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Writing a review for this game challenges my long time experience with modern JRPG game design, the expectations of a long time fan, and some of my subjective views. To deliver the best experience, I will focus more on the port rather than the actual game. I played my routes on the hard difficulty, but every thing that I mention will be genuine to all playstyles.

This is my first time playing a Shin Megami Tensei game, I was charmed by the story, the soundtrack and the references that are thrown here and there together with how the depth of its plot.

As a big fan of the Pokemon combat style, I felt like in home. This is however where I start to recite the first of my complaints: The game doesn't perform a good job at telling me everything about the combat, although the attacks have their elements, there is sadly no weakness cycle in this game, meaning that a unit may be ice element yet still have an ice weakness as well. The game allows you to analyze units, but some demons can not be analyzed. I am not going to further mention every little detail, but you could say that for the majority of my playthrough, I had to use a learn things by doing them, or in some occasions, a guide saved me the research time.
Because of its age, I expected some minor changes in this regard to aid the players against certain gameplay caveats, like the fusion mechanic. Although I am thankful for having the game let me choose the spells that I desire, unlike in the ps2 port, the 4th game had a system that allows you to peek into the fusion materials of a demon. This is one of the few things that I find questionable, tilting between accepting it for the sake of having a faithful copy of the old game, or desiring a modern upgrade, which was already available in their other products. The original port wouldn't let you for instance see your real level if you exceed 99, making it almost impossible for you to tell the threshold needed for you to control certain demons, which is yet another issue that the remaster does not fix.


The keyword "HD" in the title honestly felt like a cheap marketing tactic to attract the new players. I am no old fan, but I understand how dishonest and lazy this port was. Visually it looks great, but the devs' solution against the aspect ratio of the pre-rendered cutscenes felt rushed to me. I would like to stress out the compressed audio, which caught me by surprise and made me realize how the game does not deserve its full price tag. Still, it made me discover some good tracks, which is something that I am grateful to have. I did for certain enjoy the voice acting, which is new to this port, it felt real and genuine and each character had a great English voice.

One thing that was altered here was the AI's behavior. The original PS2 port had a wanky AI that made the already hard game even harder. The new AI feels friendlier, being less prone to abusing their exclusive skills.
I think the NG+ cycling could use some remastering, I was surprised to learn that upon heading to the next cycle, you pretty much lose everything and have to regain your demons and magatamas again. With the latter being the tedious part, I wish they would've let us at least keep the magatamas and demons and reset their levels.

While I was diving deeper in the game, I learned that it had a badly implemented packaging system. What you get with the game alone is the original game that first appeared in Japan, localized and "remastered". The game however had 2 other ports, one that features Dante and adds a new dungeon, and another which replaces Dante with Raido. These 2 were added instead as DLCs, content which by the way can't be toggled mid playthrough, with that said, you have to start a whole new playthrough and can't even have them together; something which feels unacceptable by today's standards. It is unknown to me if the new DLC maps suffer from this point as well.

As a final remark, if I would have to seek mods to balance my expectations, at least on the aesthetic level (i.e. compressed audio, 30 fps lock..etc..), then I can never recommend this product at the full price, this especially aligns with the last point that I made. Shin Megami Tensei III HD is something I can however recommend if you want to have a fresh start into the series, it needs patience at first, but it's rewarding regardless and it made me want to see more SMT games on steam. 5/10 get it on a sale.

Crash Bandicoot 4 is a top notch piece of product that gives the fans what they have always desired. I have some complaints that I sadly could not ignore.

Upon booting the game you will be greeted with the option to toggle between the classic system and a new modern system. Both of which only affect the lives system and have no influence on the core difficulty.

Graphically it looks beautiful and appealing, and the soundtrack does sound soothing for the old fans. It uses the colour palette in a way that is refreshing and nostalgic at the same time, and the music is so catchy that it captures the themes of the stages and stays memorable. You may see that both the visuals and the sounds aim to dive deeper towards the cartoonish spectrum of their art. The sole complain that I would like to talk about addresses the accessibility: At some point during the gameplay, a curious player would like to try the new inverted gimmick of some levels, the problem with these levels is that they enforce some unfriendly colours with some annoying lights. Not every level is concerned, but the game does not even warn you that players with epilepsy may be affected neither does the game offer a setting against these concerns, limiting your choices to usual PC graphical settings.


The story acts a nice extension to the general lore of the crash universe, it is well written. It had some twists which were surprising yet still leave some small holes regarding some plot dimensions. Throughout a normal playthrough, the game offers a gallery mode that can be revisited at any time which contains nice looking artworks that can be unlocked. Still, one thing that caught my attention is how some cutscenes were CGI that run at 30 fps, whilst the majority were pre-rendered.
Another caveat that I could notice is how inconsistent the translation was; I did play the German version and some lines were untranslated and left in english. I am capable of speaking both, but as far as localization is concerned, this should have been addressed.

The directors did acknowledge the meme concerning the difficulty of the game's platforming and did capitalize on perfectionism while also going far in this direction. If you are like me, chances are that you will have to deal with a big check list of collectibles that you will have to obtain, going as far as having a trophy for beating every stage with every objective without dying. The design of the levels is harsh and the difficulty spikes quite early, specifically by the time you reach the 3rd dimension. As much as completion is concerned, and in comparison to the older PS1 classics/remasters, the levels are lengthier and the boxes require some intelligence and deep perception to be found and reached.
The new inversion gimmick doubles the amount of effort that you have to spend towards the ultimate goal of finishing everything, it switches the routing in 180°. Digging a bit into the documentation reveals that the idea was introduced to toy with the muscle memory of the players. In all honesty, I was not affected by this purpose and I fail to perceive if it would do a great job on another person.
The completion aspect of this game only rewards you aesthetically. As you progress, you will obtain some skins, which in my opinion do a great job at pleasing the eyes, gallery elements, and a hidden ending.

Tutorial-wise, the documentation is serviceable and the controls are quite solid, still, I could help myself with the "hidden timing mechanics" only because I am an old fan, still, the level design does a good job at progressively teach you by communicating various hints as you go through each level. The rapid flow of the events and the necessity of completion (should you desire the hidden endings) does call for these techniques, no external resource is needed for you to learn these considering the low amount of buttons that you have at your disposal.


I loved how the game surprises you with the new playable characters, I did expect myself to be limited to only Crash/Coco, I liked how they added a new flavour to the gameplay wth their own mechanics and gimmicks.

The old skill system was removed in favour of the new mask powers, which were honestly a nice addition to the gameplay and the story. They do accommodate their respective stage portions and offer a new twist to the mechanics. The time slow mask however has no cooldown to its powers, with enough spams you can pretty much abuse it as long as you hold it.

Embedded with a leaderboard system, one can check out the records achieved by the players online through out all of the existing levels, though the time trials mode is accommodated by a ghost, I wish if it was possible to download the other online ghosts to have a benchmark basis.


This new entry of the Crash Bandicoot series serves more than what I did expect and is worth its retail price, I did spend aprox 15 hours to finish the story, as of yet I am half way done with the collectibles but I expect myself to finish it by the 50th hour. The additional modes are purposed for parties, they serve as a great way to introduce some fun. despite the lacking points that I have mentioned, the game is a nostalgia fuel, a 10 out of 10 for the old and new fans! I did enjoy every piece of it.
All in all, it does not mean that the game is for everyone. For a much healthier experience, I recommend playing it for fun, not for the completion. Old fans might be tempted into the latter and it's quite understandable, I myself fit in this statement and yet I was warned about the game prior to playing it, but the game's rewards are walled behind a hassle that is much more challenging than the previous entries.

Before I start I would like to address that the game feels unoptimized. My computer does meet the specifications yet I validate the complaints that people claim against the frame rate, I am super glad that Denuvo is absent so there isn't a DRM here to blame.

Graphically this game looks impressive in comparison to its predecessor and my favourite character, Asuka, plays exactly like how she did. I am happy that the mechanics are left intact and do appeal tacross the wide spectrum of new and incoming players. Speaking of accessibility, the tutorial here could use some work, it is not the deepest and prompts me to seek external resources to inform myself.

Setting up a keyboard on gecko still causes the headache where I have to set up P2 before P1 in order to potentially mitigate the repeated button prompts.

The hub part is something that I did welcome, it suffers the aforementioned optimization problems where your framerate gets slashed to half after finishing your first match, I find it however well thought off that the developers did not lock the match searching scanner to the hub area, making its access optional for the enjoyment. The cosmetics can be directly obtained by farming match points, so no gacha mechanics involved here, still, I wish there was more to offer on the customization part, given the retail price of the game.

The netcode is top-notch, I can not judge it fully as I exclusively matched myself with users from my region. Still, I have a major complaint here to talk about: The network design follows the steps of the recent fighting games where the game actively checks if the servers are up as you continue to play, which takes even more computation and causes some potential network stutter. This was a thing in Street fighter 5 and if the infrastructure isn't well built then I would expect a similar experience.
I did enjoy the cross play, had lots of fun sparing with console players with no issues, it's a function that does what I did expect from it.

Yet, with all of the positive things that I did mention and with all I would not pay more than 40€s for this though. The game would have its usual modes and the only "innovative" chunk was reserved to the hub and the crossplay, I understand how hard these are to develop yet I still fail to perceive why more was not offered. Not that I say that the product is not to be recommended, it appeals to the old fans and does its best to welcome new blood as well, let's not forget that there will be DLC on top, it's just not worth more than 40 as far as my subjective opinion is concerned.

WARNING: The game has a risk associated with booting it up at full screen, it will change your global font after a restart.

I have difficulties thinking about anything that is nice about my experience through out the 5 hours that I have spent in this game. I keep hearing people mentioning that it suffers some PC optimization problems, I have encountered none but it could be just a bias from my end.

The controls are janky, I had difficulties trying to aim on an enemy but the AI does not help it, especially in a crowd. The moveset is okay I guess ? The combo system only unlocks an ability that you can use against certain types of enemies. The special ability that the character has is overpowered and offers more than what is intended, or at least as what the game describes it.

The progression is awful from a level design perspective, once you realize that you do not have to defeat every enemy, the jankiness of the game will make you want to avoid them, because fighting them is objectively not rewarding, there are no upgrades and no serviceable items.

The story follows the scenarios that occur in the Kick-Ass 2 movie, it is unknown to me if it's a one on one mirroring of the source material, seeing how the store page puts lots of emphasis on it, but the story itself is linear and delivers the context with no issues.

Visually, you can sight some cel-shading but it does not look properly done but as you focus on the combat and running I think it goes unnoticed. The soundtrack is not soothing, combined with the badly implemented audio engineering and you will get the receipt for a long lasting head ache, more specifically, sounds and OST gets executed in times where it should not happen.

After clearing the game, I feel as if this game was rushed with the intention of just releasing it without caring about what the consumers might experience, I did not feel pleasant with these 5 hours and neither will I be recommending anyone to buy it, I did it because I was told that it will be removed from steam as a result of a licence expiration, which was the case, yet the game is now back and available for anyone to get.

It's a product to avoid, and if you want to hear it in other words: it sucks ass.

Does exactly what it says on the shop front and offers more than what's described. If you are coming from the past titles, you will surely enjoy the new features that align with the core mechanic of the Vergil character.
The combat mixes elements from every single installment, including the reboot, and innovates much deeper in this area. Though I have one thing to complain about: It feels as if playing as vergil turns the game into an easy mode in comparison to the other base characters but it could be just a bias on my end; I took the time to compute my damage per minute through out each character and it turns out that Vergil outputs the most within a short period.
I highly appreciate that the final boss didn't mirror the DMC3 culture of having a copy of vergil, instead, you get a new cool final boss that comes with some extra easter eggs to taste.
Add the dynamic soundtrack gimmick that the base has and you will surely have every argument that motivates you to buy this DLC, no puns intended. You are getting more than just a playable character, you are getting new gallery entries, new cutscenes and much more.

Unlike the DmC reboot, this one is worth its base price of 5€s, I did get it on a sale though and I still think it offers more than what I was expecting.

I had little to no difficulties picking this up, the controls were understandable and I could easily notice the resemblance to many Danmaku mechanics as it has both the focus and hyper mechanic.
The Hitbox is visible without the need to focus which is something that I highly appreciate.
Visually, the game looks quite pleasing, though the common enemies are honestly boring, unlike many shmups where each area comes with its own set of enemies, all of which have different gimmicks, though on a sound level, my expectations were not met; my first run was muted and I did try to imagine tracks that were eastern leaning, which was not the case. The OST is shmupfy in a modern fashion, making you feel the danger of traversing through the bullets.
The difficulties are quiet friendly even on the hard mode, making it a nice title for those who want to have a start into the shmups culture, I could even track the bullets on my first try on the hardest difficulty. It serves no story mode as the only plot elements that I could manage to find are literally from the store page and that's it, making this game suitable as an arcade score attack software.
And speaking of score attacking, the scoring system here is classic without any gimmicks.

For 5 stages (with an extra hardcore and boss rush mode) and no secret bosses or multiplayer, not even locally, Shikhondo is an indie shmup that I would not recommend for its given full price, get it on a sale.

For context optimization purposes, I will not discuss the common things that the first collection shares with this one, there are many other interesting things to note here that are worth the consumer's attention:

As discussed, the first collection had a hidden anti-cheat within the engine that fires in the third game, this same manouver concerns this time every game inside this collection. This is really bad and is the supposed cause of the random lag spikes and input lags that I had to go through.
Unlike the first collection, the next games did suffer some cut content due to some circumstances. The devs did medicate this by trying to include everything they could from the japanese releases and even introduced some solutions against the obvious lack of linking support with the Boktai games (I.E. allowing the player to obtain points through PVP and get the Boktai rewards).

Sadly, the 4th game still suffers the translation errors, something which was out of my expectations due to the devs having delayed the release date and even writing most of the code from scratch. You may call this a faithful port if you are a fan, but a new player might not enjoy it.

I do not have much to add here, but my opinion still stands out; 60 euros for this was worth it, it would cost +300 hours to finish both volumes, as the content of this collection is rich.

SUGOIIIIIIIIIIII

Considering the age of these games, this review is a critic towards the port and not the games.

When the game was announced, they promoted the idea of imposing the usage of a controller over the keyboard and mouse. In-game you still can use the keyboard, but editing its keys is locally impossible.

This is a rewritten port rather than an emulation, although it does its job at delivering you features that would meet your expectations aesthetically, on the sonar level the sounds are actually being streamed instead, you will notice this by playing the originals and then moving to the collection, the good thing about this is that it allows for potential modding of the soundtrack and it enables the player to gain control over the volume levels of the music and the sound effects, sadly this package does not give us the ability to modify the in-game music using remixed versions made by the company themselves (I.E. DS remixes); however, the bad thing about this is something that you might notice if you are coming from the original experience. Because the music is being streamed, you might notice a slight lag, especially after finishing a virus battle.

To accommodate for the Chinese players, the devs had to work around the font and rewrite it, and in my opinion, the new font looks ugly, which created a need for some fans to make a fan mod that works really well against it, restoring the beauty that is the original font.

I did go through the first collection and I could enjoy every bit of it, except for the PVP. Multiplayer-wise, The netcode is delay based, and as of today, I fail to accept a delay-based experience, constraining me to play only against people from the continent that we share. I encourage using Tango for PVP over this collection, unless you are a fan. Speaking of which, this product is aimed towards fans, and it does its job at welcoming new players with the Buster-MAX feature, which allows you to breeze through the games if you simply want a casual playthrough. Another much needed feature would to allow us to bulk trade, trading 1 chip at a time would result into a potential burn out.

Although I lack the experience in game development, I feel that offering us the upgraded versions of the first and the fifth game would be a task that would motivate more into getting this collection. I am glad we have a digital and modern way to get our hands on this, but I wish the Capcom devs went the extra mile in this regard. Much like how we got our hands on the Buster-MAX mode, I wish we had a feature that toned down the drop rates of the chips, an option that could be turned on and off is something that I think would be easy to implement, considering how the patch cards are a thing that reflects upon this idea (Yes, I know what they are meant to be originally).

Now here is a funny piece of trivia: Unlike the other collections, Capcom did not remove any nintendo references that were scrapped in various corners in these games [e.i. Mario's costume, the Pikachu reference..etc..], the visual assets are still there, I suppose attempting to modify these would impose another delay from the dev team, as their focus was to extract and rewrite the code rather than modify the visual environment.

Although the target audience are the vets, I think this product is worth the price even for a new commer.