Recent reviews by Lestatdark

Best From Soft game experience on PC I've had so far. Minor stuttering here and there and none of the issues reported by many others. Game runs at 60FPS on 4K with a RTX 3090 and an i9-10900KF CPU even on heavy load outside (severe storm conditions and large amount of enemies).

A faithful 1:1 recreation of the original game, down to every aspect of what made Panzer Dragoon such a cult classic. Yes the game is short, yes it's arcadey, yes its lore is deep and very hidden, but that's what all of the veterans were expecting the remake to have.

Looking forward to see what this team does with Zwei!

As a huge Seiken Densetsu 3 fan, having played the Dejap Translation for well over a dozen times, my expectations for this remake were teetering in the border between massive hype and serious apprehension, especially after the botched Secret of Mana remake in 2018.

Thankfully, Square-Enix listened to the complaints and feeback and delivered what is hands down one of the best remakes from the 16-bit era.

Trials of Mana fully captures and expands on all of the highlights that the SNES game had achieved in the past.
The gameplay & combat system has been extremely overhauled thanks to its venture into the 3D realm, gaining a lot of fluidity and consistency that further improves as you unlock classes, abilities and spells, becoming a very competent action RPG on the later stages of the game when bosses start throwing their own mechanics into the mix.
The story is pretty much intact, hitting all of the high notes that the original game hit with it's three separate story-lines, giving it that much more value and replayability.
The remastered orchestral arrangements are as good as the original 16-bit ones but for those of us feeling nostalgic, the game does offer you the option to switch to the original BGM.

While there's a lot (A LOT) of good things with this remake, there's also an assortment of small negative things that, while not marring the overall experience, do cause some small annoyances, such as the companion AI being a bit too suicidal in some Boss Battles, the english VA being severely underwhelming in some characters (Charlotte...) and some small bugs here and there.

All in all, this is the right direction that all companies, not only S-E, should take in any future attempts of remaking a classic. Improve on what was already delivered and keep the spirit of the original game alive.

No better game can reflect the "Labor or love" mantra better than this one. A love note to the best parts that the ARPG genre has ever produced which is constantly being updated and improved upon by a team of devs who truly show their passion and respect for the genre.

Alongside this, the strong modding community has also added hundreds upon hundreds of hours of content for an ever growing experience.

If you're looking for the defining ARPG experience since Diablo 2, look no further than Grim Dawn.

The best Castlevania experience since Order of Ecclessia. This game builds up on the concepts first pioneered on SOTN and built up on the handheld trilogies, especially Aria & Dawn of Sorrow.

Overwhelmingly positive experience overall with this game, never had a single crash or bug in 25 hours of gameplay. Combat is fluid, movement, dodge, action cancel, all feel intuitive and have the same mix of "easy to pull off, difficult to master" concept of old.

The only downside I'd point out is the lack of a proper difficulty curve. Your character quickly outpaces enemies damage and skills, especially given how insanely OP some of the shard powers are (Draconic Rage and Void Ray combo is just insane). By mid-to-late game you just cruise through until the end.

- You start the game literally blowing a Zombie's head off.
- You fight endless waves of imps, zombies and demons in the first couple of minutes
- You circlestrafe through all that while you blow stuff up with your Shotgun
- You upgrade your Shotgun in the first 30 minutes to blow even more stuff up and more enemies at the same time

This is the 90's DOOM games brought back to the modern era. Id has done it, Bethesda has done it. Old School FPS is back!

10/10