Recent reviews by JaysonFour

It's a yuri VN, where you play as Aisling, a human mercenary who's been living in an elven kingdom for a few years now. After you get suckered hired by the ruler of the kingdom into taking care of a few problems, you go looking for your pay- only for her to toss you a slip of paper at you and tell you to go here for your money. It turns out that congrats, you now own a tavern that owed her exactly that much in back taxes. Can you make this tavern successful, and maybe even find love along the way? There's only one way to find out!

Right off the top, I have to say the art is actually really, really good in this one. You can tell the backgrounds and sprites had lots of effort put into them, and honestly, that says a lot. Each character looks well-defined and different, but it seems like there's only one or two poses for each sprite and a handful of expressions. But what's there is pretty darn good!

The writing, on the other hand. is a solid "meh". I'm thinking it wasn't written by a native English speaker, because some of the word choices are just, well... off- they don't read very smoothly, and honestly it might have benefited from a few read-throughs and some solid editing, but by all means this is not the absolute worst VN script I've ever seen. Maybe a little patching up and proofreading, and that ought to help things flow just that much smoother! Plus, there are a few segments that just completely ruined the immersion (a colonel who taught you how to make chicken with eleven secret herbs and spices and a jester that ran a place where you learned to make cheeseburgers...? I mean, really, guys?). Maybe find a way to include these that doesn't go barreling right through the fourth wall?

There are two routes to choose from- Cara (the innkeeper) and Saorise (the brewer). Both have good and bad endings, and both, well... they're both pretty solid routes.

One complaint I do have is that I wish there were routes for Brioche (the third elf that you hire to help you in the tavern) and the Baroness as well... but for seven bucks, it's a pretty darn good steal. You'll finish it in under two hours, but it's worth a replay or two from time to time.

I'd say... personal 7 out of 10. The writing needs a bit of work, but the art is really good, even if the game itself isn't all that long in the end. Don't go in expecting a mountain of content, but enjoy what's there.

HONK.

That is all. Buy this game, it's just... it's one of those guilty pleasure games that lets you finally BE the pain in the ass instead of having to DEAL with them. Steal keys, make people trip and fall, just generally be the biggest pain in the ass they've ever had to deal with- and have a hell of a lot of fun doing it in the process.

The controls are simple enough to learn- once you learn how to walk, how to run, and how to grab things, that's really all you need to know.

Some of the goals are harder to figure out than others, but if you just screw around for a while, you should be able to find out how to get people to react to you.

I remember picking this up for a few bucks during a sale long, long ago, and forgetting the title of the game. And now that I've found it again, well... I can finally make my review of it.

Sword Daughter places you in the role of Tyrna, a young woman who is traveling with her father, a great general, to participate in a competition/games alongside him. However... disaster strikes, and a rampaging horde of orcs end up attacking the caravan, slaughtering everything and everyone within it- except for our valiant heroine, who is struck on the head by a stray weapon blow.

Coming to, she finds herself rescued by Gavin, a half-elf ranger who happened to be patrolling nearby, and apparently-

No. I can't go on like this, not any longer. I can't hold back the review I really want to do for this game.

This game, this VN... is absolute garbage. If you're looking to buy it simply based upon the fact the main character is a badass female warrior, well... you don't get to show many of your skills off. In fact, 90% of the time, pulling out your sword is a terrible idea, and will get you hurt, killed, or some other terrible thing happening to you. So what are you supposed to do, in this story, if not to fight?

If you've ever played Pathfinder or D&D with a female player/character at the table, and ever run into one of those guys who immediately start trying to convince her that they shouldn't be rushing into combat, that they should just be in the back and maybe even reroll as a healer or mage if they're going to insist on playing (with a high charisma score so he can hit on them), and that no matter what they should consult with him first because he'll show them how to make their character amazing? And by the way, his character constantly protects and shows off and can't shut up about how she should just listen to him because she's not cut out to be frontline or even have a say in what she does except if it's to fall in wuv with him?

Yep. Gavin is like super-concentrated That Guy.

The ways to the "good" endings are simple- you bow your head and you listen to whatever Gavin tells you to do. If he tells you that women aren't meant to play with weapons and be warriors, you're supposed to listen to him and go home to learn how to be a dutiful housewife- there's even an ending where he throws Tyrna over his shoulder and implies he's going to imprison her in his home so he and his mother can "teach" her what her place truly is- his loving waifu, because girls shouldn't be warriors.

Yep. This book was apparently based off a CYOA-style book from the early 80s, and boy, does it sure read like it, to its enormous detriment.

No matter what you do- if you try to sneak into a camp? Gavin does it better and he's the one to do all the fighting. If you try to fight the orc that killed your father? Nope, Gavin gets to go in and do it and be all flashy and impressive so he can show Tyrna she should rather be a housewife so he can wuv and protect her. There is an ending where you can go kill the orc that killed your father, but does Tyrna find grim satisfaction in a job done so her father can rest?

Nope. Gavin gets all grumpy and whiny, Tyrna ends up feeling nothing but sick to her stomach because vengeance leaves her with a foul taste in her mouth and a terrible feeling in her heart, and she hitches a ride to the next city or wherever with what's left of the caravan while realizing that maybe Gavin was right and she should have listened to the extremely hot elf a lot more, and I think she gives up her career as a warrior.

I think there's just one ending to this game that doesn't leave an absolutely terrible taste in my mouth:

As you adventure through the caves with Gavin, you can end up stumbling across Slag, an ancient blue dragon chained in place by someone or something. Now, normally, you listen to Gavin and try to double-team the ancient dragon (which turns into him grabbing you and Gavin- of course- busting out leet moves and soloing the ancient dragon without you lifting a finger- no, I'm serious, he solos the ancient evil dragon with a silver sword)- but in an offshoot ending, you can agree to a deal with Slag to allow you to survive- you undo his chains, and go off with him to destroy the surrounding countryside while getting to sport some pretty nice armor.

As for positives? Well, the art is nice, and the script is clean and free of errors, but... that's about it. And it's only a five-spot in price, and short enough that you can burn through this turd-pile in less than two hours so you can 100% it and send it back for a refund, and all you're out is the soul-crushing hour you wasted playing this trashheap- and it goes on sale occasionally so your outlay is usually less than that.

The real shame of this game is that Hanako Games is also the maker of such games as the Magical Diary series, which just launched a sequel (Wolf Hall), and as of today (2/19/2020), the original Magical Diary game, which ALSO has a female MC, is less than this pile of garbage.

Avoid this hunk of crap at all costs. 2/10- even if it's crap, it's still playable crap.

Five years after I got this as a gift, I finally beat it. And I still had a blast every step of the way.

Despite the fact the people running the studio are making one of the biggest mistakes of their lives by making Borderlands 3 an Epic exclusive, it doesn't change the fact that this game is still a blast to play and well worth your time to play through.

I don't care that this game is only a dollar. This is, without a doubt, one of the absolute worst pieces of trash I think I've ever played on Steam.

You get to play as the titular Caligula, the Roman emperor who lost his mind and had a thing for his sister. (You can even raid her dresser at the start of the game and acquire a pair of her panties; which you can wear as a helmet. Mmhm.

All in all, this just seems like the developer was in a rush to get this piece of trash out. There are walk masks missing in areas, and you can walk over beds, for one example. The script is just... horrible. There wasn't any effort to get actual editing in there, and the resulting mess isn't even punctuation to help you understand the morass of text being spewed at you.

You don't get to do much of anything- there might be one quest in the whole game that's not story-driven. Combat... well, it sucks. The few enemies you'll face in this game are completely unbalanced, and the battle screens are just a royal mess.

There's some slight voice-over work in this- I mean, it a) didn't need it, and b) that money could have paid for an actual editor to fix some of the text problems- and it's surprisingly okay, for what it is.

I don't honestly care if this game ends up on sale for even a quarter- if you gift this to someone, you're only inflicting pain. If you buy this for yourself, maybe figure out what you're punishing yourself for.

1/10, easily one of- if not THE- worst things I've ever played on Steam.

I constantly see a lot of people trying to compare this game to Loren the Amazon Princess- to be honest, I don't think that's really a very fair time. I mean, I'm having trouble comparing it to anything else they put out.

Long story short: A father calls his three daughters back to town from thier jobs from all over Aravorn, and hits them with surprising news: thier mother, who they thought to have been long dead, could still be alive. But the only way for them to figure out is to break into houses and get the money needed for the next piece of the puzzle, offered forth by a random hooded figure.

To be quite honest... it's not the best work from Winter Wolves, and I've got hours into things like Loren, Roommates, and Amber's Magic Shop to back that up. There's not much meat on this particular bone story-wise; and to be honest? Some of the goals you'll need to hit are kind of, well... they'll make you frustrated in a hurry once you've seen every relationship cutscene in the current step. I don't know if the step of the game puts a cap on the romance plots- if they don't, you're just better off picking your three partners and maxing those relationship points. for the bonuses.

I will give WW many kudos for making both straight and lesbian routes to romance, and for the ability to turn either or both off if they don't interest you, but I have to ding them on locking bonuses behind each one. Capping off each relationship gives you a bonus of some kind- maxing out the healer, for example, gets you half-off of all healing items. The blacksmith gets you half-off weapons, the waitress halves the time for thieving activities, and so on. If you stick to just lesbian or just straight relationships, you're depriving yourself of the opportunity to get the other three bonuses. Why not just make six of each and then let someone make a menu selection or something- present both of them during the first part of the game and let the player choose which one to put in charge of something?

Also, each love interest can only be romanced with one of two sisters.

The majority of the game, however, will be spent staring at the same screen- rubbing houses, and you'll be here for hours on end. You get four hours to spend every night- you can just randomly pickpocket people for chump change, you could scout out new houses to break into, find out info about a specific house, or you could get on with the break in. The only problem is, though... each of these options take up certain amounts of time, with variables- and you need at least two hours left to do a break-in each night. You can choose between three kinds of houses- merchants (easy), nobles (lots of $), and military figures (lots of XP). You creep through each house, selecting an entrance to try and get in silently, and then walking through the house casing rooms and stealing as much jewels and gold as you could get your hands on.

With luck, you'll end up with a few hundred gold and a few gems per house you hit. The only problem is, though, you'll need to do a LOT of grinding for the goals- on an ever-increasing scale, you'll need to make 1k, 5k, 15k, 25k, and 50k per "chapter" to advance the story, as well as be a particular level to survive the fights. Some of the latter chapters just started to drag on and on and on once all the other side stuff was finished- you can happily fast-forward shop days, though, but I would just go day by day until you clear all the romance stuff, and are of level to get stuff done physically, and then I would gun through multiple shop days to raise up money for supplies and gear to gain the most advantage I could.

The saving grace is that there's no time limit- you can take as long as you need to to finish the game, and can spend multiple years just grinding for cash as needed before moving the plot forward.

In the end, though... it just feels like there's not really a whole heck of a lot here. It's simply nightly grinding to raise XP and money, staring at the same screen. It would have been so much better if there's been more to this game- I mean, let's face it, something like Amber's Magic Shop managed to cram in so much more.

Does that make it a terrible game? No, it's still a Winter Wolves game, so I'll reccommend it; but I can't say that I would recommend this one as the first WW game someone should own, or even the first venture into Aravorn one should own.

I'd say buy this game if you like other WW stuff, after you've dropped for Loren, and then if it's on sale. It's still good fun, but it's not $25 good. If it gets under 20, pick it up then.

It's stuff like this that make me miss Greenlight.

At its heart, this is nothing more than a match-3-or-more game where you try to collect enough of the right-colored orbs in order to take actions. It's also, well... really, really, crappy.

It's apparently been in beta since the end of October of 2017, which was... what, about four months and change ago? And nothing's been added since then? I mean, come on...

Other reviewers have pointed out that the dev pretty much ripped almost everything in the game from anything they could get thier hands on, including a Lady Gaga cover, stuff from Diablo II, and who knows how many other games and artists and everything. It's like... is there anything original in this game? Maybe the script, but to be fair, that's... not good, either.

It's going for two bucks retail, and right now, it's apparently on sale for fifty cents. To be honest?

It's not even worth the fifty cents.

Save your money and go elsewhere.

You know, one of the greatest video game gimmicks that ever was devised is that of the toy figure that can interact with your games. Skylanders started it, and then Nintendo went and made the Amiibo figures that work with lots of different games like Super Smash Bros. Wii, and others. Then Disney got it and just ran with it- now you can find pretty much every Disney property in its own game, Infinity. Why, one of these days, you'll be able to buy a 3D printer program and RFID chip and just make your own. ...though what would you do if the RFID chip decided to not work, but even crazier, it suddenly changed into the very catgirl ninja you were coding into the game? Such is the idea behind A Wild Catgirl Appears .

You play as Ami, a high-school student in a Japanese girls school who's suddenly faced with a bit of a problem- the student council has handed down a decision- this year, every student has to join a club. This presents a bit of a problem- Ami's not that much of an athlete, and not that popular, so well... she ends up joining the school's coding club. There, she meets another person- another girl by the name of Lise, and they start working on a game, one that stars a catgirl ninja, named Starla. One day, Lise gets the idea to make an Amiibo-style figure of Starla. The figure doesn't work, but... the next day, Ami finds a surprise in her bed- one catgirl ninja who has no idea how she got there... yeah, that's pretty much the story.

I'll say it right now- this is a VN with a yuri twist to it. Ami has the chance to end up with one of four different girls- Ria (the best friend), Lise (the coding club president), Starla (the catgirl ninja), and Eiko (another catgirl that just... appeared somehow).

The story, well... it leaves a lot to be desired. There are many errors in spelling and grammar that need to be corrected that ought to have been caught with a quick spellcheck and a read-through. Not to mention, the introduction of Eiko is handled really poorly- she just shows up out of nowhere with no major event or anything. It just sticks out that she's just there- she just shows up and is just there to be another possible love interest. Why not flesh them out a bit? It needs to be polished up, and there needs to be a reason as to why Eiko shows up other than "Oh, have some free DLC!"

The art is good- I just wish there was more of it. Almost every character picture is the exact same pose- and 90% of them are the same but with just the facial expressions changed. The backgrounds look nice, but more are needed- you can't pass off a pool locker room as a clothing store changing room, for example. Throw in some variety, throw in some new poses, and suddenly you have more variety and better understanding of the characters. There is a bit of skin, and it does imply a lot of stuff, but... I think this is another of those that ended up having material cut to get itself on Steam.

However, there is one big, glaring error in this game- there are four different endings, and you can get any of them. However, once you get one, you need to close and re-launch the game to clear the event flags in order to get a different ending- if you play through the game a second time, you still get the first ending you got. I am rather surprised this wasn't addressed in the re-release. It's a glaring error that ought to have been smashed out somehow.

Let's get down to brass tacks, here: I want to like this game. I think it has plenty of potential, and it could honestly benefit from plenty of TLC from its artists, writers and programmers. But until the game has at least the whole ending problem hammered out, I can't recommend this game. A bunch of smaller problems are building up into one big reason as to why you shouldn't pick this up. If a new edition of this comes out, I'll give it a look and write a new review. But until then? I can't justify anything higher.

Steam wants three G-bucks for it, and I think that's mostly fair- though on sale would be even better. It's nice, but... it's unpolished. If I could call this a neutral review, I could- it's got problems, but it also has potential.

TL;DR - A great windup, but the kunai falls far from the target. 5/10.

if there's just one genre of games I've been addicted to ever since I got my Steam account it's visual novels. You give me a case of something caffinated, a sack of munchies and a stack of VNs and I'm good for at least a night, maybe even the next day if there's enough in the way of soda and munchies. About the only things that really get my goat about a VN is wasted potential and bad writing- and well... you add those two things in and throw in a terrible story about an alternate-reality Japan that never opened its borders, well... you get "The Sword of Asumi".

You get to play Asumi, an assassin from the Black Clan, which is famous for taking in orphans, brainwashing them, and then turning them out to kill whoever they get paid enough to kill. Of course, Asumi is still just barely out of high school, and is already an accomplished assassin- in fact, well, the opening mission establishes that fact quite well. So what does her next mission entail? Going undercover at what is said to be a "battle school" of some sort that the children of samurai go to so they can learn everything they need to know. It's basically all a pretense so she can start running around in a school uniform.... and then they shoehorn in a plot about a rebel group going undercover at the school to stage a bombing along with a bit of a romance subplot that really sticks out like a hammer-smashed thumb.

I also ought to mention that the game isn't exactly 100% there- the original is available from the developer's website and has the adult content that this version's had to have removed so it could be listed on Steam. I'm not linking the website because of NSFW-ness, but if you want, you can find a link on the game's Steam store page and go find them that way. But there's still the copious scenes of Asumi cavorting around in her room in various forms of undress and fancy underwear, so if you're into cheesecake like that, there's that at least.

The story isn't the strong point- it reads more like a fanfiction that somebody wrote, and there's not really much coherence to it besides Asumi being out of her element when she takes classes that don't cater to her strengths and the like. The main plot of the game gets shunted off so you can go play schoolgirl and try to figure out just what path you have to take. The other part I really dislike is the biggest pet peeve of mine- the fact that nobody seems to have run the text through any kind of spellcheck or editor to make sure it reads and looks all right. I mean, really? In this day and age, when you have programs like Office, Word, and OpenOffice out there, this kind of laziness is the absolute worst thing, especially in a game that pretty much requires the text be clear in order to help people understand just what's going on.

There is a save function, which is something, but once you make enough runs through the game to get all the endings and the like and unlock all the CG scenes, well... there's not that much left to do with it. The story's not memorable, the characters are forgettable, and the ending requires basically the same set of choices every time around. Once you're done with it, well, there's not much reason to pick it back up.

Normally, this is nine Gabendollars, and if you pay that much for it, I have a bridge in New York to sell you. If it catches a nice hefty sale, it might be worth picking up if you really like VNs or just want to giftbomb someone who does with it. I think it's all right at about $2.50 or so, but paying more than that isn't really advised unless you really have a serious VN addiction. Maybe if the text was cleaned up it might be worth another look, but once you get all the stuff unlocked and run out of card drops, well... what cause do you have to pick it up more than once in a blue moon after that?

TL;DR - Just a few bits of cheesecake wrapped up in a story that needs a lot of work. 4/10.

1984. The year the Apple Macintosh hit the States, the year the White Sox took over eight hours to defeat the Brewers in a single baseball game, and the year Springsteen released his "Born In The USA" album. I was about the same age as my niece at this time- but I was still trying to take things over with cats; even if it was mostly using my favorite Garfield plushes to stake my claim on the couch for cartoons. But it was also kind of remarkable for one more thing- the launch of a movie franchise that's turned into one of the more popular ones in known memory- in fact, it just got a new film, announced for release sometime later this year.

When there's something strange in your neighborhood, well... who ya gonna call? That ought to be an easy answer for anybody who was alive to have seen the movies... or the two animated series... or the other videos games: The Ghostbusters. Granted, it's been too long since I've seen one of the movies- but at least I have a couple of video games in my collection. For this review, I'm looking at Ghostbusters: The Video Game.

The premise of the story sets it at the year 1991- two years after the second movie, and business has apparently never been better- so good, in fact, that the original four Ghostbusters have decided to hire an intern- you. Apparently you're not the first, either (if some of the lines about accidents can be believed...), so to them well... you're just "the rookie"- in case something ends up happening to you, they don't want to get too close. Not that anything will... you know. Hopefully. But hey, you get to guinea-pig the new tech that Egon comes up with- so that's a plus! But they just don't know how stable the tech is... that's a minus. So you get to run around with a nuclear accelerator on your back with enough experimental tech that could blow you and everyone else clear to New Jersey. if something went wrong with it. Joy.

At its heart, the game is a third-person view shooter- you advance through the levels, busting ghosts and slamming them into traps in order to generate money to further research the tech needed to power up your offensive capabilities. Hey, they have to whip this stuff up from scratch, that costs money! You can also find artifacts for some much-needed cash, but your main source of cash is going to be ghost-hunting. The controls are all right- I used the keyboard, but I don't know if it supports the controller or not. I didn't have much difficulty with KBAM, though. The controls are easy to learn, though.

This game's been called "the third movie" by Dan Aykroyd himself, and features the voice talents of many of the original movie cast- Aykroyd, Harold Ramis, Bill Murray and Ernie Hudson have all lent their voices and likenesses to the game for an extra authentic feel, and William Atherton (Peck), Annie Potts (Janine), Max von Sydow (Vigo the Carpathian) and Brian Doyle-Murray (the mayor) add their voice talents as well. Ramis and Aykroyd also assisted with the game's script, so it really does feel like you ought to be watching this in the theater.

The first level is essentially a love-letter to the fans- and as you progress through the game you find out that yes, there really was an over-arching plot to the first two movies, with a pretty strong conclusion to the trilogy. Honestly, I had a great time playing this.

However, it's not perfect. You can't customize the player-character at all- what you see is what you get. No matter what you want to play as, you're stuck playing a twenty-something guy with a short haircut. You can't even change the gender of the rookie- in fact, I think the only current option to play as a female Ghostbuster can be found in "Sanctum of Slime" (Bridget) or in one of the "Extreme Ghostbusters" games (Kylie). Some of the animation is rather dated, and the lipsyncing of lines can be a bit off sometimes. Sometimes it can be hard to navigate the levels- the first level (The Sedgewick Hotel) is easily the worst offender. Would it have killed them to give us an on-screen map of some kind? Or waypoints? There's just too many functions jammed into the PKE meter... oftentimes the only way to figure out where to go is through trial and error or looking for someone standing around waiting for you.

Currently, Steam desires ten Gabenbucks for this game- I think it's a bit on the high side, but still worth it. If it catches a sale, and it's at least fifty percent off? Grab it. If you enjoyed the movies, and miss Harold Ramis, buy it. It really is a great game.

TL;DR - Gift-a-pulting makes me feel good, but busting will make you feel good- and is a crapload of fun. 7/10.