Recent reviews by CatgirlV3

This is primarily a review for YIIK I.V, as someone who experienced the older versions of the game secondhand.

YIIK, at it's core, is a pretty misunderstood game. People compared it to Earthbound, went in expecting a quirky Earthbound style story, and got mad when it was really a very introspective story told to you by a chronic liar of a narrator that expects you to scrutinize everything told to you, and, in truth, does not have a happy ending, despite Alex's own insistence. In my eyes, the battle system was the game's biggest fault. The game markets itself as "A Postmodern RPG", so it is vital to approach it from a postmodern lens, or the story it tries to tell will be practically invisible to you.

YIIK I.V. is a total overhaul of the game. The aesthetics are made stronger, there are now animated cutscenes, it's made very clear that Alex's monologuing is intended to be kind of annoying, some characters get more scenes to make them feel much more distinct, and the battle system has been 100% redone into a very unique and enjoyable system. These don't make the game perfect by any means, but they would, in my eyes, bump what was a 5/10 to about a 7/10. The story is a bit easier to parse, battles aren't a slog, and overall it's a great little package.

What I, and many other people likely weren't expecting, was the additional content after you finish the story. The original primary ending has been completely rewritten, leading into a segment that I will be very sparse on details for, (although I will in a spoilered comment on this review, to prevent people from accidentally spoiling themselves), but said content felt challenging, fun, and gives enough additional story for me to bump YIIK I.V. to an 8.5/10. Not a perfect game by any means, but one I can say I did very much enjoy.

I had recently gotten back into this game a few days before the news broke out, having finished and enjoyed the hell out of the game when it first released.

Hi-Fi Rush is, to put it simply, one of the best games to have come out in recent years, and should be the gold standard for games going forward. The game is primarily an action game, along the lines of Metal Gear Rising, Devil May Cry, or Bayonetta, but with the twist that everything moves to the beat. And I do mean everything; stage elements, your attack, enemy attacks, even cutscenes are synchronized to the beat of the background music. You aren't required to stick to the beat, but your attacks will still land on-beat, and you're rewarded with extra damage for landing on-beat.

This leads to the game having a very interesting feel, as it leads to beats in the music feeling almost like frames in a fighting game. All your light attacks take one beat to execute, and your heavy attacks take two beats, and most enemies have a tell a few beats before they actually execute their attack, allowing you to perform a combo that ends right before their attack, and then bust out a parry on the next beat, before continuing your combo.

The story is also extremely good, and all the characters have unique and memorable personalities that feel just over-the-top enough to not be obnoxious. Chai may feel like a protagonist you'd get tired of after a bit of time, but his personality and development lead to him being the perfect character for a game like this.

Along with these, the game has incredible replay value. There's a short postgame storyline involving 16 "Challenge Rooms" that demand you to fight a wave or two of enemies with a special condition, such as not manually moving, only dealing damage with parry counters, not taking damage, or getting above a certain percentage of perfectly on-beat attacks, ending in a humorous final encounter with the game's antagonist. Afterwards, you're offered the ability to replay the game at higher difficulties, to go for higher performance ranks, or the three side modes, Rhythm Tower, BPM Rush, and Power-Up! Tower-Up!

Rhythm Tower serves as a 60-floor gauntlet of the game's areas, challenging you with a short timer that you can increase by performing well in the fights, and every 10 floors, you're challenged with one of the game's corporate bosses, before facing the final boss at Floor 60 and getting your final ranking and payout based on how much time you had left.

BPM Rush and Power-Up! Tower-Up! were added as part of the "Arcade Update", and are both accessed from an arcade machine in your squad's hideout. While they aren't integrated with the game's 'Achievement Mural', a large mural on the wall that fills with characters and details as you complete challenges and accept your rewards, there's a separate Arcade Reward Tracker for them, holding a bunch of exclusive rewards, such as outfits for characters, new super moves, and photo mode poses.

BPM Rush has you fight an endless wave of enemies, with a bar at the bottom that fills based on your performance. Once this bar is filled, you get a "BPM Rush", where you must defeat a buffed mini-boss enemy, after which the BPM of the background music will go up and you have to repeat the process, up until you're hammering buttons at 200 BPM.

Power-Up! Tower-Up! is essentially a Roguelike mode. At the start of a run, Chai is zapped, and his stats brought down to abysmal levels, but between waves of enemies, you are given the option to accept buffs that'll bring him back up to and even above form, with more powerful upgrades including a temporary "bug" that will affect the next wave of enemies, such as causing enemies to explode when they die, damaging you, or "Setting the video feed to 480p", which serves as a humorous visual impairment.

Overall, Hi-Fi Rush is an AMAZING game if you're looking for something with a ton of personality and replay value. I would say I hope for a sequel, but unfortunately recent news has not only revealed that Tango was in the process of pitching one, but that they were also shut down by their parent company, essentially shuttering any hope of a good followup.

EDIT: Recently news came out that Tango Gameworks, the developers of Hi-Fi Rush, was saved from closure by Krafton, with specific mention that they'll be persuing more games in the Hi-Fi series, meaning that we effectively have confirmation that we're getting Hi-Fi Rush 2, so you can ignore most of that final paragraph lmao

n.S>S>HS>HS>236S>214K

The premise that the store page promised really grabbed my attention, a game with the main gameplay being doing puzzles involving your desktop and file system to help this little anime girl out. It brought to mind the parts of OneShot that involved messing with files, which I loved, but sadly, the idea isn't really taken anywhere. There's maybe two "puzzles" that are kind of neat, but they're overly obvious and the rest are puzzles which you're essentially handheld through. The worst part was when I realized that a good 75% of the game was actually a sidescroller that required precise inputs to progress, and then the final segment required heavy, precise use of the mouse. Overall, a premise that I was very much looking forward to, only to find that it wasn't actually used much and most of the game was a frustrating side-scroller.

BFG-9000

Checked it out from a recommendation in a Discord focused around an okay TF game, ended up loving the ♥♥♥♥ out of it. The game is extremely well written and the gameplay is probably some of the best I've experienced in the turn-based RPG genre, even if it is a little on the easy side.

Despite very much being an adult game, it doesn't rely on it to tell it's story or to keep you hooked. It's very much focused on being a story driven RPG first, and a lewd game second. Most of the "NSFW" elements are genuinely just characters discussing or mentioning things that'd be considered adult in a very realistic manner, while the other is the transformation scenes, which also double as a gameplay mechanic in that every new transformation you get essentially serves as a new playable class in combat. The encounter system is very unique, being that it's possible to avoid encounters if you're careful, but it's also possible to get reduced battle rewards (EXP, Job Points, and money) by sneaking up behind an enemy and spamming the use key without them noticing you, which stuns them and gives the aforementioned rewards, so it's entirely possible to gain levels and such without actually entering combat.

The writing is extremely good, and I found myself very invested in the world and the plot, especially Chapter 5. The humor also generally struck a chord with me, I don't think there were any jokes that I found bad, they all managed to at least get a smile out of me.

The game is extremely good for a free RPG, and I cannot wait to see where the story is taken in the future.

Very good Metroidvania. The gameplay reminded me of Symphony of the Night, Aria of Sorrow, and Dawn of Sorrow the whole way through. I didn't even 100% any of those games, but I did for this. The Shard system is heavily reminiscent of the Soul system from AoS and DoS, and the movement felt like a more refined version of SotN. The game is extremely well designed and the models look amazing.

If you look past all the Kojima controversy, (which, contrary to popular belief, isn't just "Kojima was fired and now he doesn't get to make Metal Gear anymore"), this is actually a very solid co-op game. I tend to not enjoy horde-type zombie games, but this one is one I actually enjoyed quite a bit even with randos from the steam group. I bought it on sale, which, if you can catch one, it's just $7.50, and it's very much worth the money. If you can convince your friends to get it, you'll probably have a lot of fun with the co-op modes, and the regular events exist to reward you for playing various modes in the game with cosmetics and higher tier weapons.

Another thing is that you can find cassette tapes containing music from various other Konami games, from Castlevania, to Boktai, to most of the other Metal Gear games. Sadly, you cannot listen to them while out exploring or doing co-op missions, but you can set them to play at your base camp or in the co-op staging area. Some events even offer *more* tapes you can get, so there's a ton of songs you could unlock to play.

There's also the well-known controversy of "$10 save slots", which is incorrect, as they're less save slots and more an extra character to get things on. For example, on Character 1 I could max out how many farms I have at my base camp, and then do it again on Character 2, and I'll be getting double the produce I'd get with just one, so it's effectively a permanent x2 resource booster.

My only real complaint is that Melee feels a little finicky. It's probably just my preference for using the Bow and Arrow, but a lot of the time you'll get hit mid-swing and it'll interrupt your attack, and then you'll get comboed into oblivion by Wanderers. It's also very difficult to tell if a melee swing will stagger the enemies or not, as it seems almost random if it does. On the other hand, the Bow and Arrow feels very satisfying to use, which I always love to see, as a huge fan of using Bows in video games.

All in all, I'd highly recommend it if you're looking for a good co-op game to play with up to three of your buddies.

super shotgun