Recent reviews by Sentinel

It is pretty funny seeing so many negative reviews complaining about the level cap.

Tactics Ogre remains the best tactics game ever made, and Reborn thankfully dialed back a lot of the stupid ♥♥♥♥ in the PSP version and made it more in line with the original game.

There's insane amounts of post-game content here, a great story, beautiful soundtrack, great characters, and challenging encounters. Despite Square leaving the game with some bugs (namely tooltips not accurately describing what a resistance does, damage bonuses not applying correctly for one type of niche 2h weapon on magic users), it's still an easy recommend.

Great remake of a good game marred by accommodations backported from more recent games in the series:

Zoom now works in-doors, making Evac a worthless spell, affecting the Hero's spell progression early on. Zoom is also now free to cast, making Chimaera Wing (the item) worthless - again, impacting exploration as the dozens of Chimaera Wings you get by exploring are dead weight.

The mini-map should not have been included in the way it was - having it always on shifts focus away from the actual game and makes you just stare at the corner of the screen for 80% of exploration time. Similarly, for some reason, the area maps are revealed as soon as you enter an area. There is no longer any sense of being in a dungeon not knowing which of the paths lead to the next level - you just open the map and b-line for it.

The world map is too big and most shiny spots on it have worthless loot, a problem caused by the heal-on-level up "QoL" that, in truth, just makes every piece of restorative-item loot in the game effecitveiy worthless,

I did enjoy my time with it, but it's Dragon Quest... I'll enjoy them all as long as they have baroque music and Toriyama's art-style.

Limp ♥♥♥♥ cavalry, background noise tier soundtrack, & this game is by far the ugliest of the franchise. I think the only positive in the visual department is the unit card art.

Can only recommend if you're tired of Rome 1 and want something newer (not necessarily better).

Also random crashes when alt tabbing. 10/10

Traps are still bugged ever since the game released. Impossible to set them - "cannot set traps when enemies are nearby."

Another epic beamdog demaster. Just play the original.

Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn is a landmark game in the genre, but the Enhanced Edition changes way too many things. New kits that completely break the game, game breaking bugs that haven't been fixed for years (traps that dont work for example), but worst of all - it completely changes the graphics of the original game for the worse. Armors, weapons, item icons, spell fx, UI, it's all uglier. In the case of armors & weapons, they decide to use the icons and models from BG1, which look so much worse than the BG2 art.

I'd be ok with this if there was a legitimate reason for the change, but no such thing exists. They were too lazy to upscale & port the original art, and since modders already had working mods to port BG1 art to BG2, Beamdog just stole other people's work.

The new, original Beamdog content is terrible and you're better off using mods to remove it.

Capcom nailed it.

Rise is not worth full price. This is from the perspective of a Lance player.

- The wirebug breaks the game as the vast majority of monsters simply cannot keep up with player mobility. I don't mind the game being on the easier side, but I don't like feeling like I have such a massive advantage over the monster.

- Weapon balance is at its worst since the first game on ps2. It is painfully obvious the developers ignored some weapons. Some of the additions on some weapons make no sense whatsoever.

- Sound effects are a downgrade from every other game in the series. This affects how good the simple action of hitting a monster feels. Because hitstop has also been severely reduced, hitting a monster has never felt worse or as impactless. It's like you're using paper weapons.

- Wirebug moves are disruptive for most weapons, since they are so overpowered that there is no reason not to turn off your brain and spam them. Very few weapons get moves that are merely complementary to their overal kit (GS is one such lucky weapon).

- As a Lance player, every aspect of this game exists to taunt you. Compared to World, skills were inexplicably nerfed (guard and guard up split into more levels and went up a decoration level so they're also harder to get), guard decorations are impossible to get until the late game; the recovery frames on pokes have been made longer, making it more difficult to counter mid combo (why?); Twin Vines - the only non swappable wirebug art - is worthless; Anchor Rage (another lance art), which isn't very good to begin with, is made worse the higher your guard skill; Insta-Guard has the least amount of parry frames in the game and the worst counter in the game - to top it all off, it will kill you in multihit attacks unless you use a third party tool exploit to trigger it every 1ms; there is no longer any way to reduce chip damage; there's a grand total of 2 armors with guard skill; Spiral Thrust (the last wirebug art) is your main source of damage and the thing you'll be spamming over and over again. The weapon's moveset is now filler for 1 cooldown move that does the actual damage.

- They destroyed Hunting Horn and turned it into a button mashing weapon that auto plays music for some reason.

- The wyvern riding system in this game robs the monsters of any personality or sense of individuality. The concept of an invader monster is completely gone. Monsters are scripted to run into you and interrupt your battle - but they won't attack you. They're specifically programmed to attack your target monster and then leave immediately so you can ride it and deal extra damage.

- Rampages are the definition of brainless. Every rampage plays the same, on the same map, and they're almost impossible to fail (infinite carts lol).

- Despite the wirebug system providing more vertical movement possibilities than ever before, this game has less verticality than 4U or World.

- The maps are designed to be battle arenas, not to feel like a biome where various species coexist. As an example, monsters in past games would have a "nest" area that they would retreat to once exhausted from battle. Most of the time this would be an area that made perfect sense - the end of a cave, the highest peak of a volcano, an actual nest at the top of a tree. In Rise, this is gone. In the very first map, you will see monsters running away to and sleeping in the middle of the road.

- The "end game content" provides no incentive to complete it - Apex monsters have no unique gear, and it's not like they're especially fun fights that you'll want to redo over and over again.

- The fact that you need to collect bugs to max out your HP/Stamina to survive the end game monster hits makes the start of every hunt a massive chore of running around the map catching bugs so you can start the hunt proper and not get one-shot. They realized how stupid the bug collecting premise is because arena quests give you a super bug right at the start that'll max you out, guess they didn't feel like doing the same for apex monster quests.

- In multiplayer, allowing 4 players to bring their 4 dogs will create an incessant torrent of visual FX that makes it pretty hard to even see the monster.

- The removal of simple flavour mechanics (heat/cold drinks) instead of their expansion & iteration signals a worrying future for the franchise.

+ one positive though, Capcom actually bothered to design 1 (one) monster around the wirebug movement! This game's final boss is actually pretty fun since you have to use your new movement abilities to dodge some of its ranged attacks and to access platforms for attacking.

Taken in isolation, none of my gripes with the game seem like a big deal, but they all add up to make me rank Rise among the worst MH games. I think to myself - is there anything Rise did better than other MH? The answer is no, there isn't.

+ The combat ported from SMT remains fun throughout
+ Fusion mechanics improved from SMT3/P3
+ Shuffle system is a definite improvement over negotiation from SMT.
- Dungeons are extremely repetitive
- There are very few enemies. Most of them are, visually, reskins of already existing ones you saw before.
- Story starts out interesting but quickly settles into a pattern of story -> get info -> dungeon -> story -> get info -> dungeon, with predictable outcomes everytime.
- The main antagonist is weak and doesn't have much of a reason to do what they did. Moreover, 99% of the interactions with them are locked behind the Social LInk system, and since in your first run you have no idea who the killer is, there's a high chance you won't even get to talk to the person much in your first playthrough.
- The demons/personas are devoid of any personality whatsoever. They have the same abilities with only elemental variations with the only thing that distinguishes them being elemental resistances. They only start getting unique abilities well into lv70s, by the time the game is already practically over. Additionally, the game is way too easy as it is, making it even more pointless to grind to get those high level personas. Hell, the "Golden exclusive" dungeon was the easiest in the entire game.
- The demon 3D models are pretty bad when compared to other PS2 SMT releases.
- There is an insane amount of padding. Basically every school event serves no narrative or character purpose. The 2 last investigation dungeons should have been cut. Find some other way to give me party members that doesn't involve going through a 10-floor hallway simulator dungeon for the 5th or 6th time please.
- The social link stories are devoid of any conflict or drama. Once you max out your first, you quickly realize that every link ends well, even the characters that shouldn't have a happy ending.
- The game doesn't like to take itself very seriously. Every dramatic scene (the very few that exist) is ruined by a comedy relief character saying stupid ♥♥♥♥ or a writing backpedal immediately after.
- The itemization is poor. Equipment is all stat increases, with accessories/armor providing further stat increases or status ailment immunities. That's it. Very poor.
- Status ailments are completely worthless. Normal encounters are over too fast for them to be useful, and basically every boss is immune to them.

It's not a terrible game, but it isn't good either. it is the definition of filler.

PS: Atlus should get some new demon designers cause all the characters' Personas are an embarrassment to the series.

This is a review about the port, not the game. The game itself is fantastic. I reference Moguri Mod throughout the review - this is a fan made mod that aims to improve the visual quality of the port.

The port is a lazy outdated mess:
- It's lacking visual FX present in the original, such as the mist in the overworld of the Mist Continent. This was fixed in a patch.
- There is no way to restore the original font. This is not fixed by Moguri Mod.
- Dialogue is rendered at a static pace, unlike the original. In the original game, lines of dialogue would show up on screen depending on how fast the character was talking. In this port, there is no distinction. This is not fixed by Moguri Mod.
- There are multiple problems with the battle UI:
-- It takes 40% of the screen. Square Enix patched this in the console versions, but the PC version was never patched. This patch was released on PC in an update on the 6th of August 2020.
-- It's rendered at what feels like 15fps, making navigation feel extremely clunky. In the original game, all menus were rendered at either 30fps interpolated or 60fps (don't know which one exactly), which made the browsing very fluid. This is not fixed by Moguri Mod.
- All menus are clunky to browse because of the crippling low framerate. This is not fixed by Moguri Mod.
- It's missing sound effects from the original. This is not fixed by Moguri Mod.
- Despite porting the game to Unity, Square couldn't be bothered to re-write the animation code to speed up battle animations independently of buff/debuff tick timers, arguably the original game's biggest problem. This is not fixed by Moguri Mod.
- The music in this port is a lower sample version of the original. This is fixed by Moguri Mod.
- The backgrounds clash horribly with the new character models. This is fixed by Moguri Mod.

The ONLY positive of this version is that you can skip the introduction to every battle. Except not really, because the option doesn't work half the time.

Thanks to the Moguri Mod, it is arguable that this version comes close to the original. Regardless of my opinion though, I'm not about to praise Square Enix for a port that the fans patched up. Moguri Mod is the only reason to buy this game on Steam.

+ music. the music is amazing.
+ amosphere/mood.
+ art style


- movement abilities are played out. you don't get anything you haven't seen in other games of the genre.
- there is very little sense of power progression. one area that gave you trouble when you were starting out will give you trouble when you're 10 upgrades in.
- "open world" design in this game means "enjoy wandering for 1 hour after killing a boss to find out where to go next". for a game that blatantly tries to rip off dark souls, it does a piss poor job of naturally guiding the player through level design
- related to the previous point, tons of (pointless) backtracking
- game has a very bad habit of spreading vendors throughout the gameworld without any fast travel points to the useful ones
- the colour coded map pin system is useless because you can't write down notes
- map is grossly innaccurate and generally not very helpful
- too much focus on combat when the combat is overly simplistic and not very good


If you have a very high tolerance for (all) the bad stuff, it's an okay game. But don't expect a 10/10 like the overall steam score seems to indicate.