Recent reviews by Kris Dusk Luna

It's fun, and pretty casual-friendly (for now?).
There's a lot of abilities and the maps are less straight-forward than say Overwatch, which gives me the impression that going forward it's going to be less fun for casuals (aka chumps like me) as the general skill level of players improve.
But at the same time, there's a lot of heroes that don't require headshots.
I only wish there's a mini-map and the option to mute match chat.

Would recommend as an "interactive movie", not so much as a "game".
I recognize and accept FF16's mainstream popularity and acclaim, however, as a diehard fan of the series, I have never been more disappointed by a mainline title.

Disclaimer: Keep in mind I am only reviewing New Game (Action mode) til ending with DLC.

Whatever happened to the 'fantasy' in "Final Fantasy"? Why is the theme getting more realistic and 'modernized' devoid of creativity/originality?
I realize there are still monsters, magic, and chocobos, even the fact that previous titles have also taken much inspiration from real medieval history, but Final Fantasy used to be so much more unique and fun. Heck we don't even have a functional airship in this one.

World setting and theme aside, what about customization?
Pretty much everyone only uses swords in this FF.
Crafting (if you can even call it that) is so linear I don't even see the point of belts and bracelets nor the useless surplus of materials.
Only thing worth getting from vendors are accesories and orchestrion rolls. Can you believe it? ORCHESTRION ROLLS that literally serve NO PURPOSE besides being a gil sink, if I want to listen to music I go to YT.
Abilities that you can spend points on to level? Except you're limited to 6 so extra points are rendered useless, not to mention there are only a few abilities worth equipping your precious slots.
Why design so many accesories with minor ability buffs when you can only equip 3 at any given time, when instead it would've made more sense to make us spend extra AP on them?
Side quests are also boring, but I guess it's what you'd expect from team FFXIV. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate lore and story but using dialogue as a medium throughout most of these side quests gets real tiring - especially with this level of language (really, can we stop trying to be too fancy with words).

Last but not least, my biggest gripe with FF16 is its difficulty.
I wish we could've had difficulty on the level of FF mode AT LEAST, from the start.
Seriously, action mode was already SO. DAMN. EASY. AND FORGIVING. by the time you reach end game with your full kit, bosses have long became just another chore to unlock the next cutscene.
Really guys, not only do you give us a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of potion capacity but you even refill them to FULL after a single death? There's literally no punishment?
Also what's with the non-centered camera???

I wish we can have another PS1 Final Fantasy...

A much more polished Majsoul.
It feels like this game was made because someone thought to improve on Majsoul - and it's clear that they did in many ways.

Improvements:
- Character collection and achievements makes more sense, you can actually show them off.
- Mainstay Tournament matches offer even quicker games than your usual East games, and offers separate rewards + vanity badge/stat.
- UI is way cleaner all around, feels better/more intuitive.
- Spending seems to offer more value in general although in-game coins are kinda hard to earn and coin items are pretty expensive.
- Other miscellaneous features makes Riichi City in general more generous.

As a long-time Majsoul fan and spender (Cat Food Supplier), even with sunk cost fallacy and all, I've decided to switch over to Riichi City just because it feels that much better and I can also better showoff the amount of time I've played + stats.
For a long time now Majsoul has been focused on more monetization and events to get people playing more, but there has been little to no improvements on the player experience and UI, it's pretty safe to say they are for the most part content with it as it is.
But honestly if they start copying Riichi City (early enough), it'd probably be the better mj game objectively speaking.

Well put together tactics game that actually offers a challenge.
Engaging plot & characters coupled with polished gameplay alongside a wonderful soundtrack in the background.
The (true) ending was excellent, and I really only ever found 1 technical issue (bug w/ movement in combat when executing skills) throughout my full playthrough.
I played this with JP voice.

FFTA still remains my favorite, but I will wholeheartedly recommend Triangle Strategy to all who enjoys similar tactics-style game, really enjoyed my time with this one.

If you're a stamp collector, boy have I got the game for you!

1.5 year later, wife really really wants to try the game again mainly because she likes the graphics but also the combat. Was really apprehensive because I already know it's a costly game from past experience, but it's not the first time she expressed interest, and I was also curious to see how it has changed so.... we made the regretful decision to try it out again because of the Super Mokoko Express event/s.

In summary, spent about 5k USD (for both our accounts total) to get to a relevant item level and also for the completion reward for Super Mokoko (for 1 account). Now in all honesty I'd say it would more realistically take 2-5k USD to actually start Lost Ark fresh and get geared enough for the current (or -1) raid and by that I mean just getting item level and 5x3 engravings - the bare minimum for a 1% chance of actually getting the chance to raid, if you don't actively try to find a beginner-friendly group on Discord then your chance drops to 0%.
You still need to get through multiple hurdles to actually get to a place where you won't actually be a burden outside of your own skills. These are mainly; cards, skill points, roster level, etc. All of which are time-gated if not money-gated.

I genuinely wanted to give Lost Ark another shot (I mean seriously I just spent 5k more on this damn game), but ultimately I'm going to treat this as an expensive lesson to never touch or at the very least spend on this game ever again because of 3+1 reasons:

Super Mokoko Express has a set end date. We started a month before that end date. We activated the engravings support. Engravings support states an expiration date that is further/later than Mokoko Express end date. Mokoko Express ends. Turns out the engravings support ended with it.
Now your character becomes useless without its engravings because you didn't plan for it to end this early. What a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ sham.

In-game and Reddit are pretty inhospitable. People treat Guardian Raids way too seriously for some reason. On one hand you get toxicity just because someone didn't pop pheromone, but at the same time the same people are quick to vote surrender after 1 wipe. Like c'mon it's just a Guardian Raid bro.
Some Island Souls are no longer possible because no one does them anymore so you don't have the minimum required no. of people to progress. They need to implement some sort of scaling system to make it possible to solo or at least duo Island Missions.

If you absolutely don't want to pay then you gotta play daily (with alts too) to keep up. People will tell you not to FOMO, but if you truly are a MMORPG gamer it's hard not to because you lose out on too much in this game.

All of the above and more issues not mentioned here combined make Lost Ark one of the most beginner unfriendly MMOs I've ever played.
Horizontal prog is important but you can't solo the stuff no one does anymore. If you just want to play 1 main character you can never ever catch up/keep up. You wanna try legion raids but toxicity already rears its ugly head on preliminary content. You look elsewhere for more casual multiplayer raids/content but there's none + no one even does old abyssal dungeons/guardian raids.
Even if we delete cards from the game, it'd still take ages for a new player to complete enough horizontal prog to be "competitive", heck they probably won't even get 5x3 if they don't pay.


Coming from a semi-hardcore T3 player.
It was pretty fun for the first month, but the more you progress, the more you notice the problems and numerous little annoyances in the game - which I will list all that I've found here.

- No glam/transmog system, can't reuse old gear as fashion pieces. You can pretty much only buy skins or earn them from events.
- Lack of skins, and when they're released in the store it's time-limited. Once it's gone you gotta pay an outrageous amount for it in the Auction House.
- FOV too small. Sure, it may be designed that way (in which case, it's really poor design when you think about some bosses), and it's still possible to clear content, but having even a slightly larger FOV would make the gameplay feel so much better.
- Numerous translation errors/typos. Understandable for NPC dialogue and other less in-your-face places, but the load screens even have them? How do they do QA?
- Hard-to-see telegraphs. Telegraph designs aren't that standardised, and most are pretty difficult to see and/or blend in too much with the map. When you combine with the fact that your FOV is extremely limited so you're almost never able to see the full boss and its behaviours most of the time especially if you're playing ranged, it gets very annoying.
- Repetitive. Chaos Dungeons are straight up boring, and Guardian Raids as well after a while. Diablo gamers would be used to this, but this game demands that you play alts (and not just 1 or 2) to stay relevant and keep up. Imagine doing them on multiple alts constantly everyday, and it quickly becomes a chore.
- Weekly Abyssal Dungeons completely locks you out after you cleared them too, you can't even go back in (without getting loot) for fun/further practice after you cleared for the week. Feels almost like you're not allowed to have fun.
- T3 honing rates are way too abysmal.
- Una's Tasks are boring and annoying to do.
- Work Energy cap is too low. I don't even think it's needed honestly.
- Market is too expensive. This game encourages whaling, and as a result, everything costs too much while earning Pheons/Gold/Silver is too difficult.
- Honing materials are not roster-bound.
- There's a lot of things to keep track of. Dailies like Procyon, Una's, Dungeons, Guardian Raids, Rapport, Guild, Stronghold, etc.
- There are "stealth" missions in the game where your stats are reduced to bits (incl. movement speed), and the goal is to not get hit by anything even once, or you start over. Some of these missions take at least 20mins to clear, so not having a checkpoint anywhere and having to start from the very beginning if you screw up even once is a huge turn-off. The longest one right now even has a bug halfway through that forces you to quit if you mistakenly moved to a different area before finishing an objective in the previous area.

In the end, I find this game (at least for me) can only be enjoyable if you're retired and can be a super hardcore player with multiple alts. Even if you have the time and energy to do that, you then have to ask yourself if you're okay with all the repetitive tasks you have to do for all your alts.
On the other hand, one might also consider the casual route by only playing 1-3 characters but he/she must then be content with being hard-stuck at a mediocre/average iLvL with nothing new to do for a very long time, because at some point you'll run out of collectables and be left with the repetitive stuff.
So yes, for the average player, you really need to invest a lot of time and energy in order to really enjoy the game. Which would be fine if there weren't so many time-limited stuff to do but alas.

Or you could just become a mega-whale I guess.
As a bonus after-thought; part of me believes Lost Ark will end up like Tree Of Savior, maybe less degenerate but still, you can already see the direction it's heading towards.

6/10
Music is its best selling point, character design 2nd.
The game seems focused on fan-service above all else. It really feels like a waste, I'd love to learn more about the characters considering how many there are but the plot and character progression all feels very half-hearted.
Sadly, overall gameplay and combat is repetitive and boring.

I'd honestly say this series definitely has the potential to be on the same level as the Fate series from TYPE-MOON.
ALICE IN DISSONANCE is really made up of people with talent, and fault was the result of their hard work.
- Amazing art
- Very high quality and polished UI
- Immersive soundtrack
- Deeply captivating story

If you think the first instalment was good, wait til you read/play the second one (please go get it if you haven't already!).

#TaltOfSavior

11/10 Tilt Talt from cubes.

If you've played FC, then nothing needs to be said here.
If you haven't played FC, what're you waiting for?

Just an awesome JRPG with a deeply touching storyline and superb OST. Combat system may or may not be the best, but nevertheless enjoyable.
SC brings a very nice nostalgic touch to people who've finished FC, as well as noticeable improvements to lots of aspects to the game without destroying the original feel.

Definitely not your average run-of-the-mill JRPG, personally I think the LoH series ranks alongside other fantastic JRPG series such as Final Fantasy and Suikoden. Worth every penny and every moment of your time.