Review #770: Under Night In-Birth Exe: Late[CL-R]

 Be careful what you wish for....

 5 yeas ago I played this weird little Japanese fighting made by the creators of Melty Blood. Nothing in that game made sense, but it was amazing. Well, that weird little game with its weird long title got an even weirder and longer title and is back as, um... Under Night In-Birth Exe: Late[CL-R]. Yeah, don't even try to make heads or tails of it, what you need to know is that it's an anime 2-D fighting game that looks like Guilty Gear but plays more like Street Fighter Alpha, if that makes any sense. In any case, it's really good, alright?

 As with most 2-D fighters published by ArkSys, the game offers a healthy plethora of modes: Arcade, Chronicles, Versus, Online, Score Attack, Time Attack, Survival, Training, Tutorial and Mission. Most are pretty self explanatory, Mission mode being a set of combo challenges unique to each character that get tougher as you go down the list, tutorial is a very in-depth guide in how to play this game and could help you with any other fighting game. Chronicles could've been exactly what I wanted from the last game, but my wish was twisted into a boring facsimile. Y'see, it's a 22-chapter long visual novel style thing. There are no fights in these, just story and story and more story, and it's SO BORING. It's written like Blazblue, so there's a ton of inane dialogue that dwells on the small stuff and goes on and on and on. I'm no stranger to visual novels, and I enjoy text-based games, but this is just exposition with no gameplay, and they go for a very purple prose styled narrative, dwelling on what the point-of-view character is feeling or thinking all the time. I wanted a proper explanation to what was going on with the first version of the game, but not like this. Not like this. As for the Arcade Mode, the few story tidbits cover the same story that the first iteration of the game covered, although the 6 new characters get their own new bits, for what it's worth.

 When I first played the game, it had 16 characters. Since this is it's third iteration I would've hoped we'd be on 24 or 25, but no, we just hit 21 characters. 20 characters is more than fine for a competitive fighting game, but considering this is an additive series, I expected more. The five new characters that have joined the roster are great, save for Maki who seems to have lost her way from a waifu-fighter like Asuka 120% or Arcana Heart. Each character starts off with 20 different color schemes, and you can unlock 20 more for each, for a grand total of 40 color palettes per character, not too shabby!

 Little has changed as far as the game goes. There are a couple of new things you can do with your energy gauge, it received its mandatory balance changes, but the brunt of the game remains the same, and that's just fine, because the game is fantastic. You get four buttons A-B-C-D, the first three being attack buttons and the D button can be used for your ultimate attack or a veil-cancels. The game is fast, but not as fast as Guilty Gear, and there's a lot of freedom when it comes to making combos. It feels good and it looks good. It's definitely very easy to play, since connecting moves is simple, but it's got a very high skill ceiling if you want to really get good. Plus, if you're lazy you can just mash the A button for an auto-combo, but making your own combos is really fun in this game, so I'd avoid it.

 The game's key mechanic is the GRD gauge. As you deal damage you'll fill a gauge that lies next to your energy gauge, and every few seconds the game will buff whoever had the highest GRD by the time. This means that the player that's doing better will get a few advantages. It's not so huge an advantage that whoever is losing will lose even harder, but the GRD is a good reason to do better. I like this momentum-based gameplay a lot, I thought it was a great idea back then, and it still is.

 There's a very weird quirk with this game, any time you suspend the game, it will make you lose whatever you were doing. Had a good winning streak in Survival mode? Hope you didn't suspend the game, because the game will force you into the Lose screen. Heck, this goes on for Arcade Mode too. I don't know why this happens, but I don't like it.

 I really like Under Night In-Birth, if you ask me, it's one of the best modern fighting games out there. I also like the fact that it's one of the very few completely new fighting game IPs that's been made in decades. Regardless, 5 years since I played the original release, I'm somewhat disappointed that so little has changed or been added to the game. I would've been quite happy just with more characters, but two iterations later and we've barely gotten to 21 characters, it's kind of a letdown, y'know?

 9.0 out of 10

Review #769: My Hero One's Justice 2(Switch)

 Slightly more Plus Ultra than the previous game.

 Last year's My Hero Academia game was, I felt, a fairly decent base for future MHA games to expand upon. My Hero One's Justice 2 is more of the same, but in this case, it just might be a good thing.

 The game offers a passable amount of modes: Story, Mission(Based on clearing maps made out of different fights, as well as 'recruiting' characters and leveling them up), Arcade(Three routes per character, although you can select the order of the fights), Training and Customization. I'm sad to report that the story mode is just as bland as it used to be, it covers the story from where the last game dropped off(rescuing Bakugo) up to the fight against Chisaki. Once again, finishing the story mode unlocks the Villain Side. What makes the Story Mode so awful? Well, the fact that it's told through static comic-style panels, and I'm pretty sure it won't make much sense if you aren't familiar with the storyline. The previous game had about three cutscenes, this game has 6 or 7, and they are pretty good, so good that I hate it that we don't get more cutscenes instead of the boring comic panels. Weirdly enough, most cutscenes only play on the Villain Side, which makes no sense considering the actual storyline is the Hero Side. Oh, and they also filled the story with filler fights. Oh, and the credits go on and on and on and on and you can't skip them. Remember when Bakugo beat up Hideki for money? Well, it's a full-fledged story fight now because why not.

 Well, the game plays pretty much exactly the same. You've got a basic combo string, two Quirk buttons that can be altered by flicking the analog stick in any direction before pressing either button, which means about 4 different Quirks(Special moves), dash and dash cancelling, which consumes energy, two super moves and the ability to summon Sidekicks to come in for an attack or to push back an enemy that's comboing you. The game looks slow on videos, but it's anything but, although the Switch version caps at 30 fps, so it doesn't look as smooth as the PS4 version. I thought the gameplay was pretty fun back then, and it still is. Zipping through the air, fighting on walls, knocking enemies around and causing destruction all around you looks and feels fantastic. That said, this is pretty much the same exact game, although I'm pretty sure it has been tweaked to flow a bit better, in the previous game sometimes I had trouble connecting with Deku(Shoot Style) attacks, but it seems like they tightened the tracking on his moves or something, regardless, the combat does feel better, but I'm not sure exactly how they made it better.

 Still, what makes this game so much better is the fact that it doubled the game's roster. The first game had 20 character(23 if you count the DLC), and this one has 40, which means you get at least 17 new characters to play with, even if three of them are alternate versions(Deku 100%, Shigaraki v2 and an alternate version of Chisaki). There's actually a 21rst character if you preordered, like I did, a boring Nomu that doesn't even get a Level 2 Super Move. It's a horrible bonus character, so if you didn't get him, trust me, you ain't missing out. The customization element is still fairly good, there's a good amount of accessories to put on your character, although most of the accessories return from the previous game if I'm not mistaken. What really sucks are the color schemes, I think they added only 1 or 2 new schemes, and schemes are shared between characters, which really sucks, each character should get unique color schemes if only to add more color variety. I'm also not a fan of having to set a customized preset(3 per character) in order to use alternate costumes or colors. What if I really like the many alternate colors of Bakugo and costumes? I need to enter the customization mode and alter a preset in order to pick it, which is rather lame.

 I heard some pretty horrible things about the first game's performance on Switch, but this game runs pretty well all things considered. A few characters like Todoroki are more likely to make the framerate dip, since they have more intense particle effects on their moves, but most of the time it's very playable. I mean, framerate drops are frequent, they really are, but this is an anime fighter, it doesn't really matter. That said, the final boss in Story Mode is a giant monster-thing, and... well, the framerate does sink very, very low during that fight. The loading times are fine, although it feels like this game murders the Switch's battery.

 My Hero One's Justice 2 is what I expected the first game to be. It has a respectable 40-character roster and fun but simple gameplay that makes it very easy and fun to play. Considering it's not a competitive fighter, it's surprising how fun cancelling attacks into each other and making long combos by dash-cancelling feels. All the chaos and destruction you can cause on the environment is just the cherry on top. Hopefully we can start getting proper storymodes on future games.
 7.0 out of 10

Review #768: The Yakuza Remastered Collection

 Finally, Yakuza 5 has officially seen a physical release on the West.

 I've written at length about the Yakuza series, so with The Yakuza Remastered Collection I'll take a slightly different approach. There's no need to delve into what are these games, as every Yakuza game is basically the same, for good or bad. Contained in this box are Yakuza 3, Yakuza 4 and Yakuza 5, and as far as I can tell, Yakuza 5 is the only one that hasn't been changed in any way. Which is just fine by me, since this is the Yakuza game I've waited years to play.

 Yakuza 3 Remastered

 This is the one that has changed the most, although just for us Westerners. A few spicy sub missions involving a crossdresser got completely axed, which no great loss there since they weren't all that fun or funny. On the other hand, most of the minigames that didn't make it into the original localized version were restored.... which doesn't really change how much I like Yakuza 3 since I didn't care too much about those in the first place.

 That said, Yakuza 3 is fantastic, I liked it a lot, although it has a much slower beginning than other games in the series. Everything I wrote last year about this game holds true to this day.

 Yakuza 4 Remastered

 Ah, Yakuza 4, the first Yakuza game I ever played, purchased it at release too! It was the first game to include other playable characters besides Kiryu. While a lot of people still mock it for the Saejima-related plot twist, I'm sorry, but I found the climax of the story to be incredible, and every now and then I still talk about it with my friends. The game's biggest change is also it's only change, Tanimura got completely redesigned and his lines are now read by a different voice actor. It has to do with the original voice actor being found guilty of possession and other shenanigans which is why he didn't return for 5.

 You've no idea how much I loved this game. I was just shy 1 trophy away from Platinum-ing the game before my hard drive got corrupted. And I went into the "Flashbacks" section just for the trophy... only to find every storyline prior to be amazing, it completely sold me on the series. So... yeah, coming back to this game was quite a treat.

 As previously mentioned, this was the first Yakuza game to offer more than one playable character, 4 in fact, an each character gets their own set of chapters, their own moveset, a master to train with, sub-stories and goals: Kiryu has to defeat a gang, Tanimura has to attend to police matters, Akiyama has a Hostess Maker minigame and Saejima has a Fighter Maker minigame. It's not as dense or as lengthy as Yakuza 5, but it's definitely a step above previous games in terms of length.

 I replayed this game after playing 5, and it was interesting how this game actually runs on a slightly different engine, combat feels a teeny tiny bit stiffer but also crunchier, and it's much more gorier. I mean, enemies can end up drenched in blood, and it's glorious, I actually wish they would've kept it like this.

 Say what you will about 'that' plot twist, I still think the story in this game is amazing and ridiculous in all the right ways. Plus, adding more playable characters felt like the best addition to the series since being able to change the direction of your attacks in Yakuza 2.


Yakuza 5 Remastered

 The one that got away, Yakuza 5, considered by many one of the best games in the series. I don't know if I'd go that far, but it's definitely the biggest Yakuza game by far. You thought 4 characters was alright? How about 5. Tanimura is no more, in his place comes Tatsuo Shinada, an ex-baseball player accused of cheating and Haruka Sawamura who.... well, let's say I disagree a lot with what they did with her. Since each character is pretty much their own world, I'll write briefly about each.

 The developers must have taken to heart a few of the criticisms from 4, because now you start playing as Kiryu right away, now taking the alias of Suzuki. He gets the city of Nagasugai. Kiryu is a balanced fighter with a ton of different Heat actions for different situations. He lost the Red Heat ability, but now you can press R2 to enter a Super Mode for as long as your Heat gauge lasts. His story revolves around him trying to keep away from Haruka's dream while getting embroiled yet again in the Tojo/Omi Alliance affairs. He gets Taxi driving sub missions, which are really fun, you have to give good advice to your passengers, while respecting the traffic code. You also get to partake in racing against the Devil Killers, a gang of speed racers. You can customize how your taxi looks as well as the music that plays during races.

 Saejima returns for the second set of chapters, beginning his story in prison but it's not soon before he starts getting harassed by other inmates. Eventually, he gets to escape in order to find out who killed Majima and what's going on with the Tojo. Saejima is a power house that can charge his Triangle attacks and is the only character capable of lifting the heaviest objects. His style is now all about bouncing enemies on the ground in order to grab them and spinning them around. Saejima's story takes place in Tsukimino as well as a small village, his side missions being about Hunting. You have to take food into the wilderness, aim in first person and shoot in order to hunt deers and bears. It's surprisingly fun.

 Akiyama is the third chapter, well, half of it, for you see, he gets the short end of the stick and has to share his chapter and city, Sotenbori, with Haruka. He doesn't even get side missions.... but at least he gets 15 sub-stories like everyone else, I guess. His story is tied to Haruka's, as you'd expect, since he returns to recover the missing money that he lent to Haruka's producer, but it's not as simple as it sounds.... Akiyama is fast and nimble, but he is a bit weaker and has less health than the other guys. Now he can press triangle to juggle enemies into the air and keep hitting them by mashing square.

 Tatsuo Shinada is the final chapter before the Finale begins, after being framed for cheating at Baseball he has been making ends meet by writing smut for porographic magazines... as well as borrowing money from loan sharks. An eternal loser if you will, he gets contacted by a not-so-mysterious figure to discover why he was framed. He gets the city of Kineicho. At first I hated Tatsuo, but I grew to like him, just like Akiyama, he isn't a legendary Yakuza power fantasy like Kazuma or Saejima, he gets tired and he gets pummeled by characters other than the big bads. He is fun, he is different from the others. His fighting style is quite different too, he is built around grappling enemies, so he can interrupt his square combos with circle to grab enemies or press triangle when in hit mode after a finisher attack in order to tackle enemies into a grapple. He is also a weapons expert, so he wields weapons in his own unique way, and he is able to find unbreakable, but weak, versions of the Knife, Katana, Pole and Rod. His side missions are about Batting and meeting up with his old team mates.

 Haruka... oh boy, Haruka. Let's start with her story, it makes no sense. Anyone who's played Yakuza 2 knows that she hated the idea of becoming an idol, so in Yakuza 5 she decides to become an Idol. Which, fair enough, people change, but she does so at the cost of Kiryu having to abandon the Orphanage which makes absolutely no sense for her. What about the fact that the producer, Mirei Park, is a bonafide jerk who gets portrayed in a very sympathetic light. She manipulated Kiryu into leaving the Orphanage and his kids, for "Haruka's well being since paparazzi would flock to discover her origins' and then she'd threaten Haruka that if she didn't perform well she'd stop paying for the Orphanage. Yet everyone is always saying good things about her and making her dream a reality. No, no way, screw her. Then there's the way Haruka is portrayed, in previous games she's always been a headstrong character, but now she's very submissive and docile, letting her rivals put her down because she's now a 'soft spoken waifu' type character. As a whole, I really didn't care about the trials and tribulations of an Idol, so I found her story to be completely boring, even though I grew to really like her supporting cast, Yamaura, Christina and Yoko, but her story as a whole just didn't do it for me.

 The worst part about Haruka is that she doesn't even 'fight' in the traditional way, instead she has 'Dance Battles', which are basically rhythm button-pressing affairs. How awesome would it have been to see Haruka perform some of Kiryu's staple moves? But, whatever, Japan feels very strongly about gender roles, I can understand that, so why not give her Tanimura's defensive style? That could've worked too. I actually liked the different songs Haruka got to sing, but this isn't really what I want from a Yakuza game. He side-missions are about Idol duties, like giving handshakes to her Otaku fans or picking the right answers during interviews. I won't go as far as to claim that Haruka ruined Yakuza 5, because I didn't hate her part, but I hate what they did with her character, and I found her part of the story to be the most dull.

 If you couldn't tell by now, Yakuza 5 is HUGE. There are five different towns, each with a ton of side activities to partake into. Each character has their own set of Side-Missions(Except Akiyama), their own 15 sub-stories, their own fighting styles and their own Masters they can learn from. If I had one gripe, it'd be that until you get to Kamurocho you can't go above level 20, which sucks because a lot of experience points earned from Sub Stories might get wasted. For a completionist like me, each character took me about 10 hours to complete, so I was about 40 hours in before the Finale, the fifth chapter in which all characters meet up in Kamurocho, and then I cleared the game after hitting the 57 hour mark. It's a massive, MASSIVE game and it's pretty fun to boot.

 The Yakuza Remastered Collection is one amazing deal, and its release means that now you can experience the entire story of Kazuma Kiryu on PS4. That said, Yakuza games are pretty samey and repetitive, so you should take a breath before starting up Yakuza 5.
 10 out of 10

Review #767: Kirby & the Amazing Mirror

 A broken mirror is the least of Kirby's problems....

 While I've played my fair share of Kirby games I wouldn't go as far as to call myself a fan, however, the first Kirby game on the Gameboy Advance, Nightmare in Dreamland, is one fantastic game so I had high expectations for Kirby & the Amazing Mirror. Sadly, the game pretty much fell short in every way.

 A Dark MetaKnight has appeared and divided Kirby into four Kirbys, so now they team up to figure out what's wrong. What's wrong is that MetaKnight has destroyed the eponymous Amazing Mirror, so they have to collect every shard and right what's wrong. The game looks and plays a lot like Nightmare in Dreamland, which is a good thing, since I've always considered that game to be one of the best looking games on the system. That said, this isn't just another 2-D platformer, oh no, this is a Metroidvania, a series of large zones interconnected between each other. I love Metroidvanias, so surely this game would be great, right? Well.... it gets a lot of things wrong.....

 The first thing that you'll notice upon starting the game is that there are three other Kirbies around you, but they are dumb and controlled by the AI. As you go through the game you'll be able to occasionally come in contact with them, albeit they aren't much help, or you can summon them by calling them on the phone, which is only ever useful to clear a few obstacles or to get yourself a quick heal during boss battles. Bosses aren't particularly tough, but they were made with 4 players in mind, so they are a bit of damage sponges. Boring damage sponges at that. Your allies aren't particularly useful, but hey! One of them might drop in wielding a power which you can then steal from them as soon as they get hit.

 Kirby's abilities remain the same, suck in enemies and eat them to steal their powers. I'm pretty sure that Super Jump was the only power that got the axe, but now we have Cupid, Missile, Magic(Just a one-time random support spell), Chef and Smash, which is Smash Bros.-lite moveset for Kirby. Sword, Fighter and Hammer have movesets now, so different directions on the digital pad + B produces different effects. There are three new minigames you can play with Players or the CPU, and they are pretty decent. There is no bonus Meta Knight mode to unlock, but beating the game unlocks the Master Sword, a power that can destroy any block and has different moves from the basic Sword.

 So now onto what doesn't work... Well, anything that's Metroidvania like. Where should I start from? The map of each area, provided you can actually find it, is pretty much useless. Some "roads" are arrowed, but even then sometimes you might be able to return from where you came from, other times the door behind you just disappears because screw you, this wasn't the exit you wanted to take but the game doesn't care, it's the long way back for you. There are not enough transporters in the game, getting anywhere takes too much time. Oh, and sometimes you need a specific power up to get to alternate routes or chests, which is usually either the hammer, missile or fire dash, so you have to remember what power you need, where the room is and where to get the damned power in the first place. And pray to god that you don't lose the power on the way, because if you get hit you lose your power and if you can't catch it in time it's gone for good. Imagine if this was Symphony of the Night and getting hit could cost you the Double Jump or your Mist Form? Unbelievable. Word of advise" A+B+START+SELECT is how you Reset in the game, because there's no other way to return to the main menu in case you wanted to try a new color or somethin'.

 Alternate colors for Kirby and extra hit points are the only real rewards in the game, but most chests you'll find either have worthless lives, worthless because the life counter resets every time you start the game or healing items you use on the spot. And there's no way to tell what each chest has, sometimes you'll go through hoops in order to get to a chest that only contained a healing items, while others you might find a new color for Kirby on a chest lying just in front of you. It's really dumb. The game has 9 main zones, and each Zone has a Boss as well as multiple "Goal" zones. Goal Zones are zones that force you into a minigame to earn worthless lives and then pop you back into the game nexus. Hopefully you had the map and could avoid the Goal, otherwise you might have to walk a long way back to the area you were exploring because if you enter a Goal you can't go back to the room that came before. It sucks.

 Kirby & the Amazing Mirror was disappointing to say the least. I've been meaning to play this game for years now, but it wound up being a horrible Metroidvania and one of the worst Kirby games I've ever played. That said, I hope the ability to change Kirby's colors returns in future games.
 5.0 out of 10

Review #766: Motocross Maniacs Advance

 She's a maniac, maniac!

 Man, Konami was really betting it on the Gameboy Advance back in the day, they developed a ton of games for the little handheld that could. Case in point, Motocross Maniacs Advance, another game I used to play through Emulation, although I never invested much time on it. This game is kinda weird to be honest, it's a horizontal 2-D racing game over all sorts of crazy tracks with multiple routes and levels with a bit of Mario Kart throw in for good measure.

 The game has four main modes: Championship, made up of six different Cups, although with a few repeated tracks between them. Attack Mode, made up of Time Attack and Point Attack. Action Mode, the minigame sub menu which has Bomb Tag, which works like Konami Krazy Racer's bomb chaser, basically, an elimination round in which you must pass a bomb between racers and whoever has it when the timer runs out loses, rinse and repeat until there's a single survivor, Hidden Lab, in which you run on a conveyor belt avoiding obstacles and gathering coins, pretty boring, and Zombie, in which you must use Nitros to defeat monsters. Lastly, there's multiplayer via link cable. There are 13 different tracks as well as 8 racers, with 2 secret racers unlocked by finishing every Cup.

 A is your accelerator, and you can hold back on the dpad in order to perform wheelies or tricks while on air, B is your Nitro, which is a key mechanic in the game in order to gain air and access to other routes aside from the one at ground level. R is your break and L uses whatever item you've got on stock, from missiles and mines, to shields and thunders. There are two elements you must keep track of at every time: Your Nitros and your fuel, both which can be collected on the track alongside your items. Running out of gas loses you the race, and running out of Nitro, well, sucks, because you won't be able to drive swiftly over certain obstacles or reach other routes. Items always spawn at set locations, so as long as you learn where the Nitros and Fuel cans are on the course you should be just fine.

 The game is fine for a short while, but there's not much meat to these bones, once you beat every cup and unlock the bonus racers there's little to keep you coming back for more unless you've got other humans to play the game with. It's over before you know it, but at least it's fun while it lasts.
 6.5 out of 10

Review #765: X-Men - The Official Game

 Everybody is someone's X.

 Trying to understand how the game's boxart, which clearly shows a three because it's based off the third X-Men movie relates to the official title, as official as Wikipedia and Gamefaqs gets, is an exercise in frustration, so I'll just call it X-Men: The Official Game. This is the last, at this time, WayForward game I own and, sadly, might not have been the best way to end my WayForward adventure in.

 The game doesn't follow the plot of the movie at all. I mean, I haven't seen the movie, but I know it's all about Phoenix, but this game is about Wolverine, NightCrawler, Colossus and Iceman teaming up to find 'parts' to repair Cerebro, and for some reason or another, end up doing battle with Sabertooth, Mystique, Multiple Man and others. The plot isn't interesting nor does it make much sense, but the character cutouts used for dialogue are pretty and the spritework is decent, if unremarkable for WayForward's standards.

 This is a 2-D action/platform game that feels very stiff and dull. The game is somewhat reminiscent of an old Gameboy Color game in which you played as a X-Men team led by Wolverine. A jumps and tapping B performs a two hit combo. After pressing B once you can then tap Up, Down, Back or A for different second attacks, although most of the time you'll find what works for each character and never switch it up. There's no reason to use the B - Up attacks because there's no point to throwing enemies upwards, so with most characters I was content with just B - Down. B - A destroys blocks beneath you, if you are Colossus, so that got a bit of use from me, but most of the time B - Down felt like the best move with every character. The L button is used to switch between characters, each one having their own health and rage bars. Rage is built by defeating enemies or collecting blue power ups, and you can tap R to deal extra damage for as long as your rage gauge lasts. It's... it's a weird mechanic because I really don't understand why it's there. It's so generic too, characters just flash red for no reason. I mean, it makes sense for Wolverine to have a rage gauge, but the other characters? Night Crawler? Colossus? It doesn't make sense for them. They should've gone with Super Attacks instead of this half baked extra damage timed mode.

 Characters have slight differences between each other, Colossus can't jump as high and feels slower than the others, but can store up to four Rage bars as well as destroy weakened walls, NightCrawler's B - A is a teleport, but you must quickly hold Up or Down after pressing A if you want to teleport anywhere besides in front of you, but not too fast, lest you accidentally pull off a B - Up or B - Down. Wolverine has regenerating health, be it if he is your chosen character or not and Iceman... Iceman has nothing. His B - A covers a slightly longer range than other characters' attacks? I dunno. The whole thing feels very half baked as well, the most you could get through Colossus and NightCrawler's abilities are restorative items you don't really need because the game is quite easy. And it's so weird how Iceman gets nothing, and the most Wolverine gets is regenerating health. How about letting Wolverine climb on walls with his claws? Or giving Iceman proper projectile attacks but turning him into a glass cannon?

 As uninspired and poorly thought-out as it feels the game also has a few quirks that make it's even more insipid. For instance, the jumping distance is proportional to how long you press the A button, but on a few occasions it feels like you have to hold the button down for what feels like too long, it's very awkward. It's not the only game that does this, but it's the only game in recent memory that had me holding down the button for so long in order to get the highest jump. The combat is very clunky too, the collision detection doesn't feel quite right, enemies can take up too much damage and they get too much mercy invincibility. It's NOT a hard game, but enemies take too long to kill in a game that is already quite boring, I wouldn't blame you if you resorted to spamming NightCrawler's teleport in order to quickly zip through stages. The only challenging part in the game is the final boss, since you have to endure a long stage filled to the brim with annoying flying pests that pester you with lasers.

 It sucks but.... X-Men: The Official game sucks. It's boring, it's clunky and it has a lot of ideas that aren't properly explored or developed. It's neat having different attributes on each characters, but they don't get much use. The different combo enders sounds like a good idea, but the implementation is clunky and defeating enemies a boring chore. Overall? It's not very good....

 3.0 out of 10

Review #764: Shining Soul II

 Shine bright like a diamond.

 Alright, this is yet another 'old GBA games I used to emulate a lot back in the day', 'cause, y'see, Shining Soul II is amazing. I mean, I've more memories of the first game since it came out before and thus I got to play it more, but I never finished either game, until now.

 This is a dungeon crawler RPG like Diablo but with anime flair. When starting a new game you can choose your character class from between 8 different possibilities, were-animal creatures and humans round up the cast, fulfilling traditional classes such as Knight, Brawler, Mage, etc. Gender and Race are predefined per class, but you get about 8 different color palettes to pick from. The story... is pretty boring, pretty dull and actually takes away from the game. There are countless inane lines of dialogue that you can't fast forward, so even if you read the entire dialogue box, you still have to wait a few seconds before you can press the A button, which is incredibly annoying, I mean, the ending cutscene went on and on and on and on and on and I just wanted to unlock the new difficulty setting and character class. It's no stretch to say that the game is a bit hard so you might grind a few levels or stronger equipment by going back to previous dungeons.... except that the unskippable cutscenes and dialogue will play every time you re-enter the dungeon, which was a very sore spot when it came to playing the game. There's no good reason to have the same exact dialogue play out by bosses you already killed when you revisit an older dungeon. There are no excuses, this was an incredibly poor design choice, and the worst thing about the game by far.

 If you've ever played a loot-based dungeon crawler then you'll know exactly how this game plays. You run around dungeons defeating enemies who may or may not drop loot, some which you'll be able to equip right away, some which might require a trip back to town or an identifying scroll in order to use them. You'll need copious amounts of healing items if you aim to survive, and you could always use Wings to teleport back to town before continuing from the dungeon floor you just came from. Death, at least on the normal difficulty, seems like a slap on the wrist, a piece of equipped armor and any gold you might be carrying will drop, but upon respawning back on town an Angel will just fly you over the floor you were killed on, and you can just pick up whatever you left, dead monsters don't even respawn, so with enough patience you can get through any dungeon, although running out of money on a boss might be a problem.

 The A button attacks, which can be charged, and the B buttons uses whatever item you have selected. You have two quick menus, R for weapons/spells and L for items, so you can quickly swap between whatever item you want to use, or weapons/spells if you want to try something different. And it's also kind of a necessity, because entering any menu is done in real time, so you could get killed while examining your loot. Leveling up grants you a Skillpoint, to spend on mostly passive stats, I played with the Knight so it might not hold water for the other classes, and 4 stats points to increase your stats. There doesn't seem to be a way to respec your character, so you'll have to live with your choices. Saving the game returns you to the main menus, which was a very weird design choice, but the worst part about it is that every single time you save your game, the game will remind you of your return to the menu through an annoying amount of unskippable dialogue boxes. I'm level 41 already, I know how the save feature works, stop patronizing me!

 The game is pretty rudimentary, with its lack of Active skills or even color-coded loot rarity, but it's very addictive and very fun, despite the dialogue-related issues. I kept replaying older dungeons, yet I was having a lot of fun. The game is also pretty lengthy, it has 10 main dungeons, but about 10 more optional areas that open up through side quests, of which there's a hearty amount, even if you have to talk to every NPC after every dungeon if you hope not to miss any of them. All in all, it's a fun, replayable loot-RPG.

 I adored this game, it's very fun, and had it not had all those unskippable and repeating dialogue scenes it could've been an easy 9. As it stands, it's a game that's incredibly fun as long as you can put up with an absurd downtime every time a cutscene plays when you play new and old levels alike.
 8.0 out of 10