Pierre-Yves Lanthier's Reviews
Overall The Council, Episode 3: Ripples is a great continuation to an already great series. With plenty of directions to go and ways to customize your skills, there’s more than one way to go through this series and you’ll need in order to see all variations of paths that you could have taken up to this point as we now wait for the next episode before finally being able to dive into the finale.
At this point in time, City of the Shroud is a fantastic experience. With great storytelling, an amazing combat system and the ability to set your party up as you see fit, there’s more than enough to keep you going with the current single player components to get you started and the multiplayer components to test your mettle against other players.
All in all Monster Hunter World for the PC is an amazingly done port.
Sleep Tight is a fun experience and a great take on childhood nightmares. I wish I could have been this armed when I was growing up. With fast paced action and great music, I do wish that it had different modes, the ability to start further up or to adjust the difficulty more than by simply switching the characters. I’m hoping for a multiplayer component down the line because either coop or versus to see who does better / lives longer would be amazing!
Warhammer 40k - Martyr: Inquisitor has a lot of great ideas and is easy to sink hours upon hours into but there are still some areas that felt rough. The title itself however hasn’t just been left to its own devices and I want to give the developers huge props for the work that they are putting into it, the events that they have ongoing and the general work that keep putting into it. Like The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing, NecoreGames pay attention and work towards making the best product they can with feedback from the fans. Should you check it out? Yes. There’s plenty to do and a lot of “Hack & Slash” Action RPG adventuring to be had.
Fans of Mega Man X, 20XX is for you. It’s everything that you’ve probably wanted since the last release fourteen years ago back in 2004. It’s fun, it’s well built and even more, it’s designed for even those that only have time for a stage or two before having to run out the door with a quick save option. The only downside? There’s no real story. That’s it. 20XX is all the classic gameplay with modern accuracy and responsiveness that you need for both your platforming needs and the void that Capcom have left since the last release of the Mega Man X series.
Red Faction Guerrilla Re-mars-tered isn’t a bad title but certain aspects show their age and the lack of refinement from the original release. That’s not to say that it’s not a hell of a lot of fun to take on the EDF in any way you see fit, it’s just that the controls can often get in the way of a really enjoyable time.
While most of us would be content with four walls and a roof, what if you were trapped inside six walls with a hatch that only led to another box with six walls? While the former lends to a sense of peace and protection the other creates a prison and when one set continuously leads to another it imbues a sense of dread and despair as you feel like you've never get out.
Mars or Die! is a neat and small adventure. In control of your pair of would be conquerors, how you go about completing your objectives is in your hands. You can do them as fast or as slow as you want choosing to ignore the bonus objectives if they don’t suit you. The controls are smooth with a controller, the graphics are well done and the writing that comes about as your instructions from your supreme ruler are hilarious as he clearly thinks he owns everything. Will you conquer Mars? Or will you die?
I quite enjoyed Touhou Genso Wanderer: Reloaded. It has many of those classic elements that make a Roguelike what they are alongside other factors that made it enjoyable as you aren’t always making hard choices as to whether or not to pick something up because you are out of space. Being able to grind it down for points and then use those points on something else makes for a fantastic feature as you aren’t stuck waiting for a blacksmith but you can do it yourself keeping the dungeon crawling rolling for a lot longer at a time.
Overall, The Lost Child is a good way to spend your time dungeon crawling as the story provides something interesting instead of a little bit of gloss as your reason for doing everything. With lots of interesting mechanics in regards to your party, there’s more than one way to approach your combat tactics as you work your way through Japan solving mysteries to write up your articles and working on the biggest one of your life. What exactly does it mean to be “God’s Chosen”? You want to know? Your dungeon crawling awaits you!
Rainbow Skies is a perfect example of a sequel that takes everything from its predecessor and does it better. From the dialog to the various system enhancements and the sheer ease of playing on the platform you want when you want. This is a sequel worth looking into and the best part is that you don’t have to play Rainbow Moon to enjoy it as the adventure itself only references its predecessor in passing meta dialog.
I really wanted to enjoy my time with Warhammer 40K Space Hulk: Deathwing - Enhanced Edition but some of the design choices just made it seem long and drawn out. Adding in killer load times, and sometimes it wasn’t worth reloading from a previous save but instead starting the mission over because you didn’t get out of the way of a missile turret fast enough.
Both Towards the Pantheon: Escaping Eternity and Towards the Pantheon are a must for any RPG fan or lover. The characters, the music, the artstyle, it has it all and it does it very well. The only reason it’s not getting perfect marks is that it froze once or twice in bad spots like me turning the final boss into a cow and because of how many times I died because of being stunned. But that’s it. Watch out for those and everything else is golden!
Subaeria has to be one of my favorite Roguelikes of the year. I've played a few so far but the depth of the back story, the construction of the environments and the fact that Styx is only human all come together very well. There are no super human abilities here, just random technological hacks that aid our would be vengeance protagonist on the way to her final goal regardless of what stands before her.
I have to hand it to Big Bad Wolf. They know what they are doing. After having finished Episode 1 of The Council, The Mad Ones, I was left with a high anticipation for the next entry and I was not disappointed. Starting off the morning right after where we left Louis and finishing on a cliffhanger, Episode 2 picks back up and showcases that this is not simply a one trick pony.
Last Encounter is a brilliant Shoot ‘Em Up. Exordium Games have really designed a unique styled experience in a class where there’s plenty of competition. With plenty of base customization between the available pilots as well as the ships they can operate, the upgrades become the icing on the cake as you explore the space beyond the gate in hopes of perhaps finding a new start for our just about extinct species.
brilliant storytelling, character development, places to see and many ways in order to do what is needed, there's no shortage of adventure to be had. Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire is a fantastic experience and honestly should be a must for any admirers or lovers of the RPG genre.
In hindsight, it might have been easier, or at least less frustrating, to play Masters of Anima on PC, given the accuracy benefits of a mouse and keyboard. If the learning curve hadn’t been so steep, I think we would have enjoyed the challenge that so many other titles lack. If nothing else, we definitely would have progressed further in the game. This is not necessarily a reflection of the quality of the game, but rather it could be related to our familiarity with a controller because Pierre-Yves barely broke a sweat when he played.
It's a game made for people who are willing to play and replay the same levels over and over again because they simply won't let it beat them, and while that might be a niche audience today, it's hard to argue that Cast of the Seven Godsends doesn't do it in style.