Recent reviews by Geoff

I thought KT were up to their old tricks again after hearing about the 720p fiasco shortly before release but as I gathered more information I became more interested in the details of what's going on. I'm going to try to focus on specifics here since other people have already mentioned stuff like editing the ini file (in My Documents, KoeiTecmo folder) to bump resolution and possibly enable AA though I haven't tried the latter through the ini yet.

To start off with a tl;dr: This is a decent port that is most definitely NOT the Vita version, which that version has much of its visual effects cut.

If you want to see screenshot comparisons between PC and PS4, there is a Steam Discussion thread made for this: "PC vs PS4 comparison screenshots"

I played through the first hour or so on PC while directly referencing a video of the game running on PS4 (Youtube "Blue Reflection Gameplay Longplay", video ID: X4J4iZTf1-g) and will comment on graphics with timecodes below (this overlaps with where the screenshots comparisons mentioned above cover but a bit more):

- Bloom is present on both (3:05, 4:33, 7:52 for some reason more visible on PS4)
- Depth of Field is present (togglable option on PC)
- Shadow bugs are present in both but are at times slightly to significantly more visible in PC (5:48 hallway walking, the shadows under the windows shifting as well as some aliasing on the windows to the classrooms which are much more visible on PC, 24:30)
- Shadow LOD popping present on both
- Stair railing shadow map aliasing much more visible on PS4 than PC (7:29)
- In ONE case I saw shadows missing on PC that are present in PS4 (12:04 and visible in one of the discussion screenshot comparisons)
- It should be noted in that case there are some severe issues with shadow LOD on the PS4 anyway as they disappear in horizontal strips as the camera moves.
- Otherwise every shadow that I've noted match between the platforms, including character dynamic shadows (53:10), self shadows (13:00, subtle), and background dynamic shadows (17:10)
- The small outline around characters looks worse with PS4 though I suspect this is something that looks better as rendering res scales (37:55)
- Generally texture quality seems to be equal on both platforms

This game doesn't have Borderless Windowed though seemingly works flawlessly with BorderlessGaming. Note that if you launch as Windowed at full monitor res it may require some finagling to actually force the game to be visible as it launches in a strange non-display state. In my case with multiple monitors it appeared on my higher resolution monitor and I had to use BG to fullscreen it, then remove the fullscreen to make it visible. From there, I simply dragged it into the correct monitor and re-fullscreened it. Single monitor users can likely just immediately use BG to fullscreen.

The game runs smoothly at 60 fps, this seems to be higher than the PS4, though that may just be an issue of referencing from Youtube rather than the actual console. From what I can see it seems like the 720p 2D assets referenced were mostly pre-rendered video (to save download size on a purely digital platform I suspect), tutorial/encyclopedia screenshots, and possibly some of the UI icons.

That all said, other people are reporting the usual gamut of issues such as instability. While I have not experienced this myself it isn't an uncommon occurrence so I can't say definitively that this port doesn't have major issues for everyone, but so far as I am able to tell it seems above average for KT, especially if we can get a few patches for people who are experiencing stability issues.

Edit: After just over 2 hours, I did run into a crash while transitioning areas right after completing a mission so holding for a patch does def seem prudent, save often

Edit2: On 10/5, there was a patch that boosted the 2d assets to 1080p res as well as a stability fix but I can't currently personally confirm the latter.

Worthwhile game for people who like fast response based action games (Devil May Cry, Ninja Gaiden, Bayonetta). I will be mainly critiquing mechanics and design in the review--it may come off as negative given the amount of things I will be nitpicking but I think this game is very close to being excellent so I wanted to take the time to be specific about things. As it seems they may still patch things, I will mention this review is as of Sept 4, 2017

About the camera, reading the other reviews it seems like a lot of issues had been resolved prior to me playing the game, but there's a few more points to potentially improve. An option for a farther camera would be helpful--I often found myself getting hit from offscreen by the fast dashing attack that claw enemies have.

This situation is very common due to what I expect is the typical encounter strategy of running around baiting suicide robots, then hunting down ranged enemies before engaging in the meat of the melee combat. Ironically, this approach to begin with is to minimize the chance of getting attacked from offscreen. This strategy is further supported by the fact that the ranged enemies have much lower health than other enemies and the sprinting attack will prioritize ranged enemies over everyone else nearby. A potential fix to this problem of strategic variety would be more enemy types and/or more actions within each enemy type.

To further expand upon the sprinting attack, it is a quick dash attack towards an enemy that is initiated by a light attack during sprinting. The interesting thing about this move is its auto-locking function which targets an enemy in range for you automatically, making it essential for hunting ranged enemies (as previously mentioned) but also as a gap closer for bosses, which I will go into further detail below.

Enemies are not aware of the Y-axis and will initiate attack attempts if you're hovering over them, making the downward falling slash risky as you can end up attacking into a move you can't see that has a more favorable hitbox. Additionally in the few encounters that happen on multiple floors, melee enemies are incapable of chasing you and ranged enemies can only attempt to shoot you.

Dodging has a bit of a long vulnerability time. While it's important to punish defensive indiscriminate dodge chaining, it also limits the offensive potential of the player. This is most notable in the variant of claw enemies that will block most attacks. In the tutorial you are taught to guard crush them with heavy attacks, but as this guard crush also pushes them back, they often end up out of range and using a dodge as a gap closer is too slow as they re-gaurd while you're still in dodge recovery. Getting close and using a strong attack chain is usable but as there are no combo options from a strong attack initiator and strong attacks within higher level combo chain that start with light attacks often fail to crush means this can be a boring approach. The actual approach i found best to use on these enemies was to sprint away at a small distance then use the sprinting attack to quickly close to perfect distance before they can bring their guard up and enable a full combo chain. One solution to the dodge recovery issue is either allow for limited chaining whereupon a long recovery will be incurred after a certain number of dodges (Bayonetta) or simply prevent dodge-to-dodge chaining but allow dodge into attacks freely.

The ranking system is based simply upon amount of HP remaining at the end of the encounter, with all hp being refilled after an encounter. Given that there is a way to self-heal 30% by using all your SP for a full screen attack, this is generally the best way to use SP as your ranking affects the amount of points you get to buy moves with per encounter (unless of course you are having no problem with hp at all). As far as I can tell the ranking system is something like 85+% hp remaining full 1000 points, with anything under being scaled to your health (e.g. 72% hp remaining gets you 720 points) and an overall rank at the end of a level. If you consistently get 80+% you can easily buy all the actions before the end of the game, which is a plus for me as these games are all about having options.

The boss battles are probably the low point of the game for me. You can almost never complete any of the better combos, with the bosses dodging out at the transition point, with some of the later bosses dodging even out of the basic light attack combo. Additionally, bosses' "safe" strike times are fairly strict, meaning even if you do a perfect dodge/perfect block into a counter they won't be staggered and usually end up hitting you on follow up attacks anyway--you absolutely have to wait for the right time to attack. Combine this with bosses having very little wait time between attacks and it could be pretty frustrating until you figure out the general pattern most of them share. With only a couple of exceptions, this results in the correct strategy for every boss being sprinting in a circle around them until they use one of their slow (usually ranged) attacks whereupon you immediately use the sprinting attack to close in, using a light combo before backing off and repeating. However, as a saving grace boss health bars are reasonable and once you get the pattern it does not take too long to finish one. This is a shame as I generally prefer the more agile character-vs-character fights in these types of games (think Vergil in DMC3, Angelo and Dante in DMC4) when they are made correctly.

Some final nitpicks, these mostly are minor issues that just go away with getting used to the particulars of the game:
Your striking range and coverage always seems shorter than it should be, I found myself constantly misestimating how safe i was in the middle of or initiating an attack chain, especially from the claw enemies.

The dodge distance is a bit too far, with dodging past an enemy to hit them from behind often overshooting resulting in a whiff. Dodge distance being shortened wouldn't be a problem as there are plenty of invincibility frames in the dodge. Air dash should be lengthened however. Alternatively weapon range could be increased as mentioned above and dodge length left alone.

Non-sprint walk speed seems a bit on the slow side. Sprinting is fine as is though it could also be sped up without much detriment if a similar move speed bump was granted to enemies so they couldn't be completely dusted.

Control customization would also be nice

As quick comments about non-gameplay aspects the game:
- Story and cutscenes are like an abridged cliche anime. I won't hold this against it as I know how expensive cutscenes are to make and how small a team this is. Taking the effort at all to contextualize things is a net plus considering the circumstances for me.
- The game is very short, taking under 3-4 hours to complete once, though these types of games are generally highly replayable due to the inherent appeal of its gameplay. There's additionally a challenge mode.
- Character models look decent, costume design is definitely anime-style, with the face models for the female characters looking very similar to some of the dead or alive characters.
- Gameplay animations generally look great, with nice looking FX work going with a lot of moves.
- Environment models don't look as good as the characters but the gap isn't distracting
- Music is surprisingly catchy though there's only a few tracks. Given that the game is fairly short, the latter isn't a problem

As much as I nitpick, I want to again clarify that for fans of the genre I think it is worth playing, especially at sale prices. The responsiveness of the system is inherently satisfying to play and is something I very rarely see done correctly outside of Platinum-developed/originated games, even at AAA budgets.

Brief review on release:
It's super broke but at least they ported the correct generation this time, hopefully this arcane knowledge carries into their future ports.

- For some reason it supports DirectInput but not Xinput for gamepads. In other words, your 360 controller (or most modern controllers that don't have a switch) won't work without some 3rd party finagling, but your old cheap controllers will.
- Default controller bindings are extremely awkward
- Also getting the crashes early into first map.
- Configuration app defaults to Japanese but can change it to English by going into the 2nd tab, selecting English in dropdown box, then clicking the middle button. The left button resets all settings and the far right button cancels all config.
- Does not technically support Borderless Windowed but seems to work without issue with the Borderless Gaming app.
- What the hell are these activation keys for?
- Forgot to add, when you create a mercenary you can enter a name but it won't let you use the keyboard normally. The controls in general for navigating the creation menu are also awkward.

Probably worth getting once patched but until then, don't do it man. If they fix the issues I'd change the recommendation.

Update 4/2/2018:
Game seems playable now, Xinput works out of the box (though it seems like it's internally remapping them to Dinput as the custom binding options still register them as numbered buttons) and no crashes across a mission

One last major gripe however is as you're learning the controls, the game instructs you to perform actions using its own generic button icons. This means regardless of whether you're using MKB or a controller, you'll have to first roughly memorize your key bindings before you can play smoothly. If using an Xinput controller, you additionally will have to figure out how that maps to the number bindings displayed in the rebind options. This doesn't take too long but it's nonetheless irritating and unnecessary.

All menu button prompts are stuck at keyboard, plus if you rebind the in-game controls for certain buttons, it changes those button behavior on the menu too. Luckily default binding seems usable for a controller once you get used to it.

I'd still say if the console version is an option then go for that, but PC version seems like it's usable with some legwork if one really wants to play this title.

If it was an option, I would change the recommendation to a CONDITIONAL YES, but sadly it is not. If someone is interested in this, it is functional with a minor caveat, and I figure the only people even looking at a game and reading this far into an old review would qualify.

It's good, extremely polished. By the same devs as EtherVapor and there are definite similarities (seamless perspective changes between side, top, and from-behind, lock on fire) but overall feels much better executed. Scoring system encourages a nice alternation pattern between ranged and melee, always keeping the player taking risks. Get it if you like shmups

Note that caveats of the shmup genre apply: don't go looking for story though; it's not terrible, just fairly typical, and it's fairly short--it's intended to be replayed rather than cleared once.