Recent reviews by Nipukka

The main reason I dropped this game is that it is constantly interrupting gameplay with VN style cutscenes. This game initially pulls you in with gorgeous visuals and smooth gameplay but the longer I played the more bored I got. The moment it all fell apart for me was when I was going through a particular level and I had forgotten some of the controls for the game because of how little you actually get to use them. Going through levels is so quick that most of the time spent in this game is just watching cutscenes. The levels are also quite linear with very little to explore and they even get reused.

The biggest drawback to this game are these so-called bonding events where your character interacts with another and you increase your affinity with them in that way. It's initially fine but there comes a point in the story where major shifts happen in the power structure of the whole military complex that you're a part of. The story takes a slightly darker turn and it's relatively interesting. Problem is that the game still has these bonding events despite all of the nasty stuff happening in the story. The game literally has you go out for a night on the town and grabbing some food from a restaurant with a squad mate while all kinds of heavy ♥♥♥♥ is happening in the story. And it even has bonding events where you are casually going for coffee with characters that are supposedly your enemies at this point in the story. There is nothing to interact with during these bonding events, you just sit back to watch a VN style cutscene of characters talking. That's it.

Other negative points to mention:

• Constant hints and tips get really tiring after a while. They pop up every single time you use any ability and there is no way to turn them off. Characters during missions also make me want to pull my hair out with constant comments like "Hey, I bet we can use that train against these enemies" right after I received a tutorial on that exact thing. Even after I used a train against enemies twice during that level already, the characters just keep commenting like I have the memory of a goldfish. The game will not let you figure out anything for yourself at all. Every single interaction you could think of will have a tutorial and it is so annoying. It even goes so far as to have a character stating that if I am on fire I will lose health. Thanks, never could have figured out myself that being on fire might be a bad thing. This game is like Dragon's Dogma on steroids when it comes to unnecessary hints and comments. If you thought "goblins are weak to fire!" is annoying, you haven't seen anything yet.
  
  
• There's this powerup state called 'brain drive' which enhances your attacks and so on. Pretty basic stuff except that it's forcefully activated the moment the gauge for it fills up. You have zero control over when it's going to activate which just removes a layer of decision-making for no good reason at all. It could activate just as you're finishing off a group of enemies and then part of it is wasted when running to the next group of enemies. It seems to drain slower when out of combat but it's still stupid.
  
  
• Side quests are garbage. Actually, they're more like tasks that are just asinine and stupid. They're like FFXV's side quests. Absolutely worthless content to include in the game. You get very little reward for doing them and there is nothing to them. Just a character that hands out the task and that's it.

Actually ridiculously fun with an arcade stick. Monkey primal brain enjoys mashing buttons to the beat

Testament was already dumb enough but now this Bridget stuff? Nah, no thanks. Kinda regret buying this game now.

Fun pinball game, although the lack of stage variety is a bummer.
It's pretty lewd so don't take it seriously.
Story mode is tedious but free mode is alright.
Only get during a sale.

I didn't expect an easy game when going into this. The difficulty is not what I've a problem with, it's how the game is generally structured. With just 6½ hours played, I've already been in the same dungeon several times and just killed the first boss. I expected to get a new dungeon to explore but instead it's the same old layout but this time it's a higher level boss that you need to work towards.

The game does explain a fair few things but seems to leave some things ambiguous. Such as speed and turn initiative. The enemies feel like they get around 66% of the turns while you are left with 1/3. There's no order of turns visible that would let you plan ahead in terms of target priority. Your turn frequency is obviously affected by the SPD (speed) stat but it's all very vague. This just leads to guesswork and general annoyance, especially against a pack of 4 rabid dogs that seem to get a ridiculous number of turns in between your actions.

Your heroes are considered disposable but the game will happily allow you to sink thousands of gold into them individually to improve their skills and equipment. So if you lose a hero that you've invested a decent amount into, you're in for some grind to get other heroes' resolve levels up and upgrade them instead to attempt higher and higher level dungeons. I would much prefer if classes had universal upgrades for skill and equipment upgrades that applied to all heroes of that class, just locked behind resolve level requirements so that you couldn't use highest level equipment on a fresh hero.

The negative/positive traits are a cool idea but there's far too many of them. After each dungeon you accumulate traits constantly. It's so frequent that it's actually really annoying to keep on top of each of them for optimal strategic efficiency. And this is with just 6½ hours played. I'm getting a headache just thinking about all the planning around traits that you'd most likely need to do much further into the game. And the traits also keep shuffling around unless it's a "locked in" trait so you can't even get a familiar with a hero and their traits, you have to constantly check them to see if they've changed. Just annoying and tedious.

Dungeon "exploring" is also non-existent. You just walk through linear hallways with random objects or enemy encounters peppered here and there before you enter another room that leads to another hallway that leads to another room that ....you guessed it, leads to another hallway . Opening crates, chests etc. is just left up to RNG on whether it's trapped or not. Honestly it began to seem like it's not even worth trying to open any chests at all since the trinkets are absolute garbage.

Lastly I'll just mention trinkets. These are bits and baubles that you find as dungeon rewards or from chests. They're either universal or class-specific that give you some bonuses like increased bleed resistance, crit damage etc. Pretty basic stuff. Except that each and every one of them has a negative effect on them. So if there's a talisman that gives 5% PROT (protection) it will take away -10 Dodge. Which at the bottom tier of armor means that your dodge chance is taken from 10% (I assume it is percentage, it just says 10) down to 0 (zero). I'm not an expert in maths but I'm pretty sure that you're better off without the trinket in that case.

Only recommended for complete masochists.

The gods mods elevate me this game

Nothing I can say that has not been said before. Brilliant turn-based strategy combat.

This game even offers an easy mode in the form of summoning so if you ever get stuck on a boss, just "jolly co-operate" through it to make it trivial. Just remember that you haven't truly beaten the boss unless you do it solo.

Surely people wouldn't brag about killing Nameless King with summons, right?

Right?

They do

Now that that's out of the way, keep in mind that you are not allowed to criticize any aspect of this game without at least seventeen fanboys jumping at your throat, all gurgling out the words "Git gud" in perfect unison. These creatures are not actually people, they're pre-programmed NPC's and you can safely ignore their wails. They've latched their entire identity around liking Dark Souls fanatically and so they feel that their entire being is insulted if you do not blindly praise every aspect of these games. Please be patient if you encounter one of these creatures in the wild, just nod in agreement and slowly back away from them.

This game is brilliant in many aspects. The highlights to me are the atmosphere, scenery, weapon and armor design, music and bosses. The good/great in this game heavily outweigh the terrible in it. There's a big learning curve to this game but it's well worth getting past IMO.

As for the garbage in this game:

- Gimmick bosses ( Wolnir, Ancient Wyvern, Deacons, Yhorm etc. ) are very boring to fight, especially on subsequent playthroughs

- Swamp slowdown. From Software loves their swamps. You are slowed down significantly within it and it just makes it a huge drag to go through. In addition to the slowdown you also get poisoned to further enhance your suffering. Fully exploring Farren Keep is just an awful experience

- Jailers and greatwolves from Ariandel

And more but that's just what comes to mind right now.

This is a fun and straightforward musou game with a good amount of playable characters. Graphics are very nice for conveying the anime artstyle, nothing like the abomination that is Jump Force. The game has three primary game modes and I haven't even gone through the first one yet which is the main story. The game's just so fun that I felt I had to drop a review already.

But it's only really worth it if you're a fan of One Piece. This game does go through the storyline events but in an extremely condensed manner. It skips over entire arcs like East Blue, Skypiea, Thriller Bark, Impel Down, Fishman Island and Punk Hazard on top of only showing the bare minimum of what happened during the arcs that it does cover. So unless you've read the manga or seen the anime, you'll have no idea what is happening and who the characters are.

Cutscenes are also in 30fps so they look hideously out of place and choppy. A lot of the story content that has you going through dialogue boxes just looks very flat and emotionless.

Personal score: 8/10

Positive points:

• Scope system is great. Adjusting for wind and distance is fun and rewarding
  
• Bullet cam is decent, heads explode in an amusing way
  
• Graphics look great and the game runs without a hitch
  
• Decent cinematics and voice acting

Negative points:

• Absurd level design. Complex paths and tall grass everywhere but very few places to actually snipe from. Sight lines are very limited so you have to kill more than 50% of enemies with a suppressed pistol if you want to stay in stealth. The level design combined with enemy placement means that it is impossible to kill most enemies with a sniper rifle without being seen. The level design funnels you into close combat and the interrogation mechanic encourages you to get close to an enemy which is stupid. Just far too many pathways and not enough open space to actually get to use your sniper rifle.
  
  
• Takedowns from behind are noisy and alert other enemies
  
  
• AI is baffling. When they notice they're being shot at they just hide behind cover doing nothing. Sometimes they send an armored vehicle towards you but it can bug out. They're also ridiculously accurate with their assault rifles at almost any range. Sometimes they're dumb idiots and sometimes complete gods.
  
  To give an example:
  
  I set down a poison mine along the route of a patrolling pair of soldiers and then retraced my steps to a known location to look for a vantage point so I could shoot towards the facility. When the enemy died to the poison mine, the entire base sounded an alarm. Slightly bizarre since the soldiers were not in direct view and there was no one close to where the mine was. At this point I was 300-400 meters away from the facility and somehow the enemy knew where I was. And I was being shot at. I tried to look with the binoculars to find what was shooting at me. At first I thought it was a helicopter or something but it was the enemy soldiers. They were shooting at me from hundreds of meters away. Once their aggression reaches a certain state it seems that as long as they have a direct sight line to you, they are able to shoot you accurately no matter how far away you are.
  
  
  
• Checkpoint save system means you could potentially lose huge progress. At one point I loaded into a checkpoint inside of a hut and the enemy commander that I had killed earlier was respawned.
  
  
• Your own traps are lethal against you and you can trigger them yourself. Completely stupid and discourages their use because for example if you cover your rear with a mine you could forget about it and later on step on it and die immediately, potentially losing huge progress because of checkpoint save.
  
  
• More of a subjective point but the character's blocky/polygon looking mask looks silly

Personal score: 4/10

The game is readily available to play in co-op and clearing out forts and finding collectables is a lot of fun. That is until the game decides that you've been having too much fun on your own terms and now it's time to sit through a linear, highly scripted story mission sequence.

This is because as long as you're doing activities in the game world, in other words playing the game, you get a meter that grows fuller and fuller for the region that you're in. And when that meter gets filled up, the game sends enemies after you that hunt you down. You cannot avoid this. These enemies WILL arrive and they WILL shoot you with a sleep dart. It doesn't matter whether you're in the air, land or sea. They will find you and they will put you to sleep. Because it's scripted and literally can not be avoided by any means whatsoever aside from closing the game.

Which is what I did.

Permanently.

Personal score: 2/10