I don’t think I can recommend this adaptation of Fairy Tail. For people that aren’t fans of Fairy Tail, there’s not much here other than a mostly competent RPG. For people that are fans, there’s just heavily truncated and compromised versions of the things they like. There’s some fun character interactions in the side quests, but I don’t think it justifies a $60 price tag. It’s a fairly lengthy game at around 40 hours, but most of this time is spent just being disappointed. If you’re a real diehard fan, and you just have to play this, then I’d at least recommend waiting for the price to drop.
It’s hard to say if Earth Defense Force: World Brothers is better or worse than Iron Rain. If you stick with tried and true EDF characters to play as, it’s probably better. If you try to use its weird gimmick characters, it’s probably worse. While some missions in an EDF game can be a bit frustrating, I definitely think they do their best to make each mission fun. Even at its worst, it still controls and plays well. In both of Yuke’s Earth Defense Force games, I feel like frustration is the status quo. Enemy placement seems less thoughtful and even when the enemy design isn’t something you have to struggle against, you’re still left with the controls not feeling very good. Between that and so few characters feeling good to use, the times in which I had fun in this game are few and far between.
I just have a hard time figuring out what the ambition or goal behind this game is. Who was this game for? I honestly don’t know of anyone that would find the writing style funny or would be willing to stick it out for the full length of the game. Personally, I think comedy is better when its balanced with drama. Having a focus on comedy doesn’t mean you have to constantly have an attempt at a joke in every single line of dialogue. It doesn’t help that none of the jokes landed for me. Maybe a small chuckle here and there, but more often than not, I found it annoying. I also don’t think it means you have to forego any sort of real character development. This feels like an episode of some bad “adult” cartoon sitcom but stretched to 30 hours. If you really like that sort of humor, I suppose I can recommend it. $15 is a pretty cheap price, so you might get your money’s worth. For everyone else though, I can’t recommend it.
Is this an EDF game that EDF fans will enjoy? Honestly, I ended up feeling fairly disappointed. Which is a shame because I think there are a lot of neat ideas here. Weapons feel rather underpowered across the board, and enemies just have far too much health for their own good. Couple this with incredibly annoying AI, and it’s just a very frustrating experience. Suffice to say, it’s pretty lackluster compared to the mainline EDF titles. The game took me 10 hours to beat, though I put about a total of 30 into it with harder difficulties. At a $60 price tag, I can’t really recommend it. A sale might make this a more tempting offer. Overall, if you’re looking for a good EDF game, I’d give this a pass and look into the mainline titles instead.
Overall, I can’t recommend Tears of Avia at all. At the price of $20, there’s far more tempting offers on Steam than this. It doesn’t bring anything new to the table, and it doesn’t do the things it borrows from other games particularly well either.
I don’t like to equate money to time spent on a game. I think that’s a horrible way to value a game. I also don’t like to say that a game isn’t worth playing because some other game is better. However, this game utterly fails to be compelling or unique. There are so many better games in this genre, with so much more vision and so much more effort. In my opinion, this is simply not worth your time, and absolutely not worth your money.
The best thing I can say about Little Witch Academia: Chamber of Time is the good production value. Visually, the game looks very nice. Every line of dialogue is voiced. There are even short animated cutscenes every now and then. But this is all surface stuff. Dive into the game, and it becomes apparent very quickly that most of the focus on the game was just making it look good. It’s a game that barely manages to hold your attention for several hours stretched to almost 30. At a $60 price tag, I’d give this game a hard pass.
I just have a really hard time recommending this. Even if you really like sim games like this, there’s so much better options out there. Even for a child, a lot of the game is so repetitive, and the game is so long that I don’t think it would hold their attention. For older folks looking for perhaps more robust games out there, I’d give this a hard pass. That’s especially considering the game is $60, which is far too much for a game this lacking. The game is pretty long too, probably about 30-40 hours, but it has such a paltry amount of content. There’s far better out there for far less money.