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

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

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

THE EVIL WITHIN 2 (PS4)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

BRAVELY SECOND: END LAYER (3DS)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lol, Baal Buster. Best job class ever.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

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

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

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

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

Mass Effect: Andromeda

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

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

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

Cuphead

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

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

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

Nioh

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

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

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

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

Resident Evil 7

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

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

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

Dead Cells

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

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

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

The Entire Shantae Series (almost)

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

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

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

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

Persona 5

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

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

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

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

Yakuza 0/Kiwami

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

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

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

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

Horizon: Zero Dawn

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

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

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

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

Microwave Cup Noodles (Nissin)

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

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

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

Valkyria Revolution

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

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

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

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

Nier: Automata

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

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

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

Glory To Mankind.  

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

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

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

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

MOMODORA: REVERIE UNDER THE MOONLIGHT: (Steam)

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

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

Uh, Nice to meet you too, Cath.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oh yeah, and you can turn into a cat.

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.