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Working with a clearly limited budget, Tamsoft has focused on delivering a tight action-combat system, while also relying on the fan service of both Senran Kagura and Hyperdimension Neptunia to see it through. It’s a good couple of hours of genuine fun, with the requisite bath scenes, humour and familiar characters to meet and fight. You can’t help but think that both properties could have grown to become more than this, but taking as it is, it’s still entertaining nonsense, with a heavy emphasis on the “entertaining”. I play enough serious games that require deep analysis, this kind of thing is my ideal break time between them.
So although the game is fun to look at, and to think about, it rarely lives up to its lofty ambitions once it’s in motion. Combat is thankfully sparse enough that players get pushed towards their next objective briskly. Although enemies aren’t always fun to fight, they do look cool, and their bullet patterns are always an impressive spectacle. And while I came in expecting a 3D bullet-hell action RPG, what I got instead was an interesting sci-fi world to explore. It’s a pleasant surprise to see that a world this rich and complex came from a studio this small. Origamihero Games is a developer with huge ambition and a lot of promise, so I’d be keen to see the team iterating on ideas from this game and continuing to polish their craft.
In flicking back through my notes on House of Ashes, I find that I have been more negative on it in this review than I remember feeling from my time playing it. It is a highly enjoyable experience and hard to put down. It might not be as spooky as I’d like from a horror game, and it might not play the way I think it should given the type of horror the developers were aiming for, but ultimately, holding the lives of a bunch of delinquent characters in my hands and deliberately letting them fall to their proverbial (or perhaps literal) deaths will never fail to be a (ghoulishly) good time.
When we think about this Halloween season and all the horror games that celebrate it, we rarely think about a dungeon crawler. After all, the 'crawler doesn't feature visceral action or jump scares. It's all too turn-based for that. But, of course, horror can be much more than jump scares and visceral action, and Undernauts demonstrates that beautifully. Strong atmosphere, challenging combat and Experience Inc.'s mastery of the genre combine to create something that is nearly impossible to put down.
I don't have much else to say about Lyrica that I didn't in my review of the first game. The differences between the two of them are so slight, besides the obviously different tracklists, that they are two sides of the same coin. In fact, the physical edition is a bundle of the two of them together, and that only reinforces that perception that Lyrica and its sequel are, really, one product split artificially into two. Given that this particular coin is made out of solid gold, though, I'm not complaining.
At the end of the day, Ultra Age is a middle of the pack action thing that has the basic mechanics of the genre down, but doesn’t do anything to stand out, and it has some real balancing issues. but struggles to balance difficulty progression as well as pushing boundaries in the genre. Unfortunately for the developers, this is one genre in which we are spoiled for choice, both in terms of finding challenging games to enjoy, and complex, thought-provoking experiences.
There is no doubt that The Caligula Effect 2 is a niche within a niche, and the fact that the second game so closely follows the first just confirms that the developers are comfortable with that. While it might not click with everyone, it's worth trying, because if you do like your games a bit thoughtful and arty, then this is going to be one of the highlights of the year.
There's respect there, and an understanding that Demon Slayer is more than a mindless series of fights, even if the gameplay system creaks with age and having been used for far too many other anime tie-ins. Mind you, if nothing else, being able to tear demons a new one with Nezuko has been something I've been looking forward to from day one with this anime, and if nothing else, CyberConnect2 delivered that.
The Eternal Cylinder is quite sad yet somehow there is a delight in finding in the smaller moments: finding an egg and evolving are especially happy moments. It is complex yet simple, running from the big bad thing that constantly looms like the Sword of Damocles is easy enough, but exploring to find the way ahead isn't always completely straightforward. The opposite emotions make the game feel deeply fulfilling. It's not quite like anything else I've ever experienced, and I feel like it will haunt me (in the best way possible) for quite some time to come.
Bunhouse is meditative and sweet. It's the kind of game that you can boot up and play for a couple of minutes or hours, depending on how much you need to de-stress, and in so many ways it parallels the joy of having actual rabbits as pets. They might not be the loudest or most boisterous buddies, but their stoic warmth fills the home with wholesome goodness. Ultimately, rabbits are wonderful, and Bunhouse does them justice.
I'm all for short games, and if a game really caught my attention I'd be more than happy to pay the equivalent of many coffees for an hour or two's play. My issue is when the game's so truncated in its brevity that it can't deliver on its promise. If Toree 2 is indeed a nostalgic love letter to the platformers of yesteryear, then the developers should have understood what made those titles cohesive, character-driven experiences. Toree 2's simply too limited and thin to deliver atmosphere, character, or a cohesive 3D platformer experience. As the saying goes: fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. I'm not making the mistake of giving this developer the benefit of the doubt this time around.
If it had a better interface and localisation, THE Card Battle: Eternal Destiny would be an easy game to recommend to people who don't usually play card games, as the mechanics are simple, elegant, and not too bothered with the hardcore deck building that is such a barrier to entry for so many people. Call it a "gateway drug" if you like, with the fan service being the hook. Unfortunately, Eternal Destiny also does everything that it can to be uninviting to newcomers. There's a decent casual game in there. Just be prepared to work to enjoy it.
Dread is fine. It's not just nearly memorable enough for a game that fans have been waiting for so many years for now.
Super Monkey Ball Banana Mania is the kind of tragedy that Shakespeare himself would have written about. There is so much energy and passion that has gone into the game, and it is massive. We're talking dozens upon dozens of hours worth of raw content in there. The presentation is gorgeous too, and for the first hour or so I was hit by the most wonderful rush of nostalgia, reliving levels that had been etched into muscle memory from so many hours of play, back on the Gamecube. But then the more difficult levels hit and the controller hardware just wasn't up to the task like the Gamecube controller was. That was one thing. Worse, though, was that SEGA took these wonderful arcade experiences and made them... not arcade games anymore.
In theory, a Bubble Bobble game with Mario Maker tossed in should be occupying my every waking moment, whether I'm busy playing it, or working out smart new ways to build sequences of levels to play through with family and friends. Instead, what Bubble Bobble 4 Friends: The Baron's Workshop represents is far more of a lazy cash-in title. Bubble Bobble, needless to say, deserves far better than that.
Actraiser Renaissance, however, is a remake that should have simply stuck to the basics that made Actraiser great. Instead, what you get are moments of greatness broken up by far too many moments of mediocrity.
Ultimately, to quote myself, "it's hard not to expect more from adaptations now. Unfortunately, the minimum effort that went into Deathtrap Dungeon (and now Fighting Fantasy Legends) is still disappointing. I'm not sure what possessed the team to dust off a five-year-old release for Switch when, as far as I can tell, no one was really asking for it. I guess there might be some marginal value there for a tiny few people, but I really do mean tiny few. Especially with Tin Man Games's take on Firetop Mountain also on Switch.
Xuan-Yuan Sword VII is an exceptional game, and a compelling example of how Taiwanese RPGs will be able to add to the narrative and thematic depth of the genre as a whole. The gameplay might be a little derivative, but that narrative, coupled with the gorgeous art and refined gameplay, make this one that you shouldn't let slip under your radar.
It's a little disappointing that one of the most compelling and thought-provoking dungeon crawlers will be inevitably dismissed and derided because it's fleshy and fan servicey. The Mary Skelter series is one of Idea Factory's greatest achievements, being both mechanically deep and thematically rich, and Mary Skelter Finale is the complete realisation of the intent of the series. I'd never encourage Australians to break the law to access censored games, of course, but just remember those Nintendo Switch consoles are region free...
Lost in Random isn't a terribly long game. Even if you do keep the battles long by maintaining normal difficulty you can knock it off in around a dozen hours or so of gameplay time. By that stage, you probably won't find the combat as charming as you did when you first started, but you'll still want to see it to its conclusion, because the narrative and humour are so particularly strong.