Reviews – Page 35 – Savior Gaming

Final Fantasy 16 Review

It took me awhile to play this one honestly, I usually pick the Final Fantasy games right away, but sadly life got in the way for this one. But damn if it wasn’t worth the wait.

The game starts out with you training to be your brother Joshua’s shield as he was chosen by Phonix to be what they call a dominant and have the ability to summon it. This has made you very unliked by your mother, even if your brother is pretty sickly it seems.

This opening prologue which is as long as many games entire chapters sets you up well. It teaches you the basics of combat and how to use your powers. It also sets the story in motion letting you know about some sort of issue killing the land known as the “Blight” that won’t be explained in detail until later chapters. To make matters worse there is a huge war being fought by numerous parties.

Final Fantasy 16 is also a much more mature iteration than games have been in the past, with foul language and blood everywhere at times. It is actually quite nice to see the emotional reaction of Clive having lost everything screaming obscenities. This is exactly what we see and hear in the prologue chapter as Clive witnesses the death of his brother at the hands of Ifirit and the destruction of his home before being taken away as essentially a slave solider.

The world of FF16 is very complex and beautiful, watching two summons try to kill each other is a treat, and seeing wild Chocobo run around the open fields is amazing. I usually go kill them for experience but its a great sight all the same.

The game isn’t perfect. The side-quests are mostly just busy work most notably early on and the combat while beautiful feels shallow much of the time, almost like a toned-down Final Fantasy 14 with some basic attacks and dodges thrown in.

All in all Final Fantasy 16 is a great addition to the series one I am not surprised most fans seemed to enjoy. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Princess Maker 2 Regeneration Review (Nintendo Switch)

I can say a lot of things about this lifesim from the early 90’s that has been redone for today,and I will. Right after I thank Bliss Brain and Gainax for tossing me a copy. It’s always a pleasure.

I won’t go into too much depth with the story, suffice it to say a god gives you a child free of sin to raise after you save a kingdom and you will make many choices that can lead to at least 70 endings. These choices will do things like raise any of I don’t know how many stats, probably around 2 dozen I never counted them. Some have real uses you will see in action like attack and defense for battles. Others are more like cooking or decorum which are things your princess does or how she behaves.

The game plays much like the first,you make a schedule and she will follow it for the month. Send her to work to make some money (apparently her father is a slaver as well as a hero) or send her to school to study things like fencing or horseback riding.

As cute as the game is it does have some fundamental issues, nothing that ruins the game by any means but it does make it harder. I’m not crazy about the chosen font which in a bigger screen is no big deal but if you toss it in your switch lite does get a little harder to read (it is still perfectly legible) and the game doesn’t offer much guidance. For example it doesn’t tell you that the 30 gold it cost for classes or per day, and you can only send your princess to class for parts of the month not single days. It’s a very quick way to burn through your cash.

I’m sure the game came with an instruction manual back in the day,but today it does not. And while graphically it’s improved and the controls aren’t bad at the price they are asking I would have like more done to it. The game is still fun and is a 6 out of 10. Id pick it up on sale for fans of the genre. Best wishes and may the Gaming gods bring you glory.

Godzilla X Kong: New Empire Review

Oh monsterverse we meet again. As a life long Godzilla fan, way back to watching the original movies with my dad when it was just a guy smashing toys while wearing a rubber suit until today watching them with my children I have always loved Kaiju. I remember watching Kong scale the Empire State Building in awe as planes attached to strings shot him and the two fight each other. Seeing them together will always bring a smile to my face.

Now something new brings a smile to my face. It’s this picture.

The real question is how does it hold up to all the other movies in the monsterverse? Well simply put very well. The movie starts out with Kong out on patrol of his territory in the Hollow Earth searching for more of his own kind, suffering from of all things a sore tooth.

This will eventually lead him to the surface which worries humanity as after our last movie there is a deal between kings and Godzilla,kong stays below and Godzilla stays above. Each has their own territory and they don’t encroach on the others domain.

That is until a new hole and area of the Hollow Earth opens up and Kong discovers he is no longer the last of his species. There is a whole lot of them left under the tyrannical rule of the Skar King and his pet the titan Shimo which is honestly just ice breathing Godzilla.

The movie is largely following Kong and a child of his species as they bond and attempt to free their species from Skar, and when Kong loses his fight and is greatly injured he attempts to enlist Godzilla to help in his fight. I won’t spoil the details of how this comes to pass, but anyone familiar with how the Godzilla franchise has always worked knows he has a flight inclined counterpart that has always had the ability to make him see reason and do the right thing.

The action scenes look amazing as they have in all of the movies so far,and while this has been my least favorite of them all so far it was still an entertaining and well made movie worth a watch. Best wishes and may the Gaming gods bring you glory.

Capes (Xbox review)

Capes from Daedalic Entertainment and Spitfire Interactive, which they were kind enough to toss me a review copy, is a tactical turn-based RPG. Think X-Com with superheroes.

The game itself plays the same as most games like this. You take turns moving your characters, using skills or attacks, and you get a handy turn order bar off on the right. The ability to disarm enemies is also a nice touch. It feels cool to teleport in, hit a spin move, and knock guns out of someone’s hands.

That some up the gameplay, and honestly if you like X-com and superheroes you will probably enjoy this, but the game isn’t all sunshine and rainbows. For starters the characters themselves look for lack of a better phrase, odd. They have a cell-shaded look to them that is very inconsistent between fights, your hero lair,and what I will call story-boards because I can’t in good conscience call them cut scenes. In fact,at first I wasn’t entirely sure the people I just fought with were the people talking.

The battles themselves are on smaller maps and are rather short which I like, but leveling up characters to feel more powerful was kind of a chore to me. I never really felt like a superhero during battles because even run of the mill goons could somehow wreck my day. I don’t mind the difficulty of the game, but at least let me fight other people with powers so Dave the security guard doesn’t drop my supposed super-heroes.

The game isn’t nad tho by any means, but at $40 there is better out there. You will definitely want to wait for a sale on this 6/10 superHero game. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Primal Survivors Xbox Review

Primal Survivors from Old School Vibes is a sort of bullet storm twin stick shooter. Think Vampire Survivors. Don’t let that comparison fool you however this is a much smaller budget game and isn’t anywhere near as in depth. But is it as good?

The game lets you choose between one of two weapons,you can either chuck bones or rocks at the enemy. They are similar except one is faster and does slightly less damage. Both are perfectly viable options and you won’t be putting yourself at a disadvantage by choosing one over the other.

As any long time reader knows, when I review games I only compare them to other titles in the same genre and at a similar price point.

As you level up you get new abilities in the form of cards,each with it’s own little perk so to speak. Some will let you collect souls that summon help or will give you more damage or faster attacks. Many let you burn or poison enemies. This is where the strategy and randomness comes into it.

The game looks solid for a budget title and it does lack enemy variety with there only being a handful of them. There are also only 3 bosses but each one is quite different and will take some skill to get the best of. I don’t say any of this as a bad thing, the replayability you hope from a game like this absolutely exists, there are permanent upgrades to get different builds to master and play with. Everything you expect from the genre is present.

As an added bonus, with the short run time (10-15 minutes per run) it’s very friendly towards gamers that just don’t have a lot of time. And with that time there are 1000 game points you can rack up fast. I got about 900 in one run.

As anyone knows when I review games I only compare them to games in the same genre and at a similar price point,and here is where this game sort of gets punished in a way. The game is solid,I enjoyed my time with it a lot. And I truly hope the devs keep up with it and add more to it. But the game is being compared to Vampire Survivors. They cost pretty much the same amount and vampire survivor is a much better game with far more to do and play with. This game is a solid 7/10, and if you are looking for quick points to up that gamer score this is for you. Or if you want to scratch that twin shooter itch with something faster to play this is also a great option. But there are better options. Best wishes and may the Gaming gods bring you glory.

Democracy 4: Console edition Xbox Review

Democracy 4: Console edition was recently released by Auroch Digital and they were kind enough to toss me a copy to review,and it’s always appreciated.

Have you ever wondered what would happen if you were put in charge of America as it’s newly elected president and you got to put all those policies you argued about on the Internet? For example if you got rid of those pesky guns, taxed the rich, pumped money into science and forced every trial to have a jury? If you guessed you would piss everyone off and you would lose the next election you would be right. The economy does pretty well tho.

Also if you decided to simply get rid of most taxes, cut off all welfare and most other spending you would also pretty much piss everyone off. Turns out Americans do not like insane changes like that.

If you take it slow and make changes here and there while making sure you don’t make too many drastic changes and keep your promises you have a chance at re-election. Really what you make of your time in the office is up to you. I found a lot of fun seeing what I could do to really upset people. For example one term in office I managed to get 0% of the votes while making less than 50% of voters vote. In fact I managed about 650 votes in total.

Winning reelection also isn’t super hard depending on what you try to achieve. Want to lower crime as America isn’t hard,good luck trying to balance the budget tho and keeping your job.

Now that you know what the game is though you are probably asking is the game fun? And admittedly there is no simple answer to this. While the game looks nice for what it is, what the game is mostly is just playing with menus,looking through graphs and figuring out what policies to set and how they will mess with the happiness of citizens. For some people like myself this is a lot of fun. I’ve sat there for hours either trying to figure out the best way to bring down crime or how I can possibly get more people to take the bus without destroying my GDP or upsetting my voters.

My girlfriend however watching me play this game was bored out of her mind and asked how I can possibly sit there and play it. I tried to teach her and within 15 minutes she wanted nothing to do with it. The game is very easy to learn with a very well done tutorial and is quite intuitive. But it isn’t for everyone. If you like this sort of game it is a solid 9/10 experience and well worth the price. If not,this won’t get you into this type of game. Best wishes and may the Gaming gods bring you glory.

Lesson Learned Xbox Review

Lesson Learned is a game from MadGameSmith and Gaming Factory that they tossed me a prologue for and they tossed me the full game for which i am extremely grateful for.

Lesson Learned is a tower defense game at its heart. You play as a school kid that woke up in a weird world where you must defend your base that you and your friends will collect different resources such as wood,rocks and slime to build different types of towers to kill enemies.

Graphically the game is nice and watching the characters chop down trees while monsters are shot with arrows is a joy. The game is definitely designed with kids in mind as there isn’t really any blood or gore involved and on hard the game is still approachable while providing a challenge for older kids but easy shouldn’t provide much of a challenge.

The sound is nice as well with the music never getting annoying the the characters yelling as monsters approach but not being scary as again I feel it is made for kids.

Achievement hunters will also find a reason to play this as you can easily collect 1000 points simply by playing through the game with all of them collected simply by playing through the game on any difficulty. The game isn’t long or short and has a nice flow to it as well with me completing it in less than 10 hours and probably will go back and finish everything on every difficulty in less than 15.

The game is a joy to play and I highly recommend it, 9/10. Best wishes and may the Gaming gods bring you glory.

Ikonei Island: An Earthlock Adventure

Ikonei Island is a cute and cozy little life sim with some pirate battling elements to it. There is plenty to keep you busy however.

The game starts with you and some friends becoming shipwrecked on an island. The island itself is quite large,I believe 14 areas in total. Each full of animals to discover,pirates to fight, statues to fix and things to build.

The game is honestly very well done if not a bit more geared towards children. I don’t say this as a bad thing,simply a warning for those that may be looking for a more mature title.

The game play itself has a nice loop and learning pattern of swapping between characters (if you want) planting crops, feeding animals which you can possess to do things you need to get done such as pollinating crops.

The game itself is fun,if not a bit flawed at times,such as when you are fighting and your view gets blocked by rocks. Nothing major but small things like this happen enough to be annoying. The game is a solid 7/10 however and is worth playing. Best wishes and may the Gaming gods bring you glory.

Zombies, Aliens and Guns Xbox Review

Zombies,Aliens and Guns is one of those games that doesn’t give you a lot to say about it. The title says a lot and it is pretty from in center in terms of what the game is.

First the game is a shooter,you grab your gun shoot, you guessed it, Zombies and Aliens. Each level is some variation of collect boxes, help people escape or ride a vehicle from point A to Point B while protecting it.

The game has simple yet nice graphics and most importantly is fun to play. It’s a throwback to a time when games were simplistic and just fun to play. That doesn’t mean the game is easy,there were a couple later levels that really ticked me off a bit. But what you see is what you get,and at a $6 price point,it’s a short romp into the past and some quick and easy achievements. Definitely pick this one up if you want something that’s easy to pick up and play. 9/10,you won’t find much better at this price point. Best wishes and may the Gaming gods bring you glory.

Moonglow Bay PlayStation review

Moonglow Bay from the Small Indy company Bunnyhug is a sort of fishing RPG. It takes place in a small Canadian town that has been having problems ever since the local fishing industry crumbled.

You play the role of a 60 something year old accountant that lost his wife shortly after moving to Moonglow bay. Now he is reopening the family business. The general game loop is wake up,go fishing,cook meals and sell them. In between you can buy things for your boat, do missions for the locals and of course donate fish to the museum to attract new customers.

Graphically the game is cute and the sound lends itself nicely to the environment the game has created. The fishing mini games work well and aren’t overly complicated but also aren’t so simplistic as to be boring.

The game has some issues, nothing major but enough to be annoying. For example walking in your house is painfully slow,and the ability to fast travel around town would have been amazing. None of this takes away from the enjoyment of the game,in fact fans of cozy life sims really need to pick this one up. A fun 8/10 that fans of the genre won’t want to miss. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.