Category: Game reviews

As always I like to get the honesty part out of the way first, and my friends over at sandbox strategies,ACE Team and Good Shepherd Entertainment hooked me up with a review copy of this one.

The game starts out with the hatching, and you controlling a single Trebhum. These little guys are basically the bottom of the food chain, but there are a bunch of mutations you can eventually find to turn your little creatures from food to basically gods if you want to feed them all to a couple of creatures. I don’t recommend this because they can die,but I’m not going to tell you how to live your life.

This is of course a survival game, and what is a survival game without something trying to kill you? The name of the game says it all, and it truly is a huge cylinder trying to murder you and your entire species. Really everything that gets in it’s way when it comes down to it. First thing I did was lay in front of it, and yes it does kill you. And if all your little herd die it’s game over.

This game is beautiful, the only issue some of you may have is that it is absolutely a linier experience with the cylinder stopping at set points where you can explore and discover the main story (which honestly I won’t mention more than that because truthfully it is the best part of the game in my opinion) and then it is off to the races as you try not to get crushed again.

The sound and visuals are amazing tho, and there are other random creatures roaming the world, some friendly, many not so much and some of them are huge. Seriously, stay away from the ocean.

My time with the game was enjoyable and I never ran across anything game breaking or even annoying. It is however a niche game and I can see many people just not being interested in it. However those people that like to do this sort of thing, the game is a blast and a solid 7/10. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Ok guys let’s get my traditional thank you to the guys and gals over at Plan of Attack and Softstar for hooking me up with a review copy of this one. I had never even heard of this series until recently as this is the first one to come west, and now that I have played it, I can understand why.

I don’t mean that last sentence as an insult, this game is beautiful with a capital B. The game takes place about 2000 years ago in China, and the attention to detail is fantastic. There are huts with little shrines outside and bamboo writings and such on walls and the clothes people wear just match what you think the time would have.

The sound and music also do not disappoint, each song in the game is put there specifically to make you feel like you are in danger, or in a mythical holy place. I loved the atmosphere of the places I visited.

The combat? Honestly I can not praise the combat enough, it is fluid and delightful to play. You are blocking and stabbing and there are executions, it is just top notch. You can level up your character and the weapons and armor by collecting items that are strewn about the beautiful map that has a good amount of fast travel places on it. Nothing feels forced, even the mini game which I played for hours (I won’t spoil how it works) but you are set the task to find people worthy to play against.

Now you may be wondering why I said I understood why it never came west after I said such great things about it. Honestly as a stand alone title and the 7th in the series, the story leaves very heavily on Chinese culture and lore and right from the very beginning after an intro you will start out as a hunter taking jobs to take care of your sister, and things will go from there as you and and family member fight side by side many times. There was a time when western audiences probably would not have taken the time to play this series, or at the very least companies wouldn’t want to risk that happening.

All that being said, any fan of action RPGs owe it to themselves to give this game a go. I won’t beat around the bush here, it is one of the better games I have played in 2021. 9/10, must play game this year. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

As always I want to thank the good people over at PQube for passing me a review copy of this one. It is always a pleasure to be chosen to review a game and this is no exception.

Kitaria Fables is almost like Stardew Valley and a hack and slash had a baby. The game starts off with you and your partner trying to find Paw Village. You will kill some slimes, save a kid and end up there just in time for the mayor to give you the usual gift. A dead relatives farm that will keep you in money.

This made very little sense to me since you work for the kingdom however you apparently don’t get paid. So after this you start doing the occasional mission for the townsfolk and the kingdom while running your farm, yes you are a busy kitty. The farming while not on the level of Stardew Valley has its benefits, for example you don’t have to place each individual seed down, you can just hoe a 3X3 grid and toss all 9 down at once. When they mature in a few days (usually 3-5 days) you can use your farming scythe to get all 9 down at once.

You will have to water them and prepare the fields the old fashioned way however until you upgrade your tools. Upgrading your tools is largely done by killing things as you explore. Monsters in certain places will drop certain things that you can save, and certain trees and rocks in town can be broken. They regrow most days but they are also the only ones that can be busted for materials.

This is where the game kind of falls flat for me. Collecting materials is a grind. It can take hours just to get enough materials to upgrade your weapons and armor level enough to compete with the next level of enemies, then the process starts over again. Luckily your skill in combat can make up for much of this.

The story itself is pretty basic and I won’t spoil it for you because it actually is worth playing for. Suffice it to say everything in the kingdom and with your family isn’t what it seems to be and it was nice to actually have a reason for the things going on in these games.

All in all, graphically the game isn’t AAA quality but it does look and sound great and I didn’t run into any major bugs, and I did love my time with the game and I will be pumping more into it. A solid 8/10 from me, best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

As always with these thing, my first order of business is to thank the great people at NIS America for once again hooking me up with a review copy of this one. 

  Second this review will be a bit different, The prinny collection is two separate games in one, so I will give a quick run down of each, what I thought of it and give you a score.

 First game on the block is Phantom Brave: the Hermuda Triangle Remastered 

 Phantom Brave is about Marona and Ash solving issues around the Ivoire Islands. Marone has the ability to summon phantoms to battle enemies, though she has to stick them into trees and bushes or weapons that are laying around. The concept is nice and it makes for some interesting choices to make in combat. Certain allies are better inside of certain objects, for example do you put your healer or mage inside of the bush that will raise their magic abilities?

  Each summon will only last a set amount of turns and when they disappear so will the object they were in, so you can’t summon everything at once the start or else you and Marone are fighting alone, and in a tactical RPG that is pretty much a death sentence.

     There are no major issues within the game such as game breaking bugs but there are some issues. The game looks good, but the options to change the settings don’t always seem to do much which is a bit odd and after the release day update the crashes seem to be gone in my experience but some reviewers report they still exist, so I am very open to the idea that I was simply lucky. I love tactics games but Phantom Brave for me is a miss and with the current issues while absolutely playable, I cant give this more than a 6/10. The music is great but I don’t see the hype for this one.

Next up is Soul Nomad & The World Eaters

 

This game is going to be a weird one for me, because to start I have to say, oof. This game spells the word leader,”leaber” right out the gate. That should tell you the level of we aren’t fixing a damn thing we are looking at here. Even the graphics are pretty much just upscaled and while Phantom Brave is running at or near 6FPS, don’t expect that here.

That being said, I am here for the whole 30 hour ride that it takes to see multiple endings. This game does nothing new at all, but Gig as a villain that lives in your head does not have a care in the world. He has waited 200 years for his chance at freedom and he is happy to insult you for however long it takes for you to let him take your body. And while they could have taken out the fact he calls you and your friend retarded, they didn’t.

This is however at its core, just another tactical RPG similar to Shining Force or Final Fantasy Tactics. Nothing about it reinvents the wheel or even makes it better, and outside of Gig even the characters aren’t special and as far as remasters go this one is lazy. It is a fun play through, but I can’t in good conscience give it more than a 7/10

This will sound weird though, while I did give the games a 6 and 7 I am going to score the actual title itself as an 8 and here is why. For $40 you are still getting two full games in one set, one of which that even if I don’t get it many people love, and it is the definitive edition with Phantom Brave and on PC its $20 anyway. Soul Nomad is also a game many people missed out on playing and in my opinion a 30 hour game that is solid also isn’t a bad deal. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Fort Triumph is a tactical RPG blended with a turn bases strategy almost board game like map that I would like to thank my friends from CookieByte games and Plan of Attack for hooking with a review code for.

Taking many plays from the XCOM play book, the game plays in the usual turn based way. The place this one changes is the world itself not only can be, but is encouraged. Many battles are won and lost on manipulating your enemy behind a tree you can knock over onto them or your mistake of where you stand.

The battle system itself is both fun an intuitive and while it can be harsh at times I never really felt it was unfair or that losing was anything other than me screwing up. You also have the option of turning permadeath on or off, which is great if you want that extra challenge. Even with it off however, if someone does you do essentially have to rehire them.

The story itself is a bit harder to get into as it broken into different campaigns, such as humans or goblins etc. The stories are entertaining and have a nice sense of humor.

The game itself is a lot of fun to play, and it is honestly one of the better games like this I have played on the PS4. There were no graphical issues that I came across, the story made me laugh and the gameplay was challenging but fair. The only issue I really had was there was little to no explanation on how to build up your base or why you should build each building an because of this it was possible to find yourself in weird situations where you would need upgrades that weren’t available to you. This also could be from the fact the world is procedurally generated though. The game is still a great 8/10. Best wishes and may the gaming gods smile upon you.