Recent reviews by Puliping

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TL;DR: don't bother with this unless you've watched the anime (but DO watch the anime, it's great)

The story of El Dorado follows Amemiya and Shion, the scriptwriter and director for the 99th class of Seisho Music Academy, as they prepare a play of "El Dorado" for an exchange program with the English school, the Royal Academy of Theatre and Acting. We get to choose our main cast, see them rehearse and train, interacting with the exchange students in various ways, and finally act out the play that we prepared for them.

It's pretty interesting seeing these characters in new situations, but for that to work you do need to have previous knowledge of the series. I'd say the minimum required watching is the anime and movie, as there are many callbacks in every route. There are some references to other side stories, like the stage plays, novel, and manga as well, but these aren't necessary for a full understanding of the plot. In any case, I certainly would not recommend starting into the series through this game.

Speaking of routes: there are four total, one of which is locked until first completion. They all diverge at the same point in the game, after a "prologue" of sorts. Unfortunately, I can't really say the game uses the medium very well: many scenes are repeated almost exactly across the four routes, meaning it can get repetitive quite quickly, especially if you do more than one per sitting. There is *one* especially good use of the medium however, unlocked after finishing the game (which I will not be spoiling here).

The voice acting is great for every character, much like in the rest of the series. I especially loved the acting during the play itself, where the girls get assigned to various characters. Some of my favorite parts are in these scenes. However, that's not to say it's perfect: some lines (especially Futaba's) seem to have mistakenly applied some noise suppression, which ends up lowering their quality. Mostly a problem with audio engineering or maybe the recording itself than with the performance, but it is worth pointing out.

Another nitpick I have with the game is with the text itself, where some names seemed to have just been written wrong: "Hoshino" instead of "Hoshimi" and "Sanai" instead of "Masai" are the examples that come to mind. Aside from these I didn't notice too many problems with the translation, but I am not a Japanese speaker. On the other hand, the display for the text was very customizable: you could change between JP/EN/ZH, as well as setting a "secondary" language, to display both at the same time. You could even change the display font, which is something I've never seen before.

Finally, in regards to the continuation of the Revue Starlight story, I thought the movie was a great stopping point for the series: it dealt with the main leftover threads, and gave us closure on the girls' stories. Meanwhile, this game is an epilogue of sorts: the continuation to the movie, where secondary threads are dealt with, leaving few if any unresolved conflicts without meddling too much in the established canon (though Hikari fans may disagree).

I thoroughly enjoyed the experience and would still play through it knowing of its flaws. I would recommend any fans to play as well (though maybe not all 4 routes, any one + Mahiru/Nana would be enough) but if I'm honest, this game would rank below some of the other side stories in my recommendation list -- read the Starlight Overture manga, it's a good one.

3v3 competitive air-hockey, where each player controls their own "MOBA-style" character.

Because it's so unique, it's not an easy game to pick up and get good at, but it was one of the most rewarding grinds I've experienced yet.

The developers have also worked closely with the community to bring changes that the community agrees are good and create a healthier meta game.

Fair warning, latency/ping is quite important at higher levels, so it's not easy to play in other regions (I'd love to have played more with some NA friends, but I get 180-240ms from SA).

Unfortunately though, due to the small playerbase, matches (especially at the highest and lowest ELOs) will inevitably be unbalanced. Especially moreso with the announcement of maintenace mode starting by Jan 2024.

I can see that some part of the community will keep active after that still, so finding custom matches through a Discord server might be the way to go.

A lil' fun Tower Defense, where the path is built by the player. Currently still in Early Access, so expect some bugs during gameplay. Future content looks promising.

Having played well over 800 hours while the game was on Battle.net, I can safely say that this is probably one of the best Free To Play games out there. Most (if not all) of the Year 1 problems people usually complain about have been fixed, and Bungie is still very much working with the community to make a better game. It is fundamentally different from where it was at 2 years ago.

Overall, I definitely recommend it, for Guardians new and old.