Valkyria Chronicles 4 (PS4): Treading back to familiar ground.

So. Remember when I was all excited for Valkyria Revolution? Man, I do. Thought literally nothing of putting that one on preorder without a second thought and eagerly dove right in. Although I had seen a gameplay trailer and knew it wasn't the game I was hoping for, I was still going to give it a chance to live up to the lineage of the game I loved.

I shouldn't have. It was total dogshit and it got rightly panned by myself and every other reviewer who played it. Well, apparently the team at Sega must have seen this coming because not long after the release of Valkyria Revolution they released another trailer as if to say "uh hey, we are working on this too?" This one had design more like Valkyria I remember. Had tanks, similar art design. Looks like it played like it was supposed to. I was skeptical now, but still willing. So after waiting for what felt like forever, I finally sat down with.....

VALKRYIA CHRONICLES 4:(PS4)

Valkyria Chronicles 4 takes place within the same timeline as the original Valkyria timeline, but further south of the original nation of Gallia. The Empire of the east has been pushing westward against Federation territory in an attempt to claim more land and in doing so more Ragnite, the material that is used as a power source for the nations and their military equipment. 

We assume control Claude Wallace, a wet behind the ears but competent star military recruit who joined up with the federation army with his childhood friends Raz and Kai. After some initial friction as a unit, the team eventual gels and passes their training to join the Ranger Corps, which is an elite squad within the federation army, and Claude is awarded the rank of Captain of Squad E.

After some initial strong showings as a team, the Squad learns that the empire is taking ground from the federation, and that they are marching towards Gallia and their small hometown of Hafen. The federation makes the decision to put all their effort into Operation Northern Cross: a massive offensive push to the capital city of the empire, Schwartzgard. Squad E is to take part of this offensive as one of the federations stronger weapons.

I can thankfully say that this time around Sega has learned from their mistakes because this iteration of Valkyria Chronicles is once again built on the same gameplay framework as the original. The wonderfully unique combination of tactical RPG, JRPG, third person shooter, and first person shooter. There are a handful of little differences put into this version, but it otherwise is a stone for stone rebuild of what made the first one great.

As you did before, you start off by selecting your squad for a given mission. Then each turn you have a set number of actions to use. Once selecting a character, you zoom into a 3rd person mode and then get a limited amount to move them across the battlefield to your desired location. During your move opposing forces are able to take pot shots at you so move quick and use cover. Once there, you can zoom again to a first person angle to line up and take a shot of your own, if it doesn't kill your foe they get to counter attack. Once you have used all your actions you end the turn and then enemy gets their phase to do the same.

How the game differs this time is in addition to the order system that was in place, the special commands for stat buffs you could spend action points to use, you now also have series of support commands from the main forces you can use to open the map locations, bring in artillery fire, and other support actions. These are story based so you don't always have them, but there a nice bit of options to have.

There are handful of new squad mechanics too. In addition to having some tanks to control, you also have an APC unit to control. I foolishly ignored this for the first part of the game, but this little guy is incredibly useful in getting some initial moves on the map done safely. On his turn, he can pick up a number of troops and essentially move across the map without taking much in the way of damage from anything that isn't a tank or anti-tank artillery. Once in position you can dispatch units at the cost of their normal move. This is fantastic for troops like Shocktroopers or snipers who do not get a lot of initial movement. 

There are two big new aspects to the squad too.  One of them is the new troop class, the grenadier. Their job, as you might expect, is a slow moving portable artillery. They take a minute set up so they are risky to bring right into the lines of enemy fire, and they can be somewhat inaccurate. But they can provide big damage to turrets, tanks, heavy soldiers, as well as provide smoke cover. When used properly, they can be a very effective force. And one of them is a major character, which will provide you an additional action.

The other is now each turn, you get a single command point. By spending this point, some characters can basically take command of two other troops in a single move. This is incredibly useful for a number of reasons. For one, like the APC, it can be used to move two troops a significantly longer distance. But while they can take damage as if they were on a normal move, they aren't the targeted enemy. They also are just in range for to possibly join in for a joint attack. So for example: if I use a scout to use the CP command to pull two shock troopers, those troops basically get to move double the distance they could have by themselves without expending their own move yet, and if I take a shot at a nearby enemy, I essentially get a 3 man attack to mow down whoever I was aiming at. It is incredibly useful.

In that initial game summary I provided more of the overarching narrative for Valkyria 4 because while it does coincide with the original Valkyria Chronicles it really could be its own game if they had changed the names of the territories. I will say that the original Valkyria was more cut and dry because it was one army vs another army with a focus of smaller characters having a smaller side stories within them.

Valkyria 4 however feels more like the main story is there only to provide the framework for all the characters stories which are the much bigger focus of the plotline. Through out the game you the military is basically part of two major operations and if that ended up being the focus it would be very one note. By making the focus more about the characters in the squad themselves, I feel that the narrative is actually stronger for it because it allows for more faces to take the stage.

While the primary characters are the source of the main narrative, this story focus is best displayed on the brighter spotlight on the lesser members of the squad. As you might remember from the first game, they released some DLC packs where you got take control of Edy and a number of other squad members. It was a fun little aside and got to give you more depth to the rank and file troops you have been using. Before, you only got to read a little blurb about their history and that was all you got.

Now between chapters, you also get "squad stories" where a small number of the squad has some interaction with the main cast. These little asides give you some backstory to these character and completing them allows you to turn some of their negative quirks into positive bonuses, so it is more than worthwhile to do them. I feel that the story as a whole in this game is pretty good, but it does have a few anime cringe moments that feel are in there for the sake of being there.

The visual design for the original has come back as well and thankfully for it it this time around. It's a well proportioned anime style done in that washed out yet colorful watercolor look that the first one had that made me feel like I was watching a well produced anime (which was sorely missed after the video gamey look of Valkyria Revolution). Sound effects are accentuated by animated onomatopoeia such as the "ratta ratta" of guns. Even has some cool weather effects for some missions.  They have added some better transitions for when troops trigger their quirks and flaws. Generally better cleaned up this time around.

It has a pretty exceptional classical soundtrack. Much like before it feels very fitting of a military story that give a lot of the missions and scenes a feeling of "epicness" but they also fit in a number of rearrangements of tracks from the original game that sneakily felt iconic to it. I couldn't hum a few bars of the main theme right on command for you if you asked me too, but I'll be damned if I didn't notice that song immediately when it crept in on a major scene.

Unfortunately for Valkyria 4 by being a stone for stone build of the first game, a lot of the bad aspects of the series also make a return as well. First off, this game like its predecessors is notoriously talky.  Because of how the natural flow of the actual "game" element is, it doesn't allow for a lot of narrative to actually take place during missions, so much of it is crammed in between the missions of the game. Like you can with most modern games, you can always skip them but this is a narrative based game so I don't know why you would want to.  

But this does bring us back to the biggest complaint of the Valkyria games and it's something they should have fixed. But in between every single story segment, the game brings you back to the book menu. The book menu is what you can use to flip through all your various options of the game like skirmish missions, R&D to make new weapons, proceed with the story, adjust your squad, etc.  As a base framework, it's fine. But for some reason after every single story transition it brings you right back to the book and asks you if you are sure you want to proceed with this chapter.

Literally every time you want to advance the game, you have to select this.

I appreciate the need to confirm that I am making the decision, it's fine for almost any of these functions so I don't accidentally go into a menu I don't want to. But in the context of following the story it's an absolutely pace killing nightmare. If I start going through the story segments, what SHOULD have happened is it would play through all of the necessary story bits until I tell it to stop. Let me pause and either skip and go back to the book menu at MY whim so I can pick up were the story left off. Then after it completes the story it then would go back to the book on its own so I can prepare for the coming mission.

This is how it SHOULD have worked. This is how it should have been implemented from the second game onward. But it's not. So now after every couple minutes of cutscene (and sometimes even less than that) it just yanks me to a loading screen and then back to the book so it can ask me if I want to see the next part of it, and then wait for the loading to finish to continue the story I didn't ask to stop in the first place. It's arduous, completely unnecessary, and it makes a game that doesn't exactly move at a break neck pace go even slower.

The additional unit types do allow for more strategy, but at its heart this iteration of Valkyria can be won in the same fashion as the first game. That means with the right defensive buffs, and the right moves, almost every single mission can be won on your first turn. Yes, a handful of them do require some very specific strategies to survive, but there was a lot of times where I would use my raise all defense buff, command a pair of shocks with a scout to dash towards my goal, and then finish off to take base with my two troopers. Inside of a few missions I was "A" ranking all of the story missions and skirmishes.

That being said, Valkyria 4 did a better job of making all the ranks way more useful. In my last review I said that you shouldn't waste your time with medics, lancers, or snipers. Now the missions have a lot more different nuances to them so it is to your benefit to play around with it all and bring at least one of everything to the table. You have no idea when you might need a snipers long range accuracy or a lancer to bring out a frustratingly placed tank. The only class I ended using the least was actually new grenadiers. They had use but not as much as the other classes did, at least when I played it.

R&D can be a grind to do sometimes. Up to three tanks in the game and 3 branching trees of weapon means a lot of upgrades to do if you want everything. This too is muddled by the support character reacting every time you build a new weapon with one or two lines. This also should have been changed to only react as you were leaving R&D, so I could speed through my upgrades without having to stop to cancel this reaction. Instead, like the book, the progress is slowed for unnecessary pause

And like the first Valkyria a significant number of the upgrades are worthless. More damage is nice and all and so is clip size. But this is a game that rewards head shots so it doesn't make sense to use anything but the starting weapons because they have the best accuracy and that ultimately is the strongest stat in the game. They thankfully now show on our squad screens how accurate each solider is so now you can change things accordingly, and admittedly some of the weapons you find are indeed better than the base weapon. But so long as you keep upgrading center of the tree, you will have little issue progressing.

The last thing I want to bitch about is one enemy in particular, Klaus Walz. As a character, he is fine. He's a foil to Claude as being their big enemy tank captain. But he he specifically is bullshit because outside of having a fast and maneuverable tank that is next to impossible to bring down, he is one of two units that break one of the rules of the game. His tank is able to just have generic machine gun fire that triggers WHILE he moves. So if for some reason he is making a turn around where one of your guys are standing, he just completely obliterates their health bar without even taking his turn.

And one of the missions you fight him, he gets the first turn! So after you carefully set your troops up to start the level, he just blows through 1 to 3 of them before you even get to take an action. It's one of the few missions where you might have to restart it just because you got fucked before even take a turn. Even the final boss lets you get a goddamn move in first.

Ultimately the question is, is this good or better than the first Valkyria Chronicles? Well, that's a tough call because it's working against nostalgia. If I take them from a mechanics standpoint I do have to say that Valkyria 4 is better due to the additions to the games and minor improvements. I do love this cast and this story, and it had some great moments in it. But it does feel like there is a bunch of wasted potential because they had 3 previous games to fix some quality of life annoyances that could have made this game superb.

Instead, I have to lave with the somewhat unimpressive rating of "If you liked Valkyria Chronicles then you will like Valkyria Chronicles 4."  Which is true and by no means a mark against it. I frick'n loved this game and would certainly recommend it for its uniqueness. But it feels like it could have been so much more polished after all this time. But I am not looking a gift horse in the mouth. They messed up a series and I liked and then fixed it with a proper installment. If I get an Valkyria Chronicles 5 then I am more than happy to see it.

I will say that this one kind of messes up its own
lore about the Valkyria, but it was a nitpick at best.

Nights of Azure 2: Bride of the New Moon (PS4): Baby Steps Forward

I wanna say at some point in 2016, I saw a trailer for a game that was being produced by Gust. If you don't know who Gust is, that would me you probably don't play the Atelier franchise with almost the heroine like addiction that I seem to. While they are known for item creation RPGs, the trailer depicted a much more faster paced action game with hack n' slash combat, over the top super movies, and what seemed to be good soundtrack. Gust is a competent studio, so I gave this a purchase with little thought.

It was not a very good game.

So I didn't immediately rush to pick up the sequel when it came out, but during the summer months I had a relative dead spell where I didn't have any immediate new releases to get to, and I saw that gamestop of all places had it ridiculously marked down (not a good sign). But as poor as the previous was, I was able to see it through to the end, and felt with nothing else to do and only 20 to spend, why not give the sequel a try....

NIGHTS OF AZURE 2:
BRIDE OF THE NEW MOON(PS4)

Nights of Azure 2 picks up in the distant future from the previous iteration of the game. After the last battle with the Nightlord banished away eternal night, the world was not as saved as people hoped as during the night monsters called fiends surface and terrorize humans, leaving the sun as their only defense and forcing the world to never truly know restful sleep.

A holy order known as the Curia task of their best agents, a woman named Aluche, to take her friend and now-priestess Liliana to be a sacrifice to one called the Moon Queen and to become the fated Bride of Time. An upset and distraught Aluche proceeds with her mission to accompany Liliana where the ceremony is supposed to take place, but they carriage never makes it. They are attacked by fiends and in Aluche's efforts to protect her friend, she is slain in battle.

Sometime after, Aluche awakens to find herself under the care of a Curia researcher called Camilla Alucard (yeah, that's not fucking on the nose). Using sciences shunned by religious practices, Aluche now lives again as an artificial half demon with purple blood, like the last holy knight to fight the Nightlord. Leliana is missing and leads point to a nearby ruined city and with no other course of action, Aluche pursues to try to find and save her friend. 

Okay before I even get started with the actual review: Carmilla Alucard? Really? You named a fucking character Carmilla Alucard? Come the fuck on. I mean she's not a vampire so it's kind of misdirection I guess, but she does deal with blood transfusions for the half demon character. You could have named her Elvyria D. Edgelord and that would have been about as a subtle. Sheesh. 

So Nights of Azure 2 plays pretty similarly to the previous iteration of the game with some subtle differences, so while I never gave the first version of the game a proper review, there is going to be some significant carry over here so you could see this somewhat as a double review.

At its core, Nights of Azure 2 is a mission based hack and slash spectacle fighter with some RPG elements and splash of Pokemon monster collecting to go with it.  Functionally how it works is you start by accepting missions at your base of operations (the same hotel from the first game) and then go out into the surrounding map to try to complete your objective, be it slay a certain monster, number of them, find specific items, etc.

The rub is that even though Aluche's new half demon status grants her significantly more strength, it does require regular blood transfusion and digestion to maintain, essentially forcing her into a state of vampirism to stay alive. So when you leave the hotel, you only get a short amount of time to complete your goal. So with a clock constantly ticking, you have to quickly navigate the map as efficiently as possible, while simultaneously battling monsters to increase your experience and gain blood so you can level your character and thus allow you to fight for longer stretches. 

If the time expires during the mission, you only get the experience for the monsters that you defeated none of the rewards for completing the quest. This forces you to try it again the next time you go out, the problem is with each chapter you only have a limited number of nights to get your main story quests done, while side questing along the way. If you fail to get everything done by the time the moon goes dark, you get a game over.  I've heard people complain about the time mechanic in this one but honestly outside of the first chapter or 2, I never really felt pressured by it. I've completed story missions with plenty of moon phases to spare, and then ultimately those carry over. You could do more side questing later.

Like the last game, on top of using a combat system with light, heavy, and special attacks to combo and chain, you can still summon demons that you collect called Servan to fight alongside you. Some of these can be used for support and some of them have attack properties. But a handful of them also have some situational map purposes such as burning down an impeded path or using one's flight to jump to a higher level and open a new route. So while it is good get some some strong one's leveled up, you will need to occasionally rotate some out from mission to mission.

How it differs from the first Nights of Azure game is now this time you have a number of support characters who can fight with you as well. It wouldn't be a Gust game if it literally wasn't barfing cute anime girls at you with every given opportunity but it did add an interesting new ripple to the game. If you are going to give me all these characters, at least they are letting me get some use out of them.

Because of the breadth of characters to choose from, the game now also features an affinity mechanic that plays a factor on character specific side quests, cut scenes, and possible ending outcomes. So if you want to unlock more of the content, you are going to want to jump around from character to character. To its credit, some of them have some pretty unique moves that make them all pretty interest to use. But as it is with games like this, you will find one or two characters you will want to stick with be it for their moves or story.

Once you are back at your hotel base, you can speak to your supporting party members to finish up any specific side quests you did for them to watch new interaction scenes with them, and then head to the lab to level up. In the lab you basically have two forms of experience. Your regular XP you use to level up your skill tree for stats, weapon abilities, and other passives. You also have a blood XP that is used to level up your Servans. Once they level up to a point your "evolve" them which basically makes a stronger version of the one before, and sends it back to one.

Now before I get into the complaints with the game, I would like to stress that I do generally enjoy games that Gust puts out  (most of them are Atelier, but shut up). So the real crux of the review is did they learn from their mistakes from the previous title to make Nights of Azure 2 a better than the first one? Nights of Azure was functional and did had some bits that I liked, but there was a lot of room for improvement.

Well, there are some story bits that are still pretty cringe worthy. First of all leveling your character. Much like the last Nights of Azure,  Azure 2 had to contrive a reason for when you are leveling your character, the process requires Aluche to be clad in a scantily white set of bridal lingerie. They did this in the first Azure as well. Whenever she successfully raises a leave she has this pleasured moan animation that she does to complete it. It's super awkward.

There are some useful skills on each tree, but stick to one weapon or the game becomes a grind.

Then you have a number of "pool" scenes. Since they highlight that this hotel has a pool, they basically have a significant number of character interactions take place at the pool to justify the characters getting into swimwear. And holy crap, if the level up bridal lingerie was racy, then the swimsuits are a step over that. I don't think even girls with perfect bodies would have the courage to wear some of the suits the characters in this wear. I love me some fan service as much as the next guy does, but these are so over the top it borders on comical.

They do this, I feel, to really hammer the point that Aluche is gay. The first Azure game also had gay protagonists. That's fine, I get that it's a consistent theme since the first game and as I played through I started to piece together that the affections between the main characters were clearly more than friendship. But at least to that sense, it felt more natural as the story progressed on. Azure 2 would have been about as subtle if they just said: "Aluche got a massive girl boner because Carmilla wore her bathing suit". It feels like it had to be crammed in because the last story did.

Speaking of cramming things in, this game expects you to do an awful lot with very little time. I did a fairly significant number of side quests and used a decent amount of my allotted time to explore the maps to try to find better paths or where certain monsters or treasures were. And when I would get back to the base, I would be awarded with affinity from the character I used. Each character has about 6 hearts to fill, but after playing through the entire story, I don't know if it's even possible to to max out every character's possible affinity rank. I feel you must be able to to get the good ending, but I don't see how.

This is something I bring up a lot of games of this nature, but the combat still kind of has that weightless floaty feeling the first one did. It is better this time around but the recoil from enemies taking damage still jerky and unnatural, and it ruins the entire feel of the combat. It also really doesn't motivate me to learn how to properly combo since stun locking enemies into the longest slew of attacks I can muster basically traps them into place. It also negatively impacted my Servan usage since I basically didn't need them. I would wait for my special counter to finish and then mow groups down with it. It just didn't have that visceral recoil that I get when I play Bayonetta.

The skill tree branches on a few different paths, and it's mainly to beef up the various weapon types as you play through the game, but honestly I just stuck to the route of the base sword and it really didn't seem to affect my experience in any tangible way. The first Azure title was not very difficult to get through, and this one really isn't either. So long as you occasionally remember to spend your points at base, you should pretty easily clear the game.

It's visual design is.... fine. I guess. It's an anime game so I don't know how much I can say about it. It's pretty consistent with the games they tend to put out, but it looks like it would be just as at home on the PS3 than a PS4. But I have to figure if they aren't going full bore on the details of the characters or environments (which admittedly can feel samey), you would figure to get a must smoother and consistent frame rate.  Perhaps I am remembering wrong but Azure 1 had a pretty solid 60fps all game. I don't think Azure 2 is that smooth at any point.

I generally like the soundtrack in Gust games, and Azure 2 is no exception. Much like the boss battles of the Atelier series, this series is known for blending synthesized fantasy classical blended with contemporary rock and metal. For lack of a better expression, it very much is "video game music" but it's not bad. It didn't shake me like Persona, Doom, or Undertale did, but it's definitely a credit to the games favor. And for certain story moments, you might recognize updated arrangements from the previous Azure title, and I appreciate consistency like that.

But the sound design overall in this one is not great. There are inconsistencies throughout the game. There will be points where the voices will just cut out during scene (Japanese language). During combat voice lines will sometimes surge up and sound effects of attacks will mute during special moves. Some song volume levels are much higher than others. It's strange and feels very unpolished, which honestly wouldn't surprise me with how fast this company pumps games out.

It's story is still somewhat nonsensical. They do not have a lot of build up to who exactly the final boss can be. I think in both games they make an early appearance and then never again until the actual last boss battle. It makes it a little hard to get motivated when I don't really know what it is I am fighting. I actually finished the first game not realizing that was the final boss. It adds characters and gives you new locations, and it does constantly warn you of the impending doom, but yet as I play it it never feels like the stakes are getting raised. The tension level remains consistent from the first to last stage.

But Gust does do some story things right. They are very consistent in their lore. In Atelier games, in sequels major characters in one title will be minor characters in another, showing a change in the timeline and growth. Azure 2 does this as well as one familiar support character references and tells of the events of the previous game, which culminates with a major character returning to join the party. I won't lie, despite my lukewarm feelings to the first one I got happy to see them again, and was even more happy when I got to use them too. So the story must have done enough to leave some kind of lasting impression.

I find myself somewhat mixed on Nights of Azure 2. I affectionately refer to it as "anime trash" because that is absolutely what it is. But for a game that I didn't think was that good to get a sequel, and for that sequel to be good enough to see the story through does say something. I definitely can say that they did make improvements so it certainly is a better game. But at the same time it just so decidedly average.

Azure 2 is an ultimately unoffensive title. It pushes no boundaries and doesn't really shake up any established game mechanics. It's visual design is pretty anime and it has a relatively decent soundtrack. It's not a horrible game, but depending on what it is you are looking for you can find so many better options in that same vein. It's vanilla ice cream. It's perfectly fine as it is but it feels like it's begging for so much more. Tighter story, more weight to the combat, better implementation of its mechanics, better sound design.

I want to say that I paid close to 20 or 30 bucks for this game. That's probably a fair price because despite showing improvement, there is still quite a bit wrong with this game. That said, the ARE showing signs of improving, so I am not totally ready to write this one off. I wouldn't tell anyone to take a chance on this one, and it is a game that can be very easily forgotten after you've played it. Roll the dice on it if something about it speaks to you, but otherwise I wouldn't give a recommendation.

Carmilla Alucard.
I'm still mad about that.

Secret of Mana: Remake (PS4): Revisiting a familiar path.

When explaining to idiots who think I hate the Legend of Zelda franchise, I usually have to explain that I love the best Zelda game: A Link to the Past, (Yes, best. Ocarina is average at best. Fight me) But while this icon title is pretty much a masterpiece on the SNES, it wasn't the first of this top-down exploration adventure game I actually played on this console.

When they announced a remake for this one, I was pretty amped. And despite Jason Schreier of Kotaku's attempts to suck the joy out of everything in his reviews (he seriously hates every remake), I was pretty excited to play it again. I haven't played through this game in a long time, but it's always been one of my favorites as a kid so it will be interesting to see how the game has changed, and what is the same in.....

SECRET OF MANA(PS4)

Secret of Mana opens with a brief prologue about the world of this game. Human civilization prospered and advanced by utilizing magic and energy powered by Mana. They used this power to make a massive floating super weapon called the Mana fortress. In order to stop potential destruction, the world unleashed a Mana Beast to destroy the fortress.  As they clashed, a man wielding the Sword of Mana appeared riding a white dragon and defeated the beast and fortress. The world was safe, but as mana started to fade.

We flash to now, where Randi is exploring the falls with two other village children looking for a sparkling treasure they had seen below.  Randi slips on a wet passage and falls to the bottom, where he finds a Rusty sword embedded in stone. After hearing his name and yanking the blade free, he catches a glimpse of a ghost for a moment before heading back to the village.

On the trip home he notices that monsters are a lot more violent and active. Upon reaching the village he learns that he actually has pulled the legendary mana sword and it was what was protecting the village from monsters.  The Village is attacked by a larger monster called a Mantis ant, and Randi manages to fend it off. However, due to the monsters attraction to the sword the village exiles him from home. With nowhere else to go, Randi takes the advice of a knight named Jema to take the sword to the shrines to reactivate the power of Mana.

Jesus Christ. It's actually shorter to play through that sequence than it was for me to describe it. This remake is a modernization of the 1993 release. It is actually a pretty faithful rebuilding of the game from a map perspective and from a mechanics perspective. While the game is functionally exactly the same as it was before, they did make a number of quality of life improvements to the game overall.

Obviously and most notably this game got a complete graphical overhaul. Now this isn't an upgrade to make it super new and modernized like a lifelike rendering like Final Fantasy 7 is currently getting. They basically upgraded this game from the SNES graphics to a more polished version of say a gamecube era Zelda game. It manages to keep the art style from the original promotional and concept art from the original game so the overhaul doesn't feel like it's departing from its original aesthetics.

The game is now full of voice acted dialog as well, which was a surprising addition to the remake. This has been a big point of contention to the remake as a whole because whenever they announce something new or good that people want, it immediately turns into complaining about not being the same. Now admittedly it's not exactly the greatest bit of voice acting by any stretch, and it's pretty much reduced to major characters and scenes (and the innkeep for some reason) but ultimately I was not that put off by it. I played Star Ocean: A New Hope. That game is the eff'n gold standard for bad voice acting.

So functionally, the game operates pretty much exactly the same as the previous SNES iteration of the game did. Secret of Mana is a top down hack and slash adventure game with RPG elements in the vein of Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past and can be played up to 3 players. It still operates with the endurance mechanic so when you swing your weapon you have to wait for a quick 0-100% counter to fill up before you can take another swing at full strength.

You still can charge up your 8 weapons depending on their level for special attacks that deal increased damage. Your support characters Primm and Popoi still can use the various types of magic they learn during the course of the game. And this is still done by the ring menu system which can be just as slow and cumbersome as it always has been. It is certainly original and unique to the series but when you are trying to level up your magic it never flows as smoothly as you would like it to, even if you have it memorized.

This is somewhat abated by the addition of a pair of hot keys that you can now program. For a veteran player like I am to this series, this is very handy to have Undine's healing spell mapped to one and whatever spell I was leveling or using for dungeon or boss to the other. This cuts down a significant amount of delay having to navigate the menu every time I want to cast a spell, which makes this a very welcome addition to the game.

This clip show's the significant difference from casting with the ring system, to the hot keys.

They have also included a little mini-map in the upper right corner of the screen, which was a nice little add-on. You can turn it off as well, which I did since I know this game like the back of my hand. But a cute little visual thing that they used for the mini map is that it uses the original SNES sprite graphics for it, which is a nice little nod to the original. When using it though, it did feel like it quickened the pace of the game because you could see a lot more of the map.

As I mentioned previously, There is additional voice acting to the game and it's usually kept to primary scenes. But they added a bit of story flavor for when you go use inns. Inns in this game were originally required to save, so when you to use it you are treated to a scene of the main characters interacting with each other about some of the previous experiences of the game. All of these are completely new and original. Some of them are cute, some are funny, some drag on much too long. To the game's credit these can be skipped, but I don't know why you would since this is new content. I will say that if you don't keep up with them, the team will talk about events you did hours ago.

The music in this game has completely remastered as well to make use of PS4s expanded memory and quality. I found the modernized orchestral iterations to be very good, but again, this is something I have seen a significant number of reviews and comments to complain about. It seems like Square-Enix was concerned about this too so the game does have option to set it back to the original SNES version of the soundtrack, which still actually holds up pretty damn well, really.

I would say that the biggest annoyance I had with the remake was the change to the AI control system. In the old version of Secret of Mana, you had a 4x4 grid based on how close to monsters you wanted your team to get, and how aggressive they were in attacking. It was pretty stellar, because I could have weaker character hang back, but still attack like crazy if something got too close.

It's now a more simplified AI control menu and I don't feel it's for the better. Because by simplifying to "attack the same", "attack another", "do not attack" or whatever they are called, I feel now attacks are wasted by hitting an enemy I've already gotten well in hand, or making some map travel frustrating because I can't get the team to keep up with me because they are chasing another monster or refusing to run past. It's happened a number of times and admittedly a minor frustration. But minor frustration that you notice a lot, becomes a major one.

This simple gird allowed for a lot of character nuance in combat.
I do not understand why they got rid of it.

I will say that in the defense of the menus, they did simply down the list of meaningless statistics that don't actually play a factor into the gameplay. It was just additional information for the sake of having it. Now it's just down to simple, easy to understand terminology with much clearer indicators of progress while you are leveling. So while I miss my grid, it's not really all bad as far as menu changes go.

The voice acting is.... acceptable, I suppose. I am always kinda taken aback when I play a game that has some bad voice acting because at this point it feels like with how many actors are in the VO scene this shouldn't happen anymore. But after some initial cringe at some lines, I am sure you would be like me and eventually the voices will sort of just fade into the noise and not bother you. I will say that some of the Inn cutscenes can be phenomenally bad. It's always usually one that runs too long.

With the rework of the menu, there is now a much more significant indication
of progression of skills, or benefits to items used. 

They also made the strange decision to not animate the mouths in this game other than a few exceptions. It gives it more of a puppet show feel if that makes any sense. Major scenes will fully animated and drop to a 30fps frame rate to give it a more cinematic feel to it, but while characters are talking and moving, the mouth is shut, or open and not moving. It's strange and feels out of place. This is also the norm for any other non-animated cutscene. It basically shifts from pose to pose rather jerkily. This feels like it would not have been much work to fix.

A lot of the old game annoyances are back too. The could have really tweaked up the combat system so that the percentage for attack could have greater influenced the damage dealt. Instead it still feels like you either get full damage, or next to no damage. If I have 40% stamina when I take a swing, wouldn't 40% damage make sense? Another combat annoyance is the "miss" rate is still ridiculous. Even at full stamina your likelihood to miss an attack is why higher than it should be, leading to combat where you are constantly taking a swing at a baddie to kill them and just constantly whiffing for no reason. This is even more frustrating when you wasted time charging up an attack.

To be fair, you far less likely to miss on a charged attack. But it still happens too frequently.

Leveling magic is still a chore. Like the weapons, you level up their efficiency by using them. That makes sense, rotate your higher weapons around so everyone is good at everything. But even with the addition of the hot keys, magic still takes an arduous amount of time. Pick your spell, wait for the cast animation, wait for the spell animation, wait for the damage to drop so you can recast it again. MP is pretty sparse in this game so you need to carry MP recovery items if you are going to grind spells for any reason.

They did add a feature that you could increase the amount of items you could carry. Typically you could only carry up to 4 of every specific item and I personally felt that somewhat added to the challenge of the game. When you learn magic it really doesn't become the inconvenience it feels it should be, but none the less you can increase that amount so it helps for grinding spells without having to constantly go back to the Inn to recover your MP.

But the flat out biggest problem of the game is the exact same one that I bitched about in my Death's Gambit review and that is that this game crashed a fucking lot. It would crash mid battle seemingly for no reason, during boss fights, during screen transitions. It was patched multiple times and I still found myself with the game constantly crashing on me. It really was souring my entire experience of the remake as whole.

Unlike Death's Gambit though, Secret of Mana has also added a very generous autosave that basically saves every time you enter a new room.  So even if the game does crash on you, you really aren't inconvenienced any more than just needing to reload the game back up and bam, you are right back where you left off just a room away, or at the start of a boss fight. It really is something that should have been taken care of immediately but honestly I don't even know if that ever got addressed.

So that leaves us with the final question: is the Secret of Mana remake better or worse? From where I stand, it comes to a matter of preference. The original holds a special place in my heart and I can always go back and play it. But it's not available to everyone now, so if you have never played Secret of Mana before I would give this a recommendation even with the problems I've cited.

Sure, a number of things could have been done better or improved upon, but it still captures a lot of the old magic that made me love the game before, and quality of life adjustments added do make for a more streamlined experience. It's only 40 bucks and it's a reminder that classic, simple mechanics can still hold up.

I am still saying "One night is 50 GP"
in old man voice

Death's Gambit (PS4): Facing Death

My friends. I have a confession to make to all of you: I am a fan of Dark Souls. I know, I know. I'll give you a minute to recover from this staggering bit of realization, but it's actually true. Before even! When From Software put out Demon's Souls they essentially created a game genre that was eventually perfected with their magnum opus: Dark Souls. Since then many companies made their own iterations to try to capture some of the magic. Some are bad, some are ok, some are compared even when they shouldn't be (look'n at you, Nioh). 

But it's the ones that try to take that gameplay style and mechanics system and blend it into their own creations that grab my attention. And when this one came out this past summer, there were certainly more than a few reviews of this one that I started to take notice. Made by White Rabbit studios and published by Adult Swim Games, I felt this would be a good investment for my recent PlayStation store gift card and sat down with....

DEATH'S GAMBIT:(PS4)

In Death's Gambit you play Soren, a knight in service to the nation of Vados. When Soren was born his father was drafted to a war known the "Great Expedition" per the fiefdom of their home. His father never returned, so Soren grew up under his mother, Evelyn, who tried to instill to him to live a life that is one worth remembering. As the campaign continued onward, eventually Soren's mother was also drafted and did not return.

To follow in his mother's footsteps, Soren also became a knight to join the Great Expedition as well and led a company into battle. The game begins shortly after this, where a Vil'dradur (A Dragon/Lizardesq race of people) warrior called Vrael is seen dragging Soren's body to a burning pile of Soren's company. Nobody else survived. Taking a jaded pity on Soren, he tells him to return to Vados. The battle was lost and there is nothing left for him here.

But just as he goes to leave the battlefield, Soren is confronted by Death himself. Death has granted Soren immortality, but only if he accepts a contract into Death's service, asking for a single favor. With nowhere to return to and without any cause other than to try to find his mother, Soren accepts the contract and continues forward.

As I eluded to in the introduction paragraph, Death's Gambit is a 2D metroidvania style Souls clone similar to the vein of my previously reviewed Salt and Sanctuary. Many of the mechanics that you would recognize from these games are going to be in play here as well as a number of unique mechanics as well.

While using the Souls comparison for the game mechanics, I would say its actual play style feels closer to Castlevania. It has a pretty arcade speed to it as the character moves reasonably fast and the jump is quick, although a little loose. It uses the face button scheme instead of the more traditional souls trigger system, which makes more sense given the 2D plane that you play the game on.

Combat is generally what you would expect. You are able to equip two different weapons (usually a melee and ranged) that will deplete your stamina as you fight, forcing you to back up and replenish before you can resume. You have a dodge roll move that like its Soulsian heritage also depletes stamina but gives you invincibility frames for a significant portion of the roll. This is a essentially the core, and about where the comparisons to Dark Souls ends.

You also have a "Soul Energy" gauge and this is bit of a clever mechanic because when designing your character, your character class actually directs how you actually fill this gauge. For example, I use a rogue in this game, and they fill the soul energy by attacking relentlessly and with aggression. But if you were to say play as the defensive minded sentinel, this gauge increases by defending or parrying attacks.

This gauge is how you perform up to 3 different special attacks, in lieu of a magic system. On top of having to fight to build energy for these attacks, your soul energy also degrades over time so you may not always have an attack ready to go at the start of a fight. These abilities also have cool downs that naturally force you wait between uses. In conjunction between the stamina, energy, and cool down it produces this interesting balance that both rewards aggression and pace, while preventing spamming abilities and forcing awareness of your limits and defense.

A good deal of the of the equipment that you use of the game pretty boldfacedly tells you that many of the weapons are stat specific, so right at the onset when you build your initial character you will have general idea of where you want allocate your built stats.

This too, follows the standard RPG/Souls stat system. I'd probably akin it more to Bloodborne as it's relatively simplified to Vitality, Strength, Endurance, Finesse, Intelligence, and Haste. You could balance your build if you like, but more than likely you will find yourself splitting between your main attack attribute and more life and endurance.

Much like its inspiration, your starting character is just a jump off point for you to customize.

Also, much like its inspiration, it bills itself as an open world game for you to freely explore and tackle in any order. It starts off on a somewhat linear starting point and once you reach the main sanctuary (eg: firelink shrine) you are then free to branch out in multiple directions and see what path works for you.

The experience system, however, has a few subtle differences that I really liked. As you know with most of the games aping this system as you gain experience, souls, blood echos, diamyo, etc you then use that level your character, purchase items, learn new abilities, and upgrade your equipment, when you collect it and you die, you drop it and have to go back for it. If you die again, it's lost. Right?

That is not Death's Gambit does things. It's equally more forgiving and punishing. Because now when you die, you don't actually lose your experience. So you will never find yourself caught under-leveled and panicking to find the next death statue you spend those points. Instead, you drop your phoenix feathers. These are your primary rechargeable healing item and they are in a limited supply. Say you have 5 feathers and you die in the boss encounter, you then warp back to your last save and have to go back with 4 feathers. If you die again before getting back to the boss, you drop another. Now you have 2 less and still need to get back to where you dropped them. It's a unique punishment to carelessness.

These feathers also have a interesting strength buffing mechanic. When at checkpoints you can choose to limit your supply of them for 10% damage increase. I think the max number of feathers you find is 10, so when I play in NG+ modes I find myself allocating 6 of them to give me 60% attack boost to really layer the damage on enemies and bosses. If 4 feathers isn't enough for me to fight then I am playing much to carelessly. These feathers are not lost for good because you are able to spend experience to reclaim them (including ones yo, but it does cost more to do every level higher you get.

I will say boss fights have an interesting reward mechanic that will keep you engaged. If you happen to lose in a boss fight, it takes you to a screen where it shows you the boss and their life bar. That life bar will deplete to the amount of damage you did. As it decreases it awards you the experience you would have earned by taking out that much health. When you try again, you won't be awarded more experience unless you do better than when you last attempted the fight. This provides a nice little psychological push to make you give the boss another try.

This game as an incredibly chill, piano based symphonic soundtrack to it. It never really dips itself out of the classic territories, and makes for very good ambiance music. I wouldn't really consider the soundtrack to be iconic in any capacity, but it does have a very somber opening theme that I enjoy, and all of the music seems fitting for the scenes. A lot of Souls comparisons could be drawn here as well.

But the best aspect of the sound design is how competently voice acted this game was.  Matt Mercer plays Death and he has pretty much become a staple in the video game voice acting world so naturally he just nailed his part. But a lot of the voice actors according to the IMDB pulled multiple roles, basically reducing all the roles of the game to about 10 or so voice actors. It was very impressively done, I didn't find any of the lines to be particularly cheesy and hokey. Once I actually started to progress in the game, the voice did a lot to help me get lost in the story.

Although I do have to knock that, for some reason, Soren is a silent protagonist despite having lines of dialogue that don't change from play through to play through. What is the purpose of this? I complained about it in Tales of Xillia 2 and it makes just about as much sense here. You gave him lines of dialogue, you armed your game with very established and competent voice actors, many of them already doing multiple roles. You couldn't have one of them read Soren's lines? Fuck, have Matt Mercer just use his Troy Baker voice to continue further to confuse me, and that would have worked just as well. I do not understand this decision.

Graphically, it's another game that draws inspiration from graphics of old so it's another one that resorts to pixel animation as opposed to rendering. That being said the games monster design is fairly well detailed with lots of different frames of animation. Some of them fair better than others, I will admit. There is one particular boss fight, The Tundra Lord Kaern, that has a failing attack that looks like it could have used a few more animation frames to look a bit more fluid.

That actually kinda leads to one of my biggest issues in the game. Salt and Sanctuary managed to completely nail the timing that made their game feel like a 2d souls game would feel. Its timing, fluidity, weight of actions all felt... right. Death's Gambit gives me kind of a loose, arcadey feel to it. Specifically when it comes to jumping. The jump is very fast and immediately halts the moment when you let up off the button, which makes the jump feel very bouncy and forced me to pay more attention to my jumps because now the timing is significantly more important.

Combat as a whole took some getting use to because depending on the weapon you chose it affects how you move in the battle when you swing. I first started the game as a Scythe user and I couldn't get the knack of it because the animations would move me so much farther forward than I was expecting to go and multiple times I'd helplessly fall into traps or miss my target because I was moving too much in combat. I eventually restarted and switched to daggers.

But even then, I found some of these controls to be somewhat unnatural. Perhaps that is not the correct word but some of these actions do not roll fluidly for me. For example, you have a kick move that you are supposed to use on enemies who are in a guard position, to do this you need to hold the button that draws up your shield, then hit a shoulder button that allows you to throw the kick. I never, ever get this right on the first time. I typically will take a hit or two trying to do this, and if I have more than one enemy after chances are I am going to take way more damage than I want to.

This game also has an incredibly frustrating barrier to entry. From a relatively stable easing into the game, one of the first bosses you come across is the Bulwark. Now, I've heard this guy can be beaten at level 20 (and there is already a level 1 speed run) but mother fucker this guy put a massive roadblock up in my game. Tack this on a period of still figuring out the controls and it's going to lead to a significant number of deaths in a row.  I'll be honest I was getting ready to put it down after a while

They say that the game is non-linear, but it really feels like it's not. There is a pattern I've found where the curve is definitely more forgiving and that you really should do because it unlocks all the necessary NPCs required to learn the skills in the game. I usually end up dealing with the Bulwark next to last. By finding this path it ended up giving a more fair leveling path and now I have pretty much have it down to memory.

The amount of equipment is tragically minimal. Most of the gear in the game only has one or two variants, and some weapons like the daggers there is no 2nd version at all. So you don't really need to worry about leveling up the wrong equipment because honestly there isn't much to level, just wear what matches your leveled stats. So it doesn't leave very much in the way of customization and that is pretty disappointing. This is also hampered in addition to the game's skill tree because there is no option to respec (even in new game plus), so it's entirely possible that you can miss big sections or treasures because you didn't commit to a specific skillset that allowed you to get there.

I was sort of prepared to go after the game for its story because it felt like your standard fantasy speechifying where they sling a bunch of names and fantasy terms together, and it felt like I wasn't retaining much of it because it doesn't sound like it means anything. But there was one area of the game that took a very strange tonal shift that caught me completely off guard, and by that point I was starting to find my groove in the game that was progressing a bit more smoothly. There is a lot of lore in this game, but again, like Dark Souls you have to go out and find it.

And this game feels like it is hiding a lot of secrets that I haven't unearthed. It has to be, there are too many mechanics that haven't been explained that have to mean something: You can cancel your contract with death, so when you die it deletes you game. You have to make story decisions on some characters at one point. NPCs can be killed (or murdered by other NPCs) and you can stop that, There is a NG+ option where you can raise the level from 1-10. There is an unexplained "fear" mechanic that has to do something.  So I hesitate to rip this story apart because they did actually put in a pretty significant amount of voiced over lore. There has to be more to this than what I am seeing.

Not every boss is beaten by fighting. Sometimes the goal is just to survive.

But worst of all, most unforgivably of all is this game crashes. Constantly. This game crashes with out any rhyme or reason to it. This game crashes when transitioning from one map to another, this game crashes when there are too many enemy projectiles on the screen, this game crashes when I am jumping to much and the animation doesn't catch up fast enough, this game crashes in the middle of dramatic boss fights in prompt of nothing that I can immediately see, this game FUCKING CRASHES WHEN YOU ARE SAVING YOUR GAME CAUSING ME TO LOSE ALL MY FUCKING PROGRESS WITH A CORRUPT SAVE.

This game has been patched more than once already, so the amount of crashes I have had with Death's Gambit is fucking unbelievable and ridiculous. No game close to release, and especially months after release should be crashing as much as this game has. So either the patches you are putting in is not fixing the problems, or you haven't even bothered to address them yet. Either way, it is a completely massive fucking black eye on this game because now I can't enjoy it to its fullest because I am constantly in fear of having this game just randomly close on me for no reason, and possibly lose all my work.

Look. The bottom line here is that I like Death's Gambit. It takes some pretty established mechanics and does a good job of implementing it and tweaking it for their own system. The sprite work is well done and the sound design is pleasing. It has fun boss fights when I get the controls down, and I'm working through a third play through of the game as I write this.

But son of a bitch it doesn't feel like it's ready yet. There is just no excuse of a multi-platform game to have this many problems months after its release. I hate day one patches but I would take 30 of them if it got this game to run properly. So I am torn how I want to deliver this. I want to give Death's Gambit a recommendation because ultimately I got a great deal of play out of it once the game started to click for me. But frankly, it might be worth waiting a few more months so they can hopefully address some of this shit.

If you lost your progress because you left Death's contract, that's on you. If you lost your progress because Death's Gambit crashed on you, that's on the devs. Purchase at own risk.

I'm going to be pissed if I finish NG+10

and there is no secret ending. 

A Hat In Time (Steam): A surprise hat thrown in the ring.

Sometimes there are games that you hear about and just from the couple of sources you trust you know that you are going to want to try it. That was kind of where is was at with this one. I heard the game mentioned a couple of times and I heard some pretty positive reviews about it without reading too much into it.

So naturally when the steam summer comes around I have games like this one locked, loaded, and ready for purchase. It dropped a bit so I jumped on this one. It sat in the backlog for a bit, but while looking for something new to play on my Thursday stream and this seemed like a good change of pace. So with that, we donned our best cap and dove into.....

A HAT IN TIME:(STEAM)

So contrary to what I had assumed, this is not about time traveling girl in a dashing top hat. That's only part of it. Hat Girl, as she is known, is an alien simply flying home in her spaceship. But as she passes over a specific world, a member of their local mafia bangs on her front screen demanding a toll. Hat Girl refuses and the Mafia smashes her window, causing her vault to fly open and suck out these glowing hour glass "time pieces" as well as herself out into space to the planet below.

There, Hat girl meets a local trouble maker in a red hood and a dashing mustache, hilariously called Mustache Girl. Initially, after Hat Girl helps her get free from the Mafia, Mustache Girl agrees to help find the missing time pieces if Hat Girl helps her run the Mafia out of town. Things go well until Mustache girl learns the time pieces can be used to actually alter time, and has the idea to use these to be time traveling heroes and ride the world, and other worlds of their bad guys.

Unfortunately, Hat Girl needs to them to power her ship and get home so she declines. Mustache girl claims this is a selfish use of them, and after stealing from Hat girl and dissolving their friendship, it then becomes a race to see who can collect the time pieces first.

Spoiled a little of the story there to give context, but that is more or less the framework of the story and its as good a motivation as I needed.  As I eluded to in the intro to this one, I basically went into the game pretty much not knowing a thing about. But now that I have played through the game from start to finish, there is only one way I can describe it:  A Hat in Time is a love letter to the 3D Super Mario platfomer. So expect a good number of comparisons to it.

At the onset of the game, Hat Girl has pretty limited bag of tricks. She can run around, and jump, and has a umbrella that she can swing at enemies. When she is airborne and someone comes into range, you can hit the attack button to do kind of a homing flying dive at a baddie. Its a generally invulnerable move but its not fluid or fast. So you will more than likely bash things with your umbrella until you are prompted to use the aerial attack, usually by bosses or specific enemy types.

You have 3 primary objectives every time you drop into a new level. You need to A: collect pons which are gems that will let you unlock new buttons for you hats which give you new passive abilities. B: collect balls of yarn which allow you to unlock new hats, which give you new active abilities like dash, bombs, etc. and C: collect that level's time piece, which allow you to progress to the next chapter of the game. 40 time pieces in total.

As I sort of mentioned before, it draws a great deal from the formula that made Super Mario 64 work so well. Each chapter of the game is broken up into 4 to 8 acts which drop you into that world to go after a new time piece. And like much like its inspiration, each change of act might produce some subtle changes to the level on top of your ultimate goal.  For example, in the first world of Mafia town, the entire place is somewhat of a tropical beach island city.

Man, the Mafia are friggen jerks.

But in one of the acts, Mustache Girl turns on all these giant faucets that basically make them spout out lava instead of water, so now any of the water you could previously swim in now causes damage and require more precise platforming. The goal to unlock the time piece is to navigate around the new terrain to reach said faucets and turn them off. Worlds are generally open so you can explore around and see what changes and learn where you can go now or what ability you might need to come back later.

After completing a certain number of acts (you don't need every time piece) you can move to the finale of the act which usually results with a fun, interesting boss fight and the closing of the story for that set of worlds. All of them individual to each other so while it does lead to a big final story arc, each chapter feels contained and different so they feel different, fresh, and unique.

You can always replay levels to go back to reload on pons or try to get more yarn to get new hats for more abilities. It is entirely possible to beat the game without having all of them because I was able to do so and do so without much difficulty. As you play, you can also find time shifts. Again, much like in the 3D Mario games and would say Mario Sunshine in particular, time shifts are these kinda surreal floating in space pocket levels that usually involves some trickier platforming to complete in basically a wide infinite undersea/spacescape. Most chapters have 2 or 3 of these.

So I'm not gonna lie, There is a lot to love about this game. First off this game bills itself as "A Cute as HECK platformer" and I'm hard pressed to disagree. Everything about the art style gives me a nostalgic Saturday morning cartoon feeling about it. Cartoony style caricature with big eyes and character proportions. A lot of absurdist scenery. Each world has its own differing theme with characters to go with it be it a train car of birds, a forest of ghosts, or a mountain of shamanic goat people. In the recent DLC update, they also added a "retro" mode to make the graphics looks like they are on the N64, and somehow that feels like it fits just as well.

Hat girl, who never actually has a full speaking line I think, has a lot of little character building animations that will happen when she idles or during the course of the story or level. She is a bit of a fun loving prankster and when approaching enemies she stick her tongue out and make a "bleeeeeeeaahh" sound at them. She'll make faces at people and tease. But she is also a sweetheart and if she befriends someone she'll blow kisses that have little hearts. This game is adorable.

In more than one level, she'll have to sneak around silently. During these levels of the game you will notice that if you aren't using your dash, you will see that she is walking around holding up her hand in a finger gun pose like she's playing that she's a spy. It's a lot of these little animations that end up giving Hat Girl so much character to her personality without having to deliver a single line of dialog.

There are some pretty great supporting characters too. My hands down favorite is the antagonist from the 3rd or 4th act, a ghost called the Snatcher. He basically traps you at the start of the level and yanks your soul out, and then forces you into a contract to be his fixer. Everything about this character makes me laugh. His voice, the 4th wall breaking cynicism of his boss fight, he even has brief Undertale reference if you are looking for it.

One character I was expecting more from is the shopkeeper you use to buy new button abilities for your hats. He is a ghostly, spectral character with a floating mask and broken speech. Just from his overall design I expected there to be more story, or content relating to him. He ended up just being a shopkeeper like he said he was, which actually kind of impressed me because that is an awful lot of attention to detail for a character that essentially has no bearing on the story.

Every part of the game with the Snatcher is my favorite part. I love this character.

They throw in a lot of little game mechanics in this one to change the feel of it too. I mentioned the stealth levels that borrow mechanics you might see in a Metal Gear game. In one level you are just racing forward as the stage falls apart around you, using your gear to navigate the jumps properly to keep moving forward, like you might see in Uncharted, Tomb Raider, or even Crash Bandicoot really. At one stage a character wanted me to doctor up my picture for a movie, and so I am basically doing an MS Paint job over my picture as part of an actual story mission. It's hilarious.

Hat In Time also does some camera tricks like Nier: Automata did change the feel of a segment. The game for the most part is generally 3D in all its segments, but one boss encounter with the Mafia Boss, the game sticks a 2D plane for the entirety of the encounter. It limits the range of movement which requires you to have more precise jumping and timing of your aerial attacks to complete. Some of these changes also completely change the tone and feel of the game from level to level.

The game has some very funny writing. It's incredibly cheeky and plays with a lot of the tropes you expect in video games. A lot of segments are very sarcastically written. And while I have called this game a love letter to 3D Mario titles, there is a lot of love to go around as there are references upon references in this game, such as the C.A.W. agents from the Murder Mystery level, which are clearly drawing inspiration from the G-Men from Psychonauts.  There is even a text adventure on the ship that you can play that has some rather hilarious outcomes if you continue to play it. It even turns a trope I generally hate on its head and made it feel hilarious and new, while also providing me a much more difficult moral choice than I was expecting.

Right down to how they deliever their lines, the agents of C.A.W
are a direct parody of the agents in Psychonauts.

This soundtrack completely nails it. This is an OST that sort of does a lot with a little, and ends up giving us a ton. Each stage has their own unique theme, so naturally they all have a complimenting song that go along with them. But as you complete each of the acts in each stage, The song remixes to adjust to the changes of level, thus giving it the song a different feel while still being the same theme for said level.

But then, the game blindsided me with the exceptional rock-as-fuck boss fight themes. I first noticed it with the fight with the Snatcher and its highly covered theme "Your contract has expired". So it caused to me to go back and listen to some of the other encounter themes and almost every one of them is fantastic. I am really loving Contract and "The Battle of Award 42". Pascal Michael Stiefel absolutely knocked it out of the park with this OST. Some of you might be hearing some of these songs in my upcoming Extra Life highlight reel.

The game has a decent length to it as well and what I like about it is that it does not require 100% competition to get through.  It tells you right at the onset that there are 40 time pieces to gather, but you don't actually need all 40 to play through all the main chapters of the game. You DO need most of the hats to navigate through all the levels, but you don't need all of them. This allows for some additional replay value after you have completed the main story. If you wish to do the DLC chapter, it does require a bit more completion than required to finish the game, but I consider that post game content and don't hold it against it.

In addition to all of this, for the first day of its release they gave away the first DLC chapter away for free. While I can never be rid of the bane that is DLC, I appreciate gestures like this. The devs also released an update that provides modding support for fans to customize the game, and a multi player split screen mode that looks to provide some fun cooperative play/teammate trolling as you can hit the other player. I personally haven't had the chance to try the multiplayer, but for collector missions or finding time riffs, this seems like it could be useful.

Awwwww.. These girls...

There are some minor complaints at best. There is a looseness to the controls that 90 percent of the time feels generally feels pretty great when you are playing, but it becomes a massive annoyance when trying to time a jump right at the edge of a ledge. More than once I would be trying to time my jump and go over the edge because I wasn't hitting it as soon as I felt I needed to.

There is an air dash kinda move that you use to extend the length of your jump, which I hate. Not that mechanic doesn't work, but it also functions as your slide move when going down a hill. Again, also fine. The problem comes in is because this animation doesn't cancel itself, or with any of the main actions such as jumping again or swinging your umbrella. So in the occasional tight situation I would be trying to navigate tight platforms, land my extended jump, then die because I was scrambling to swing my umbrella or jump out of the way. It's annoying and seems like an easily fixable issue, and may be with upcoming patches.

As with most 3D games of this nature, there is some camera fuckery that can be a mild aggravation.  When having to do some wall jumping, climbing, or worse yet when you have to land on narrow platforms, you also need to sort of guide your camera while you jump to make sure you stick the landing. It's not exactly fluid and not comfortable to do, so chances are you will be making more than one attempt to hit a jump. This is incredibly frustrating when trying to jump on a clothesline because of the narrow target to hit. The level "The Big Parade" was probably the most frustrating example of this.

This is more of a personal complaint, but I would have liked health to be a little more forgiving. I wouldn't say this game is exceptionally hard, but hearts aren't as common as pons are. Unlike 3D Mario games where you get 8 health and coins restore it, Hat In Time only gives you 4 and only specific heart pickups restore your health. This makes the latter stages, and specifically the DLC update on a WAY higher difficulty curve than the rest of the game, which can lead to some frustration.

But ultimately, these are minor complaints on an all around solidly built game. The fact that this was done by an incredibly small team and basically shared in bits in pieces instead of working together at one office makes it even more impressive to me. A Hat in Time hits all the right points for me for a new property: fun characters, good soundtrack, great replayability, adorable art direction, the right amount of skill to be challenging without being frustrating, and so on.

Sometimes when there is a buzz around a title and you take a cursory glance at it you know that it's going to be right for you, and that is exactly where I put A Hat in Time. This game is appropriate for everyone and has a little something to offer everyone's gaming tastes a bit. I very much enjoyed this game and give it a wholehearted recommendation to anyone who is looking at it.  I just wish that I started it sooner.

Sorry Mustache Girl. But every British sounding
woman just sounds like Tracer to me now.