Останні рецензії користувача Jedo

Since starting this game, I have broken off all ties with my wonderful mentor—Marie Kondo. The game just has too many ingredients to hoard and I didn't have the will to leave it alone!

Atelier Ryza is my first game from the Atelier series. It features a heartwarming story of adolescence and finding purpose in a seemingly uneventful land. The world features a lot of flavor text and there's much to learn about the residents even though half the residential maps may feel void of life. If you give it some effort in the NPC interactions, you are sure to find good backstories that show there's more to the game than meets the eye.

After finishing the game, I thought that the combat was a-okay. It featured the tactics system of progressively stronger attacks by building up a meter which I have seen in older iterations such as Legaia 2. While it's not groundbreaking, the combat does just enough to support the main star of the story—the Alchemy.

Alchemy/Synthesis absolutely carried this game. After beating most of the content, I found myself losing track of time figuring out material loops, unlocking deeper recipes, and gathering the right materials to create game-busting equipment/utility items. Putting a lot of care into this aspect of the game makes sense considering the meaning of an Atelier. I'm very satisfied with the amount of enjoyment I drew from this feature.

I also have to give credit to the composer of the Underworld theme and the battle theme for the Elementals. It's beautifully done, but it is such a shame that those battles were short-lived due to the depth of the combat.

It's a good game, but I'd be hard pressed to buy it at full price. The base game is already priced very steep here in Canada ($68.99) so as much as I want to explore the other games, I need to wait for a sale. I think that the paid cosmetic DLC for the various costumes is a good thing especially since I know there fans for this series that can appreciate and support cosmetic options for a fair price (ranging from free to $3.40 here). What I disapprove of is selling DLC stories that are either OP or VERY short for absurd prices ($6.69-10.29). It makes me feel like it was chopped up from the main game to sell to uninformed buyers. I am personally not paying the extra $30 for an OP island and content I can finish in 1... maybe 2 hours.

To summarize, buy the base game on a sale.

Cute free factory automation game. This one isn't very complex but it serves more like a demo for the full game coming out later. It's a quick and simple 100% for those who are interested (just under 2h but could be faster with Improved Furnaces). I think the game has served its purpose since I now have Nova Lands wishlisted. Genuinely excited and I hope I can get a demo of the full game with more complexity.

This game is a straight infusion of Dopamine to the soul! It doesn't matter whether you're a previous fan of SoS/Harvest Moon/Doraemon because the game is simple enough as a friendly introduction to either franchise. Just like with previous Harvest Moon games, Doraemon SoS does a great job encouraging the player to feel invested in a community. It's such a wholesome theme being stranded in a picturesque watercolor world and then slowly building up trust and friendship with the various residents throughout the year and have it culminate in a heartwarming bond as the smaller plot lines converge into the main story.

Personally, I am a huge fan of Rem and Harmon (the others are great too)! They are very wholesome characters that fit many positives tropes and just come off as very endearing throughout the whole game. Rem's character in particular shines through as you can really tell from the cut scenes and day-to-day interactions how much she really loves all animals.

The soundtrack is also amazing! The music actually gets even better into the second half of the year (Fall & Winter). In my opinion, the musical pleasantry is back-loaded in the game and something I was craving HARD after cycling through the first in-game year. It made me want to take my time during Winter to really let it soak in.

There are a couple of small issues that I encountered, but nothing that would break my happy streak in this game. Firstly, Noby is noisy as hell when mining. You get used to it, but I'm glad they fixed it for the next game. Second, inventory management felt a bit off for me due to limited space AND the method of selling goods (you open the shipping box with a different key from directly selling stuff). Lastly, depending on how you upgrade your home and progress relationships in the game, the (VERY CUTE) horse may become irrelevant very quickly with the introduction of the Anywhere Door and (later on) the Human Locomotive. The horse needs more appreciation!

I truly recommend this game to anyone who wants to get started with Story of Seasons games as it has a lighter set of features compared to regular SoS games. Of course, this game is also ideal to everyone interested in Doraemon whether you are familiar with the franchise or not. Buy it!

Good puzzle game with a really simple concept done well. Great free way to kill time.

Very calming puzzle game with even more calming music. It was so chill it bordered on the realm of being pleasantly distracting. Feeling zen right now and glad I took the time to play it.

A huge part of me wants to recommend this game because nearly all creative elements in this VN are deeply satisfying. I love the illustrations, the character interactions, and the gripping soundtrack which are all executed quite well.

However, at this moment I cannot recommend this game at full price due to a major pain point. As good as this VN is, the vehicle used to deliver it is god-awful. Unity and VN are 2 words that should never be placed in the same sentence. The VN feels clunky when transitioning between some scenes and the save feature has a high chance of breaking if you create a lot of save files. Upon completing the story for the first time, I had 50+ save points because I was trying to map out what triggers certain achievements (Mystery master, PI, etc.). When I tried to save at the first decision point on my second run, the game pseudo-freezes at the save screen while the character/background animations are still moving along. I managed to save ONCE after verifying game files and then it proceeded to break again even after I deleted my old save points. TL;DR the save feature is one of the most important aspects of a visual novel. It should be the last thing to break in a VN because, by nature, people explore different routes in these types of games.

This story is written well and Unity's VN engine is not on the same level as its competitors. I bought part 3 and I will play it despite this issue out of respect for the good storytelling and art. Please consider using a different engine if you make more VNs.

Considering this VN is free, it's got cool court/timed mechanics. Have at you!

I'm glad that I played this game to completion.

It started out really slow, but the game really grew on me over the course of a 45h laissez-faire playthrough. After finishing the game, I felt that all the quests, the NPC interactions, and the sometimes corny interactions tied together nicely with no wasted moments. I especially enjoyed Infinigon's take on comedy throughout the story. They had hilarious moments of slapstick, deadpan, and cartoon caper-ish humor -- the kind that you were likely to see in something like Scooby Doo back in the day.

The character interactions were not necessarily deep, but it was tied together in such a wholesome way that I could not help but feel a little bit sad when the story drew to a close. I want to give a shoutout to whoever gave life to all the character development arcs in the game. Without it, this game would have felt like a humongous fetch quest. I really enjoyed the banter between the MC, Nyveth, Mitrielle, and even that random af knight at the start of the game.

It also took me a while to appreciate the cooking combat system, but when it clicks... it clicks hard! It was really fun thinking a couple of moves ahead while going for a cheeky sauce play or an extravagant menu to just roll through matches. It was inevitable that this game would remind me of that tanned spice guy from Food Wars who just so happened to be a master of aroma. From featuring such characters and cooking battles, combined with all the unique win conditions, I look at Epic Chef as a really wholesome food wars kind of RPG.

If Infinigon ever makes a sequel to this game, it would be nice to see a few things implemented:
- a recipe book (I don't think it was necessary due to the scale of the game, but it would have been nice)
- better inventory management
- a tracker for weekly activities (like selling ingredients/dishes for gold)
- restaurant NPC interactions (with customers)

Thank you for the memorable experience!

EDIT: I pointed out that the collector Kudo has been broken for several months now (pretty disappointing for a CREATURE COLLECTOR) and got attacked by a super zealous/overly defensive superfan. Temtem has a hostile community that does not take criticism well and prevents productive discourse leading to actual solutions. 10/10 community.

-------------------------------------------- ORIGINAL (POSITIVE) REVIEW BELOW

To preface this review, I started roughly a week after the 1.0 release, spent full price on the deluxe edition, and topped up for a few cosmetics and the BP to support the game. I don't regret any of my purchases and overall, I believe I got more than enough value from this wonderful game.

The story is quite good and gave me nearly 100 hours of enjoyment. It follows a traditional formula that definitely fed off nostalgia and featured a few twists and turns that re-engaged me to the story just when I thought things were falling into a lull.

Even more than the story, I have to say that the musical component of this game is VERY strong. A lot of the BGMs and battle themes are absolute bangers. No offense to the trailer music, but everything else overshadowed it and got me pumped (the first boss battle theme, Lochburg overworld music, etc). Damian Sanchez is a true professional.

Difficulty-wise, I think that this game features a harder post-game than other similar games in the genre. This is a good thing because creature collectors often feature advanced mechanics that don't get utilized until much later. I feel that this particular difficulty level introduces said advanced mechanics at a healthy pace just before you arrive at the post-game and ensures that you can't just brainlessly coast through after the story without ever utilizing critical thinking.

Despite all these positives, the game is not perfect and has room for growth -- specifically regarding the UI/optimization, monetization, and bridging the gap between EA players and 1.0 release players. I mentioned my spending on top of the initial purchase because I do want the game to succeed beyond the 1m players it already announced today. The "negatives" might seem long-winded, but that's only because I want the devs to take all of this in and really work on hammering these out (which I think they are doing quite consistenly IMO).

UI/Optimization - Overall, the game feels like a switch game. Inventory/Temtem sorting has so much room for improvement. Whether it's locking Tems to easily identify and protect important assets, filtering/sorting Tems and Items, or even just better categorization of items, there's a lot that can be done to improve this particular system. A lot of the issues surrounding inventory and tem management seem to be easy conclusions to make if you have ever played any game where collection and large inventories are a thing. Trading stickers for example is quite annoying because the way stickers are sorted is fixed (and not immediately intuitive) and a lot of people end up making excel sheets to track what they have since a search feature is not implemented. Just let people filter/search/sort or whatever and 99% of these issues will be a thing of the past. Additionally, the screen transitions when moving from map to map (without loading screens) feels choppy and features a slight delay.

I also have mixed feelings about the overall economy and the clear line between an Early Access adopter and a new 1.0 release player. On the one hand, I understand that it is important to ensure that the efforts of EA players should not be wiped out just because a game is going out of EA on Steam. On the other hand, it feels weird to new players like myself to see end-game players flexing millions of Pansuns, mythicals, and controlling dojo parks on the first day of the official 1.0 release. As a game that is supposed to be an MMO, this all feels weird to me. Admittedly, I don't have an answer on how this could be better.

Piggybacking on the weird state of the economy due to EA and leaving the EA state, there is also a clear distinction between EA and 1.0 release players. From my experience (your experience may vary), the game doesn't feel like a true MMO because not everyone is on equal footing during the official release. All the thriving/sociable/active clubs are already established on day 1 and are mostly just taking in people who are in the post-game which requires at the very least a few days of effort even for the most engaged and hardcore player. The rest of the newer and smaller clubs are teetering over various levels of activity. Overall, this distinction is weird to me and weakens the charm of this game specifically as an MMO (it's still good of course). It makes the game's community seem smaller than the actual 1m current players that was recently announced.

Co-op feels like an afterthought. While I do understand that you can do lairs as part of the co-op experience, there's really not much incentive to play in co-op outside of it. The experience incentives for co-op play during the main story are negligible because the exp bonus is a) too small to make any impact and b) the exp share is negated by the utility of the coward's cloak and blanket. Once you finish the main story, co-op in the overworld (meaning outside of lairs) no longer yields any benefits because you can level proficiently in specific areas and there is no incentive other than building on "the power of friendship".

Even though I felt like I got my money's worth out of the experience, I still feel like they are pricing out a lot of PC users with their current price point. I think they could do a lot better with the cosmetics monetization to bring that barrier to entry down a little bit. There aren't a whole lot of choices in the cash shop (4 items that rotate daily and 3 items that rotate weekly?) and it's not enough to stimulate purchases from people who want to support the game or may just be browsing. It's understandable though if that manpower is being focused on fixing bugs in the game, but I really do think this is an area that they can do better in to make the game more accessible price-wise. I don't think it will cause a negative uproar if the customization options were to suddenly expand and get better.

Despite the lengthy pain points I described, I can confidently recommend this game to all of my friends! It provides more than enough entertainment for the price. It's a labor of love, and I have absolutely no regrets sinking 200+ hours on this game over the course of the last 2 weeks.

Mercenaries Rebirth: Call of the Wild Lynx is definitely a step up from Mercenaries Blaze. It has noticeable improvements on elements from the first game which I already liked while keeping some things that were already good exactly the same. In particular, the game feels more alive with the introduction of crisp new sprite animations. I really enjoyed the BGM, but I also simultaneously missed the old tracks since they were just as awesome.

The same story formula is there, but there is enough variation in the character backgrounds to say that the story and its supporting cast can be considered new. There's also enough content in this game to the point where I feel that the price is appropriate for what you get, especially considering the price and content from similar TBS titles.

It was fun. And contrary to others saying that this is a grind-fest, I assure you it isn't. You literally get 1 level per chapter and the grinding element is very light relative to titles like FF Tactics. I think the best way to look at this title is basically an interesting way to dive into the genre while only going knee-deep. A lot of older TBS titles are heavy grind fests and Mercenaries titles, including this one, gives you a friendlier experience/introduction to the genre.

A good option once you get your feet wet and finish this would be War of the Human Tanks which is a small step up in difficulty.