Recent reviews by Fizzlesticks

Obviously, Final Fantasy IV is a very good game. Some grindy parts haven't aged all that well (there are certain parts of the game that have huge difficulty spikes, requiring you to spend a couple hours just grinding for no other reason than to gain levels. Those parts are boring), but the rest still holds up fantastically. While earlier FF and Dragon Quest games were important, Final Fantasy IV was really the blueprint for the modern JRPG, and because of that it hasn't been all that dated more than 30 years later.

The question is - do you buy the 3D remake or the pixel remaster? There's no right answer. The remake has some great things: more cinematic cutscenes (the big ones even voice acted), and I would say a world that feels a bit more diverse. However, you can tell that the game was made for a small screen (it's a port of the mobile version, which itself was a port of the DS version). There are certain things like the camera feels REALLY zoomed in a lot of the time, making it hard to see where you're going without the map overlay, which takes up the whole screen. If they simply implemented a minimap for this version of the game, that would have been great.

Also the music is better in the pixel remaster.

All in all, recommended buy. Whether you buy this one or the pixel remaster depends on what kind of art style you want and how much you value more cinematic cutscenes. Either way, it's a great game.

First time I played this game, I had no issues. Second time, my game crashed and I lost literally 15 hours of progression. You can't mentally recover from that.

The original game hasn't aged entirely gracefully (pacing is all over the place, constant inventory management is annoying, etc), but it's still a lot of fun.

Mass Effect 2 hits the ground running and never stops, the game is an absolute blast

Mass Effect 3 picks up right were 2 left off, even if it doesn't finish strong.

One "major" problem it seems this edition of the game has is that achievements do not work for ME2 or ME3. Something to do with the way the game interacts with the EA launcher, I guess. There's a work around if you uninstall the EA launcher and go to Origin instead, but it's kind of a pain. So, if achievements matter to you, be aware of the issue. It was kind of a bummer to me when I found it out, but I also don't care enough about it to try work-arounds.

Definitely recommend this game if you like open world action/RPG adventures. You can't really affect the story via your decisions so much, but you can give Aloy your own personality if you like. The combat kind of overly rewards stealth/archer vs. outright melee, so if you want an outright melee game ala Dark Souls, this probably son't scratch that itch, but it's still great fun.

Con: For me, at least, the game tends to crash a lot when I'm riding on a mount, so I tend to go everywhere in the game on foot. Not sure if that's a general problem or just a problem that I have.

I would love to recommend this game, but unfortunately it completely glitched out for me as soon as I got to the second world. Dash either wouldn't work or I could't stop dashing until I hit a wall, gliding didn't work, enemies would freeze after I hit them, etc. The whole game just broke, and because of the autosave system, I couldn't reload an earlier save to try and fix it, which means I have to completely uninstall the game and reinstall it if I want to try again, which I'm not going to do.

Spyro is fun, but at least for me, this game was a buggy mess. Not to mention I have a 3080ti and while I never had any noticeable framerate drops, my system was pumping out some serious heat. Like more than it did with AC: Valhalla. If you have a lower-end system, definitely play this game on the lowest settings.

It's cheap. It's brick break, which you've probably played before (my first brick break game was Kirby's Block Ball on the GameBoy). It's got a fun aesthetic to it. The soundtrack gets a little repetitive. There are (I believe) 33 levels in total, 3 of them being boss fights. The first boss fight was fun, the second one was SUPER annoying, I haven't got to the third yet because level 3-10 can eat my shorts. Seriously, devs. You know what you did. The good part is you don't have to completely start at the beginning when you run out of lives, you can keep retrying the level you were on (your score just resets). That takes some of the anxiety out of losing.

At any rate, it's like a couple bucks for a game of brick break if you want something to kill 20-30 minutes at a time.

A lot of gamers like to dislike the last couple AC games because they pretty much aren't AC games anymore. That's true, but I thought the old AC games were getting really stale. Ubisoft decided to take the games much more into an RPG direction. That was somewhat true of Origins, and it's *definitely* true with Odyssey.

AC Odyssey is just as much of an RPG as The Witcher 3 or Skyrim. There's still some stealth elements, but the stealth in the game is much more about sabotage and "thinning out the herd" before taking on enemies in actual combat. Most stronger enemies cannot be assassinated at all. If that bothers you, that's fine, but you're missing out on an awesome experience.

The story is really good and hits really hard at a few moments. There's plenty of choice and consequence (there are "good"/"bad" endings), and the story does really have an "odyssey" vibe. Plenty of characters come into the story for just a quest or two, then you move on.

Now, for a couple annoying/bad things: Some of the enemies can be way too spongy. Every enemy in the game levels with you, which is both good and bad. Like, as you level up, every battle gets harder, even against enemies that are supposed to be weak. It may keep the combat from getting boring, but it also starts to make it feel like the game is punishing you for progressing.

As for the DLC: Legacy of the First Blade continues the "A" plot of the game, while Fate of Atlantis continues the "B" plot. IIRC you can start Legacy of the First Blade pretty early on in the game if you want to (though you will be extremely underleveled), though the plot doesn't really make a whole lot of sense if you haven't finished the main plot of the game. The Fate of Atlantis cannot be started until you've finished the "B" plot, though some of the parts of that expansion don't really make sense if you've already finished Legacy of the First Blade.

edit: I forgot to mention, there are also like "mini-questline" DLC quests in the game (their quest markers on the map are a different color than normal). A few of them also don't really make sense unless you've already finished the main story.

So, that being said, the order should go: Finish the "A" plot of the main game (the one about the Cult of Kosmos) > Finish the "B" plot of the game (Abstergo and all that) > Fate of Atlantis > Legacy of the First Blade.

There's something inherently unintuitive about playing putt-putt with a controller or keyboard/mouse. It's like every time you play it, you have to learn it again for the first time. It's kind of a bummer to play with friends and it takes you to like hole 14 before you figure out how hard to hit the ball. Also, you only get 15 seconds per hole to see the whole course. That can be kind of a pain for the larger holes because you don't really know what you're supposed to be aiming at. And the camera controls are a bit wonky.

That's another thing. Obviously it's called "golf with your friends." Absolutely only ever play this with your friends. This game does have a lot of content, and if you have people to play it with regularly, then go for it.

Basically, if you and your friends want to organize a "golf with your friends" night every week, that's the only way I could recommend this game. For everyone else, I'd have to say you're not going to get much out of it.

Tl;dr - Highly recommended if you are familiar with JRPGs and are looking for a good one to play. Maybe not if you haven't.

I would describe the combat of the Ys games so far as a cross between Secret of Mana and Dark Souls. You only control one character at a time, but the game encourages you to switch between characters constantly. You play with a party of up to 3 characters. The combat is pretty fast compared to other action RPGs, involving lots of running, dodging, blocking, and counter-striking. Compared to other Ys games, though, the combat in this game is much slower and more methodical. It makes me think of Xenoblade more than the cross I mentioned earlier. Make no mistake, the combat is the reason you play this game. I love it, as do many others, but if you don't like it, you're probably not going to stick with it.

The story is... okay. It starts off great, as Adol and a cast of other characters are shipwrecked on a dangerous island. As the story goes on, though, and it gets more and more into the typical "save the world" JRPG crap we've experienced hundreds of times before, it kind of loses steam. And most of the characters really don't have any development beyond a couple lines of dialog that are basically "I've changed now" (there are a couple standouts but I won't mention them to avoid spoilers).

As for sound, if you've played basically any other Falcom game, you know the music is incredible. Whether it's meant to get your blood pumping, or to make you feel peaceful, or emotional, it hits on all fronts. The voice acting, though... outside of Dana and Laxia, it's terrible. Like 2004 low-budget level terrible.

I like the way they expanded this from other Ys games (I don't think any other Ys game has taken me more than ~25 hours, this one took me almost 60). Finding other castaways is fun, and requires you to completely explore the island (which is rather large). The sidequests are somewhat few and far between, but they are impactful. The night explorations are a lot of fun. Fishing is a complete timewaster, but sometimes that's just want you want to do.

The raids and hunts, though... god, those are a slog to get through after a while. Thankfully, though, most of them are optional.

Short version: The gameplay is wonderful, the story is serviceable, it runs like butter, it's a fun time. 8.5/10 would recommend.

The combat is wonderful. Like any Ys game, the combat is fast-paced, easy to learn, difficult to master. Think of it like Secret of Mana on steroids. As far as JRPGs go, it's fairly light content-wise. You won't spend 100 hours trying to complete this game. The story is... okay. Lots of the usual JRPG tropes (protagonist with amnesia, that one child party member, the party member who was withholding vital information from the rest of the party because reasons, making you feel like the last 10 hours was a waste, etc). It's still charming, though, if a bit shallow.

Visually... It's a port of a Vita game that was made in 2012. With those expectations, it looks alright. It looks like a mid-2000's PS2 game. I'm fine with that. My one issue is that, for this PC port, they didn't scale down the UI at all. It feels like the UI takes up a third of the damn screen (makes sense on the Vita, not so much on my PC). The character portraits are crisp, but things like the font haven't been changed from the Vita version at all.

This game takes 20-25 hours to finish, depending on how thorough you are. There are some achievements that can't be done in on your first playthrough, so if you're planning on 100% completing it (which includes completing the game on "nightmare" difficulty, playing for at least 5 hours as all six characters, and maxing out every skill for every character), I think it would probably take about 40 hours. Although, there is a secret boss that I imagine would be a... well, a nightmare on nightmare mode. That might take a few hours by itself.

All in all, if you like JRPGs, give this game a go. If you like fast paced action games, give it a go. It's a fun time that never gets stale or too repetitive.