Recent reviews by Nauct

Anime Dark Souls, the two best things in the world combined

Best sword fighting game.

Play it, beat it, then do NG+1 sword only, without Kuro's Charm and Ring the Demon Bell. Best gaming experience you'll ever have if you're really into sword fighting.

#1 10/10

10/10 JRPG It's like $15 on Steam on sale, buy it if you like JRPGs. One of my favorites in the series

Guilty Gear Strive or +R has rollback netcode so you can actually play online.
Booting up the game first time in a while had to replay tutorial, had to hit ok like 50 times for notifications, skip past the stuff talking about a sale, navigate through the menus trying to get me to purchase something, then going into training mode there's a short ad after loading screen.
Hopefully SFVI has rollback and isn't so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ obnoxious. I'll stick with Arcsys and Bandai

Best fighting game 10/10

This is the one everyone plays, buy it

Good game, bad RPG. You're on rails most of the game, which does make sense story wise. Also your character progression is very linear, not much choice, each early story section if you fight every enemy you'll have each "tree" maxed out anyways, so zero choice. After you get to chapter 11 you get minor choices to make. After you finish the story you're about half way done the content and the game does really open up. I'd rather play XIII-2, they've fixed annoying ♥♥♥♥ in that game and it's an actual RPG.

The AI is retarded. Maybe not wait for the ATB to fill if you have 10 HP left, maybe use the saboteur ability that prevents the enemy from attacking/using magic before you cast deprotect on the mob I'm not targeting. The gambit system was far superior. Also your characters move around the screen so sometimes they'll randomly be grouped and all take damage from AOE and sometimes they wont. You can make your commando attack to move position, but usually you'll have only one of those, the other classes don't really move. It's definitely a huge step back from XII. I hate not having control over my character, especially when not a single person used common sense programming them.

First time you change your paradigm each battle it takes like 3 seconds. They removed that in XIII-2. It's so annoying to me. I always run haste and ATB recharge weapons etc. so it is a full turn wasted for my controlled character at the crucial beginning phase.
The minimap can't be locked to north and your main map rotates. You hit square to bring up the map, but if you turn it turns the map you access on square. It's ridiculous to me. Not that you need your map if you're just doing the story, but it's retarded.

The game still looks amazing, I liked the story, I love the characters. It's a cinematic masterpiece, not a great game in my opinion. I'd still recommend it, I'm a sucker for a good story and likeable characters. 8/10

Short Review 6/10 Good for one play through on sale.

Amazing beautiful game, combat sucks.

RPG elements 10/10 Tons of quests, bestiary, armor and weapon crafting, etc etc

Everything else 10/10 Amazing game, great story, voice acting is great, everything is amazing

Combat 2/10 Sword combat feels awful if you've ever played ANY other ARPG, Dark Souls, God of War, Devil May Cry. It's unbelievable how bad it is compared to the rest of the game. If the combat was fun in anyway I'm sure I would have completed this game 100%, but I just hate the game every time I'm in combat. You have some unique spells to cast which are pretty cool, that's why I gave it a 2 instead of 0. If you some how like the combat, this will be your new favorite game. I can't stress enough, it's the worst combat of any Triple A game I've ever played, by far, period.

If you're a fan of HEMA or realistic sword fighting etc you will hate how he fights. So many spins and unnecessary movement. A warrior is supposed to only move as much as needed, not twirl every single attack. It makes me sick

Movement is really weird too, there's a couple options for it. I guess they're going for realism, but it feels laggy and weird.

I bought all the DLC, but just couldn't bring myself to play again thinking of the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ combat.

If you go into this thinking you're getting a souls experience, you're wrong. No similarites to Dark Souls

CLASSIC JRPG YES 11/10

Writing this review 44 hours in. Playing on hardest difficulty 100% of the time. Getting close to main story completion.
So there's three parts to this game. City building, skirmishes(pseudo RTS) and standard JRPG combat.

Playing on the hardest mode you are desparate for combat upgrades from the city building part. Also there are lots of side quests to upgrade your city and recruit new citizens. I've been doing 100% of the side quests that are possible and I still get one shot by most bosses that are 10 levels LOWER than me.
It does make the city building part very rewarding when you see the tangible benefit of whatever upgrade it was. From Magic to Movement Speed to Increased Party EXP, all the upgrades ever for everything.

The skirmishes I don't like so far, the quests I have right now are close to level 50 and my army is in the 20's so I'll have to go grind old skirmishes for hours. Really the biggest deal breaker about this game is this mode. I played SC2 for years so this garbage mode is beyond terrible IMO. Very boring, harder difficulty make sure you're close to the same level and know the rock paper scissors match up. Can't spend military might on the abilities or you wont have enough to keep army healthy. So you just move your units and watch them attack and hold square.

The combat can be frustrating because you have two guys on auto pilot. Which means they get one shot a lot (again only played hardest difficulty). So a lot of the time you'll just let them die and solo the boss.

If you've seen a Gibli film you'll notice the similarities in this game. It looks like anime, each new area/city you come to is unique and mystical, quite immersive if you like this style. Very cute, feel good story with darkness mixed in here and there.

If you like Tales Series or similar I can highly recommend this game. I didn't buy it until they added the harder difficulties because I read in a lot of other reviews it was too easy. For sure a challenge and a half late game :D Those ♥♥♥♥♥♥ skirmishes though.