Recent reviews by Hou

The story is a downgrade from the previous few expansions but the boss encounters are genuinely THE BEST fights we've had in years and negative reviewing the whole expansion just because the writing quality dipped is silly.

A huge breath of fresh air, as someone who's been craving an innovative MOBA.

It unironically gets good after a hundred hours.

Depression only costs a dollar.

The premise is ridiculous with the story rarely taking itself seriously and the characters being fun and charming; the writing is paced well and usually light-hearted, regularly making me actually laugh out loud (which is something I can't say about most things; I'm normally Exhibit A for a consistent poker face). Despite all of its absurdity, though, it does touch on more serious topics at times and does them well. Its balance between comedy and seriousness is probably around 80 to 20. Both aspects work well together and form something worth remembering.

The English translation quality is actually one of the best I've ever seen in a visual novel. Frognation Ltd deserves a lot of respect for its work on this. Everything sounds very natural and very few things were lost in translation.

Some people are, of course, not going to support this localization because it's a port of the console version and not the original PC version. I will not try to change the minds of those who do so, but I sincerely feel that many are missing out on a fun time as a result.

You can never experience the pure bliss of Poppo's heart-pounding singing without this. It even comes with a Sham/Sora version as a bonus!

No sober man would make the hardest video game boss known to mankind a fairy from the moon that wears the U.S. flag.

10/10 PTSD

If you are familiar with the original Grisaia trilogy, then the previous volumes of Phantom Trigger may have felt somewhat formulaic and predictable. However, that is not the case here; this one will make you feel right at home.

It's still fairly short but Vol. 5 is easily the best of what Phantom Trigger has to offer so far.

If you feel the need to get beat up by seagulls are reading this, then get this game. No excuses.

Mark of the Ninja is a stealth semi-action game in which you play as a ninja marked (painted on) with magical ink, that gives you special powers, but will eventually corrupt your mind.

In this game, you traverse various stages in a very stealthy way. More often than not, if you get caught, you're probably going to die. So to prevent this, you must do what a ninja would do: Complete the mission from the shadows. Sneak up on enemies and slay them silently, sneak past them so as not to risk being seen, make them hallucinate and think their allies are enemies, violently and loudly have them devoured with bugs, etc. There are many answers to one level.

This game has a slightly extreme difficulty balance where the first 80% of the game is fairly easy, then the last 20% is extremely difficult (epecially on the unlocked game-mode which is harder). But if you're patient, or aggressive enough, you should be fine.

If you like 2D stealth games, and you do not have this game, then your library of games is incomplete.