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 The LIes of Locke Lamora

Had the title been Father Chains's Big Score, I probably would have read the whole thing. I'm treating "Father Chains" as a name rather than considering the components here, by the way.

Thoughts on the Demon Princes Series

Hey, wait a minute! I think those fellows might not have been demons at all, except in a figurative sense!

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.

Review of Fantasy Island

Hey, wait a minute! They were using "fantasy" in a different sense from what we use here! Aside from that, I never thought much of it.

Rating: The/Plane

Reverse: 1999 Review

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

Important Announcement

For all of you waiting for the kind of coverage of that new Harry Potter mobile game only to be found here, forget about it. They didn't ask me to be in it, so that's that. But just wait for the Baldur's Gate 3 review! There probably won't be one, but there's still time.

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.

The Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power Complete Review and Analysis.

Didn't watch it, so I'm going to talk about Pathfinder: Kingmaker instead. It's good, but it should have dropped the kingmaking and been about half as long after that excision. Also, the way some of the companions get involved is odd. Early spoilers!




Harrim wanted to unseat the Stag Lord and become a baron? Really? Harrim? That guy? Him? It makes sense that nobody seems to mind that you get to be the baron. They don't seem to be the sort to want that in the first place. But then why are they there?

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.

Lord of the Rings: Triumph of the Evil Power Master's Sinister Rings Trailer Review

Didn't watch it/10. I'll just agree with your opinion, if you don't mind.

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 Watch Out, We're Mad!

People paid to watch that. I give it my most philosophical rating: sweet mystery/life.