If you’re a long term Ys fan, sure the story content may not be to your liking, but as it’s own thing, once the game lets you go out and explore, it’s one of the best in terms of gameplay.
Overall, if the game wasn’t so talkative when going from dungeon to dungeon and if the character designs were a bit better, I’d honestly have a better time. More so if the game didn’t make me feel like I was only going from story beat to story beat to story beat every time I beat a dungeon it would have made it a bit more enjoyable. This isn’t to say that the game is even remotely bad however as the dungeon crawling itself is a ton of fun here. While I do wish I could see the turn order in battles, it’s really no big deal. The fact that what moves my teammates will learn and when they’ll learn them is a pretty big plus in my eyes.
Overall, I had a really good time coming back to the series after the last entry left such a bad taste in my mouth. One might even say, my faith has been Re:Newed. Outside of some technical issues that can easily be patched out, it felt good going back to the start of the franchise with a couple gameplay tweaks. If this is meant to be a preview for how 7Even goes, I can’t wait.
Tokyo Xanadu is a game I really wanted to enjoy. Not to say that I don’t like it, because I do, but I was expecting a bit more. For what it eventually excels at in dungeon design, it lacks in combat. For what it excels at in world building, it fails in originality and almost feels by the book. I’m not sure what Falcom was trying to accomplish by trying to make Tokyo Xanadu a derivative of their Trails franchise. I’m not happy or even upset that they do, but what they do leave me as, is very confused.
This game tries to say a lot by only telling you bits and pieces which is perfectly fine. Everything about it feels very well constructed as I’ve never had any issues of any kind. In the end though, while I wouldn’t call this game boring, after I finish a session of playing it, it feels pretty forgotten which is kind of sad because I was ready to love this game like I did Yomawari.
In the end, despite its anime counterpart taking perversion to the next level yet stopping just before being considered pornagraphy, this game is actually one of Takaki’s tamer games of the giant breast hyper battle “genre”. Sure, it still contains the usual mechanic of clothing being ripped off and the small cinematic that comes with it is still the same as the changing dressing room mechanics. But despite all of the sexual appeal, there’s a good gameplay mechanic underneath that just can’t seemingly take off the way the game wants, which is sort of disappointing.
Considering SEGA meant for this entry to be a reboot for the franchise, this overall is a pretty mixed bag. The lore and overall storytelling they have in place is good. It’s just that they need more interesting characters.How the soundtrack is implemented into the gameplay is a really nice though. Hopefully by the time we get the next entry, some if not all of the kinks will be ironed out.
As much as I find Senran Kagura to be my favorite guilty pleasure series, this one I found myself actively disliking it from the get-go. The gameplay design is certainly fun when you get the hang of it, but everything around it is just badly designed and just makes it not fun to play. As someone that’s for developers wanting to branch out and do other things, this is one of the few times where sticking to the status qua might have been a good idea.
Senran Kagura without its iconic action just doesn’t work. Peach Beach Splash mechanics weren’t fun and in Reflexions, there’s just no content and the fun wears off after the first half-hour. Maybe PeachBall will be good since you can’t make a bad Pinball game, but otherwise, wait for Re:Burst.
In conclusion this game just has too many problems to be recommended to anybody unfortunately. What started off as a good and entertaining time just became a race to finish the game as fast as possible to get away from it. The game certainly has cool ideas but there’s way more negatives than positives; with the worst of it all being that the Vita has so many DRPGs on it already – some of them being the best DRPGs ever made. For this one to come out after them just feels like wasted potential.