Review #555: Tomb Raider II

 I wanted Persona 5 to be review 555...

Those breasts don't quite look right.

 Tomb Raider II is... quite something. It's an undisputed step forward from Tomb Raider 1, but, but it's still aged a bit badly.

 The story... is barely even there. There's an intro movie revealing the past of an ancient dagger, then there's Lara exploring the great wall o' China, then you come across a baddie who talks of another baddie who wants the dagger and now Lara is out to get the dagger before the bad guy does. The story is but a frail, delicate thread that's barely even there, so if you like narrativesi n your games, this game ain't it.

The game looks quite a bit better than the first game.

 The game plays pretty much exactly like the first one, Lara shoots, jumps, grabs, clings, dives and swims all over the place. Kudos to the developers, as nothing reminded me of Tomb Raider 1, every stage, jump and obstacle felt quite fresh. The arsenal of weapons has expanded to include an assault rifle and a grenade launcher, as well as a harpoon gun to deal with underwater enemies. Tomb Raider 1 was filled with psychotic animals looking to kill you, and there're plenty of animals wanting your meat here too, but most enemies are humans this time around, which is much more exciting thematically, but it was pulled off rather poorly. Simply put, it's incredibly hard to come out of a fire fight unscathed. The best tactic seemed to be to dash towards an enemy, guns ablazing, but run toward his side, then roll and continue shooting while the enemy shoots at thin air. It's not perfect, but it works... albeit it ends up being incredibly lame and repetitive. Sometimes you'll have to swim towards a platform while an enemy shoots at you, and then climb on top of it while still getting shot, which is why taking damage seem unavoidable. You also have to perform a few drops that will hurt you, so level design feels a bit cheap at times.

 It sounds hard, and it is hard, kinda. Enemies are the least of your worries, as ammo and health pick ups are very plentiful... not that you'll know that on your first playthrough, as you foolishly try to stock up on everything you can, since everything and anything is out to get you. I'm not kidding, it seems like there's a trap laying at every single corner, thank god you can save at any time now. Sadly, this meant that I was saving my game every few minutes or so, either because I knew the game was gonna throw something unexpected at me or because I just got done with a tedious endeavor, like pushing crates which takes like forever, so I'd rather save before the game forces me to do it again thanks to an unforeseen death. Tomb Raider was made for the 'save-anywhere' feature, so thanks god it finally made the leap to the console version, Tomb Raider II would have been nigh unplayable without it, due to how frustrating it could've been.

New weapons, new costumes, new environments but the same ol' Lara.

 Tomb Raider II introduced Flares into the game, I found it quite annoying having to use flares to light my way, and having to drop them at a moment's notice in order to take out my guns, but I can understand why they are here: The game has impressive lightning effects, and they had to show them off. Another new addition are vehicles, such as snowbikes and motorboats, which, while they don't add too much to the gameplay, are a neat new element into the game. Finally, secrets work quite differently than before, now you need to collect 3 dragon statues in every level, and only upon gathering the third one do you get goodies. This means that rewards are great, but if you finish a stage missing a single dragon statue... ends up feeling disappointing.

 Overall, Tomb Raider II is decent, but it takes the right kind of person to appreciate it nowadays, since the game can get quite frustrating when there're so many ways to die. The new stages are larger and more complex than the ones in TR1, but the new emphasis on gunplay leaves a lot to be desired, simply put, combat is cheap and always favors your enemies, but I guess they did what they could with the tools they had at the time. Tomb Raider II is quite long and hard, so it's best enjoyed in bursts.
 7.0 out of 10

Now Playing: Spyro the Dragon

 Did you know that Spyro is a Dragon?

Ugly green label is ugly. But what can ya do?

 What if I told you that I had never played Spyro games before? Despite loving the hell out of Crash Bandicoot, despite reading about it at the time, despite my best friend loving this game, despite my love for all things Dragon... I never, ever felt like giving Spyro a chance. That changes now.

 I've played about 3 stages from the main world, and I'm having quite a bit of fun. There's a lot to collect, but I don't know what the use is for the eggs or the treasure... but who cares? It's a collectathon, anything goes! ....but really, I'd like to know if they have any purpose besides 100% completion.

 All in all? It's more fun than I had imagined, although I'm not much of a fan of Spyro's movement, he's a slippery little bug.

Review #554: Pirates - Legend of the Black Buccaneer

 He can take me sailing any time.

Voodoo Pirates never went out of style.

 2006 marked the year in which Bully, Black, Final Fantasy XII, Godhand and... Pirates - Legend of the Black Buccaneer were released. Critically panned, the very few reviews you can find on it are less than kind. But I think they are wrong. As a lover of all things Metroidvania, this game made me think of Knytt in 3D. I know the game is sloppy, but boy if it isn't fun.

 The game's story is pathetic, featuring a pirate who's out for a famous treasure, there's no voice acting but the narrator, and cutscenes are made up of hand-drawn art with the narrator's voice. The story is bland, and there's very little of it. What you need to know is that 'our Hero', as the game calls Francis, comes upon a voodoo talisman that lets him turn into the Hulk AKA the Black Buccaneer, and now must fix a ship, get some booty and get the hell out of the island he's trapped in.

The talisman lets Francis go Mr.Hyde on his enemies.

 Upon starting the game you'll probably feel very lost. There're many different paths, some you can traverse, some you cannot(at the time), and the map will tell you of all the different collectibles you can find in any of the game's 18 interconnected, different areas. At first you'll feel that the map is useless, but you'll get the hang of it eventually. The game's primary strength, and what makes it so good as a Metroidvania, is how many ways there are to tackle it. There's a lot of freedom in how you go through the game. Will you collect anything that you can as you explore the Island? Will you instead focus on completing objectives, one at a time? Will you focus on activating the shrines first, so as to upgrade your stats, or will you go after the Gilded Gates, challenge rooms that reward you with new powers? It's up to you.

 A Metroidvania at heart, there're two main components to the gameplay: Fighting and exploring. Fighting is alright at first, you can mix weak and strong attacks to produce different combos, you can unlock more by finding scrolls, or use a gun(or a bomb, once unlocked) that run on a cooldown. If the going gets tough, and it will, you can also turn into the Black Buccaneer, on the purple gauge is full, to deal massive damage and sap health from your enemies. There're also Voodoo spells, like summoning a Zombie or possessing an enemy, but... they sap your health while activated, so I found them quite useless.... although maxing their levels make the cost negligible. Your stats can be upgraded by spending 'Offerings', dropped by defeated enemies, on different shrines throughout the Island. Combat was decent at first, but I will admit that it grew boring on the latter half of the game.

There're very few enemy types, get ready to face a lot of Gorillas. And Zombie Pirates. And Voodoo Natives.

 There's a LOT of platforming in the game, and it kinda sucks. The X button is used to roll or to jump, depending on the context, but sometimes the game won't get the right context, plummeting to your death. Some jumps can inexplicably fall short on their mark too. All in all, it's pretty wonky, and I guarantee that you'll die a lot of times due to this. Thankfully, you can spend an increasing amount of Offerings in order to revive. The platforming is easily the game's worst part, but it's not horrible. I could stand it thanks to how fun it was to explore the island. There're so many things for you to collect in every area that earning a new ability, such as burning rotten trees or grenades, to destroy weakened walls, feels rewarding and you'll want to backtrack in order to get what you missed. The map does a great job of tracking what you're missing too. Puzzles in the game consist mostly of pushing boxes around, and they are fairly simple to solve.

 I was midway past the three hour mark when I defeated the second-to-last boss, and hit five hours when I finally got every single collectible and upgraded every stat. I had a lot of fun with the game. I think it's short length, but decently sized areas, make for a fun game to replay. It's not a very polished game, that's for sure. But the punishment is lenient enough so that even if the wonky platforming killed you, you can jump right back in in a few seconds flat. This is not a game for people wanting a competent hack-and-slash, because it's not, nor for people looking for a Pirate game, because the Pirate theme is little more than decor, but a game for people that love Metroidvanias. It's a game that rewards exploration with tools for even more exploration, and pretty open ended in that regard, which is were it really shines.
 7.5 out of 10

Now Playing: Pirates - Legend of the Black Buccaneer

 Low budget goodness.

 The premise is silly, but the game is dope, yo!

 So, like, the disc had a few scratches and I didn't feel like leaving my room to make progress on Persona 5 and... I popped in the disc. Reviews scores were low, reviews were few and the back-cover had a sentence warning people not to confuse this game with Pirates of the Caribbean. I knew the game was gonna be trash.

 ....but it wasn't. It's a large metroidvania game with a lot of freedom in how you tackle things. In my case, I was three hours deep into the game, still wondering if I could actually level up my skills, since the menu showed me numbers next to my combat abilities, and enemies were becoming damage sponges. Turns out you can, those shrines I've been neglecting? That's where. I was playing and doing stuff as I came across it and had the means to collect them, not going out of my way to do missions. And it's not like the game told me that Shrines could be use to upgrade my skills!

 Regardless, the fact is that, as someone that loves Metroidvanias, I am loving the game. I love how much freedom you're given and the gameplay is acceptable. Platforming is a bit wonky. It's very wonky. But it's passable. I think the only fault I could have with the game, albeit one I don't care too much about, is that it doesn't make much use of the Pirate motif. You have to fix a ship, find a treasure, fight with cutlasses and old-school pistols... but that's were it ends. Enemies consists of monkeys, zombie pirates and voodoo savages. Needless to say, the game does little to make you feel like a pirate.

Month Overview: April 2018

 Tally:
Tomb Raider Anniversary 8.0
Prince of Persia - The Fallen King 3.0
Tomb Raider Legend 7.5
InFamous - Second Son 8.0
Enter the Matrix 3.5
Disney Infinity 2.0 4.5
Dissidia Final Fantasy NT 9.0

 My output decreased a little, but I managed to play a few longish games. Dissidia was a pleasant surprise, turning into a reskinned Gundam Versus... something I loved. I also discovered that Crystal Dynamics' first take on Tomb Raider was pretty much glorious.


Runner-up:

 As much as I liked Second Son, and I liked it, it left me with a bitter aftertaste of disappointment. I had fun with the game, liked it a whole bunch, but, but I just couldn't shake off the feeling that I was playing InFamous 2.5. So, y'know, the game is pretty darn great, but at least I was expecting a bit more out of it.

Winner:

 I know that people hated this Dissidia, but... I adored it. It's Gundam Extreme VS but 3-on-3 and with pretty boys. Duking it out with iconic characters is great, all the unlockables are great and the battling is delightful, even if I could've done without summons. They also changed everything I disliked about Dissidia on PSP, the tedium of having to customize equipment and movesets is gone, now you have a set moveset, but can pick between spells and HP-Attacks, which streamlines the game a lot making for a much more blissful arcade pick up-and-play experience.

Now Playing: Persona 5

 It's amazing.

I love the art, goddamn.

 So I'm 3:40 hours in and I'm loving it. I'm loving how Black is the new thematic color, I'm loving the new darker, more mature themes it's dealing with. I'm also loving how everything looks, with a very saturated color palette that looks incredible.

 I'm willing to forgive how Persona 4-ish the cast seems to be, with Ryuji being pretty much Yosuke, Morgana being a stand-in for Teddy and Ryuji and Morgana behaving just like Yosuke and Teddie. Ann seems like a fusion between Chie and Yukiko, with Yukiko's looks and personality but with Chie's bravado. But I adored Persona 4's cast and dynamics, so I'm willing to let it slide this one time... as long as Persona 6 doesn't try the same formula.

 Gameplay seem pretty good, although I'm not a fan of demon conversations. I like the system in Shin Megami Tensei, but I'd prefer keeping both series separate, something that Shin Megami Tensei IV failed to do.

 All in all, I'm mighty hopeful for this one. Seems to be everything I would've wanted out of Persona 6. Doing away with personal shadow confrontations, something that made the P4 cast so endearing is ballsy to say the least, and I'm not too much of a fan of this Thief motif, but I'm keeping an open mind.

Review #553: Dissidia Final Fantasy NT

Final Fantasy's 'nice try'.

Geeze, just cut it out with Lightning, nobody likes here games!

 I liked Dissidia on the PSP, but I had a few gripes with it. I'm happy to report that Dissidia on the PS4 is pretty much exactly what I wanted from Dissidia on the PSP and then some. Critics have been harsh on this game, but that's probably because they can't wrap their head around the fact that this game is an Arcade game and not a triple A open-world, story-driven epic. Here, you pick up the controller and you fight, and that's it.

 The game plays pretty much just like it did on the PSP, but it axed the EX modes and introduced 3 on 3 battles. This is how you play the game: Each team has three stocks, or respawns, so the first team to suffer three losses loses the match. You go about this by landing Bravery Attacks, attacks that increase the Bravery number. Once you're happy with your bravery you then use an HP attack to translate your bravery into HP damage. Getting hit means you lose bravery, so you have to think twice. Will you accumulate a large number of Bravery points in order to kill an enemy in a single blow, or will you slowly chip away at an enemy's health? Successfully landing an HP attack will revert it back to its base, 1000, so it's not like you can just spam high-damage attacks. One of my peeves with the first game was customization, since I didn't like customizing movesets, and that's gone! Each character has a single moveset set in stone, which is great since there's filler. You only get to pick between three HP attacks for each character. Furthermore, each character has its own unique skill, executed with Triangle, as well as two slots for buffs and debuffs, done with Triangle+Up or Triangle+Down. These triangle skills run on a cooldown, so you have to be careful with them. Periodically 'Summon Cores' will spawn that, when broken, allow you to bring a Summon into battle to aid you.

The character roster is fantastic, even if it's mostly made out of pretty boys.

 Gameplay is fast and frantic and I love it. This is an arena-fighter with 6 combatants running around at the same time, but the game runs very smoothly, only dipping, and very little, when it gets too chaotic. It can be a bit tough to get a hang of the camera, L2 to target a foe on the left, R2 on the right, both to target the nearest foe and hold one of those to aim at a Summon Core, but you'll get the hang of it. Besides normal battling there're also Core Battles, in which you must fight to destroy the enemy's core while they attempt to destroy yours. What the game could've used would've been more modes. Give me a real practice mode in which I can fight a dummy. Give me an elimination match, where once a character dies he's gone for good. Give me something more.

 It also lacks more customization. Why can't I increase the amount of respawns per match? Summons are neat an' all, but it seems like as soon as a Summon Core appears everyone abandons what they are doing and runs towards them... how about letting me deactivate summons? There's a HUGE soundtrack, with great tracks, why not let me pick a song before a battle? But, worst of all, this is a fighting game... with no Offline Versus. Alright, so having two screens at the same time may have taxed the machine... so make it so that it can only be played in 2-on-2 or 1-on-1 battles. Turn down the graphics, do what you have to, but the game needed a Offline versus mode.

There's so much going on at the same time, and the framerate is SO smooth.

 The first thing you'll have to do upon booting up the game is entering the Gauntlet mode, in which you fight against 6 teams of enemies. And you have to do this, because you have to grind in order to unlock story mode. I'm not kidding. Story mode is unlocked piece by piece as you earn Memory Pieces, which are earned by leveling up your Player Level which is done by playing Gauntlet Mode over and over again. Or going Online. Doing offline single VS CPU battles doesn't give you anything, which is incredibly dumb. Regardless, you'll be grinding Gauntlet Mode a lot, because not only do you need Memory Pieces, you also need to level up individual characters because... the allied CPU is incredibly stupid and you need to level them up, by using them or having them on your team so that the CPU becomes more proficient with them. And you need to level them up, because it's not unusual for your CPU allies to do nothing as all three enemies gang up on you. You also need to grind for Character Levels in order to unlock alternate HP attacks. You also need to grind for Money if you want to purchase any cosmetics.

 Get ready to put in about 3 hours of Gauntlet if you want a single costume. Considering a successful run through a Gauntlet earns you about 600 gil and costumes are 10800 a piece... And weapons are 7600 each, so.... you're in it for the long haul. There're also in-game loot boxes, which thankfully can't even be purchased with real money, in which you may earn collectibles, but you'll be earning crap mostly. And it's a shame, because each character has about 2-3 extra weapons, as well as three colors for each of their two costumes. There's a lot of great stuff to unlock in this game, but the grind is ungodly tedious. It also should've made this customization more snappy, as it stands, you have to set presets for Skills, costumes and weapons for each individual character. This means that, when you're on the character select screen, you must press Triangle to enter customization mode, then press 'character', then find you character on the list and then go to 'EX Skill', 'Costume' and 'Weapon'. That's a lot of unnecessary menus. Presets are nice to have as options, not as something mandatory. They should've given players fast menus, like you do when picking CPU allies or enemies in mock battles, in order to pick a costume, weapon and skills.

It looks like a lot to take into, but it's very easy to get into the groove of things.

 And then, lastly, we've got the story mode, which is one of the game's biggest disappointments, next to the lack of offline versus. Unlocking it is a pain in the butt, plaything through boss battles is a pain in the butt thanks to useless allies, the final boss is a pain in the butt because he cheaply spams HP attacks... but none of that is what really makes it disappointing, rather, it's the story itself. It's garbage, the story is garbage. Which would've been alright, since this is a 'what if' game, but what it really needed was characters interacting with each other. These are characters that had, most of them anyways, a single game, so why not let us enjoy their personalities again, as they interact with one another? But nope, dialogue and character interactions are short and uninteresting. The badguys barely get any screen time, might make a quick quip here and there, and then they disappear. Final Fantasy I-X get 2 characters each(IV gets a third one, Kain), but the remaining eight characters, of which Kain is a part of, don't even appear on the story mode. There's a lot of stuff that is poorly explained or poorly written, specifically the Lightning/Zidane branch of the story, Lightning and Squall just disappear never to be seen again until the finale. It's a poor story, with poor fanservice.

 Here's the thing, the game is a blast to play. You've 28 iconic, and some not as iconic, heroes and villains from Final Fantasy, and there's so much glee to have as you see all these fantastic characters fight each other looking great thanks to current-gen graphics. And characters are very different from each other, not as much as, say, Guilty Gear, but you'll find that you'll be using different strategies with different characters as you experiment with their movesets. And as much as I had to grind, it never felt like a grind because I was having fun mowing down hordes of enemies. I just wish that getting the cosmetics you want was easier, and selecting your set-ups was faster than having to fix 3 presets per character, going through various menus. But here's the thing, where the game falters is on all the fluff, what really matters, the core gameplay, they got oh, so right. I don't think I'll ever tough the Story Mode again, but Gauntlet Battles? Count me in. Just wish that Offline single Sparring Battles would give points and that the game had a 2-Player offline mode.

 You know, as much as I complain about the game.... I absolutely adored it. It feels a great deal like Gundam Extreme VS, which is a good thing since that's one of my favorite games out there. I love the character cast and I love the gameplay. Would more bells and whistles would've been nice? Definitely. But they nailed the core gameplay just right, and it's a very easy game to just pick-up and play, which is one of the things I value the most in a game. And I understand why so many people dislike it, most people have moved forwards from these Arcade games, this is not what most people expect out of a game.
 But it's exactly what I love. Now gimme a 2 player offline mode and we're cool, Squeenix.
 9.0 out of 10