Recent reviews by legojoe

Such nostalgia. Time for me to get taken away for having nostalgia but I digress. I played FFVII as a kid, never finished it first time around because the 3rd disc was broken/corrupted. Not sure how but it was my cousin that owned it previously but he never played that far into the game. He only had it to try it out but I liked the game as a kid somehow. Around I'd say 11 or 12 years old, I got a new copy and finally finished the entire game with the help of a walk-through book. Getting the Gold Chocobo to get Knights of the Round summoning, Bahamut ZERO, etc.

Then PSP came to existence and later down the line, Final Fantasy VII Crisis Core. We all know fans would almost definitely get the game. I played through the PSP version twice over. Now this game is remastered in full HD glory. Cissnei was the first girl that I simped for in this series and seeing her in full HD in her Turks outfit *coughswimsuitcough* was amazing.

Now for the actual review. The game itself is pretty much a copy-and-paste from its original PSP version so if you've already played the original and don't feel like shelling out cash to play it again, that's fine. There's nothing different from this game to the original except for just one gameplay mechanic that shouldn't make or break you buying the game.

A whole new cast of voice actors which I'm fine with. For the most part, the voice acting is alright, the main problem is the script and dialogue. I don't understand why considering they've redone everything with new models that they can't fix the lip-syncing. There are scenes that they have very broken English or terrible pacing in dialogue because for fk's sake lip-syncing needs to be done well otherwise it's no good.

For example, "I don't understand why you all keep pushing things onto me." You'd read this as one full sentence and probably expect the same full sentence but in this game, Zack would be like, "I don't understand why you... (pause, does some animations) all keep pushing things onto me." Maybe it's just me reading the subtitles faster than the characters can actually talk but dialogue pacing at times are very awkward to say the least. Not a huge problem, main story dialogue usually well voiced out.

Gameplay is the exact same save for the one new mechanic: Buster Sword mode. Zack can initiate a stance which gives him damage reduction, super armor, and empowered attacks while in this stance. You can either do a two hit strike that has a high chance of staggering the enemy or use a Command (yellow) Materia that instantly gets the full benefits of a combo attack. If you recall back in the old game, Command Materia does more damage the more combo attacks you do before you use it, Buster Sword mode skips the combo attacks needed. You also have Buster Sword proficiency that goes up ever so slightly as you use more Buster Sword mode to block and defeat enemies. I've not reached the maximum level of proficiency which is only 95% for lore reasons I guess.

Actually gameplay has one slight difference I forgot to mention. Zack attacks more like how you've played Cloud in VII Remake, much more fluid, more hits instead of the old 1, 2, 3 hits.

TL;DR, same game with some slight differences in gameplay. HD models but still uses CGI from the original PSP version and even the Sephiroth cutscene from FFVII on the Playstation. Not sure for nostalgia or no budget. It was a fun experience going back to the game again and seeing everything again. I died a lot because I'm playing on Hard mode so if you're playing this on Normal, it should take like half the time it took for me to finish the game. Or more because I also did a lot of sidequests.

Here's the TL;DR, it's a good 8/10. Boom boom, bang bang, and a hwatcha smash a zombie. I've never played Dead Space so I'm a fresh into the series player. I know of Dead Space and some bits of lore like them being called Necrophage but aside from that, nothing.

I'm just going to list the things I have problems with that made me give this game the score I'm giving it.

1) Switching weapons is such a pain in the arse. I get it, protagonist isn't trained in using guns in any regards but the way this game handles weapons and reloading is such an annoyance. How this game works is that you have two 'guns' that can morph into different weapons. Switching between the two guns is simple enough. It's when you want to get the 'other' weapons that it gets really tedious and annoying. For simplicity's sake, Gun 1 and Gun 2 both have their A, B, C forms. You have Gun 1A and 2B forms and you're equipped with Gun 1. Now you want to get to Gun 2C form so what happens? You put away Gun 1 to pull out Gun 2B which you then take off part 2B to attach 2C part onto the gun.

2) They've already patched the game but there are still places and events that have a sudden frame/stutter. Thankfully nothing game-breaking and it happens on very rare occasions. At least from my personal experience.

3) Inventory management nightmare. This may be just because of the kind of player I am though. Your ammo has a cap per stack and for each type of ammo. Weapon blueprints you find also take up a slot. This game at certain moments just hands you supplies and loot, which you just sell for money, and you're too full that you have to make a personal decision. Reforge stations, which acts as the player's hub to upgrades, are few in between at the beginning. There are so many times I'm faced with a full inventory already but there's still loot to pick up and there's no Reforge station for a very long time. I have to make a decision whether to leave it, drop ammo, or health pack for the loot. Some players may like this hard decision making design but I don't.

4) the Save system is so bad. Well it's not exactly bad but it's not how I expected Saves to work. In the year 2022 going into 2023, when I save a game, I expect my current state of the game saved when I load. That's not how Callisto Protocol works. How their saves, even if you manual save, works is that it brings you back to the last checkpoint you had. So if you made some good progress and it's been 30 minutes since the last checkpoint, you then decide to save and come back later? Good bye that 30 minutes of progress.

5) There are times lighting is really weird and bad. There are some doors that just literally light up like a Christmas tree in the dark.

6) Sound glitches. Sometimes using the electric baton or the Gravity gauntlet locks the sound effect. The weapons are placed away but the sound of the electricity or the gravity hum still keeps going on until something manages to remove it. Usually using the weapon to kill something clears it.

7) This game isn't scary at all. It's all a bunch of cheap jump scares. I hate jump scares. The entire game can be summed up as: Walk down the road, jump scare, kill zombie, walk down the road, jump scare, kill zombie, and repeat.

------

The game itself is fun, the lore seems great, and the graphic designs and approach is amazing. No real complaints there. I also kind of like the minimal HUD, everything's on your character. The Health Bar, battery charge which could be better with its display, and ammo are all on your character so you can get good immersion out of it. To check your total ammo, you have to go into your inventory to check which adds to immersion. Pretty good game overall.

Combat is fantastic.

I am providing my review of this game now that I've gotten 100% achievements for this game. The game is totally worth its price. This game does have its pros and cons and for all its worth, can be incredibly difficult and frustrating at times but can be well worth it once you figure out the nuances to the game.

This is a looter-shooter type game where you enter a stage, experience the story if you wish and gain loot in the form of Parts to enhance aspects of your Mobile Suits/Gundams and blueprints to get expand your pool of usage units. The game feels much like an action-fighting game; you go in and cut things down with your GN sword or duke it out with your beam rifles and guns until you face the Mobile Armors.

As with all Gundam games, fighting Mobile Armors is an absolute pain in the ass especially when playing solo. Most mobile armors in this game has I-Fields which you need to break by consistently shooting Beam ranged weapons. Your AI partners are extremely dull when it comes to attacking so you'll need Parts and maybe the Pilot Skill Piercer to deal increased damage vs I-Fields. You can of course opt to use a physical attacker but the game developers made it so that if you are able to take down the I-Field, your beam attacks do increased damage to off-set the time you may have wasted breaking the I-Field. I learned how to Perfect Guard really well with most Mobile Armor enemies.

You can Guard and Side Step in this game but Side Stepping isn't really that good because the game's tracking AI is really stupid. Unless you perform a Perfect Side Step which is pressing the button at the correct time, you're going to get smashed so I went with Guarding for most of the time since if you perform a Perfect Guard against enemy melee attacks, you can perform a Counter that destroys their Balance meter allowing you to put in more hits while they're staggered.. That said though, some enemies can be Side Stepped easier than others.

The Target Acquisition/Lock on system in this game is a pain in the ass to deal with when playing on Mouse and Keyboard. Using a controller is fine and a lot more manageable. I still don't understand what way to shake my mouse to change the lock on target. The reason for the problem is when fighting bosses, sometimes add spawn and you just want to stick on the boss but you may accidentally move your mouse a bit as you press Mouse 1/2 and game goes, oh you want to target that dood instead and switch off the boss. Then you struggle switching from add to add trying to lock onto the boss again and die miserably.

I really enjoyed the dialogue in this game. The overall story is meh but the character interactions in this game is amazing. It's like on the level of Super Robot Wars where some characters actually have lines related to characters from other series. There was one particular mission where Amuro joins as a ally in this mission and there are characters from different series that pop in and Amuro would have some dialogue expressing his thoughts on those people and their timelines.

The cutscene animations the game developers placed into the game are also very nice too. That is also to say that the Gundam models and animations in this game are amazing. Using weapons whether it be ranged or melee weapons you can actually see the full animation of the Gundam doing the action including pulling the beam saber out to attack and returning it place after finishing unless you animation cancel. Oh yeah, SDGO players would love to know MCA is in this game although not as easy.

Now the one thing I dislike the most in this game are Special Attacks (SPA). Ranged SPA aren't that bad but melee SPAs are absolutely horrendous to the point that it's useless in some situations. Against Mobile Armors you can pretty much kiss your melee SPA good bye because unlike non-Mobile Armor enemies which get stunned if you SPA close enough, Mobile Armors couldn't care any less that you used it and just does whatever they want to do and which is usually jump out of the way. Like I mentioned earlier, non-Mobile Armor enemies get stunned but they are not locked in place which means if someone knocks them out of your way, then your melee SPA is S.O.L. I don't understand this design idea.

Ranged SPA also has its fair share of problems. If you lose track of your target when you use your SPA, you would miss the SPA entirely as well. Half the time that both melee and ranged SPA miss is because of the cut-in animation that prompts when you SPA. It's like a whole 2-3 seconds before you actually start attacking and so many things can happen in that time frame.

On the subject of SPA, I also don't understand the design concept for some of them. SPA damage can be beam, physical, or both (hybrid) and can be ranged, melee, or both (hybrid). So you build your Sharpshooter with Ranged damage but its SPA is melee like why? Same goes for In-fighters which you build melee but its SPA is ranged.

The game definitely has annoying game designs that makes no sense and some artificial difficulty because of said game designs but the game is fun to play. Playing with friends make it more enjoyable of course but there is multiplayer so if you're faced with a difficult mission, just create a room or join a room and play with others.

Now I just want more Gundam variety added to the game.

I am a person who generally avoids side-scrolling games, usually for aesthetic reasons. However, this game I decided to give it a try because the visuals were interesting, decent animations for combat, and the game revolves around farming? Hmm, sure why not. I wasn't sure what I was getting into but almost 53 straight hours into playing this game, I was so engrossed that I even ignored some other games that I was playing just to keep playing this game.

-The 'Bad'-

I'm just going to get the bad stuff out of the way first because I feel like that's what everyone wants to know first. So what's the problem with this game? Some quality of life stuff that annoys me personally. For instance, whenever you go back home, you start up from the entrance and have to run all the way back up the mountain to get home. I get it, you enter a place so you start at the entrance yeah sure but you play as a goddess, let me just magically teleport up there or something.

Farming in this game is so realistic that I don't even know what to say. At least I learned a lot of knowledge about farming with rice! One thing I dislike immensely, probably due to my tiny smol brain, or it could be because the game has some minor issues with it, is when you're planting rice onto the field. The movement controls are fine but I wish you can strafe or something. It's hard to line up properly because the camera moves ever so slightly so even though you are moving 'downwards', the camera moving so slightly makes you veer off-course. Trying to adjust myself is battling the physics engine trying to get my character move to the proper position. It took me a very long time to get used to it.

For the length of time that I've played, the game crashed only once but thank you game for auto-saves so it was kind of moot point. And I've only been absorbed into the wall once but jumping made me pop out safely so that's alright I guess.

My last gripe is the story flow. There's a weird flow with the story here and there and without spoiling anything, an example would be like you start at point A. The story goes to point B and then C. Somewhere along they way, it feels like they would skip a point and go to the next one. It's the main story so it's not like I missed anything, the game's story seems to have cut out pieces of the story. This happens twice where it feels like the flow messed up.

-The Everything Else-

The game itself, I would so love to give it a 10/10 but the minor problems that I personally have just can't give it a 10/10 but it will definitely win the award 'A Truly Hidden Gem.' The story revolves a super spoiled girl learning and maturing into a true Harvest Goddess was an enjoyable journey and how the character interacts with others shows this. I have no complaints about the story aside from the weird breaking points I mentioned. Still I feel like the ending could have expanded a bit more.

The combat in this game is truly fantastic. It is the core part of the game aside from the farming aspect. I feel like I am in 95% control of my character when exploring and fighting demons. The other 5% is due to wonky controls. You can press a button to send out your character's raiment, or divine shawl if you will, to grapple enemies and surfaces but the directions that you can send it out are the 8 directions, up, down, left, right, and diagonal. You can't send it out to a specific direction, only the general direction and it took a while for me to get used to it. Dunno why you can't double jump either, I feel like it should be a possibility but oh well.

Combat feels very meaty. The sound effects and visuals when you hit and kill something are amazing. Also sending enemies flying where they can collide with other enemies and have those enemies collide with more enemies for mega damage feels really good. You are given with a huge pool of skills that you'll discover as you level up and progress in the game and they all have their uses. Some definitely feel more stronger than others. There are so many ways to kill your enemies, either by your normal attacks, strong attacks, skills, even the raiment grappling can throw enemies all over the place. Again dunno why double jumping isn't in this game as it would provide greater freedom but I digress.

Farming in this game is too darn realistic. First you sort the seeds out. Then you have to till the field. Manually. Row by row. Then you have to plant the seeds. One by one. Adjust the water level with water gates. Add in fertilizer but wait, did you properly add in all the materials you want into the poop to create the best fertilizer? Did you added that chunk of bear meat? Or that demonic pearl? And the chunk of obsidian that I got from the volcano? You did? Good. Now you have to pull weeds that grow every now and then, adjust the water levels accordingly, After you start cutting the rice, you need to hang them to dry. After that you need to thresh the rice and the hull the rice. All of this is done manually like holy balls did I learn a lot about rice farming. Thankfully there are skills that you learn as you do this that makes it a lot easier and faster. It was definitely an experience though.

I enjoyed this game immensely. They pay attention to details a lot like for instance when you enter your house, your character wears sandals but when you jump up to platform that is 'home', your character is then barefooted. Amazing small detail. I wish there were more clothing visual variety. It's just the same outfit in different colors and patterns.

Lastly... the English dub is actually pretty darn good. The game does allow you to change from English to Japanese voices but I decided to try the English after forgetting to change to Japanese and went through the introduction of the game. Pretty good.

Originally I wasn't interested in this game but when I heard it continues from RE7, I felt that I had to play it to see what more story they would have with Ethan. There's a lot of twists and turns but overall I felt that the story was alright. There's a lot for discussions in terms of lore and what's coming for RE9.

I had a problem with the game at the very beginning. The game's FoV is set to 81 and Capcom for some inane reason decided to not add a FoV slider. According to some people, this helps make the game more scary. Excuse me while I go puke in the toilet from the motion sickness. I'm used to playing First-Person games with at least 90+ FoV so having the FoV that low made me incredibly nauseous. I had to go and download a external mod made by the community called Lazy FoV and Vignette Fix from ModNexus and no more motion sickness.

The game itself, in my opinion, suffers from an identity crisis. It tries to be scary but that ends in 15 minutes of the beginning. Seriously it goes from night-time so dark you can't see ahead without a flashlight to daybreak and then daylight the entire game through. You just run through the place and shoot monsters. You should play this on Hardcore because then the 'Survival' part of the game comes in full effect while managing your ammo. You can shoot at the monsters' legs to stun them while you pull out your knife for some free damage or even kill to save ammo.

There are 'puzzles' in the game but they're so simple that I not sure if I like it or not. To be fair I wouldn't really want to get stuck in a puzzle for 10+ minutes when I could be enjoying the story but I digress. Simple puzzles.

There's a stage in the game where you have to run and hide in a closet or under the bed. That part was pretty interesting. When I opened the closet and saw nothing inside, I tried to step in it and close the door. To my surprise, it worked and I thought, "There's going to be a run-and-hide section. Alright."

Then it's just back to shooting, more shooting, throw a few explosives, and shoot some more. The protagonist, Ethan, which should be prey felt more like the Terminator instead. You don't die and you carry a couple or three pistols, a shotgun or two, a bolt action sniper rifle that uses 7.62mm, and plenty of explosives on you. I want to complain about a section of the game later on which you use a cannon that's literally welded in place with a few screws and bits and pieces of metal... more than once. Physics begone!

Overall the story was interesting, the gameplay's there and it's whatever. If you've played RE5, RE7, RE2 remake, you'll know what to expect. One thing I like though is that the crafting materials have their own separate inventory like The Last of Us which was a huge problem in RE7 trying to manage the inventory. The game has its own immersion and immersion breaking things like monsters dropping money or crafting materials. Whatever. You're not provided with any military-grade weapons until you beat the game which you unlock in the Extra Contents shop: The Dragoon (Which should be a AN-94 or something of similar) and the WCX (MCX, a 5.56 assault rifle). There's also the USM (USP) and the kramabit. They're really powerful for Standard difficulty and Hardcore is about just right. For the hardest difficulty, Village of Shadows which you unlock by beating the game or pay more money, it's truly about Survival of the Fittest.

I've beaten the game on Standard and I'll go back into it on Hardcore. I enjoy popping heads with the sniper rifle.

I love every aspect of this game. It's so wondrous. Although there are a lot of small itty bitty things that can gnaw at you, it doesn't take away from the incredible journey you will get from this game itself. If you like to build things in the world of Dragon Quest while getting to live through a wonderful Dragon Quest story, this is the game for you!

To start the setting of the story, it takes place after the original Dragon Quest II, yes that exact same game from 1987. Now any more into this would actually be cutting into spoilers alert so I won't go further on this point. Like I said, this is 100% a Dragon Quest game story that will keep you involved through and through although the immersion can be broken multiple times as you farm, take care of your farm animals, and build many kinds of structures. Is this Minecraft/Harvest Moon? I dunno.

It's quite similar to its predecessor, Dragon Quest Builders, but vastly improved across, well, pretty much everything. Although the inventory system is still ass, I can spend about 2-3 minutes trying to look for one specific item... Couldn't have killed them to add a 'Search' feature. Unless it does have it and I don't see it. Stacked with so much blocks, it's really hard to look for things and this is probably my biggest gripe for the entire game.

Dragon Quest Builders 1 got me so bored after a few hours I didn't bother finishing the game. Won't go into too much but it felt massively redundant to do anything considering you just lose most of it progressing to the next bit. Dragon Quest Builders 2 got this covered up. Anything you collect, build, and whatever you do, can be bought back home with you to your main hub and once you complete the story islands, you can revisit with all the materials you have. If you feel like you want to spend more time on those story islands instead of your main one, feel free to do so.

This game does hold your hand for a very long time because a lot of building blocks and materials don't get unlocked until you progress through the main story so if you want to build a castle early on? Well you'll have to build a wooden one until you can replace it with castle materials.

There's so much that could be said about this game and it's honestly better if you just jump into it instead. I think this is my most half-assed review but the issue is that the good things about this game can be very spoiler alert-ly and I've pretty much addressed all the things one can expect diving into the game.

Firstly I played this game on Hard (Jedi Knight) difficulty so I got destroyed a few times. Also, there's no space combat or space level so RIP anyone hoping for it (I did).

Now since this game takes place 5 years after the Purge and before the Luke Skywalker trilogy, the story is exactly as you would expect it to be: Absolute gobshyt. So what would you focus in this game? Well you can to wield your lightsaber doing all sorts of maneuvers jumping around, using the Force to push, pull, and slow your enemies. Throw your light saber around like a maniac and pumping yourself full of drugs to replenish your Force gauge. Overall it's a nice experience from a Padawan whose only starting Force ability is to slow your enemies which is a VERY awesome ability by the way! Works great against bosses!

You slowly progress through the story, learn Cal's backstory and how he slowly become a true Jedi Knight and it shows in the way he'll learn to manipulate the Force. The other characters' backstory? I'm sorry but I barely cared, mostly due to the lack of interactions if anything. You basically learn other characters story in bits and pieces while you are fighting against the local wildlife, fauna, and other Imperial scum. Or during planet to planet transitions. If anything that I really cared about is that I want to ship the Cal and Merrin (a witch) pairing. Hehe.

I thought the game would be too easy on Normal mode and I was right. I started on Hard mode and the first enemy I found was literally a mini-boss hidden and it was literally killing me left, right, and center; dying in 2 hits, 3 if I'm lucky. If I played on normal, most likely it would've taken me at least three times the amount of hits to die. Each blaster hit from a Trooper literally takes a small chunk out of me and when I see there's 5-6 of them, I literally lose my mind. There are times I was literally stuck at a healing point because I'm trying to get used to a certain area.

The game world is beautiful and fabulous. There's so much sights to see and your spaceship is also very awesome to explore and look. So much detail. And I think this is pretty much what the game is, it's very pretty to look at. Everything else is absolute gobshyt and boring. At one point I got kidnapped by bounty hunters to put on a show for some rich snogguns but I managed to escape easily and never again abducted. The world is beautiful but empty and lame. There's no other NPCs to talk with aside from your 'party' and they're as interesting to talk like how you speak with your imaginary friend Bob. Customization variety is garbage. Oh would you like that poncho in blue and red, or would you like it in all pink? Maybe you like a more fabric kind of poncho in tan color?

And what the hell is the point to even painting your spaceship when you look at it for less than 1% of your playtime. You spend most of your time outside the ship or in its interior.

You can customize your lightsaber with different parts to change its looks which is fine and all but that's it. If people didn't cared about visual customizations, they wouldn't even bother opening any chests in the game because that's pretty much the only thing in them aside from these rare hidden yellow chests that provide a +1 Stim amount to your BD-1 for heals.

Some game definitely got inspired by Dark Souls what with these melee doods hiding behind a dead-spot as you round a corner to ambush you with a smash to the face. The save points are literally like Bonfires.

I just wished this was a more open world game. Take a alternate world route: Actually rebuild the order, explore more world, and all kinds of things. There's literally a giant sandbox that looks great that pretty much has NOTHING in it!

I only recommend it to experience playing as a Jedi as this is the best by far. I love just switching my lightsaber on, hearing its hum, and its light illumination effect. It feels great.

In the short amount of time I've spent in this game has made me addicted. Now to begin off: set your expectations low; as do most, if not all, games published and/or developed by Bandai Namco has always basically been a flop or at least not up to expectations. You may argue why do that for a $60 game? Is it too much to expect a fully functional and legitimate game? Sadly, with Bandai Namco... Yes but I digress. TL;DR at the bottom.

How is the game? We're going to have to go into different levels to each figure out how this game is. To begin with, this game is sold on Steam as a 4-vs-4 online multiplayer game. Now is this game as that? Yes. So if you're expecting a story or some sort of narrative, you're looking at the wrong game my friend.

The game has 2 modes: PvE and PvP. The PvE is pretty much a flop, people just do the PvE to secure rewards such as unlocking characters from which you can earn jutsus and other goodies from and leave it at that. The battles in PvE aren't anything too exciting but if you like jumping around like a pro ninja, it's something to look out for.

Now with PvP you have two options: Quick Match where you hop onto a unranked room and match up with 7 other players to battle it out in a Capture the Zones battle or you can choose to play ranked matches where you fight a Deathmatch with 7 other players. Again, 4vs4 so 3 will be teammates while the rest are enemies. Going back to expectations, well, there's only one mode for each of those PvP modes, that's right, there's only Capture the Zone for unranked and Deathmatch for ranked. For now I assume anyways as the menu in the PvP shows two other types of battles that we have no access to currently. I'm also going to assume that the PvP modes will be expanded more.

Gameplay

Now to the biggest part about the game, the gameplay mechanics and I'll have to say it's very enjoyable. It makes you feel like a proper ninja from Naruto. The animations, the movements, and techniques you can employ. Although there's a slight issue with camera-targetting, I don't really find this an issue. There were plenty of reviews complaining about camera-lock and to them I say that they're just kids or fresh gamers who have no understanding how to play a fighting game like this with free camera.

The game offers you a good variety of jutsus to build your character with and you can freely swap them around. However, the thing is that jutsus are locked behind classes and the game will have you choosing Assault, Range, Tank, or Healer but of course you can freely change to whatever class you want. If you want to use a specific combination of jutsus like having Raikiri on a Healer, well, sorry mate; I'm sad I can't do that either. Your normal movesets are also determined by the class you choose as well. They all seem very well balanced as well.

Don't think just because it's a healer, you can abuse them. Experienced Healers with the right jutsus can kite people for a long while. Tank is a odd class in my opinion, the more proper term should be 'bruiser'. Assault does assault-y things and ranged does their pew pew jutsu from range like a Giant Fireball.

Now here lies the problem: Jutsu balancing granted this is only for Ultimate Jutsus. Bandai Namco endorsed (I'm saying endorsed because they decided to publish it and all games they like to publish tend to never be balanced) so don't expect balancing. I mean they tried but there are Ultimate Jutsu that can one shot people. Sure the conditions are pretty high in requirements but a couple of them are too damn strong, so strong that it's basically all every single player uses! Either Kirin or Shinra Tensei. Heck with a proper equipment setup, you can use Kirin in the first 2 minutes into a ranked match! Kirin's downside is that it has roughly a 2 second channel time and it does telegraph where it's going to hit but if it just hits anyone, they instantly die. Shinra Tensei I don't even want to talk about, absolutely bullcrap.

The maps themselves seem fine but there's only 5 maps. Hopefully more be added in the future.

Overall the gameplay mechanics and controls are fine. Although it gripes me to say that a game boosting about character customization isn't very well done at all but what I do know, everyone just uses Kirin, Shinra Tensei, and Shark Torpedo. Much options.

Speaking of options, the clothing options. We do have a large variety but as Japanese games all do, they're mostly just recolored of the same skins. It's alright I guess, at least some are interesting designs.

The user interface could definitely be improved upon. It's somewhat clunky as if you want to do anything, you have to go to a specific place in the hub to do so, can't just open up a menu to do it. A very odd choice but whatever, it's better than Xenoverse which has a hub too big for its own good.


TL;DR

Game's fun, really fun. It is as advertised, 4-vs-4 PvP so why complain about lack of story? Controls are good, mechanics are good albeit somewhat unbalanced with Super attacks. The servers are crap as there are the occasional disconnects or game crashing but that'll probably be fixed soon. There's a good amount of customizations to go around although somewhat bland. While I do recommend this game, not worth $60 in any regards. Still if you have excess money laying around and you just want to duke it out with other Naruto fans, this game is an option. I find this more enjoying than Ninja Storm.

Let's start off with the question: Is it worth $55? No. Is it worth $40? I would say yes until I found out the greatest travesty this game has and because of this travesty, I feel like this game isn't even worth $30. It's a bit of a spoiler so I'll put it at the very end of this review. TL;DR at the bottom as well.

To begin, this game is merely a theme park management game. Nothing really much different aside from the more interesting graphics as well as believeable dinosaur animations. Some people might like the wonky ragdoll physics that the game sometimes emulate whenever a dinosaur dies or when tranquilized.

You are given 5 'stages' or islands and each stage has its own difficulty in terms of gameplay, with each map rising in difficulty. Each island you're given a starting capital which is exclusive to each island. However, you can easily bypass this by going back to your previous island, find some high priced fossils and go to the new island to sell because fossil inventory is shared across all islands; same thing with research as well so it's a way to cheat the system.

The game is incredibly slow as well! If you don't abuse the fossil warehouse, then you literally have to sit there for a good 20-30 minutes at each starting island waiting for money to come in. So much time I've spent in this game was me sitting there playing games on my phone or watching YouTube because I'm waiting for money to come in. I think out of all the hours I've put into this game, at least 3-4 hours was spent waiting for income!

The amount of people you see in your theme park is somewhat exaggerated. You can build shops and other manner of buildings where visitors can go shop or eat. However, the problem is that the system doesn't actually account for the people you see going into the store as actual numbers, instead it goes through some weird system where it detects how many people are in the vicinity and puts them through a formula to give you income. Another issue is that there's a range to this... Yes. There is a range detection. Say you build a bunch of shops like a mile away from the closest point of interest like a dinosaur pen, well those shops would not be able to 'pick up' those people. Even though you can physically see people going in and out of the shop, the shop will show 0 visitors.

Now to the actual dinosaurs... Very believeable, you can have the camera pan around any dinosaur you want to look at and it's great and all but that's it. You, as the player, can't really interact with them in any way aside from using a Ranger jeep to hit them with healing darts if they're wounded or sick, or take pictures for money. Or ride a helicopter to fire tranquilizer darts for whatever reason it may be, whether you want to sell, ship, or disable a escaped dino. That's pretty much it. Carnivores don't even really care about you when you're in a ranger jeep. They may 'attack' you but nothing happens, no damage or anything. I went AFK for 20 minutes in a Ranger jeep and came back to just being pushed to a corner.

Dinosaur interactions gets even more dull. Same type dinos would 'socialize' sometimes. I say sometimes, because usually I'm too busy to even look at them and wait for them to socialize which is basically they get together and growl at each other. Carnivores have a bit more interaction which is either: kill each other or roar at each other. The kill each other part is one of the most annoying thing in this game. You put in 10 herbivores and 1 carnivore in a single pen and the carnivore will do everything in its power to kill off the other herbivores even if it wasn't hungry. It's incredibly annoying and I get it, I can't 'tame' these beasts to eat the live bait or stack of meat you place down but you would hope that they go for them sometimes but nope. As long as there's a herbivore somewhere, that's its #1 priority.

Their animations are the same as well. Raptor have 3 different animations which is a lot surprisingly. It will either; growl at another dinosaur because it can't kill it, fight the dinosaur, or hunt the dino from behind. No matter the opposite party, it will do the exact same animation.

And that brings to the biggest travesty I have experienced in this game but before that, this game is pretty boring to a certain degree. The things pretty much any Jurassic Park fan would want to see are raptors, T-Rex, and the Indominus Rex. The raptors and T-Rex are incredible, the feels you get from them are amazing. Raptors are annoying just like in the movie: They are easily irritable causing them to break out of their dino pen. The walls are pretty useless, I've upgraded to Electrified fences and they just smashed through. Alright, upgraded to Heavy Steel Fences, smashed through them as well. Fine, fine, I'll stop being cheap, I'll upgrade to Heavy Electrified Steel Fences; description states it reduces impact damage. Guess what? They smash through them just as easily as the regular fences! Just slightly slower! I get it, the game is designed to force you to deal with dino outbreaks but come on! So you learn to make a double layer dino pen for carnivores specifically.

One last bit about interactions.. Social interactions can be as many as possible, has to be same type. Gallimimus will only socialize with Gallimimus. Carnivore kill interactions is only 1 on 1. At first I placed a triceratops into my velociratpor pen thinking that they'd maul it down. Instead, all I get is that a single raptor will try to 'threaten' the triceratops and run away. That's it. I even have 4-5 raptors in that pen. Didn't even bother grouping to kill the triceratops. Great.

**SPOILERS**

Now. The travesty. There isn't any special interactions between a T-Rex and Indominus Rex. I was expecting something more special than their regular animations because they were the highlight in the movie but nope, they just run through their regular attack and kill animations. After all that time tolling away at this game, the biggest hype for me doesn't even exist.

There aren't any marine dinosaurs either so no Mosasaurus.

Then to top it all off, the Sand Box mode which brings you to Isla Nublar is just that, a sandbox mode with nothing in it. Unlimited cash, build whatever you want, go crazy. I was hoping that you'd see past artifact buildings from Jurassic Park but nope, it's just a big massive empty map.

TL;DR

All in all, the game is just a massive disappointment really. It has its moments but it's not worth $60 in any regards. Come back when it's at least $30. Lots of tiny problems that build up into one big problem; not immersive enough. Limited interactions, some borked mechanics, and it's just not as fun as it should be.

Would give it a 6/10 but no, 5/10 after the travesty that I've experienced. Just disappointing.

How do you describe a game that suck but doesn't suck? I guess you would call it above average. Despite the glaring flaws to the game, it's still a nice experience to enjoy. This game suffers similar problems as the other game made by the same developers, 'This War of Mine'. It's difficult to start playing even with the slow pace tutorials but for myself, after restarting the game twice, I managed to beat the game in one sitting of roughly 4 hours or less.

The game itself puts you as the leader of the group of survivors and attempt to weather through the storm by restarting a age-old steam engine. As you play along, you would find it hardpressed trying to manage your facilities to allow your people to work efficiently with food supplies, warmth, and medical facilities. Later on, population's discontent and hope also plays a role in the way of either one hitting the breaking point ends your playthrough.

The problems I mentioned earlier that this game suffers from is that once you get past that midpoint to sustain your town, the game becomes ridiculously easy to the point you can just hit that Fast-Forward button and enjoy the show. The way the game itself counters this though is when you complete main story quests which brings you to the final bout against nature where you have to prepare against a deathly storm putting the temperature to -120 C. After that, the game ends and viola, you're done? You can't even go back and play through the game until the end of time or finish exploring the map.

Replayability... A little. The game diverages into 2 paths around midgame, 'Order and Discipline' or 'Faith and Religion.' That being said, they really don't have much difference from one another aside from one having cops and the other with priests.