Recent reviews by MaChao

A deceptively deep roguelike experience with Dynasty / Samurai Warriors characters.
The core gameplay is just Warriors from an isometric perspective, including every characters original moveset.
The depth comes with your character / team build.
Character come with 2 "resources", titles (such as the faction they belong to, or if they are of exceptional renown) and atributes like elements, speed, attack etc.
Each character has inherent passive abilities that require a certain amount of titles and/or attributes to be activated.
Your entire team consists of 7 members and bonuses are further augmented by the formation you're selecting.
Unlike, say, Hades, you're not limited to collecting only 6 additional characters though.
You can gather more and switch them out after each round, depending on new formations, items etc.

With a solid gameplay foundation and plenty of build depth, Warriors: Abyss is a deceptively deep and robust roguelike and comes highly recommended.
Just steer clear of the grotesquely overpriced cosmetic DLC.

Another great game by Astro Port!
The game feels a bit like "The Hurricane of the Varstray" with some fun weapon mechanics added on top of it.
Great fun, massive variety of weapons and abilities, story is a bit silly though.
Overall, highly recommended.

Yet another fantastic game from Team Ladybug!
It's the full package: It looks stunning, it sounds great, it plays well and it has a fantastic, charming story.
Controls could be a little smoother and has some issues. For instance, attacks lock you into facing a direction a little longer than they should which can lead to some bad dodges.
It's not game breaking, but it often feels a bit off.

All in all, highly recommended and already one of the best games released this year...and it's only January!

Fantastic SHMUP with a very lenient difficulty curve and a fantastic soundtrack!
The graphics are a bit too low-resolution which hurts visibility a little.
Overall, great experience, highly recommended!

While i barely scratched the surface of the game, it's already impossible not to rave about it.
Warriors never looked better, it never sounded better and it never played better.

Presentation was never the strong suit of Koei's Warriors series, yet Origins knocks it out of the park.
The enemy density is incredible on its own, what makes it even more impressive is enemy behavior though.
Some move in formation, others run panicked across the battlefield, gone are the days of fighting with "Kung Fu Movie Rules", peons swing at you whenever they can.
Peons feel alive and finally pose an actual threat again.

The soundscape is another highlight.
The soundtrack is absolutely phenomenal, be it new tracks or remixed of old ones.
But the showstealer is the battlefield noise.
The shouting crowds when the battlefield reaches a certain threshold of people causes goosebumps.
You can hear the difference in crowd size and it's incredibly immersive.

The combat system couldn't have been any better.
After the failed experiment of DW9's flow system, Origins uses the classic Charge system as a backdrop and builds into it.
In addition to all classic charge combos, you now have a selection of active skills you can use, all fulfilling different roles.
From movement tools to counter stances to specific skills meant to break an enemies big attacks.
They're all managed by a new, seperate meter from your usual Musou gauge.

Defensive maneuvers also saw a major overhaul. Blocking now comes with its own set of attacks, parrying plays a much bigger role in the games stagger system, dodging is a new mechanic which also comes with its own set of attacks.
It's a very modern take on the series most traditional combat system, and it works perfectly.

This is the best Warriors has ever been and i pray to the heavens that Origins sees a sequel or becomes the groundwork for the next mainline entry.
This is an absolutely phenomenal game!

Final Fantasy 16 is difficult to recommend and it all comes down to if you want a videogame or an "experience", as the game is quite literally half movie (average playtime is estimated at 40h while a cutscene supercut runs for roughly 20h).

There are a few things great about it too.
For starters, it looks fantastic. Given its generit setting, most of its environments aren't all that creative, but what is there tends to look stunning.
It's character animations, especially facial animations put many of its contemporaries to shame.
Even during throwaway NPC dialogues, faces have subtle mood expressions, eyes wander. It's fantastic looking stuff.
It's UK voice cast is, with a few exceptions, giving great performances that, again, put many of their overused US colleagues to shame.
The soundtrack is also nothing to sneeze at either. It does something many AAA composition fail to do these days:
It has hummable, momorable melodies.

But that's where my praises end already.
As said before, all this makes for a decent "experience", but the game part is severely lacking.
As it has been discussed many times before, the combat system is very shallow.
It's perfectly servicable and functional, but simply cannot support a 40h game.
Made by people behind Devil May Cry 5, it vaguely resembles its combat system, just without the nuance.

In place of intricate, input heavy combo systems you have a single, linear basic combo attack and several special abilities bount do singl ebutton presses that operate on cool downs.
It is all very simple and intuitive, but gives people experienced with character action games little to play with.
Final Fantasy 16 is to character action games what "Final Fantasy Mystic Quest" was to JRPG's back in the day.
A watered down, simplified experience with as much mass appeal as possible.

There are also no RPG elements in sight.
Gear improves by flat increases without any nuance or reason for consideration. Bigger numbers mean better gear.
Accessories fare a little better, but you get to pick between single digit percentile damage increases or cooldron reductions.
Nothing of it really matters in the long run.

Despite the entire premise of the game centering around an entire zoo of elemental beasts, there are no elemental affinities, no status effects or anything that would add a little spice into the mix.
Much like your gear, it eventually boils down to what skills produce bigger numbers, as the few skills that have utility aside from causing damage tend to be so situational that they are generally not worth bothering with.
Pick what does the most damage, as there is no need for nuance.

The central gameloop can roughly be divided between action oriented, setpiece heavy "stages" and your typical open world activities.
Said stages are decently fun and, at least in my opinion, if they were all there is, this game would have been a lot more enjoyable. Their presentation is phenomenal, they are well paced and most of all, they don't overstay their welcome.
They are the perfect format for the game's mechanics.

Sadly, you have the more open part in between.
FF16's side quest design is among the worst i've encountered. Only a handful happen to tell a worthwhile story, while the majority are nothing more than surface level ramblings and gameplay that boilds down to talking to NPC's in a specific order and with a little luck, you even have a single enemy encounter in between.

The story is entirely carried by its voice cast and characters.
Character writing was surprisingly good, made even better by the aforementioned stellar voice cast.
Story writing on the other hand is as generic as its setting. Stop me if you heard this one before:
There are wars going on in medieval land but in the shadows, a primordial evil is pulling the strings trying to end humanity because humans are bad! And you, as Mr. Protagonist are tasked to prove them wrong by the power of friendship.
Riveting stuff.
It leaves no dead horse unbeaten when it comes to writing cliches.
But just as its gameplay, it seems it was trying to craft a story with as much mass appeal as possible.
It even has two dedicated NPC's to explain you every single character or happening in the world. It tried to sand of any and all edges which ended up producing a tale that's as exciting as the color baige.

Final Fantasy 16 is a game for no one in particular.
It leaves behind RPG players, it doesn't offer anything for action game players, fans of Final Fantasy's often convoluted plots get a vanially flavored fantasy tale and medival fantasy fans will have to navigate their way through 38 years worth of franchise references...
It tried to appeal to everyone, even if it meant losing the franchises identity for it.

I can also not say anything about its DLC as i chose to skip it.
I've done most of what the game had to offer and i can't see myself coming back to it anytime soon, maybe even ever.

An absolutely fantastic piece of software!

I play a lot of older Japanese indie games which often won't even support 16:9 resolutions.
Lossless Scaling manages to to upscale these games, keep their aspect ratio intact, add pillarboxes without any hassle to set it up whatsoever.
LS turned out to be the surprise solution to a very niche issue! Highly recommended!

Chromacell is perfectly OK, with a couple of odd design choices keeping it from being great.
It picks up some design elements from "Euro-Shmups", like most enemies being tanky or most (mini) bosses having random shot patterns.
Another bizarre design element is that through its 10 stages, nothing other than your initial 3 lives persist.
You start each stage from scratch, no power ups, no shot type, but also restored shields.

What it nails are the visuals. Great pixel art, good usage of effects, backgrounds aren't distracting and clearly visible.
Good stuff.
The soundscape is fine, nothing memorable, but it does its job well enough.

All in all, it's an enjoyable romp for a great asking price that just falls short of greatness by a handful of rough edges.

Imagine a combination of Creeper World 2 and the Falling Sand game.
The main gimmick of IXE is its sculptable terrain which is often used to create fun puzzles.
Lava blocking your way forward? Break open a nearby aquifer, let it cool down and solidify parts of the lava turning it to stone, dig away that stone to make room for the rest of the lava to flow to which lowers its overall level, making way for your ships to pass through!
Much like CW2 back in the day, IXE is a different gameplay experience than the main games. It's lighter on the strategy elements and focuses more on creative puzzle and problem solving.
All in all, another fantastic Knuckle Cracker gem!

I know why you're here, you know why you're here.
Just tell your loved ones goodbye and buy the game...