Recent reviews by Sionfel

Originally posted by Me, having something awoken inside them:

This better not awaken anything in me

THIS GAME IS SO GOOD!


Honest! Striking visuals, simple gameplay loop, bite size runs with that "One more run" allure. I thought I played for 20 minutes. I ended up playing for nearly an hour and a half.

It costs like 2 and a half Costco hotdogs! Buy it!

You will be helping an indie dev team, that put a lot of love and care and polish into this title, and it shows.

They deserve your purchase.

I put a man and his partner in handcuffs, got her arrested for murder, left, came back several days later, robbed his safe, bummed some change, then took off his handcuffs. 10/10

Beautiful game with very simple gameplay. Almost like a kung-fu fight choreographing game skin on top of a dance or rhythm game. Sounds like nonsense, but it's a nice, calm few minutes.

Beautiful sprite art, good story, with really good feeling platforming.

Before going on, this is 100% worth your purchase. It's gorgeous, fun and a good game. I am eager to see what the developer releases in the future. It shows a great deal of polish and the characters and environments are fantastic to look at. I want to explore this world again!

That being said, the game can be really frustrating at times.

Boss fights can feel borderline unfair and drag on and on. I think it's a case of developer difficulty where they felt the fights were fairly balanced, but for a newcomer a lot of it feels less approachable. These fights feel like throwing yourself at a wall repeatedly until you learn to optimize it perfectly or find a cheesy strategy, which runs contrary to the rest of the game which is a pretty breezy, almost casual, experience.

There are also instances of near-pixel perfect platforming segments that last huge areas with no checkpoints and require timing a jump at the very end of a fast moving platform's path and having to just pray that an unseen, off-screen enemy's movement cycles don't place them at the edge of the platform you're trying to land on. Falling means restarting the whole segment.

As for the Metroidvania tag, I can see why it might be there, but it feels kind of misleading. The game is very linear. Movement abilities do continue to be unlocked and give you more platforming options, but there is no backtracking to earlier screens to reach new areas outside of the hub area.

Super compelling mix of business management and arcade fun with a surprisingly quality story.

I am a huge Fate/ franchise fan. I was probably going to like this game regardless, so feel free to let that color everything else I have to say.

I was immediately apprehensive when it was announced and in the trailer there was the Omega Force logo. Omega Force are excellent developers, but they live in their niche and thrive there. As great as Omega Force are at diversifying the gameplay in their licensed Warriors titles, it's already been done in the franchise with both Extella and Extella Link being musou games.

Thankfully, they managed to find an excellent balance with what they know and new mechanics. Combos initially flow like those in a musou game, linear chains of light attacks followed with a heavy, but they inject a need to react and play off the opponents that is so often missing from their more typical fare.

They also manage to make the player character feel strong and useful, while demonstrating the huge gulf that exists between Masters and Servants as far as their strength. You don't feel underpowered or useless, but you absolutely do need your Servant to survive. Enemies aren't like those in other Omega Force titles, they can take a beating and if you fail to stay on your toes, they will punish you and easily deplete your HP bar.

Strictly viewing this as a Fate/ game, this is the best adaptation of a Holy Grail War in any non-Visual Novel game so far. It perfectly captures the delicate act of having to balance the facade of daily life while also uncovering the other Masters, preparing for nightfall when the veil of secrecy is easier to maintain and all out Servant vs Servant combat can really take place.

As far as the story they do retread some well-worn story beats, borrowing from tropes established in more than a few Fate/ stories. It does make for an excellent introduction to the franchise for first timers though, and a entrenched fan will probably find it nostalgic. I will buy it a second copy on console if any of these idiots say, "People die when they are killed". You have my word.

Omega Force and Koei Tecmo as a whole have really out done themselves with this release

I have a lot of nostalgia towards this game, so don't take this review too seriously. I probably played 100+ hours of this back on the original Xbox throughout the early aughts.

I bought the pre-2020 PC port in 2016 alongside BR2 for a whopping 2USD. The port was serviceable, but low rendering resolution and poor controller support kept me from wanting to continue playing after the Louisiana chapter. When this dropped in 2020, they gave owners of the original free revamped copies.

This port is a lot better. The game runs well, can render at modern resolutions, has full controller support and is true to the original experience. Being a game from 2002 that mean a lot of roughness, but it's still a lot of fun and can be beaten 100% in a single sitting.

The combat is super satisfying. 4 hours in and I haven't even started the story yet, I just go into expedition mode, do a few missions, and then go about my day. It scratches the same itch as Monster Hunter.

I waited for ages for Bamco to put this on sale so I could play it, and now I mostly regret it.

I'm only 2 hours in, but the game feel and lack of options in combat make this a hard pass in my books.

Defensively, I suppose the thinking is that Ghouls are given opportunities to leech health from dazed opponents, and CCG members can use health packs, so defensive options are pulled back to balance out those abilities.

Only certain kagune and quinque can block, but the block timing is iffy and it's hard to judge how effective the blocks really are outside of a stunned state the enemy sometimes goes into if the timing is right. This could be an interesting trade off as, similar to Monster Hunter, it's the larger and more destructive options that are given the ability to block. You can always dodge/dash, which uses stamina, but the dash you're given doesn't "feel" like it does anything. You're nearly always better off spamming and tanking the hits the enemies dish out only dodging for larger telegraphed attacks.

Offensively, for Ghouls, you're limited to a single beat down combo, 2 special attacks that use stamina, and a ranged attack they you'll rarely use. This makes combat super tedious. After one level, you've seen your options for that style of Kagune.

For CCG players, you're given a main, secondary and ranged Quinque. This allows you to flow between the two different options on the fly and mix up their strengths and weaknesses as well as a single special for whichever is currently equipped. This is probably the most fun you'll have. Unfortunately, you're only given one combo per weapon and they don't really flow that well into one another.

There are Quinx, Artificial Half-Ghouls, but I haven't gotten to their part of the campaign as of this writing.

The lock-on is a necessity as the attacks don't track without it, but you're better waiting until the enemies are right next to you before using it because being locked on to a target makes your movement slow to a halt and makes it much harder to get out of the way of incoming attacks.

Mission structure is limited and feels arcadey. You trudge slowly through samey hallways from combat encounter to combat encounter with slight variations to mix it up.

Frankly, if the combat took more inspiration from Character Action games and the mission structure was opened up, this could be a solid game, but that's not the game we got.

Pick it up for under $10 for the slideshow recap of Season 1,