Recent reviews by shadow2stealth

This is a yes for me but only "on sale".

The game is largely unfinished so don't pay full price for an unfinished game. When I say "unfinished", I mean they gave the bare minimum of main missions to complete the intended story, but that was it. You can tell additional content was abandoned because the map legend still has an icon for "side jobs", but not one side job is presented that ever uses that icon.

Aside from main story, your only other options are:
A. "robbing stores for extra cash"
B. "stealing cars to crush for cash"
C. "stealing rare cars to sell at docks"

What do you use all this extra cash for? Well...
A. buying different outfits from clothing shops (is also a part of avoid police if you spotted outside of a car committing crimes...need to change your look to lose the heat)
B. Visiting Gun Shops or special Army Store to gear up for next mission (in case the mission doesn't drop your favorite guns)
C. Autobody shops to PIMP MY RIDE! (definitely the best part if you prefer stealing cars & tuning them for your personal garage/usage...is also a part of avoiding police since they learn your car if used in crimes so you need to change color &/or plates to lose the heat on it.)

Compared to Mafia 1 DE, I feel this game is better as:
a. there is slight more to do (was literal zero reason to deviate from main missions on Mafia 1)
b. the gunfights feel more balanced (still bad compared to more modern 3rd person shooters, but no cheesy rail shooter moments like in first game)
c. Car tuning can make a difference on vehicle handling, speed, etc. so is more fun driving around city (Found a good straight away to get that over 140mph achievement & then my car flew off the road by a good 5 feet high.)
d. Story actually has tie-in with Mafia 1 story so while I don't recommend Mafia 1 to play, you should at least youtube the story scenes so you seen how they connected the two. I haven't played Mafia III yet, but I've read these is a tie-in with that as well.
e. Care was taken with approaching certain story missions. In one mission where you are expected to flee [in your underwear], I managed to assault one of my attackers, take his gun & wipe out his other five buddies and later on when the Radio News reports on the incident it actually reported differently than if just fled the scene.

So much potential was in this game, but they chose to release in this unfinished state...but what was released I felt was good.

Still a classic. One of few trilogies where each successive game actually made things better & more fun.

The only thing this has going for it were the graphics really brought the world to life. But the gameplay itself sucked...every mission is point A to point B and no reason to take a different route...might as well have been on rails. The combat was clunky felt ridiculous with your 1 guy having to kill 20+ cops/gang members. The cop chases were imbalanced: either they were up your ass or lost you in 5 seconds, no realist in between. Was crap when my guy on a motorcycle would fall off if someone breathed on me wrong, but a cop on a motorcycle was actually pushing my car off the road.

Even on sale for 50% off this didn't feel worth it in the end. The narrative held my attention & some of the characters were gripping, but I might have saved my money & just watched the whole story play out on YouTube since nothing I did in the game has any meaning.

Biggest down vote for this game is the concept of "Blindside" attack...while an interesting mechanic and many other systems play off of it for melee class characters, it is stupidly hampered by bad combat animation speed AND your main character "Edge" has one of the slowest speeds.

Blindside is one of the worst moves to set up because it can only be started from a "neutral" stance & you have to wait for a small charge (unless using BEAT S...but even then is still slow) and it coupled with stupid idea that melee characters don't have "No Guard" by default so just the slightest tap knocks you out of it unless you want to waste a Battle Skill slot.

And I know that some will say "use Mer as she is faster", but still doesn't excuse why the main character is the worst at his role since you have him the whole game.

The "grind" for completion is not fun either. Went from needing ~30-50 enemies to 100% data collect them to now 100 per each enemy is just a dumb way to try to pad play time to a game.

And I agree with some others on this being a bad port as well: a game on PC that can't Alt+Tab out of Fullscreen correctly and does not have screenlock for cursor in this day in age is pitiful. I have to shut off my dual display (put into duplicate mode) to prevent the dumb cursor from leaving the game & dropping me out of fullscreen mode mid-combat.

Don't know why I've never written a review for this game, but it is definitely one of my favorites. Probably because I am a sucker for Create a Character [CaC] that actually inject you into your own story. By far my most favorite SAO game since all the rest you usually play solely as Kirito. I also love how all the previous "game only" characters from other SAO games do carry over into this one as well.

I will be the first to admit that there are definitely several cheesy 1-shot your dead enemies [mostly special/DLC bosses], but luckily most are not like that unless you have difficulty at maximum setting or just go in with no plan of attack. The companion AI can be dumb as ♥♥♥♥ at times, but if team is set up more to heal & buff, then they can at least be useful as distracting meat-shields for a bit.

It is important to remember that this is RPG (MMO simulator) first and a shooter second so don't expect a huge amount of depth on the shooter side...reminds me more of Mass Effect than say Call of Duty play style. It does cover the basics of having craftable/mod-able weapons & gear to all you to tweak between different playstyles

The story does have the corny anime "friends conquers all" mentality so probably not for those looking for a serious story, but fans of SAO or similar anime probably won't mind it.

Overall, I can recommend this for those looking for an anime story that doesn't take itself too seriously and a fast pace, 3rd person shooter.

If you like the idea of crappy, unbalanced western-style PvEvP MMO, this game is for you...otherwise, run the other way.

PROS: Very immersive looking world...felt like old west. Even the clumsiness of firing weapons felt like it could be written off as just being part of that era.

CONS: Looks super grindy and is not new player friendly when Rank 90+ plus players are allowed to gank Rank 5 players out the door. I wasn't even 1 hour out of the tutorial in Free Roam and already getting harassed. Says a lot about the end game when high ranking players are so bored they got nothing better to do than pick on new players. That coupled with some ongoing problem with audio where just the game's volume mixer keeps going down to 20% volume randomly...not worth my time.

Glad I only wasted $5 on this 120+ GB pile of garbage. I got better game uses for that amount of disk space.

Not sure how this got any good ratings. Is pathetically short for the cost.

The world and titan fights are awesome, but way too linear and over way too soon. My play time is literally all it took to beat the Campaign on Hard. It basically felt like one big tutorial with me going "really that's the end?"

Had high hopes for a game whose class creation UI and storytelling were done so well.

Have to down vote because of idiotic monster placement in early levels. Having a map with lvl 2/lvl 3 monsters and then suddenly putting level 7, 9, & 13 monsters is just retarded. Or putting 5 groups of "swarm" types that each take 2-3 AoE spells or flasks to kill (need 10-15 spells/flasks total) when all companions are single target types and they only give you like 6 flasks is further infuriating.

And the mentally of "will have to come back later" is horse cr*p...putting that kind of "backtracking" to kill a couple misplaced monsters is dumb; especially when the main quest is a "timed" mission.

** UPDATED - Pile of hot garbage & bugs **

RNG is horribly imbalanced. Tactics & character builds are useless when you roll more < 10 dice rolls than the enemy does. Spent over half the time save scrumming just to try to keep ♥♥♥♥ balanced.

Also, AI pathing is bugged to all hell resulting in your turns being interrupted & wasted when trying to charge a melee touch and move up to enemy/ally and when same thing happens on enemy turn, you are left with combat hung and you have to reload the whole thing.

TLDR: "Love the feel of combat and the graphics and just have to ask 'When can we expect this for Chrono Trigger?'"

PROs in my mind:
- GRAPHICS: Great balance of bringing the original pixel art to life without going over the top trying to make it look "real"

- CLASS CUSTOMIZATION: Old version leveling/class selection felt as linear as the maps...pick either light or dark class at certain milestones and just keep leveling; it was nice at the time compared to other RPGs from that generation that didn't even give ability to change classes, but am so thrilled with the new passive ability system and your own ability to add extra ability points how you see fit. Can really tailor your team the way you want.

- COMBAT: Feels so fluid; especially with the dodging. Even added Provoke to my main [tank] and it feels like a Dark Souls game of dodging AoEs and attacks to get in a few good hits with added advantage of companions chewing up the enemies' backsides. Can suck when there are too many enemy casters on the field though.

- STORY LINKED TO CHARACTER CHOICE: While the overall story can be linear & does converge at one point, the concept of your main & side characters dictating what perspectives of the total story you see and each having their own personal goal in addition to the main goal is very well crafted. Three major villains that two characters (out of the 6) share means at least three playthroughs to see all the story angles. I love putting two people with the same main villain on one team as it usually as some interesting dialogue when they run into each other and team up.

I will acknowledge some of the CONs from others, but I feel they are minor compared to the PROs:
- DIFFICULTY: even Hard mode can feel easy [you can always challenge yourself with a no-hit run on Boss fights since it does give bonus XP] Anyone saying game is too hard need to make sure they are proper levels and properly exploiting enemy weaknesses; the game even gives you consumable items before the boss at times just in case your party doesn't have the necessary abilities on their own.

- STORY/MAP LINEAR: Yes it can feel pretty linear but keep in mind that the story and original map layouts are from the 90's; so people expecting "open world" will be disappointed. But I like that they stayed true to original works.

- VOICE ACTING: I'm not as critical as some, but there have been some cringe worthy moments where audio and character animations felt mismatched or dialog just felt "simple" when there could have been more there.

- COMPANION AI: Can be dumb at times; especially if strategy isn't configured correctly...can't count how many times I've seen Angela running in to swing her staff & eating an AoE when she is sitting on 80% MP left and I have her set for no MP limit.

- WEAPON/ARMOR CUSTOMIZING: With how good the Class Customizing was, this seemed like a missed opportunity. Weapons and Armor still feel pretty linear; always visit nearest vendor and make sure to have the latest and greatest...would have been nice to have more choices with certain pieces focusing on specific gameplay styles to further strength class choices or compensate for their weaknesses.

Don't usually write reviews, but this warranted it. World and dungeons are good and most mobs are interesting to to fight. But have to down vote it to horrible Boss fight design.

Most bosses themselves are not hard to understand their move sets (except Riphide who is just dumb design all around) and get good at dodging the hits, but the number of "adds" that are thrown in during these fights are infuriating as we are not given AoE weapons to deal with them, Some fights even have "random" spawn locations which make it impossible to predict where the adds will even be coming from so you are constantly getting ganked.

If devs really wanted to have adds for the sake of replenishing ammo, then bosses should be dropping out of fight (like a status, not action but immune to damage effect) and let the adds rush in...when adds are dead, then boss re-engages. Otherwise, boss just gets a lot cheap shots in, which is not fun.