Recent reviews by Taisetsu na Miko

It is really good old school RPG based on Metal Max, which I have not played. It makes me think Digimon World 2 was somewhat inspired by Metal Max. The game is both simple and complex. It is traditional grinding heavy RPG gameplay which I love, but it also deals with vehicles and upgrades and materials. Materials are the only currency/items you earn from battle and it has an elegantly modest list of what you can get. Most of the time you want to be in the vehicle, but there are also areas that are not accessible for your vehicle (despite it being represented as the same size as a human when moving on the map. Stats seem rather unimportant compared to equipment, but eventually stats do seem to effect everything surprisingly. Choosing between selling or crafting with materials is pretty cool, especially since it is the only way to get money outside of claiming bounties and treasures. I love grinding for upgrades and there is a big surprise at the end of the demo (which is half the full game).

When the demo reaches its limit, the path are blocked by featureless bodies. But there is an extra difficult dungeon where you can get the 6th tank and you have access to some end game level areas so you can keep playing the demo to explore everything the game has to offer. I really thought this would be a full game instead of a demo and I got around 16 hours of play before I ran out of story content. One thing I wish I learned a lot earlier is that the bars are a valuable resource for improving human characters. I kept forgetting to use them so I only started when I ran out of content. It is a cheap way to get very unique benefits, but you have to be lucky and it takes a lot of time.

The art and animation is very nice and the gameplay is smooth. The performance issues that I encountered are long world map loading and glitchy menuing in battle, as well as the repair shop not properly clearing text and sometimes seeming to heal you without permission (it only looks that way). Also, you can end up having your turn carry over into a new wave of enemies in a glitchy way, or you can get a beneficial glitch where you defeat the last enemy twice and the EXP and materials are doubled. Actually, the worst issue seems to be lack of controller support, which is a surprise when the game does not have many buttons that you need. For Steam Deck, I am not sure you can set it up to work in gaming mode.

The translation might have been improved with updates as there are very few problems with the text in the game, but cutscenes show the characters with Chinese character names and I also remember more conversational dialogue in these cutscenes being too vague. And we are lucky that the game already has three languages (Japanese being the third). The language feature is a bit hard to notice since the game starts in Chinese, but it looked similar enough to the Kanji for word or language so I was able to spot it quickly enough. For everyone else, it is the bottom right option in the options menu.

Most tanks seem like a straight upgrade, but they do have some unique qualities and the second tank may be really good when fully upgraded. There also may be more equipment later on that favors lightweight tanks and the main cannon of each tank is not removable/exchangeable so far, which means there might be a lot more balance between them than it seems. Anyway, you should try this game even if you do not like grinding because it might not be that grindy if you are brave enough. Plus it will always be free.

Not a casual fun game at all without auto clicker, but very interesting. You have to click the screen in order to get any drops which is kind of nice compared to other inventory droppers. The non DLC items might be completely worthless on the market, but I have not gotten most of them. There is actual grinding in addition to crafting and maybe a bit of lore to this which makes it really like a game unlike similar products like Dollar, Butt Slapper and Banana. They did a good job making this game mysterious as you are not given much explanation on how things work and I guess you would have to go to the Discord to check. There are tons of updates but I am not sure how many affect the core game.

Update: Found out there is a shop that uses in game currency and you can start selling your stuff there. It is made by the developers themselves and hopefully is completely safe. It is the best use for any items that will have too low of a value to sell in USD. Also, I have started to find a lot of answers on how to do things in the many crafting sections so maybe it is not as hard to understand as I thought. You can also find an item list in the manual that gives you a little extra knowledge on how to obtain items.

This game is on the level of a demo. It is way too ambitious to be finished without a serious injection of money. The English text is basically unreadable outside of the books which read perfectly fine, but are barely present in the game. Perhaps the reason the writing elsewhere fails so hard is an attempt to write casual English but it ends up being off 100% of the time if you are not fluent in the language. I also think Orochi probably has not worked on most of the text in a long time because I think they are capable of better now. Even so, I would contribute myself to polishing up the text so it is at least readable (if given the chance).

The title screen actually made me think I might not like the game because it seems to have several errors with the combat screen and it does not show much of significance and the animations looked very awkward. Somehow when actually playing the game the animations never looked that bad and I did a lot of combat.

I feel like this game really nails the feeling of a Playstation Final Fantasy game or something. It actually does have Limit Breaks, which is awesome. And despite the severe lack of content, you could level your character skills up very high (and the strongest ones seem very imbalanced). This game was very enjoyable and impressive despite not understanding almost everything in the story (I could try playing in Spanish despite my low profficiency in it). I think the 4048 minigame was amazing, but it is only found in a random town.

The game ends on a rather major point and it is actually somewhat understandable. You meet someone who is probably the main villain and you get a randomly high quality animated scene that is talking about something in the sky that I could not see unless it was supposed to be the Sun. Then the game tells you when there is no more content. It also happens to be where you get two of your three achievements in a short span of time but my game did not register those achievements.

I would like to see the existing areas given some more locations and giving those locations more clear meaning, and an improved English translation, but I am fine with the game ending where it did besides that. Also, I may have missed one or two quests, but it was really hard to know what quests I had accepted after the dialogue had passed and I was left with no clue on how to finish/start them.

This is a game with gameplay that looks pretty weak, but still feels so engaging that I never had a problem with it. The way characters move and get hit across the battlefield is enough to make it entertaining.

The strong point of the game is the storytelling and it is so much of a focus that it feels like there are almost no natural moments for the player to engage in side quests and dungeons. However, the game is pretty high difficulty so that gives you a good sign of when to do other content despite the plot urging you to do everything as quickly as possible (I guess this is a downside of the game). The storytelling feels much more wise and human than any other game I have played. I am not a fan of a largely male cast but I still had no problems with that here because the characters were so compelling (the ones that are central to the story). Adachi might be my favorite character even though Ichiban got me into the story (I watched people play long before buying it).

The main positive of the gameplay is the class system. It is probably inspired by Dragon Quest, but I still only know to compare it to Final Fantasy V. Unlike FFV, you do not get access to all of your skills in other classes (in a limited fashion). Your classes also have stats attached to them. You can get both stat boosts and skills that your character gets to keep through classes, but most people will probably not even notice this until the end of the game. It is really hard to get good skills and I would recommend getting Shield Blast from Enforcer, Fulminating whatever from Fortuneteller and Ice Scatter from Host. Females get stuck with less classes and I could not find any noteworthy skills except Magical Voice from the Idol and maybe Bullet of Honor and the Candle move from Matriarch (DLC).

I feel like the game ended off worse than it started. Too many deaths is a huge writing flaw in my opinion. It is cheap storytelling in a game that did not need it. It feels like more valuable characters die than disposable ones, although that does tie into the story well. Also, Saeko is pointless even though she is part of the main plot. It's sad that she might just be a glorified love interest for a side character when she is depicted as a strong independent woman. She does help progress the plot, but it is never done in a way that makes her stand out as a character. At least the "social links" gave characters great narratives to deal with, but once again Saeko is the weakest link as it is just a the same thing she already dealt with in the main plot.

I am a fan of grinding in RPGs, but it felt like grinding was very one-dimensional in this game. Normal encounters did not give you enough experience and part-time hero gives you 0 experience for some dumb reason. Main quest fights, including normal enemies, give you an exaggerated amount of experience in comparison. Dungeons give close to the same amount, but they are not fair in design. You can be on one floor of a dungeon and have the difficulty increase so much out of nowhere that there is no chance of survival. And while running away is possible, it often feels too risky. Enemies feel poorly balanced in general with either not being a threat, but still being tanky, or being a huge threat, mainly because of one of their skills or a random spike in difficulty. I rarely got game overs because I was cautious, but they at least seem to give you the option to back out of any area that is too dangerous. The lack of proper balance in the game seems to be exemplified by the final boss, where he gets multiple attacks before you can attack again and he has an attack that you are supposed to be aware of but can not really do anything to stop except getting lucky. Maybe there is a status effect defense item against instant death, but it still feels like a poor way to make a final boss. The guard option often never feels viable because you are not given enough turns before a charged attack hits a character when fighting any boss with a full team. The game can often feel difficult and grindy because of how little level ups do and how much you rely on class bonuses for stats instead (and classes take too much experience to level up). They should have learned from other games with class systems and not have the job experience be increasingly high numbers. The only way you can level up jobs to maximum is reaching the end of the game. The grind is too steep even with high experience enemies for 100 hours or something.

I'm really not sure how hard or grindy I should consider this game to be. This is a game for a great story experience with generally great acting (the most annoying voices are in Japanese mostly). You might have an easy enough time going through the game if that is all you care about. And the business management game can give you infinite money with relatively low difficulty (and basically no difficulty when you clear it). Other mini games can also make the game easier if you dedicate enough time to them. But once again, the grind is often not worth it. I tried getting speed boosters from Kart Quest and it took about three hours of the same difficult minigame in the same mode. Dragon Kart seems better, but only very slightly, and you might need to invest a lot of money into it first. If you were to get the most of the game's side content, it would be thousands of hours. It feels like the game should have just made easier, or there should be difficulty settings that make alternative methods harder to benefit from because it just feels like the least exploitable game ever when it comes to raising a character.

Better than Rivals 2 or Smash Ultimate and (obviously) Multiversus. I only played the Arcade mode and online, but it managed to outshine those games. Now that I have played the Campaign, it was a lot better than I imagined. Almost all of the voice acting went into the Campaign as each textbox is fully voiced. Despite having a few very strong power ups that are easily accessible or permanent, it is designed in a way that can seriously challenge you, especially on higher difficulties. Most noteworthy is that it plays as a survival mode with tons of stages. You basically go through five or more arcade modes without having guaranteed life or health restoration.

As a whole, character movesets are incredible, based largely on the best characters in Smash that were often underrated like Ness, Corrin, Mewtwo as well as staples like Peach, Fox/Falco, Captain Falcon... And this game also does a great job of experimenting with zoning characters to make them actually cool and fun. Not to mention the great strong/light button system instead of Smash attacks. And I have not even learned how to use Slime mechanics (somewhat intentionally) but I feel like the characters are complete and powerful without those functions. It might be a bit hard to learn, but I think it is a lot easier than Smash Ultimate actually because most moves are great in this game whereas Smash and also Rivals 2 (can not speak for Multiversus since I never played it) have moves that can be very awkward and situational and others that you are basically supposed to use as a crutch in almost every situation. Nick basically lets you use multiple moves as a crutch, which makes it easy to learn. And the Slime mechanics have not felt super overpowered so not knowing them against opponents who do is not the most punishing, unlike Smash Ultimate where it feels like you need serious matchup knowledge to even hit some characters, or Rivals where it feels like you need to master the system mechanics to have a decent shot at winning after a certain rank even if you were great at Smash.

I will say that voice acting in combat is a bit of a weak spot. Only the bosses really shine with voices in their fights. Thankfully, the campaign makes it feel like the voice acting was not a waste at all and I think all of the characters have their official voices, which really surprised me.
Actually, another small problem with the game is the lack of more modern characters. Avatar is most of the more modern characters. Lincoln Loud got removed and I think he really stood out as a character. They probably expect most of the players to be older and not be familiar with Nick's newer IPs, but I still feel they should have tried to introduce them.

Bready good. The character customization was an enjoyable experience even if it was small. The game seems to have some very multi-tasking friendly tasks which was pretty rare in Old School Runescape as far as I could find. Inventory is made convenient as possible so the backtracking is never as harsh as free to play Runescape. Your character is always running on top of that. You can also do combat while moving, which is something Runescape should have had even in Old School. I also like how everything you can examine has a picture along with the description. And the game surprisingly ran with very low energy consumption as I was able to play it longer than I could with Old School Runescape and not even be close to running out of battery.

But this game is not really like Runescape. First of all, inventory management and cumbersome tasks were part of what made things in Runescape valuable. In this game, money flows like water and I have a hard time imagining how impactful trading with other players could be. Also, items are not grouped by materials and enemies above your level say "do not interact, hiss!". This game fails completely if you want a medieval style experience and is really nothing more than a somewhat linear world to explore with discovering things and doing easy tasks at the core of it. And spells do not seem to have any experience or material costs involved and the first three spells you are taught are all supposed to be quality of life features, which is completely opposite to Runescape.

Still, I can see myself playing this game for a while and possibly finding new things to enjoy about it. Having too much trouble finding the obelisk needle though and it is getting annoying. I think this game is worth anyone trying as a free game.

This game has been through a lot but still has promise as an item dropper. The items feel worth getting in my opinion and the item stacking might give it some longevity. The price barrier also reduced the amount of bots and the developer has also taken some steps to combat bots.

It has pretty good zoom in and textures and rotation, but overall it is a bit too much work to slap until you get the auto-slap, but auto-slap does a great job. It is cool that you can use two hands to click with the right and left mouse button. Also, the promotion thing makes it so these items are immediately low value, but it is a smart marketing idea. And you can get to see the front and the back, which includes full nudity. It's a bit eerie with the section of the body being quite small though.

I recommend downloading it because there is nothing to lose and there are also descriptions for each butt that can get pretty interesting.

The One Piece of RPGs

It is definitely hard to get into this game, but just about everything for an interesting game experience is here. The story is really great if you work for it and probably a little better if you are familiar with past SaGa entries. The Final Emperor, Mr. S and Macha are pretty important figures in other SaGa games, for example. But the combat is also really rewarding, but a slog, especially if you are relying on trades rather than trial rewards. It is also missing some quality of life features that the "prequel" game (Scarlet Grace) provided, like being able to move to the end of the timeline with L1/R1, speeding up animations by pressing X/A, faster paced combat and animations in general, et cetera. On the other hand, the combat has been improved a lot from that game, with combos that are easy to activate and can turn the tide of battle easier, showstoppers that prevent a battle from snowballing too easily, first aid roles that easily heal up LP and are standard for every (non-ephemeral) character (you used to need really slow methods for LP recovery in Scarlet Grace) and two new types of skills which although I rarely use them, make it even easier to manipulate the timeline and prevent too many unfair situations.

The main characters are amazing in this game too. They really change the experience of playing the game more than the characters in SaGa Frontier. Ameya gets a lot of help making her potentially much more powerful than your other characters if it is your first or second playthrough or something. Siugnas can get insane amounts of LP that he can spend for useful skills and he also can interact with his team members in interesting ways. Tsunanori Mido can power up his puppets with a lot of unique easily acquirable roles that make his team very powerful in early game, but require a lot of work because of the Mimicry skill learning of Kugutsu. Diva can switch her mech body, giving her potential to gain some permanent benefits that other mechs can not get, and she also gets Wednesday and the plant girl who are very useful and rare types of party members. Bonnie and Formina barely have anything (that I know about), but they do get to start with three "monsters", which are another potentially great companion for early game.

I think Siugnas and Mido are the best protagonists and sadly Ameya only seems to get better when you nearly 100% the game. That brings up another important point - this game is based around many playthroughs. Ameya is basically the worst character to do multiple playthroughs with until you meet all of the conditions. Mido is so good that you might want to just play with him 5 times as your first character. Siugnas has a lot of great story and might unlock content for the worlds. Bonnie and Formina seem to learn about the core plot points of the game, but so does Mido. Diva seems the least worthwhile so far in terms of payoff.

Anyways, if you are bored with straightforward and tropey games and you also are a fan of grinding a great combat system, this game is perfect. However, like games of old, this game is much better if you take a lot of breaks rather than trying to binge and see all of the content quickly.

It is easy for me to recommend this game. I have thoroughly enjoyed it. I played it two times earlier in my life and lost those accounts basically. I got further than ever in an unexpectedly small amount of time. The game gives you better resources to get tools and track your progress than I remember, but I have no idea when these mechanics like the loot table, GP (Grand Exchange) price
display and XP drop trackers were added. It is a good game if you want to draw or watch a video at the same time occasionally. It is now renown for its various paces of gameplay depending on what you are doing and I favor the most idle of grinds so I can draw or write in between actions. Despite having pretty simple gameplay (in free accounts), I find the game still very engaging and almost feel the urge to play it at the same level as the need to eat food and drink water. If you are okay or in love with being weak and slowly getting stronger, this is a great game for you and it is a bit faster than I thought all those years ago.