Recent reviews by 麻衣さん

OCD triggering survival crafting game #318934180421 + Good Worldbuilding.

More.

1. Enter the house.

2. Set up your ghost detecting gear.

3. Lights start to blink.

4. Run out of the house.

5. Guess a random ghost type because you don't want to go back in.

6. Start a new game.

20 out of 10.

If you want a game that doesn't rely on jumpscares to scare the crap out of you, don't get this game because it's not just crap that's gonna come out of you once you start playing.

The maps are beautifully made and perfectly fit the vibes a true horror game should have. This is complemented by well-done ambient soundtracks and paranoia-inducing sound effects. With that said, it's still not too demanding in terms of minimum spec requirements so a lot of people could still enjoy without the need for an insane graphics card.

Co-op doesn't dampen the scares even a bit. You get an extra scare when you turn a corner and your "co-investigator" is standing there in the dark not knowing why the hell you're running away from a room where someone just touched your ear with the sweet whisper of death.

For the price it's advertised at, I think the developers are underestimating themselves too much. I've seen games ask for more than double the price of this game and can't even deliver half of the quality this gives out.

Okay so you're probably thinking, "Oh it's another SAO game, it must be just as bad as the previous ones." Well you'd be both right and wrong. First of all, most of the previous SAO games were SO BAD that it's almost unimaginable to have anything worse in comparison. That being the case, ever since their release of Fatal Bullet, there was a slight improvement to the their overall production. In my opinion, having played several SAO-themed games, SAO:AL is a step up from most if not all of them. It might not be a very big step but it's a step nonetheless.

Okay so let's go to the game itself. The reason why you'd be both right and wrong in saying that it's just as bad as the old SAO games is simply because it adapts some of the things that were frustrating with its predecessors. BUT, at the same time, it was able to provide some form of compromise to address some these past problems. So let me list down some of the most prominent positive and negative points about this installment:

(Ver 1.07)

NEGATIVE POINTS

1. The dragging and cringe-inducing storyline.
This isn't much of a spoiler but how the main story length distribution of SAO:AL goes is 50% Chapter 1, 20% Chapter 2, 10% Chapter 3, 10% Chapter 4, 5% Chapter 5, and 5% Chapter 6. It literally felt like some chapters didn't even deserve to be called "Chapters". It took so long to move from Chapter 1 to Chapter 2 and then a little further down the line you could literally go from Chapter 4 to Chapter 5 in 30 minutes (considering you skipped all the chatter scenes). After the first chapter, everything that follows basically feels like filler chapters. The further you go, the more tedious and cringy the dialogues and interactions become. There was barely any story to scrape by anymore by the time you reached Chapter 4 that they had to introduce a new annoying character that literally feels like he was just placed in the game to stretch the story.

2. The guard and parry mechanics.
I don't know if it's just me but it's been hella difficult timing the guard and parry in this game. It came to a point where I decided to just totally not use it and resort to purely using the bow for most of the content wherein I just need to keep my distance and I'm good for the most part (The bow is also ridiculously strong in terms of DPS compared to other weapons by the way so it's a win-win). But, I still want to try enjoying the game with the other weapons, it's just that it's difficult to use melee without being good at guarding/parrying.

3. The clunky multiplay system.
It's quite difficult to enjoy the multiplay feature since you literally have to always stick with the other people in the lobby in order to clear objectives. There are also instances where you can't clear a certain boss/miniboss when one of the lobby members has already completed it before entering the lobby since the game requires EVERYONE to be present at a boss location and actually have the boss undefeated for it to initiate. It is also especially frustrating when using the quick match feature because if one of the lobby members decides to troll and not join the others for doing objectives, the rest of the lobby can't progress as well since the game requires everyone in the lobby to be "synchronized".

4. The exponential scaling system.
By exponential I mean you literally go from easy mode to hard mode skipping anything in between. And to be honest, I don't think hard is the right word for it. Its more of having enemies that have HPs that are so thick that it takes too long to kill them but at the same time they can't really kill you too because for some reason their damage doesn't scale as fast as their HP growth. It's not just in terms of enemies that the scaling is off too, the crafting system and quest system is so unbalanced that somewhere down the line I started questioning whether it was worth completing quests that were unrelated to the main story at all. Crafting requires you to have items that are pretty scarcely found in order to make items like a Healing Potion (I ended up never crafting the higher tier healing herbs and just stuck to healing skills the entire game). Imagine this, I reached Chapter 5 and barely had 80k Shia (in game currency) and the shop sells a freaking Healing Potion L for 3500 EACH. For reference, completing quests up until the halfway point of the game would most often award you with 300-500 Shia. Imagine having to complete around 10 quests only to use the money for a single healing item.

5. Loading times that make your hair go white.
The ridiculously long loading times were so bad that people had to start making guides on how to speed them up. The good thing about it is that they were able to address this problem a bit with their first few patches and it isn't as bad as it was when the game first launched.

POSITIVE POINTS

1. They did something about the clunky AIs of the past.
In Ver. 1.04, they finally made the spectator AIs attack more frequently. They were also able to create a system wherein repeated usage of skill sets while piloting the side characters allowed them to retain these skill sets and every so often execute them in battle even though you aren't controlling them anymore. It's literally like a coding system wherein there are triggers and conditions that when fulfilled would cause the AIs to execute the coded move pattern. This was a very interesting concept but is still pretty raw when it comes to optimization. Maybe future updates would make it more fluid execution-wise (hopefully).

2. There is a lot of content that somehow justifies the price.
I have to emphasize "somehow" here since content does not equate to quality. For the price that it's advertised at, I initially thought that if it was going to be another thing where they were just going to be a few maps with a few dungeons and a story that could be completed in less than 10 hours, I was totally going to rage. Luckily, I think there's enough content here to last someone a good 100+ hours, and this is still without the 2 promised DLCs for those who bought the deluxe edition.

3. The affinity system.
Yes of course, since this is SAO how can it not have an affinity system right? But, what I personally liked about the way they did the affinity system this time around is that there are many benefits to maxing it out other than just some bed scenes (although those are important too of course). You can actually get equipment skins and buffs from characters that have you have high affinities with; and this varies from character to character so there is further benefit from maxing out not only the characters you prefer which can largely influence your playstyle in the long run.

4. The flexible skill tree.
There are 9 different weapon types available in the game. Each one has its own dedicated skill tree and you can mix some of the passives from one skill tree to the passives from another skill tree. This gives for some unique late game playstyles.

5. THE GACHA SYSTEM.
FINALLY. What most of the old SAO games lacked is end-game content and something that would keep players playing even after completing the game. With the introduction of a gacha system, there is actually benefit to playing the game everyday if only for a short amount of time. The game gives out a daily quest which upon completion gives you a single pull on a gacha where you can randomly get gacha-exclusive items that can be either enhancement items or cosmetics. With this system in place, I assume that the lifespan of the game would far surpass most of its predecessors that only had the base game and DLCs to count on for content.

SUMMARY

I'd recommend anyone into the franchise to try this out once it goes on sale (Even a 20% sale would do). I don't really think there's any major problem with buying it for the full price right now, but personally, I think that the best time to pick this game up is when it's far more optimized than how it is now.

gg

This game was, and always will be one of the best horror games ever made. It set the bar for not just the horror games of its time, but all video games in general. It was a masterpiece then and it looks like it's going to be a masterpiece now.

It's basically a puzzle game effectively disguised as a horror game with the bonus of head smashing and body part chopping.

I had never felt anything near the fear you get from playing RE:2. The fixed camera angles made you wanna move the entire tv screen just to see what was at the next corner. Walking through corridors became so caustrophobic that I would rather just hide in a safe room for the entirety of the game. But the worst part was always the damn windows. You pass by them one minute and nothing's there, but the next, you hear that loud smash and you've got zombies sandwiching you from both sides of a corridor. Zombies had never been more frightening than when they were in the early RE days.

I've seen clips of that Nemesis-like enemy and actually that's what's got me most excited about this. RE was the mother of the craziest stalkers ever concieved by the human brain and I expect a lot of people to be on the edge of their seats as they run from this RE:2 boss.

Looking forward to this anxiety-inducing game very much.

It's a well made game considering the size of the team that made it.

Although it's fun enough playing solo, why this game really shines is because of its multiplay feature.

The story this game boasts is actually very interesting. Think of it as a post-apocalyptic survival game wherein the premise is that the whole world got flooded. Or something along those lines.

After you complete the short main story though (considering how the second chapter isn't completed yet) you gain access to more and more materials to improve the quality of life of your raft. In a sense, you get this satisfying feeling that you were rewarded for playing through the story.

Playing this with a group of friends is a guaranteed fun experience.

One of the few decent chill survival games.

Low budget open-world zombie + PvP game.