Recent reviews by Urakross

EDIT: so I spoke WAAAAAAAY too soon...
Game's still not exactly worth the price still in it's current state, but at least it's not dead as a can of spam like KSP2 is

**sigh**

so, I was a massive fan of Cities Skylines 1, after the absolute ♥♥♥♥ show that was Sim City 5 where nothing mattered besides that you have generally enough of everything, traffic didn't even get cleared up with public transport or anything. (granted I got SimCity 5 back when it was mostly new, so back in like 2013-2014)

I was willing to give Colossal Order and Paradox the benefit of the doubt, because
Paradox publishes some really good games and Cities Skylines 1 was really good (granted a little simple in some regards) but it was overall a solid experience.

Based on prior experiences on other games have lead me to believe that a sequel by the same developers and publishers have a good chance of being good, but now this is a wake up call that that will not always be the case.

Just to preface this, I pre-orded Kerbal Space Program 2, and that was a whole train wreck in of itself, but there was multiple saving graces there. A. the developers and publishers didn't blame the community for warrented critizicsm B. the game was marked as early access (it actually still is) but we at least had the expectation of it being unfinished, unoptimized etc. and C. they did eventually turn it around, yeah the game is where it should've been at the beginning of early access but again, in terms of early access, better late than never.

This to me feels like an early access quality game that was advertised as a complete game that has new features, more in-depth ways of interracting with the simulation, but in reality it just feels like the old SimCity game from 2013-2014, traffic means nothing because it'll always be clogged no matter what you do, there's bugs up the ying yang like cars completely ignoring that a pedestrian-only walkway is...well pedestrians only, they still haven't fixed the bugs where if trams or bus stops are placed close to each other (in a logical way so that people can board them at more convenient places) they just disappear etc. etc.

Oh, another thing as well. Kerbal Space program 2 is 1 price tag, yeah it was expensive for an early access, but it was 1 price tag, every new feature, all new content etc. etc. is an update. Here, really, DLCs that amount to asset packs? like I pre-ordered getting the ultimate edition so I got all of these as it in theory was included with the price tag. but jesus christ, people who only bought the base game now have to pay for DLCs that should've been part of the base game by default.

I always believed that DLCs are a double edged sword, yeah it can add new content that was thought up after the fact, but this is a rude awakening that most companies are now starting to abuse DLCs, by rushing out a game leaving out the parts that aren't ready for release, then adding back those parts using paid DLCs, something that in reality should've just been part of an Update to save face. I don't know where the blame should fall, because on one hand it could be that Paradox forced Colossal order to release this before it's ready, or it could be Colossal order not caring anymore and just ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ out things as fast as possible.

I think now I know not to pre-order stuff until it's known good unless it's from a proven developer (FromSoft anyone) in some cases it ends up like No Man's Sky (in the case of Kerbal Space Program 2) but at least now we have a game to reference for when a game releases broken an incomplete at launch and is never fixed or anything.

Jesus christ this brings me back to when I first played SA2 back on the Game Cube (at a friends house, because the first console I actually had growing up was the original WII). Now Sega...if you're listening. Please actually bring back the Soap shoes, A. it's technically promotional Merch. and B. it prevents Soap shoes costing a trillion dollars on Ebay

TL;DR : Rough around the edges, but literally the best sonic game released in my lifetime (so the past 20 years)
(sorry for the long review, I finished this game twice, and I'm writing this at 6 AM, so this is mostly just ramblings of a mad man)



this review is going to actually be in 3 parts, from each perspective that I viewed this game in. the First perspective is that of your average sonic enjoyer, the second perspective is that of a story writer, and the third perspective is that of an aspiring game developer.

Part 1: Sonic fan
As a sonic "fan" I originally went into this game thinking that it's going to be super ambitious but falls flat on it's face in a similar fashion to sonic 06, and this is all mainly due to past experiences, like the release of sonic lost world, sonic forces, and even sonic colors ultimate. I thought that sega would promise something big and mess it right up. However my fears were put to rest when I experienced this game for the first time. For obvious reasons it's not the same style of sonic as what I grew up with (I mainly played sonic Adventure 1, Sonic Adventure 2, Sonic Heroes, and Sonic Unleashed) but this isn't a bad thing. Those games worked because they were still holding on to the 90s charm that Sonic was created with, but after colors that charm started to be more of a hindrance than anything, keeping sonic from innovating, and especially since part of that 90s charm was to be stereotypically kid friendly you get things like Baldy McNosehair, and most of the interactions between characters in games like Sonic lost world.
Sonic Frontiers feels like a re-imagining of sonic, stil keeping the save base ideas, but actually properly bringing it into the modern era, just like how the Adventure series marked the beginning of a new Era of 3D sonic games, this game (hopefully) marks a brand new Era for Sonic as a whole. Though it remains to be seen, because even after this brilliant game, I still have fears that Sega will do something to lose this last spark in the future, for now, I am happy, that we get a truly good Sonic game in modern times.

Part 2: Story writer
Truth be told I was only recently acquainted with the works of Ian Flynn quite recently, however right away I could tell that Ian Flynn was a good writer, making stories that are grand and when they want to be super dark (the IDW comics, I forget which volume but the one that takes place after forces comes to mind here). Unlike previous writing in sonic games which were simple and not very good given certain premises, noticeably around Sonic Colors where the writing was trying to be too trendy for the time they were writing it. Here in Sonic frontiers, the characters are alive.
There's noticeable arcs in this game granted they're short, but they're there. The one that most comes to mind is Tail's arc. Most people I know who are familiar with Sonic and most of the games in the series all agree that Tails used to be an amazing character. A kid who was in the shadow of Sonic, but wanted to become more independent (Sonic Adventure 1 & 2 again are the perfect examples of some form of character development). However recently tails has been nothing but useless character wise. Especially in Sonic forces where Tails was scared of a fake Chaos 0 eventhough this is the same Tails that singlehandedly stopped Eggman's nuke from going off in Station Square, and fought Chaos 4. The arc being described here actually has Tails questioning himself, doing self reflection, and Sonic helps with this, instead of brushing it aside (like he sort of does in Lost World) he explains that it's all part of growing up, and Tails ends up understanding that he needs to work on himself if he really wants to make Sonic proud. WE HAVEN'T SEEN ANYTHING LIKE THIS SINCE SONIC ADVENTURE 2 (unless there's other games where There's proper character development, in that case we just haven't seen it in a while)
Alongside that, this is from recent memory the ONLY story where Eggman isn't the bad guy. Usually the stories goes one of three ways. Either Eggman is the main villain for most of the game and then the real villain is whatever ancient god he woke up now. Or Eggman awoken a god or something and that is the main Villain until the very end where it's actually Eggman again, OR Eggman is the big bad through the entire game. However in this story, Eggman isn't the main villain, (SPOILER WARNING) sure he created Sage, but Sage wasn't exactly the one trying to destroy Sonic, yeah it may have seen like it, but it was because she was trying to protect Eggman, with the fear that the presence of Sonic was going to make her job harder (to be fair it kind of did because Sonic was being told to destroy the Titans which were trying to keep something from coming out into the real world from Cyberspace).
All in all, it's a pretty well written story, that has well thought out interactions, side plots that develop characters. Heck at the time of writing this review I've beaten this game twice, and for some reason on the second playthough, knowing the story, and even developing some kind of attatchment to the characters. When the credits rolled I almost started to cry.

Part 3: Aspiring game developer
I want to preface this saying I AM NOT A PROFESSIONAL GAME DEVELOPER. I want to be, but i'm teaching myself how to do so in the mean time. Though I think I can provide my two cents about this game.
PROS (what I found good about the game from this perspective)
- The Combat System. Simple but effective
- The Parkour System. Again Simple but effective
- The Challenges System. Can be repetitive at times, but the ideas for the challenges are actually really fun
- The Open Zone in general. it's a large sprawling landscape that in any other game would annoy people because it would take too long to traverse....but you're sonic so it's a breeze and it's fun (because there's actually content here)
- The Cyberspace Levels - Amazing level design with actual difficulty added to them
CONS
- The Cyberspace Levels- They seem to be made of just reused assets, because we have Chemical Plant, Speed highway (from generations), Green hill again and that's all the set pieces there are. Granted again they are designed after classic levels, such as City escape, Speed Highway, Skyrail etc.
- The Controls - They're still some of the best controls for a sonic game in a while, but they still feel like they need fine tuining though I'm not sure if this is an issue of time loss during development, or it's just due to how the boost formula works


ULTIMATE CONCLUSION:
Overall I am super happy with this game. is it Perfect? no, far from it, but it's a step in the right direction, and hopefully Sega keeps going in that direction and doesn't screw it up again.

there really isn't much to say other than it's a very well built software, really the only times I've had issues with it is when I was trying to re-pair my old HTC vive base stations (I have a valve index now and the new base station 2.0s) but it actually clued my in to the fact that those base stations went bad.

Heck even the developer tools (which for most other software that includes them it's super complicated and unstable) are very intuitive and very well programmed.

- Pros
- Historically accurate
- Interestingly paced story
- interesting characters
- Mass effect like reputation and speech choice selection
- Super detailed and realistic world
- Proper world building
- Beautiful (if a bit rough around some edges) graphics
- Realistic Combat
- Cons
- Buggy Realistic Combat
- Buggy in general
- Save system
- Detailed Review
As stated above there's a lot to love about this game but there's a lot of issues with it that I'm pretty sure that most other people have with it as well. The biggest offender is going to be the the combat, yes the combat is super realistic even making multi-man encounters super lethal, but the main issue comes from how the combat itself is handled.
In normal combat (one on one) it works perfectly fine, there's multiple target zones and fake outs and ripostes are all fine. the issue comes with multiple enemies in one fight, due to how the lock on system works the target system freaks out like crazy if there's more than two enemies, plus also when you're staggered there's a bug that I encountered that allows the enemies to tackle you even if they aren't moving and are in front of you (it's not a riposte because being staggered you can't attack) and also the staggering that the player experiences is also really buggy compared to the staggering that the enemies experience.
For instance, if an enemy is staggered it means that they don't have any stamina (makes sense it takes stamina to keep yourself squared) but when the player is staggered even at max stamina the game acts as if the player has no stamina at all and doesn't allow an attack or dodges out of a stagger and with multiple enemies it just makes it worse (I'm convinced this is a bug because it only happens sometimes)

Another issue that I mainly have with this game is the Save system. Like I don't have an issue with the save system directly, limited saves is an interesting way to make the game harder, but it's all so buggy, because saves tend to have data blend between each other (due to how saving actually works in regards to saving the current game state, it's a bit bugged) and the fact that from what i've experienced the more you save the buggier the game gets (at one point I even managed to break the animation rigs for the character screen in the inventory making Henry do an A pose and the Reins of your horse not care about physics anymore)

other than those (sort of) big issues this is a brilliant game, it reminds me a lot of the Mount & Blade series, and also Skyrim (after 800+ mods have been installed) just without magic

Before we get into this, i'm going to say that this is my first ever monster hunter game so there is no bias here. For a very long time a lot of games never really drove me to play them, either because there was little to no replayability, or the concept of the game was cool and all but a lot of things get in the way of the experience whether it be because of an annoyance or the gameplay gets repetitive. However this game has a lot of those issues solved for me

- Mechanics are quick and easy to learn
- There's unique ways to fight each monster (even if it may be like darksouls in some cases)
- The environments are well crafted to not only look good but have practicle uses in navigation
- There's no hand holding because the game expects you to learn how to play it instead of tells you everything anytime
- Tons of replayability due to the amount of weapons and the various trees that are available
- Multiplayer capable (so that it can make some particulary difficult monsters a tiny bit easier though it auto balances them)
- Well crafted DLC that feels like it's own thing but without feeling like it should be just it's own game (plus it adds to the replayability because it adds more stuff to grind on)

Any many many more but I don't want to make this review any longer than it already is, but yes I recommend this A LOT

I'll say that i'm a bit neutral about this software. On one hand it's a great software that Adds a bunch of QOL features to MV, but on the other hand it's too lack luster for it to be a new software. just to be more objective, I'll list everything that I've found more convenient in MZ.

- Plugin commands are easier to administer because you no longer need to know plugin syntax

- with the refactor to the code base (though it's not much more different to MV) plugins can be more complex and cater to
usability (though this point is a bit weak)

- They layer system coming back is a godsend (because I'd keep messing things up with tilemaps in MV)

- I haven't used it yet, but from my research of Effekseer (or however it's spelt) it's easier to make amazing animations

- Plug-in ordering tips (the amount of times I broke something because of it's load order is stupid)

- The ability to change the resolution (though i'm not sure if this was present in MV because I used plugins for that)

other than that, everything is largely the same, performance isn't much different though I think it can support bigger more complex maps in the allotted memory space. Really My disappointments are that it wasn't much more than an MV mod, and I'm disappointed in the community for the disproportional amount of paid for plugins than free plugins for MZ, heck i'm disappointed in the lack of plugins in general because of the similarity of the code bases. Other than that, I'll say that I have a neutral stands on this software.



EDIT: Original point still standing, I've been using rmmz for a while now (I'm actually making a full game based off of a book that I wrote) and I will say it's much MUCH easier to deal with than rmmv, I have way more plugins the rmmv and there's no errors (besides the fact that some of the custom scripts I made don't work, but that's me being a noob at javascript) a ton of plugins have been made since this review that more or less replace all of the plugins that i've used in rmmv (besides the SRD data compressor, I used that for encryption). There's overall more stability due to the fact that it's much easier to update all the libraries used, all of the libraries are properly libraries (and not multiple parts of 1 library like with rmmv) etc.

The only big issue I have is the fact that the encryption is broken. the encryption that comes with rmmz is the EXACT same that comes with rmmv where it's not actually encryption and there's a website where the encrypted files can be decrypted, and the fact that there's no way to really encrypt a json (unless I want to write my own encrypter and decrypter but the documentation on that is really out of date). like I could go into more detail about how the encryption is oof, and the other encryption methods (like nwjc) no longer works in the same way, and current documentation doesn't work. but overall, it's a good bit of software, just still original points stand

Ok, let me preface this review that I haven't actually played through the entire game, because I plan to do a let's play series on it, and I've only just done 3 episodes of a first impressions video on it,but my god is this game amazing. I'm not really much of a game critic, but I am an amateur game developer and I can whole heartly say that I just love the attention to detail and the quality of this game. The motion is nice and smooth no matter what option of locomotion you're using (unless you have a failing Vive base station like I do) the combat is nice and easy to understand, the quality of the lighting, textures, animations etc. are top notch, and the optimization. It's like valve spend all of 2019 just on optimization because I have a Geforce GTX 1080 that's showing signs of starting to fail, and the game still ran at the 90FPS the HTC vive allows. Overall it's a really really REALLY good game, and plus it gets bonus points for being the first full length AAA game that was developed from the ground up in VR. Sure there are still some issues that I know for a fact that valve will fix, like certain ways the hands grab stuff etc. I just hope this spurs valve to do more with Source 2 than just make half-life:alyx and only half-life:Alyx (like a proper source engine 2 SFM)

It's impossible to make a perfect game, heck it's impossible to make anything perfect, but this game comes very close to being perfect due to how it's very simple. yes I know it's in VR and all, but when you get down to brass tacks, it's just a rhythm game, but how it's done is absolutely brilliant. I will say one thing though, a 3D level editor would be much easier than the 2D one, and also I wish you could go to the level editor without needing to put the VR headset on first

EDIT: whelp, this review was late to be edited, but the only reason why I changed this review is because of who owns the game now, like seriously wtf facebook. It's still basically a perfect game, but A. Facebook owns it, B. the developers that facebook are using are incompetent and C. They seemed to have made the tracking accuracy worse on non-oculus platforms (and yes, I know this for a fact, I did some anectodal testing with a friend of mine who has an oculus rift, and compared his results with me, because I have an HTC vive pro with index controllers)

Pro - it's a retro game that still hold it's gameplay fidelity to this day, and it handles better then I thaugt on a PC

Con - it crashes alot, I can only get it to work on a certain resolution and even that is a one time fix

Until this is fixed i'm going to give this game a negitive review, I want to give this game a positive one,
becasue it's a good game, but the fact it crashes a lot, i'm not sure if it's just me thats having this problem, but it crashes.

Edit:it seems to be fixed, I think it was a side effect of the DLC, or maybe they patched it, but it works in full glorious (though it wasn't designed for it) 60Hz 1080p (seriously, the cutscenes break because it's not designed for 60 fps)