Recent reviews by brianbcdefg123

Fading Hearts is a highly interactive visual novel. While others engross you in a linear story, this game takes the 'well, it's shorter, but there are multiple endings' route. There are a couple things that I like and dislike about the game.

- It has a shallow battle system, which makes it feel like Persona at times. I personally think Persona gets way more credit than it deserves nowadays, but whatever. You can do things outside of battle to prepare yourself. Obviously this isn't the main dra of the game, and it's not that deep.
- The endgame is way too sparse compared to the rest of the game. You'll go a week or two with rarely any scenes, and you'll start to wonder if the game broke or something. On the two playthroughs I've had, this has been a problem with both. I have heard that aspects of the game are randomized, so it may or may not be a serious problem. Maybe I was just really unlucky.
- You get the sense that the developers quit early on this one. Not just because of the above, but you're marching along, thinking the story has a lot more life in it, and suddenly everything gets resolved in a series of events in a day or two. It just... ends. Abruptly.
- I see people complaining of the writing, both the content and the grammar/spelling. I wonder if were playing the same game. I remember no grammar/spelling errors, and I don't have serious problems with the content. It is quite a mishmash of ideas, though, veering closely to the otaku. And some of them are just plain stupid or cliche. But largely, it's passable.
- The developer makes too big a deal of everyone lying to you at some point. Yeah, everyone's keeping secrets... but that's par for the course in anime, really. It would have been more significant in my opinion if you were able to guess what these lies were before their reveals, but the twists are so far out there that you don't really get that chance.
- The advertised genre changes have a bit more meat to them. Depending on what you want to do, you can either discover the core of the story (going into supernatural elements), or not bother to discover the character's true intentions and treat this as a life sim.

I see this as $15 in the store now. Please wait until this is on sale. I think it's enjoyable, but not quite worth that price. There's a bunch of unused potential in the life sim part of this game, and I would pay attention to a spiritual successor.

I made a Let's Play from it. I think this is worth it.

There are a lot of games in the Ys series, several of which are on Steam. This is actually a prequel, set hundreds of years before the main series games.

Yet... this is my favorite.

The Ys series are action RPGs. What makes them unique is that a level-up should not be underestimated - it makes the difference between getting served by a boss and dominating it. So grinding feels genuinely rewarding, and something you shouldn't have to do much of if you're not playing on higher levels. Plus, the soundtrack absolutely rocks.

There is a bit of a Metroid feel as you'll be backtracking and searching around for powerups to help you get further into the tower. There are three characters, and for me the game was never really boring enough not to replay with the other characters. Getting all achievements, however, requires beating the game a total of six times, and on the highest difficulty for three of them. Don't think I'm going for that.

The Ys series was never huge on story - you won't find anything revolutionary here. But it's not a problem, since the gameplay more than makes up for it.

In summary: Genuinely fun action, great music, and a great intro into the Ys series. GET THIS GAME.

The only way I recommend this game is if you are a die-hard Naruto fan (have watched/read/played the story up to this point) and have either played previous games in this series before or are up for a bit of reading and experimenting with controls.

That said, here are the reasons I do not recommend this game to everyone else:

NS:UNS3FB (even as a acronym it's a mouthful) is a fighting game with three modes: Story, which picks up around book 50 of the Naruto manga, after the attack on Konoha (um, the second one) and goes to the heat of the Fourth Great Ninja War. From what I have heard, the game actually makes up its own ending to this, which will probably cause confusion when the fourth game in the series comes around, but I'm not concerned with that.

See, this game is not a game for beginners, and this is my greatest beef with it. There are no tutorials in story mode. There are just about 25 dialogue boxes that display tips for the game - and you can't even access the start menu to view them until after the first few battles! So yes, if you haven't played the previous games (which are not on Steam currently) prepare to experiment a bit. Even then, you may get the feeling of missing out on things, watering down the experience. As I understand the battle system right now, it's only okay. There are items you can use... but that's not really my play style. Plus there are a TON of them to unlock, so I just ignore them completely. I've never needed any of them yet.

This brand of xenophobia towards newbies continues with the story itself. No explanations are given for past events, nor is any glossary given for the Naruto lexicon that has built up over the past 10+ years. There is a timeline that allows you to view key events from before the game, but I am halfway into story mode and have not yet unlocked a single one of those events.

And the cutscenes. Yikes. I haven't compared them, but the story mode likely covers most, if not all scenes from the manga. This means a lot of content, nearly all voiced and paced accordingly. The story has its moments, yes (Naruto meeting his mother in Chapter 4 had me tear up, honestly), but you will come to realize quickly that you will spend around 4/5ths of your time in story mode watching cutscenes and the rest actually controlling your character. It gives Final Fantasy VII: Dirge of Cerberus a run for its money. Each chapter roughly consists of about 5 1-3 minute stages... and then an hour's worth of scenes. This is odd. Other Naruto games have managed story better - I'm thinking of the early Clash of Ninjas, and maybe even the original Ultimate Ninja games, although I remember those less. I've finally wised up and started skipping scenes.

There is an overworld, or should I say a collection of straight paths which try to resemble an overworld. Besides Konoha, which you only spend a bit of time in, the overworld portions seem pointless, and are basically only hubs in which to shop and save your game before going to your next fight - menus could have done them equally as well.

There are thousands of collectibles to buy, but most of these are titles and still images you can use to spruce up your ninja info card for online play. Unless you are a absolutely hardcore completionist, you'll probably just buy the ones you want and get on with it. If you can find them - ever try navigating a drop-down style menu with 1000 options? You're going to.

The second mode is simply free battle. It's straightforward. Naruto Shippuden has a large roster (around 100 off the top of my head), and you'll probably find your favorites here. Many have alternate costumes/forms which may or may not be considered separate characters. Most of the characters have to be unlocked from story mode, though. For Full Burst there is also a 100-mission mission mode. I've heard gripes that not every character from Story mode is playable, but with a good-sized roster already, I have no problem with that.

The third mode is online play. I have not tested this, but I assume it plays more or less akin to Free Battle. With other people. And there's rankings.

I remember seeing a screenshot in a magazine for the first Storm game long ago and being blown away by how true to the anime it looked. Here, backgrounds look good, but character outlines ruin the setup a bit, I think. Still decent, though.

SUMMARY: Unforgiving to beginners in controls or story, and catering to fans moreso than newcomers, NS:UNS3FB is ok, but fails to stand up to the great fighter games, or even other Naruto games.

The first chapter of Dysfunctional Systems, Learning to Manage Chaos is a visual novel. If you like a more relaxed experience, then certainly look into this genre more, but otherwise gamers with trigger fingers will find nothing for them here.

The story itself is well-written and I feel the universe created by Dischan can be expanded upon in a variety of ways for future installments. The music is great, and I was pleased to discover the soundtrack is included with the game in its directory.

Length is a real problem though - the episode is only an hour long, and I feel it could have been expanded upon exponentially. More than half of the characters are introduced in the epilogue.

The achievement system in the game is also significantly flawed. Like most visual novels, you can make choices along the way to alter the story. The catch is, this only occurs at one point during the game. Most of the achievements are gained at this point by selecting different combinations of responses within five minutes of each other. Therefore, it is easy to collect most of the achievements in only thirty minutes by saving right before this point. These are not the most straightforward, and you'll either need a guide or a lot of repitition - not what I think an achievement system should be. The rest are collected by completing the game's two major endings, which are both only a half an hour after the decision point. I got a 100% in this game in a mere two hours.

I also found out that Episode 2 won't be coming anytime soon. First, Dischan said they were in trouble, then they ran a Kickstarter, which succeeded! Yay! But then it didn't work out and they've been (partially) refunding people, saying that the series will not continue after all. Boo! With that in mind, I can't really say I recommend this unless you're a fan of the genre.

The best procedurally generated music game that I've played. Not for the epileptic at ALL, Beat Hazard is a top-down shooter where your music determines the level. You can even play with internet radio for a type of endless mode. Beat Hazard also contains a wealth of powerups, ranks, and gameplay varieties to make the game a must-buy, especially if you have a music library of any significant size.

Considering that this is a blend of rhythm games and RPGs, my two favorite genres, I don't know why it didn't catch my eye on day one. The general gameplay involves switching between three play fields - one to gain mana to cast spells, one to actually use the spells, and one to defend against enemy attacks. It's the kind of concept that must be played to get a good idea of, but let me tell you, it's great. Most of the gameplay music is by Ronald Jenkees, who I now know to be a fantastic artist. While the ending is a bit lackluster on all accounts - a tad 'what the heck?', a bit of open-endedness, even on the secret ending, and a special achievement that might or might not really bug you (I was fine with it, and rather liked it) - Sequence/Before The Echo is an indie game that you need to buy right this second. Just be ready for tons of horrible puns.