Ever since I first watched the original Masked Rider back when I was a wee lad I've been enamored by Kamen Riders. They look cool, they get cool power ups and the storylines are slightly darker than the ones in Super Sentai. With Kamen Rider: Memory of Heroez they tried taking it seriously, making a game that older fans could appreciate too, and the end result, well.. it's not awful.
While the game promoted W, OOO and Zero-One as playable characters, we also get a few extra sidekick riders too, which was pretty neat, so we get 6 different riders in all. W, OOO and Zero-One have multiple forms which was really cool. That said, W was the series that made me stop watching Kamen Rider, since even though I adored Decade, I really couldn't stand this double rider.... and he is quite clearly the main protagonist of this game and he is the character you're forced to play as the most. I was really looking forward to Zero-One, since I didn't watch his series but his design looked really neat.... and he is treated pretty much as if he were part of the sidekick riders. You are only forced to play as him once and his relevance to the plot is pretty much nil, as OOO and W are quite clearly the most favored riders.
The game is a very linear beat'em up. VERY linear. There are blue energy barriers gating you into the only path you can take through the game, even though environments look expansive, they really aren't. It also falls into the most repetitive and annoying Japanese licensed game trope: Loads and loads of useless text. It's not uncommon to trigger a boring cutscene in which characters state the obvious, spend 20 seconds walking to point B and trigger another boring cutscene in which characters either state the obvious again or talk about something that could've been condensed into something more palatable. It's a licensed beat'em up. give me a cutscene before and after each level and then just let me bash enemies, it ain't that hard. Or at least make the dialogue more succinct, interesting and worthwhile. And these 'pseudo' cutscenes are even MORE annoying because they usually change whatever Rider you selected, usually into W. I want to level up the other guys, I'm forced to play as W most of the time, he is already at max level, let me play as somebody else. But no, resets you back to W, so you have to enter the menu again, go to character select, pick another character, wait for the 5-second long unskippable cutscene of the Rider entering the scene and HOPE that the next checkpoint is a fight and not another pointless dialogue scene.
Sadly, the combat isn't all that interesting, in fact, it's very rudimentary. Every character and every form has a basic weak attack string(Usually just three hits), a strong attack(Sometimes it's a string), a unique attack and a super move. You can dodge and change forms mid 'combo', if you can call them that, but that's about it. You don't unlock new moves, you don't get different attacks depending on when you link the strong attack from your weak attack, you don't get different attacks by holding different directions on the analogue stick, it's just mashing Y and pressing X every now and then and that's all you get. Needless to say, combat is pretty repetitive and shallow. Having different forms is neat, and to be fair they can have widely different attack animations or properties, but for the most part you'll be doing the same things with every character. Strong attacks, unique attacks and dodging are tied to a stamina meter, for whatever reason, which I felt was too limiting and dumb.
There are a few silly mechanics like the Denden Sensor, in which you must follow a signal to a spot, then enter first person and follow another signal to find something. It's just a waste of time. A few stages will also have W get on his bike and the game turns into an on-rails shooter like Panzer Dragoon, but they are pretty forgettable too.
As to really sell you on the whole low budget charm, the game has framerate issues on the Switch. It's not a bad looking game, but surely they could've optimized it better? One time a gun-tooting enemy spawned behind a purple barrier, so I had to cheese him into getting closer and then hit him with the very few moves that reached him. Another time the game got stuck on a loading screen.
If you come at the game with lowered expectations you might fun some find in it. I know I did after I realized that this wasn't the epic mature, decent-budget Kamen Rider game they promoted it as. Playing as Kamen Riders is fun, the characters look cool and I'm sure with a bit more money they could've made something decent. If you ask me, the All Generation Kamen Rider games are a much better alternative.
5.5
No comments:
Post a Comment