Recent reviews by Taka

a

The game has been censored because SJWs are whiny little babies.

Also, the developers support the terrorists from BLM.

I highly recommend that each and every one of you refund this game.

Without a doubt the worst Guilty Gear game in years.

Everything about this game is a huge step back from previous games, like Accent Core and Xrd. All of the characters play terribly, and many of the returning characters are missing half of their moves for no reason. Barely any attacks seem to chain into anything, giving you a very limited number of things that you can do in any given situation. The UI is also horrible and looks like a low budget mobile game. Literally the only positives about this game, as far as I'm concerned, are the music, the overall graphics, and good netcode.

On top of all of that, the game forces you to sit through a several minutes long "Connecting to Server" screen whenever you start the game. You aren't even given the option to launch in offline mode to play single player. You HAVE to sit through the excruciatingly long connection screen.

Do not waste your money on this game. Go buy either Accent Core or Xrd Revelator, because they are both a million times better than this game. If I hadn't bought this game on GMG and had instead bought it directly through Steam, I'd be refunding it right now. Total waste of money.

Edit: Also, a line of dialog has been censored to remove mention of Taiwan, to appease China - a country that refuses to acknowledge the fact that Taiwan is an independent nation, and is, in fact, number one.

Edit #2: And now they've joined the SJW cult by claiming that Testament is the non-existent gender of "non-binary". What a joke.

Edit #3: Bridget is a man.

Epic Games is a cancer upon PC gaming.

I can't understand why this game is so popular.

Now hear me out for a moment. I get it. I get the basic idea behind why it's so popular. It's a multiplayer game with a low barrier of entry that can run on a potato, and it has an interesting gameplay gimmick. The core gameplay sounds really fun on paper, and for all intents and purposes, it SHOULD be really fun, but... it isn't. At least in my opinion.

There's mainly three problems with the game, in my experience, and each one of them is kind of a dealbreaker for me.

The first problem is that the presentation of the game is REALLY janky. You'll just be wandering around the ship and suddenly, without any warning or fanfare, the victory/defeat screen pops up. The game is over, and it gives you no sort of information or stats about how or why the game ended. Did everybody but you get killed? Did the Impostor disconnect? Who knows! The game doesn't tell you WHY you won or lost, just that you did. The only exception to this of course is when the Impostor is successfully ejected from the ship... which brings me to the second problem...

The players are idiots. The idea behind the game is that you, as a crewmate, have to try and catch the Impostor in the act of killing people, and successfully call a meeting to accuse them, so that they are voted out. The problem is that nobody pays attention to what's going on, and even when they do, most of them have no idea how to convey their claims in a convincing way. An emergency meeting is called, and the chat is immediately spammed with "who called meeting" "where" "what happen", followed by "red sus", "blue sus", "blue safe", "white". You can make whatever claims you want, but in reality nobody is actually paying attention to what you're saying. In my experience, most of the time, either everybody votes for the first person to be accused, regardless of any claims of evidence, or nobody gets ejected at all. And then when everybody dies, you find out that the killer was black all along. All because nobody was paying attention or put forth any actual evidence that might have lead to the culprit being voted out.

This is likely due to, as I said, the low barrier of entry. This game has become especially popular with kids, and kids are freaking stupid and don't know how to play logic-based games very well. I also experienced these sorts of problems with another similar (and in my opinion, way better) game, Town of Salem, which is also "Speed Mafia", just like Among Us is. The core game was fun, but because it was dominated by dumb kids who can't type and don't pay attention to what's happening around them, my enjoyment of the game suffered.

Anyway, my last problem with the game involves all the little tasks you're supposed to complete around the ship. The game makes you wander around, and do these simple little minigames to progress towards your goal. If you complete all the tasks, then you win. But most of them are tedious and annoying busywork. They aren't fun to do. Every time I started a task, I just wanted to finish it as quickly as possible - not because doing so would be advantageous to us, but because they were boring.

So basically, what the game experience is REALLY like, is running around doing boring, menial tasks, while trying to avoid everybody so you don't die, and then having everyone try and pinpoint the culprit using single words with no explanation, only for you to end up winning out of the blue with no idea how or why you won.

This game has no reason to be as popular as it is, in my opinion.

Let me first state this - in terms of gameplay, Phantasy Star Online 2 is an excellent game. The core gameplay here is fantastic and, though it can be a bit repetitive and severely grindy at times, you'll still have a great time playing anyway.

However... There are some major problems with PSO2's Global release that you, as a player and potential money-spending consumer should know about, and then you can make the decision if you want to spend your time on this game or not.

The first problem is the localization. It is, for lack of better word, terrible. The entire game seems to have been translated by some interns who barely speak a word of English, and in some cases, looks like it has just been run through Google Translate. To be fair, a lot of the translations are fine, especially those that have voiced dialog, but most of the item descriptions and other unvoiced dialog can be gibberish at times. Though there have been a few lines that were fixed, such as the infamous "Gods be operative" line (which was later fixed to what it was supposed to be, "Godspeed, operative."), most of the dialog is still in shambles to this day.

There are even items which have no description at all, or a completely unhelpful description that doesn't actually tell you what the item does at all. Also, in the Japanese version, every single piece of equipment had flavor text with lore in the description, but all of that has been removed, in place of a single sentence saying "An item equippable as a Sword". Heck, there's even been items released that are completely blank, without even a name on them, making searching for them almost impossible.

So the translation and overall localization is a complete and total mess, and basically every aspect of it is directly inferior to the fan translation patch that's been available for the JP version for the last 8 years. But... There's an even larger problem that the game is suffering from at the moment.

Censorship.

At first, the changes almost seemed reasonable, if annoying. They raised the minimum height your character can be so you can no longer have childlike characters. We thought that perhaps there was some sort of legal reason for this, so while it wasn't ideal, it was somewhat understandable. Then, they put clothes on naked characters (though due to the camera angles, you couldn't see anything anyway) in story cutscenes, and cutting out bath scenes entirely, which again, was thought to have perhaps been due to legal/rating reasons, and that there was simply no avoiding it.

But then... Things started to change, and it became much more obvious as to what the REAL reason for these changes were...

You see, in PSO2, there was a set of weapons called the Slave series. Slave Calibur, Slave Shooter, etc, one of every weapon type. Well, they quietly, without even so much as a mention of it in any patch notes, changed the entire Slave series to the Raven series overnight. Nevermind that there is an actual lore reason WHY they're called Slave weapons, since they cut out all of the lore descriptions anyway... But why even change something like this? Was anyone complaining about it? Not that I personally saw. It seems that someone, with a certain sort of opinion, within the translation team, was changing things for a certain reason. And keep in mind, that these weapons were called the Slave weapons in the Global version for MONTHS before it was abruptly changed overnight.

So what happened next? Well, in one of the guild bases that you can have, there is a hot springs area. This area is split into two sections, with two doors - one for male characters and one for female characters. In the JP version, there are barricades preventing you from going into the door of the incorrect gender. But in the Global version, these barricades have been removed entirely. It's as if someone in the localization team has the (wrong) opinion that there are more than two genders! But what sort of person might have that opinion...?

And then, most recently, more dialog changes were made. Your Blacklist of people whom you don't want to see has now become your Blocklist, and your Auxiliary (a little robot that you can have do quests for you) no longer calls you Master, but calls you their Handler...

Are you getting the picture by now?

It seems that someone (or someones) within the localization team of PSO2's global release is part of the insane cult of Social Justice (aka Feminism). They seem to believe that everything is offensive and that it is their duty to censor things that someone, somewhere might be upset by. Even though nobody with an actual brain could possibly be offended by the words "Master" or "Slave", or think that gendered doors need to be removed from the game.

It is likely that these changes will continue into the future, and we will see more and more content gutted, censored and made safe for the fragile feelings of the perpetually offended. If something like that matters to you - that you care about the integrity of the creator's original vision for the game, then I urge you to either play the Japanese version of the game, play the game without giving them a single cent, or just don't play it at all.

Hey, Capcom DIDN'T screw something up for once!

The game opens by telling you that it is a "Final Fantasy for fans and first timers". But I wouldn't recommend this game to either group.

It can't be a Final Fantasy for fans of the series, because it is absolutely NOTHING like almost any other game in the series. The closest game in the series to FF15 would be Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII, but even if you liked that game (As I do), I still can't recommend it. I'll get to why this is shortly.

But even though I like LR, most people don't. It's fairly panned. So I would imagine that an FF made for fans would be something more akin to one of the more popular titles, such as FF6, 7, 9 or 10. But... no, it's just nothing at all like any of these games. And all of those games - and just about every other game in the series, are loads better than FF15.

I also wouldn't recommend this game to first timers either. As I said, the game is just plain bad (I'll get to why that is in a moment) and if you really want to get into the Final Fantasy series, your money is much better spent elsewhere. Go with one of the really good ones, like 7, 9 or 10 (not 6 though - it's a good game, but the Steam port blows). To be honest, if you were to play FF15 as your first FF title, it would probably turn you off the series for good - and even if somehow you enjoyed the game, it isn't remotely indicative of what most every other game in the series is like.

I keep saying the game sucks, but I'm sure you're wondering WHY. Well, let's start with one of the most basic aspects of an RPG - the story.

First of all, before you even begin FF15, you ABSOLUTELY MUST go watch the movie Kingsglaive: Final Fantasy XV (and optionally, the anime Brotherhood: Final Fantasy XV). Kingsglaive takes place immediately before the game and provides VITALLY IMPORTANT information, CRUCIAL to the plot. It is virtually impossible to have any clue whatsoever about what is happening in the story from the very start of the game unless you watch this film. The game begins by dumping you in the middle of a desert, pushing a car down the road and mentioning that the heroes are on their way to get to the main character's wedding. Why? Well... the game doesn't really tell you. I mean, eventually it kinda-sorta does, but you would then spend the first third or so of the game having absolutely no idea what actually started this journey in the first place.

Also, Kingsglaive has a way better story than FF15 as a whole.

But the problem with FF15's story isn't only that you need to watch a bunch of supplimentary material to make any sense of it. The plot is just a freakin' mess all around. The pacing is HORRID and you will spend long stretches of gameplay without progressing it at all, and even when you do, it's not really in any meaningful way most of the time. You spend about two-thirds of the game driving around the big open countryside of Lucis, where the plot moves at a snail's pace, and then they cram an entire game's worth of plot into the last third, rushing you haphazardly from one plot point to the next, which is incredibly hard to follow.

But, you might be wondering, what ARE you doing during that first two-thirds of the game? Well, you're doing side quests. Lots of them. Like, dozens upon dozens. And you MUST do them, because they're the only reliable way of gaining levels. But not only do most of these side quests have absolutely nothing to do with the plot - not offering any kind of lore or backstory that might make them worthwhile other than to gain EXP and items... but they're all terribly boring and largely the same thing over and over. You will hunt monsters, pick vegetables, mine minerals, examine objects and take photos in 90% of these side quests. Of course, we can do all of these things, despite the fact that our hero literally is supposed to be heading to his WEDDING, and trying to save the world from an evil empire and a horde of daemons while we're at it. But sure, we can totally go pick some vegetables and deliver them to the local grocer. The world and our fiancee can wait.

But what about the COMBAT? Well... unfortunately, it is the most shallow, mindless combat in the entire series - and yes, even more shallow than FF13's combat. The game isn't a turn-based RPG at all, it's actually an action "RPG" - and I place "RPG" in quotes because it barely even feels like one. This is more akin to what are known as "character action games", ala Devil May Cry or Bayonetta - only the combat is EVEN MORE shallow than those games. You will be doing the exact same thing at level 60 as you do at level 1. The combat system does not evolve at all. Oh sure, you get a couple new tricks, but most of them are useless and the most efficient way to fight is to just spam the normal attack button, hold the evasion button (yes, you can just hold it down and auto-evade almost everything -and then parry them), and use "warp strikes" - teleport attacks that consume MP but home in on your targeted foe - and all of this is available from level 1. There's also magic, but it functions more like a grenade that explodes over a wide radius and is generally not worth using unless you're fighting against large groups, especially since the magic system essentially prevents you from having more than 3 casts of a given spell stocked away at once for a fairly large part of the game.

The game isn't even remotely challenging either, though at first you would get the impression that it is. At first, it seems like enemies do a ton of damage to you, and your attacks seem to barely do anything at all to them. But in reality, enemies are just big HP sponges that can take way more hits than they have any reason to. And as for their heavily damaging attacks, this is easily mitigated by the fact healing items are cheap and can be used at almost any time, and you can even save yourself from being killed as long as you have a Phoenix Down in your inventory, making it nearly impossible to actually get a game over unless you really, REALLY suck at the game and don't carry any healing items.

Oh, and before I forget, the game also boasts that it feels like a "road trip", with your four heroes driving around in their fancy car all around the countryside. Sorry to burst your bubble, but the car is on rails. You MUST stay on the road, driving on the right side of the street and driving the speed limit at all times for the majority of the game. Eventually, you CAN get an offroad version of the car through a side quest, but it comes a bit too late in the game, and if you drive too far off course, it'll still put you back on the road anyway.

Oh, and the music sucks too. Totally forgettable. The performance of the game is also pretty bad and Square did a pretty terrible job of porting the game, which is a shame since FF12 came out only a month before and it was a spectacular port.

All in all, FF15 has no idea what it wants to BE. Does it want to be a character action game? A JRPG that plays like a WRPG? A driving and exploration game? Does it want to be open world (the first 2/3 of the game) or does it want to be linear (the last third)? Does it want to be a happy-go-lucky road trip, or does it want to be a serious story about war and destiny? The entire game is a mess from beginning to end, and the sad part is that it didn't have to be. The game was changed so many times and went through so many different directors and development teams that the final product is a mishmash of whatever they felt like trying to do at the moment, and boy does it suffer because of it. The game has a strong villain (even though his methods kind of... don't make a lot of sense...) and a pretty decent cast of main characters, but due to terrible writing and pacing and an abysmal joke of a combat system... the game is ultimately just... not good.

If you really want a game that tries to blend WRPG elements with JRPG elements, you're much better off playing Lightning Returns. Skip FF15.

R.I.P. MvCI

Quack.