Recent reviews by Yang Xiao Long: Ace Attorney

This is the kind of game that won't be made anymore. An open world, metal-inspired action adventure game? With such soundtrack? A shame it didn't sell well back in 2009, loved this game ever since and everyone should give it a try.

I know, I've only played one hour and that might fell short, but honestly? The game didn't give me a reason to care. The story is randomly generated as in "We don't even care about the story or traits of the characters, we just give them random texts that hardly makes sense". Sure, there are "main" stories and the likes, but I played to games, one with random generated characters and one with characters of my own design, and I couldn't care less about any of them.

After that, the gameplay is extremely simplistic and boring. The warrior being my fav class, all my warriors ended up dying because they weren't tanky enough, even though the must stay in the front line to actually deal damage. Idk, I've read that if you stick around long enough your characters become overpowered, but the game never gave me a reason to stick for so long.

What can I say, this series is great and this is a great addition. Everytime I thought I could see where things were going, I had the rug pulled from under my feet.

Totally abandoned.

There's just so much love and soul putted into this comics <3

If you have played "To the Moon", do yourself a favor and play this, too. If not...well then go play "To the Moon" and then come back and play this, dummy!

There's not much to say. Amazing story and music, no gameplay. You are here for the ride, and what a ride it is.

It got me thinking. A lot.

Just Monika.

This review does not take into account the whole issue with Denuvo and Sega doing shameful things.
Because its clear that the only thing Sega did here was mess up, big time. Nothing more. The devs are great and they did a fantastic job.
Hate Sega, not this game. This game is a little lovely marshmallow. Hug it. Kiss it. Go to prom with it.

This is less a review, and more like a bunch of impressions and opinions putted together. I'll mumble about things and suddenly change topic. So that being said, ahem, lets begin:

The whole game was produced by FANS. And you can clearly see that. And I don't mean the clear references to other games or old characters. You can feel how they genuinely played and love the old Sonic games. Not wanting to spoil here, but they even took note of regular "knowledge" within the Sonic fandom and applied it to the game. For example, there's one boss in Sonic 2 which has an EXTREMELY obvious weak spot. You can hide in an specific part of the level and the boss won't be able to hurt you at all. Now, a similar boss appears in this game. My first thought was "Heh, should I try the good old strategy?". And guess what? They changed that so it makes you feel that they made the same mistake, then BAM, there's an specific attack to that area.

But okey, you are not a Sonic fan. You have never played a sonic game, or maybe you have played a few but don't really care, I don't know. This game is still an awesome retro and a platformer. The art is beautiful. And I mean it. I sometimes simply stop in the middle of a level to appreciate the view, or to check the colors they used in certain parts, etc etc etc. The animations are lovely. Not only are they fluid as heck, but also they are overflowing with personality. You see Sonic, Tails, Knuckles and even the enemies and they feel alive! I remember the first time at the "Ice" zone, Sonic got frozen and I simply stopped playing because the sprite they used for 'Frozen' Sonic was fantastic! And then I let Tails get frozen too, just to watch his sprite. You know they have made a good job when you consciously stop playing the game just to check this little things. And there are dozen and dozen of other examples. From the first zone to the last one, there's always something worth checking out.

Okay, but you are here to play, not to see, right??? The level desing is glorious. Once again, like in old Sonic games, there isn't just one path. No more "Press forward and you win". There are tons of alternative routes. I guarantee that if we both play one zone, we will use different paths. And that's great because now you aren't just running throw the level. You are also exploring it. If you miss a jump or accidentally take a different route, then you must better be paying attention because its a completely different world.
And of course, if you are a hardcore Sonic fan and have played the classic games tons of times, you will probably notice that some parts are similar to old levels. For example, there are parts in Stardust Speedway Act I that resembles Marbel Garden from Sonic 3. Or some parts in Titanic Monarch that resembles Scrap Brain Zone from Sonic 1, and so on and so forth.

Something I like about Mania is that it presents a challenge. Sure, its no Dark Souls or the likes, but as a Sonic veteran, I found myself almost running out of lifes by the endgame. That's something cool. The game won't just sit down and expect you to beat every level in two minutes with over two hundred rings. Sure, you can do that once you get the hand of it. But until then the game will fight back. Power ups are harder to find, so once you get a shield, you better make it count.

The new boss fights are cool. I mean, I like the fact that they tried doing new stuff, rather than just making an enemy and making you jump-and-hit. For example, there's a boss which you can't damage by yourself, you have to throw it against some spikes. And if you miss the attack, chances are you will be the one taking damage from those spikes. Believe it or not, it took me some time to realize this. They aren't hard bosses, but they force you to retreat and think a bit about how to adapt your strategy.

So yeah, I don't know. The game's great. I love it. The only reason why I've only played 10 hours since yesterday its because I have stupid social and academic obligations. The art is great, the music rocks, the gameplay is cool. There are a bunch of unlockables and the likes. Mini games to get the Chaos Emeralds or Medals (they unlock stuff) are funny and they don't feel repetitive. This game deserves love!

10/10, Game of the Year, Game of the Decade, Goat of All Time.

UPDATED 16/10/16

First of all, if you have a way to test this game before buying it (playing it at a friend's computer, for example), DO IT.
In my opinion, you can know if this game's for you by just playing 15 minutes (a.k.a. the first chapter of the campaign). If you don't like it by that point, DON'T BUY IT. The game does not get any better. If you like it but feel like you need more content - like skins or more than four characters with greater variety - then DON'T BUY IT. Other than achievement hunting, there isn't much content at this point in time. If you liked it and feel like you could play and grind hours of that repeatedly, BUY IT, the game is probably for you.

Ahem, now, the review:

The first big problem is that the game isn't worth $25. This is the crux of the whole thing, since the game itself is fun, but offers little things to do. Campaign, ranks and achievements. The game still feels unfinished and there's no content whatsoever.

The core gameplay is really basic. You have Light, Heavy and Ranged attacks, an Ultimate move and a broken counter. You will be mashing the same buttons over a over again. Ever heard of the God of War Square Square Triangle symptom? Well, this game suffers from the same. There are only one or two combos worth doing (Psst, Yang's LLH).

This isn't something "terrible", since it is a hack 'n slash after all. There's always fast-paced action and it feels nice to kick the butts of vile creatures, right?

The thing is that its extremely simple, easy and repetitive. Dying seems like an imposible task, there's no strategy and no variation.

There's almost no difference between the four characters and they all share the same type of skill tree. Sure, Blake is better at making combos, for example, but in the end they all feel the same. The max level is 10, and you will probably reach it before the second half of the game, which means there aren't many skills to choose from. You won't have a "unique" character. In fact, you will probably never use 40% of skills in the game, like the rest of us.

The only game mode is the Campaign. You can play with other people or go solo. The campaign is composed of ten chapters. You can clear it in about three hours aproximately, and multiplied by four if you want to use all characters. This is not "bad", since the game is meant to be replayable. But there's little reason to do so. There are no secrets, no different difficulties, no skins nor anything to unlock. The final boss is a joke, its easy and tedious, more like an ordeal rather than a challenge. There aren't many things to do once you beat it. Except for...

...Achievement hunting. There are 25 achievements, most of them are easy and you should get them in just one round. Some of them are interesting enough, but unluckily they fell short.

The story is bad, regardless of whether or not you're a RWBY fan or not familiar with the series. I would say that you don't need to watch the show to understand the game, but they explain so little that you might feel lost if you don't know the basics of the story. Of course, there's no character development, and the big bad is clichéd and does not have a strong motivation. There are NO cutscenes, so do not expect to see things from the show here.

Once you finish this, the only thing left to do is increasing your Rank, which is the equivalent of your multiplayer level. The max is 10, and it requires you to do insane grinding of objectives and then RESET all your progress, so you'll have to begin all over again everytime you level up. Lazy replayability is lazy. You have all been warned.

And that's the game right now. It's not "bad", but it's not "good" either. It's funny but not captivating enough. Honestly, it feels rushed and unfinished, and there are plenty of bugs. And I really mean it.

Many things are lacking, like more characters, game mods and skins. They'll probably be added as DLC, which only makes this "Full Release" worse. There aren't even any Trading Cards or Badge.

TL;DR:
I've been in this boat since January-February. I've seen all versions and updates of this game. The Early Access process was really weird. Some questionable decisions were made without warning, content was cut out for no real reason and the final result feels rushed. The game is fun, but simple, easy and broken. I'm sure the dev team had good intentions, and the game had potential, but $25 dollars is way too much for such a simple game. Not to mention much needed content will come as DLC, meaning you'll probably have to pay even more.

At the end of the day, you can have fun with it. But unless you want to grind by killing the same enemies over and over and over again, the price isn't worth it.


UPDATE: So, we got quite a few new things during this last few days.

First, the price was reduce from 25 to 20 dollars. I believe this is a much fair price for the game. A good move, quite controvertial, but that's the price it should have cost after the release.

Second, Horde Mode. Or should I say "Defend from Waves" mode, since its not an endurance contest against enemies, but you must protect specific objects from 10 waves of enemies, each harder than the last one. It introduce the use of torrets and it requires the teams to have a bit more of teamwork which the actual campaign never needs. But, then again, its just requires you to defend a position from some waves, basically what you have to do during the first two chapters of the campaign. And there are no new maps; the three locations being Emerald Forest, Mountain Glenn and Forever Fall. But its free, which is a good point, specially since, as seen in my first point, the price was reduce from 25 to 20 dollars. So now a new player receives more content for less money.

Third, and this is the strong point. Team JNPR was released as a DLC. It costs 5 dollars...which I find to be quite fair. Now, I haven't been able to use them since I don't have money to spare right now, but from what I've read and watched, they are better and funnier to play with than RWBY, and presents both a better and a more diverse gameplay. So yep, it sounds like JNPR is a success! Let's see if the hype can survive more than a week, though. But granted, it sounds like a good DLC.

So, you may ask, why is this review still a negative one? We have more content for a lower price, and a good DLC!
Well, the thing is, even though all of this is great, the core game still kinda sucks. This update haven't touched any of the issues previously discussed. The Rank System is still broken and requires waaay too much time and sacrifice. Team RWBY still feels boring, and the core gameplay wasn't polished.

So yeah, the reduction of the game's price was a good move. Horde mode wasn't a great addition, but it was okay. And JNPR seems to be great, but that's a DLC. The Main Game still needs some love. So, even though this update brought the game to a grey area, it still have some ways to go if they want to change this review to a positive one.