Category: Game reviews

As always, first and foremost, thank you, everyone, over at NIS America for hooking me up with a review copy of these games. I say games because while you buy them together they are two games in the same series.

First I will get the stories out of the way. In Langrisser 1 you play as Prince Ledin. After your home country is attacked you set out to retrieve the sword that was stolen and you are bound to protect as it can be used to unseal the forces of darkness.

In Langrisser 2, you play as Elwin, a man trapped between two warring factions and it will be your job to figure out the best way to bring peace to the world.

The games themselves play basically the same way. They are strategy RPG’s from the bygone era when the likes of Shining Force and such were just getting started. You move your characters across the map and different characters are better against other unit types. Enemy charging you with horses? Defend yourself with spearmen. Counter spearmen with regular infantry or take down those pesky flying enemies with bowmen. Is it better to take down individual soldiers one at a time or to aim for enemy commanders so the whole squad retreats? These are all choices you will have to make in each battle and those choices I never got tired of making.

This game has seen many upgrades from the original version from sound to visuals and even new characters. This helps when you are trying to see the over 20 endings both games offer and well over 500 outcomes for each character. The games have great replay value and as a fan of old fashioned RPG’s like this, and someone that missed the original release I truly appreciate the ability to bounce between the remastered and original art styles. This is one of those series I didn’t know I missed or wanted until now, and I am happy I found out. The game is beautiful, the sound is great and any fan of the genre should pick it up. 9/10 from me, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Before we get this one started, as always, I want to take a minute to thank that guys and gals over at Plan of Attack, Obsidian Entertainment, and Red Cerberus a huge thank you for the review code so we could play what I can only describe as a masterpiece of its genre. It is truly an honor to be chosen to play a game to review, and while I fully plan to bash this one a bit, it deserves plenty of praise as well.

First the story. I will start by saying you do not HAVE to play POE1 to enjoy POE2, it is however very helpful. Depending on what choices you make there are returning characters and they will make comments and mention of the last game as you return to the role of the Watcher and Eothas awakens from under your home at Caed Nua.

Eothas is a god, and a god that decides people need to die, and your soul, at least in part, belongs to him. Now why this occurs I won’t be talking about, you will have to chase him down across the world of to find that out yourself, which leads to what I believe is the best addition to the series, your boat.

The boat works as your main form of transportation around the Deadfire Islands, and you can not have a game with islands and boats without pirates. What do pirates do? They attack ships.

Ship fights require you to have a crew, cannons and so much more. The better the crew, the better your ship will operate. Have a big ship and a skeleton crew? Things won’t go so well. Have a well-trained crew with plenty of cannons and food but forgot to buy cannonballs? You are still in trouble. You will always need to make sure there is food and shot for everyone to avoid a mutiny, and if things go bad, prepare to be boarded. This all works both ways tho, and you should feel free to do the same to anyone silly enough to annoy you.

The battle system is also a strong point in this game if you like Isometric style RPG’s. From the start, you have two options, real-time with pause where the action is always going and you can pause it when you need a second to make some choices. The other choice (and the way I played it most of the time) Turn-based. This was added in the 5.0 PC version and will be familiar to those that play Xcom 2. Regardless of how you choose to play it, you will never be at a loss for strategy and things to kill. On the lower difficulties, you can make a mistake here or there and be fine but at the higher ones, the small mistakes mean certain death.

Speaking difficulty there is truly something for everyone. If you don’t have a lot of time but love the story, there is a difficulty for that. Do you want to go all out and see if you can survive the hardest challenges possible undefeated? They got you covered.

Now earlier I did say I would bash the game a little, and here are the bad points. Nothing was a deal-breaker for me, but there were a few things that got to be pretty bad at times. For example a few times I got stuck on what seemed like absolutely nothing and couldn’t move my character. This was easy enough to solve by switching characters and letting the stuck character come over to me on his own. I will also note there was a patch while I was playing that may have patched that out since it hasn’t happened since, but be aware it did occur.

Another thing that got to me was the occasional frame rate drops and slowdowns. At no point did they affect gameplay, they just exist and bother some people more than others. For me, I don’t care if they don’t last more than a second or two and these didn’t. My last complaint is my biggest tho. Even on a PS4 Pro, this game has some significant load times. They are far from the worst I have run into, but when you have to sit through a few in a row it gets to a guy.

Bottom line tho when push comes to shove, this is early 2020 PS4 game of the year candidate for me. The game is beautiful, the story and world are well crafted and the sound and voice acting is top-notch. 9/10 must-play for RPG fans.

DragonBall FighterZ is the DBZ fighting game people wanted for years and never truly got. This beautiful 2D fighter quickly became loved by people that grew tired of Marvel vs Capcom or simply love fighting games and wanted something new to sink their teeth into. The graphics are beautiful and the sounds are outstanding. The character selection starting out was nice and has been expanded nicely since launch.

There is also no shortage of things to do in the game itself with online and offline fighting modes, things to collect and even modes to simply watch. There is not a lot to say here, if you are a DBZ fan or a fan of fighting games, it is worth picking up. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Dragon Ball Z Kakarot is another DBZ game once again tells the story from when Raditz shows up until the end of the Buu Saga. Despite the name of the game, you will also spend most of the game NOT controlling Kakarot. When you do control him tho you will pretty much feel like a god much of the time which is nice.

The graphics are undeniably amazing and the sound is exactly what you would want. Most importantly from this RPG (and yes it is an RPG) is you will get to explore the world of DBZ. Fly around and check things out, visit towns hunt animals, go fishing explore to your heart is content. Maybe kick around some robots or Saiba men.

You can learn new moves or power them up with experience, or by training in special areas tho some moves are locked behind certain criteria. For example, don’t expect to go Super Saiyan before Goku would in the show or to defeat Raditz with a Spirit Bomb.

Another nice touch is when you eat you are given a permanent stat boost. This is why eating is important, along with that is a temporary boost that can make quite a bit of difference. I don’t want to talk about much besides the basics because there is a lot to do and I don’t want to spoil it. To me, this was the best DBZ game ever made tho I wouldn’t argue with those that prefer Fighter Z, which coincidently is tomorrow’s review. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.