Recent reviews by roo

Familiar but refined in the right places, reducing a lot of the busy work between quests. The added focus on a story is decent, with most of the characters more interesting than the usual anime tropes, but it's much less effective once in High Rank, as it outstays its use as a tutorial while having little more narrative ground to cover. Despite that, it was a consistently enjoyable 80 hours of meaningful progression.

This is probably the best combat has ever been in Dynasty Warriors, adding a bit more substance to the 1:1 encounters without losing its Musouness.

The attempt at more explicit storytelling is a great idea, but doesn't really work. Most of the cinematics are pretty uninspired exposition dumps to pull you to the next story beat. Lots of fade-to-black with "And then he died"-style captions whenever something needs to happen that doesn't involve four guys standing around in a tent. The silent personality-free uncustomisable amnesiac protagonist is a curious choice to act as the emotional centre of this world, as every single person you encounter trips over themselves to confess how horny they are for you. These conversations are at least absurd enough to be entertaining (brb, going to let Guan Yu etch the features of my face into his memory)

I can't hold the clumsy storytelling against it though, as it does at least make the cast of characters a bit more recognisable in battle (something I've often struggled with in past DW games) and the gameplay itself still punches through.

I do wish I was playing an Empires version of this game built on the same component parts but with a more dynamic campaign, but I assume that will never happen.

Really enjoyable auto-shooter. The pace of updates is very slow but there's a good amount of content and replayability options in its current state.

Dragon Age: The Veilguard has some good ideas but is ultimately unsatisfying. Moment to moment gameplay is decent enough. The move to Mass Effect style combat works well, and the degree of control over your companions still feels essentially Dragon Age-y, albeit less tactical. The progression and ability to specialise a build is deeper than I was expecting, but I also felt like I'd experienced everything the combat had to show me after a few hours. There were some build-defining Uniques that did encourage me to play around with different playstyles, but more out of curiosity than a sense it would let me reach untapped combat potential.

Unfortunately the storytelling, supposedly Bioware's secret sauce, left me cold. Companion quest chains each told simplistic stories, going from A to B to address a personal conflict in a fairly rote way. Some voice actors, such as Bellara's, were able to elevate these somewhat with their performances, but there was very little to feel connected to. Regional quests were even more forgettable, with some feeling cobbled together at the last minute, such as Dock Town's ritual quests which are dropped through generic bulletin board postings. The main quest line is also a pretty simple "here is the big bad, kill the smaller bads, kill the big bads". None of these distinct story threads feel like they're enhancing each other, there is no sense of theme beyond little morality plays, and the tone veers from Saturday morning cartoon to action movie cliches without ever feeling right. There is no sense of ambition in the narrative at all, no sense of role-playing when every dialogue option is a clumsy but likeable retail team leader. There are hints of something interesting, like the ambiguous relationship with Solas, and the sense of scale of the final couple of quests, but not enough to rescue it from its blandness.

Absolutely more of the same, but that's no complaint. One of the most fun changes is how viable Air Raiders are to solo now with various automated drones.

If you’ve played Persona 5 you’ll know what you’re getting into, but personally I think P4 has a slight edge. The mechanics are familiar but with a bit less of the bloat that P5 sometimes suffers from. The dungeons are certainly less visually interesting but ultimately I prefer their pared back procedural approach that focuses on the gameplay. Much recommended!

The minimalist design is really beautiful, and the simple gameplay lends itself to trying a lot of strategies. Stations are represented as one of a number of shapes with passengers looking to be routed to a different shape, so lines need to be designed to effectively carry people around the network. This abstraction nicely mirrors the real world, with circles equivalent to commuter stops, squares as central hubs, and unique shapes representing individual points of interest. Somehow this game succeeds at being simultaneously relaxing and stressful as hell.