Recent reviews by zelghadis

One of the greatest francises in gaming history revived in an awesome manner

Absolutelly astounding

Disclaimer: while I didn't get this game from developer for free, I've won it in a giveaway asking for my honest review in return.

If Steam would allow neutral reviews Juicy realm would get exactly this from me - neutral score. Because the game isn't bad, but at the same time it has absolutelly nothing special going on for it that would make you choose this one over dozens upon dozens of similar games on Steam.

It's a generic rogue-lite with top-down view. It's got nice and unique artstyle - very childish, but maybe it's your thing. You get to choose among 4 characters, with slightly different stats and starting weapon, but choice is rather cosmetic as you change weapons after 1-2 screens. Your enemies are sentient fruits trying to destroy humanity, there's a very basic story behind it which in itself was a funny idea, until developers ran out of original fruits and started coming up with silly enemies like sentient icecream cones, sentient birthday cakes and so on and on - it give you more unique looking enemies, but totally does not fit original narration.

Now to the meat of any roguelike - gameplay. Sadly it's the weakest part of Juicy Realm. Characters move very slow and gameplay is very slow as well, weapons are unimaginative and in most cases only difference is their range or how fast they shoot plus different animation, it's obvious they targeted for gameplay similar to Enter the Gungeon but lacked skills to pull it off. There are not enough unique weapons and your whole run is luck based - you can get best weapon the very first room and will not bother with anything else for the rest of the run. No intresting powerups as well, just generic stuff like "get 5 more HP", or "Your Stamina regenerates faster". If you get lucky runs can be very short - whole game can be completed in 30 minutes and then there is little point in replaying it again. There is no meta-progression of any kind between the runs, you always have almost the same set of rooms with the very same boss at the end and very same generic biomes in the very same order, characters play almost the same so no point playing all of them unless for achievement hunting, only actual fun can be found I guess in screwing around in co-op mode for a while, but I think it will get boring pretty soon as well.

Summarizing - the game is not bad per se, it's quite polished, runs well, looks fine, but it doesn't offer anything special and does not hook you up to stay and play more of it. And with dozens of other rogue-likes avaiable on Steam, many of them really great, there is really no reason to pick up Juicy Realm over them.

Graphics may get dated.
Gameplay may get dated.
UI may get dated.
Writing, story and worldbuilding never gets dated.

And despite old-fashioned gameplay, ugly low-res graphics and irritating UI - it is still and will always be the best video game ever created. Because no game ever got even close to the astonishing level of creating a timeless story, world and lore that Planescape:Torment did.

It's thew love letter to old Harvest Moon Games, probably the best indie ever to get released on Steam :3

Good for its price.
It does not innovate in any way - it's straightforward retro platformer with very basic mechanics, but it's very well made - controls are responsive, levels are well designed, artstyle is especially good - it's very cute and funny. It's basically well made basic platformer, nothing more nothing less. If you like these types of games 2$ for it is a steal compared to other similar titles on Steam ;)

I really like an idea of an interactive independent movie - sort of choose your own adventure but with actual visual feedback done by real actors rather than having just plain text or some pictures/animations added. But Press X to Not Die is too short for me to give it a positive rating. Whole experience was slightly over 20 minutes and that's only because I intentionally screwed around dying multiple times in the same scene for lulz and achiev, without it the whole "game" would be like 15 minutes long - it's not enough for positive rating, even for this price. If it was 1-2h long like a normal movie it would surely be intresting experience, maybe not really replayable, but still fun for one try, but as it is it feels much more like a demo. Before you can enjoy it it's already end credits. If devs ever release a full-length title in this format it may be fun and intresting experience, but this game itself should be picked up only by people really intrested in format who are well aware they are paying for very short demonstration only.

Crashes right after title screen. unable to play the game. And looks like I'm not the only one - forums are full of hundreds of posts about people not being able to just launch the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ game.

Final Fantasy V, as a game from arguably the most popular jRPG franchise of all time, cannot be totally bad game. If you compare it to many of jRPGs available on steam, especially from the flood of uninspired RPGMaker games we've had in recent years, it will look great, offering loads of content and inspired mechanics. but sadly if you compare it to any other Final Fantasy game it will not look so good any more. I'd even said it's one of the weakest FF games. It doesn't mean it's bad, just not as good as the others.

First of all the port of the game is bad. And I mean really really bad. Because it uses launcher that then starts some kind of emulator you cannot use most of things you're used to when playing on Steam. Forget about Steam Overlay, taking screenshots, seeing what achievements you unlocked and so on. None of usual steam functions is present. Add to it that there are some graphical glitches like stuttering, fps drops (yes, in a game as old as this! which is running perfectly fine on weak mobile devices!), sound effect lags. Top it all with possible game breaking bugs which may require you to restart whole game because you don't get ability that is required to progress and it's gone forever. I strongly recommend using many save files for this game because otherwise you may be forced to replay hours hoping bug will not occur again.

Another problem I have with it are one of the weakest characters in Final Fantasy history. While supporting cast is not too bad, maybe unimaginative, but not too annoying, main hero and main villain are different cup of tea. They are both the dumbest, most cliche and most annoying duo you've seen in the whole franchise. All main hero does is to drop idiotic one liners, do stuff without thinking about it and making a fool of himself. He's totally not likeable and you will grow up to hate him very quickly. Main villain is no better - you don't feel afraid of him, because he's doing dumb stuff all the time, is totally predictable and most cliche evil wizard you can imagine. Maybe screenwriters thought about this duo as a comedic relief, not your usual baddy but guy who can stumble upon his own leg etc - but it didn't work. They are not funny at all. Pathetic at best.

Story is also not the best, but at least not as bad as our cast. It's simple, predictable, but at the same time gives you opportunity to visit many awesome locations and meet some nice NPC that luckily are much better than our main cast.

Before we start talking about gameplay you gotta remember one thing. It's a very very oldschool game. It will not hold you by hand at any point. It's the other way - you gotta fight it really hard for it to let you play at all. You don't get any stuff you know from modern games - like quest log or hints what to do next. You gotta do it all for yourself and very often you don't even get any hints. Add to it that game is full of secrets, which while theoretically optional in fact are must-haves because without them you won't be able to progress sooner or later (all kinds of optional powerful equipment, summons and spells) and you should really consider using some kind of guide or even a walkthrough if you consider playing this game. Because without it you will spend dozens of hours trying to fins all this secret stuff. And most of the time it will be time wasted - because in quite short time most of locations will become too low level for you, wandering them looking for secrets will not help you grind, it will only waste hours of your time.

Ok, we complained quite a bit, now let's talk about good stuff :>

Artstyle in this game is very unique and not all will like it, but I personally love it. While overworld is your usual FF stuff with SuperDeformed characters and colorful minimalistic graphics, the design for character portraits and enemies is quite unique. Instead of your usual anime style you get very detailed, westernized, even gothique a bit style. It may not fit well with some classic anime artstyle lovers, but for me it was fresh and it looks awesome even for modern standards. Ofc all these pieces of work are stable, non-animated, but they look awesome nonetheless.

Music is awesome - like in any Final Fantasy game. Songs will stuck in your head for a long time and they are pure pleasure to listen to. I recommend the soundtrack alone to any fan of retro-era game music.

Class system in this game is very fresh and unique. Instead of your heroes having like usual a class attached to them during your gameplay you unlock more and more "jobs". Jobs can be anything - from various kind of fighters, white/black/other mages, summoners, to niche classes like bards, dancers, chemists, canoneers etc. Each job plays differently and you can change job of any character at any given moment. Just keep in mind that each job for each character gotta be levelled up separately. Add to that the fact that you can also add one ability of some other job you levelled up to your character and you get just insane amount of combinations for your party setup. And you will need it. You will be required to juggle the jobs quite often - some dungeons will require more physical, other more casting approach. Different bosses will be vulnerable to different stuff and you will need to change your setup for them. What it means on one hand is that you will have to grind quite a lot which can be a downside. But at the other hand it means that you will be shifting your playstyle and strategies quite often as well, so combat will not get boring at any point of the game. For me the sheer fun of developing new strategies for hard combats is what saved this game for me, kept me entertained and even forgiving of all the problems it presents.

There are also lots of very different equipment and accessories, all with different effects, which you will also juggle a lot to make it counter particular bosses/enemies. It gives you even more flexibility to customize your party to what you currently need.

To summarize:

Pros:
- Unique Artstyle
- Great Retro Music
- Awesome Class System
- Lots of customization for party setup, gameplay and strategies

Cons:
- Very poor port
- Gamebreaking bugs
- Very weak and cliche main characters
- Mediocre story
- Very oldschool gameplay with no hints or indication what to do next

All in all if Steam would allow us to give mixed rating for the game - FFV would get a mixed score from me. Around 6+/10. But as it is I believe there is a little more good stuff about this game than there is bad stuff, so it get's positive from me. Even with it's flaws it's still better from lots of other jRPGs flying around. That being said - if you're wishing to start your adventure with Final Fantasy series - FFV is one of the worst games to do so. There are simply too many much better ones available on Steam. Get this one only if you already played all the others and are still wanting even more Final Fantasy in your life :>

The Force Awakens offers what you would expect from any other LEGO game - it's short, easy but enjoyable experience for all ages. The plot follows the newest Star Wars movie almost 1:1, you will visit all locations from the movie plus 3-4 extras (battle of Endor from Return of the Jedi is a game prologue plus there are 3 unlockable short missions). The animation is on a good level, there's usual great sense of humour and lots of easter eggs to find, game can be enjoyed by you as well as your kid, you can play solo or in coop - so far so good.

But let's now go to weaker points.

Voice Acting - it's obvious that devs will not hire the whole cast of hollywood blockbuster as voice actors, it's common practice for video game characters to be voiced by different actors, but here some choices are weird at least. For example Rei, who is a teenager, sounds like an old lady, not even close to original character. For anyone who's seen the movies quite a few voice actors will make you feel strange.

Port - the game is ported poorly and you will encounter many port-specific bugs. For example it launches by default in 720p. Each time you alt-tab game will return to 720p and you got to go back through options menu (no mouse support in options so a lot of clicking) to change it back. Also if you decide to invert flight controls, each res change will reset this change. If you decide to play in windowed mode your window will always be 720p, you cannot make window of any other size etc. None of these bugs is gamebreaking, but they all add up to lessen the fun you have from the game.

Boring replayability and lots of grind - game itself is 7-8 hours long, but it unlocks you only 20-25% of collectibles. Here lies game replayability - replaying missions with different characters you can use their different skills to unlock more and more of new stuff. Sounds amazing, but sadly in fact it gets very boring very fast. How it works in practice is that you choose a new characters for free play, launch mission, mission pays the same every single time and just in few spots you use new characters to do some stuff which you were unable previously. Then you pick another characters once again and do the same. Rinse and repeat. You play the same easy content 95% of time, spend 30mins on a mission just for 2 mins of new content, then you do the same thing again with another character. Another problem is that some unlockables are placed in autoscroller parts of mission giving you basically like 0.3-0.5 sec to get them. So you play a mission for 30min, fail to get unlock, so you have to restart the mission over and over again (30min each time) hoping this time you will not screw up this 0.5 sec section. Not only boring but frustrating as well.

AI - tends to bug quite a lot - have seen my AI companions commit suicide a lot, and each death costs you score, so if you target score attacks I strongly advise playing coop only.

Price - it is basically the most expensive LEGO game so far. LEGO games are expensive in themselves - ~20$ fow 6-8h game. But here we not only get 30$ base price, Deluxe Edition 10$ more but even Season Pass. In total it's a 50$ for a game that lasts for 7-8h of first playthrough and only very few people will be willing to stick with it to unlock all. Many people may consider 30-50$ a lot for such a short game.

OK, We've complained a little, so now to good things :>

Like I said - story is awesome, full of great humour that will make both adults and kids laugh. It also stays true to original material and is complete, which is good considered some LEGO games had problems with it in the past (looking at you Hobbit!).

Gameplay is quite fresh compared to other LEGO games.You can divide it into 3 elements - one is usual LEGO gameplay - easy adventure game with very basic 2-keys combat and puzzles which most of the time ends up with "automatically build something with lego bricks" - nothing new here. Second part is cover-shooting sections - and it's the weakest part of the game I must say. It's very boring, offers you next to none freedom and feels just like a waste of time. Still it's something fresh in LEGO games. But then there's flying sections - and boy are they good! I wouldn't mind if whole game consisted just of them. They are very fun, offers a lot more than simple ground combat (U-Turns, barrel rolls, normal shooting, torpedos, flying away from homing missiles, big variety of combat areas and enemies and so on and on). It's easilly the best part of the game, which is good, because I can forgive weak shooting in Star Wars game, I can even forgive very weak lightsaber fights (luckilly there are only 2 of those), but good space combat is a must!

All in all the game is quite good, offers some replayability (well a lot of replayability but mostly boring one), but suffers the same problems as other LEGO games. If you are LEGO games fan, SW fan or looking for a game you and your kid can play together both having great fun - this one will be a good choice, but not for a full price. Wait for a sale.