Tag: Reviews

As always, first thing is first a huge thank you to the guys over at Plan of Attack for hooking me up with a review code for this one. It is always great to be considered and even better to be chosen.

The first thing to cover is the graphics, they obviously are not AAA quality but you shouldn’t expect them to be. They are still both beautiful and creepy as hell. They serve their purpose magnificently and truth be told, I wouldn’t change them at all even if I could. The way lights flicker during certain events and things seem to just flash on the screen. As a life long fan of horror movies and games, I was excited to play this game but I was quite nervous. It looked great, but I wasn’t sure it would deliver.

The sound, was 100% what it needed to be. The subtle moans or or creeks you can hear in the background at times are outstanding. When a lightbulbs break they sound pretty much like real lightbulbs. When you slide a door open and and enter a room and you hear the static on a T.V. it all just sells the experience in ways that I couldn’t have asked for more.

I won’t get into the story because that was my favorite part, but I will say this, it is dark and beautiful and SadSquare has my respect for being willing to tell the story they did. In good conscience I can’t forget to tell you the opening is essentially the reason trigger warnings exist. It doesn’t shy away from the story is telling. These things aren’t done for no reason and it will all be explained. It isn’t there for shock value.

The controls themselves work well, though the first person thing isn’t really my thing it is pretty cool and I thought using the L and R buttons to pick things up and such was pretty awesome. I liked to just randomly pick things up and move cups and stuff. It didn’t serve much of a purpose but I did enjoy putting cups on on random shelves. I am easily entertained. The actual purpose of this is to put candles for light on plates or on candle holders that are placed around and to fix lights.

Now the part we are all waiting for, is this game worth buying? Quite honestly, Yes. Absolutely yes. Fans of horror games need to add this to their must play list. This game is an 8/10. With multiple endings there is plenty of reason to play more than once, and each one changes more than enough to make them worth seeing. It is 100% savior approved. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

First thing is first, as always, a huge shout out to the guys and gals over at Focus Home Interactive for giving me a review copy of this expansion. Anyone that follows the blog knows I am a huge fan of the series and have been for years. For those that aren’t familiar with this expansion here is the launch trailer.

This expansion has a lot of content, starting with a new map. Of course this is where I started things. I was surprised to discover, cows. Yes instead of the typical have some fields and machines to grow and harvest some crops you are given a couple cows, some money and the machines you need to feed them.

This is your first taste of the new things in the game as you can instantly just walk over and grab the walking mower.

The new map is honestly one of my favorites in the series, it is simply beautiful. It also may be one of the biggest in the series, but that I truthfully can’t say. The views are great though, and if you are like me and you occasionally just like to go for a quick drive around the map this is a great place to do it. That all doesn’t matter because while the map is great, is there anything new to play with?

The answer is a resounding yes. There are around 30 new ones, many of which I still haven’t gotten to play with. There are new small tractors, plows and cultivators from companies like pottinger, Sip and Rigitrac. As you would expect they all function amazingly and serve a specific purpose. Many of them actually made raising animals for me much easier.

The only really down side to the expansion is simply this, if you don’t love Farming Simulator, this isn’t going to change your mind. This is more of the same, and for fans of the series that is what we wanted. We have more things to play with, new ways to raise our animals and a new place to do it in. Honestly, that is all I really wanted and expected from it. For fans of Farming Simulator 19 looking for a reason to step back onto the farm, this is it. A must own expansion for fans. 9/10, pretty much everything an expansion should be.

As always with these things, I would love to give a huge shout out to NIS America for hooking me up with this one and this time a second shout out to my friend Erik that helped me review this one. The game is massive as is the series itself going beyond just these four games, so having a second set of eyes to help me catch certain things was greatly appreciated.

There are a few things to get out of the way, for example you can play this game without the other three, you will however you will be doing a great disservice to one of the best stories you will find on the PlayStation 4. I won’t go into the story of the other three games because that isn’t why we are here. The story to this bad boy however finishes off the story of Class 7 nicely. With  The Erebonian Empire about to be at one hell of a war, you will go on a quest to save the world. You should know it takes place right after where three leaves off as a cliff hanger with one of the main characters in captivity.

Now if you are worried about the game play itself, the battle system is essentially the third with some upgrades. This isn’t a bad thing though because the battle system has always been a strong suit here. The classic turned based battles, beautiful graphics and amazing sound mixing together to create an experience not to be missed for RPG fans.

I honestly don’t have a lot to say about the game itself because I feel like I would be betraying the experience. From the very start as you get to know the new class 7 as you try to find Rean to the very end when you are fighting side by side with some of the series most iconic heroes, there is just something to always be looking forward to.

As for the score, this one is obviously going to be 9/10. Loved this game and thought it finished off everything nicely. Erik however as a fan of the series gave it a 10/10 and thought it finished everything up pretty much perfectly and gave us something from not only the Trails series the entire games series.

As always with these things, huge shout out to ININ games for hooking us up with a copy of Umihara Kawase BaZooKa!

What at first I thought would be nothing more than a variation of the Smash formula turned out to be so much more. While yes that obviously exist, as you can tell from the trailer, there is also a full challenge mode you can play, which for you trophy hunters is mandatory if you want this pretty easy platinum to pick up. I know how much of a selling point that is for some of you.

The controls are admittedly a little sluggish and the graphics will let some of you down, but as with most ININ games these aren’t meant to be AAA titles, they are for people that love the old fashioned classic feel of gaming. This game truly does capture that feeling of nostalgia. As I sat on my bed playing explaining to my daughter what the hell I was playing I recalled my time playing my NES and SNES for hours on end. That being said when my daughter played the game with me, she had no issue playing and she didn’t start gaming until the Xbox 360 era. They always manage to walk that fine like between classic feel and new age gaming.

That all being said, there isn’t much of a story here and the game play can be repetitive. Outside of a multiplayer party setting or trophy hunting outside of some quick nostalgia fun or to kill some time before leaving for work, this isn’t something you will want to play for hours on end. I did like popping it on for 15 or 20 minutes here or there though. Each character also feels pretty much the same outside of their special moves.

With all that taken into account this is a solid 7/10 for me. If you like that classic feel and this sort of game, its a good buy for you. If you don’t however, save your money. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

First and foremost, huge shout out to the guys and gals over at Sekai Games, with developer Mr.Tired Media for hooking me up with this one. I wasn’t truly sure what I was in for, but this close to Halloween and it being October you guys know I was all too happy to play anything with the word undead in it.

First and foremost, this is a dungeon crawling RPG with turn-based combat. It kind of reminds me of the old first person dungeon crawler system of Persona, fully equipped with an automapping tool so you know where you have been. When you enter combat, it has a Phantasy Star 4 vibe, you see your characters from behind choose your attacks and some moves will even combine to make new moves. The only real issue I had here was that weapons eventually break (though they can be repaired before that happens) but this was hardly a major thing, it just annoyed me.

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While the battle system is fun and easy to get used to, it isn’t anything we as gamers haven’t seen before. The story however was something I found refreshing and worth the time. You will wake up to find your childhood friend a zombie, but not he eating you kind. It turns out some zombies retain their humanity and these can be cured. The rest aren’t so lucky. Why you haven’t turned and how your father is connected to all this is quickly explained before you are on your way, with some of it outright mocking the fact that it doesn’t exactly make sense and you shouldn’t be asking questions because it ruins the narrative.

The story is full of small nods to video game and horror movie tropes that are fully acknowledged as being what they are and mocked or admittedly ignored. You will meet new characters, many of which will admit to the the fact things are messed up but go along with it anyway and always in a humorous manner even to the point the monsters themselves are explained something that are there and one of the lovely zombie ladies comments she wises she was one of the cute ones instead of a zombie.

All in all at the price point and as a fan of RPGs this is one of the better ones in that range. Definitely an 8/10 from me. For what the game is and was trying to be it succeeds beautifully.

First, once again huge shout out to the guys over at https://twitter.com/PQubeGames for tossing us a review code for a game I honestly had no clue was based on an anime but wanted to play anyway because the name instantly made me ask the question, what is this game about?

Well for better or worse the game is not about picking up women in a dungeon. You will play as two characters, Bell Cranel and Ais Wallenstien as their separate stories unfold and cross paths. It is a very basic story that matches a very basic dungeon crawler. I don’t say any of that as an insult though.

The combat is quite simple, mostly just typical hack and slash with some special moves. There are some difficulty spikes if you don’t make it a point to grind out some items and such to upgrade your equipment. Weapons upgrades and even some new weapons and armor themselves require you to sell certain items at the store itself.

The quest system however is where the game sadly loses me. It is basically just a matter of go to the guild, accept a quest run though the same basic dungeon levels, kill enemies, get to the stairs or find the items, and the quest is over. This is pretty easy to use but it doesn’t really make for interesting gameplay in the long term but it is essentially necessary for playing the game in full.

Graphically the game isn’t going to outshine the competition but I enjoy the cute anime like cut-scenes and such and the sound also is nothing special, but serves the purpose it is intended for. I never felt the music was out of place or taking away from what I was doing. The game however would be better off played by fans of the series or for more hardcore fans of dungeon crawlers as I feel the more casual base will really just feel let down. This game is a nice 7/10 for me. I enjoyed it, but it clearly was made for fans of that series. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

As always I like to be upfront with these things, so a huge shout out to the guys and gals over at PQube for the review copy of this one. Always love being chosen for these things and this is no exception.

That being said, this game has received some mixed reviews and they are honestly quite deserved. I would LOVE to go through this whole review, but truth be told if anyone does that they are really just doing it as a challenge and aren’t being totally honest. The game starts out fast, but you will essentially finally be old enough to go get your first Nexomon. You will be attacked by a wild creature, though this one is a huge dragon, and someone will show up and let you choose your first. Unlike Pokemon tho you get nine choices, don’t beat yourself up over it though, you can get them all a little later anyway.

From here your adventure will start with you hiding in a cave and having to escape by fighting your way through some wild Nexomon which you can catch. You will quickly notice however that power leveling serves very little purpose since the wild pok…I mean Nexomon, will level with you. This is actually nice because it creates an environment where you can explore where you choose and catch what you want to use.

The story is actually pretty good and is quite a bit more mature than most Pokemon clones, it is also quite a bit more challenging. The game also has quite the sense of humor to it and doesn’t shy away from making fun of itself.

Part of my biggest issue with the game is the difficulty comes mostly from the fact that in a battle or two your team will be totally drained. Even evolving doesn’t much help the situation at least early on. Healing is also done at some weirdly positioned buildings and while i understand what they were going for with the whole feeding the Nexomon and using different traps it didn’t always feel right. The balance just always seemed off in both battles and trapping.

All in all I have to admit the game was very enjoyable. I will even so far as to say its the best Pokemon clone I have played. The game isn’t perfect, but for me it was good enough and the right support for some balancing issues it would be even better. I give this game a 7/10. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

This is one of those games that I wasn’t sure about so I hit up my good friends over at Sometimes You and said hey guys, mind telling me more? And they said here just play it! Ok none of that is true, but they did toss me a review code and for that i am grateful.

Swordbreaker starts off with a quick little story that explains why your character about how our adventurer ends up hearing about the castle where our game takes place, and how he ends up going there.

The game has a very simple premise, one that I thought I would hate. It plays out like a sort of choose your own adventure graphic novel. You read short paragraph about your surroundings with some amazing artwork to go along with it. Each choice you make will change events of the story, some times for the better sometimes for the worse. Luckily when making the game they decided to be quite forgiving, you can die three times before they force you to restart entirely. For me this not only encouraged me to take more risk, it also made me test out some of the silly options to see what would happen. By the way, many of the silly options can be quite worth it.

The game has over 300 scenes to view and at least 3 “proper” ends that involve making it through the entire castle. There are numerous others, mostly involving you dying. The choices however aren’t just simply this or that and that is it. Most of the choices have future repercussions or even benefits. I once saved a character just to find out 20 minutes later it could save me a ton of time figuring out a puzzle.

All in all there isn’t a ton to say about this game. A single play through may take 2 minutes because you made a lot of bad choices, might take about 45 minutes or an hour. The story is pretty good and has some nice twist and turns. I can easily recommend this game to anyone that just wants to relax. 8/10, best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.