth pointing out.

Perhaps my biggest complaint is a lack of content. The game excels for the most part... until it ends. At only 13 levels, and for those who are particularly good at games like this, it might feel a bit on the short side... almost to the extent it feels like there definitely should have been several more levels but due to how the story plays out you know it properly completed. This leaves me feeling a bit mixed. In the end quality can trump quantity but if they had even extended the content by 50% more I think it would have made for a substantially stronger offering. Even more so if it went beyond that. Another issue with the content is, while it definitely offers a number of challenges and playstyles, the game isn't exactly rewarding or engaging in a way that most players will ever actually engage in a level more than once or those challenges. There are no unlocks, progression upgrade system, or anything else to really drive this element home. Some of the challenges, while certainly not impossible, do ask a lot and can prove time consuming or tedious in a somewhat possibly unfun way except for especially hardcore fans. This is definitely something that can be improved on in future iterations... if there is any hope of a future one in the first place.

Honestly, I certainly recommend this game and think the dev earned praise. I don't think its worth $39.99 frankly due to content being too short, even if complex and high quality. It truly is too short, imo. However, a price tag of $24.99 might not be too far fetched, and any sell for $9.99 and less is absolutely a steal. A few tweaks to content and some type of perk/upgrade system/replayability value (that is meaningful...) could have gone a long way to bumping up that price tag value.

A solid, though flawed, step in the right direction for the Ys series.

Story:
The story is decent but relatively weak, overall, with events largely intended to give the player a direction to go more than offering depth. In fact, aside from a minor side story in earlier chapters, there isn't really any significant story until the last two chapters of 6 chapters total. The core of that story, at that, takes placed in a segregated past where you only really have control of a single character thus stepping away from the MC and crew, though not entirely. It has a solid twist later on though hardly unexpected. I will warn you that, unless you are willing to do the extra objectional quests and exploration, the main ending is downright disappointing. The true ending, which is easy enough to get as long as you do extra stuff and you don't really have to worry about permanently missing it if you do the quest board tasks as they come in, is far better and one of the best moments in the story. Don't expect anything special here compared to actual developed JRPG stories, but it does what it must to support the gameplay and isn't by any means bad. It is imbalanced with most of it coming in at the end (easily 80%+), but it is more significant than prior Ys entries. Story never really was the main reason people came to a Ys game, anyways.

Lore/cross-over tie-ins:
You get Adol coming in as one of the MCs once again, along with his partner Dogi. Dogi, however, is busy taking care of the camp and thus does not join you for any fighting, instead managing operations at base. You see some small references to other events involving Adol and locations mentioned, but otherwise only have Dogi and another great cameo, albeit minor, from Cecelta late in the game. Lore is nearly non-existent until the end of the game with small tie-ins to gods. While Yggdrassil is well handled, mostly, though it buckles plot wise near the end this is probably one of the weakest Ys entries when it comes to established tie-in lore and even its own lore, doing very little to develop and make it relevant beyond an incredibly basic plot device.

Characters:
Characters bring a ton of charm to the game due to a cast of nearly 30 characters really helps make up for the otherwise imbalanced and overall weaker story. The main cast are particularly notable and come off rather well crafted, mostly, though there is some inconsistency in the approach of romantic interests and treatment of the primary side female heroine who joins at the start once Dana becomes relevant. However, for much of the game this character is well done. Her and Sahad, in particular, really help flesh out the otherwise silent Adol quite a bit in terms of feeling like a living breathing person. Hummel and Ricotta are sleeper prized additions to the cast as they add a great deal of flavor and some of the best moments/dialogue. Dana, the main female heroine and composing the core of the story, is easily the most well developed character though her and some supporting characters/story bits hit some hiccups in logic along the way, though most may not notice. Almost all extra characters are a welcome addition aside from one particularly obnoxious noble.

Combat:
If you are familiar with the Ys party system know that it is improved in this one and feels a lot smoother, though it does have its flaws. The slash/pierce/strike system still exists but swapping between characters, the break state which opens them to all damage types as long as party helps build break, and the effectiveness of most party members is pretty good. Any character you aren't controlling actively is granted immortality along with damage reduction so they don't drop to 1 HP too easily letting you have a chance to swap and not constantly be at 1 HP but making sure they don't just constantly die in combat, either. Ricotta is, unfortunately, well known to be pretty much gutter trash tier and that could actually be considered being far too nice. In fact, some of her skills are so bad they literally have a 100% miss rate unless used in unrealistic situations making them unusable and the others are just bleh. She can still be used, she just falls short compared to most of the other options for the most part, especially as she shares the strike damage type with Sahad who is arguably exceedingly broken aside from his slower movement speed (which is non-issue for bosses/harder enemies with flash and evasion guards and really only annoying for moving through an area fast or farming). Sahad's Str stat scaling is um... Yeah, okay its broken. Sorry. It is EXTREMELY BROKEN. It pushes somewhere around 50-100% higher Str stat than everyone else and even as Adol if you pumped every Str elixer you could get your hands on until the final boss (without farming them infinitely at the end of the game). His HP is quite high, too, and he has many superb skills for team fights, powerful enemies, bosses, and support/utility purposes. He has CC, he has massive range and AoE, he can break, he can spam, and he has insane damage. If it weren't possible to get Force Edge and Brave Charge for Adol and get damage high enough to spam them for adequate damage it would be no contest. Sahad would be the strongest powerhouse. Hummel does have a spammable overpowered skill that lets you avoid damage and get a free counter hit, though, if one were struggling and wanted to abuse it but otherwise is a largely subpar character that has aiming issues with many of his abilities. The rest of the cast are decent with solid skills, though Dana is well liked and decent in combat she is actually not particularly effective as a fighter for any goal be it solo and especially as a party. She can fight but she qualifies as "average" in every single sense of the word. Her most popular and coolest looking form is especially weak and due to the excessive animations makes her vulnerable to retaliation. However, coupled with two other decent characters it doesn't matter much and you can enjoy playing as or using her. For her own story event solo fights she is flexible and those fights are intentionally designed around her, though due to her poorer damage they can be a bit drawn out (tho she has the coolest fight in the game, imo, during the last health bar of a certain ruins boss reveal which pairs well with her otherwise usually irrelevant speed). It is completely possible to have both Adol and Dana in the same party (when you do finally get her which is way to late in the game tbh). Flash guard and evasion guard exist and neither should. They completely break difficulty so opt to not use them if you want challenge.

RPG elements:
- Skills are way more reasonable to level in this game than prior but still serve virtually no real combat benefit over unleveled.
- Weapons can't be upgraded ahead of time due to progression limiations making their impact feel largely invisible.
- Materials are largely pointless except for collectors for nearly any purpose involving them and about 98% of the crafting.
- Base upgrades could not have been more poorly implemented and really serves to passively boost points and add minimal to non-existent depth.

Bosses:
The bosses are primarily horribly designed either being lazy duplicates, simply too basic, or incapable of posing a meaningful threat in this 3D game featuring an evasion button and too many weak angles, much less flash guard which breaks them entirely. The final and true final boss are pretty sorry, too, but the final post-game dungeon boss is decent if not very underpowered for what he should be. There are, perhaps, three half decent Ys inspired bosses (two of which are optional...) which is unfortunate.

I have to end it here because my review is too long for Steam's character limit, sadly.

The environment and enemies seem to be far better so far in my first 10 minutes of play, however, due to the overwhelmingly flawed technical aspects of the demo it should have never been released in this state even as a demo. It is bad enough I can't reasonably justify getting the game immediately day 1 at release.
- Incredible freezing at random (extremely common in menus, but as game goes on it starts occurring during non-menu play as well) and it actually isn't an issue with my PC.
- Game's audio settings are wack (TV? No speaker option?)
- Awful mouse speed in menu
- Cutscenes getting extremely out of sync with audio due to the freezes
- Did not boot application correctly (froze severely during even that)
- Menu didn't always register clicks even when not freezing, including space bar presses like it wasn't sure if something was highlighted at times.
- Dodging zombies or luring them then turning too sharp can result in them becoming effectively dumb, even for a zombie, running in a straight line in the direction they were already heading into a wall for a good moment (maybe 5-15 seconds, didn't thoroughly test but it kept happening before I quit due to the lag after clearing enemies past donut shop).
- The LMB when being grabbed seems to not even work no matter how many times I tested it so I've no idea what exactly it should be doing.

Additional issues:
- What the heck is wrong with Jill's personality and behavior? Her attitude and way she talks to people makes no sense. She comes off as a bratty punk and frankly totally untrustworthy because of how bad her demeanor is. She makes even Carlos seem quite proper... just the way he looks at her dumb comments in the first cutscene because of how bad she came off was incredible cringe on her part because I was looking at her the same way.
- Knife is unbreakable... really? Why?
- Dodge is cool, especially dodge melee but it is very ineffective as the damage is a pathetic. Dodge shoot forces the reticles to remain pretty much maxed meaning you are better off dodging then waiting for slo-mo to end then shooting for heightened damage and far better ammo preservation and crit rates while the dodge merely covers distance when attacked in this case as a pure defensive option rather than offensive.
- Lightning box is spammable it seems which is rather overpowered and didn't seem to have any negative impact when used by you fairly close. Did not thoroughly test how often or how close I could use/be to it in detail though.

Sadly, due to the severe technical issues I can't be bothered to finish the demo. Simply not worth my time in its current state and I was very much looking forward to this one as my possible all time fav RE game.

I want to recommend it. I really do but it is simply too buggy to wish this on anyone. We aren't talking small dismissible but game breaking bugs that can either force you to restart the entire game or hours back if a lucky auto-save exists before the bug.

The one I ran into was related to Spider Splicer bodies vanishing and you need to take three pictures, but if you don't realize one is a Spider Splicer before you kill it and then focus on the chaos of other people killing you only to look for it later when the body has already vanished permanently locking you in place as that enemy will never respawn. Some people get a lucky auto-save around that point just before the bug, I did not for whatever reason (mine was at the very very start of the level... several hours back).

This is only one of many game breaking bugs I've seen mentioned to be well known on the forums. It is unfortunate, because the game is reasonably entertaining if not for them (though definitely overrated I feel, but still quite decent).