Recent reviews by Tehoni

Resident Evil HD delivers the core experience that you would probably enjoy if you're a fan of the remakes, particularly Resident Evil 2. The atmosphere is unsettling, the dialogue cheesy and the environments look great and are intriguing to get lost in. The constant backtracking drives home the feeling of being stuck in a labyrinth, and the puzzles are taxing enough to get you thinking.

Whilst the zombies are ever-present, your worst enemy will actually be the countless doors which make you watch a cutscene every time you open them. If that wasn't bad enough, your inventory is pathetically small, which is only exacerbated by needing separate items to save, shoot, heal or use melee, and having no idea what random key item you might need with you to open a door. On top of all that, the camera and controls are constantly working against you. It's frustrating for sure, but something about all of those things make the game quite endearing, as it stays completely true to the original experience.

Overall, I definitely recommend giving it a shot if you liked the remakes.

Unfortunately I can't recommend Monster Hunter Wilds right now. The performance isn't good enough and relies on frame-gen as a crutch. Despite that, many textures look poor even on the highest settings. The multiplayer implementation is also disappointing; whilst generally improved slightly from World, it's still a pain to complete story missions in co-op. This is a step-back from Iceborne post-campaign, where you were able to view some cutscenes together. The multiplayer UI and systems behind it are also unclear and you will frequently find that your co-op hunters are completely invisible to you.

Despite some rare dodgy translations and localisations, Fate/stay night remastered is the best way to experience the origin of one of the biggest anime franchises. It still holds up with a fantastic soundtrack and voice acting, and delivers a great story with complex characters that the various adaptations cannot fully convey.

If I could voice one complaint, it's that the impact of the Heaven's Feel route is slightly diminished by censorship which removes the most shocking scenes and dialogue. Generally, it's not a massive issue and I don't think it changes the tone of the story in any way; Heaven's Feel remains the most captivating route in my eyes. However, I did notice at least one occasion where a scene directly references something that was supposed to have happened earlier, but had been removed (Shirou specifically remarks that the bruising on Sakura's face has gone down on day 5, but there was no earlier scene where he noticed the bruising, as it was removed).

Overall, It's a strong recommendation from me if you're invested in the Fate series or have any interest in visual novels.

Metaphor doesn't stray far from the tried and tested formula of the Persona games, but it does put a unique spin on a lot of the elements, which can at times be positive but also can sometimes feel detrimental to the experience.

To start with the positive, the world of Metaphor has interesting lore that can be explored fairly deeply throughout the game, I think this is one of the key things to get right in a new fantasy RPG, so I'm happy they delivered. This goes hand-in-hand with the great art throughout the game, with lots of unique designs for regions, NPCs and monsters, as well as a very good looking user interface. The soundtrack throughout is also pretty good, but I think only a couple of tracks really stand out.

Along with a new world comes a lot of new characters, and unfortunately many characters with interesting designs and important positions in the hierarchy of the world of Metaphor are left completely by the wayside as the story progresses, which is a shame. In addition, whilst the art direction is interesting, I feel a lot of the potentially cooler designs are let down by poor 3D models and lacklustre pre-rendered cinematics. I especially have to point to the synthesis attacks, which are the strongest special moves, of which many I feel look tacky.

The most important characters, that being your party and 'followers', do get a good amount of content, and I especially like how there is no hidden relationship stat anymore, which makes it much more simple to experience each character's story. However, I wouldn't say their stories are particularly memorable, with a few exceptions. Metaphor also has no romance system, which is fine, especially since it was a pretty under-baked thing in Persona anyway. But, the choice to replace it with a 'canon' romance is weird when that romance gets next-to-no development either.

As for the party companions specifically, they have nice designs and work decently together, but it's just a bit bland. There's not really ever any conflict between them, Strohl seems to speak for the party more than the main character does, and you rarely do anything together as a group that isn't combat. It just doesn't feel like there is much camaraderie there overall. Dynamics that seem interesting, like Hulkenburg idolising Junah, or Heismay hating the Paripus, are not explored in the slightest beyond tiny mentions.

On the other hand, the story is engaging and keeps you on your toes with a good number of twists. Despite some lulls in events here and there, I was always intrigued to see where it would go next, especially after reaching the fourth area in the game.

The gameplay ultimately has the same pitfalls as Persona, where combat begins to feel bland once it is 'solved', but it's not like this isn't true for most turn-based games. Metaphor at least lets you breeze through enemies without going into turn-based combat if you out-level them significantly, and the variety of archetypes keeps things interesting enough, especially since different enemies can have unique mechanics. I like the addition of inherited skills, and I'm a big fan of the unique mechanics of the Masked Dancer and Summoner archetypes.

The ability for everyone to switch archetypes is fun to play around with, but is a bit of a pain to maintain, especially when it auto-selects equipment that you don't want to use. It's also nice that you can restart combat from the first turn whenever you want, but you cannot restart combat with different archetypes and equipment, so I find sometimes I just had to pass turns until I died because I happened to have a bad setup for a boss. The addition of rows in combat is cool, but sadly is not utilised enough to matter that much, other than passives that increase stats in certain rows.

As for gameplay outside of combat, there a good number of different activities, but I can't really say any of them are that interesting (apart from the coliseum) compared to things like the baseball in Persona 5 or fishing in Persona 4. The activities in Metaphor pretty much all just boil down to reading some text.

All that said, it is overall a recommendation from me, Metaphor is a very solid JRPG supported by an interesting world, engaging story, lots of characters and tangible power progression.

Maestro is another one of those games that VR feels like it was made for. It's great to feel like you are conducting a massive orchestra, especially with the good selection of compositions in the game, ranging from classical pieces to some big band jazz. There's a good tutorial with some funny moments, and a little bit of visual customisation to play around with.

I hope they continue to add more content to the game, like more cosmetics, tracks (maybe some modern compositions?) and I reckon even a story mode to carry on from the tutorial would be cool. Custom tracks would be incredible, but unfortunately I imagine it would be a lot more complex to implement than other rhythm games.

Regardless, even without all that, it is a solid recommendation from me.

In my opinon, Tekken 8 is the best Tekken has ever been and is the best 3D fighter out there.

The base roster of 32 characters is massive and varied, and the 3 newcomers feel right at home. Reina feels great to play with her aggressive Mishima style, Victor has a unique move-set owing to his gun and sword and Azucena has interesting evasive gameplay as well. Of course, everyone is going to have different opinions about how strong or annoying some characters are, but balance is a separate issue that I frankly don't feel qualified to comment on with any authority. That said, there have definitely been some less than ideal changes in some patches, and nerfs to the best characters have been slow.

Tekken has always been a ridiculously difficult game to learn thanks to the huge roster, long move lists and mechanically demanding inputs, and that hasn't changed. But, Tekken 8 is good for beginners, owing to a really in-depth practice tool, a new Arcade Quest mode that teaches new players the basics and great replay features. This is the first Tekken I've taken semi-seriously and it's great how much the game helps you learn. I would love to see further improvements in this area - it would be great if you could input custom combos to use for the combo challenges, for example.

The story mode is great fun, quite creative at parts and is a nice homage to the whole of the Tekken series. It also has really good music, and you can even customise every track in the game to instead be a track from any other Tekken game, which is an awesome feature.

Overall I'd say character customisation is pretty solid and you can have a bit of fun with the wackiness of it. But honestly it feels a bit lacking, even if you go back and compare to Tekken 6, and especially if you compare to Soulcalibur. This is compounded by so many customisation items being locked behind a paywall.

I've played a lot of online matches now, and whilst there are some laggy games, generally the netcode is solid, especially against opponents on wired connections. It's a shame there are some features that were in previous games that are missing, like tournament lobbies and team battle mode, but maybe they will be added in the future.

Overall, I give Tekken 8 a very strong recommendation, even if you were new to the series and just wanted to give it a try.

Animal Well is a unique puzzle-based metroidvania with a great atmosphere, some challenging platforming and many secrets to discover.

I recommend it for the complex puzzles and the freedom of approach to its various systems.

(And of course the fact that it's like Halo 2 meets Halo 3).

Mass Effect Legendary Edition has 3 campaigns spanning a massive playtime, with great characters throughout and a well-written, intriguing story that evolves based on your decisions in all 3 games. As a 3rd person cover shooter with the ability to direct squadmates, the gameplay is quite unique, and despite clunky controls at times, can be fun to play. There are issues here and there, like outdated animations, unwieldy UIs, and a galaxy map that is a pain to navigate, but overall it's a game more than worth your time filled with impactful character moments.

The legendary edition also makes many improvements over the original trilogy, with updated visuals and various fixes and additions. But there some glaring omissions: detailed graphics options, an FOV slider and an option to disable lens flare or camera shake. To that end, I do recommend playing with unofficial patch mods, but they don't fix every issue.

At the very least, what you're getting with Mass Effect Legendary Edition is great value for money.

It's a massive disappointment for a game I've been looking forward to for a long time to release like this, especially given Capcom's stellar record over the last several years, and Itsuno's clear passion for this franchise. Frankly, it kills any hype I have to play the game when you see all this warranted negativity surrounding it.

For me (and seemingly most others), it is impossible to achieve a solid 60fps even with minimum graphics settings with hardware above the recommend specs. I know the recommended specs target 4k 30fps, but targeting 30fps for an action-orientated game like this is ridiculous in my opinion.

It's concerning, because it is an indication that the RE engine can not cope with games of this scale, which doesn't bode well for Monster Hunter Wilds.

On a gameplay front, it seemed to be just like DD1 from what I played, which is a good thing. Graphically it's very impressive too, but the character animations during dialogue are poor.

It's not as bad as Cyberpunk or Fallen Order on release, but we should expect better. Don't have much else to say at the moment, should have been delayed. We will wait and see.

I never played any other version of Persona 3, so upfront I'll say that I'm happy Persona 3 Reload was made as it has made a story with many die-hard fans much more accessible.

For me, that accessibility comes in the form of various quality-of-life, gameplay and graphical improvements that Atlus have learned since originally creating Persona 3. The baton pass mechanic makes a return from Persona 5 to spice up the combat, the added Theurgy attacks are an awesome spectacle and the UI is a lot more intuitive. Plus, the characters and their attacks all look better than ever in the new engine.

That said, other evolutions to the formula; like social links having gameplay influence (outside of just giving more xp) and duo special attacks, are missing. This is shame, and it's especially notable that there aren't that many varied activities to do around town or unique locations to visit. In my playthrough, I found it too easy to settle into a rhythm, with the game rarely throwing curve balls at you in terms of day-to-day activities.

On the positive side, all of the interactions with Elizabeth were great (especially since they don't take in-game time). Also, some of the social links are easy to get invested in, giving a particular shout-out to The Sun social link. However, there is an overall lack of dialogue with your romanced link, and it's annoying being locked out of social links with your teammates for so long due to social stats. It's also extremely unlikely to max every social link without a new game+ unless you look things up, which is frustrating as you miss out on parts of some characters' stories.

The story is good throughout and doesn't pull punches, making for some really powerful moments. On the flipside, I found some of the twists were made a bit too obvious, and the lack of fanfare or build-up to many allies joining your team a bit underwhelming. Finally, I honestly don't know what the general opinion is on the ending and epilogue, but for me it initially felt unclear, and although I was okay with that outcome, I felt it didn't deliver a satisfying conclusion to the story for most of the characters (this may be rectified with The Answer DLC, but it's still a shame that it isn't included in the base game if that is the case).

The combat almost exclusively takes place within Tartarus, a tower of procedurally generated floors. It's undoubtedly improved from the original, and more interesting than Persona 4 dungeons or Momentos in Persona 5, but still does not hold a candle to the palaces in Persona 5 in terms of engaging exploration and diverse environments.

Unsurprisingly, the soundtrack is great throughout, but I personally found the number of tracks to be a bit underwhelming.

Overall, P3R is a great remake that brings a beloved game close to the high standards in presentation and gameplay that Atlus has set with Persona 5 Royal, so I can easily recommend it to any Persona fan or as a good entry point to the series.