Recent reviews by Flux⁶⁴| Ｒ - Ｗａｖｅ

Let's begin with the best: The game mix of XCOM strategy, RPG elements and card playing/ collecting is fun and clearly the star of the show. Heroes will level, get stronger, and most importantly get better cards. Each character does feel unique and each convinces with its own background story and emotions/ motivations. The battle mechanic (manage heroism for each turn) is challenging, but yet the game is easier compered for exampel with XCOM. In and out of battles you will earn many different types of materials, artifacts, credits, etc. and soon you find yourself in a very addictive "collect and spend immediately"-mechanic. Fun! Tbh, sometimes it can be a pain to keep the ressources all straight and navigating the menus, manage all of them back and forth just to upgrade/ get new cards. Here I would have liked a simpler or faster system. But the possibility to customize all characters was great and gives a lot of variation. Creating your own personal "superhero dream team" felt fabulous and also offered a lot of variety as there are many different characters from the Marvel universe to play.

Conclusion
Marvel’s Midnight Suns combines addictive, deep strategy gameplay with a cast of characters that make the moments outside of the action just as rich and enjoyable as those in it. A lengthy campaign packed with missions to go on and relationships to form with Earth's Mightiest Heroes make Marvel's Midnights Suns a modern strategy classic and one of my biggest gaming surprises this year.


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CPU-: AMD Ryzen™ 9 5900HX Mobile Processor (8 CPU cores)
GPU-: NVIDIA® GeForce RTX™ 3080 GPU 16 GB GDDR6 VRAM
MB-: AMD Promontory/Bixby FCH
RAM-: 64 GB (2x32 GB) DDR4 RAM (3.200 MHz)
SSD-: Samsung® PM9A1 MZVL22T0HBLB, 2048 GB

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CPU-: AMD Ryzen™ 9 5900HX Mobile Processor (8 CPU cores)
GPU-: NVIDIA® GeForce RTX™ 3080 GPU 16 GB GDDR6 VRAM
MB-: AMD Promontory/Bixby FCH
RAM-: 64 GB (2x32 GB) DDR4 RAM (3.200 MHz)
SSD-: Samsung® PM9A1 MZVL22T0HBLB, 2048 GB

After 42hrs, the fantastical journey full of cultures, people, beasts & monsters, politics and mechs has come to a very moving end. I have not experienced anything like this since in the 90s, and let me just say that my bar is quite high on (rpg-)games (I grew up on the snes and ps1 generation games). Terranigma, FFVI-IX, Secret of Evermore [...] just to name few of them... and Chained Echoes can easily keep up with these. It even comes up with some new fighting twerks, which offer a breath of fresh air in the otherwise familiar genre (e.g. overdrive bar or sky armor fights). The game and it's story is very detailed, has a great way of telling it's lore and history of the countries. Music is incredibly familiar yet new and of high quality.
Only the crystal system could use a revision (even if this upgrade system is not necessary and I have defeated every (optional) enemy even without perfect optimization), but the rng itself is a bit frustrating for people, who want to have "perfect" stat-characters.

Conclusion
The game is a solid 9/10 and a modern classic in my books. The gameplay is deep, and at the same time the quality of life improvements from the 90s hits are so well implemented that your time will go very fast. What a fantastic, and surprisingly good RPG!


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CPU-: AMD Ryzen™ 9 5900HX Mobile Processor (8 CPU cores)
GPU-: NVIDIA® GeForce RTX™ 3080 GPU 16 GB GDDR6 VRAM
MB-: AMD Promontory/Bixby FCH
RAM-: 64 GB (2x32 GB) DDR4 RAM (3.200 MHz)
SSD-: Samsung® PM9A1 MZVL22T0HBLB, 2048 GB

Story
The (main) story (which doesn't reveal itself until the last half hour of the game..) comes up far too short, is pseudo-intelligent and if you get any info, it is rather cryptic. Do I now have to play through the game several times to see a satisfying (explanatory) ending? Not with me, sorry. Even if the idea with different endings is nice and feels innovative, the game and especially the gameplay itself cant hold up with the idea (e.g. why there are no automatically-added shortcuts in a 2nd, 3th [...] playthrough??). Many plotholes keep pulling me out of the adventure too: Be it, for example, an intact post-system in the world of Nier, although no human dares to go outside the villages, because otherwise he will be immediately attacked by monsters ("shades") or the section where I had to look for five "key fragments", where I often was just confused, because these important items suddenly appeared here and there, without it even remotely makes sense.

Characters
If you can really find something outstanding about the game, it's the characters. Even though they come with typical jrpg characteristics, they grow on you and act believably. Since there are some deads and the game itself is also not stingy with blood, it feels "adult" and drama fans get their money's worth. Worth mentioning is also the art design in general (costumes, opponents...) which I noticed positively. The final bosses in particular are imposing in appearance, but unfortunately they usually play sluggishly and the fights feel stretched and tedious.

Gameplay
Average at best, I'd call it like a "Devil May Cry-light". The focus/ camera is sometimes a real pain in the ass during fights, but the spell abilities and various weapons are cool to experiment with. The quests are bad, I mean really bad. They are boring, repetitive and are very lazy written. There are really only a few exceptions, and these are not worth mentioning. The "mini-games" in the game (as well as the achievements that go alongside with them) are also more bad then anything else and can only be achieved with a lot of time-consuming work, which you do over and over again.

Music
I wish I could say something great about the music. Even though it's great staged and composed, but it kills itself through repetition and a less variety of songs.

Overall
Even though the game has well-written characters, a solid foundation for the story (which even begins with a different game "Drakengard") and some nice twerks (e.g. multiple endings..), the endless fetch quests and the partially implausible game world didn't appeal to me. I'll still play Nier: Automata, as I'm interested to see if the creative thought processes have been taken further, but for me there are clearly better jrpg's out there right now, like Scarlet Nexus, to name just one.


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CPU-: AMD Ryzen™ 9 5900HX Mobile Processor (8 CPU cores)
GPU-: NVIDIA® GeForce RTX™ 3080 GPU 16 GB GDDR6 VRAM
MB-: AMD Promontory/Bixby FCH
RAM-: 64 GB (2x32 GB) DDR4 RAM (3.200 MHz)
SSD-: Samsung® PM9A1 MZVL22T0HBLB, 2048 GB

I recently finished Darksiders 3 and enjoyed the entry despite its drastic design direction unlike its predecessors. It also helps that the puzzles in this one have been drastically reduced and I no longer get the feeling to recive items, just to do puzzles with them. Because of that, the whole gameplay in the world itself feels more immersive and complete for me. The level design in general is genius in all aspects, it's beautiful, it has many secret paths and connections to other paths you couldn't access before as you progress with your abilities (just like Darksiders1), each way you took before can open up to completely another direction. The combat as well as the abilities and weapons feel fun and refreshing. Even though I can't withhold the fact that you have to get used to the new "souls-like" mechanics before the combat is really enjoyable. The bosses are easily the best so far from the franchise (and in the worst case, at least as good as in the second part).

Negative for me was the fact that the story again does not take place after part 1 and that the plot just runs parallel to the first and second part. Therefore, the third part has the same problem as the first: The ending is so exciting that you immediately want to know what happens next, but all you get is a black screen and see the credits rolling.

Conclusion: War and Death were cool, but my favorite horseman now is without a doubt Fury. A great game, very enjoyable and worth your time, without the false expectation of people (which is kind of understandable) the game would have much higher scores from critics.


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CPU-: AMD Ryzen™ 9 5900HX Mobile Processor (8 CPU cores)
GPU-: NVIDIA® GeForce RTX™ 3080 GPU 16 GB GDDR6 VRAM
MB-: AMD Promontory/Bixby FCH
RAM-: 64 GB (2x32 GB) DDR4 RAM (3.200 MHz)
SSD-: Samsung® PM9A1 MZVL22T0HBLB, 2048 GB

"They called me Prophet. Remember me."

Despite his flaws like clunky controls, performance issues (freezes, crashes, black screens..) or a difficult, to almost unfair stealth mechanic: it's just badass to roaming through the city with your god-like hack possibilites or infilitrate some enemie bases and have "Don't Sweat The Technique" in-ear.

//RECOMMENDED TO BUY


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CPU-: AMD Ryzen™ 9 5900HX Mobile Processor (8 CPU cores)
GPU-: NVIDIA® GeForce RTX™ 3080 GPU 16 GB GDDR6 VRAM
MB-: AMD Promontory/Bixby FCH
RAM-: 64 GB (2x32 GB) DDR4 RAM (3.200 MHz)
SSD-: Samsung® PM9A1 MZVL22T0HBLB, 2048 GB

"They used to call me Prophet. Remember me."

This was much, much better than I thought it was going to be - I should have bought this earlier. No, it's not a state-of-the-art AAA title, but it's very close, and the slight roughness around the edges is more than worth it for a smaller dev team that really loves and appreciates the source material. The same goes for the dlc, which add some super cool additions to the terminator franchise (especially the first movie) as well.

Conclusion: This should have been Terminator 3. Better than any of the movies in the series that followed T2. A game, which is definitely what true Terminator fans wanted in exploring the "future" reality. 8/10


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CPU-: AMD Ryzen™ 9 5900HX Mobile Processor (8 CPU cores)
GPU-: NVIDIA® GeForce RTX™ 3080 GPU 16 GB GDDR6 VRAM
MB-: AMD Promontory/Bixby FCH
RAM-: 64 GB (2x32 GB) DDR4 RAM (3.200 MHz)
SSD-: Samsung® PM9A1 MZVL22T0HBLB, 2048 GB

Story & Character
The world always at war with an mysterious entity called the Others, you choose one of two different (main) characters at the beginning and see their unique story as the intricate plot of the world unfolds. Once you've beat the game as one character, you can then NG+ into the other character to see both sides to this wonderful connecting story. This always creates an air of mystery & excitement and keeps a good beat to the story, always wondering what you'll see next for your cast of characters, and wondering what you may learn when you play as the others. The story is definitely one of the biggest highlights of this experience with multiple layers of conflict that somehow find a way to still connect to one another, and gave us an opposing entity that may be one of my new favorite 'villains' I've ever experienced in gaming. The only element stronger than this game's fantastic story is it's wonderful cast of characters who all have unique personalities and individual goals, and with a similar support system to Fire Emblem give you extra Bond Episodes to spend more time with them and appreciate them more. By the end of my journey I ended up loving every party member I had, even if they weren't on my team throughout the game. Scarlet Nexus also makes excellent use of knowing when to have animated cutscenes so they can be more impactful, ultimately leading to a constant interest in what's happening.

Gameplay
To get as an anime-style hack & slash title an AAA style treatment is rar and this absolute knockout hit all the right spots for me. Gameplay wise this game is for me action genre at its finest. Always feeling rewarding to play even in the basic combat, this game goes a step further by making your main character(s) a psychic user. Throwing around objects and doing big combination attacks always looks as cool as it feels to do it, then goes to the next level when you do combinations with your party members to also use their powers. Teleportation, Duplication, Super Speed and more just give you more ways to enjoy playing this game, which is already enjoyable to do. As you play more you unlock more things you can do with each party member, and expand the detailed skill tree that's one of the best I've ever had in a game.

Graphic/ Sound
The art and animation were well done, I really enjoyed most of the areas and levels of the game. People how are fans of the cyberpunk setting, will like the world of Scarlet Nexus. You can switch the outfits of almost all the side characters and it also changes in all the cutscenes which is pretty cool. The game in general looks very aesthetic, very well design decisions where made (like the red strings or the designs of the enemies..). The soundtrack to this game was phenomenal. Lots of future sounding stuff, mixed with a lot of funky beats and basslines. The emotional parts had many beautiful and swelling songs behind them as well.

Negative
The game can get pretty boring during the "Standby Phases" (free time in-between the chapters of the game). This is due to the boring side quests and the companion system which takes hours to complete (complete meaning fully level up your relationship with your team) and if you're a completionist like me, then its possible that you get burned out like halfway through your first campaign from that mechanic. Don't get me worng: the bond episodes in the companion system are great, I just wished to get to them not by just throw on my team as much as possible gifts all the time. And the game, even when the presention is top tier, is at the end an mid-budget project.. so you will see a lot of re-used environments and most of the cutscenes are slide-shows. Also be aware: Since there are two campaigns with lots of overlap, game can get repetitive towards the end - especially because I felt like the game is 2-3 hours to long in the main story itself.

Conclusion
Scarlet Nexus is a fun action RPG-lite that has a complex story and a bunch of loveable and well-written characters. If you like games like Astral Chain, Persona 5 or being a cyberpunk (/brainpunk) fan, you will not go wrong with Scarlet Nexus, especially as it’s being set up as a potential future franchise. The combination of telekinesis and action elements are nothing new, but SN does it beautifully by combining it with other different skills and magics. I just can say: Thank you Bandai Namco for this. 8.5/10


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CPU-: AMD Ryzen™ 9 5900HX Mobile Processor (8 CPU cores)
GPU-: NVIDIA® GeForce RTX™ 3080 GPU 16 GB GDDR6 VRAM
MB-: AMD Promontory/Bixby FCH
RAM-: 64 GB (2x32 GB) DDR4 RAM (3.200 MHz)
SSD-: Samsung® PM9A1 MZVL22T0HBLB, 2048 GB