Recent reviews by HalfFireFortress

Get Armored Core VI
I don't think I've played a game this viscerally satisfying. The gameplay is absolutely top notch, I've never played a game like this but I really can't imagine it being done any better.
This game was a bit out of left field for me, I've never played anything even remotely like it. But despite that I found myself loving it! It's the type of game you suck at when you start, and you get frustrated, and you pound your head against a boss over and over and over and over until BAM you've done it! You've surpassed it! And that joy keeps you going to the next, and the next, and the next, until you go back to fight the first boss and realise.... huh, was this guy always this easy?
The story is there, and was enough to keep me interested. It's not a game you get for the story, but it did pique my curiosity. Honestly, it was more fun to fill in the blanks with my own imaginings, but the story *is* there if you pay enough attention. I like it though, it very much fits. 621 doesn't give a ♥♥♥♥ about any of this, so of course the only story you get explicitly is through characters talking around you. You gotta read between the lines.
The music is.... perfectly sufficient. Maybe even emotional to some. Not for me, but there's nothing wrong with that. It does it's job! I've just been playing too many games with music that make me want to stop playing the game and listen instead :P

tl;dr GET ARMORED CORE VI

Truthfully I'm not sure what to say about this game.
A lot of this is going to be in comparison to the original trilogy, for obvious reasons.

I do think from the perspective of this as a game, it is quite a lot better than the original trilogy (as one would hope from a later game). In investigations, there's a lot less blindly examining things, in fact it's always fairly obvious when you have to. There's also a lot less presenting every single item you have in order to advance the story, which really quite frustrated me in the originals. On top of that, I really quite enjoy the new additions to the game, such as the jurors and their subsequent examinations, the "Herlock Sholmes" deduction sequences, and multiple witnesses giving testimony at the same time.

That said, I do have vastly the same issues with all of these. The game is.... trivially easy as a result. Admittedly, the only difficulty in the previous games was how obtuse and the sheer leaps of logic required for some of the solutions in the originals, and I suppose this is the cost of fixing that. Though I can't help but feel there's a balance, as the final case in the second of this collection proved quite well. The deduction sequences really feel like a joke most of the time, while they provide quite the fun spectacle, they take seconds to solve, and these sequences are really quite long so it results in them feeling a bit like a chore at times. Perhaps if they didn't have Herlock go through it once without your input, it would be a little less tedious. The secondary witnesses suffer from a similar problem, there's an incredibly loud alert sound, and a hard to ignore visual alert whenever you're supposed to interrupt somebody, which makes it feel like you're not really noticing it yourself at all. Though I understand this does mean you don't have to constantly pan between the witnesses, as that would be vastly worse than this, but that feels like more of a problem with the implementation in the first place.
The juror segments I have a lot less issue with, with my only comment being how frequent they are. Maybe they were trying to go with showing how easy it was to sway them as was Van Zieks point, but it really felt unnecessary at some points, especially when you can already see where the trial is going.

Maybe I am simply better at this sort of game after the original trilogy, but knowing me I highly doubt that :P

Still, these are mostly just overstated nitpicks. My real problem with this game comes from the pacing. Yes, the finale case is great, and I loved it. But it essentially came at the cost of... most of the rest of them. The story in these games is very enjoyable in the fact that there's basically no filler cases, everything is connected, and I do love that. But to preserve the reveals for the ending they seem to have really stretched out the rest of the story. Everything is just so.... slow.
Maybe that's just how visual novels tend to go, but I don't remember having this problem with the originals. The much more serious nature of the story in this game means it tends to drag on a bit without as much of the comedic nature. Nothing wrong with that of course, but I did find myself getting a little bored quite frequently, I didn't feel much at stake very often.

I *do* like how much more forgiving this game is. Maybe that sounds at odds with what I said about the game being too easy, but both can be true. No matter what the situation is, if you make a mistake you only lose one.... point? health? I admit I had to save scum quite a lot in the originals.

The music is very good, I fell in love quite quickly, though I was a little disappointed that the second game in the series had relatively little new music. One of my favourite parts about the original trilogy was how the music changed between games :P
The 3D character models were a little uncanny at first, but I quickly got used to them, and even preferred them!
The little cutscenes in each case were very fun, although they seem to phase that out in the second game, which was a little sad.

Overall, I still recommend this game despite what I've said. I suppose negatives just weigh on the mind more than positives. I really liked Ryunosoke's development throughout the games, and the supporting characters in Susato, Sholmes, Iris, Gina, Gregson, Van Zieks, Kazuma and most importantly WAGAHAI AND TOBY were very fun, though I don't think the development they were doing with Van Zieks worked very well, I never quite ended up liking him the way I did Edgeworth.
The story is very fun overall, and despite how long it takes to get there, I did really enjoy the final case and the way everything tied together. As with the originals, the game is fairly predictable. Despite that however, a lot of the cases did successfully manage to pull the wool over my eyes. Even if it's usually fairly obvious who the criminal is ultimately, the trials did manage a fair few amount of twists that weren't immediately obvious on the way to them. Plus it upped the difficulty to something a lot more enjoyable. Despite only two games in the collection, it feels almost just as long as the original trilogy, even if not as iconic.

A fun strategy game. A little on the easy side, I'd definitely recommend playing on the hardest difficulty, and the 7th and 8th level honestly felt a bit out of order difficulty wise, but overall a fun experience.
Had a little trouble with one of the achievements not triggering, but got it after a few tries.

Fantastic. Just fantastic. Technically, took me two years to finish (though I did take a two year break lol).
If you like platformers, this is definitely the game for you, offers so many very challenging and yet not frustrating levels, with a variety of scenery. The music is stunning, and even if you're not a fan of platformers, the story is still pretty investing, and the game offers an assist mode with plenty of options to help (all the way from slowing down time to more dashes), so overall I'd recommend the game to anyone!

I can't deny the game is very fun. The story was interesting, music is great, gameplay is quite fun.
Buuuuuuut, it is still *very* buggy. I could put up with it, but keep it in mind if you're not used to that kind of game.

Audio mixing is very weird, and also out of sync, really takes me out of it a lot.
Also while the world is very interesting, I feel it could have been expanded on a bit more. Besides the endings the story is very on rails.

This game is... inconsistent. Some moments feel fantastic, some make me want to uninstall straight away.
The story is.... there, I suppose. Not great, but has its moments.
I feel like the main appeal is supposed to be the gameplay, but I just could not enjoy it. The parkour is not very enjoyable, because it's just not responsive. Aiden never does what I want him to, and the delay between pressing a button and doing a thing is incredibly annoying, why are there so many unnecessary animations.

Also, the game is still incredibly buggy and broken.

Music is alright I guess.

This game does not and will not respect your time.
Servers are constantly going down.
Changes are frequently missing from the patch notes.
Even small patches release with immediately obvious bugs.
Year by year more and more content is becoming increasingly monetised. (Oddly, none of this money appears to result in mitigating any of these other issues?)
Narrative quality is inconsistent at best.
One of the worst new player experiences I've seen (and I play Elite Dangerous!)
Skill based matchmaking is so undeniably awfully implemented, I can't even touch the quickplay playlists for dread of being absolutely stomped on. Lord knows why the game seems to think I'm some sort of PvP god.
A very specific gripe, but solo lost sectors are just not fun, at all. And it sucks that they're so heavily required, unless you want to wait months to fill your collection through vex incursions. The drop rates, even after they were significantly improved, are so bad. And overload champions are just so awfully designed for solo play, it genuinely just makes me want to stop playing, especially in the lost sectors where they put two right next to each other, what a joke.
I hate that I cannot escape this game due to aggressive marketing and FOMO tactics, do not view any additional hours after time of this review as a good thing.

Banger soundtrack though

Just like the first game, but ever so slightly better in most areas.

I enjoyed the climbing mechanic, even if it did look a bit stilted.
The story is a bit subpar, maybe because of the odd voice acting and animations.
Overall, it didn't detract from my enjoyment of the game, the highlight for me of course being launching the rocket, and the EVA sections.

A very sweet game, with a short story but nice character moments.

Oh, and a haunting second ending...

I'm a little biased, any game set in space is an instant win for me, but this game absolutely earns the positive review. I'm not really sure what genre of game I'd define it as, but there's nothing more satisfying than salvaging a ship efficiently with no mistakes. Initially, I really didn't like the shift timer, but now that I've tried it I think it definitely adds to the game, encouraging you to figure out shortcuts and generally improve, while not really having any penalty for being too slow. Oh, and the music is excellent