Little Nightmares (PS4): Only a little.

I took a swing on this one at the recommendation of my siblings. I'll be 100 percent honest going in I didn't really know anything about it. But since its an indie game, going by its title and I had a general idea. But I never really had the opportunity to play it. It was always kinda on my back burner. Well after a random flash sale had the complete version down to 10 bucks, I figured why the hell not.

LITTLE NIGHTMARES: COMPLETE EDITION(PS4)

As is the case with a number of these types of games, we don't get a whole lot of story to start with and are left to figure it out as we play. When we start the game, we are greeted by a dark and foggy screen. As the fog begins to clear we see the form of a person start to take shape. Clearing further we make out that it appears to be a geisha in a kimono, and slowly she starts to turn to the camera. 

Eventually she sharply faces the 4th wall, and we cut to a small child (named Six apparently) jarring awake from sleep. She is tiny if less than a foot tall, wearing a yellow raincoat with a hood that covers her face. She is currently trapped on a traveling ship called "the Maw" and after awakening, leaves to find an escape.

Honestly, after the waking up the game pretty much immediately begins and I really only have Wikipedia to confirm that the location is called the maw, and I'm basically just guessing that she is trying to escape.  Pretty much from the word go you take control of the game so any story that you can gather comes from the pieces you can put together as you proceed along the game. 

And right from the word go, and rather unsurprisingly, Little Nightmares confirms what I guessed and that the play is that of the spooky indie puzzle platformer variety a la Limbo, Unravel, or Inside.  Its got a pretty functionally simple control scheme for the most part, although I will say some button combo's don't feel very intuitive which I will get into later.

You use your analog to move, you have jump button, a run button, and grab so you can pick up objects and pull levers. If you have played the aforementioned Limbo or Inside the control scheme is going to feel very familiar to you. There is also a button to crouch and sneak/slide but for the most part these indie platformers really like to stick to simple game design and sell their product with impressive visuals and subtle story telling.

I will say though, unlike the previous two titles I've compared to, Little Nightmares operates on a full three dimensional plane, so you aren't just moving left or right like a classic Mario game. When you press up or down, you move in the fore and background. Some of the maps will require you to change your directions, and there are some chase sequences that involve this as well. It only became a point of frustration when trying to tightrope on some pathway, veering too far up or down, and falling off and usually falling to my death.

Little Nightmares is pretty fair with checkpoints though, so if you do happen to bumble with ledge like that, you can count on being respawned relatively close to where you fell in the first place so its not going to set you back too far. Honestly with the exception of one section of the game, this was the way I most frequently died until I adjusted to the control scheme.

It's not a very long game either, and I'm waffling if that is to its benefit or detriment. Full story, with no DLC chapers is about 5 levels long and holds roughly about a 2-3 hour play time. Granted its not a full release, but Inside managed to cram 8 hours into their game. The question is what is the appropriate length for a game like this, because I will be the first to admit that after a while it felt like Inside was getting a little too long. Now, that is just on my assessment of the start to finish of the main game. There are 3 DLC levels I have not got to yet and that might appropriately flesh out length, although for a game this size it probably couldn't have hurt to just include it in the main game.

During the course of gameplay there are handful of different "collectibles" you can gather for trophies. As you play through the game there are lanterns to light, little geisha dolls you can smash, and then if you look in the nooks and crannies, little people called Nooms skitter away and hide. But if you can find where they end up hiding you can pick them up and give them a hug, which I think changes the ending slightly? I have been told there is only one ending, which is a little disappointing. Since this is one of those games without scripts they could have tweaked the ending to chance the subtext. Would have added some replayability to a shorter game. This worked really well in the early Atelier series, and would have done well here too.

It's got a very interesting visual style, as most of these indie platformers do. While streaming it my mom (yes my mom watches my stream, I'm popular), she described it as a darker version of The Borrowers. If I had to describe its visual style, I would say its as if Tim Burton did his take on the Spirited Away. With the exception of the Geisha, the nooms, and Six, all the of the enemies in this game have this bloated or grotesque form to them to the point where it looked like they were wearing skin that isn't theirs. It certainly has a fucked up look that supplements the dark tone of the game well.

Seriously, I think this exact blocking occurs in a Studio Ghibli movie.

There really isn't a lot for me to nitpick here either. The game is dark, but with an title like Little Nightmares I guess I was expecting the game to be scary. It really wasn't. Dark, oppressive, somber, but it really wasn't scary. Again, a nitpick at best, because I don't think being scary was the games intention. It really just wanted a dark undertone, and it basically nails it there.

I've already complained about the length of the game somewhat, but the length can be subjective really. A few hours can be the perfect length for some, but 5 levels for 20 bucks? 8 levels for 30? I dunno, despite me getting it on sale for less I still can't help but feel a little bit of short changed. I paid about 10 for the complete edition of the game and that seemed like more fair price to me.

The biggest issues I had with the game through is that some of the mechanics don't feel like they were properly optimized. The crouch and grab are on the shoulders and run and jump are on the face buttons. Despite them being in the positions where you would typically find these buttons in other games, they never felt natural to me in a way that felt right. I could run and jump with ease, but if I needed to slide or grab something on the fly (like climb a chain) holding down the trigger never felt natural to me. I would lose my grip, or fail to grab something.

But the biggest frustrations I had came in the 4th level in a spot that wasn't even really a puzzle.  There is a segment where you basically have run across a table and avoid gorging heavy patrons or else they will shove you into their mouth. Once you do this, you need to leap off the table to a climbable wall. The problem I was having is I was having real issues with the grab radius. When you see something reach with full extent of their arm, by most video game logic you would think that you have safely found the range to avoid losing in this segment. This is not the case here, and the grabs were always just a bit more than I expected them to be. So in trying to avoid getting grabbed, I would walk right into the range of another.

This was only made even more frustrating from when I reached the end, when I would go to make the jump, the physics would not consider me close enough, and basically glitch push me away from the wall. This happened to me like 3 or 4 times which made me think that there was a different solution to get past this area. So naturally, while exploring some other option I was constantly getting killed in the same spot of what otherwise would be a pretty easy game and it was getting immensely frustrating. Lo and behold I actually just needed to step one more step off the ledge to actually get the distanced needed to clear this jump. Fucking annoying.

But if I am being honest I really can't hold that as a point against it, because it was me playing poorly. The circumstance caused a clipping that made me think it was just a poor design, but when pulling clips it really was just my goof. But all things considered It didn't really mar my experience with the game, just added a pointless 20 minutes of fuckuppery.

At the time of writing I haven't gone back and finished the DLC chapters yet, but I intend to do so. All in all I would say that I enjoyed my time with Little Nightmares but I wouldn't say it blew the doors off for me. That isn't the negative knock it sounds like though. The gaming market place is getting pretty flush with arty, minimalistic story platformers. I basically had an idea of what I was getting into when I started this game and it was exactly what I got. I will say the story wasn't what I expected it to be so that was the pleasant surprise.

I honestly really don't have much more I can expound upon here. Little Nightmares is a pretty solid game, although perhaps a little pricier than I would have liked if not on sale. If you are into this style of platformer the it is going to check all the boxes for you. If you are looking for something with a little more meat on it, I would advise for the complete edition of the game.

Evil Within 2 (PS4): Learning from one's mistakes.

Over three years ago, I wrote a bout a game I was very excited to play that ended up being very difficult and very dumb. I played it to finish, but I did not much enjoy myself. That game was The Evil Within and I consider it to be one of the biggest flops and disappointments of 2014. It came from the mind of Shinji Makami (who gave us Resident Evil 4, btw) who I usually expect much better from. I blamed Bethesda getting their dirty hands on it.

So naturally, as you might imagine, I was not exactly rushing to reserve or pick up the the next installment of this game. I did throw it on my Amazon wishlist though and promptly forgot about it. But occasionally Amazon will occasionally let know when a game is on sale, and it eventually dropped to 20. Ok, I'd bite on 20 bucks. So after sitting through my pile while I worked through games I actually wanted to play, I did eventually make time for....

THE EVIL WITHIN 2 (PS4)

Three years have passed since Sebastian Castellanos narrowly escaped the incident at Beacon Mental Hospital and has left the Krimson City Police force. Times have become hard on him as Sebastian as become an embittered alcoholic. He is haunted by dreams of his past, of a house fire that destroyed his home, the life of his daughter Lily, and the departure of his wife Myra. 

After being jarred awake from a drunken stupor by another nightmare, Sebastian awakens to find his former partner and betrayer from the previous title, Juli Kidman seated across from him. He furiously exclaims he's been after her to try to get some answers about the Beacon incident of the prior game but she shuts him down by telling him that his daughter is alive, and that she is currently in the hands of MOBIUS, the shadowy corporation that Kidman is a part of. Lily is in danger, and they want Sebastian's help. After a small scuffle with MOBIUS agents, Sebastian is subdued and taken.

When Sebastian comes to, he learns from Kidman and a MOBIUS administrator that Lily as currently being used as a Core for another STEM device, the machine that allows people to share consciousness. But she has disconnected and has not responded to them. They have sent in teams to fix the problem, but they have gone silent. So despite not trusting MOBIUS or Kidman, Sebastian again plunges into the STEM for a chance to get his daughter back.

Ok, well that is a step in the right direction. Right from the onset of the story we are given a pretty clear and concise storyline, even if a little overused in video games: Broken father's chance at redemption by saving his daughter/wife/girlfriend. That is very easy to follow and gives me a clear and direct goal to achieve. Way better than the previous games "go investigate this murder, and then all this random shit happens."

It's also furthered by slipping in just enough story to remember the last game without dwelling on it. Oh I have to go back into that fucked up machine again that shares consciousness, but it's going to look like a small community of everyday America. Ok, that's a setting that makes more sense, and now the characters can explain the shifts as they happen. We are essentially able to play with settings because we are in a dreamscape. The continuation of the last game's stupid story is indeed still stupid, but we off in the right direction to start.

But what as a nice surprise is that after a brief linear set (basically used to reteach you the game controls) where we meet one of our antagonists, we are then dropped into the town and free to explore. We have a set goal to reach, but we also can find trace memories that open new quests from other people. So as I was wandering towards one of these checkpoints, I saw a woman running and screaming across my path being chased by three Lost (the zombie like standard baddie of this game) and Sebastian narrates "Man she's gonna die if I don't help her, but I really need to save some ammo."

That's when it hit me. Is this actually an open world horror game? I don't think I've actually played an open world horror game before. You could argue that the classic Silent Hill games are open world but there is not really questing to do, just set pieces to find. In the Evil Within 2 I am able to wander the town, and sometimes when I go to investigate a house to find ammo, I might get swept into a survival mission where waves of baddies are coming in, or I get shifted to a new area and have stealth around a very grudge like ghost to get back to the reality I was in.

Some of the behaviors show that the Lost aren't just zombies. This scene is tough to watch.

Giving me the freedom to explore opened the world up and didn't make me feel like the game was linear. I liked that. It felt like the next logical step from how some of Shingi Mikami's previous games like Resident Evil 4 and Shadows of the Damned are designed. We have larger sprawling maps, now we have more options for things to do in them.

So with the previous Evil Within game, I had a lot of complain about with the combat mechanics and stat upgrade systems. It again uses the very familiar 3rd person shooter controls we are all familiar with at this point, and next to useless melee attack, d-pad quick menu options, a stealthy crouch and a loud run with stamina mechanic. If you have played any modern 3rd person shooter I shouldn't need to explain the majority of the buttons. They did add an aim assist feature which I used because I wanted to blow through the game, and to its credit it does help hold your headshots, but you still have to be pretty on point with your aim for it actually lock on. So I don't feel it made the game too easy.

I foolishly ignored my bow gun, but its different arrow types will be super useful later because of the various effects.

But my big complaints were lack of ammo with steep difficulty, and relatively useless stat upgrades. Well, Tango Gameworks and Bethesda addressed the first by introducing a new crafting mechanic to the game. It's small and uncluttered basically with 10 items to use, and almost all of them require gunpowder. You can use this at workbenches to make new ammo or healing items if you are running short, or if you are out in the field and need some in a pinch you can craft from you menu and get some at an increased supply cost. Supplies are found and dropped all over, but It never felt like I was getting too much of it. You can also improve your weapons from the work benches to boost their damage, capacity, reload speed, etc.

So now it feels like I have the ammo to get into some gunfights with the baddies, but not enough that I can run in guns blazing. Which forces me to use the game's stealth mechanic more strategically because if I don't I'd be wasting more ammo than intended. The enemies have really twitchy motions, so you really need to make use the environment to slink around and stay hidden and moving slowly so you can get your instant kill stabs off and as many as you can before needing to resort to the gun. This makes for incredibly tense situations where you are desperately trying to take down enemies as quickly and quietly as possible to stretch your ammo a little further.

It works even better in new maps with tight corridors, because you just know something is going to pop out and rattle you. Yes, it manages to actually raise horror tension in a open world game which did way the hell better than the first installment of Evil Within did. Sometimes you are presented with situations where you HAVE to stealth so it makes use of the mechanic well. The one hit kill axes make a return as well, but you really should consider these a last ditch effort to save you from a tough group of baddies, or botched stealth attempt. Thankfully on the normal difficulty the stealth is pretty forgiving even with bosses so if a fight is not going well you can retreat and regroup while baddies lose sight of you.

Holy shit, the game has boss fights! Remember boss fights? Periodic appearing unique enemies that require you to use all your learned skills and abilities to find an effective way to beat them? I keep starting to think that video games in general have moved away from this, but Evil Within 2 boasts a reasonable amount of unique enemies as you play through to test your mettle. Many of them become regular baddies by game end but it was still greatly appreciated. I love a good boss fight and it feels like there are fewer and fewer games putting them in.

Then we have the skill mechanic. Like the last game, beating up enemies makes them drop "green ooze" which can be used at your safe house (or room) where our mysteriously friendly yet stoic nurse returns to strap you to a chair and pump juice into your skull. They overhauled the skills this time so now they make sense and are actually useful. No more of the shitty Fallout accuracy stat that makes you miss even though you have a perfectly lined up reticle. Now the skills affect you stamina, health, recover rates and so on.

But they also added reaction abilities depending on what skill tree you are working. Like if I am increasing my stealth I can do a quick scurry to chase after an enemy for a stealth kill. Or a reaction to where if I get grabbed by an enemy, I will instantly use a bottle that is typically used to distract enemies to knock them off of me to save me from damage. Or a speedy reaction that will allow my character to automatically dodge attacks from lesser enemies. They are useful and actually worth unlocking, so now I'm more willing to hunt enemies because the skills actually help me out.

Who the nurse is, is still never really explained, but I find her to be less abrasive this time around.
She manages to squeeze in a pop culture joke or two if you are listening.

Graphically the game has made major improvements too. I complained last time that they tried to do the grindhouse film grain look and it just made the graphics look shitty, washed out, and last gen. All the mouth animations were off and it overall looked sloppy. That just doesn't feel like the case in this one. There is no grindhouse washout so now despite the dark settings and tones, there are splashes of color around, and the world generally feels more alive. It makes the shifts to more demonic settings that much more jarring because the Everytown America setting sets a control line to shift from. Animations are synced up nicely and voice acting (while still hokey and goofy) is much improved this time as well.

And perhaps as a nod to Resident Evil 4, they added a shooting gallery mini game. I would spend rather insulting amounts of time trying to complete every level of difficulty on two shooting gallery game types. One bites into the addictive need for color matching puzzlers so shame on you Bethesda, you clever pricks for knowing about my penchant for Bejeweled Blitz.

Honestly as I run through the list of things from the previous game, I find myself with very little to complain about. I'll say that the barrier to entry is still a little bit steep as you learn your controls and nuances to enemy behavior. It's got a pretty generous autosave so there where more than a number of times where I felt it was just better to die and get my ammo and healing back than it was to win the fight and be left shorthanded. That sort of impacts the horror aspect when you aren't afraid of dying and losing progress.

Bethesda hid little nicknacks all over the game from the other games they worked on.
They don't do anything, but they are fun little nods to other games.

There is a tiny down pointing arrow or v on your screen for a majority of the game, and I had no idea if it was a waypoint marker or what and I found it very confusing. It wasn't till the very late game that at one point it was red and I realized it was indicating that I could use my stealth dash, which I had unlocked before but had no idea how to use. Some of the game's mechanics could be better explained. Like the game tells you that you can drink coffee in safe houses to recover, but doesn't ell you that coffee recharges over time so you can't keep using it.

In a later portion of the game it actually rehashes a gauntlet of enemies of the last game for you to fight again. It felt like a filler segment to raise the tension but I had been playing it for like 12 hours at that point so honestly it doesn't feel like it needed to be there. Not problematic I guess but felt kinda thrown in.

Some Spoiler Warning here, so skip these next three paragraphs if you want: the game still occasionally feels like it is dangling out plot threads from both versions of the game that never end up getting explained or resolved. I still have no idea why Sebastian almost zombied out last game, and they bring up that his partner isn't actually dead but then that plot point is never actually followed up on. Honestly I had forgotten that character even existed, he could have been left out and it wouldn't have impacted the game at all.

Anita Sarkeesian is certainly not going to like this game, so don't be surprised to see it on Feminist Frequency. Like I said above the general theme of the plot line is a pretty tired trope to begin with, with the damsel in the distress variant. But the story goes out of the way to make all these interesting and strong female characters with different skill sets, and you can bet your ass that things to do not go well for a lot of them. But to be fair, for a horror game of this nature, a significant number of them men are going to die too. It's a horror game. How many horror games and movies end with almost everyone surviving?

Esmeralda Torres is confident, strong, deep, and a hell of a fighter.
So I bet you'll never guess how her story unfolds.

Really my biggest beef with the game is it does the annoying trope of the constantly changing primary antagonist. For a large portion of the game you pursing a psycho who is clearly after your daughter too. But after a challenging fight with him the story pulls the "oh you've killed me, but now have to go after the REAL villain who you've never met yet!" More annoyingly is it actually pulls this shit twice!

Lastly I made the big complaint that The Evil Within was not scary. I could argue that the Evil Within 2 was not scary either, but in this case I don't think it was really trying to be. You can go to a horror movie and not be scared, but what it did very well was make you tense. Especially in the stealth sections of the game with tight environments. It did actually manage to get me with one jump-scare so that's an improvement over the last game. But honestly, some of my favorite horror movies aren't ones that jump-scare the shit out of you, but the ones that kick up your heart rate and have you leaning out of your chair because the tension just has you rigid. Evil Within 2 nails it there.

Anima is not technically a boss. You can't fight her and you have to stealth to get away.
She appears at scripted points, but can also just appear at random to send you hiding.

I walked into Evil Within 2 with a very lukewarm mindset, even as the story played out I felt that it was a stupid plot line. I didn't care about Sebastian or Kidman in the last game, so I was hard sell going into this one. But I think somewhere around the six hour mark, I realized I was completely fucking riveted by the story. I was genuinely loving my experience in this ride I was on, the development of the characters were logical and making sense. I was interested to see how the story was going to play out for the parties involved. The combat was fun, the stealth was tense. I was having a great time playing this game, and when I was at work I'd constantly be thinking about playing it when I got home.

I'll just say it: The Evil Within 2 was great. Not just ok, not good, great. It's like they took my review, handed it to Shinji Mikami and it personally pissed him off. So he remade the game specifically so I would like it. It addressed almost every complaint I had for it and it provided me an exciting and fun experience that I would rank as one of my betters during the PS4 life cycle. Some reviews said the same but they wouldn't go back to it, but I am already playing new game plus, which says even more that I am not ready to put it down. Easily an 8 or 9 and I would highly recommend The Evil Within 2 to those who like the horror/action genre. Color me genuinely surprised.

Seriously, a few more survivors at the game end couldn't have hurt.

Bravely Second: End Layer (3DS): Grinding down.

When this first one came out, I quite literally dove into buying a new handheld to try it because I knew I had some long flights and a convention to spend time with it. In my review I had more than my share of nitpicks but ultimately I left it saying that I hoped that this would be come a franchise and hoped that this would have a nice linage behind it.

Well sure enough this series did get a sequel in April of 2016. And while I was enjoying it, I eventually set it down and moved on to other games. But after working through my pile I did go back to grind out and finish. So while the game has been out for a while, I got my thoughts on it now. 

BRAVELY SECOND: END LAYER (3DS)

Bravely Second picks up two and half years after the events of the first game. Agnes for her work as a crystal vestal has become a Pope in the crystal orthodoxy and is currently brokering a peace treaty with Braev Lee, the duke of Eternia. Just as they are about to sign the accords, they are interrupted by Kaiser Oblivion.

The attack is devastating and Agnes is taken hostage and brought to the Kaiser's floating sky fortress. Yew Geneolgia is the leader of Agnes personal security detail, the Crystalgard (and our primary protagonist for this game), and looks to rally his allies and the remaining orthodoxy forces to try to take the fight to the skyhold and bring Agnes back.

The game starts pretty much in battle, which is a great way to get JRPGs going

Obviously, the story of Bravely Second is more complex than that but after we pass where I've mentioned we get into spoiler territory very quickly. I will say that this time around the story is a bit more involved and fleshed out and the previous iteration. Bravely Default was by no means a simple story line but its basis was you need to restore the 4 crystals, and if you played the previous title then you know you did that a lot.

Bravely Second follows a more traditional damsel in distress trope where Yew rallies heroes to give pursuit to a new threat. And along that path there are twists and turns, old faces and new appear along the way. It does make you replay certain segments like the last one did which is something I still found annoying, but not the same amount of times so I won't ding it too hard for that.

This is probably going to end up being a shorter review than my usual shtick because this game is a pretty stone for stone copy of the original Bravely Default, so I would basically be repeating a lot of what I said in my previous review. Much like I said before, the Bravely series is basically a classic Final Fantasy JRPG in all but name: A 60+ hour fantasy adventure with turn based combat, random encounters and exceptional music. Since this is a direct sequel, many of the characters, enemies, and bosses return to reprise their roles.

Agnes is not a primary party member this time, but she is a relevant part of the story.

But it wouldn't be a sequel if they didn't add something new to switch up the palette, so with a new set of characters naturally we get a new set of bosses. And with new bosses we get a new set of job classes to use (called Asterisks in game). Twelve new jobs in all which gives you a pretty mind bending amount of variety to what your party can do. Some of them are pretty straight forward which just allow you to plow with damaging abilities, some of them are a bit more bizarre like the Patissier which requires using items to use the special abilities. Then you get some that make old ones irrelevant like the Bishop, which basically can do everything the White Mage does but to the whole party making it vastly superior.

What I always loved about how they implement the job system in this one is you have the ability to really play around with what skills you have to min/max your characters abilities. In the late game I was basically combo the right sets of jobs and abilities to make a very damaging spell attack all the enemies up to 4 times in a row and sometimes cast twice in a single turn, basically allowing me to just rain down offense in the returning Brave/Default system. Or you could go the classic route like I did in the first game and equip a ninja with as many weapons as they can hold and charge 4 attacks in a row. There are lots of viable ways to play.

Generally the combat system hasn't changed from the previous game, but the Brave Points from the old game are now Sleep Points which are used to trigger the Bravely Second ability. What this does is expends one of these point to allow one of your characters to have a free turn to use up to 4 abilities. You have to have the available turns to spend to do them still, but the benefit is that the damage limiters are removed, so if properly set up, you can unload with an attack that can reach the millions in damage. SP however can only be charged up when you 3DS is in sleep mode, so use them sparingly or you have to spend real money to buy SP drinks. Honestly I almost never needed to use this sans one story moment.

Outside of that, really there isn't a lot of change between the two games on a mechanical level. It uses the same world map, a lot of the same dungeons that appeared in the previous game, you fight a lot of the same bosses and monsters. The "build a town" with street pass mechanic returns more or less the same way (although you can fight optional bosses from other players this time around). You could say that this game basically is more of an extension or an epilogue to Bravely Default than it is a true sequel.

Bravely Second's soundtrack is pretty good as well on top of being fully voice acted. There are lots of little cutscenes and character interactions that help flesh out the story and almost all of them were fun to listen to. The only downfall to the music is that my favorite tracks that played in this one were just songs from the first game.

While all of the characters from the previous game make a return in some fashion in Bravely Second, many of them take a back seat to new protagonists Yew and Magnolia arch. The two major plots basically revolve around these two characters: Yew's mission to rescue Agnes, and Magnolia's mission to save the Moon and defeat the massive monsters (Baals) currently attacking the planet. Basically Ringabel is the only character we kinda lose between games and good riddance. I hate the amnesiac trope.

But whats nice is that even though the old characters return, it focuses on the new characters story with the returning characters as more of a supplement. I like this better because this is what allows the universe to expand and become more interesting. The Atelier games are excellent at this because when an old character drops in, They feel like a welcome Easter egg, and doesn't affect how I feel about them from the previous game.

I think there was another controversy about censoring the girls costumes again,
Honesty guys, if a little cleavage on 3DS pixels being taken away ruins your
experience of the game? You might be picking the wrong hill to die on.

What I didn't like is the flippin' tedium that the Bravely series has now become known for. If you are truly going to play this game in its full capacity, you are expected to grind all your characters up to the max level, and go through and max out all of their job classes if you want to have the right set of abilities to really go up against the tougher bosses in the game. And sorry, even with the fast forwarding mechanics grinding is still grinding. And grinding is boring. It's the problem I always have in the Disgaea games. If you are making a boss so overpowered that its going to take me 100+ hours of grind to stand a chance, I will sooner just not do it.

Which ultimately brings me to the biggest problem that I had in Bravely Second: the game was just too easy to put down and stop playing. As you can see from the date I listed in the intro, I basically played through this game over the course of two years. I would reach a point where I didn't want to waste time grinding so I could fight and had other games to play, so I would set the DS down and literally forget about the game for months on end. That says to me the story wasn't compelling enough to keep me bolted down with the game.

When raining down with 4 meteors on one turn rips baddies a sunder. But you really
need to use the right skills, or Magic can be some of the weakest attacks in the game.

I will say that the grinding aid features such as fast-forwarding the battles and being able to turn off all the random encounters makes a welcome return and honestly I don't know why every JRPG doesn't do this. I suppose it does make final dungeons that much easier, but it also takes out the path of attrition its supposed to be for the climatic final battle. Honestly, if I am grinded out to max level, I turn off random battles and never look back.

The other thing I could talk about is how the ending of the game played out. There really is no way to explain it without spoiling it to a degree, but it does the same kinda thing Undertale did when it played around with the medium and actually addresses the player and not the characters. Technically, if you go by release dates Bravely Second did it first, but only by a few months so they were in the same dev cycle, but I will say Undertale did it better. Both great though, I love how games are starting to mess with the medium to tell their story.

Edea Lee is still best girl. Love her to death.

I did ultimately like Bravely Second but the problem between the two iterations is that Bravely Default was a fresh breath of a new IP done to homage the classic style JRPG. Bravely Second is just more of Default. As said above, it's essentially a long epilogue. They are not going be caught in the Final Fantasy catch 22: Do you change things to try to make it feel new? Or do you stick with the formula and put out a samey release? They honestly can't win either way they go with it.

That being said. I'm not unhappy with my purchase of Bravely Second. It is what it is, more of this franchise. If they make a third one I'll be getting it. But I wouldn't be surprised to see the series end here. Who knows, maybe they'll make a fancy new one for the Switch?

Lol, Baal Buster. Best job class ever.

Ragey's 2017: The rage quitter year end wrap up.

This years Ragey's will be a tad more bared boned this year because with the X+Y thing and a streaming schedule I didn't get as many written as I would have liked to. Still though, this year had its series of ups and downs and while all of the games I've played might not have gotten site reviews, I still played an awful lot of games. For the interest of parity and expanding my list, in no particular order here are the games I played/am playing that I didn't get around to reviewing just yet:

-Dead Cells (steam)
-Hollow Knight (steam)
-Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria simulator (steam)
-The Entire Shantae Franchise: (Risky's Revenge, Pirates Curse, 1/2 Genie Hero)  (PS4)
-Yakuza 0 (PS4)
-Yakuza Kiwami (PS4)
-Bravely Second (3DS)
-Metal Gear Solid 5: Phantom Pain (PS4)
-Gravity Rush 2 (PS4)
-Killing Floor 2 (PS4)
-Atelier Firis: The Alchemist and the Mysterious Journey (PS4)
-Everybody's Golf (PS4)
-South Park: Fractured But Whole (PS4)
-South Park: Phone Destroyer (Mobile)
-Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc (Vita)
-Senran Kagura: Bon Apatite (Vita)
-Guilty Gear Xrd: Rev 2 (PS4)
-Fornite (PS4)
-World of Final Fantasy (PS4)
-Nidhogg (PS4)
-Overcooked (PS4)
-Uncharted: Lost Legacy (PS4)

Fuck me, I need other hobbies. Hopefully I'll have a slew of games to review in January and those that don't I'll make a new omniderp video to cover, but until then please enjoy.....

The 2017 Ragey's
I really don't even care what the product is. I'll take any sponsorship at this point.

12: The "Crippling Introversion at a Social Gathering" award for "Game I wish I got to play" goes to....

Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

Oh ho? Surprised? Yes you jackasses, despite what all of you think, I don't hate the Legend of Zelda series as a whole. I hate the path it has taken, and it's complete and utter bias devotion to it because of its lineage regardless of faults and flaws. Showering it with perfect 10s (and game of the year awards) after a lengthy review critically detailing everything they didn't like. All the while showering the praises of other games as if they were flawless and giving them 8's. 

Watching Egoraptor's Sequelits of Ocarina of Time pretty much perfectly summarizes everything I've grown to lament in this series. The constant stagnation to follow the same formula in every game. Same characters, same items, same story, same paths. The setting changes barely. In my head it's the fantasy equivalent as the yearly Madden update. A bit hypocritical since I play the Atelier series, but none the less dulled my interest in the franchise.

So when one that goes back to open world exploration of old that breaks those traditional conventions? That interests me because I love a good action-adventure game (as will be cited later this list). Unfortunately I never got a switch and haven't purchased any games for the WiiU that's come to my possession, so I never had the opportunity to give this game the chance it deserves. But I would like to, and I honestly mean that. 

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11: The "But what about her emails???" garbage award for "Biggest Disappointment" goes to.....

Mass Effect: Andromeda

Mass Effect has always been one of those games that felt out of place in my collection. I'm not a big sci-fi guy and I'm not a big western RPG guy. But something about this franchise always makes me come back to it. Despite EA business practices and the garbo ending of Mass Effect 3, I wasn't surprised to see them come back to milk this cow one more time. But like a lot of people, I went into it with pretty tempered expectations. 

And while they did an excellent job doing away with the Paragon/Renegade system and exchanged it for a lot more gray decisions, Mass Effect: Andromeda really did just feel like a cash grab on brand recognizably. Totally functional and playable, not even bad really outside of some glitchy animations and poor character models. But on the whole it doesn't really feel like it needed to exist. Apparently EA and Bioware think so too since after the incredibly tepid response to the game and its sales, this property looks like it's getting shelved for a while. Probably smart. 

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10. The "Know what's makin' a comeback? Vaudeville" award for "Biggest Surprise" goes to.....

Cuphead

I saw the announcement trailers and pre-release trailers like everyone else did. I thought its visual style was clever enough, but ultimately since I assumed it was Xbox exclusive, I chalked it up to a game I wasn't going to get to try. But then it got release on Steam, and more than that it was only 20 bucks? Ok, I'll bite on that.

But what I wasn't expecting with how much fun I was going to have with the game. Basically a string of Megaman style boss fights with a couple run and gun style levels thrown in for funsies. Animated with the rubber animation style of old Disney and Warner Brothers cartoon of 30s and supplemented with a big band/jazz based soundtrack that compliment each other perfectly. Lump that in with an excruciatingly punishing level of difficulty and suddenly a 20 dollar weekend romp turned into 40 plus hours of pattern recognition and replayability. I didn't expect to like Cuphead as much as I did, but I'm very glad I took a chance on it.

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9. The "McDonald's Sezchuan Sauce" award for "Most Overhyped game" this year goes to.....

Nioh

Sometimes I just don't get the masses. I played this game in its alpha, and found it too frustrating. I played this game in its beta, and found it too frustrating. Enough that I decided I wouldn't buy it. Then every person and reviewer lauded how incredible this game was and it sold out everywhere on its first run. I buckled, bought it, and gave it one more try. And I still found it too frustrating and difficult, but this time I persisted through it against my better judgement.

Nioh is a game that is unmercifully hard for the sake of being unmercifully hard. The story is dense and confusing, and I never get that sense of satisfaction of completion like when I would finish a Dark Souls game. It is overloaded with a lot of little mechanics and numbers that make it feel like you need a textbook to fully make sense of all of it, and if you say you don't I think you are lying.

At its based core, it's a very solidly build game with tight controls and very impressive visuals (I seriously fucking love the boss monster design). But if when asked if I had "fun" I could never straight out say yes. People raved about this one, but I honestly don't know why. Easily one of the most overhyped games I played this year.

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8. The "Brussels Griffon" award for "Flash in the Pan" game of the year.

Resident Evil 7

I was not sold on Resident Evil 7 when I played the Beginning Hour demo the first time. It felt like it was trying to ape what made the PT demo so successful, but it ended up just feeling kinda boring. But when I got to the actual meat of the game I found myself surprisingly enjoying it way more than I thought it would. 

Every time Resident Evil starts to go on a really stale bent and make people think the series is over, they take a real drastic measures and shake things up. After the bad bent of RE6 this was certainly a shake up, and what I liked is that for the most part it was completely stand alone without any of the previous RE lineage before it. It made it feel new, fresh, and original. Ended up being lauded as a very good game. And then, like so many, was promptly forgotten about.  I know DLC packs came out for it, but honestly I haven't seen one article or review about them. For that it gets my "Flash in the Pan" award.

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7. The "Realizing Shopping at Giant Eagle is a fucking scam" award for "Worst Value" goes to....

Dead Cells

Let me start off by saying that Dead Cells will be a very good game. A fast paced self described Roguevania souls-like style game with tight controls, fun combat, challenging bosses and open exploration. I jumped on this as the buzz around it really started to grow. Streamed it a few times until I got stuck on second boss of the game. I liked Dead Cells a lot.

Unfortunately, it's early access. So that second boss of the game, also happens to be the last boss of the game. And this is why I don't like the bent that developers are going on with early access. Because now they have my 18 bucks. So who cares if they never finish the game. They don't have to. They've already sold thousands of copies. I essentially paid for a demo. The steam landing page says they will have the full game ready in about 8-12 months, but so far I haven't seen any news of updates since I purchased it. I don't like the idea of selling an unfinished product, and that's what this is. So it wins worst value.

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6. The "Realizing shopping at Aldi's is fucking sweet" award for "Best Value" goes to....

The Entire Shantae Series (almost)

I need to trust my gut more. I had been looking at this series on steam for months. Always thought it looked cool but never took the plunge to give it a try. Well last year just before Xmas a Sony flash sale put the 2nd and 3rd games of the Shantae series up for less than 5 bucks for the pair of them, that was a deal too good to pass up. And after mere minutes of playing Shantae: Risky's Revenge the only regret that I had is that I had waited so long to try it.

I played through both Shantae: Risky's Revenge & Pirates Curse in practically a pair of sittings, and quickly added the new Half-Genie Hero (only $19.99) to my holiday list. The Shantae games despite their cutesy looking exterior provide me everything I love in a classic Castlevania style platformer: cool visuals, interesting characters, classic platformer controls, exploration, and fun boss fights. I never had the chance to give this series a proper review (which I still intend to do), but despite nothing but positive press this series gets it never seems to be at the forefront.

It should be. The Shantae series is loads of fun to play and if you enjoy classic NES or SNES style platformers you can get a great amount of entertainment at a remarkably cheap price. I even love the occasional DLC where I get to play the other characters. I want more Shantae, please.

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5. The "Get up and dance" Award for best Original Soundtrack goes to....

Persona 5

Ok, so I had to make an additional award this year so I can honor this game. As much as I was set to give it game of the year before it was even released, there were some incredible contenders this year. But I feel this is a category I should have created a while ago, because it's honestly one of my favorite aspects of some games and it deserves recognition.

Persona 5 was everything that I wanted it to be. The cast while not the same lovable bunch Persona 4 had, they had their own unique charms and quirks that made me learn to love them, and the game played exactly I expected it to. But what surprised me was the slow burn of the soundtrack. Shoji Meguro is one of my god tier of video game composers, so when I first started playing the game I was kinda disappointing that I didn't find the music as catchy as previous entries. But as I played through songs felt like they were well thought out before chosen, fitting for the scene or battle appropriately, and getting catchier as I played. But then near the end of the game, one song did something no other game did...

It made me get up and dance. Literally. During the boss fight I literally got out of my chair and did my little disco step while I played the fight. I was enjoying it that much. I can't say any other game has done that. The OST to this game has been one of the two cds I've listened to all year. So while I can't give Persona 5 the game of the year like I want to, I can certainly say it has the best, most entertaining, feel good soundtrack of 2017. 

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4. The "5-Way Skyline Chili" Good Consistency Award goes to....

Yakuza 0/Kiwami

You know what? Fuck it. If I am adding awards here, I would like to give some acknowledgement to the series that I feel has been consistently good. A series that literally was the first introduction to this blog. A series that is finally starting to get some recognition. From the holidays to last year and early this year, Sega produced a prequel game and remake of the original PS2 game in Yakuza 0 and Yakuza Kiwami. I have long been a proponent of this series for its intriguing storytelling and fun combat engine. 

After the long slugfest between the west and Sega, Yakuza 5 finally got brought over via PSN and it did surprisingly well even being just a PS3 digital release, and it must have done something Sega to give this series a second chance in the west. I never got around to giving them proper reviews but the Yakuza games don't change much from game to game. Slight tweaks to the combat mechanics, addition and removal of mini games to play. A lot of times reusing the same map in every game.

But it always, ALWAYS delivers a satisfying experience for me. It's easily one of the most consistently good game franchises I've ever played and with the announcement of Kiwami 2 and Yakuza 6, I finally will be able to play through its entire linage and see the story from the beginning. Now if we can just get that samurai spin off over here I'll be all set. 

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3. The "Game Awards Snubbed this game" Honorable mention goes to....

Horizon: Zero Dawn

A game I had in very strong "Game of the Year" contention when it came out. I saw this trailer at E3 and pretty much inside of seconds had this completely pegged as a winner and something I would love to play. It did not disappoint. Incredible visuals, compelling interesting story, fun open world mechanics, beautiful score, exciting combat and I can go on and on. There are very few faults I can find with this game. It's literally everything I can ask for in an action-adventure game, and for Guerrilla games first attempt with a new IP, it was completely knocked out of the park.

Sadly for Horizon, it went up against a new Zelda game at its release which unfortunately shot it in the foot from getting the respect it really deserved. I'm not a 100% completion guy, I like to play through games naturally being carried by the narrative. But with Horizon, the story was secondary to me even through it was very good. I just found myself getting lost in the wilderness, hunting, gathering, doing quests as I wandered along. I severely outpaced the level of the story and got to a point where I had nothing but collection missions to do, begrudgingly forcing me back to actually play the game. That is a real sign of a immersive experience, just getting lost in a game.

The only reason I don't make it game of the year of the 3 I was considering, is it was the one of the three that I put down satisfied. I didn't go back to it after I was done with it. I probably could go back and replay it, but I never felt the need to. I finished it satisfied. So not my game of the year, but it could be and it's an absolute must play if you haven't yet.

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2. The "Ham Handed Product Placment" award for "Worst of the Year" goes to.....

Microwave Cup Noodles (Nissin)

FUCK. YOU. I can deal with a little bit of product placement, Final Fantasy 15. BUT THIS SHIT??

While I don't consider Final Fantasy 15 to be one of the greatest entries of the series, I certainly more than enjoyed my time with it. And hell I bought and played the DLC and the multiplayer and have been enjoying those, but this fucking mission. Holy shit, I don't think I've ever seen such a ham handed plug in of a commercial in my life. It's so hokey, so bad, so forced that when I go to the store and see the Nissin Cup Noodles, I get actually angry because it reminded me of this quest, and buy any other available brand out of spite. FUCK you, Cup Noodles. You make me hate Gladiolus even more.

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2.5. The "Nissin Cup Noodles" award for "Actual Worst Game of the Year" goes to.....

Valkyria Revolution

Ugh... Sometimes my fandom gets the better of me. I constantly sung the praises of Valkyria Chronicles and so of course, when they announced a new one I completely jumped at the chance to get back into this universe. But then as I waited for the game to release, reviews started to come out, comments were being made, scores were being given. I should have taken it as a warning sign.

Upon release, the game was a torturous slog of bad voice acting, poor animation, excessive story and grind, and gameplay that doesn't even remotely resemble the game I love. If I am being generous, it was playable at the bare minimum. The story was just good enough to make push my way to the end, but myself and the rest of the Valkyria fan base got burned on this one. Sega seems to be trying to make amends with a new Valkyria game that looks just like the first one, but I'm afraid to hope.

If I have an actual worst game of the year, it's Valkyria Revolution.

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1. The "I really wanted to give this to Persona 5" Award for "Best game of the year" goes to...

Nier: Automata

Wow. I really wanted Persona 5 to be my game of the year. I had pretty much decided that before the game even came out. I took over a week off to play it and binge. It delivered on all the experiences I wanted, had an amazing soundtrack, and continued to prove to me that Persona is one of the best RPG franchises out there. But with apologies to Atlus and the Persona development team, there was a better game out this year.

When I first started this game, I constantly fell asleep it was so chill. That's usually a bad sign. But after that initial push, the game had me. Done by Platinum Games, it featured the fast paced frenetic Bayonetta style combat that I love, an absolutely peerless classical score in multiple languages that is my other favorite soundtrack of a year, a storyline with multiple endings that bend video game mechanics and tropes directly into the narrative, and some brilliant mindfuckery from the beautiful mind of Yoko Taro. I had listed a few complaints when I first wrote the review but upon further play and further reflection, all of these said complaints appear intentional to further supplement the story. This game is practically perfect. Hell, it got me to go back and play a game I thought I didn't like to make me realize I was wrong.

Nier: Automata is cursed by getting absolutely glowing reviews that get marred by getting scores that don't reflect what the writer said. That will not happen here. In a year that was just simply amazing for video games this year, out of the dozens of them that I played, Nier: Automata truly does stand atop them all for the experience it provided. Absolutely my Rage Quitter 2017 Game of the Year.

Glory To Mankind.  

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Might be starting to fizzle out on the writing, but we'll keep plugging away on this for as long as I have the energy for it. Thanks for reading. -- CannonMan ┌∩┐(◣_◢)┌∩┐

Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight (Steam): A quiet, hidden forest treasure

Oh the steam summer sale. That magical time of the year where you spend money you probably shouldn't on games that you will never get around to playing. I've done it, you've done it. 90% of the time when I buy one game I was really looking forward to and about 10 that I never even touch. But every so often I stumble across one that seemed like it could be interesting if given the shot.

I've never heard of this series, but this is the 4th in the franchise. It also happens to be a prequel so despite it being the newest I get to start its story from the beginning. Would this be just another title that was purchased and then immediately forgotten to the pile of shame? Or would I stumble upon a gem to be treasured and valued? Let's find out.

MOMODORA: REVERIE UNDER THE MOONLIGHT: (Steam)

The tale of Momodora starts 400 years before the events of the first game, where a young priestess named Kaho travels to the eastern kingdom of Karst to investigate a spreading curse that is threatening her lands and village. Upon reaching the outskirts of Karst city she is confronted by a Knightess called Cath.

Cath informs Kaho that the source of the curse is coming from the Queen of Karst, but she has locked herself away in the castle. Cath advises Kaho to leave while she handles it, but the curse affects Kaho as well. They can't enter without finding crest pieces necessary to enter the castle so armed with only a bow and a maple leaf (the signature weapon of these priestesses), Kaho explores to find the crests to confront the queen and curse.

Uh, Nice to meet you too, Cath.

Wow. Very few games have such a cut and dry story these days. I actually had to fluff some of it up to get two paragraphs of description. Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight is a classic styled 2d Castlevania style game the borrows some mechanics from the Dark Souls franchise, done in the retro style pixel graphics that oh so often make me weak in the knees from the onset. 

Let's start with that, actually. From what I have seen in previous games, Momodora titles were typically done with small sprites that allowed for minimal animation detail (think Super Meat Boy). This iteration however the sprites are significantly larger, which allows them to have much more significant detail in their sprite animation. It clearly shows because all of the action animations have been beautifully detailed with multiple frames and poses to give it a very natural and fluid feel.

The dodge roll looks natural, the attack swings have a sense of weight that give a very realistic timing that just feels right. Characters and bosses have lots of signature motions to telegraph attacks which is incredibly crucial for this style of combat engine, and they appear to do a lot with a very minimal color pallet. Monsters and characters are all very differently and interestingly designed.

Bells function as checkpoints. Like Dark Souls bonfires they restore health,
refresh your items, and give you a checkpoint in the case of death.

Environments look like they belong right at home on the NES or SNES consoles, and while there is only so much detail you can give to castle corridors and caves, the environments make great use of parallax hiding details of the background environment in layers, making cityscape and forests look so much more impressive because it allows them add subtle details that fade with each layer of distance. I'm a huge fan of pixel art and good sprite work so this kinda stuff really appeals to me.

The map is long and sprawling much like you would expect of a Metroidvania game with locked doors, paths that require specific abilities to get through, and looping paths to provide short cuts back to other areas of the game. The game is not massive in its size but it is modestly sizable so it's certainly not a game you are going to blow through in one or two hours. I would say there are about 8 or 9 different areas that you'll need 4 keys to fully unlock.

Combat at its core uses very simple mechanics. I hate to constantly use the credit of Dark Souls because it's not the first to use the invincibility frames but much of Salt and Sanctuary's 2d styled combat rings familiar here. Kaho's running speed if I am being generous is moderately paced, so you will probably be using the dodge role to pick up the pace. When fighting you will spend the majority of your time with simple button mashing combos to swing your leaf, and then using your dodge roll to roll through or away from enemy attacks. If the situation demands you are also able to rapid fire your bow for weaker but safer ranged attacks.

Battle is augmented by the items that you can collect that give you various stat boosts and abilities. Some of them provide immediate effects like attack buffs, but a large majority of them have passive abilities such as lifesteal, status aliment resistances, magnetism for items and so on. You can only equip two and their affects could be for battle or for exploration and they can be restored at checkpoints which is nice. But, you will only get so many uses between them so you need to choose wisely based on your play style as well as alternate based on need.

The music of this game is generally chill, and kinda dark. The opening theme when starting in the forest opens with a very slow paced and somber tune. After that when going from castle outskirts, to cathedral, to caves and so forth the music sticks to more of an ambient droning rather than actual music, but when it does it tends to stick to pretty melancholy melodies.

Even the music when fighting a boss monster tends to stick to a relatively deep noted loop or an uptempo melody. I like the music in this game but I wouldn't say that it's catchy in any capacity. It's perfectly acceptable for the tension level of these moments, but I wouldn't say that the music is the strength of this game. It's totally serviceable but nothing to write home about.

Even when monsters are not violent, they are not friendly.

It isn't a very long game, either. Depending on your level of determination and frustration to boss fights, the entire game can be ripped through with bad and good endings inside of a couple of sittings. I think I managed to play through its entirety in a few days. Maybe spanning that 7-12 hour range. There is a new game plus where you can start with the equipment you collected, but it doesn't really change the game much.

There are also a number of difficulty settings, but I feel that normal really does provide the best experience. It provides just enough challenge that the game is not a pushover and will punish you for making stupid mistake or rushing too carelessly, but fair that you can learn patterns and make easy work of bosses so long as you pay attention and learn. I tried to start streaming this game on Hard and even knowing where things were or what patterns enemies had it was still punishing me to the point where I was struggling to make it to the first boss with increased enemies and reduced health.

And this is a minor nitpick at best, but I found the jump to be needlessly frustrating. Kaho has a relatively low jump height, but she does have a double jump. I supposed that would sort of lend to realism if it was reduced to a single jump, but with a double jump it feels like it should be much higher than it is. I don't know. I don't think it really affected battles as much as I felt they did. Again, minor nitpick.

I suppose my biggest complaint about Momodora is that its weakest aspect is probably its story. You are given a minor back story, and primary goal, but the game doesn't really seem to evolve past that point. Cath is the only major NPC that gives some meaty exposition and she doesn't feel like she in the game enough to really flesh out the story.

There are a couple of NPCs that you can speak to, but at best they give some minor explanation about an upcoming boss. After beating the game both bad and good endings, I didn't feel like I had much in the the way of resolution, and didn't have that strong connection to the universe it presented me with because it felt like it never really explored it, which is a real shame. Perhaps I will get more if I play the other titles, but for my first entry to the series I was left wanting more.

But despite those flaws I ended up greatly enjoying Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight and am very glad that I took a chance on it. That's really the one thing I can put trust into with steam reviews. If they say it's getting overwhelmingly positive reviews, I can generally trust that. This game feels like it would be right at home on the NES, but will polished modern controls. You can find it on Steam, PS4, and Xbox One for as low as 10 bucks, and it also goes on sale so I would say check it out. Good games like this deserve to be played.

Oh yeah, and you can turn into a cat.