Thoughts on Age of Empires

You know, I'm starting to think there's a particular age of empires at all! It seems like we've had empires for a long time! Unless we are to reckon humanity's entire existence the age of empires. That's pretty deep.

Thoughts on SD Gundam G Generation Eternal

By the time you finish reading the title, your AP will be full again. Truly Eternal/10.

Thoughts on Millennia

I mean the hot new strategy game, which you might not know, because it's called Millennia. In the modern era, don't you have departments to make sure your game's title is reasonably searchable? I haven't played it, so that's my only thought.

Reverse: 1999 Review

They called it that because everyone who plays it reverses 1,999 degrees and moonwalks away.

Breaking News From a Century Ago

Yo, I just won XCOM 2 for the first time, and what I wanna know is, who thought that design for A*****s was good and what secret society is pushing to make everything purple? They should cut it out.

A Star Ocean Summary

You're on a fantasy world. You have a pretty good time. Then you leave the fantasy world and don't have such a good time, but the game's almost over anyway.

Some Reflections on Fire Emblem: Engage

Spoilers naturally


Hard isn't kidding around early on, though it is kidding around later. It's a satisfying tactical experience without being crazy hard. There is however some cheapness in some stages regarding boss movement and when they trigger.
The combat styles are a good attempt to reduce mounted dominance. Fliers feel like one option rather than the best one. Cavalry, however, seems too weak now. Perhaps it should have built-in Momentum, because as it is, increased movement alone is a poor bonus with how small the difference is and the additional terrain-ignoring fliers get.
It's a great idea to divide skills between the characters (personal and class skills) and the emblems (crazy nonsense). The game can be more complex while still being easy to understand because of the compartmentalization. That said, I would have preferred if the balance hadn't been tilted so far toward the emblem side. Even inherited skills come from emblems only and not from classes or something else.
SP gain is slow. Any kind of experimentation is pretty much locked to Normal, where skirmishes ought to be safe to do.
The story itself is decent, but the presentation of it is terrible. The cutscene direction is a big problem. I'm sure the writers imagined most of the lines between the good guys and the bad guys being delivered across a battlefield, not for everyone to walk up and stand in a cirle together and walk away when it's time for war and tactics. The blocking is boring even in good-guy-only conversations. There's no cinematic flair whatsoever. Another problem is that they use the lord's dumbfounded expression far too often.
The translators should be ashamed of themselves, but they most certainly are not.
The voice director should get some of that shame too.
The cast is decent. Pretty normal Fire Emblem stuff, which doesn't seem exceptional but is still better than most games.
The music is standard for Fire Emblem as well, which is to say completely forgettable. It isn't essential to have super-special special weapons, but it can be fun. Unfortunately, most of the special effects go into emblem weapons. Outside of that theere's the lord's sword then nothing till the very late stages when you can get legendary weapons. The legend of a silver weapon but slightly better.
The biggest disapppointment of the game is Wyvern Ride. Only the little mascot could have fun with that one. Maybe I'm just mad he's better at it than I am.
Colors! How I missed them. Most importantly, the enemy range and threat colors and terrain distinctions, which in Three Houses were often hard to make out.
Rating: Good/Game.

The Legend of Heroes: Trails From Zero Review

It sure was nice of them to put the score in the title! Bazing!

Score: Legend/Heroes
Note: I have not played this game.

Thoughts on Triangle Strategy

It's pretty good.
I like that each character had a different ability set. However, that makes the low number of deploy slots even more irritating, as does the fact that some of the mock battles had higher limits than the story battles.
The characters look as if somebody ran Eureka Seven through a Final Fantasy Tactics-izer, a strange device invented for a niche market.
The battles managed to change things up from one to the next without becoming a real pain with gimmicks and triggers players have to negotiate in a restricted way. Most importanty, the gimmicks and terrain features sometimes work in the player's favor, which games sometimes neglect to do and give all the fun to the enemies instead, who are incapable of appreciating it. This post was written before the AI revolution, if any future readers are confused. The TP system is fine, but I think the more expensive abilities are impractical beyond what the developers must have hoped.
The story doesn't really support the weight placed on it, and also isn't good. My perception of the situation, the resources available to each faction, the implications of various approaches, and so on always differed from that of the characters, which created a sense of alienation. Sometimes none of the available decisions made sense to me based on what I understood of things as they stood. Beyond that, it's overall a mess with elements, especially regarding Hyzante, that seem to intrude from other games. Possibly better games. It swings between basing everything on personal motives and being a struggle of ideological frameworks in a strange way, as if the writers never agreed which style they would pursue. The long, long sections between battles, which at first I accepted as setup for later events and decisions, ended up being mostly too much talking about stuff that didn't really matter later.
Grinding mock battles is unnecessary to succeed, but seems necessary to enjoy some characters. Only late in the game could I afford offensive items.
The hidden items in the exploration areas makes them a slog instead of a break between battles which give a deeper feeling to the world.
The point of New Game+ in a game like this is so that I can replay it faster to see different paths. Increasing enemy difficulty is fine for a mode, but leave one for easy replays. Sure, the game isn't hard, but I'm talking really fast, as in not paying attention at all.
The endless trips between the merchant and the forge are irksome and unnecessary. The smith should sell the upgrade items.
Before playing it, I thought Triangle Strategy was a bad name. Nothing has changed.

The Latest Videogame News

You know, I played Front Mission Evolved, and I can't call it great. Stay posted for more news.

Thoughts on Dragalia Lost

As an expert in not playing Dragalia Lost, seeing as I only played the intro, I decided to explain its failure. Publish or perish, after all.
First, right from the beginning, the controls felt worse than similar games like Bleach Brave Souls.
Second, that intro gave the impression the game would be dungeon-focused, but when I looked in later, it seemed the entire thing was boss-in-a-box fights with a heavy co-op focus. The audience that wants more of the former feels deceived, and that which wants the latter will never know that game has it.
The biggest problem, however, is that it missed its aesthetic. It seems to me, a professor of not playing Dragalia Lost, that there's a triumvirate of aesthetic categories such that the successful mobile games hit one or two hard, which we will call Cute, Cool, and Coom. Games can touch on all three, but you can tell where its heart is. Granblue Fantasy is cool and Princess Connect is cute, for example.
So what's Dragalia Lost? It has those chibis, so it's cute, right? Not really. They don't have particularly cute expressions. They look like low-poly characters in an early Playstation game, as if their tininess were a technical limitation rather than a choice. Furthermore, they're being used to tell a pretty po-faced fantasy story about dragons and time travel. The music is cutesy, not cute. The difference is crucial. Maybe it's cool, but then, it's full of chibis and tubby dragons, not to mention pastels and slice of life type wyrmprint art are not the least bit cool, to say nothing of Euden's hair. It certainly isn't coom. The occasional bikini doesn't cut it. You need to hit different tastes and have a sense of the erotic which Dragalia Lost lacks almost completely. That's why it got so little fanart.
You can talk about this or that update or monetization all you want, but that only matters if people play it in the first place. Dragalia Lost's numbers were disappointing from the very beginning. I contend the primary reason was the lack of aesthetic appeal, although of course some people liked it a lot. Plenty of stuff I like also isn't popular, so I know how it is.

Notes on Dragon Quest Tact

Hey, this isn't a comedy of manners at all! It's a mobile gacha tactical RPG! I give it my Toriyamaest rating of 5 Gokus/5.
I did this gag before, but now it's retro.

Some Notes on Mecha Knights: Nightmare

Terrible title. They aren't even knights.
Word on the street is that common practice is to put the levels developed later first, because the developers improve as they go. It feels as if that did not happen here. The levels become more interesting and intricate starting around the halfway point.
Story: None. Dialogue: Ahahahahaha!
I didn't use every weapon type, shameful as it is to admit, but at the very least none of them that I tried seemed ideal for every mission. Hurray! The normal rifles seemed strictly worse than the plasma versions unless I missed something, which there is a good chance I did.
More color would have been nice in the environments and enemies. You can paint your mech though, which helps.
You sure do kill a lot of stuff. The weapons feel powerful, even if the healthbars don't always agree.
Overall, it's pretty good. I give it my mechiest rating: 4/Answer.

Detailed Review of Re:Zero Collaboration in Konosuba Fantastic Days

Terrible story but I got all three of them. 10/10.

Thoughts on Ys IV Dawn of Ys

Spoilers!

Not only is Dawn of Ys better than Mask of the Sun, it's better than the earlier and the next Ys game to the extent that I start to wonder if maybe Falcom stunk.
HP regeneration is too slow for the higher levels. MP regeneration is too slow, but only if you make multiple stops with Warp. Warp should be free.
It's a bit of a problem that in boss fights you don't know if you can or cannot use magic before you go in them. Still, it isn't as bad as it could be since dying puts you right outside and skips the cutscene.
Putting a generic evil dude in at the end makes your story better? Strange but true. The motivations of the villains are clearer in this than in Mask of the Sun because of it.
Exciting music, wild bosses, reasonably personable characters even if Karna doesn't really do anything in either version, dungeon variety (straightforward or twisty, plain or puzzley, dense or sparse enemies, flat or vertical). The experience gives a real sense of adventure.
There's a sense of place, too. It still has inexplicable dungeon layouts, but the way dungeons relate such as the one becoming a tower later, as well as the relative sanity of the evil empire's castle make you feel like you're going places instead of running on a treadmill while a fire background and an ice background are rotated behind you.
Freeze magic doesn't really have much of a purpose. Half the spells don't, really. You only use Shield when the boss is immune to magic, and Seeker simply replaces the mask.
what do the Ruby and Necklace do? Two shops sell those. One's a secret shop. And the other gems. What's the deal?
Ys IV Dawn of Ys is a fantastic game. I give it my Ysiest rating: Ten Dogis through ten walls.

Old Ys Power Ranking

1. Ys IV Dawn of Ys
2. Ys I
3. Ys V Desert Kingdom of Bad Times
4. Ys IV Mask of the Sun
5. Ys II
6. Wanderers from Ys

More Ys II

Also the way monsters can spawn right in front of you is messed up. Most of your equipment does so little there doesn't seem much point in buying it except that money isn't good for anything else. The final boss is the sort that requires some luck to beat, at least for most players, which means we go into the final credits thinking about how lucky we got instead of what a fun fight or game it was.

Some Thoughts on Ys II

Spoilers!

Now there's a game with ambition far beyond its competence. It adds shooting action to the good old bump combat, but the way enemies are knocked back based on their facing rather than where they're hit and the fact that you have to wait a million years to fire again if your fireball has to pass off the screen whereas you can machine-gun anyone in seconds if you hit make it unsatisfying. It tries to dial up the adventure aspects with little gimmicks you might use once or twice and endless backtracking across a senseless mass of buildings and sewers.
Ys itself is an unsatisfying land for adventure. That ancient vanished land of magic and mystery turns out to be three villages with a bunch of monsters all over. What have the monsters been doing for all those centuries before Adol showed up? Chilling, I guess. What have the Ysians been doing? Inbreeding, probably.
The game lacks a sense of place and, therefore, a sense of progress. Where is Solomon Shrine in relation to the rest of the island? I dunno, over there. It's not like you climb to it or anything. Why do you have to go through a lava area? Who knows? What are those tiny rooms in Solomon Shrine for? Adol feels like he's passing through unrelated areas, not making his way toward an ultimate destination.
The characters aren't really characters and the story isn't really a story. The way cleria relates to everything else is weird. It seems as if it's just thrown in sometimes. "You have to defeat the demons, and also, cleria. The magic created demons, even though Darm says he's ten thousand years old, so we have to take away the magic, and also people mined silver, which did something. Maybe." The whole thing, for all the backstory put into it, feels less satisfying and less real than killing some jerk who's doing something bad for more power.
I'm going to be entirely honest and admit that no, I did not remember Feena. That wasn't really much of a moment. They knew each other for approximately forty minutes.
The slow text is bad, and forcing you to sit through it every time you check up with old NPCs or want to restore your MP. Little moments like how the initial conversation with the goddesses triggers both when you enter the room and when you leave it waste your time and make the game feel sloppy.
All in all I give Ys II my knockbackinest rating, bird in a platformer/10.

Notes on Ys V

Spoilers!
I used a Light spell on a skeleton and that did not eradicate the skeleton please refund my MP.
It seemed as if they had three different ideas for the story and never decided which one they were picking. They just threw in some of each instead.
That old guy saying nothing good would come of hanging out with Stoker sure didn't know what he was talking about. I figured Stoker would be the final boss instead of being friendly and helpful the entire way. What a twist!
MP as a number? Not even a bar crackling with eldritch potential?
The enemies don't care that Adol is around. Or that he's killing them. The designers had to put all of them in small rooms or on plateaus to contrive a chance for them to attack.
The hitboxes. Goodness gracious. I couldn't figure out what some of the spells did because they never hit anyone. Those tentacle grabby guys near the penultimate town snatched Adol from three screens away. What a mess.
The final complex is a million times more interesting than the dumb old Darm Tower. A town, important locations spread around, a lot of movement that isn't entirely backtracking, different graphics . . .
The menus are so experimental, so avant-garde, so clunky. I would say I respect the ambition, but I don't. They're menus that make everything take longer than it should.
When Rizze first appeared, I thought she was supposed to be an old lady.
The plot seems like it should hinge on the Kefins being trapped in the city, but they can leave any time. They also don't seem like such a big deal that sealing them away is all that important. They just had some magic that kinda worked OK I guess. Adol beat them all up easily enough.
That last boss sure was enigmatic. The enigma is who's supposed to care.
Overall I give it my slowest attack animation rating of Adol's arthritis/10.

Addendum

Also, Dogi was barely in it and Adol barely has muscles. That's no way to keep up with the times, fellas.