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.

Valkyria Revolution (PS4): Oh Valkyria... What has Sega done to you...

So a little over 5 years ago (Jesus Christ) I had written a review for a game I thought was great that almost nobody played. It was a bizarre blending of anime, JRPG, tactical RPG, 3rd person shooter, and first person shooter. All these mechanics should have made it some ridiculous mish-mash, but somehow it worked. I really enjoyed it a lot, and felt since nobody bought I would heap some credit on it. That game was Valkyria Chronicles. 

Apparently there must have been some demand for it, because after the release of the PS4 Sega decided to give it a purdy HD sheen and re-release it with all the DLC on PS4. And I bought it again, because I'm a sucker. There was also apparently demand for the two following sequels released previously on the PSP. So someone at Sega figured why the hell not, lets toss out a new Valkyria game and see how it does? I couldn't wait, and bought it without hesitation.

VALKYRIA: REVOLUTION(PS4)

The story of Valkyria: Revolution takes well into the future of the first game. It begins with a man and his teach discussing a private grave honoring the 5 traitors of the nation of Jutland, and why history doesn't explain why they were honored so. Richelle is teacher to the Jutland royalty and knows the true story, and sits to tell him the true story of the Jutland Liberation.

The continent of Europa is still a country of nations, and ragnite is still the resource that rules the world now not only for its potential as a power source, but now for the alchemic properties that allowed so many nations to enter an advanced industrial age. The Ruzi empire has the biggest slice of the pie, and has advanced and expanded its influence to maintain its military power and ragnite control over Europa. During its expansion, the emperor Klaudiazs and his five generals set flame to a stand alone orphanage and took hostage to its caretaker, a woman named Maria.

She basically put up zero defiance, so I don't know why Ruz had the raze the orphanage.

Five of the orphans that survived formed a tight knit circle and after their adoption advanced themselves with skills to take revenge with the nation of Jutland. Amleth, rose as a soldier to captain an elite squad. Violette uses her femme fatale charms as a spy, Basil uses his economic influence and power to equip the military, Fritte uses his skills as a columnist to stir the will of the populous, and Solomon uses legislature to advance political action of the nation. The five of them decide to use the nation of Jutland to push to war with the Ruzi empire to kill the Emperor and his 5 generals and learn of Miss Maria's fate under the guise of Jutland liberating the empires captured nations.

But all is not so easy as the Princess of Jutland herself, Opheila, joins the military to fight along side her people on the front lines, stationed in the unit under Amelth's command. The 5 now have to advance carefully to pursue their revenge and manipulate the war, without their intentions being discovered by Opheila, who wants truly nothing more than the liberation of Jutland and the surrounding nations.

Violette, Basil, Amleth, Solomon, and Fritte: the Traitors of Jutland.

Did that seem wordy? Because it was. I know Valkyria games really heavily lean on cutscenes to get their stories across since the levels aren't really long enough to effectively weave the narrative into the gameplay, but this one is in a severe, SEVERE need of an editor. First off it's trying to tell this complicated tale of two nations militaries at war, then it's trying to explain the subterfuge of the 6 major characters trying to control it from the shadows, (only one of which is playable).

But then it also deals with the interpersonal relationships with the squad, and the princess. The squad has like close to 15 playable characters, and it's like they all try to cram a line or two of dialog into every cutscene like a bad impov session. When this happens scenes that should have been over like 20 minutes ago will drag on and on because every character has to drop some trite one line platitude that does nothing to contribute to the story or develop their character. The squad is literally a pick and mix of anime tropes and most of them aren't even good. Some of them are literally the same as the character they share the scene with.

It's made especially bad by some phenomenally bad voice acting. This to me is the more amazing thing because since I play a lot of games, I recognize a lot of voices. Some of these actors are incredibly talented. I've heard them in better works. Hell eff'n Matt Mercer who does amazing voice work is in it and while he's one of the better acted characters in this game, overall the voice acting makes cutscenes that drag on far to long feel even longer. I've had some story segments run over 40 minutes before I actually got to a level (and when you are streaming this does not keep people watching, let me tell you).

Toooooo many eff'n characters.

They changed the battle system for Valkyria: Revolution and I honestly have no idea why. Valkyria as I know is more or less a tactical RPG. Think kind of like in Phantom Brave terms: You bring out your set peices to the battle. They have their own moves and ranges and abilities. You move your pieces for attacks (while getting shot at as you) and then once you've made you moves, the enemies get their crack with you shooting at them. It was a weird amalgamation of game elements but they actually managed to work well together.

Valkyria: Revolution has completely done away with the tactical element of the game, and when the fans rebelled in the first trailer videos they tried to adjust the abilities to give it a more tactical feel. Essentially how the missions work is you select 4 troops from your Vanargand squad between your Shocktrooper heavies, fast and nimble Scouts, your Sapper mages, and your Shield-bearer tanks. Typically you will take Amleth and Princess Ophelia for your shock and scout, since 90% of the time they are required for the story anyways. You basically round out the party with whatever characters or roles you want left.

Once the mission starts you usually have a relatively simple objective: Hold this point, take this base, beat this boss. As soon as the missions starts you basically have free reign to wander the map and take out enemies. You have an attack button, guard, dash, menu and lock on. It's not turn based anymore but the action does freeze when you go into the menu if you want to fire a shot with one of your guns, use a grenade, or abilities. This is part of the concession to try to make it a little more tactics based (because upon first seeing the game play fans complained) but it doesn't really hold up that well.

The point of giving use of the guns or terrain is what allowed the tactical combat system to work. You could run to cover, take your shot, then have protection when it wasn't your turn. Now I find that there is little reason to use it as I can just vault the cover and swing my sword around since there is no turn order anymore. The only time you really want to use a grenade or ability is when you have a bunch of enemies grouped or have a particularly stubborn foe like one of the mech tanks.

When you complete missions you get spoils of money and abilities to equip to your characters. These abilities have affinity levels so on top of leveling your character, you basically have to bank in your unused abilities to move around a skill grid to allow you to use greater abilities, as well as build up characters individual abilities on top of their base stats. The problem is you have squad of like 15 people, the grids expand, and you don't get a lot of spoils from fights as you play through the game. So you for sure can expect to be doing a bit of grinding to try to get your mainstays up to level. I think even just focusing on 2 characters, I never seemed to have enough.

In between story missions you can also take on a number of free missions as well. There is no story tied to any of these so they are basically a free sortie to get spoils and levels. But what this also does is affect the map during the course of the war, so there will be hot-zones where you are pushing or getting pushed back. The more area you take during the free battles, the more the trade embargo will be lifted and more items you can purchase during when you are back at your home base.

Skill upgrading in this game is the fucking bane of my existence.

Much like the previous game, in the home base you can go to your R&D department to improve your guns, grenades, and launchers as well as boost your characters grids. There are also a number of shops where you can buy supplies and you can take them to a main outfitter where you can rework your gear for the team as a whole with bonus effects. I will be 100% honest I did this maybe once or twice at best because the upgrades seemed marginal at best and you have to wait a battle to pick up the item you crafted AND you can only do them one at a time. Sorry Valkyria: Revolution but I got shit to do. For the most part this didn't seem to impede my progress.

So usually when I review a game I go into the basic mechanics then go into what and I liked and what I didn't but as you can already tell from this one, there is a lot of shit that I didn't like. So let's keep that ball rolling. Now I've mentioned that that every single cutscene is much too long and relatively poorly acted, filled with trite and pointless lines.

But it also suffers from the problem of the first game of forcing you to go back to the main menu of the two characters in the future discussing the events at the end of every single chapter. There is no reason to do this. I can't go back and play old missions until the beat the game, and I honestly don't want to see the extra cutscenes. All you are doing is adding a step in getting me through the trudging story and makes it that much harder for me to get the action.

There is no reason to keep bringing me back here. Let me jump to the main menu
from the pause menu when I want to go. Keep the story going.

What the hell happened to graphics in this game? Both of them are anime looking yes, but the original had this beautiful watercolor washed out style that made it a joy to look at with bright colors that looked rustic, and classic anime design with soft fluid animations that made it look like I was actually watching old footage. Valkyria Revolution swapped that out for this almost generic video-gamey looking anime archetype. While all the characters are well designed that they all manage to stand apart from each other, something about the eyes just makes them all look too similar to one another.

The animation in combat is fine, but it does the old Resident Evil animation of hand conversations during talky portions of the game, which are silly in their own right. But when a single character has like a 10 minute monologue, that never cuts to a different camera angle, you have a single jackass waving his left arm at about should height in the same circular animation for the entirety of it. It's impossible not to notice and looks even dumber when you do.

The music isn't all that spectacular though either. The majority of it is tolerable, well fitting for the menus or scenes you are in. But two songs are played almost ad nauseam throughout the whole game. One is the song that plays when the villains are talking, which sounds so relentlessly sinister they could be talking about giving away puppies to new forever homes and you'd think it's the most evil thing of the world. The title track of the game is the other one, which plays almost every battle and in many cutscenes. It does have a good melody and does give the battle a feeling of epic so in that regard it is well placed, but it's a pretty paltry offering overall.

The grind is insufferable in this game. Things started off hot with me getting a quick level advantage over the enemy that carried me through the meat of the game, but in the later stages where you have boss fights with one of the Valkyria they become these painful battles of attrition because of these bullshit defense stacking abilities that bring your party's damage to next to zero. Even your shock troopers who usually can mow through everything will barely dent through, making these fights take forever.

And as stated above the rewards for doing this are negligible at best. After a few missions I only would get enough reward to move Amelth a few spaces on his grid, because if you want good experience you have to burnt he better skills you get. But those are the ones I want to equip! Thankfully the game continued to dump a number of abilities I never ever bothered to use which helped a little, but again the tedium of the process would just kill any motivation I had to grind.

There is no way to sugar coat it. This combat system is fucking boring. It's not fast paced enough to truly feel like an action game. The animation has no weight behind it so all the strikes glide through as if there was no impact. It's too free form to have any sense of RPG structure too it. Like I said using the skills and guns feel like a token attempt to go "hey see? this is still kind of a tactics game right?"  On top of that a significant portion of the missions just take too long, even when they don't. There have been times where I have playing missions that feel like I have been going for well over an hour only learn I played about 12 minutes.

The game also feels just too easy. Like I said its got a pretty convoluted skill and upgrade system, and it can't be that effectual if I was able to basically not use the shops in any capacity, only grinding up a few characters and was pretty much able to cruise through a significant portion of the game. It has about 10 episodes and a finale,  and aside from a few trip ups on a few boss fights I sailed to chapter 10 with relative ease.

No connection Slyvia Bles, who actually was a deep, conflicted, and interesting character.
By having it jump so far down the timeline this is really the only connection to Valkyria Chronicles.

But this game makes one fucking cardinal sin that made me put the game down. Near the end of the game in one of the final missions, it pulls the bullshit "we need to split up" deal and forces you to control two teams. I think this happens only one other time in the game, and the problem is if you played the game like I had done, you would get the mission with two stud main characters, two acceptable supports, and a whole load of fucking trash because I don't have the 90 hours I would need to level up these stupid characters to equip stronger abilities.

So now I'm stuck. Either I break up my good team and struggle to get through it, or I go in with a team of scrubs and hope for the best. Either way it killed the pace of the game and motivated me to move to something else. Sorry Valkyria Revolution, but I'm a working adult with shit to do.

And the real tragedy of it is, despite some incredibly dumb parts and even dumber dialog, the story was starting to get me a little bit. While the most of it is just useless fluff that I didn't care about, I was interested to see how the situation with the traitors and the princess were going to play out. Looks like I won't be doing that myself, because this game shot its one saving grace in the foot. Its single shred of interesting narrative.

I did end up growing to like Ophelia in her naivete. She's for her country first,
but she is surprisingly receptive and understanding to all sides of the conflict.

Honestly I don't know why this surprises me. Sega has a long track record of not knowing what the fuck they are doing. The only reason they are sort of succeeding is because they purchased Atlus and them left them alone. They haven't messed up my beloved Yakuza or Persona franchises yet, but other than that if they're not pimping out Sanik's used asshole, it's ruining a franchise people used to love. Valkyria is no exception.

I stomached as much of this game as I could. Hoping it would get better. I really wanted it to. Sometimes you can push through bad voice acting and find a hidden gem of a good game (Star Ocean: Last Hope and Infinite Undiscovery are great examples). But there are just too many horrible errors to overlook on this one. The game was universally panned by other reviews, and I have no other choice but to pile on: Valkyria Revolution sucks. Buyer beware.

Ugh, I didn't even get into the English singing in this game.
Dreadful.

Nioh (PS4): Why do I do this to myself?

I find myself getting annoyed by term "Souls Clone". I get that Dark Souls is amazing. Hell I've been advocating that series since Demon's Souls before people even gave a shit about that series. But not every game that is hard and has old video game aesthetics with a new shine is a souls game. But that doesn't stop every reviewer and developer from dubbing every game that loseable XP and a murderous difficulty a "souls game".

Now I had heard that Team Ninja were dabbling with the concept of a "souls clone" set in mythological japan. OK, that's a cool setting and I do generally like these games. So I got into the alpha and played for a few hours. I didn't like it. Then I got into the beta, and I didn't care of it either. So I felt I wasn't going to get it since the early tests didn't sell me. Then I started seeing reviews from almost every source that this game is very good. Not only that but it completely sold out of its first printing of the game. I had to be missing something, so I decided to take one more try and try to force myself though....

NIOH(PS4)

The story of Nioh starts from the voice of a man named William. William was a commissioned pirate once under the service of queen Elizabeth I. She sought after a resource of power known as Amrita to help win her conflict with Spain, but after using their services the pirates were imprisoned in order to keep Amrita a secret. 

William is imprisoned in the Tower of London for his role in the raids, but with the help of a fish like guardian spirit that watches over him called Saoirse, William makes an attempt to jailbreak and fight his way to freedom. During his escape he is confronted by an occult looking man called Edward Kelley, who is using amrita to corrupt and turn people and things into monsters. After corrupting an executioner in an attempt to kill William, Kelley realizes that William's guardian spirit would be useful to find more amrita, and imprisons Saoirse in a crystal and makes his escape to Japan where amrita can be found in abundance.

Saoirse has protected William since he was a child and has been with him ever since, so William will not stand for her abduction and gives chase. Unfortunately he lands in Japan in 1600, a time where the entire country is embroiled in war and ravaged by the demonic Yokai and Oni that overrun it. With no option but to press forward, William studies the way of the samuari, picks up the first discarded weapon he can find, and heads in search of Kelley.

The story of Nioh is actually a great deal more complex than that since this actually does parody the story of the Sengoku/Edo period of Japan when the country was at war to unify the nation under a single banner. William is more or less an homage to William Adams, who is considered by history to be the first Englishman to step foot in Japan, and was the first Caucasian samurai (so this isn't a case of whitewashing).

In fact, a large majority of the characters are based and off of real life counterparts who had prominent roles during this period. Even the cartoonishly gothy Edward Kelley was actually an occultist and alchemist who claimed he could use a mirror to talk to spirits. So while this game does take many wild liberties in the name of dark fantasy, there was a significant amount of homework done in setting up the backdrop for this game. 

There is an abundance of cutscenes of William looking lost at political meetings.
It's actually pretty fitting, since you won't have a clue about the conversation either.

Now, as I have mentioned before this game is very often billed as a Japanese Dark Souls, (which is ridiculous since the Souls games are Japanese to begin with). But while there are certainly there are some main mechanics that generally defined what the Souls series is, I would say that Nioh has a much more arcadey feel to the action the slow paced slog that is a Souls game. If I had to give it better comparison, I would say that it mixes the Bloodborne with, unsurprisingly, Team Ninja's other claim to fame Ninja Gaiden.

Instead of using the shoulder button based combat one might be used to at this point, Nioh keeps the a more traditional face button system for light & heavy attacks, dodge, and interactions. The shoulders are used for blocking, drawing your ranged weapons and firing them. The last shoulder button changes your attack stance from low, medium, and high. Your stance determines what kind of combat style you wish to engage with be it light fast swinging but lower damaging attacks, a balanced set, or a slow clubbing high damage range of attacks.

But then you also have a number of tricks to use as well such as the living weapon. In your pursuit of your guardian spirit, you get the help of others, and when fully charged you can essentially use their power to go super saiyan and deal massive amounts of damage as well as a brief spell of invulnerability. Each spirit has different attributes as well as passive effects, so with the right tweaking of stats and gods, you can create a self feeding living weapon form so long as you are constantly putting enemies down to replenish it.

And THEN you also have three different sets of skill points to go over multiple skill trees such as one of each of the various weapons you get in the game, your ninjutsu abilities, and your onmyo magics. Some of these abilities have passive that affect your character regardless of what skills you choose to purchase. Some of them have very specific uses so you really want to comb through the skill trees to kind of get an idea of what it is you want to go after. Setting on a few weapons types, and what magics you want to shoot for. 

Everyone one of those options at the top are for a different skill tree.

The stamina system is slightly different because you have a pulse move you can do that if timed at te end of the combo, can cause your stamina to regenerate faster. Yokai also leave waves darkness on the ground that slow your stamina regeneration so you have to pulse in those spots to dissipate them. I never remembered to do this. It felt like it was adding a stem to an already complex battle system.

I actually akin the combat more to Bloodborne than I would Dark Souls because of the high speed nature of the game. While you can be severely bogged down with heavy armors and equipment, you can still run at a generally fast pace, and combat still moves incredibly quickly. Breakneck base would certainly be a fitting term because it was this nature that had me struggle so much when I played through alpha and beta.

Nioh does not use a single large open world since for the course of the story your are traveling over nearly the entirety of Japan, so instead you go to major territories of the country an it is broken up into unlocking stages. Most of the story missions will be a long sprawling map with shrines (bonfires) to level up and checkpoint at before working your way to a spectacular boss fight, some of them will have only the one and a relatively simple objective for you to complete be it find something specific, reach a certain point, or fight a series of enemies or boss.

After completing the level, you are taken back to your map screen which also functions as a shrine so you can spend your accumulated amrita (souls) to level up, buy equipment, upgrade, set your abilities and so forth. So on one hand you might find that the world loses a sense of massiveness because its not just one big interconnected map, but on the other you might find it to be less harrowing because eventually the map will come to an end and you will have a chance to catch a breather and recover. In addition to that, by switching to the stage system replaying old locations to grind, level up, and explore seems less tedious since things move faster and areas are shorter.

And you are going to need that break to sort out the amount of items the game is going to barf all over you like an all night saki bender at a hostess club. In games like these you typically find new interesting weapons or armor in areas of the game that relate to the area you are actually exploring it or sometimes get specific drops from enemies that mirror their own equipment. In Nioh there are five major weapon types (before dlc) and two variants of ranged weapons. As you play through the levels, loot corpses, and find treasures you will be washed with a wave of equipment constantly loading up your inventory.

But then the loot also has rarity levels between common to legendary. Marked in very MMO colors to signify how rare it is. The more rare the item the better familiarity you can get by using the weapon more frequently and thus increase it strength, (or you can just use a whetstone and just boost it to full strength). Once you do if you opt to use this for crafting you might be able to carry over some of the abilities to a new weapon. While armor generally gives your character a new look, you are going to find yourself mix-matching almost every 20 steps because loot is mad irrelevant almost immediately.

The defensive gear does this as well. Just getting constantly flooded with a nonstop wave of equipment. Almost every piece of equipment has a myriad of next to negligible statistic changes of minor point values and fractional percentages. Some abilities highlighted so they have increased ability if you wear the entirety of that armor set for a bonus. The numbers are excessive or confusing. I finished the game without ever knowing what number exactly determined how much defense I actually had and what modifiers were actually contributed to what it was doing. The inventory mechanic in this game is as big of a fucking mess as is was in the original Mass Effect.

I find using the blacksmith to also be equally confusing. There is nearly no purpose for using it from what I can tell. I never seemed to enough of or the right materials to make anything respectively new, you can only Soul Match and item if its of a lower lever to something you are trying to merge it with to bring it up to speed, sell values are pretty weak from what I can tell to begin with. It just doesn't make sense to waste your time using the blacksmith when you are literally going to find better weapons the moment you kill something new, and you can use your old equipment as free XP dumps if you offer them up to shrines, so unless you are strapped for cash for some reason there is little reason to be here.

Now admittedly, I am a sucker for Shinto lore and Japanese architecture and iconography so the setting of this game is right up my alley, even if its a little samey after a while.  Many of the game levels will take you through Japanese fishing villages with small shacks and homes, Shrines, large wooden ninja manors and palaces with hidden doors and trap floors, and caves. Lots of caves. There actually seems like there are a significant number of levels that take you inside of caves an mountains for some reason. Admittedly those levels aren't exactly works of art. You've seen one cave you've seen them all.

Similarly, this game features some very impressive and interesting monster design and that's really what allows the setting to shine. Typically the majority of the enemies you fight are various dudes in armor or ninjas, buy scattered throughout the levels you will fight various Oni and Yokai demons and ghosts that ends with a spectacular boss fight, usually connected to the level in some way. The visual design of all of them are impressive and amazing. I would often find myself marveling at their design. The ice maiden, Yuki-Onna, and her boss fight is an excellent example of this.

And I would be remiss if I didn't mention how good the cutscenes look, if not for their laughable content. While very clearly computer animated, all of the character models are well designed and attractive, every with their own distinct looks about them. So while the names can be confusing by following who is who, you won't confuse anyone by appearances in this one. The downfall is almost every one of them is William sitting with important political figures in Japan, clearly bewildered by the conversation before leaving to slash up more demons.

My biggest complaints about Nioh, however all stem from the overall difficulty of the game for various reasons. First and foremost, don't give me an recommended level for when I should try to do something, because it doesn't mean anything. As I said above the defensive item statistics are all confusing, and it seems regardless of what sets of numbers you have selected, even some of the easiest enemies in the game can still cut you to ribbons if you are careless or get ganged up on. This game has one setting, hard.

Two, Nioh doesn't seem to follow its own combat mechanics for enemies that you have to suffer, giving them a significant advantage. Chiefly its in regard to the stamina trait. When you swing your weapon, dodge, block, run, or take damage, it uses your stamina. Once it depletes you have to wait to recharge before you can attack. If you try to block with no stamina the gauge goes red and your guard is broken leaving you open to attack. Whatever, this is pretty standard in this kinda game.

The problem with it comes in on a series of these one on one character duels you do as sub missions throughout the course of the game. These missions can suck my fucking ass. First off, regardless of your level they are next to impossible to do. But what makes them more frustrating is that you can't build a strategy because things that drain your stamina don't affect enemies the same way. I've had duels where my opponent strings together this massive 6 attack combo that doesn't even so much as lower their gauge by 10%. I've unloaded even longer combos that get guarded that don't move their gauge by 10%. Yet if I'm on offense or defense, I can't keep my stamina up to save my life. One of these fights resulted with me losing my shit on stream and smashing my controller beyond repair.

Now, there is one specific saving grace in this whole game that saved my ass in the form of one of the Omnyo spells in the form of the Sloth talisman. I read this was the key to toning down the difficulty and it truly did help with a lot of the fights, because it slows the opponent down for a brief period which makes the combat a little less twitchy (but no less dangerous). The problem here is when I would research how to get it, I'd hear of a nerf. When I'd look to see if it did get nerfed I would be treated to pages upon pages of people screaming in forums about how it needs to be removed, and "fucking casuals" are ruining the game and should go back to go back to playing Animal Crossing if its too hard.

A very early starting boss fight is a real struggle, the moment you get sloth it becomes laughable.

Listen assholes. You don't nerf shit from single player games if you think it makes it to easy for you. You not use to increase you challenge. You fucking nerf something if it causes the game to be unbalanced. And shit can only be unbalanced if A.) It is a multiplayer game that causes an unfair advantage. B.) breaks the games intended experience. Sloth magic is not harming people who don't want to use it even by fighting the shadows of players that died because it just makes the challenge harder for you.

Gamers, please. I bitched about this shit when the Gamergate debacle was really at the forefront of the news but seriously get this shit through you head: We are not special. Everybody games now. Nobody gives a shit that we can play through the original Dark Souls one handed blind folded on a guitar hero controller. So this unnecessary divide of hardcore gamer or filthy casual is fucking retarded and needs to stop. All you are managing to do is create a divide of a culture where one doesn't need to exist. I play Smite, but is to turns out, I don't need to venomously hate people who like League of Legends or Dota 2. Fucking knock it off. People who like games are cool, so if someone needs help maybe offer tips or ideas instead of berating someone as a casual. Fuckin' morons.

Why does there always have to be effn spiders...

So ultimately, my big issue with Nioh is this: When I would play the game I would be asked by a friend if the game was fun. I would go on to say that how it looks great, it controls well, the characters are well designed, the combat is fluid and fast, and so on. To which he would respond by saying: "But is it fun???" and while I could come up with all the reasons in the world for how this is one of the more technically sound games of 2017 the bottom line of things is I wasn't getting that sense of satisfaction of getting past a difficult segment like when I would get past and area in Dark Souls.

So the question then becomes, does "fun factor" count as a tangible merit if the game is good or not? I certainly put in enough time to say it was a worthwhile purchase. I was able to see the game through to the end. There are few mechanical flaws that I can come up but nothing that was a deal breaker. It's setting and character design was well done and nice to look at. And all of these things are certainly marks in it favor. But if honestly sit and ask myself if I enjoyed my time with Nioh, gun to my head, yes or no answer, it's going to have to be no.

The bottom line is outside of that first push through the opening area of the game, I never had that sense of relief of accomplishment I would have when I proceed through Dark Souls.  Just a continued persistent annoyance knowing something harder was waiting. That I would die to some simple enemy because of a cheap death. Have to grind and sort out about 2 billion items to power up marginally to fumble through the next boss fight. It was tedious. I didn't even have that break through like with Darkest Dungeon where I suddenly understood how things work and was able to take it for what it is.

Nioh is a well designed, very beautiful looking game. It is certain going to have its niche audience, and looking at it objectively I can see why would think that this game is very good. But the fact of the matter is that I played through it out of annoyance and stubbornness, not enjoyment. And last I checked that was the whole fuckin' point of buying video games. It's getting a release on PC so its user base will grow. But I can't in good conscious give the game a proper recommendation, because when asked if its fun I could never just say yes. There was always some qualifier.  Purchase and play at own risk.

Maybe GamePro was onto something with their Fun-Factor score.