Tales of Arise requires a massive time commitment if you want to see this excellent story through its various twists and turns to its satisfying conclusion. If you want to watch all of the awesome ‘skits’ and complete all available side quests, you are looking at spending a minimum of 60 hours with Tales of Arise. That being said, I never felt bored while playing the game. I always wanted to keep pushing on to complete one more side quest, find one more owl, catch one more fish, or uncover one more secret in this twisting Tale. After finally accepting that it was time to get some sleep and turn off the game I continued to think about the well fleshed-out characters, their individual motivations, and their overall quest. I counted down the hours until I could jump back in and continue from where I left off.
Cris Tales is a game that is wonderfully presented. It also brings some new and unique gameplay ideas to the table, but then makes poor decisions in how to flesh these out over a 30+ hour adventure. This is a game that definitely looks and sounds great, but the cracks in the gameplay and functional stability of the game itself create drawbacks that may cause some people to give it up before seeing it through to an exciting, if not somewhat predictable conclusion.
This game is clearly built with repeated plays and speed running in mind. In fact, the game comes with an individual arena and overall speed run timer built in. Each wave of each battle starts in the same way (enemies appearing in the same positions), so I can certainly see this game being popular in the speed run community as players try to find the most efficient pattern of mowing down the enemies as quickly as possible.
There is a long history of both good and bad pirate games across a variety of different consoles and genre styles. From the recent Microsoft hit Sea of Thieves going all the way back to 1987 and the original ‘Sid Meyer’s Pirates!’ on Commodore 64, you have probably played a pirate game before and honestly you’ve likely played a better pirate game than this one too.
Maid of Sker was made by a small core team of less than 15 people, and at times it does show. As noted above, the base game is very short for a modern game. Even in this game’s genre, this one feels a little bit short for me. This may be as a result of the repetitiveness in the enemies and the puzzles. That being said, the atmosphere that is built though the soundscape of this game is excellent. You can feel the pressure and tension of sneaking past groups of enemies, and the relief of snatching the item that you need to progress without being found.
Judgement is yet another killer entry into the Yakuza series, but it can be enjoyed alone without any prior experience required. The cast of characters are well-written and more importantly the Japanese voice acting is top-notch. The story draws you in with intrigue and never feels predictable or cliché.
Rez Infinite is not a new game. It is a remastered version of a game from 20 years ago that was pretty much the swansong of its genre. It is a niche retro experience that in all honesty is not for everyone. It can, at times, be brutally difficult. But if you enjoy a great shooter, if you are an audio-visual buff, or if anything said above piques your interest in the slightest, I urge you to give Rez Infinite a try.