Recent reviews by Vance Finiraldi

This version of Suika is for you if you enjoy feeling as if you're defusing a bomb every few moves in the mid-to-late game.

In all seriousness, though, there's not much to say. Presentation-wise, it's bright and colorful and has good music (which is subjective, though that was probably a given if you bought this as a fan of LAiX/Gunvolt and/or its music), but it's a clear Suika clone with some alterations. Anyone saying that this is cash grab for Inti Creates in-between major projects is probably right. That said, if you like playing Suika, then you'll enjoy this if you don't mind/like how the changes to the base formula affects how you play. And if you don't, this won't change your mind about it.

First thing to note about this game is that the pieces you're dropping - in this case Lola pod forms - are not completely round. The angular attachments and flat sides on most of the pieces mean you can't just expect them to roll neatly into place to fit and fill empty space, so you need to be even more careful about how you place new ones, all while hoping the physics doesn't shoot loose/stray pieces across the playing area and ruin whatever plans you had in your head. Otherwise, you may find your play area filled with far too many large pieces that can not possibly reach another due to how they're being blocked by the others, resulting in an early end to your run.

There's also a 12th, final piece after the watermelon-equivalent. It's notoriously hard to obtain (see the relevant Steam achievement) due to the hard-to-work-with shapes of the last few pieces before it (particularly Giga Lola), but if you're stupidly lucky skilled enough to get it, you're rewarded with Lola's final form, which is scaled back down to the size of the early-middle stages, freeing up a lot of space on the play field and providing opportunity for some of your stray pieces to merge together, prolonging the game in much the same way as combining two watermelons does in standard Suika.

Some replayability is here; getting more points throughout multiple play sessions unlocks more songs you can listen to while playing, all of them being music from the Luminous Avenger iX games (And no, no songs from ASG2, since that's bound to come up. Different singer, rights issues, etc. Same deal as Gunvolt Records). After that, though, all that's left to do is to gun for the monthly and/or all-time high score rankings. Which is fine for the type of game this is and the game's price.

All in all, a pretty fun game to sink a bit of your time into. Just don't expect to use too much of it.

Kyle Seeley. How dare you. I patiently waited for this game for two long years ever since you announced it back in to 2019. I even took in stride the delays and relative lack of consistent updates over the course of its development period even as a few started questioning whether or not the game would ever be released. I was stoked when I finally saw a release date and purchased it as soon as I got home from work that day.

But then what do you do? You do something within the first five minutes of the game proper so terrible... so heinous... that I can almost never forgive you for it.

Seriously, I can't believe that you would do this to any of us. I demand a proper apology by the end of the week. Or else I may never purchase your games again.

...

After all, you had to remind us of the horrfying existence of the abomination known as 3OH!3.

...

...

And then forced me to admit to myself, "♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, for as fratboyish as it is, their most well-known song is actually pretty damn catchy."

Joking aside (so chill 3OH!3 stans; you do you), Emily is Away <3 is a solid sequel to its predecessors, as it moves on from the confines of the instant messengers of ages past to the earliest days of the social media of yesteryear (technologically speaking). Feelings of fond recollection hit you as you go through year using Facebook in a near-accurate recreation of it in the service's prime, bells and whistles included, before it became the hellscape that it is today, which is something that Seeley gleefully mocks in the brief 2020 intro sequence with its pastiche of modern Facebook.

EIA <3 is essentially an interactive novel serving as a parable to budding teen romances first, and a "dating sim" second. This... shouldn't be a surprise to most who've played the first two games, but the amount of people treating it as one and being disapointed that it doesn't have more features designed to cater to that secondary aspect inclines me to give a bit of a gentle reminder. That said, I don't blame 'em. After all, after what the previous iterations of Emily (and Evelyn) put most of us through, who can fault them for not wanting to go with either of them? Or for wanting to go with Mat, who admittedly is a total bro. As far as Seeley's primary objective goes, he did a splendidly regardless of the path the player takes, with one small caveat I'll bring up later. In any case, it also does a damn good job of bringing us back to an emotionally turbulent time of our lives, tugging at our heartstrings and bringing out the tears and melancholy.

As far as being a sequel goes, I do think that there are elements it shines in but others that it pales in when in comparison to its predecessors. EIA <3 makes use of a lot more interactive and visualelements within the game than just the constant fake-typing you do in AIM due to a shift toward facebook, making for a more immersive experience. And there's a larger cast beyond Emily and Eva that your character directly interacts, in particular the aforementioned Mat, which is a definitive plus as well, since it feels less like your life revolves exclusively around just the girl you choose as your love interest, and a bit more like you're actually living through a portion of their final high school year. And as always, the game excels at making you feel like you're talking to people with actual personalities rather than charicatures designed to appeal to your interests, especially with how natural and real their conversation with you goes. You can notice things like subtle shifts in the way they greet and talk to you, which leads to the game successfully cultivating a sense of dread and apprehension for the uncomfortable or raw conversation you know that's about to take place.

On the other hand, the previous entry, EIA Too, did a better job at making Emily and Eva feel like two distinctly different people. While there are dialogue differences between the two, there's also just as much text shared between that have no deviations whatsoever. It's this flaw that hinders the desire for repeat playthroughs past their second one, which is a shame, since they are essential to experiencing all the endings the game has to offer. Especially when there's an internal flag within the user's save data that basically bars the first girl you attempt to be with from the best ending, unless you're willing to edit the file. While a player being barred from certain endings on their first playthgrough isn't unusual, per se, I do think there was probably a better way of going about it than to have players unwittingly lock one girl (who players probably picked first because she's your favorite) from getting some of the endings while opening up the rest, including some of the good ones, for the one they didn't choose. Too didn't have this sort of arbitrary lock on its final outcomes, so it's a little unfortunate that it's in play here.

However, all these problems, I feel, are nitpicks in the grand scheme of things, especially when judging the game on its merits as a stand-alone title. Emily is Away <3 is an awesome starting point if it's your first exposure to the series, giving new readers a good taste of what the rest of the games are like in terms of what they potentially have to offer narratively, bein as much of a nostalgia trip and emotional rollercoaster as all the other entries before it, encapsulating many of the small details that made 2009 what it was for those who grew up in that period, while simultaneously stirring memories of and reviving the many feelings, both the highs and lows, that shaped us at the time of our lives when we were just barely entering adulthood, regardless of when and where we first experienced them. It's well worth its full price, and if Seeley intends to continue with this series even as we get closer and closer to present-day social media, then I look to seeing what further stories he has to tell.

But still, I could've done without being reminded of 3OH!3. =P

And learning to be apprehensive of the color red. LOL

My Universe - Cooking Star Restaurant may look visually decent (or at the very least inoffensive but dull) and the gameplay maybe be nostalgically reminiscent of other games of its type, particularly Cooking Mama, but ultimately, you end up with a game with even less depth than the aforementioned series that overstays its welcome thrice as fast.

I could forgive the small selection of recipes (30 in total, with six recipes each from five different countries) if at least some of the steps to make them were unique and specific to each of them, but what the preparation of each recipe boils down to regardless of the actual meal in question are the same half dozen or so minigames, which gets repetitive before you even unlock the fourth chef. And none of them are even very good, by the way. They tend to fall under "slightly janky controls" (frying and spreading) or boring (any minigame with randomized button presses like egg cracking).

Furthermore, all this padded out by extremely shallow restaurant management between cooking sessions. Restaurant level cooking experience, sitting and serving customers? No nuance with anything like upgrades and skills and the like. They all serve no purpose other than to artificially extend the game time and bar you from quickly steamrolling through the recipes one by one. Oh, and you're doing all this yourself. These other chefs that are teaching you these recipes just stand there and don't do anything on their own. You're still doing the cooking for each customer, one by one. And as the one cook, I shouldn't have to be playing the roles of manager and server as well for an establishment as large as the one being run. Hell, you don't even get money. Just experience to progress you closer to unlocking all the recipes and reaching the end of the game's "story," which is barely existent.

Look, if you're looking for a game that's as simple, relaxing, and leisurely paced as the Cooking Mama series, you can do better. You might as well boot up your old DS with your copy of Cooking Mama 2 and get your fix that way, because Cooking Star Restaurant doesn't scratch that itch.

An experience so dull that I can't be assed to write a full review, and so mind-numbingly easy (save for the first boss that they purposefully set you for a hard time with) that the real game doesn't feel like it starts until you enter post-game. And frankly, it probably should've started off with that, since the main campaign feels like a condensed retelling of the first few story arcs with nothing substantial in-between, and the content there is the only thing of real value for any pre-existing fan.

Also, achievement hunters beware, the gallery doesn't save properly unless you close the game through the actual in-game menus and not through application window's close button. Like, seriously, ♥♥♥♥ you devs for not noticing that ♥♥♥♥.

Personally, I enjoyed A Squire's Tale quite a bit. Is it perfect? Hardly. There are issues that can be spotted right away with even just the slightest bit of scrutiny. However, for those looking for a relatively light read, especially compared to some of the denser works in Choice of Games catalogue, this is a pretty decent pick, depending on your tastes.

For anyone that's played any other game by Choice of Games, A Squire's Tale doesn't break new ground gameplay-wise, at least for them. But for those who haven't, it's a text/based CYOA game with choices that serve primarily to raise/alter your stats (in this case, your skills and attributes one might associate with any knight/squire), determine whether you succeed or fail at certain checks pertaining to said stats, and change relationship values with relevant NPCs. Repeat till you reach the ending, where your all your choices culminate into what happens during it. More complex and gamey than a physical CYOA novel, but simple enough to easily grasp. This formula and these mechanics have served them well so far to attract a sizable audience, especially in digital markets besides Steam. However, for this particular release, there's something about their usage that warrants a deeper look, which I'll get to later.

In terms of how they affect the plot, though, your choices only diverge from the path you're on slightly before eventually leading back to the main path. At most, you affect which companions you interact with and how things end up after completing the main task, but never will your choices lead to such a drastic change that the course of the plot is altered entirely during the main bulk of the game. In a way, this flow and limited degree of consequences to their choices are much more in line with modern RPGs than it is with a CYOA book.

As such, it is - as other reviewers have pointed out - essentially railroaded to follow a mostly linear plot. You're driving along one long highway, and you have a choice as to whether or not you visit the towns and rest stops along the way, but your destination will always be at the end of that same road and never junction into another. I've played enough of this publisher's works to accept that this is their preferred format for their games, so I'm not going rag on this point for long. However, for many, this is contrary to what people think when they hear the term "Choose Your Own Adventure." They expect choices that go off the rails and affect the story so drastically that the journey is almost entirely different every time they play. And I think this dissonance between the story structure players expect and what Choice of Games prefers to put out is the root of what some casual/uninitiated readers feel when they pick one of their games up. If you seek to have that level on non-linearity, then this game isn't for you.

It should said that the nature of the plot itself seems to be a point of contention, so how about we go with a hypothetical scenario where we assume you play this game without bothering to carefully read the store description because the publisher use the same template for games under their label every damn time (*cough*). You hear a title like A Squire's Tale, read a few dozen or so paragraphs, and probably think you're going get yourself into some medieval historical fiction. No unusual elements whatsoever so far; just the story of a knight and her squire out to resolve the kidnapping of the Prince of England. And it is, for the most part.

But then you start hearing more often the name of... a place that is sure to get censored by Steam's profanity filters (which to their credit, is an actual part of medieval myth that you can look up) and realize that the story is operating under the assumption that said mythical place is real in its universe. And thus, your perception of it as historical fiction shifts to low fantasy. Which I didn't really mind. And to be fair, the store description does make it clear that fantasy elements are going to take prominence at some point. But I can understand any frustration from those that fully expected the former upon going in blind. And while I wasn't put off by the shift, I can see how some might see it as the story having an identity crisis. It's a difficult problem to reconcile, for sure, and maybe the author could have done a better job at blending these two aspects together so the focal shifts between the two aren't as jarring.

Let's go back to what I put a pin on earlier and address this game's greatest flaw: the technical aspects and how they are implemented and represented. A problem so blatant that it risks affecting one's overall enjoyment of the game. Now, I'm going make a counterargument to a point that a couple of reviews before mine have addressed, which is the opportunities (or lack thereof) to increase your stats. That isn't the problem. There's an ample amount of opportunities to increase them in the section of the game intended to build upon - namely, the first two chapters - with sparse occasions to earn a few more boosts in the later ones. However, the feeling that there isn't enough is a byproduct of a couple of factors.

Firstly, because most of your skill building is confined within the first few chapters, you're given a false impression of just how much you're able to build a specific stat due to the way percentage bars are used to indicate proficiency. The decision to use percentages over any other means if representing them is one of this game's biggest failings. Focusing on one stat will often lead you to bring it up to 40% by Chapter 2 (of 10), so one could be forgiven to believe that by the end you should have it near 100%. But no. By design, a small set of skills at around 30-40% is what they expect you to make use of throughout the game. And those shouldn't be the "high" values for stats like these when there is no sequel planned, as it misleads you into thinking you should be training them to be even higher. And it's false impressions like this that lead to suboptimal builds, which relates to the next issue.

The game expects you to specialize in three or four skills. Which would be fine, if it were not for the fact there is next to no room for leeway. One bad stat increase can spoil whatever build your aiming for, which will later result in you making choices where your stats fall a little short of making the skill check.

And as one might suspect, there's no benefit for those that want to be well-rounded. This wouldn't be a problem, if the game would make sufficient hints that you're supposed to specialize. Not that I'm asking the game to break the fourth while doing so, but there are ways to nudge a player in that direction through the narrative, and I feel that other COG games have done a more decent job at that than this.

So would I personally recommend this despite all that I said? Yes. Again, I enjoyed it, especially since I came in without much expectations or pre-conceived notions on what the story would turn out to be. It was easy to immerse myself in it and I liked the setting and characters. But like many games published by COG save for a few stand-outs, I'd slap a big asterisk to my rating if I could. It's certainly not for everyone, and the quirks in the technical side of things are rather glaring. But there's an audience for A Squire's Tale, and whether or not you're part if it will largely depend on whether or not you can set aside those issues to enjoy it.

The punchline at the end of the game is cannibalism.

There. You should be thankful; I saved you $3 (if we're going by full price) by telling you the only thing interesting about this game.

Because it certainly isn't the gameplay, of which you're given two very basic/barebones, unengaging styles: "2D/sidescrolling survival gauntlet" and "overhead TPS from point A to B". They don't function particularly well, and the only change they go through is increasing difficulty. No upgrades or what not to make the experience feel more fleshed out or engaging.

Neither is it the presentation and graphics. From what looks to be real life stock imagery for the backgrounds to the still images of bad looking 3D models displayed sequentially to give the illusion of movement, in general, it's just really unpleasant to look at. The overhead TPS segments are an exception to the rest of game. You're in an actual 3D environments with character models that are actually moving, so it's more easier on the eyes, but that hardly matters since they are so dark you can barely see anything. And no matter what mode you're in, the blood/gore is laughably bad.

And the story... well, my opening statement should've made it obvious what I think of it. It's merely an excuse to have the "heroine" go through hordes of zombies. And that would be fine... if the numerous cutscenes between stages didn't work against that.

And again... the punchline is cannibalism. You don't need to suffer through a bad game if the premise is what's drawing you in.

To best sum this up, this is what should have been the previous game's final section/dungeon packaged as its own separate game... at an asking price of 2.5 times more than the original's.

Okay, so to preface this, I wasn't coming in expecting high art. After all, I've slogged through the schlock that was the first "Chosen" game; I know what I should generally expect from this game as far as presentation is concerned. I bought this mainly to provide myself closure to the cliffhanger the last game ended off at. However, when you put out a completely linear experience that's even shorter than its predecessor and sell it at more than double the price, that's something worthy of being pointed out. Loudly.

Aside from that, if you've played the prequel, then you have pretty much played this game, as it has almost of its mechanics, quirks, and issues. Generic RPG story, bland cast, basic RPG Maker battle system. At the very least, character portraits during conversation between the main characters are relatively ta-- oh wait, no. There's gratuitous clothing damage to their portraits, which now appear in battle in lieu of their sprites, to compensate! This must be where the developer chose to invest what little ability they had to innovate, instead of using that effort to write a story that can stand on its own without the need to remember its predecessor's in detail. Bravo. /s (And before anyone even dares to counter this jab with a certain portion of my own game library, let me just say that most of those games are upfront about who they're targeting. This game, on the other hand, has these fan-service elements while trying -- and failing -- to be taken completely seriously.)

Overall, this really isn't worth it at full price. Hell, it's hard to recommend this at any price even if you lower your standards a substantial amount. If you know what you're doing, you're going to breeze through this in just barely over an hour and feel as if you've had an incomplete experience. Which could have been mitigated by switching to the previous game's party every now and then while they're doing things of importance, but whatever. If you're really curious as to how the previous game's cliffhanger is resolved, then go for it... but I'd recommend you at least wait for a sale.

P.S. To this RPG Maker game publishers that engage in this practice (which this did at its initial release), please stop citing established JRPGs and series without context in order to drum up sales. That doesn't work. Never has and never will. Not without good writing or your own assets. Try to sell us your games on their own merits.

I don't usually make public reviews, but I'm putting in my "Not Recommended" vote to discourage the practice of inflating games with an insane amount of trivial achievements. Really? An achievement for every kill and headshot? That's almost Zup 3's level of ridiculousness. To Dinosaur Hunt's credit, at least it doesn't reward 5 achievements for the same task like that game does.

Seriously, if you're going to add a lot of achievements to your games, at least make the meaningful. Actual milestones. Not for every incrimental task while you play through the game.

As for the game itself, barring how one may feel about achievement hunting and the competitive aspect of it on sites off-Steam? Not really worth it despite the low price. It's only mildly fun for about an hour or so before quickly going stale.