Recent reviews by MiC

After getting the Steam Link Bundle I wanted to give this one a try and I do not regret at all.

The art, gameplay and concept are indeed brilliant. It mixes meta-narrative concept and hack'n'slash combat-system with side-scrolling 2D "anime" stunning arts. The gameplay is nimble with a variety of moves (which most of them we´ll have to unluck/upgrade in exchange for in-game cash), three difficulty levels and fast pace combats while we follow (or not) the guidance of the narrator's voice, who will be in fact the soul of the most bizarre moments during the story. The controlls are simple but very responsive and these ingredients mixed with a great OST composed by electronic melodies which fits perfectly with the game aesthetics just making it a great valuable masterpiece.

The price tag is fair taking in consideration the quality we get in return, but most of people will not agree since the potential timeplay is very short: about 1,5~2 hrs if you go straight forward and 4+ if you want to go through all secrets/achievements, which is highly recommended in order to understand a bit more about the events through the game and "dig deeper in this world" ~ apart from getting some funny moments, surprising extravagant events and little pieces of cryptic lore as "reward" that make totally worth the effort.

Personally I felt in love with this "meta-game in disguise" admixture plus those constant references to the Cthulhu Mythos and its referent The King in Yellow, but definitely I want to enjoy more content after getting all the things that this little piece of arte has to give. Hope we get more gems like this one soon to quench my thirsty feeling.

PS: Please ignore those extensive deep reviews from people who played around 0.1 hours stating the control are clunky, the chinese narrator is terrible (when newer versions of the game include an English narrator...), the animation is very ♥♥♥♥♥♥, the game is very hard, etc... Just give it a try and see by yourself how much ICEY has to offer. Such damage the Steam Link bundle did here... *sigh*

Después de haberme destetado con el Unreal Tournament original y habér descubierto el porno al mismo tiempo que UT 2004, he decidido darle una oportunidad a este título a pesar de haber leído varias críticas por parte de jugadores de corte clásico.

En mi caso -por el momento- sólo he podido completar la campaña principal con bots, en la cual centraré mis críticas dado que el multijugador tiene pinta de estar muerto y todos mis colegas son unos niños rata que sólo juegan al CS:GO o al PUBG :(

Lo que os puedo decir es que si buscáis una experiencia que se resuma en jugar con putos retrasados mentales en vuestro equipo contra mancos (que son algo mejores que los retrasados anteriormente citados, o al menos intentan hacer algo) o clones de Malcom/Xan porculeros a más no poder (dependiendo de la dificultad) este es vuestro juego. Ésto me ha quedado especialmente claro cuando hoy en un escenario de la campaña (un 4vs6 de enlaces, que viene siendo el mierdatuto del maravilloso modo asalto ~ Dios bendiga América) he visto como 3 de mis majetes compañeros se han metido en un tanque y se han quedado parados disparando al cielo toda la partida ~ convirtiendola en un 1vs6.

Especialmente llamativo además la excesiva simplicidad de la campaña, cuya regresión desde UT 2004 sienta como una patada en los cojones - Los que hayáis tenido a Lauren, su noviete, Malcom y Xan en vuestro squad hace 13 años me entenderéis...

Si os preguntáis por qué tengo tantas horas a pesar de esta crítica, es porque (aunque me cueste muchísimo aceptarlo) es innegable que algo tiene de la esencia de sus predecesores. Si conseguís reunir a varios pelagatos para jugar la campaña cooperativa o multijugador, posiblemente pueda llegar a ser bastante pasable, quizás incluso divertido -Sin amigos olvidadlo, el multi parece más muerto que un escarabajo del revés- Aunque yo pasaría directamente de este aborto e iría al Unreal Tournament original o al UT 2004, que a pesar del paso de los años sigue contando con jugadores, o como mínimo con una campaña decente.

Sintiéndolo mucho, antes de recomendar este juego a alguien prefiero meterme el dedo por el culo y darle vueltas. Aunque si estáis acostumbrados a la amalgama de shooters contemporáneos dadle una oportunidad. Igual hasta os parece bueno.

Without any doubt the best choice for the "Best Use of a Farm Animal" category in this Steam Autumn Sale.

Someday chickens will rule the world.

Rough story from a kid´s beautiful perspective. Its concept reminds me to other stories like American McGee's Alice games or the Pan's Labyrinth film.

It is indeed not perfect but still has its own personality and I would recommend everyone to give it a try.

The story can be finished on 3 hours approximately, and little bit more with 100% achievements.

Me cago en las putas Gymkhanas de los cojones.

PD: Cojones no está censurado en Steam :O

I´ve just finished the game after 140 hours (all vanilla content cleared at Chaos difficulty and all side-quests completed, with the exception of the last bonus dungeon). I consider myself a big fan of the Tales series and I didn´t miss the opportunity to get this title with the last discount.

For me it was a great experience, from the very beginning this title introduces a very nice and complex battle system which will require some hours to get used to. The story starts well to keeps you glued to the screen. At the middle of the story It gets boring for some punctual moments (Coinciding coincidentally with the moments of more freedom of exploration...) to after suddently improve at the end until reaching the brilliant climax with a beautiful ending. Anyway during this first playthrough I found lots of little details that I didnt like at all, which stain the great qualities of this game. Let me summarize all of them:

• The combat system and the skills mechanics are deep as hell and you will need a lot of hours to understand and master it. Probably this have one of the best mechanics and battle gameplay of any Tales games.
  
• The item upgrade mechanic, which is strongly related to the skills system. It is very very complex and it will also need a lot of hours to understand it, but it is very rewarding once you get used to it.
  
• As on most of the Tales games, the main cast is very nice and some of the skits are hilarous.
  
• The difficulty system. You can easily beat the game on lower difficulties but it´s highly recommended to play on higher difficulties as it is more rewarding as the highest the difficulty is while you are playing. I´ve found some people stating that is impossible to play on the last difficulty (Chaos) during the first playthrough. My personal experience is that I went through all the game at Chaos difficulty (except at the beginning, since you will need to win X combats on lower difficulties to unlock the higher ones) and I found it a very challenging and rewarding experience. Additionaly, if you find any boss too difficult to beat you can temporary decrease the difficulty as I did on three optional fights, which were literally impossible to fight as the enemies deleted me on a couple of seconds... I mean the fight with Rose and Zaveid at the Lakehaven bridge, the combat with the Darkz Turtlez and the battle with the Phoenix Normin
  
• It has some brilliant moments, the Anime cutscenes are amaizing little pieces of art and the final is just beautiful.
  
• Great OST, it has some nice pieces. Special mention for... this one OMG ROFL

• The main character is stu.pid...
  
• The AI during the combat is even more stup.id than Sorey. They play like a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ kick in the balls and honestly the Strategy Menu and the Orders System to "customize" or change the AI decisions depending the situation is totally uncomplete and definitely much better on previous Tales games and it is pretty annoying to see how your brainless mates are dying 20~30 times on hardest bosses and you will have to solo your enemies. Apart from this, I totally miss an option to manage armatize/unarmatize criteria for AI. It is also irritating when they unarmatize just on the exact moment that a boss hits hard and they should be armatized. Ending up with all party members death and you losing the battle against a hard boss after 10 minutes for their fault... Curiously, at least at Chaos difficulty, some enemies seems to have more brains; they interrupt the casters and simultaneously take the correct decisions while your teammates can´t do it.
  
• The camera is sometimes totally broken and annoying. This point eclipses the exceptional combat system...
  
• There are some uncomprehensible design decisions on the game. I can understand the Alisha´s controversy (Something similar happened at Final Fantasy VII and nobody complaint about it...) but I cannot understand why you cannot carry over your equipment to NG+ (as you probably know if you already played any other Tales game, after beating the game you are allowed to start the game again with your current status introducing additional changes). Taking in consideration that during the whole game the developers keep actively insisting you to mix up different sort of items in order to adapt to any situation mixing the different habilites. But... Why? Why are they prodding you to have more than one set of equipment and therefore dealing with different enemy encounters if, in total contradition you will lose all the equipment when you start a New Game Plus??? Would it not prevent to test optimal sets of equipment for different situations...? "At least" we are allowed to recover the current equiped items for each character while committing to NG+ but meeting certain conditions on the next playthrough...
  
• The game is totally unbalanced, sometimes it´s too easy even on higher difficulties, you can easily fight an enemy supposed to be strong and then you lose agains a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ plant.... Why the caster mobs over there are more powerful than some of the bosses???
  
• The same balance goes for the plot: It is very irregular. There are a lot of highlights, but sometimes it gets boring and there are some inconsistences at character´s decisions. This combined with the above will make you feel like this game is not a solid piece at all.
  
• The DLC Alisha´s Story should be free. It has been free when the game has been released and it seems to contain a relevant story content (I don´t have it so I can´t confirm it). Now it is 10 bucks...
  
• There is a well-known bug which is preventing some of the attachment granted after earning specific achievements. If you have already got the related achievement and you meet again the conditions to get the attachment you will never get it again... Which means that if you have two different walkthroughs or you just reloaded a previous save after achieving the conditions you will miss the specific item forever. Namco should be aware but it seems that they do not care about it and this will never be fixed.

Honestly, I really hate some of the bad design decisions made at this title but I can´t still hate this game. In fact I love it. This has one of the best combat/skills system of any RPG game (and also one of the most complex and item-upgrade system). I liked the story from the start and I empatized a lot with some of the characters (with the main character as exception). I would recommend this title as it should be quite enjoyable for almost everyone, but especially for challenging players since this game is very rewarding at higher difficulties (strongly recommended to play it on higher difficulties for "hardcore" players). It´s not a perfect game, it´s not the best Tales, but you will love it if you can forgive some of its incomprehensible errors.

Nice casual game.

You´re basically a robot that digs the mine to collect ores that you can sell to improve your equipment.

Very simple mechanics but quite enjoyable. The story will take you between 3~6 hours.

5/10

Visually stunning and with a great OST, but I cannot recommend this game at all.

I gave it a try until the end of the game, and I would resume my experience with the following: From the outside the game looks beautiful and the mechanics are not bad, but whole walkthrough is repetitive as hell and I only enjoyed very specific parts of the story.

It looks nice at the beggining, buty believe me, it turns a humdrum game. For me Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams is one of the most overrated platforms of the last years (most probably due to the nostalgia).

Farm the cards and uninstall it. Definitely there are a lot of better options on this genre unless you´ve played the original game.

Killed a guy with a poisoned apple. He ate it after placing it on his pocket. ♥♥♥♥ happens :)

10/10

PS: Highly recommended to take a look at the PredCaliber´s guide if you are looking to mod this game for better graphics. I followed it and it works like a charm.

Excellent from an artistic point of view, the design is amazing and the OST fits well with the unique warm.

Unfortunately I cannot recommend this game, I consider it a short (finished in 1,5 hrs) but great audiovisual experience. Although, this is my personal experience. I know that most of the people out there will think that this is game that consists in jumping and going straight to the right on every single levels.

If you consider yourself someone that appreciates the audiovisual experience more than the gameplay itself give it a try , otherwise just pass.