Recent reviews by Aleksei.Volchok

This is a visual novel with a detective mystery theme. It's another entry in a long series and it's OK, but I don't think you should play it if you've already played any of the previous games, unless you're excited about it to the point where you don't read reviews like this.

It covers very familiar ground. There's a lot of charm here, plenty of goofy characters, and the mysteries themselves aren't that bad. This is a bundle/remaster of two games, so you get a lot of cases for your buck. However, the game is very long and overexplained, which is bad in itself, since it might irritate you the way it irritated me. But also, when you see some inconsistency or a stretch in logic that characters ignore, it becomes all the more infuriating when they spend hours talking around weak plot points. I've played the first game and reached the second case of the second game before I felt that was enough - I'm tired of all the bits more than I wonder what's happening with the central plot.

Also, the series is inherently unrealistic and nonsensical, but here the mechanics of the court are so bizarre that even the characters themselves comment on it. It makes for a fun drama, but there's no internal logic to it at all, which wouldn't be an issue in your usual goofy cartoonish story, but here, logical deduction is the name of the game.

But again, if you haven't played any of the Ace Attorney games, the novelty of it all will likely outweigh the issues.

Octopath Traveler II is a turn-based, party-based role-playing game that aims to invoke nostalgic feelings. I like it. It's the least bad JRPG I've played in a while; in the sense that I struggle to say anything critical about it. The highs aren't that high, but the lows are almost non-existent; it's pleasant all the way through. It is very similar to the first game in the series, but is better in every regard, so I recommend skipping OT1 and playing OT2 instead, the stories are independent.

If you're not against pixel art graphics, then the aesthetics will bring you great joy. The music is especially great. Character progression is fun and satisfying, and the combat doesn't overstay its welcome. In terms of story characters are charismatic and diverse, and it's well written if unambitious.

Though here I can start complaining: the eight stories you play through are presented as if each character experiences them alone. Yet at the same time, other characters comment on what's happening and they're clearly present in combat. It's a distracting dissonance on top of the usual gameplay-and-story segregation. The pacing isn’t perfect either - the game remains very easy for a long time, as long as you stick to locations of the recommended level. And when it does become harder, and you're finally forced to think about what you’re doing in combat, you’ve probably already played for 40 hours. By that point, it can feel frustrating to suddenly be challenged when you're expected to make use of a nearly complete set of abilities.

The equipment could also be a little more interesting?.. But see, I’m nitpicking - because really, it’s all just fine. It even has a satisfying endgame sequence of just the right size.

This is a boring recommendation: I can’t think of anyone who wouldn’t like this, except maybe people who hate pixel art on principle.

XCOM: Chimera Squad is a streamlined tactical RPG set in the XCOM universe. It reuses many familiar mechanics but reshapes them into a more contained, limited, and polished experience. I sort of like it - in a “6/10, I don’t regret playing it, but there are many better games (mostly because every other tactics game is now an XCOM clone)” kind of way.

The game has character, in the sense of a cartoonish, quippy tone. I don’t enjoy that style, but at least it has an identity -something I felt XCOM 2 lacked. It also has characters, which I find more tolerable. They’re all broad stereotypes, but not aggressively so, and never irritating. More importantly, from a gameplay perspective, this is the first XCOM where every squad member is a distinct, pre-defined character with unique abilities. There's limited customization, far less than in XCOM 1 or 2. Add to this the game’s structure: it's built around discrete, encounter-based missions, with no traditional exploration phase. This leads to snappy, ability-driven combat, where the emphasis is on managing cooldowns and synergies. Thematically, the squad operates more like a SWAT team, replacing stealth mechanics with a breaching phase. These pre-encounter choices, using special items and abilities, give the game a distinct rhythm. The fat is trimmed - every decision matters, everything feels tuned and intentional. But that also means the experience is... less memorable. There’s little friction, and without the highs and lows of XCOM 2, the overall arc flattens. You're not in a fight of survival against a superior foe, you control superhero cops who decide the order in which the enemies die.

The strategic layer has been heavily simplified. While it arguably plays more smoothly than before, it lacks the tension or narrative framing that gave tactical missions weight. You’ll rotate characters mostly to try out different abilities, and by the end, you'll have maxed every stat and resource. This saps the campaign of variety - it unfolds the same way each time. You choose 8 out of 11 available agents, so there’s nominal replayability, but after finishing once, I felt no desire to start over. I also recommend playing on Hard cause even then the challenge falls off by the end and only the final sequence of missions can test your mettle properly.

The UI and technical aspects are a letdown. XCOM 2 nailed its interface, but Chimera Squad feels like it was designed for gamepad - until you use a gamepad and it suddenly feels designed for mouse. The UI misrepresents rules, bugs occasionally misregister attacks, and unless you catch a fleeting tutorial pop-up, you'll never know what various status effects actually do. That said, none of this matters much. The game is forgiving: agents have generous HP pools, they bleed out instead of dying outright, and the bleed-out timer is so long that most missions end before it runs out.

In the end, Chimera Squad is decent. I don’t have much to complain about - but not much to praise, either. It’s... OK. It is a game that realizes its ambitions better than any other XCOM game, but this ambition is to be a decent streamlined tactical RPG, not a genre-defining behemoth like other games in the series.

This is a visual novel. Usually, I praise a good story-focused game for doing something that would be impossible in a book. This one, however, wouldn’t work as a book—not because of its structure, but because I doubt anyone would have published it, at least not without heavy editing and cutting its length in half.

The game features both mystery and romance. It attempts to depict multiple historical settings and does so relatively well, mainly because it avoids focusing on historical details and keeps the language modern without doing the usual tired attempts at ye olde Anglo speech. It doesn’t even explicitly name locations, though it’s usually obvious what they’re meant to be. The story is structured as a collection of loosely connected short stories, each of them a Shakespearean-style tragedy, all thematically similar. This repetition is clearly a deliberate choice, but by the time I reached the fifth story, I couldn’t handle it anymore. It felt like reading five raw drafts of a short novel exploring the same idea—without ever getting a fully realized novel out of it.

I’m used to people calling a game’s writing "great" when it simply doesn’t offend the senses. This one isn’t exactly bad—the book lover in me never felt pain while reading it, just boredom.

It might sound like I dislike the visual novel genre itself, but I’ve enjoyed some in the past. While I have plenty of criticism for this game, I wouldn’t say it’s bad just because of anime tropes, unlike some other VNs. In story-driven games like this, the true strength often lies not in the writing alone but in how it leverages the unique tools of the medium. Unfortunately, this game misses the mark there as well. The art style is interesting, but many images feel like rough drafts, with broken perspectives, incorrect body proportions, and other issues. The background art is even worse—cheap-looking, heavily blurred photographs. There’s no voice acting. The game does have choices, but they all boil down to either "See Bad Ending #X" or "Continue the Story," so while there’s a mystery, you don’t actively engage in unraveling it. There are some spoiler-ish mechanics that wouldn’t work in a book, but they’re minor, and if you don’t notice them, you won’t miss much.

One genuinely great aspect is the music—it features a lot of vocal tracks, all performed exceptionally well.

The game clearly has a huge following, so don’t take my thumbs-down too seriously. Aside from some of the art, I can’t say anything in it is outright bad—it just didn’t resonate with me (except for the music). That, of course, is entirely subjective. It’s not a game for me, and I gave it a fair shot, playing more than half before putting it down.

If you decide to play it, I recommend using the Remaid of Dreams mod—it significantly improves the technical and visual aspects. Naturally, the game runs well on Steam Deck.

Yakuza 0 is technically a brawler game about criminals in 80s Japan. But really it's a game of minigames with insane but very entertaining plot.

This game was my first introduction into the franchise and on my first playthrough I approached it without realizing how rich the open world and side activities are. Now that I've replayed it on Legendary difficulty (for some reason it's only unlocked after a single playthrough which is a shame because it's not that hard and would have worked as a normal difficulty for many people. Well, except for the way it treats death - instead of allowing you to replay the last segment it drops you into the main meny) and was reasonably completionist I consider it still to be the best in the series.

Mind you, the flaws are numerous. The fighting system is overcomplicated and even on legendary you can get by with just a couple combos you like. The graphical presentation is all over the place: many cutscenes are high quality and look as if they were made today, but there are plenty of cheaply made cutscenes with worse graphics, and also stop motion cutscenes for some reason. There's a huge gap between characters based on real actors and other characters (player characters aren't based on real actors so to me even they compare poorly to better looking models). Many quality of life features from later games are missing. The economy is wild and even though it's a part of the theme of the game this makes character progression uneven, grindy and unnecessary at the same time.

Still it's a sprawling huge game that feels great to play. It has a huge number of mini-games and they are the highlight of this entry: so many of these mini-games have additional challenges or stories built around them. If you have never played a pool videogame you can play it here, and then try some puzzles, and then a special pool championship will be unlocked for you. With other games there might be a character who befriends you or a whole set of substories connected to it. This being a Japanese manly game one of the biggest awards you can get is gated from participating in a "mini-game" that is just watching light erotic videos of actresses playing characters in the game.

If you're new to Yakuza series then this is the best place to start, as it introduces you well to the tonal breadth of the series. If you played other games and somehow missed this then I beg you to ignore some deficencies (like lack of autosaves or ability to save wherever you want) and play this. It's Yakuza at its best. The game mechanics might be less cohesive than in other games in the series - you get very few rewards for participating in most mini-games - but it was very easy for me to find intrinsic motivation to get better in various games for a miniscule reward of a Completion Point or two. On my first playthrough I felt frustrated with the map not showing the collectibles or side quests, and on this "proper" playthrough I've been everywhere on the map so many times I had no problems finding everything the game has to offer. I don't recommend trying to 100% the game (there are some ridiculous requirements in the completion list) but I strongly suggest to not chase the main story and try to find interesting activities everywhere.

It's a full motion video classic detective mystery game. It's OK, I guess.

The premise is that the heroine is supposed to solve a murder mystery during a family celebration organized through video call. You can see immideately it's goofy and lighthearted. The mystery itself won't blow your mind, so it's all about the actors doing the acting. It's fine, I guess, but it gets repetitive very soon. You aren't supposed to solve everything on your first try, which takes less than an hour, you're supposed to play the game again and again till you gather all the evidence. Choices that lead to getting the evidence seem intentionally arbitrary, so you must go through most choices, watching the same performances again and again. There isn't any sort of time loop happening, it's just... I don't know. I quickly lost interest.

It's not that bad but it's just not great.

It's a party-based linear role-playing game, or JRPG. I like it.

It's extremely silly and not even in a clever or spectacular way. I don't think the constant torrent of jokes gave me a single smile, but it also didn't irritate me, which is already an achievement. Narratively it's a parody of traditional JRPG plots, gameplay-wise it's very similar to the previous game of the same developer, Cosmic Star Heroine. You wouldn't expect much from gameplay of such a silly game, but it's actually great and extremely well thought-out. It's not a card-based system, but it's somewhat similar, and it makes sure no two fights are the same, and you constantly modify builds of your characters. Using such an interesting system in a 6-hour game (don't mind my playtime, it's actually 6 hours if you don't skip anything) feels like a waste, but this highlights another good thing about this game: it respects your time and there's absolutely no filler in it. Even random battles are avoidable (I suppose you can get away with skipping them on a lower difficulty levels) and finite, yet you always have an option to manually launch a random fight for grinding.

I have some complaints about UI (short description of your abilities is lacking; it's unclear which elements the attack will use and what do icons mean) but overall it's a great example of a properly made game. It will not feature on any top 100 RPGs lists, but it's adequately made and you're guaranteed to not regret time spent on it. Well maybe you'll regret it if the humor is too cringe for you. Cosmic Start Heroine is a better game in most regards, but this one deserves your time as well.

Troubleshooter is a tactical RPG. I liked it, and I respect it, even though I couldn't get into it. This game tries to do everything you can think of. It has a story with narrative choices and some complex presentation; it resembles XCOM and follows some of its conventions, but it actually plays more like Japanese strategy RPGs such as Disgaea. It includes class-switching, monster taming, character building through putting abilities into "sockets," crafting, developing relationships with NPCs, and challenge modes for missions. It tries to do everything.

Most of it kind of works. You'd expect such an ambitious indie game to look like an ASCII roguelike, but it even looks fine, I like 2D art especially. I respect that. It's still turned out to be too hard for me to swallow; the UI struggles to support even basic functionalities, not to mention more arcane mechanics. I'm not even sure how hit chance works in this game! It has an odd sensation of roughness where specific elements are fine, but they rub together in the wrong way. I like the music, but it's frequently used out of place; it feels like every track they have is meant to be played over a boss fight. The English translation is the final straw for me. While the writing is functional in gameplay, the story is barely comprehensible.

I've said many harsh things about this game, but I still give it a thumbs up. This is clearly a labor of love, and it could have captured me under different circumstances; it has everything to become someone's favorite game. If your tolerance for jank is high and you're well-versed in the world of tactical RPGs, then definitely give it a try. Oh, and I don't recommend playing with gamepad, at least on Steam Deck it turned out to be more convinient to emulate keyboard and mouse.

It's a detective game, kinda. It's good. All that can be said about the Case of the Golden Idol can be repeated here. I think you should play the Case first. Rise might be a better game overall, more polished, but you'll still have a lot of fun with the Case.

Not much else to say. I have complaints, but they are minor and are more critique than complaints. Sometimes the wording may feel misleading, forcing you to insist upon wrong answers. Some episodes betray the core promise of these games, as in a series of strange and grotesque events connected by a common story, because several scenes are relatively peaceful and mundane. The art style is ugly but it's clearly intentional.

If you like the Case and its DLC then definitely get this.

It's an immersive sim in cyberpunk world. I know I'm beating a dead horse, but it turned out to be as bad as its reputation suggests.

Playing it immideately after the original Deus Ex makes you realize how genius the original game was. Using very basic graphics it created a sense of place, it could make you talk about the nature of democracy with a bartender and it didn't feel too silly, it had huge levels with variety of approaches. Invisible war is the antithesis of this. The levels are extremely small which removes both gameplay variety and thematic sense. Not for a minute you will feel like you're in a real place where people live or work.

Worst of all, it feels too sci-fi. The original game was sometimes weird and juvenile about the connections to history, but it was trying to show you the real world 5 minutes into the future. Invisible War is so exotic and advanced it might as well be a Star Wars game. None of the factions are recognizeable as anything connected to the real world, it all feels extremely generic.

I thought later reboot games dropped the ball on world-building but now I clearly see how successful Human Revolution and Mankind Divided were in capturing some of the magic of the original Deus Ex. This one is just painful