Recent reviews by Jota

What a spectacular concept and execution, one of the most fun and addicting deck builders I've played, a labor of love and passion from one person and it shows.

"What If I made something fun I'd like to play" and we got this masterpiece from LocalThunk. Deserves all the praise it has been getting.

This is far from my ideal Sonic game, however, it can be pretty fun.

The core gameplay loop of exploration in the open zones, to open up the cyberspace levels which rewards keys for the chaos emeralds to advance the story is fun and a good foundation to build upon. The game can look good, yet I'm not sold on the art design of the generic environments and art style of the islands, and the reuse of assets for the cyberspace levels is baffling. It's nice to stack and complete open zone challenges in quick succession, even if they rely a ton on automation, there are ways you can break the game and complete them on your own using momentum from your boosts and jumps ( jumping deceleration should be turned off to facilitate this ), it's great what a fun movement system can do to an otherwise run of the mill open world map. That being said don't expect real momentum or rolling-based physics on slopes and the like, it's not that kind of game.

The cyberspace levels should be on paper a low point of the game, however in practice I didn't mind them that much and serve as a nice break from the open zone gameplay, even if these are extremely short. Also the boost feels extremely nerfed in these stages.

The combat is fine, I didn't have problems in the little chunks you experience it and bosses serve as another break of pace, most are fine, but some can be annoying by relying too much on waiting (Shark comes to mind). The Titans tho serve as a nice cap off each island and are cool setpieces as well. Oh yeah, great soundtrack too, but we all expected that.

Also extra points for being the first sonic game in like 10+ years that actually tries on the story aspect of the game.

What can I say, it simply feels nice to control Sonic in a 3d environment, which shouldn't be too much to ask for in a 3d platforming game (but you'd be surprised). I didn't love nor hate the game, I kind of liked it, and I'd recommend it if you are on the fence on it to form your own opinion.

I've played OW since its initial release and poured hundreds of hours on it, this game still holds some of that exhilarating and extremely fun experience, more so with friends. The gameplay is still responsive and satisfying and there are some really cool moments. That being said, there is a lot of problems with this game.

Broken promises, the PVE campaign was completely scratched and it was one of the main reasons the jump "had" to be made to 2, which was a lie. This is basically a rebalance of the original game. The complete deletion of the original game, along all the records within, monetization that is extremely greedy and ass to be honest. Back then you would think lootboxes as a predatory mechanic (which they still are), however this new battle pass system is even worse than that, at least you were able to just play the game and be rewarded with cool cosmetics and stuff by just having fun on the various gamemodes, this new system feels like a joke compared to that which is really really sad. FFS, I believe at the start of OW2 heroes were locked behind this battlepass, which is absurd but at least they backed down on that. A bunch of maps and a gamemode was lost, I used to really like this game, but that feeling is long gone. At least it still is fun to mess around with friends (to which I say, what game isn't?), but that's it.

From what I've read and have been told, this is a pretty faithful remake/remaster of the original Yakuza/Like a Dragon ps2 game, which tells how much of a quality title and vision they got all those years ago with the first release of the series.

A nice continuation if you started with Zero, and still long ways to go which is very exciting to say the least with these games. Fun combat albeit maybe a little repetitive, captivating storytelling and wacky events galore.

Incredibly fun and deep, rewarding progression, can be intimidating at first, but once you give it a chance, it can grow on you and you can learn as you go. I did that and I think this became my favorite ARPG, on par with Diablo 2.

It has some of the most customizable end games experiences I've ever had, and I'm just a noob but with some guidance I started to understand the different mechanics and systems and how to interact with them, while focusing on the ones that grabbed or interested me more by trying them.

Also while I usually refrain from using guides and the likes, the complexity and massive learning curve can be somewhat alleviated by the help of the community, which I think is neat.

It's free too, worth to give it a try if you are interested.

An incredibly solid title, top notch presentation, weighty and powerful combat which feels nice to control as well, epic setpieces and a very good story. Tacked on RPG elements and other stuff may be hit or miss, and the difficulty curve at the beginning of the game may be a little skewed on higher difficulties due to these elements, however, these are minor nitpicks on an otherwise phenomenal game, a must play if you are a fan of the series and want to experience the new direction it got in this title, or any action or cinematic game enjoyer in general.

Personally I'm excited and looking forward to Ragnarök which will be releasing soon on PC as well.

I've been replaying a lot of sonic games this past year, also I've avoided this title for 7 years, 'cause I knew what I was in for. Part of me said that I had to try it out before finally playing Frontiers, so here we are.

Not a broken game, but a really boring, mindless slog. This is rock bottom for this series.

Levels that are a straight line and are finished in 2 minutes, hold boost to win literally. Jumping and controls that feel awful in a freaking platforming game, they brought back classic sonic from generations (without any good reason) and to make it worse it feels way off, there's so much wrong with this title. This is where creativity goes to die. Visuals and music are ok but nothing to write home about to be honest.

Just don't waste your time with this, it's not worth it at all.

This could have been the definitive collection of the classic Genesis Sonic games, however it has some problems.

That being said, it's a solid collection of great titles and the incredible mobile remasters made by Christian Whitehead and Stealth from 1, 2 and CD, plus the long awaited Sonic 3 (& Knuckles) remaster in the same engine. Widescreen is such a fundamental upgrade to these games it cannot be overstated.

While you can play the decompilation of said ports other ways and they have arguably better options at hand, this game includes some extras and you can tell they put some effort into it, and there is also the awesome modding community hard at work that have ironed out most of the major bugs and problems with this release (Ultrafix mod), plus ways to restore the original Sonic 3 soundtrack which fares way better in my opinion than the rearranged beta tracks. This could have been alleviated if they included the actual ROMs that Sega delisted when they released this collection as the actual classic mode, instead of the cropped up versions of these remastered versions, however likely due to the complications with Sonic 3 it was not possible.

I can recommend it on sale, most of the problems would be noticeable only if you are a somewhat hardcore fan of the series to be honest (and specifically these 4 titles), everyone else will get some fun outta some of the best ways you can play these games with this collection.

An incredibly solid game that looks, runs and plays beautifully, there is some strong albeit linear level design (which in and of itself isn't a bad thing per-say), the encounters within the levels are enjoyable and ask of the player to make meaningful moment to moment decisions. Really cool boss fights, weapons and locales, fun little secrets when you explore around and the story is a very interesting spin on the Pinocchio novel.

The gameplay itself is very familiar if you've played these kinds of games before, however it has a strong sense of identity and brings great ideas to the table to genre conventions like visceral/critical/fatal attacks, weapon durability, weapon crafting in the form of handle and blade switching with very interesting movesets and specials in the form of fable arts, and a very satisfying parrying mechanic, just to name a few.

All in all, a quality title, this is the best Soulslike game I've played not made by Fromsoftware, alongside Nioh. Congrats to Round 8 Studio and Neowiz on such a strong title.

A really cool spin on the action RPG genre, yet quite unique on it's combat mechanics and complexities around the controls, with 3 stances that favor different approaches to the encounters and change your weapon moveset. Also what seems like a very deep character customization in builds and what not (I unga bunga'ed my way through the game with a strength and Odachi build tho).

Cool boss fights and locales, a little lacking on its level design may be my only nitpick but really solid overall, can't recommend enough for any action RPG or Soulsborne fan.

Might be Team Ninja's finest project that I've played so far, I'm looking forward to completing this game DLCs and the sequel.