Recent reviews by Sensai

You ever read those reviews with people who say 'man, I wish Steam would allow me to give a neutral review instead of saying I recommend for or against' without realizing that this thought is just a long way of recommending against? That's this. This game is the very essence of that sentiment - there's nothing particularly interesting, novel or superb about Blossom Tales: The Sleeping King, but it's also inoffensive to the point that it's difficult to pinpoint anything wrong with it.

The most unique thing about the game is how the story is told, as a children's bedtime story. It's a fun idea and one that lends itself well to the simplistic story being told. The children are written to be endearing and they succeed - you like the kids and enjoy their rapport with their storytelling grandfather. Unfortunately, the very simplicity that this explains and helps cultivate means that the story necessarily is likewise elementary.

All in all, I don't believe the game to be worth the time spent going through it. This is unfortunate, and maybe even unfair - there's nothing the game does wrong or bad (besides take too long, I feel), it just doesn't ever do anything to stand out. You're better off spending your 10 hours elsewhere.

The first Darkest Dungeon is a long, drawn out descent into madness which sees you losing adventurers with regularity before you're ready to tackle the titular dungeon. Grueling, punishing, and a mountain to climb, the original is a very, very slow burn in which death feels permanent and damning.

The sequel eschews this intentional, slow approach and instead shifts to a rogue-lite take on the formula: in lieu of your individual characters getting better from a more traditional 'level up' style system, they embark on quests to the mountain and then upon their grisly demise return to begin the process anew, having bought candles with their lives that can be used to make a number of things, including characters and the wagon (the 'meta' upgrades) stronger. Death is expected and, sometimes, desired.

Whether these changes are a positive or a negative will vary depending on the reader. Personally, I feel the change to a higher focus on individual runs as opposed to a larger, overarching story lessens the overall feeling of going slowly mad, something the first game did very well. What's more, death is trivialized in the sequel, meaning that the RNG being cruel isn't as big a deal. As I write this out, I see how that reads as a positive but in fact it's the opposite: so much of the first game is overcoming the challenges before you through awful decisions and terrible lows. This is mostly lost in Darkest Dungeon 2, as a bad bit of fortune ultimately comes down to the player saying 'oh, I'll be less unlucky next run' and then getting rewarded for dying.

Nevertheless, I still recommend the game, even if lacks a lot of what so many people loved (and hated) about the original. In fact, I bet more folks will enjoy this game over the first one - it's undeniably less frustrating, less intense and less harsh. And yet, with this newfound ease comes (to me, at least) a lesser sense of satisfaction - Darkest Dungeon 2 makes clear the goal is to arrive at the mountain, but it never asks you to climb it.

(And as a spoiler-laden postscript, I found the ending to be hilariously mismatched in tone with the rest of the genre as a whole. Cthulhian, Lovecraftian, cosmic horror is supposed to be about instilling a sense of dread, of slowly going mad due to a knowledge of a greater, evil-or-at-best-apathetic god. This game instead focuses on obsessiveness and mental health as major themes..and then has everything nicely resolved by the end of it. Again, I'm betting that most people would enjoy this more than the grim tidings that the original's ending affords, but it makes the whole thing feel cheaper.)

The obvious comparison to FEAR is unavoidable, and thankfully helpful to describe the game, so let's tackle that immediately: Trepang2 is the same frenetic, John Woo inspired shootfest, complete with bullet time and an undertone of horror. Unfortunately, it fails to reach the same heights as its predecessor, with some misses being more obvious than others.

The gameplay is fun, with your actions having some real heft to them: the guns feel punchy, with bullets eviscerating through the countless enemies in a very satisfying way. The particles are over the top in the best of ways, and when it's good, you feel awesome, almost high on your ability to dole out death. Like in FEAR, you get to hear the enemies' comms, leading you to feel like the enemy is a tactical unit instead of just hits of dopamine ready to explode. They're not quite as convincing as FEAR was in this regard, but it's enough so that you get to almost the end of the game before seeing the flaws in their programming.

What I most disliked about the game, though, was that it does not feel cohesive: it's almost as if there were two directions the game wanted to take, but neither side creatively would back down. This leads to a pretty jarring back-and-forth that lessens the game. Take, for instance, the penultimate level in which you find a spooky mist monster that you cannot kill and can only walk, not run, away from. The game builds this up, with approximately 20 minutes worth of walking around and generally getting spooked out...only for this monster to appear a single time. You walk by him, maybe die once, and then...that's it. You're then transported to Trepang's version of the backrooms (which is largely unpopulated) where you meander around for another ~15 minutes. The following (and last) level has you assaulting a building with at least 4 helicopters blowing up everything in loud, larger-than-life explosions as you shred through the remaining defensive forces up and down the aforementioned exploding building. FEAR did this same thing, but much more convincingly: it never felt out of place when the horror came, and the return to shooting everything that moved never felt jarring.

The game has some structural flaws and some pacing issues that will absolutely hamper your enjoyment, but the gunplay makes it worth wandering the arenas that Trepang2 has built for you.

A cute, quick game in the style of OneShot (and a touch of Undertale) that's rife with homages and nods to the classics. Clocking in at two and a half hours, it's hard not to recommend such a charming romp.

Approaching some spoilers here, especially for those who may have watched the trailer and thought twice about the game: don't let the 'horror' vibe the trailer gives throw you for a loop; the game lightly touches upon mental health issues that I'd wager all but those with the most hairline triggers will be fine with.

An excellent addition to the survival horror genre, Amnesia: The Bunker returns to what worked well in the original Amnesia: The Dark Descent and ditches some of the additions made in later games. A tightly paced, quick foray into this horrific world, you play as French soldier Henri doing his best to get out of the bunker he's holed up in as he'd rather take his chance with German bullets. The story takes a backseat, allowing the player to opt-in as they please.

Anyone who might have been turned off from Amnesia: Machine for Pigs or Amnesia: Rebirth owes it to themselves to return to the series and give it their best effort to escape from the Bunker. It's worth your time.

This game is very polarizing, but absolutely fascinating. It offers no handholding at all, provides no direction, and delivers a compelling feeling of being prey in a very dangerous ecosystem. Give it a try - you'll either love it or hate it, and you'll know after about an hour of playing.

Out of all the games I've beat recently, my mind wanders most often to Rain World.

This game legitimately is a great speedrunning game. Seriously, 10/10.

In the form I played it (update 5 or 6, I think), this game is like a more relaxed Factorio with more a focus on exploring the world. The added Z-axis helps make the automation easier, but still scratches the itch for those who want to spend time min/maxing for efficiency. More recent updates haven't yet enticed me back into the game, though I'm certain when it reaches its 1.0 release I will be right back in the factory, helping it grow.

Do you often sit around thinking 'man I wish Final Fantasy Tactics was out on PC,' daydreaming of getting lost in Ivalice except this time there are ogres?

Well, I do too and I am sad to say this disappoints as I haven't seen a single ogre yet. The Final Fantasy Tactics bit seems to be right on point though.

I consider myself a rather large Ace Attorney fan, having played the original games when they first released, then again on the DS, the 3DS and finally now on the PC. (You can read my review for those games here on Steam, too, if you like my rambling, long-winded, overly arrogant style.) To see a new entry in my beloved series is an exciting, worrying thing. I mean, sure, they got Shu Takumi, Ace Attorney's original director/writer to come back to direct/write this one...but what if they mess it up? What if it's bad? What if, what if, what if...?!

In terms of gameplay, it is largely unchanged: you play an attorney who moonlights as a detective and go about trying to prove your clients' innocence. There are minor changes in the formula, but by and large this innocence is proven, in true lawyer fashion, by reading *a lot* of text. This is less a game you're holding and more a very well put together book, complete with moving pictures and fancy music.

But, man, those pictures sure do move smoothly. Better than they ever have before! The extra dimension of the characters really helps drive the emotions they feel home, allows them to feel, pun intended, more well rounded. A prosecutor derisively pointing at you from across the courtroom is a standard set piece for the series; a prosecutor derisively pointing at you *in your face* directly in front of you is a shocking development for the series. (I recognize this will only be impactful to those who have played previous Ace Attorney games; I expect this is most everyone who is interested in purchasing this game.)

The music, in true Ace Attorney fashion, is excellent. It captures the feeling of times-gone-by seemingly effortlessly: to listen to the soundtrack is to be transported back to the back half of the 19th century.

The narrative of the games (which is really the reason any of us are here) is quite good, though I do not feel as smitten with it as I do the original Ace Attorney games. This is likely due to my aforementioned affinity for the original games and I expect that I will come to appreciate the stories found in this collection more as time marches on. The characters in the Great Ace Attorney games are charming, comical, tragic, stoic, heroic and villainous. Many characters, as opposed to just the 'main' ones, make repeat appearances across several cases which allows a great depth of character development to be had. I had originally written here in praise of the development of certain characters in particular, but in doing so I realized that almost all of the characters have a striking amount of development - well done, Great Ace Attorney!

One minor gripe I have with the narrative that feel important to at least touch upon: the story of the first game is there to be the foundation for the second game. The first game's story does not feel particularly filling or complete as a standalone novel, which makes more sense when you see it as just setting the scene for the second act. In this sense, this game takes longer to 'build' than previous Ace Attorney games in that it's telling a longer, more nuanced story. Whether the juice is worth the squeeze is likely a matter of personal interpretation, but I very much enjoyed the climactic ending of the second game.

There was never a question of whether I'd buy this, only a question of if it would as good as its forebears. My cynical 'what ifs' were ill placed as Great Ace Attorney feels like a step up in every feasible way to the original trilogy and, indeed, all of the mainline Ace Attorney games.