Recent reviews by FirehawkV21

This is a rather fun incarnation of the Stadium version of Trackmania. The graphics look great, the game's well optimized for the most part and the new tracks are fun. I highly reccomend it.

Quick Note: At the time of this writting, I have completed 11 Campaign missions. I haven't completed the game yet.

Even though I enjoyed Assault Horizon (I think of it more like a game like Burnout rather than Forza Horizon in terms of gameply style), it's good to see a classic Ace Combat game releasing to the PC. And man, Project Aces did a home run with it. This is one of my favourites in the series, alongisde 5, 0 and 3 (the Japaneese release, not the "Arcade" International release). And it's set in Osea. Bonus points here.

Gonna put this out real quick: Holy mother of god! This is one the best optimized PC games I've ever played on a laptop. I have a laptop with an Intel Core i3-6006U (2GHz, Dual core with Hyperthreading), 8GB of RAM (dual channel) and two graphics cards: an Intel HD Graphics 520 and an AMD Radeon R5 M430. While I wasn't expecting the game to hit 60 fps right on, I was rather surprised that the game on Low settings (720p resolution) ran on my laptop at 45-50 fps. Especially since the game is beautiful, even at low settings (sans some effects, but hey, I'm on a budget build in the end). Yes, there are some areas where the game will chug (Mission 12 can really slow down when a lot of AA guns are firing), the game's lowest FPS was still above 30FPS. So, if you have a decent CPU with a decent GPU (preferably a dedicated one or an eGPU), the game will be playable to almost smooth. Nice work there.

Story wise, it's the good old "countries being at war". They did freshen up the story though. Not much to say there, in all honesty. Same thing with gameplay as well. Although, the Aircraft Tree is a bit annoying to navigate (at least with gamepad) and not a fan of it in general (not that it's bad, it's just that there were times that I wanted to sell aircraft I didn't want in the end but I couldn't). I do like that they carried over the parts system from Ace Combat X and Joint Assault, with the modification that you can equip various parts, rather than customising each part of the aircraft. And the clouds having gameplay benefits and drawbacks is also well done.

So... All in all, I highly reccomend it.

Technical Info:
Developer: Team Syukino
Engine: RPG Maker MV
Released: February 5th 2019

Intro
I am torn with this game. On the one hand, the game in theory is interesting (that being an arena RPG of sorts). On the other hand, the game is flawed to the point that it’s a boring, grindy and sometimes buggy mess.

Presentation:
For the most part, the game is quite nice looking. Although the darkness in the city makes it a bit difficult to navigate around. The bigger issue that I have with it, however, is that the game is uncohesive in areas. Characters come from two Resource packages, which make them mildly different art style wise. The music (at times) doesn’t fit. At times it plays a tune coming out from an Ancient Japaneese themed RPG, rather than a medieval fantasy RPG. Sometimes, breaking the immersion. And the UI could have been skinned so it fits better with the game’s theme. Technical issues also chip away from the presentation as well.

Gameplay:
This is where it suffers the most (alongside technical issues, which I’ll get to in a second). The main meat of the game is to be an arena legend in Geralta. So, most of the game is battle. You get to recruit other members as well, alongside playing min-games and exploring the world (sort of). To be fair, when things work, it’s pretty pleasant and fun. When done right, the battles are chalenging. And I enjoyed exploring (when I had an idea of where I was going at least). And the rhythm game was fun. But here’s where the game falls apart. A design failure I noticed is that you can battle enemies (and even enter the arena) without any party members. This results in battles dragging for minutes on end (especially when the enemies can recover HP). And rendering the arena unbeatable. I think that it’s a flaw since the player starts out with no money and unless they search the city for the two free recruits, they’ll close the game before you say “Nightmare mode”. It would have been better to not allow the player join without a small party, unless the game scales with the power of the player and the number of party members. Some UI elements (such as the enemy’s HP bar) are obfuscated by the darkness, making it difficult to see crucial info. The battle UI is a bit clunky to use. Pressing the right arrow key will skip a turn and pressing the left arrow will open the party menu. Since the options are in a wheel-styled menu, it throws me off at times, pressing the wrong key. Adding text near the icons could also help, since some members have different skill sets but use the same icon in the menu. Exploration can be tedious due to unavoidable monsters in some places and there’s no skill (at least as far as I am aware) where it returns you back to the city, so you have to return on foot. And it can be pretty frustrating when you are out of resources and you are almost beat up. In addition, I am not seeing any good reason (aside from killing some time) to play the mini-games. They are there… just because. Finally (as a sugestion), I’d like to see some side-missions. Maybe a hunting mission. It would at least give a good reason to explore and/or play a mini-game.

Technical Stuff:
While it’s not as severe, I’m afraid that I only have negative stuff to say about. First off, 5GB game? Three fourths of it is two copies of the Windows version, a Linux version (which uses the SDK version of NW.js, not the Normal one) and a MacOS version. Why? I don’t know how Steam handles packages, but I’m pretty sure that you could split it into separate packages that are only available for a specific platform (one for Windows, one for Linux and one for MacOS). You are wasting the computer’s storage space for nothing. If you can’t make separate packages, at least write a bootstrapper app to check which OS is running and run the appropriate version. Pay a visit to the nwjs documentation as well. Speaking of which, the game has a flaw that uses the nwjs default profile (which allows the game to cache Shaders). And since I am working on a newer version, the game itself can’t use that profile. Which can harm performance, if the game uses hardware acceleration. And the game needs a bit of optimization. And I noticed that debug tools that are in the package (such as a batch file to start a web server and the nwjs source code compiler) To finish off this bit, there are graphical errors, such as images stretching out and the party being in the wrong position in battles.

The verdict:
Frankly, at this point (I played version 1.3) the game feels like a prototype for a game that might come soon. While there is a potential, it needs a serious overhaul to make it something worthwhile. I am not seeing any good reason to pay 4€ to play this. If you do enjoy the game, more power to you. But after two hours, I had to drop it. It burned me out. Until I see something worthwhile or the necessary overhauls are done, I will not recommend this to anyone, unless you enjoy grinding (which I doubt that are many here...)

I am using the program to write my games' dialogue. I got to say, I'm pretty impressed with it. The UI is intuitive, the Notes system works well, the default grammar check tool works nice and it's pretty fast. The biggest issue is that LanguageTool doesn't work, which is a shame. That and not having the usage of Markdown is... well... not the best idea. I highly reccomend this.

Before I begin, I'd like to note that I have the original as well. I'll try to judge Portfolio Edition as it's own, and then compare it with the original in two categories.

Game Character Hub Portfolio Edition is an upgraded version of Game Character Hub. The main differences between them are a few additions, along with PE supporting MV. While the GUI is the same, the Portfolio format is a welcome edition to an excellent tool. The new format can now store multiple sheets (this depends on which kit of chracter parts you'll use), making easier to manage multiple characters. The app practically runs like butter, even on underpowered systems. Adding character parts to the sheets is a breeze as well, since a part will be applied in all of the sheets.

Unfortunatelly, there are some dissapointing parts as well. Unlike on VX Ace, there aren't any additions or modifications on the MV parts, so unless you need an easier way to move and edit parts around, there isn't anything that would be better than the default generator. Exporting is a mixed bag. You have to restart the program a lot of times, just so you can make multiple expressions for one character (or more, if you have multiple files open). And importing img files is just as confusing as the previous version. You can import them, but you can't map them properly, so you can't tell the program which exact color you want.

While I do reccomend the program in the end (barely, mind you), this heavilly depends on you. If you need something better than the generator and/or you are on a Mac or a Linux computer, then I do reccomend it. If you already own the old version, it's a pretty difficult descision to make, since most of the additions don't make it easier to sell. I bought due to the improved workflow and MV support, but I do feel that it should have been released as an update.

A great Action RPG game with lovable characters, solid gameplay lots of things to do and great music. The voiceover is a bit cheezy though, along with the story line.

A great game getting an almost great port to PC. The online features could have been better and I miss a few features from a diffrent version,

Great game to play.

While it's not as good as the previous games of the series, it's a blast to play both mutiplayer and single player (though the story is quite bland). Some tweaking with the DFM and replacement of the helicopter missions with something else, this can be one of the best. Veteran Ace Combat players can use the Original Mode for plane controls but it will take you time to learn piloting it in DFM.

Boring gameplay, annoying music and headache inducing graphics describes this scam. DO NOT BUY IT!

Awsome!
Pretty intense, great mechanics and goregous graphics (at least at some maps that I saw as of this writing).

Just make sure to have some friends ready. It can be difficult mainly pre-Rank 10.