Recent reviews by Zen_Akechi

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Update: NEW UPDATE IS CONSTANTLY CRASHING GAME PLEASE FIX THE GAME. LITERALLY HAD 5 DIFFERENT CRASH INSTANCES THE PAST 30 minutes.

Edit: PSN is now optional from Sony Announcement.

TLDR: Game is pretty fun, just be aware of the game breaking bugs and questionable balance decisions.

Gameplay loop is fine and it's something to do if you want to mindlessly shoot bugs with friends. Balance decisions and choice of weapon is questionable to where you're forced to run specific weapons as some of the weapons just feel too underwhelming to deal with specific enemies, but I don't think those are deal breaking enough to warrant a negative review alone. It does feel like my choice of weapons feel very restrictive and overall performance would be hindered especially in solo play or solo + randoms.

The bugs however feel way too game breaking for me that it just hindered my overall enjoyment of the game. I feel like the bugs aren't really addressed by much reviewers/friends before I got the game.
Some examples being:
- Being stuck in Terrain and not able to get out, sometimes I can't respawn because I used up all the grenades and I have no explosive weapons (I was solo)
- Being recalled and stuck on high ground, not able to get down without dying
- Recall plane not working properly forcing you to forfeit all your samples obtained
- Random game crashes that just occur randomly (not even when there's a lot of effects/enemies)
- Random network disconnects when internet received no downtime/hiccups (I had a situation where I was going to deploy an eagle, but the disconnect cause the eagle to kill the squad around me)
- Recent Players/Friends bugged, Steam friendlist is necessary if you want to play with certain friends and the whole private room interaction/invite. Not game breaking but very annoying.

I'm not sure if I'm the most unlucky person as I was not actively hunting for these bugs, I just encountered these bugs with my time playing the game.

Also, why give us Japanese voice options if it's not even possible? (I'm aware of the Steam warning, it's just weird given the option without being allowed to)

Honestly as someone who liked Holocure and played a lot of it before it came on Steam, I was pretty excited to try out HoloX. To be honest, I would be lying if I wasn't disappointed in the game.. While I do understand it's a passion project and Kay literally spending his own time working on this game, there's just a lot of issues that damaged my experience compared to HoloCure for example that I do want to bring up as I do want this game to be very successful.

The game is poorly balanced to where it's unfun for the player. I only had fun with my friend once we figured out a broken strategy (Super Armor Biboo item and just face tanking everything with damage items and heals with a supporting DPS on the back). Also the NPC helpers have very limited healing potential which feels awful as I just see them all die from one of the boss's attack pattern (Not sure if this is intentional)

Some of the enemies just had very little readability. Iroha Boss Fight, Black Bird, La+ are some examples., (Compared to HoloCure) which made it difficult to come up with proper plays because you take too much damage to the point where super armor is a necessity due to scaling of the later stages. While I do like abusing certain strats, I don't think super armor being a must in the game is healthy (And nerfing super armor isn't a go-to to be honest). I also had difficult tracking the character I was playing in a middle of some of the boss fights. Honestly, I had the most fun abusing a strategy later at the game to literally counteract with some of the unfun mechanics.

To be honest, I think everything after this is just minor inconvenience as my main complaint is mostly the gameplay issue mentioned above:

I tried the steam remote play with my friend who was using a Steam Deck and my friend reported that he had lagging and freezing issues on his end. Notably during the boss fights. I also had issues with movement at some point as I would be moving and then the character stops moving. I'm fairly sure some of the connection issues lies on Steam server end than HoloX itself so I think it's unfair to blame solely HoloX for the connection issues.

The controls were pretty janky due to how simplistic but also too complicated to utilize. An example being how one button is used for 2-4 different actions based on how you hold or press it. I was able to get used to it after playing for some time, I don't think it's a bad thing to be honest compared to the others., it just feels unituitive. For controllers, I do think the shoulder buttons should be used (i.e. abilities) to be honest.

I'm not sure if the game brought it up, but I do think that sharing inventory or money would be better than separated. I do understand that it might have been an idea but ultimately decided to be separated as the game is likely scaled based off 4 players than 1-2 players for example. Yes, I do know that you can buy items and drop the items for other players. I was just wondering.

This is extremely nitpicky, but I couldn't really figure out the point of getting items at the world 5 as I couldn't find the ability to sell the items to Kaela as I always sold stuff to Nodoka. Also, why is taking fire damage a thing when there's no proper health regeneration. Also, I do think that enhancement failure should make the enhancement success rate be higher.

I do think save options should be a thing as others brought it up

The gameplay itself I can see being very fun, I just think the game just needed more time in development. Once I saw the announcement of online coop being delayed, I was honestly fine with playing Solo, but playing Solo is just extremely difficult and just having another player made the experience a lot easier. I'll be down to update the review once there's an update fixing some of these issues.

tl;dr I rather have the game be delayed.

Game is shutting down on November 2023

I want my refund ($20)

The first game I don't rage at when losing