Recent reviews by Aquillion

An amazing game that makes good use of the massive number of Touhou characters available to both present a vibrant setting and to expand the gameplay, since figuring out what sorts of things each character would like to eat is a major part of the game.

Unlike most cooking-sim games, it isn't actually high-pressure, since time stops whenever you're selecting stuff to cook or otherwise reviewing information. This works well with the relatively laid-back portrayal of the setting.

For its price, this game delivers the basic experience that it promises; you start out incredibly weak (the early game is rough) and eventually become absurdly overpowered.

Do note the price and its implications, though. The game has everything it promises, but little else; the plot is minimal, and while it does decent things with the mechanics it's not amazingly deep. The idea here is to capture the mechanical feeling of those "reincarnated as a monster" isekai stories where the character starts out weak and evolves into something outrageously powerful; the game does that well enough to be worth a few afternoons' worth of entertainment if that's what you're looking for, but don't expect deep stories or the like.

Also, there are a few minor bugs and grammar / spelling issues. Nothing gamebreaking or anything, but it's worth mentioning.

An excellent open-world cultivation game, with huge amounts of depth and tons of things to do. Randomly-generated techniques add a bunch of replay value as well.

An important note is that the game has been review-bombed due to issues with restricting modding; the devs have since given in and allow normal Steam Workshop modding, but the game's review score hasn't recovered.

Although this is both an RPGmaker game and a shop simulator, in many respects it's closer to a "choices matter" adventure game than an RPG. You'll probably spend at least as much time exploring, building contacts, making decisions, and so on as you will in your shop itself.

Luckily, the writing and world-building is top-notch. The choices you make are also fairly impactful, plotwise; and while the game broadly divides most of them into "ruthless" and "generous" options (and tracks your total for each), their impact is often more nuanced. People will respond to your actions (and, therefore, the plot will develop from them) based on how they affect them personally, rather than on a simple alignment system.

The game, as its description says, also has an actual message about capitalism and economics, though its message is more nuanced than you might expect - there are multiple endings, some clearly happier than others, but generally-speaking the game goes into depth on practical the impacts of the economic systems it discusses and the choices you make.

With that said, for most of the game the tone is fairly lighthearted and cozy. This isn't a "stressful" shop simulator like many out there - your shop can largely run itself (with some work to restock it and pay taxes), especially later on as you pay for more automation; and the impact of screwing up is generally limited. The focus here is on the story and on decision-making more than on staying in the black.

Worst game Arkane has ever made by a huge margin. Buggy, unstable, regular crashes and hangs (which are a particularly big problem for a roguelite game, where you can't save mid-mission and can use hours of progress to a crash.) And this is a year after release, so it doesn't seem like the issues are going to be fixed any time soon.

PVP netplay (a major feature of the game) also has some of the most stuttery netcode I've ever seen - I'm on a connection that plays every other major FPS butter-smooth, but interacting with the other player here is like watching a slideshow.

But even aside from that the basic gameplay is awful, like they forgot everything they knew about making this sort of game. The game presents itself as a play-your-way action-stealth-problem-solving hybrid, but it will regularly spawn enemies out of nowhere surrounding you or behind you in areas you've already cleared - and I'm not just talking about in response to an alarm (where it might make some sense) but eg. in response to advancing the plot and others things that have no reason to attract magical enemies teleporting in from nowhere.

This completely ruins any immersion and makes it impossible to play the game in a thoughtful manner - "play your way" yeah right, the director grabs you by the hair and force you to play their way whenever they want. The game mostly boils down to "guess where and when the game is going to randomly materialize new enemies and set up turrets or the like to catch them", which, again... completely immersion-breaking.

Just awful. How did a studio like Arkane forget everything it knew to make a game this bad?

There are a few bright spots, of course. The writing is amusing and the core Dishonored gameplay mechanics still have some charm. But every decision unique to this game is awful. Avoid, avoid, avoid.

Anyone who likes the Final Fantasy 5 / Final Fantasy Tactics class system should play this game, of course; it's a massive (hundred-hour plus) RPG using this system. But beyond that it's a game for anyone who likes exploration - the world is huge and full of secrets, constantly rewarding you for managing to wrangle your way into areas you weren't supposed to be able to reach.

One other thing worth emphasizing is how polished this game is, particularly given that it's essentially a one-man project. Little details that are common annoyances in the genre are fixed here.

For example, not only does the game allow you to respec the stat boosts you got by leveling in a particular class, it tells you you will get this ability early on. And while it costs a bit of gold to respec, the game allows you to go back to any build you previously had for free, letting you experiment with different stat layouts without having to grind for gold.

Similarly, nothing is missable. Items that became unobtainable for any reason become purchasable in the black market. Even missed enemy stats can be obtained by paying someone in the library to fill them in for you.

And just in case you dislike any minor aspect of the game's design, the designer has added a ton of assist options to let you adjust or even bypass specific mechanics you find objectionable.

Orb Pondering Simulator 2022.

"Connecting to the Hitman 3 server, please wait..."

Expect to see these words a lot, cutting into your gameplay with a huge obtrusive popup that freezes everything at random. Even if you have a perfect internet connection, even if it's wired, even if the other games in the series were fine for you and no other online game gives you any trouble at all, something is clearly broken here. Hitman 3's always-online requirement is a mess; it will fairly regularly cut into your play, at random, to complain about losing its precious (and completely unnecessary) connection.

For a single-player game with basically no online functionality 99% of the time this is absurdly unacceptable. What on earth were they thinking? A sour note to end the series on.

This port is absolutely atrocious. Terrible gamepad recognition, constant severe flickering in full screen, crashes, save file issues - it feels like the port received no testing whatsoever.

The game is essentially divided into visual novel "investigation" sections (which are beautifully and reasonably well-written, but only slightly interactive), freeform "planning" sections where you lay down traps and salt and bait to trap ghosts, and finally strategy-RPG sections where you actually have to fight the ghosts.

In practice battles are won or lost in the planning section; if you lay down traps properly, it's easy enough to ambush a ghost, but if you screw up you can easily lose track of them and run out of time.

Gameplay is divided up into about 13 episodes (plus a few mini-episodes between them added for this special edition); you can also go on freeform randomly-generated missions as much as you want if you feel like grinding, although they get repetitive fairly fast.

Overall the game is stylish, well-made, and well-worth playing for anyone who wants to play an anime-style "go to school, then fight ghosts afterschool" sort of thing.