Entry #668: El Shaddai - Ascension of the Metatron

 Gives a whole new meaning to Divine Intervention.

 El Shaddai - Ascension of the Metatron is quite the experience, the biggest praise I can give it is that it almost feels like a Suda 51 game. Almost. This is a 3-D hack-and-slash action game that mixes in platforming as well as 2-D sections alongside some very surreal imagery to create a weird, inviting beast.

 The plot is hard to completely grasp, but it has you playing as Enoch, a heavenly scribe turned warrior, as he is sent back to earth to defeat 7 rogue angels. And then a ton of nonsense happens. While the story is quite simpler than anything Suda 51 would ever do, it still feels like a very surreal experience, with a ton of stuff that doesn't make sense or never gets brought up again. That said, most of the story is plaid straight, so no hidden symbolism or what have you, just amusing stuff like Lucifel(Not a mistranslation, since he is still an Angel his name ends on L) talking with a worried god about Enoch. The graphics are cellshaded, but it's the dream-like design of the levels that really makes the game stand-out. It's weird and very unnatural, which fits the theme of the game so much. Every new area is a feast for the eyes.

 Sadly, gameplay isn't up to snuff. The rhythm-based combat is innovative enough, but there are only three different weapons in the entire game, and only so many things you can do with them. There's no point to styling on enemies either, since there's nothing to upgrade. The purifying mechanic was also kinda boring, after using a weapon for a while it'll corrupt, making it much weaker, so you have to wait for an opening to tap R1 to 'purify' your weapon and restore it. Alternatively, you can just hit an enemy until it gets dizzy and then steal his weapon, purifying it in the process. A lot of the time the best strategy seemed to be to just disarm every enemy and then pulverize them with whatever weapon you ended up with. Honestly, the combat was decent at best and boring at worst.

 The platforming was also pretty bland, be it the less than precise 3-D platforming sections or the floaty, slippery 2-D platforming sections. Either way, platforming wasn't much fun in El-Shaddai. Mind you, it's not like platforming is completely horrible, it's just passable, forgettable even.

 While El-Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron is definitely lacking as far as its gameplay goes, the unique audiovisual presentation alongside its Suda 51-like script made me really enjoy my time exploring El-Shaddai. I don't think I'll be replaying this one anytime soon, but I am glad I got to play it at least once.
 7.0 out of 10

Entry #667: Super Dragon Ball Heroes - World Mission

 Gotta catch'em all!

 Known as that game with the badass commercials depicting what-if forms for a ton of characters, Super Dragon Ball Heroes - World Mission finally made it outside Japan, so we can finally see Super Saiyan 3 Vegeto duking it out against Gold Cooler. It's amazing.

 Dragon Ball is no stranger to weird games, so World Mission is nothing out of the ordinary. Based on an Arcade game that featured real cards, this port on the Switch makes everything digital. You don't play as the characters themselves, but rather, you make 7-card decks featuring known and unknown characters from the world of Dragon Ball and fight against another 7-card deck, in a five-turn mini-game extravaganza. It's not a game for everyone and it's definitely not a game for your average Dragon Ball fan, but it's quite fun all things considered.

 You won't find yourself out of things to do with this cart, as there is a lot of content packed in this little cart. The story mode is made up of five different chapters, with various sub-chapters contained withing, and most sub-chapters even contain 'alternate dimensions', which translate as another map full of fights. You can also fight in tournaments, 'puzzle fight's and even fight against other players(Sadly no single-console multiplayer), and if you are up to it, you can even challenge Arcade Mode, which is sort-of like Story Mode but without the story and less customization. Add to that that there's about 1000 different cards, and about 350 different characters depicted among those. The amount of combinations and strategies you can build around this massive stack of cards is staggering.

 While the game's tutorial is pretty bad, leaves a lot untold or poorly explained and does it in a very weird order. Honestly, you'll learn more about the game by partaking in puzzle fights and by experience alone. The gist of it is like this: Each of your seven cards/characters can fall on any of three classes(Berserker, Hero, Elite) each with different properties, and on each turn you can place your cards on different areas of the playing field, the furthest away from you the more damage they'll deal and the more stamina they'll consumer, while the closest area to you is the 'support' lane, in which characters can restore their stamina or trigger special abilities. Afterwards whoever player goes first gets to attack first, and attacking/defending is all about timing minigames. If the attacker wins the game he'll deal extra damage and, if available, perform a super move. If the defender wins, they'll receive less damage.

 Yeah, gameplay is pretty limited here. As a matter of fact, I kinda disliked having to go through timing minigames on every single turn. I mean, I learned to accept it on the long-run, but this is not my kind of game mechanic. That said, the game really shines in the strategy department, as characters come with all kinds of abilities and what not, smart players will be able to craft some really smart moves. For instance, you can even form your deck around a 'Round', like, for example, a deck surrounding Ultra Instinct Goku allowing him to win the game right on the first turn if you win the timing minigame. Since a few abilities can be use AFTER a certain round, you can even build a deck based on surviving the first four rounds and then laying waste to the enemy on the fourth. It's a simple game, and it's actually quite simple to understand after a few matches, but I felt awe at how deep creating a deck can get.

 On the other hand, the game desperately needed more animations. Every character shares the same 8-9 basic attack animations, and you'll see them play out over and over and over and over and over and over again. I know, it's crazy to expect them to create different animations for every single character, but they could've gone with different 'sets' of moves shared by different groups of characters, that alone could've gone a long way into making fights look more dynamic. Or at least add more animations, so that you haven't seen every single basic move by the fourth battle you fought.

 As for how you actually get your cards, that's done by winning fights and earning Gacha tickets. Those can then be used on the store to randomly get cards. Yes, it can take a while before you can get every character or card that you can, but I was using my most wanted 7 characters by the ten hour mark, so that's not to bad. And while there are rarer cards than other, the game does a good job of making cards useful in some way or another. You could make an entire deck built around Yamcha and still win because some of his cards can increase the speed of the timing minigame for your enemies, tied to the fact that 'weaker' cards have a lower cost for their super moves, so they can start using them earlier. Honestly, no card is entirely useless and there are a ton of ways you can play. You can also build your own card by collecting 'pieces'(The character, the aura, the abilities, etc) through playing the game and then use mix them together in the card-maker. There's a lot you can do in this game, trust me.

 If there's one major 'flaw' with the game is how Story fights completely break the game mechanics. Say, you build an entire deck built around depleting the enemy stamina? Too bad, most CPU enemies have unlimited Stamina. By the end, pretty much every enemy has a timing mini-game speed increase on you, and they seem to time their 'perfect's, well, perfectly.

 Here's the skinny: Super Dragon Ball Heroes - World Mission is good fun. There's a lot of tools you can play around with to create various different strategies, and there're a lot of different Dragon Ball characters you can toy around with. It's a bit lacking in spectacle, and a few CPU fights are a bit too cheap, but it's a fun game. Fights are so short(Less than 10 minutes each!) that, for a portable game, lends itself quite well to playing in a few bursts. That said, as fun as it was, now I wish Namco would take all these character models and make a new Tenkaichi game on the Switch.
 7.0 out of 10

Entry #666: Samurai Shodown(2019)

 No Gen-An Shiranui, no buy!

 Samurai Shodown is back, baby, and it's back in style! While I've always enjoyed the series, I never considered myself a fan. As a matter of fact, I always preferred SNK's other Samurai game, The Last Blade(When are we getting a physical release of both games? SNK, get on it!) but I think I might be changing my mind any time now, since this game is pretty darn brilliant.

 I'll get my complaints out of the way first, starting with the poor character roster. There's a scant 16 playable characters. We get 10 out of the 12 characters from Samurai Shodown 1, because pandering, 3 newcommers(Darli Dagger is alright, Ruxieng is the dumb 'ditzy big breasted animu waifu' stereotype and Karasu, which might be my new favorite) as well as a few choice picks from the rest of the games: Shiki, from 64(Brilliant pick, even if her in-game reason for being present is incredibly dumb), Genjuro from II and Yoshitora from V. It's missing a lot of fan-favorites, including MY favorite Kazuki. You can get the season pass for free for a few days which will turn the game into a physical/digital hybrid with four extra characters: Basara from III, Wan-Fu from I, Kazuki(THANK GOD) from IV and Rimururu from III. The roster leaves a lot to be desired, sadly, but at least all 16 characters are very different from each other: There's no filler here. Although that might change once Rimururu makes it in.... My other gripe comes in the form of loading times, they are a bit longer than they I would've liked, making for a lot of dead time whenever you play.

 Now then, I'm not one to judge games solely on graphics, but by the gods is Samurai Shodown pretty. Everything in the game is extra colorful, and character models are incredibly detailed with beautiful animations to compliment this new oily, inky style they went for. As a matter of fact, everything has a slight parchment-like texture applied to it, making it look like a Ukiyoe painting. Super moves makes the texture more notorious for added style. I can't stress this enough, this game is gorgeous. It might not have the most realistic looking character models or environments, but they went for style and they knocked it out of the park.

 But let me tell you WHY Samurai Shodown is SO darn good, because it's not just its incredible graphics, but its gameplay. Samurai Shodown is unlike most fighting games, while there is a combo counter here, combos are not the norm but the exception: This game is about landing precise attacks when you see an opening. This means that matches can go by very quickly, if you land slow-but-strong attacks, or very slowly if both opponents can't find an opening. It's not a game for everyone, and that's fine.

 Complimenting its simple design its got equally simple game mechanics. You have lots of them, for instance, for defensive options you've got: Blocking/Just-Blocking, Deflecting, Parrying and disarming. All those actions are fairly simple to pull off: Tap backwards to block(Tap just as you get hit for a quicker just-block), perform a just-block and press quarter-circle-forward+LS+MS to deflect. Press LS+MS to dodge on the spot or Quarter-circle-forward+LS+MS before getting hit to disarm your enemy. Every mechanic is very easy to pull off, and you've got tools if you want to predict an attack or if you want to react to one. For attacks you have 3 Slashes(Weak, Medium, Strong) and a kick, special moves, a one-time use super-special move, a rage-explosion as well as a rage-super move that disarms your enemy. Plenty of those will give you options in how you want to manage your Rage gauge. This means that this is a feature-rich game, with just the right amount of mechanics and tools for anyone to pick up the game fairly quickly and master it at their own pace.

 Samurai Shodown(2019) is the fighting game I didn't know I wanted. It managed to bring the series into the present day with a high degree of success. A more robust character roster as well as more extras(Like unlockable color palettes) could've made this great game into an even better one, so it'll be interesting to see how it develops as more characters get released. Not that I want to encourage DLC, but what can I do? On the other hand, I can't wait to get this game on Switch and take it out with me anytime, anywhere.

 8.5 out of 10

Entry #665: Dungeon Hunter - Alliance

  Gameloft strikes again, for better or worse.

 Gameloft is a company I've learned to appreciate in the last few years. Yes, they make knock-off mobile games based off console games... but they always make GOOD knock off games for a mobile market. That said, they make mobile games, so whenever a game of theirs gets ported to more mainstream consoles, well, they tend to not get such a good reception. Dungeon Hunter - Alliance had it tough, it was already outdated by the time it released(Dungeon Hunter 2 was already a thing) and it was a 40$ re-release of a game you could get for a fraction of that on mobile.

 Well, in true Gameloft fashion, Dungeon Hunter - Alliance is your generic dungeon crawling loot-based RPG modeled after the good ol' classics, like Diablo. You've got your passive and active skills you can develop as well as bonus stat points you can allocate on your various different stats every time you level up. You've got your basic classes: Warrior, Mage and Rogue, with equipment reflecting on your character model and what not. It does little new or original, with a fairy companion that acts like a free spell every minute. It's a bit barebones, and simple, but it's also competent and lasts a solid 10 hours or so.

 The game is kinda tough, I'm sure I couldn't have gotten all the way to the end of the game without investing on the potion capacity upgrade skill.... and I've played with a Warrior. I've read a few complaints that other squishier classes are even tougher, which probably means they balanced the game with multiplayer first. Online is dead, and good luck finding another person with a Vita and this cart, so you are on your own!

 On the other hand, the game has a few technical shortcomings that really hurt the overall experience. The biggest problem of all, and rather common in a handful of Vita games, are the exasperating long loading times which are very inconvenient on a handheld game. Then there are the mandatory touch controls. Using a fairy spell requires tapping the screen twice, which works relatively well except when the game thinks your double tap was you pinching the screen to zoom in. Very annoying! Then there's the shaking, when your character gets stunned you have to shake your Vita. Cumbersome, yes, but you have to shake the console while keeping track of your tiny health bar so as not to waste a potion because you weren't sure if you were at death's door yet!

 I'm gonna go on a limb and say that, for all its unearned bad rep, Dungeon Hunter - Alliance is a good time for anyone interested in the genre. It's not perfect, it's not original, it has its technical shortcomings and you can get it cheaper on, probably, any other console. But it's still a competent, meaty game that can get you your dungeon-crawling fix on the Vita.

 6.5 out of 10

Entry #664: Tales of Vesperia

 Tales of crashes and freezes.

 Tales of Vesperia has long been THE Tales Game, you know, the one stuck on X360 that a lot of long-time fans, such as myself, never got to play. I was hyped for this port, like, a lot, but in pure Namco-Bandai fashion... they screwed it up. It's sad, because it looked great on paper: Both English and Japanese dubs alongside all the extras from the enhanced Japanese-only PS3 version, just what could go wrong? Well, nobody tested this dumpster fire it seems, because every version of the game is prone to crashing, but the Switch version is EASILY the worst one. Reports for PS4/XOne crashes are very few, but one needs not look very far to find just how many people suffered this game. Namco-Bandai released a couple of patches which do make the game more stable, but I had the game crash once during my post-patch playtime, and I've heard reports that the post-game is still pretty unstable. As for me, I finished the main game, what I cared the most about, and had my fill with the game, and after reading so many reports about its crashes... I decided not to play it.

 As for the game itself, it's certainly very overrated, or maybe it has simply become yet another victim of its own age. The story is a mixed bag, every thread regarding Yuri's vigilantism and Yuri and Flynn's friendship was fantastic and fresh, even if the resolution to Yuri's solo-activities felt a bit underwhelming. On the other hand, a lot of the story has to do with 'Guilds', and it was just so... dull and boring. This makes the story have a lot of ups and downs, as far as my interest went, sometimes I was invested in seeing how the story would develop and others I was just going through the dialogue waiting for something interesting to happen. The rest of the story is made up of generic anime tropes, as per usual, as well as the repetitive Tales of tropes, so you have your Traitor and also your mandatory annoying kid character. This version of Vesperia also adds ANOTHER annoying kid to the party

 The combat in the game is pretty decent, but it's not as fun as I've had with other Tales of games. Customizing the CPU felt a bit more limiting than I expected, and the Healer would fail to use the most appropriate spells for the occasion. That said, I've always liked Tales real-time combat, and this is no exception. The Skill system sounds great on paper: Learn skills from weapons by using the weapon for a certain amount of time, but it translated into quite a bit of grinding, since it took a far too long to learn a few skills. As for the environmental puzzles, they are pretty simple affairs, nothing too memorable.

 Tales of Vesperia is alright. The story has its moments and the gameplay is alright. I think I would've enjoyed the game more had I not been scared of crashing every few minutes or so. As it stands, this is a bland port of a good game.
 6.5 out of 10

Entry #663: Psikyo Collection Vol.3

 Breast-pad included.

 Here it is, the final entry of the 3-part compilation, Psikyo Collection Vol.3. In what can only be described as baffling, this entry includes even less extras than the previous collections: No bonus art, and each game get its own slot on the Switch's dashboard, as opposed to a single program running all four games. It's a weird couple of choices, but there must be some reason as to why they changed it up for this installment. There must be.

 GunBarich

 A pseudo-sequel to the Gunbird series, this is an Arkanoid-Breakout-shooter hybrid that's actually kinda disappointing considering how much I grew to like GunBird. There are a few power ups to make your life easier, and the game is quite cutesy, but while I can tell that it's a decent game, it just wasn't a good way to end the series.
 6.0 out of 10

 Sengoku Cannon

 The Sengoku series quickly became my favorite from these compilations, and Sengoku Cannon does the series right. 6 different characters, and now we've got: Spread shots, focused shots, cannon shots(Which turn enemy bullets into coins if you defeat said enemy with it) as well as the mandatory bomb. This is probably the best in the series.
 7.5 out of 10

 Strikers 1945 III

 Strikers 1945 III is the prettiest of the bunch, but it's also the hardest, to the point that I wasn't having much fun. Keep in mind I'm not much of a fan of shooters(And I purchased these games because I thought Strikers 1945 was Aerofighters!), so this high level of difficulty, even on the easiest setting, was a big turn-off. On that note, the game follows the formula Strikers 1945 has been following to a tee, with nothing noteworthy for this last installment. It's alright.
 6.5 out of 10

 Zero Gunner 2-

 Oh boy, oh boy, now this is something special. Zero Gunner 2- is unlike anything else from these compilations. Well, it's still a shooter, so it's not THAT different, but it's very unique. This is the only game that's completely in 3-D, but it also adds a new dimension to the shooting: You can turn your ship in a full 360 degrees. This is done by holding down a button which will make a target-reticule appear in front of your ship, now, as long as that button is being held, moving the analog stick will make your ship move in around this marker, as opposed to 'strafing'. It's a bit hard to explain, and seems daunting at first, but getting the hang of it is very simple. The game is a bundle of fun, and one of my favorites from these compilations. On another note, this game is called '-' because it's been rebuilt from scratch since they lost the original Dreamcast code. I've read a lot of comments about how bad it's in comparison to the Dreamcast original, but I found the game to be great.
 7.5 out of 10

 Psikyo Collection Vol.3 is a bit of a letdown, coming right out of Volume 2, but it's not half bad. Sengoku Cannon is brilliant and, having not played the Dreamcast original, Zero Gunner 2- is fantastic and a breath of fresh air from everything that I had been playing from this collection. On the other hand, GunBarich wasn't very interesting, and Strikers 1945 III stuck too close to its guns failing to make any sort of impression outside of 'I've played this before at least two other times'. Not that any of these games are bad. Bottom line is: I still think Volume 2 is the best one, but everyone's in luck: This collection is being re-released in a 2-part edition, bumping the games to 6-per-cart which will make for a much more appealing purchase and will help make up for the few less remarkable entries.
 7.0 out of 10

Entry #662: 64 Memories - Cruis'n USA

 Outrun, made in America

 Part I: The Flashback
 As a famous racing game hater of the 90s I never really did care much about Cruis'n USA. I must've played it a few times when we went for dinner to a few restaurants that had Nintendo 64 consoles for children to play with. It's a shame I wasn't able to appreciate this game back then, because this is exactly the type of game I've been looking for since I can't get my Outrun fix outside of said franchise.

 Part II: The Entry
 I know, alright, I know. This game is supposed to be a terrible port of a great little arcade game. The framerate is choppy, the physics are weird... but I loved it. Heck, the unpredictable physics when you crash and hit other cars is part of the chaotic fun that is Cruis'n USA. The game is an Arcade racer through and through, and unlike most other racing games, this one is about going from point A to point B, kinda like Outrun. However, instead of one long track, the game is divided into 15 shorter courses. You can play on any course by itself, but the main attraction is 'CRUISE THE USA', in which you play every race in a set order.

 The game is a bundle of fun, easy to get into, simple to understand and play. It's fast, even if the framerate can't keep up, and I absolutely love this type of racing game. Honestly, it feels like an American take on Outrun, and I say that as a huge compliment.
 8.5 out of 10