Recent reviews by Judeo-communism

This version is a lot easier than the 3D version. I've beaten and replayed the 3D version several times, and this is the first time I've ever played FF3 that's not the 3D version. The 3D version can be brutally difficult at times, downright unfair and relying on RNG hoping the boss doesn't do his super AoE attack 2-3 times in a single turn to 100-0 you instantly, as many enemies and most bosses can attack 2-3 times per turn, whereas in Pixel Remaster every enemy and boss can only attack you once per turn. One notable exception for difficulty, however, is the Cave of Shadows. I found it to be much more difficult in PR than in 3D, even though it wasn't necessarily easy in 3D either. The enemies seemed to have a lot more AGI in PR and always acted first, leading your healer to slowly "bleed out" their MP resources every single fight, and the Dark Knight jobs weren't able to oneshot enemies even when dual wielding. My memory may be off, but I think I remember Dark Knights oneshotting enemies there in 3D if they were dual wielding.

In any case, FF3 3D is a brutal challenge and unfair sometimes. FF3 PR is much easier and more streamlined with several conveniences like auto-battle and auto-save. The animations and battles are much faster, and you can sprint around maps. It makes the overall game play much faster and thus much shorter than the 3D version. They're both great, the 3D version is better if you want a good challenge and the PR version is better if you just want a quick experience of what FF3 is like. You might find the PR version to be a bit "watered down" in terms of FF games, but that's because it is. It pioneered a lot of firsts for the series, like multiple world maps and the job systems. Not much of that was "remade" for modern times, so don't expect too much. For example, the game will unlock jobs for you but you have no gear for them at all so you can't even use them yet. Or, some jobs are downright useless then all of a sudden get a power spike in the next town or dungeon when you get gear for them, only to become useless again later as they never get new or more updated gear again.

It's just a classic experience where most things aren't all that balanced, and sometimes enemies even in PR will oneshot you and there's nothing you can do about it thanks to RNG, but overall still an enjoyable classic jRPG. Not great, not terrible, just very middle of the road in terms of the FF series.

So I played through FF7R the first time when it came out on Steam a couple years ago, then just replayed it again alongside the Yuffie episode.

I remember liking it the first time, thinking "I still prefer original FF7 but this is good, too. it has some flaws like bad map design, annoying side fetch quests and some rather anti-fun (but not difficult) bosses."

After replaying it again with a more analytical eye, that's all still largely the same. I was able to appreciate the side quests a little more now that I already knew what to expect from the game, and I was able to use different materia and party builds since I knew exactly how long the game was going to be and what battles to expect. I enjoyed it more this time than my first time as a result, where as in the first time I already had expectations set based on the original and wasn't sure about how much "planning" and "investing" I needed to do in specific materia based on the original game.

With that out of the way, this game is not worth $70. Definitely get it on sale. It's not a bad game, and it will be enjoyable for FF7 veterans or new players, but it's not worth $70.

It is, however, a 40 hour game that's only the Midgar section of FF7 and thus already as long as the original game. But the major wrench in that is that the biggest reason it's 40 hours and only in Midgar is that the game is A LOT of cutscenes with voice acting that pad your time, plus side quests and traveling large hallway maps with no real exploration. So you don't spend 40 hours playing the actual game in gameplay, you spend the vast majority of that watching cutscenes.

The story is not bad and the cutscenes are very good and compelling. They flesh out each character very well, and it throws a large amount of twists at you for the veteran players that you definitely don't expect. Since they intended this to be about a 40 hour game just in Midgar, they definitely embellish many sections and add entirely new scenarios that weren't in the original. These embellishments vary in quality. Sometimes you're having a blast in them, othertimes you're really wishing that part would finally end so you could move on. You spend A LOT of time with Biggs, Wedge and Jessie in this version that you don't in the original, and the Shinra Building episode is also much longer.

You quickly learn that whenever the game tries to subvert your prior FF7 story expectations, certain things start to happen which become very compelling. It makes it so much more enjoyable because despite you knowing what's ultimately going to happen, you want to see how it happens now because of those certain things. It makes for very good storytelling for the veteran players.

I might be a minority on this, but I think the music is pretty bad. Only a few tracks are actually "okay," but most of it is just random dubstep eletronic noises that sound like modern autistic hip hop and barely anything like the original, far superior music. It's also very subdued and quiet, particularly in battles, so it doesn't grip you or make you bounce your head as you begin a boss fight. The battle theme, boss theme, Jenova's theme, and even the motorcycle chase themes aren't truly present in the game. They play bits and pieces of them here and there, but again it's so electronic and subdued that you can barely recognize them when they DO play.

Most of the cutscenes range from fine to okay, with a few good ones and some really bad ones. It definitely pushes the action cutscenes to maximum over the top Advent Children styles that are just unbelievably stupid and cringe sometimes. A far cry to how much more subtle and grounded the original FF7 was, which made the game a lot more relatable than FF7R.

The combat system is definitely FF13 inspired. Build a stagger gauge, break the enemy, burst them. That's the basic core concept loop for the combat with minimal variation. Some enemies and bosses require more strategy than others, and there are definitely uneven and random difficulty spikes particularly with a few bosses. These only get further compounded when enemies are weak to immune or resistant to particular elements, but you can't switch your materia mid-combat so you can't adapt to them and that makes some fights much more difficult. Likewise, when you do have the setup, some become way too easy. The game doesn't give you Hard mode until you clear the game once, and Hard is designed for max level characters with maxed out materia and builds as a post-game challenge. It is quite hard, especially on two particular bosses (Air Buster and Hellhouse), and will require specific party make ups and builds specific to those fights. You cannot use any items in Hard, even out of battle, and resting does not restore your MP. So healing is definitely a very deliberate decision; every spell cast, offensive or otherwise, will limit your available heals. Enemies are given a multiplier on damage dealt on top of it in Hard, so you really have to plan carefully. It's a little too much min-maxing every single detail for me to be "fun," where I prefer more skill-based than strategy-based gameplay.

What I do like about this game's combat is the variety of character playstyles. Every character plays very, very differently from each other. Tifa in particular is very fun to play; some of the most fun I've had playing "monk" in any RPG. As you play through the game, you'll quickly notice the enemy AI almost always targets whoever you're controlling though which is pretty annoying. Sure there is a "Provoke" materia, but it's limited and has a long cooldown, and only activates on characters you aren't controlling. It's just really annoying when you're trying to swap between characters to spend their ATB efficiently with their attacks (like using Tifa to increase Stagger bonus during burst windows to prep Cloud's huge burst) only to have every enemy instantly chase you down and force you to immediately become defensive. The idea that you swap to a different character as the enemy is targeting a specific character just isn't a thing. The battle system is bad by any means, but it's also not amazing or as good as original FF7. It serves, but it's not particularly memorable outside Tifa's few moments where the enemy isn't targeting her because it's staggered and there's no more adds.

And that's kind of the main point where FF7R falls behind the original: it's not nearly as memorable. It's fine, it's good, it's enjoyable. But it's not perfect, it's not amazing, it's not unforgettable like original FF7 is. I still remember so many extremely minute details about original FF7 as a kid, yet I could barely tell you many of the major specifics in FF7R even after replaying it for a second time. It's worth a playthrough, but only on sale. Here's to hoping they make the next two much better and more memorable, but I can say it is a "good" remake.

Also, for you Noticers, there's a lot of obvious intentional cringe in this game that is blatantly meant to undermine us, particularly with the NPCs. Don't say I didn't warn you

Iron from Ice.

This game was fantastic and a worthy addition to the franchise. The story remained compelling from the very start to finish, and every decision you make ranges form bad to worse. You really do feel like you're in the Game of Thrones world, and all those times you fantasized how you would make good decisions and still retain your honor without dying gets thrown out the window. You will die and face other serious consequences for those decisions.

The characters in this game are very much their show counterparts, not their book versions. Which for characters like Cersei it's great, because her show character is miles better than her book character where she is a joke. Trying to out talk show Cersei while pleasing Margery is nearly impossible. Extremely fun. Show Ramsey, however, is not nearly as compelling as book Ramsey who is far more cunning. It's not that show Ramsey is bad, he's just much more one dimensional and predictable. So you can already tell what's gonna happen any time you see him.

While it is true this game does have a rather broad overarching story it ultimately follows, there are several key decisions you make throughout the game that vastly change how it plays out. This makes replaying the game even more fun as you try other paths, several of which present entirely new scenarios that didn't exist in your first playthrough. This leads to several different "endings," which I put in quotes because the events are largely the same but the characters present in those endings vary greatly. A few decisions in particular dictate the characters more than others, but I won't spoil it, so just enjoy a few playthroughs of the game your self.

It's a very short game. Each playthrough is about 13 hours long or less. That's not bad by any means, because it's just a story driven game with very little gameplay. I don't typically enjoy this style of game at all, but this one is definitely an exception because it does justice to the world of Ice and Fire. The story is actually quite good and makes you very invested in your House.

I'm too honest and good for King's Landing, Cersei ripped me apart with talk and I couldn't bluff Ramsey. 11/10 game

This game is great. I haven't played any of the AoE games before, but I did grow up with Stronghold. I tried AoE2:DE first since it was cheaper on sale, but it has some very bad pathfinding issues and seems to lack a lot of overall polish, even when comparing it to Stronghold. AoE4, however, has all that polish and very few mechanical problems, if any. It flows and plays incredibly well.

It doesn't have an over saturation of many different civilizations that ultimately feel the same like AoE2 does either; every civ in AoE4 is very unique with their own playstyle, even the alternate civs like France's Jeanne d'Arc and Germany's (Holy Roman Empire) Order of the Dragon. England plays very differently than France which plays very differently than Germany. England is heavier on their unique unit, the Longbow, while having pretty good Man at Arms that you can train quickly. Their basic villagers also can shoot enemies with their own bows, making for a solid ragtag defense unit which is actually historically accurate. France focuses on having great Cavalry, that are good both early and late game. France's alternate civ, Jeanne d'Arc, plays very differently by having Joan being a "hero unit" that you start with, and she gains EXP. as she kills things and levels up. Each level making her much stronger and she comes with unique abilities. Germany focuses on maintaining a solid defense and having strong religious units that give unique bonuses for capturing relics and buffing their economies. Germany's alternate civ, Order of the Dragon (Historically accurate and founded by King Sigismund of Hungary, for you Kingdom Come: Deliverance fans), makes very expensive units that are very strong. They can't field as many units as other civs, but their units are extremely powerful. And many more civs and alternate civs. Japan can make spies. Mongols have horse archers. Rus have good cavalry and get bonuses for hunting animals. The unique civs is where the game shines.

In addition to the uniqueness of civs, they streamlined the "Aging up" mechanic too. To advance through the ages in this game, you choose between two different special buildings unique to each civ, per age. For example, England's Feudal Age lets you choose between a Council Hall (acts as an archery range but works twice as fast) or an Abbey of Kings heals your units standing near it, and train a King who is a powerful cavalry unit and also comes with an AoE regen for your units. These kinds of choices are something you can make on a per-game basis which drastically change how you play each match, which is very fun.

The music is very good and unique with each civilization too, an extremely nice touch. The single player campaign has extremely high quality videos that tell you fun history lessons and let you relive key moments in AoE4's gamplay. It's very enjoyable if you have a nationalist pride for your country (as you should).

This game is just good fun. It's fun to learn, it's fun to master, and it's fun to beat other people at. And the matches aren't that long, about 30-40 mins on average. It's easy enough to pick up and learn, but deep enough to take competitively with all the conveniences of modern games. I feel like this game perfected what they learned from AoE2 and expanded upon it.

Highly recommend if you're looking to get into RTS.

Elden Ring is not good and does not deserve the praise it gets.

I say this as someone who wants to love this game. I want to enjoy it. I want to find the good and see it the same way everyone else does. But I can't. Because I'm at the end of the game and I'm so sick and tired of it, every play session is a chore and exhausting. It's not hard. It's not difficult. It's the easiest Souls game yet. But it's also the most annoying and wastes your time far more than all of the other games combined. Most of my playtime is just me alt tabbing looking at some guide or wiki to make sure I don't screw up some obscure questline, which the game has no visual tracker or clarity of, just by naturally playing the game. Or I'm alt tabbing because I'm so bored of the game and get side tracked doing something more fun instead of playing this game.

This game requires you to have ADHD to enjoy it. You're thrust into a gigantic open world with very non-linear exploration, and it expects you to go in 6 million different directions at once while never fully finishing a single task or area. If you do try a methodically "take one step at a time" approach, it wastes even more of your time by having the gigantic open world be largely empty. It doesn't reward you for exploring. Some random mushrooms behind a cliff isn't "content." It suffers from the exact same problem that Breath of the Wild did: the world is too big and there's nothing in it to justify it. It only exists to waste your time traveling and looking for things that aren't there. Which you still have to look for anyway because sometimes there is something there, however rarely, like an accessory, upgrade material, new skill or dungeon. And the game expects you to find them all and miss nothing, because the enemies are so poorly designed and take forever to kill.

The enemies aren't hard. They're not challenging. The bosses are the easiest part of this game. But this game has by far the highest amount of "annoying, antifun poorly designed enemies" than all the other Souls games combined. If anyone makes a top 10 most annoying enemies list of the Souls series, Elden Ring's enemies would occupy at least 8 if not all 10 of the slots. Just when I thought "this is the worst enemy design they've made yet," I end up fighting 6 more I say the exact same thing about in the same play session. They're so obnoxious with 1 frame windups, long releases, high tracking, no recovery, infinite stamina, unpredictable patterns, and extremely short time windows to actually hit them, if ever. You'll do so many hit trades in this game because you're bored of waiting for that 1 frame that you can safely hit the enemy in as you constantly dodge all their attacks that have no recovery thus can't be punished safely.

Again, it's not hard. This is the easiest Souls game. It's baby's first Dark Souls, and I imagine the only people who do find so much to like about it simply haven't played the superior trilogy of games before this one. I did; I replayed all 3 for the first time since each of their releases in preparation for my first playthrough of Elden Ring, so my thoughts and opinions of them are fresh and not rose tinted. You can't even get invaded in this game unless you're doing co-op or summon a red signature.

This game sucks and is a huge disappointment. Go play Dark Souls 3 instead. It's far superior in every way and won't waste your time or have such high amounts of annoying antifun enemies. It's also much harder. I'm not even sure I can be bothered to finish the game now because I'm so sick of playing it. I'm at Farum, so yes, I'm very close to the end of the game and beaten just about every challenge possible at this point.

Fantastic game. It really polishes the Dark Souls formula to the best here, and feels so good to play. It's much faster and harder than DS1, while not nearly as frustrating with clipping or bad animations like DS2. Having just finished the trilogy in rapid succession, I think this is the best one overall, even if DS1 is the most memorable.

I only have two complaints about DS3:

1. You cannot upgrade armor, and leveling up gives very low defense bonuses. So you take a ton of damage throughout the entire game. The game tries to mitigate some of this by giving you a gigantic amount of health, that you increase further by going Embered (This game's version of Humanity) as well as a maximum of 15 Estus Flask that can be upgraded to +10, but obviously you lose the health bonus on death and have to consume another. The problem, however, is that because you take so much damage, you still die in 2 hits on average so all the extra health never "feels" good. They made anything below 70% equipment load "fast rolls," and the invincibility frames on those rolls with extremely low recovery means you're basically expected to roll dodge everything. Shields can be upgraded like previous games, but they only get +1 Stability per upgrade and it already starts low. They're the worst they've ever been, compared to DS1 and 2. So this game is not about blocking or even having tanky builds, it's all about dodging and never getting hit at all. I would've liked to been able to upgrade armor, because they especially made Elite Knight armor set total garbage in this game. You can't get it until near the end of the game unless you're willing to kill an NPC that plays a vital role in one of the endings, but even then it has worse defenses than the basic starting Knight set you get and weighs more. It's supposed to make up for it by having slightly better elemental resistances, but you really feel the lower physical defense and weight far more. The default knight set looks really cool too, but I played through the trilogy using Longsword, Crest Shield, and Elite Knight set. I even did Nameless King with the Elite Knight set despite all the lightning damage I took.

2. The mid-late game, for whatever reason, gets really boring to me and forgettable. And I don't know why. I love the early game in this game, everything to Farron. Once you finish Farron and its bosses, the game just fell flat for me in terms of fun. I barely remember any of it, and this happened on my first playthrough of the game too. There were some outstanding moments like the Nameless King and final boss, but everything between Farron and those is a blur. They're not bad at all. The map design, enemy design and placements, and everything else are fantastic. But for some reason I just feel like it drags on and doesn't have the same impact as DS1, and to a lesser extend DS2, do. Maybe it's because I'm used to the formula that they continue to repeat along with the same'sh story telling, I'm not sure.

The best thing that DS3 brings to the trilogy though are the Skills. Every weapon and shield have Skills associated with them that use a new meter resource called Focus Points. These are essentially your "MP" and replace the "Amount of Uses" you had with spells in the previous games. You can increase this amount with Attunement, and restore it by reallocating your Estus Flasks into FP Flasks. It's a very fun system that makes you excited to look at every single weapon in the game and consider the possibilities. While most of the basic weapons have the same Skills (that are still fun to use), almost all of the boss weapons have unique Skills just for themselves, and every boss Soul has 2 choices of what to do with them. Most of turn into a weapon, a shield, a spell or a ring. It's very fun to play with.

Since I used Longsword, my Skill was called Stance, where I slowly charge into an "Ox" stance (real life longsword guard), and if I press light attack, I'll do an upwards cut that stuns enemy shields, does full damage, and allows me to do a Critical Hit (Ripsote) for even more damage if I did stun an enemy shield. If I press heavy attack, I do a gap closing powerful upwards stab that has high Poise (Super armor) breaking potential, very useful for fighting other NPCs. The only problem I have with this particular Skill, however, is that they don't do any bonus damage. The light attack Skill still does the same damage as a normal light attack, and likewise with the heavy attack Skill. So they're extremely niche abilities that cost FP to use, meaning they're only useful in very specific situations (fighting enemies that actually do hide behind their shield, which you can just Kick like normal for the same effect without costing FP instead of doing standard R1 damage). If they did considerably more damage so I'd want to use them in normal fighting situations, it would've been WAY more fun.

Overall, the game is a blast. The enemies are harder than ever before (except the final few areas of DS2 were harder due to bad map design), some of the bosses are tough as nails and it was a good signoff the trilogy. I did the standard Linking of the Fire endings for all 3 games, and I think DS2 did it best. DS3's ending was extremely short and kind've disappointing given it was meant to be the culmination of all 3 games finally coming to a close, but there are two other endings still.

I had a blast.

So I've been replaying the Dark Souls trilogy again for the first time since they each came out, preparing my self to my first playthrough of Elden Ring. I remember when I first finished each of the games, I felt like Dark Souls 2 was my favorite of the trilogy. I specifically remember hating DS2 at first, the beginning is quite rough and the controls are not nearly as fluid as they are in DS1. They also made some very questionable decisions when it came to stats, like making Stamina, Equipment Load, and invincibility frames when dodging all three separate stats, all each are equally necessary to play the game. But as I played through the game more, especially reaching the end game, I felt like I loved the world, its characters and the story more than DS1. I felt even more compelled to complete it and see what happened. I really cared about Drangleic.

Now, after just having finished replaying DS1 Remastered for the first time since like 2013 or whenever Prepare to Die came out, I feel completely the opposite. I was looking forward to replaying DS2 the most, and straight from the beginning after immediately finishing DS1, I hopped back in. From the get-go I could feel the clunkiness of DS2 controls compared to DS1. I thought maybe I'd adjust to it, and would get more accustomed to it once I got back into actually fighting enemies and relearning their behaviors. But I never really did. I still feels far worse than DS1, throughout the entire game. Every stat decision feels bad too, you never feel like you have enough Agility (invincibility frames) when you dodge. You get clipped either early or late all the time. And the enemy behavior is infuriating compared to DS1. In DS1, you could "easily" dodge just about every attack and punish the enemies' recovery. In DS2, this is impossible in many cases. Just about every single enemy in DS2 tracks your movement well into their attack release animations, and many enemies have absolutely no recovery. This means enemies can swing giant zweihander-like reaching sweeps with dagger-like windups, doing maul-like damage with arming sword-like recoveries. You'll notice this especially in the later areas of the game; giant enemies literally with big two-handed mauls spamming giant sweeping attacks that track your rolls behind them or around them or away from them and no recovery. If you try to punish their "recovery," they're already winding up the next attack before you can block or dodge out of your own recovery. Not to mention most enemies are stupidly hard to flinch. You'll hit trade for days unless you cheese the game with an ultra-greatsword, magic or ranged. In just about every area of the game I had fond memories of before, I hated today. Then finally came the dreaded Shrine of Amana, which I did hate originally, and I found it even worse today. By the final area of the game, I decided fighting them wasn't worth the frustration and started skipping them (Dragon Shrine and Memory areas). I've never skipped enemies in any other Dark Souls, always preferring to slowly and methodically find ways to clear the area before doing the boss. Dark Souls 2 ended that for me, and I was so ready to finally beat it again and move on to better Dark Souls 3.

The expansion for Dark Souls 2, Scholar of the First Sin, only compounds these problems worse; they add 20x more enemies in some areas, all crowded in small corridors or hallways, each doing way too much damage with no wind ups, recoveries, or ability to be flinched. It's not fun. You can "gitgud" but that mostly means cheesing with ranged or being willing to make every fight take 30+ minutes each as you wait for the perfect frame opening to actually land one small quick hit then dodge away and repeat. It's shocking to see such bad game design when Dark Souls 1 and 3 were so stellar.

I still think Dark Souls 2 on its own is a decent game, at least until the late game. It's not nearly as good as 1 or 3, and it saddens to me think how my memories were all just delusions of this game. But treat this game as its own stand-alone game instead of a direct sequel to 1, and it's a bit better that way. This game deserves its hate the playerbase gives it afterall. I'm hugely disappointed for ever liking it, but nonetheless I'm mostly critical of it because of DS1. Without DS1, this game is still recommendable.

A perfect port of that game you could never stop playing on MAME emulation as a kid. I had a blast playing this with netplay back in 1990s/early 2000s and I still love playing it today. It's rare that I ever play (or make) a game that I don't always come back to thinking about this one in many different areas. And it's honestly the only D&D game I actually enjoyed lol. The online works great too

I beat Prepare to Die edition when it came out and I finally got around to playing this version. I don't have any hyper specific memories of Prepare to Die about how it looked or using DSFix, so I have no qualms about Remastered. It looks and plays fine. Also, it's way easier than we remember. The average Mordhau pugger takes exponentially more skill to beat than anything this game has to offer now. I beat every boss in one try except for Artorias which took two tries and Kalameet which took four, using +15 Longsword, +5 Crest shield, +10 Elite Knight armor set. Good game, good version, very populated PvP invasion scene. But the PvP is extremely laggy even when you have perfect net. It's basically impossible to take it competitively or even half seriously. You'll hit trade and desync for days while enemies teleport behind you for instant backstab from 6 million miles away. So, play Mordhau for PvP, play this game for PvE. Good times to be had.

Another childhood favorite that still holds up today. You're not a massive, overpowered killing machine. You're a thief. You suck at combat. And you must use stealth to win. Unforgettable story, setting, writing and level design. I still go back and replay this game regularly. A game of good design and passion.