When Managed Democracy Goes Wrong (Helldivers 2)

Let me start this post by clarifying that I have not personally played Helldivers 2. I have played Helldivers, which I absolutely hated. That’s actually why I have not picked up Helldivers 2, even though the reception, until recently, has been so good. There’s no playable demo, so I’m just expected to shell out for a sequel to a game I hated on word-of-mouth recommendation? It’s just not going to happen. But this isn’t a review for the game, or even a post about the gameplay, so none of that really matters. I want to talk specifically about the recent controversy over PlayStation trying to mandate linking PSN accounts to play the game on PC (Steam).

If you’re not up to speed on this issue, the short version is that when Helldivers 2 was released, players on Steam didn’t have to have a connected PSN account to play the game, even though it was published by PlayStation. Recently, PlayStation announced that linking a PSN account would become mandatory in the near future. Surprisingly, and I will discuss why this should be seen as a surprise later on in this post, this caused a massive shit storm. Not just for PlayStation, but also for Arrowhead Game Studios, the developer. The game went from overwhelmingly positive on Steam to overwhelmingly negative over the course of a week. Massive numbers of players began demanding refunds, which PlayStation and Valve agreed to honor, even for players that were past the normal 2-hour play rule. I can’t remember another game that shifted from such a strong position with such positive reception to such a negative position so quickly. Truly, this should be studied. But let’s look at some of the nuances of this situation.

Let the records show that this is not the first game that required people to link their PSN account to a Steam account. In fact, my Steam account, which is more than 10 years old, only exists because I was forced, by Valve, to link my PSN account to a Steam account to play a game on console. I was trying to play Portal 2 on PS3, and I couldn’t play it online without linking a Steam account. There was no massive outrage. People didn’t rally against the tyranny of Valve. In fact, many people defended Valve, calling it a great business decision. Here’s an old Reddit thread about it. Just check out some of the comments.

People will immediately say that the situation is entirely different. They’ll say that the Portal 2 thing happened at launch, while the Helldivers 2 announcement came three months into release. Except that’s not really true. PlayStation did announce this policy at least two months before the game launched. Don’t believe me? Here’s a Reddit post from 5 months ago on the official Helldivers 2 subreddit asking about the requirement listed on the Steam page. And no, it was not buried towards the bottom of the page in order to mislead people. It was, and continues to be, prominently placed in the support section just below controller support and just above language support, like that sort of information is for EVERY SINGLE GAME ON STEAM. If people chose not to read it, how is that PlayStation’s fault? What happened, as reported by Polygon, was that PlayStation didn’t require PSN account linking at launch because of a technical issue. That issue has now, supposedly, been solved, so they’re ready to enforce the PSN account requirement. But from the beginning, they were transparent in saying that Helldivers 2 on Steam would require a PSN account. The fact that people either didn’t read the not so fine print, or just blatantly ignored it, is not PlayStation’s fault. Nor is it really their problem. It does suck, but it’s inaccurate to say that PlayStation lied. Consumers being a combination of lazy and illiterate doesn’t make a corporation dishonest. PlayStation lies about shit all the time. The fact that people got angry when they told the truth is pretty funny and extremely ironic.

Let’s also not pretend that publishers making people link accounts to their games is anything new. There’s a reason I have an EA account. Mass Effect 3 and Mirror’s Edge, among other titles, forced me to link it on my PS3. I was also forced to login to EA every time I played Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order on Epic Games Store. I have a WB account, because I was forced to make one to play modern Mortal Kombat titles. There was a time when every single Ubisoft game you bought on Steam required you to link a Ubisoft account. In fact, that still might even be the case. But I play all my PC Ubisoft games on Ubisoft Connect anyway, so I can’t even personally test it. Why is it suddenly a problem when the publisher just happens to be PlayStation? Again, I’m not saying what PlayStation is doing, or was trying to do, is a good thing. I’m just saying that it’s nothing out of the ordinary for the gaming industry. The fact that people are suddenly angry about it says way more about the players than it does PlayStation.

Other people will address the, in my opinion, much bigger issue of access being removed for many players, due to the country they live in. I’m a big proponent of region free gaming content. If you read this blog regularly, you know that I’ve written countless posts about the unfair treatment of gamers in different countries, based solely on where they happen to live. Just two weeks ago, I wrote a post about how I got screwed trying to play a physical copy of Unicorn Overlord on Nintendo Switch, because of region locked language options on the cartridges. Literally on the Helldivers 2 Steam page there’s a prominent notice that states “This game only supports Japanese language/voice for customers in Japan.” I am constantly getting screwed over by game sellers, like Fanatical, who I use a lot, because certain keys won’t activate here in Taiwan. Most recently this was the case with a preorder discount for Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree. But nobody cares. People aren’t rallying to the aid of gamers getting screwed over in various ways due to their current location. Yet suddenly everyone is a political activist when it comes to Helldivers 2. Why is that the case?

Very simply, people in places like the USA and Western Europe don’t actually care about people in other countries getting screwed. What they care about is political grandstanding to strengthen their own agenda of not wanting to have to connect a PSN account to play a PC game. While I’m sure a number of players do have friends they play with regularly that will lose their access in this scenario, that’s not good ethics. It’s selfishness. Going to bat for your friends is a good thing, but it’s self-serving. It’s not a morally right decision. It’s not a political statement. It’s just you wanting things that make you happy.

I’m reminded of the Stellar Blade censorship controversy, which I refused to make a formal post about, because it’s a ridiculous non-issue. But I do think that a quote I read on Twitter about it is very relevant here. “If every time you go to bat about censorship, it’s to defend your right to ogle female characters or be racist, your position will continue to look sus by everyone on the outside.” I think that’s a very relevant quote in this Helldivers 2 situation. As a person who doesn’t play Helldivers 2, from the outside this doesn’t look like gamers rallying to a cause because it’s the right thing to do. It looks like a bunch of people whining about something that affects them personally that they otherwise wouldn’t give two thoughts about if they weren’t personally playing Helldivers 2. In other words, it looks sus.

Notice that I have sat here and written a blog post that’s more than three pages long about this issue. As I have for many issues in gaming over the years that haven’t personally affected me. Why? Because I have actual ethics and conviction about things like consumer rights in digital entertainment. For me, this is not an issue worth going to bat for. It might have been back on the PS3 when it first started. But consumers, myself included, didn’t feel the need to protest mandatory account linking. So I don’t see a problem with it now. Yes, many people living in countries that can’t make PSN accounts get screwed, but I think it’s odd that they were even allowed to buy the game to begin with.

Again, I have been denied the ability to purchase games, legally, because I live in Taiwan, countless times. If Valve and PlayStation knew that people would need a PSN account to play Helldivers 2 on Steam, which they did, as I have already discussed, why were people in these regions not blocked from buying the game to begin with? In general, I don’t know enough about region blocked content on Steam. I’m sure there are policies about it, but I haven’t encountered it enough times in my life to feel the need to research it past surface level. But the whole thing seems weird. And laying the blame solely on PlayStation seems like the easy way to deal with a much more nuanced conversation about region locked/blocked content, which, again, I have been complaining about for years. If I went to a GameStop and asked for a PS5 game and the clerk sold me a Switch game, would I get mad at Nintendo that the game won’t run on my PS5? No. I’d get mad at the GameStop for selling me a Switch game knowing that I was planning to play it on a PS5. So why aren’t people getting angry at Valve in this situation? They’re the ones running the store. They’re the ones who knowingly sold you a game you can’t play without a PSN account even though you like in a country where you can’t make one.

Instead of whining about a single game, let’s have the bigger conversation. I would love to see American and European gamers stand up and protest all region locked/blocked content in games. I would love to see real change on issues about DLC distribution by region, language access limitations in games, and predatory pricing by region. Again, Helldivers 2 doesn’t let people who want to play the game in Japanese do so if they live outside of Japan. But we’re not going to have those conversations at a macro level. Unless we’re talking about a specific popular game and sticking it to specially PlayStation or Nintendo, both Japanese companies, by the way, we’re not going to talk about these issues again until the next specific popular game affects the wrong people. In other words, it’s either apathy or blatant hypocrisy, as is tradition.

I would be remiss if I did not take the time to point out the irony of people complaining about corporate overstep in a game that’s very clearly a political satire about fascism touting catchphrases like “managed democracy.” You can’t make this stuff up. Insert comment about a lack of general media literacy here.

A friend of mine, who loves Helldivers 2, sent me a message recently that said “We won, but at what cost?” This was in reference to the fact that as of writing this post, PlayStation has publicly stated that they will not be forcing players to link a PSN account in order to continue playing Helldivers 2. Not that the 3^rd-Party Account requirement is still listed in the support section of the Steam page, as it always has been. The gamers won this round! However, one of the most successful games of this year with one of the most positive communities and scores on Steam is now sitting at overwhelmingly negative and has probably lost any chance of being named Game of the Year at The Game Awards 2024. Though by the time this post is published, the Steam reviews might very well have changed back towards positive. At least slightly anyway. While that stuff doesn’t necessarily matter to gamers, it does affect the future of the franchise, and potentially the studio. Consider that this may have killed any chance of Helldivers 3 happening, if that’s something you care about. Consider that scores and awards factor into bonuses for developers, if that’s something you care about. There is a cost to activism, as there should be. I’m not saying that people shouldn’t protest and fight for what they believe is right. That’s one of the main reasons I started this blog a decade ago. But the real question is was this a battle worth fighting for and will the long-term outcomes resulting from it be a net positive or net negative for gamers? I don’t play Helldivers 2, so I won’t necessarily be affected either way. But history has shown us that when something changes for one studio or publisher, it often reverberates through the rest of the industry. We’ll just have to wait and see how it all plays out in the long run.

As always, thanks for reading. Please take the time to follow my blog, leave a comment, and check out some of my other channels if you enjoyed what you read.

Simping Ain’t Easy (Stellar Blade)

I had planned to write a full review of Stellar Blade, but I’m barely past the introduction, after defeating four bosses mind you, and I felt that in the current discourse of this game, this post was more valuable and important to write than waiting until I was ready to pen a formal review. So, as you read this, please understand that my opinions on this game are not fully baked yet, as I’ve only played the game for eight hours at this point.

I’m really angry that currently there is so much discussion about this game online, and yet none of it is about the gameplay. In fact, it’s already a meme that many people are talking about this game, often quite passionately, while never taking the time to discuss or even mention the gameplay. I think that’s a shame, because the gameplay is absolutely worth talking about. In fact, it’s the best part of the game. Which is important since this is a video game.

The fact that the entire conversation about Stellar Blade has devolved into two camps arguing about ass in video games is annoying. I expected one side of the aisle to complain about this game. They already were before the game even released. No one should be surprised about people complaining that EVE, the protagonist, is too sexy. “Male gaze”, “objectification of women”, and so on. What I could not have predicted is that an even more vocal minority would be on the other side of the fence arguing that EVE, or more specifically her clothing, is not sexy enough. I think both sides are wrong. I think both sides are stupid. And I think both sides need to touch grass. That’s all I’ll say about that issue in this post, as I want to talk about the gameplay of Stellar Blade. If by now you haven’t realized it, my title is ironic and has little to do with the actual content of this post. Sorry, not sorry.

The best way that I can describe Stellar Blade’s gameplay is “What if From Software didn’t hate their players?” Put another way, “What if From Software made Bayonetta?” To clarify, I’m not referencing Bayonetta because of the character’s appearance. I’m referencing Bayonetta because of the fluidity of the gameplay and QoL mechanics that make combat way more accessible than anything From Software has ever made. Why am I referencing the soulslike genre? While this game is not a soulslike, it borrows heavily from the Dark Souls formula. Stellar Blade’s combat is not perfect, but it is great, because it prioritizes fluidity over difficulty, which translates to fun.

The first thing that you’ll notice about Stellar Blade’s combat, once you unlock a few essential techniques from the skill tree, is that there are several mechanics built in to help you avoid damage. Not just the traditional dodge, block, and parry, all of which are present, but also, special counter moves that rely on timing. Other than organic dodging via manually moving out of the way, there are at least four different mechanics that all work in tandem to help give you opportunities to deal large amounts of damage against enemies while avoiding taking any damage from them. And you don’t have to be a master of the gameplay to use them. This game is not built around the idea of having to play for hundreds of hours so you can master the gameplay to the point of being able to run around naked with a dagger and one-shot bosses with a back stab. Though I’m sure many players wish you could do that in this game. You simply have to learn the basics of the mechanics and then you can quickly start avoiding all sorts of damage, including special attacks. Skills like “Blink” allow you to dodge behind enemy special attacks while taking no damage and getting a massive opening to deal a flurry of attacks. Not only is it effective, but it’s satisfying to pull off; and it’s not super hard to pull off either.

Most of the counter skills are pretty easy to implement. They’re highly telegraphed and require 1 – 2 button (including the joystick) combinations. They’re even color coded to make sure that you know exactly what you need to do to avoid the attacks being thrown at you. It looks good, it feels good, and it’s highly effective. And that’s how most of the gameplay feels. It’s a game that’s rewarding to play from basically the start, because the damage ratios are fairly well balanced, including boss fights.

One of my favorite things about the gameplay is that every technique you can use against normal enemies also works exactly the same way against bosses; and just as effectively. I abhor the longstanding design concept that boss fights should work differently than regular fights. Everyone has played a game where they give you really effective skills that simply don’t work in boss fights. Sometimes it’s blocking. Sometimes it’s a perfect parry or dodge. Sometimes it’s a special attack. In all cases, it’s annoying. The idea that I have taken the time to master combat techniques to make myself more effective only to have those techniques not be usable against the hardest enemies in the game is insane. It’s the equivalent of making overdrive (that’s what they’re called in FFX) attacks not available against boss fights in Final Fantasy. Stellar Blade does not do this in any way, shape, or form.

When you fight a boss in Stellar Blade, everything you use normally is both at your disposal and effective in said boss fights. Blocking, perfect parrying, perfect dodging, blinks, special attacks, shield breaks, and so on all work just as effectively against bosses as they would against any other enemy; and it’s awesome. It feels great to face a boss and feel like the fight is balanced on the very first try. I’m not saying that I beat every boss I encounter of the first try, but I never feel like the boss fights are unfair. I cannot say the same for Dark Souls. Those games never feel balanced in the boss fights. So far, every boss I’ve faced in Stellar Blade has felt extremely fair; and the reason for that is because I can use the same fighting style that I’ve been working to master against regular enemies.

Again, the gameplay is not perfect. For instance, while the combat is very fluid, there is a bit of command lag. Sadly, this was done intentionally, as has been confirmed by the developers. They felt like the game would be too easy if it had perfect button press parity, which is an insane take in 2024. However, I can confirm that removing the lag completely would make the game considerably easier. I don’t know if that’s a bad thing though . . . However, the gameplay is very fun and gratifying.

If you like action RPGs, with little emphasis on the RPG mechanics, as they’re very simple in Stellar Blade, I highly recommend that you try out this game. Play the free demo! The combat is good. The puzzles are fun. The graphics are good. The writing exists. Compared to a lot of games in recent years, this is a serious contender for GOTY, or should be anyway. Yes, the protagonist is sexy. But if you think that’s all this game is, the internet has failed you, as is its way.

As always, thanks for reading. Please take the time to follow my blog, leave a comment, and check out some of my other channels if you enjoyed what you read.

Poor Form Vanillaware

If you read my blog regularly then you know I love my Nintendo Switch. I’ve never outright said that it’s my favorite console, but I spend more hours a week playing games on it than anything else. I buy more full-priced games on Switch than any other console, though to be fair Nintendo doesn’t leave me much of a choice. I also preorder more games on Switch than any other platform I currently play on.

One of the things I like best about the Nintendo Switch is that, or at least so far as I believed until this recent incident, the physical games are completely region free. I have written extensively about my struggles as an American gamer living in Taiwan that can’t read Chinese. I have not purchased a physical PlayStation game in Taiwan for some time, because the discs are region locked. Normally, the main reason this is a problem is because of how the DLC is managed, but language is also often a factor. PlayStation and XBOX games have regional language limitations. When you look at the back of a PS5 game case, you can see the languages that specific disc supports. In the USA, it’s always going to be English at a minimum, but usually Spanish, and often French, will be supported as well. Here in Taiwan, the minimum is Chinese, but usually Japanese, and sometimes English, will be supported as well.

From Darius Cozmic Revelation

There have been countless games that I would have purchased physical versions of in Taiwan on PlayStation consoles that I couldn’t because there was no English language supported version for the physical disc available in Taiwan. I was under the impression that this was never the case for the Switch. I currently own 56 physical Switch games. 31 of those were purchased from local stores in Taiwan. Of those 31, only 1 of them didn’t allow me to play the game in English, and that was because a physical copy of the English translation of the game did not exist when I bought it. This is not something I ever checked for on the game packaging. This was/is, to the best of my knowledge, a general practice implemented by the Switch architecture. Games on the Switch default to the language of the region your console is set to, whether they’re digital or physical copies. Unless the game has built in language settings that you have manually set to something other than your default language, the game just plays in your account language. This of course only applies to games where a translation of the game in your account language exists.

I have encountered Switch games that literally don’t have an English localization/translation version. In these cases, the game only runs in the native language it was created in, which is usually Japanese or Chinese. But I never buy games that I’m not sure have an English translation, unless it’s a game where I know I can play it regardless of the language. That 1 game that didn’t play in English on my Switch was Darius Cozmic Revelation. I knew that didn’t have an English translation when I bought it. But it’s a basic SHMUP game that I’ve played countless variations and clones of since I was a kid. I knew I could figure it out and enjoy it in any language, because I wasn’t playing it for the almost nonexistent story anyway. Furthermore, saying that Darius Cozmic Revelation doesn’t have an English translation is a half truth. Out of the box, it does have English text in it. It’s just not all the text. The menus are in English for me. Many of the tutorial images have English text scattered throughout them. It’s just not fully translated to pure English. And much of the in-game text actually is in English, at least for some of the games in the collection. The point is that one of the things I love most about the Switch is that I literally have never had to worry about the region I purchased a physical cartridge in, because both language and DLC access are based on the region of your account, rather than the location the cartridge was purchased in. Or so I thought. This has been true in 30/31 physical cartridges I have tried on my Switch that were sold to me in Asia, that had an English version available at the time of purchase. But sadly, I finally found an outlier in the recently released Unicorn Overlord from Vanillaware, which is that 31st cartridge.

Taiwan Version in Sealed Case

I was quite taken with the demo for Unicorn Overlord. So much so that I chose to write a review of it. You can read that here, if you’re interested. I knew I was going to buy it at some point. Recently, it was my birthday, so while I didn’t really need to buy it now, as I have too many games to play, I decided to treat myself. As I do prefer physical media, as well as supporting local businesses, I wanted a physical edition of the game. The game has sold really well in Taiwan. Surprisingly, I was not able to find a physical copy for more than a month after it launched. Several game stores I frequent were sold out. So when I finally saw a physical copy of it, I jumped at the chance. I never even considered that I wouldn’t be able to play the game in English with this cartridge. As far as I was concerned, it was literally an impossibility, since I already knew that an English translation of the game exists, having played the demo. Additionally, the cover of the Taiwan physical copy is literally in English. There is no Chinese or Japanese version of the game’s logo. The Asian copies use the same English logo title and then add some additional writing in their local language underneath it. The back of the cover is in Chinese, but I own plenty of Switch games like that. So I bought the game without even thinking about checking to see if I’d be able to play it in English with this cartridge.

I take the game home and open it without so much as a Google on the issue of language, because I really did not know that it could even be an issue on the Switch. But as soon as I inserted the cartridge into my Switch, I knew something was wrong. The Taiwan physical version of Unicorn Overlord doesn’t say Unicorn Overlord in the Switch home screen. It says the title of the game in Chinese. This is something I had never seen before, save for with games that literally didn’t have an English translation, as I discussed earlier in this post. This was an immediate red flag for me, but I didn’t think it would be an issue. So I load up the game to find it running in Chinese. But only sort of. The main menu was in English. New Game, Continue, Settings, and Extras menu options were all in English. So, I believed that the game was running in English, like it should have been. But when I pressed new game, everything was in Chinese. I was surprised, but not worried. I assumed that it was defaulting to Chinese but could easily be changed in the settings. Sadly, I was wrong.

I go to the settings menu to discover that while I can change the voice acting between Japanese and English, ironically with no Chinese option at all, I can’t change the in-game text. Can’t change the menus or dialog text. It’s Chinese or bust. What’s especially irritating is that some of the text in the UI for the Chinese version is still in English, adding insult to injury. I was shocked. I was angry. Not just because I couldn’t play this game, but because suddenly everything I thought I knew about Switch games turned out to be potentially false. Maybe all these games weren’t defaulting to English as a general rule of how the Switch works for its users. Maybe all these games that I just happened to have bought, including both first and third party titles, just happened to have been made by developers that cared enough to make their games playable for all users, regardless of where they live and/or purchase their games. Statistically speaking, that sounds insane. The idea that only one developer/publisher would have been lazy and the rest went out of their way to do right by consumers just can’t be true. It goes against all evidence and reason.

What’s more likely is that a specific studio, in this case Vanillaware, went out of their way to region lock their Switch game. But why would a studio do this on the Switch? On PlayStation and XBOX consoles, this is, sadly, still the norm. But on the Switch this is far from normal. It was standard on past Nintendo consoles, but the company went out of their way to amend this long-standing problem; not only matching Sony and Microsoft’s commitment to discs running on consoles from any region, but also making language packs available to all players via internet patching. So why would Atlus allow this to happen with a game published by them in 2024?

Multi-language access on the PC is such a standard that it’s not even worth discussing, and has been for years. When you download a game on Ubisoft Connect, the first thing it does is ask you which language packs you would like to download. This even happens when you install demos. On Switch, the console normally defaults the game’s language for you without even asking you what you want, unless the game itself asks you. Why make a game as highly anticipated as Unicorn Overlord was before launch less accessible? I honestly can’t think of a good answer here. Sadly, I don’t even have any other physical Switch games from Atlus to check if this is normal for games published by them, or if Unicorn Overlord is an outlier. But in any case, I do not like seeing this practice on the Switch. It’s a step backwards both technologically and in terms of Quality of Life features. Who’s to say that people don’t want to play games in translations other than their native language? People like to watch anime subbed. Should Japanese gamers not be able to play American games in English, just because they live in Japan. It’s a ridiculous practice on any platform, but it’s even more ridiculous when applied to a platform that had done away with it years prior.

Sadly, I wasn’t able to get a refund for this copy of Unicorn Overlord. As the game was open and technically functioning as intended, they deemed it an invalid grounds for return, as they wouldn’t be able to resell it as new or report it as defective. So, they instead offered me to trade it for any used game they had. To my disappointment, they didn’t have anything I really wanted and didn’t already own in their used Switch pile. So I ended up with Octopath Traveler, which I considered an equivalent trade as far as the games were concerned. I really wish they would have had Fire Emblem Engage or Tactics Ogre: Reborn. But at least I got a turn-based RPG from a company I trust to make them. Ironically, the first thing that came up when I loaded up Octopath Traveler was a screen that said I can play the game in any language I want and easily change it in the menus at any time, because that’s how games should work in 2024.

So I have to say poor form to Vanillaware. I had only played one of their games previously (Dragon’s Crown), and I never finished it. I was excited to play Unicorn Overlord, and now they’ve soured the entire idea for me over an issue that shouldn’t exist to begin with. I can’t say when or if I’ll end up buying the game again, but now I definitely won’t buy it until the price has dropped to at least $30. Maybe even $20. Because now I have to make up for paying $55 (Taiwan price after conversion) for a used copy of a game I didn’t actually want. And after Unicorn Overlord, who’s to say if I’ll ever consider buying a game from them again. And all over a problem that should never have occurred.

As always, thanks for reading. Please take the time to follow my blog, leave a comment, and check out some of my other channels if you enjoyed what you read.

Mimi the Cat: Mimi’s Scratcher Review – 4/10

I’m always happy to try indie games, because often they surprise me and end up delivering experiences that I never would have expected. I think about games like Vampire Survivors, because it looked so terrible to me, but then I tried it and ended up putting more than 50 hours into it. So I’ll always give an indie game that looks interesting to me a shot. Sadly, sometimes a game really is as basic and bland as it looks. This is the case with Mimi the Cat: Mimi’s Scratcher (Scratcher) from Wise Box Studios.

There really isn’t much to say about this game, because you can totally get what it is just from watching the one-minute trailer. It’s a casual, low stakes puzzle game that feels more like it should be on mobile rather than a home console. While I played it on the Nintendo Switch while docked, it absolutely makes more sense to play this in handheld mode while doing something else, like watching TV.

Visually, Scratcher is fine. It’s extremely minimalist in its visual style. The levels are floating squares in a single-color void with a few gridlines underneath to help you better manage your positioning. But since the game is pretty simple, the additional gridlines aren’t really necessary. You can change the background color of the world at any time just by pressing B. You don’t even have to go into the menu to do it, which is a nice accessibility option coupled with very convenient QoL design. But overall, it’s a pretty bland, barebones looking game.

The cat’s movement animations aren’t great, but I wouldn’t say they’re terrible. Given the scope of this game, they’re certainly not a hindrance. You’re definitely here for the gameplay rather than the graphics. Which isn’t really an issue for a level-based puzzle game like this. Even the menus are extremely barebones, giving you little in the way of options. It’s just start the game or go to settings. And the settings are only setting the volume for music and sound effects and changing the language. Kudos to the studio for providing translations in eight different languages, but since there’s no story, it’s really just the few controls in the tutorial; and you could easily figure out pretty much all of them on your own in a couple minutes. But the text is a very readable sans-serif font, so at least there’s that.

As for writing, there isn’t any to speak of, the gameplay controls notwithstanding, so that’s all I’ll say about that. They don’t even explain to you why Mimi the cat is in this weird void of nothingness pushing boxes around to reach a magical floating cat scratcher. But that’s fine. The trailer was honest about what I’d be getting into, so I won’t fault them for that. However, a story might have motivated me to push through to the end of the game.

The audio experience is also pretty simple. There are a small number of effects, which mostly amounts to pushing boxes around and reaching the goal at the end of each stage. I feel like they could have done a bit more with the cat making sounds, but that probably would have gotten annoying eventually. Even navigating the menus is a silent experience, save for the chime you hear when you select something. I was impressed by the song that starts playing when you first load up the game. It was a more intricate composition than I would have expected from a game like this. That said, it’s the only song the game has. It just plays in an endless loop as you pass through the levels; and yes, it does get old. Honestly, you could play this game silent while watching TV or listening to music and the experience wouldn’t be much different. It certainly wouldn’t be worse.

The gameplay works for what it intends to be. It’s a straightforward puzzle game where you’re trying to reach a clearly marked goal in every stage. The trick is that the goal is basically always floating in the air. So you have to move boxes around in order to place them in such a way that you can climb up and reach the goal. The concept is simple, but these puzzles do get progressively harder with each stage.

You can only climb up one level at a time, which is defined as the height of one box. Boxes can be stacked to make stairs. However, you can’t move stacked boxes. Boxes can be unstacked, but only when the cat is on the same level as the top box in the stack. Meaning that in order to unstack a two-box high stack you have to have a third box next to that two-stack. You climb up that one box and then push the top box of that two-stack off. Boxes can only be pushed forward; and they cannot be pushed off the stage. Meaning that you have to be careful of dead ends and trapping yourself with stacks you can’t climb. Boxes automatically stack when you push them into each other, so it’s important that you watch what you’re doing. At level 21, you encounter crates. Crates differ from boxes, because they can’t be pushed. Crates can appear in single and double stack instances. Boxes can be stacked on to crates.

A second aspect of the gameplay is jumping. You can’t manually jump, but you can clear certain gaps. While you can only climb up one level, you can jump down two. Or at least two, since I have yet to encounter a three-stack scenario. You can also jump across gaps that are one square wide and one level below. Meaning that if you are standing on a box next to a hole that is one square long, you can jump from that box to the other side of that hole. You can also jump across a gap from a two-stack, but you can still only clear a single space gap when jumping. Additionally, you can jump from a two-stack to a one-stack across a gap.

Interestingly, you can carry boxes when they’re stacked on top of crates or boxes, but only for as long as it takes to carry the box off the crate. You can even jump over a gap while carrying a box, as long as it’s on top of a crate or other box when the action starts. You stack boxes by pushing one box into another one. It stacks automatically when this is done. The same thing happens when you push a box into a crate.

As with most puzzle games of this nature, a big part of the experience is trial and error. Thankfully, Scratcher has one of the most convenient restart mechanics I’ve ever experienced. You can restart a stage at any time by pressing X. Again, you don’t have to go to the menu to do this. And the loading time is nearly instant, so it’s not troublesome when you get stuck and have to reload. That’s probably why they kept the graphics so minimal. I only cleared the first 26 levels before I got bored with it, so there may be additional aspects to the gameplay I haven’t encountered. But there are only 55 levels in total, so I can’t see the gameplay getting much more interesting or complicated. Scratcher is what it is; and what it is, sadly, is pretty boring. I will say that I appreciated the fact that you can basically play the game with one hand. Especially since you have to use the d-pad rather than the joystick to play anyway.

There’s not really any replay value in this game, as there’s little in the way of variation to the gameplay. I’m sure some of the puzzles have more than one solution, but they would not be so wildly different that you would be able to call it a different or dynamic experience. Once you clear the 55 stages, that’s pretty much it. And I was able to clear 20 of them in under an hour. Meaning that unless you get stuck on certain puzzles for a long time, this is at most a two-hour game. With the $5 price tag, I can’t say that it’s worth it.

Mimi the Cat: Mimi’s Scratcher is not a bad game so much as it’s a mediocre game. It feels very much like a game jam type of project rather than a commercial project. Something to try but not to buy as it were. And if you do buy it, the game won’t last long anyway. This isn’t some hidden gem indie game that’s short but tells an amazing, emotionally impactful story. It’s really just 55 puzzles that you’ll solve once and then be done with. While playing this game, I was reminded of Freshly Frosted. It is more expensive, with a $10 price tag, but it’s also a superior puzzle game experience in pretty much every way. It has more than double the number of stages, a story, and much more dynamic and interesting gameplay. If you are looking for a casual, puzzle game with more depth to it, I’d definitely recommend that over this one. I rate Mimi the Cat: Mimi’s Scratcher a 4/10.

As always, thanks for reading. Please take the time to follow my blog, leave a comment, and check out some of my other channels if you enjoyed what you read.

Final Fantasy I (Micro-Review)

I’m a Final Fantasy fan, but what that means in 2024 is a bit debatable. The reality is that I have been playing FF games regularly for more than a decade. My first Final Fantasy was FFX, which I still consider the best overall game the franchise has ever produced. To date, I have played X, XII, XIII, VII, XV, and I in that order. I’m also currently playing II for the first time. I have played some of the spin-off titles, like XIII-2, but I don’t want to talk about those in this post. While I consider myself a fan of the franchise, and continue to purchase and play the games, the reality is that I have loved only half of the games I’ve played in the franchise, liked one of them, and hated two of them. Not to mention the fact that of 16 mainline titles, I’ve only played through six of them. Though I am currently playing through the Pixel Remaster collection, so I will have added five more games to that list hopefully by the end of this year. I identify as a FF fan, but I can definitely see why that statement could be considered questionable.

As I just recently finished FFI for the first time, in the Pixel Remaster collection, I decided that I wanted to do a post that was somewhat akin to a review, but really it’s more of a discussion on classic JRPGs and how it feels to play one in 2024. So while I will comment on my experience of playing the game in this post, I will not address all the aspects of the game that I would in one of my normal reviews.

The first thing that really stood out to me about Final Fantasy I is that it actually holds up really well today. Honestly speaking, there are a lot of things the game does, for better or for worse, that we still often see in modern RPGs. The turn-based combat, which I love, feels both dated and modern at the same time. A lot of the same practices are used, such as elemental weaknesses and resistances, critical hits, and the ability for attacks to miss. Any Pokémon player can easily walk on to FFI. Yet the combat offers things that many later JRPGs lack. For starters, your party has four members. My first FF only had three party members available in combat at the same time. The same is true for VII, which is many people’s favorite game in the series. Alongside that, the favored turn-based FF titles tend to max out at three enemies. FFI has battles with up to nine enemies at once.

Combat capabilities in FFI are limited by class; and that part isn’t fun. Especially when it comes to magic. I chose to have a red mage instead of a white mage alongside my three other party members, and that was a major mistake. It was super irritating not being able to learn spells like any level of group heal. Meanwhile, most of the black magic spells in the game can be learned by a red mage, so the experience felt very lopsided. I used more items in this game than probably any other FF I’ve ever played. It was the only way to make up for the lack of group healing magic; and it absolutely made the game harder.

Something that I really appreciated about FFI was how streamlined the experience was. Today, every RPG, Japanese or otherwise, feels way too long. I don’t actually think it was intentional for this game to feel so respectful of my time, but being able to finish a AAA franchise JRPG in under 20 hours was very refreshing. Even with the bit of grinding I had to do, the game never felt too long or slow paced by comparison to many modern titles. And I do get that many people today are split on that issue. In my youth, I too wanted games to be as long as possible. Now, as a busy adult with a hefty backlog, I only want games to be as long as they need to be. I’m over pointless fetch quests, monotonous collectibles, and unfulfilling side quests that add nothing to the experience other than time spent. FFXV, as the latest installment in the series I’ve played, is filled to the brim with side quests that just wasted my time. FFI sent me around the map multiple times, made me find secret locations, and even had me revisit dungeons all while still keeping the entire experience under 20 hours. I will acknowledge that the Pixel Remaster version of the game removed the bonus dungeons, for some odd reason, so the game should have been slightly longer, but I’m fairly confident that it still would have been less than 30 hours total.

I appreciated how coherent and complete the story is in FFI. It’s definitely a much simpler narrative than many of the games we get today, even in this specific franchise, but it was also better written in many ways, because it was a clear narrative with a fulfilling ending. No open-ended nonsense. No moral ambiguity about whether or not slaying the final boss was a righteous decision. I knew why the characters were there. I knew what they had to do. And I never felt like they were unjustified in why they had to do it. Too many games today have fallen into the “Are we the baddies?” trope. And many of the ones that don’t just don’t take their writing seriously at all. Neither is good structure for writing in a video game, in my opinion. I shouldn’t feel confused about why my actions are my actions in a video game. And I should never feel like an asshole at the end of a game, unless it’s a game with morality options and I’ve chosen to play as an asshole, which I almost never do.

I don’t want to talk about the graphics, because this is a remaster of a port of a game from 1987. So all I’ll say on that front is that the dated graphics were in no way a hindrance to my enjoyment. But that’s obviously a personal preference issue, so I’m sure some people will find this game unplayable today; and those people are wrong.

I don’t know if the original version of the game had this, but being able to save at any time is always a pleasure that all games should have at this point. That said, I found the save vs quick save function to be odd and pointless. You can save when on the world map, but not when you’re in a specific location. Whether it’s a town or a dungeon, you will not be able to save. But you can quick save at any time in any location, except for while in combat. Quick saving works exactly like saving, save for the fact that you only have one quick save slot vs the 20 regular save slots.

There were little things that I didn’t like, such as the fact that you can’t buy elixirs, but these sorts of issues didn’t prevent me from completing the game. Apparently, you can farm elixirs in the bonus dungeon, but again they removed that from this version of the game for some reason. This definitely made the final boss more troublesome, because it was a pretty unbalanced fight without a white mage. Yet the game still took me less than 20 hours to complete.

All in all, I really enjoyed Final Fantasy I. I’m glad to have finally been able to play it. As it stands, it’s probably in my top three FF games, that I’ve actually beaten. As I write this, I’ve already started FFII, so I’ll probably end up doing mini-review of all six games in the Pixel Remaster collection. However, rather than giving them number grades, I’m going to rank them all among the mainline FF games I’ve beaten. So as of right now, here’s my current ranking.

1. FFX

2. FFXII

3. FFI

4. FFVII

5. FFXIII

6. FXV

As always, thanks for reading. Please take the time to follow my blog, leave a comment, and check out some of my other channels if you enjoyed what you read.

Marvel Rivals . . . WTF?

A couple weeks ago, Marvel announced that a new game leveraging their beloved IP was on the horizon. As any gamer who likes Marvel can attest, this can be great news. Such as with Marvel’s Spider-Man from Insomniac Games. Or this can be bad news. Such as with Marvel’s Avengers from Square Enix. In defense of Square Enix, we don’t always know at announcement which type of news we’re getting. I’m happy to admit that I was very excited about Marvel’s Avengers at announcement. Conversely, I was absolutely not happy with the announcement of Marvel’s Midnight Suns from Firaxis Games. It’s wasn’t until I got to try the demo that I was sold on the game. You can read a blog post about that here, if you’re interested. All that said, Marvel quickly confirmed that this new game was absolutely bad news.

Marvel Rivals is a PVP hero shooter; and everything about that description is everything that’s wrong with this announcement. As was said by pretty much the entirety of the internet on the day of the announcement, “NO ONE ASKED FOR THIS.” Not a single person actually wanted this game to happen. Not even people who play hero shooters. There’s no reason for Marvel/Disney to try to compete with an already bloated market filled with popular trash like Overwatch 2 and Apex Legends. And honestly, it’s a stupid choice to even try.

Here’s the reality of trying to launch a PVP hero shooter in 2024. No matter how good your game is, it’s not going to succeed without investing a butt-ton into not only marketing, but more importantly the competitive scene. People don’t play these hero shooters because they’re actually fun. They’re terrible games. They play them because there’s money to be made. They play them for the esports opportunities. They play them because they get views on Twitch and other gaming streaming platforms. People are not still playing Overwatch 2 because they genuinely think it’s a good game. They’re just hoping to get a seat on that gravy train. Even the 40-something year old dad who only plays a couple hours a night after a long day at work only plays because in the back of his head, he wants to believe that eventually he could get good enough to make it at the competitive level. He never will, but that hope keeps him coming back. Because at least he has something to hope for. The point is that without building a lucrative esports community, which is entirely driven by money in 2024, there’s no hope for this game, or any other new hero shooter.

People will definitely try Marvel Rivals. The latest thing is always appealing. Assuming it’s F2P, I’ll probably download it and try a round. The important thing is that people won’t stay. Unless there’s money to be made, all those Apex Legends and Overwatch 2 players will quickly return to their equally mediocre, but already established and potentially lucrative niches. Why would you start from scratch if there’s no money to be made? What irritates me is that this is another textbook example of the gaming industry having good ideas, but fumbling the execution.

Let me be honest in saying that the gameplay for Marvel Rivals looks really interesting. In the trailer, there’s a sequence where someone playing as Doctor Strange opens a portal that allows someone playing as Spider-Man to jump through and land in the center of a firefight, completely disrupting the situation. There’s another sequence where someone playing as Rocket Racoon jumps on to the shoulder of someone playing as Groot, allowing them to do a cooperative frontal assault. I want to play a game with this sort of dynamic gameplay! Every Marvel fan does. What I don’t want is to play a PVP hero shooter filled with microtransactions and no story campaign. This looks like the gameplay I wanted Marvel’s Avengers to have. But instead of making a cooperative story focused game, they made a PVP shooter. What were you thinking, Marvel? You nearly struck gold. Then you turned it into shit, like some sort of reverse alchemy scenario. Why doesn’t the industry ever just give us the nice things we actually want?

I would happily pay for a game that has the kind of gameplay shown in the Marvel Rivals trailer but operates like Lego Marvel Super Heroes. That’s really all they need to do. And again, that was supposed to be what Marvel’s Avengers was. But they cheaped out on the execution. And now Marvel Rivals is just straight up executing the wrong thing. It’s all so tiring at this point. I know the skills to make the Marvel game the people want exists. I also know that such a game could be profitable. The problem is that the people in charge will always say that they want it to be more profitable and then screw up everything as a consequence. At least we have Marvel 1943: Rise of Hydra to look forward to.

As always, thanks for reading. Please take the time to follow my blog, leave a comment, and check out some of my other channels if you enjoyed what you read.

A Casual Gamer’s Paradise (Princess Peach: Showtime!)

When I first heard about Princess Peach: Showtime! (Showtime!), I was skeptical, until I saw the announcement trailer. The idea of a game where the character could transform into a large number of different variations, each with their own unique gameplay, is a great concept. In fact, it reminds me of an old favorite of mine from the XBOX 360 days called Kameo: Elements of Power (2005). After playing the demo, I was sold. Granted, I buy a large number of the first party Nintendo titles, so it wasn’t really a tough sell for me to pick up this one. However, what I did not expect was how easily I would be able to add it into my current play schedule without making any serious adjustments.

In my younger days, I only played one game at a time. Unless you count mobile games, which I’m only ever playing one at a time as well, I used to spend all my gaming time on a single game. I’d play it until the end and then move on to the next game. Starting a second game while in the middle of one was unheard for me. Now, I’m running four different games, plus a regular mobile game, concurrently.

My “main” game right now is Starfield. I play it just about every night before I go to bed. At work, during my lunch breaks, I normally play an indie game that I can play without sound. I’ve written about this in a previous blog post. Currently, I’m playing Cursed to Golf, which I’m determined to beat, even though it’s really tough. Recently, my commute increased by double the travel time and now requires me to spend at least an hour on the subway every day. During that time, I’m currently playing Final Fantasy I in the Pixel Remaster collection on Nintendo Switch. When I watch TV, I’m often playing something on handheld. Either my ROG Ally or Nintendo Switch. Currently, I’m playing Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, which is excellent and definitely worth your time. That’s four games at once. So when I decided to preorder Prince Peach: Showtime!,with a voucher, I wasn’t sure when I was going to actually have time to play it.

To my surprise, I was able to implement Showtime! into my play schedule rather easily. And the reason for that is because of how it’s structured. Showtime! is a single game, but it doesn’t really feel like one. Instead, it feels like a collection of short games. Not mini-games such as those you find in Mario Party or WarioWare. The stages in Showtime! feel more complete than that. Yet, they’re still short, casual experiences that you can easily pick up and complete in under 30 minutes.

Each stage in Showtime! is its own play in a theater. I could go into the details about how this is shown visually, but it’s unnecessary for this particular post. What’s more important is that every stage is comprised of its own unique world, gameplay, and story. Each play has its own villain, victims to save, costume for Peach to wear, and gameplay changing power. When you finish a stage, it feels very complete. You experienced a full story, new gameplay, and, assuming you found the collectible, unlocked a new costume. The experience feels complete at the end of every stage. As such, the game feels great to play just one stage at a time.

Rather than sit and play Showtime! for an extended period of time in a single session, I’ve played only one stage each night since I started it. If I don’t get all the collectibles in a single attempt, which happens at least 50% of the time so far, I’ll replay that stage for the 100% completion. But after that I stop. Even if I do have time to play more, I don’t. At that point, I load up Starfield. And playing it that way feels great. I always leave the game both satisfied and feeling like I want more. When I play it again the next day, I know that my experience will be entirely different, complete with a new story, new gameplay, and a new reward. It’s the perfect casual gaming experience. Honestly, I should probably end my days with Showtime! instead of Starfield. Then at least I would get a sense of accomplishment at the end of the day.

I don’t know how many total stages there are in Showtime!, but playing it has been a great experience in every session. It’s the perfect casual game that still feels like it has substance. Because you are still playing towards a larger goal and story. It’s just broken up into several pieces that can standalone as their own experiences.

This post isn’t a review, as I’ve only played the first five stages so far, so it didn’t seem appropriate to write one. But I do highly recommend the game to anyone looking for a casual gaming experience that’s fun and fulfilling. So far, I’ve really enjoyed all the costume powers I’ve tried, save for maybe Patisserie Peach, but I still appreciated how different that stage was from the others I’ve played up to now. Princess Peach: Showtime! is definitely worth checking out. And since there’s a free demo, you have no reason not to give it a try.

As always, thanks for reading. Please take the time to follow my blog, leave a comment, and check out some of my other channels if you enjoyed what you read.

Do People Actually Like Inventory Management?

A couple weeks ago, I published a post about how I had to learn how to mod Starfield, so I could play it in ultrawide resolution on PC. While that was the first time I ever modded a game in my life, I ended up adding two additional mods to the game about 20 hours into playing it. They aren’t really important for this specific post, but they do speak to the fact that this game needs a number of adjustments to be fun. To be clear, with the now three mods in place I’ve implemented, I do now really enjoy playing Starfield. However, my current biggest issue with this game, and many other western RPGs, is inventory management.

Hoarding is a big part of both Western and gaming culture. We all know the meme about playing a JRPG and not using the epic potion, because you may need it at some point down the road, only to end up completing the game having never used it. This doesn’t really happen much in Western RPGs, as they don’t tend to focus on consumable mechanics the way JRPGs do. If anything, I’d say Western RPGs suffer from the opposite problem. That problem being an overabundance of stuff and by extension the need to spend countless extra hours of gameplay managing all of it.

Starfield’s weight limit system, like in most RPGs, is trash. In the case of Starfield, it literally ruins the game to the point of almost making it unplayable. In fact, after getting the ultrawide resolution working, raising my character’s weight limit was the next mod I implemented. I didn’t go overboard. I saw people online raising their weight limit to like 50,000. For reference, the game starts you off with the weight limit at less than 200. I only turned it up 1,000. I didn’t want to remove inventory management from the game completely. I just wanted to make it so that I would never have to do serious inventory management in the middle of a mission. The mod worked exactly as I intended and has made the game a much better experience for me. However, even without having to worry about the weight limit, I’m still forced to spend an exorbitant amount time in Starfield doing inventory management.

While a lot of negative things have been said, by me and others, about Starfield, I want to make sure that people are aware that the gunplay is awesome. The shooting in that game feels great. And there are a ton of different gun options. Not only are there lots of guns to choose from, but there is also a decent amount of gun customization via manual upgrading. The problem with all these weapon options is that you have to constantly swap them in and out with guns you find. However, determining which guns are actually better is often more difficult than the firefights. And therein lies the problem.

Starfield is thorough in its presentation of different weapons and armor items, but it lacks any sort of tool that helps you quickly decide which piece of equipment is better. Even when using the compare equipment function, you see lots of numbers, but the number often don’t make comparing two pieces of gear any easier. You constantly find drops of the same gun in Starfield. Often, the damage is exactly the same. It’s actually the mods, as in in-game gun modifications, and innate buffs that make two models of the same weapon wildly different. But that assumes you both know the differences between various equipment mods at a glance and want to take the time to thoroughly compare two weapons, often in the middle of a mission. The reality is that it gets old fast. I like shotguns in Starfield a lot. But there’s at least four different shotgun models that can have up to seven specific mods on them at the time of picking them up. Even if you know which types of shotguns you prefer, that doesn’t mean you’ll be able to easily determine which one is best when comparing two or more shotguns currently sitting in your inventory. And you know what? Dealing with that process over and over again is not and has never been fun. Not in this game, and not in any game, if we’re being honest.

I have to ask if anyone actually likes doing inventory management as a gameplay mechanic at all? When I think about the countless games I’ve played in the past that forced you to spend large amounts of time managing items in your inventory, for whatever reason, I always think of that time as external to the gameplay. That is, it’s something you have to do in order to continue enjoying the gameplay, but not actually part of the gameplay itself. That’s a weird differentiation to make when I put it into words, but that’s always how it feels. Nobody plays Pokémon and says one of the things they love the most about the game is having to make constant trips to the Poke Centers to buy more balls. The gameplay is finding, battling, and capturing Pokémon. Going shopping for more balls is just something you have to do to get back to the gameplay. I don’t think I’m alone in this opinion, but maybe I am?

The thing that I wish Starfield, and countless other games with massive inventory management components, had is a clearcut grading system for all items. Not a rarity system.  Starfield, like most Western RPGs, has an item rarity system. What I’m talking about is a system that assigns a total point value to every piece of equipment that’s balanced to the overall gameplay experience. That way you could quickly see which gun or piece of armor was objectively better at a glance and then just throw away/sell the one with the lower score. No reading lists of stats. No comparing mods. Just a very simple single number comparison system. If that were available, the amount of time I spend looking at my inventory in Starfied would drop by no less than 70%. While Starfied does have a value figure for each item, this only reflects the sell value of the item. Not its general effectiveness in combat. There are mods in the game that literally don’t improve a weapon’s performance at all, but still increase the gun’s value when implemented. This is because it costs resources to craft mods, so even useless mods have to give some sort of ROI in the game’s economy.

While a clear rating system would be nice, implementing it would be tough in a game as convoluted as Starfield. Though I do believe this would work for the guns in Starfield, making scores relative by specific gun type/model, I don’t think it could be done with the game’s overly complicated armor system. Armor, or spacesuits to be specific, is an annoying mess in this game. There are lots of clothing and spacesuit options, and they all have some level of cosmetic value, but the important part is their protections stats. The game features three different types of weapon damage and four different types of environmental damage all running concurrently. Meaning that your full set of armor needs to account for seven different types of damage plus mods and innate traits all at the same time. Sadly, you rarely find a piece of gear that protects against everything. Usually, each piece of gear specializes in certain types of damage. So you have to hold on to several pieces of gear and mix and match them based on the conditions of the specific planet you’re currently on. It’s a mess in every sense of the word. And there’s no armor sets function to hot swap gear either. So you have to keep spending a ton of time in the menus changing your gear around each time you visit a different planet with harsh conditions. Ultimately, I gave up on the whole exercise and constantly wear a legendary spacesuit that does multiple types of protection all at once. It’s not the best at anything, but it meets a minimum standard for most things. But I wish there was a better way to manage this inventory.

The real question that I think needs to be asked is why? Why do games have these convoluted inventory systems. Why do games have mechanics like encumbrance? While they are two different issues, they are clearly relevant in the same discussion. I don’t like these things. But I have to assume that someone does. Otherwise, what’s the justification in putting them in games? Logically speaking, there has to be a decent number of players that genuinely do like spending hours of their time sifting through menus trying to decide which items to keep and which to drop or sell. I don’t know who they are, but they must be a large group. Otherwise, game developers are actively making game mechanics that people just don’t enjoy . . .

As always, thanks for reading. Please take the time to follow my blog, leave a comment, and check out some of my other channels if you enjoyed what you read.

Attack of the Karens Review – 8/10

The reality is that a major reason that I decided to review this game is because of the title. How could one pass up trying a game called Attack of the Karens? I don’t even play bullet hells that much. Because I’m usually terrible at them. Sometimes I wonder how I ever managed to beat Returnal. In any case, Attack of the Karens (Karens) is an indie bullet hell by Studio Primitive. I had the pleasure of reviewing the soon to be released Switch version, courtesy of Flynn’s Arcade, the console publisher for the game.

Karens leverages a retro art style that feels low budget, but not dated. I was very impressed with how modern it looks even while clearly emulating classic SHMUP games like Life Force (1986) or Darius (1987). The graphics are not pixelated, but feel like they want to be, if that makes sense. The color pallet is simple and limited, but executed with care. Funny enough there is an option called “CRT Filter” that lets you add scanlines to the game.

As the game is themed around Karens, as in annoying, entitled women of late 2000’s memes, the settings, obstacles, and enemies you encounter all play around with this theme. The levels, of which there are at least five, but I’m still not sure how many total, are set in everyday places you’d expect to encounter Karens at, like the suburbs, the bayside, or downtown. Yes, these are the actual names of the stages. Obstacles are things like high heels, make up utensils, and other stereotypical adult female items. Enemies include things like lesser Karens coupled with robots that fire lasers and bombs. At the same time, the game’s story has numerous sci-fi elements to it, so the visuals are often enhanced by this. The bosses, for instance, are all women that have been turned into cyborgs.

Studio Primitive mixed sci-fi with American suburbia very well visually. The bosses being the best examples of this. For instance, one of the bosses, named Jordan (none of them are actually named Karen) is a social media influencer. One of her attacks is using her cellphone to throw selfies at you. Really, that’s the whole game from a visual standpoint. They took normal objects and made them look sci-fi without making them look particularly cool; and that style works very well here, because it allows for a lot of variation in enemies. In a game where you’re fighting volleyball players, you’re also fighting tanks. While dodging shoes, purses, and lipstick, you’re also dodging missiles, bombs, and lasers. It’s funny, but absolutely not lazy in its execution.

The UI is simple, but effective. In the top left corner of the screen, you can see your HP, presented both numerically and visually, your current progress towards leveling up, your current level, and the total number of modules (in-game currency) you currently have. On the right side of the screen, there’s a vertical bar. I really like this because it’s the progress bar for how close you are to the boss of the level, with a break in the middle to show your progress towards the mini-boss. But when you reach the boss, the bar becomes its HP bar. This is a nice touch, because it gives you two different types of information clearly without taking extra space on the screen.

The menus do suffer a bit with this dated visual style. Text and icons could be clearer, but they’re certainly readable at a fast enough pace. All-in-all, I was happy with the graphics in Karens, for what it is, because it works for the game they set out to create. That is to say, it certainly could look better, or more expensive, but that wouldn’t add to the experience in any meaningful way.

This game deserves so many points for audio. From the start menu, you are immediately hit with an intense beat that feels both sinister and futuristic at the same time. I’ve played many indie games with low budget graphics leaning on the “retro inspired” tag that open with an impressive song. More often than not, those games only have the one song. Not so with Karens. This game has a full soundtrack of impressive background music consisting of 18 different tracks. You can even buy it on Steam as DLC. And it’s solid music. It’s not a Final Fantasy OST, but it’s much more impressive than I expected going into this game.

I was also very impressed with the voice acting. Normally, a project of this style and scale would lean almost exclusively on text to convey its story and feature little to no voice acting. Especially a game in this genre. Karens goes the complete opposite direction and has voice acting for every piece of story/dialog in the game. All five of the bosses, your handler, and the upgrade notifications are fully voiced. The dialog is recycled, meaning that you will get tired of hearing the same boss intros over and over again, but you can skip them. You can also turn them off in the main menu option screen, but then you won’t see any dialog you’ve previously missed, if you get farther than you have before. It’s a great option for replays though. In any case, I absolutely appreciate the fact that the dialog is fully voiced and voiced well at that. The sound effects are standard fare, but they are exactly as good as they need to be. I have no notes.

There is a surprisingly large amount of writing in this game. And again, it’s all voice acted. The general plot, which does start out with a cutscene, is that an alien parasite has made its way to Earth and infected four women, turning them into evil cyborgs. It’s not clear why an organic parasite turned them into cyborgs rather than mutants, but sci-fi gonna sci-fi. These evil cyborg women built robot armies and want to destroy humanity. The funny part is that they were already terrible people before being infected, thus the title Attack of the Karens.

You play as a member of the KDF, which I believe stands for Karen Defense Force, but don’t quote me on that. You are tasked with defeating the Karens to save humanity. Your handler, Amanda, briefs you about each of the Karens at the start of their levels and speaks with each of them during their boss fights. She also occasionally comments on what’s happening with scripted reactions during the course of play. There is an actual story here. I won’t spoil the ending, but there is a major plot twist that, while not being very surprising, does put this game a cut above many other 2D side-scroller bullet hells I’ve played. And that includes titles in the genre that aren’t/weren’t indie projects. Also, a lot of the dialog is funny. It’s not the most hilarious game I’ve ever played, but Studio Primitive clearly put effort into writing this game; and that should be celebrated, given what I’ve come to expect from many projects like this.

Karens features your standard SHMUP gameplay made considerably better with the addition of several QoL options and roguelite mechanics. While this game is challenging, it gives you the benefit of being able to unlock permanent upgrades. You’ve played some version of this basic concept before. There are four stages, each with a mini-boss and boss. You fly your little ship from left to right trying to avoid obstacles and enemy attacks while continuously firing your attacks. You do have to hold down the weapon fire button, but you have unlimited ammo and can’t change weapons. Think Galaga (1981) but horizontally instead of vertically.

There are a total of four stages in a run, but there seems to be more than four maps available. Bosses are not tied to a specific map, and they don’t always appear in the same order, making each run feel slightly different. Mini-bosses, however, are tied to specific stages. I really like that the game tells you the order of the bosses before starting each run, so you can plan accordingly. For me, the order of the bosses definitely factored into my ability to clear all of them in a single run. The constantly changing boss order was very helpful, because not only did it allow me to experience all the story content, regardless of how far I could get in a single run, but it also allowed me to practice against each boss continuously, making it easier for me to get farther much faster than I otherwise would have. Of the four Karens, two of them were very easy for me and two of them were very hard. Eventually, one of the harder ones became much easier for me to tackle, because I got to keep practicing without having to make it past multiple other bosses before facing her. The fifth, and final, boss is always the same, as that’s story specific.

As you play, you collect modules. These are the game’s currency for buying permanent upgrades, and they carry over from run to run. Upgrades consist of several things such as improved damage, additional HP, and faster movement. There are also some more niche upgrades like a consumable rocket attack. There is a limit to the amount of upgrades you can buy, as is the case with most roguelites. I actually really like how quickly you can purchase all the permanent upgrades, because it makes the game feel very practical. You can see the light at the end of the tunnel very quickly when it comes to reaching the end of the game.

There are also run specific upgrades that reset when you get a game over. There’s a decent variety of these, and they can be upgraded during the run. Once you learn which ones you really like, prioritizing them makes the game feel much more manageable, difficulty wise. You get run specific upgrades every time you level up. You get XP by killing enemies, and you can choose between three random options every time you earn a new upgrade. I always prioritize getting the credit card as early as possible, because it speeds up XP acquisition, getting you even more upgrades faster. Both run specific and permanent upgrades have maximums, but generic HP, attack power, attack speed, and movement speed run specific upgrades don’t.

Another QoL feature that I really appreciated was the “Kurses & Kushions” menu. These are a set of modifiers that you can toggle on/off between runs at your leisure. Kurses make gameplay hard and net you more modules faster as a result. Kushions make gameplay easier and reduce the amount of modules you get. Meaning that once you unlock all the permanent mods there is no sacrifice to be made by using Kusions, other than pride of course.

Make no mistake, this game is challenging. It gets easier as you learn the patterns and better understand how the upgrades work, but it’s still quite difficult. Your base HP is only three hits. Many of your upgrades, such as shields, have cooldowns as long as two minutes, which is an eternity in a bullet hell boss fight. There are no continues. You have to clear four levels, each with a mini-boss and regular boss, plus a final boss in a single run. Yet the game doesn’t feel unbalanced. While difficult, I did not end my time with Karens feeling like it was something I’d never be able to beat. In fact, I almost beat the final boss after about six hours of total play. And really the final boss is the only part of the game that feels truly unfair.

Every boss has two forms. However, the final boss has four. Honestly, it’s a pretty ridiculous fight compared to the rest of the game. During the other four boss fights, you only have to deal with one full life bar and can still get upgrades during the fight, if you manage to level up mid fight, which is rare but not impossible. In the final fight, you have to deal with four full life bars. And the final form goes into multiple prolonged invulnerable states. At the bare minimum, each phase of the fight should give you at least a few hearts when beaten. Had that been the case, I would have absolutely beaten it the first time I got that far. The game doesn’t even refill your HP going into this fight, for crying out loud. I did eventually beat the final boss after several attempts over the course of probably nine hours of total play, across several sessions. And I managed to unlock all the permanent upgrades except the very last one before doing so. Additionally, I did it without using any modifiers. But again, outside of this one fight, the rest of the game feels very fair and balanced.

There is certainly an argument for replay value in Karens. The various upgrades, modifiers, differing order of bosses in each run, and the variety of upgrades you can get in a given run all help to stretch this game out longer, if you want that. Karens isn’t a long game, if you can manage to beat it in a single attempt; which you won’t. A successful run will take you about 30 – 40 minutes total, unless you’re playing very conservatively. My game winning run took 30:47, as reported by the game. That said, unlocking all the permanent upgrades took me more than eight hours, giving me my money’s worth for the $5 price tag, had I not been provided a review key.

Aside from the final boss fight, I was pleasantly surprised by this game. It delivered in ways that I never would have expected, and it made me feel confident in my bullet hell abilities, which is very rare. I played the Switch version, but you can also find it on Steam, with a free demo available. Overall, I give Attack of the Karens a solid 8/10.

As always, thanks for reading. Please take the time to follow my blog, leave a comment, and check out some of my other channels if you enjoyed what you read.

My First Mod

I’ve been playing PC games for a long time. The oldest PC game I remember playing that I specifically relate to the PC as a gaming platform is Hocus Pocus (1994). However, I did not identify as a PC gamer until I built my first DIY system back in 2017. Recently, I built a new rig to replace that first one, as it was no longer performing up to modern gaming standards. I wrote a post about that new system a few weeks back, in case you’re interested.

In the seven years that I’ve been doing serious gaming on PC, I have never once used a mod, or software mod to be more specific, as I have done a small amount of hardware modding for practical reasons. I’ve never been into the idea of game mods. I understand why they exist. But for me I actually like to play games as intended by the developers, a majority of the time. I also rarely if ever replay games, so I’m not usually putting in the time to warrant changing a game from its originally intended version. Additionally, the concept of downloading software from random people online in a world of so many scams, viruses, and nefarious digital happenings really freaks me out. So I spent the last seven or more years of PC gaming actively not using mods, save for those built into the game as a native option by the developers. I’m talking about things like big head mode in Ratchet & Clank. Otherwise, I’ve been completely mod free . . . until playing Starfield.

While I did not build my new PC to play just one game, Starfield was the motivation that finally made me commit to upgrading to a new system. To be clear, I did not believe that this game would be nearly as good as the community expected and Todd Howard promised. With the exception of id Software and the DOOM franchise, I learned long ago not to trust Bethesda’s promises. That said, I did get to try Starfield before building my system, and this demo experience managed to sell me on it. Or rather, sell me on the idea of using my several months of free XBOX Game Pass for PC subscription to play the game. I knew I couldn’t run it on my old PC, so I had to build a new one. Funny enough, if they had released Starfield on PS5, as originally announced, I probably wouldn’t have built this new PC when I did. And I would have actually bought the game.

As I always build my latest system to near the top of the current spec market, I opted to upgrade my previous setup from dual 27” monitors to a single 49” curved ultrawide. Like it or not, this seems to be the future of PC gaming; and that’s why I went for that display. At first, I didn’t like it, but it has quickly grown on me. That said, I was not aware that so much media, gaming and otherwise, just doesn’t support the 32:9 aspect ratio. I can understand this for movies and TV, but the fact that so many (modern) games don’t support it is both surprising and, now, irritating to me. I will admit that I didn’t do enough research on this, as I just assumed it was a given for a medium that’s supposed to always be near the cutting edge of technology. But that doesn’t make this fact any less disappointing from both a personal and technological standpoint.

As Starfield was my major motivation for finally building a new PC, I wanted that to be the first game I played on the system. When I had everything ready, I activated my free Game Pass for PC subscription and downloaded the game. I started it up to discover that “the greatest game of all time” does not natively support the 32:9 aspect ratio. “25 years in the making,” and Todd Howard made an epic space game that fails to allow players to fully try to capture the vastness of space in their gameplay experience. Even more irritating is the fact that he had the nerve to tell people, in an interview, that his game required them to build/buy better PCs to fully enjoy it. Well I did build a better PC, Todd Howard, and your game isn’t up to my rig’s standards.

I was very angry to learn that I couldn’t play Starfield natively in 32:9. However, I also refused to settle for playing it in anything less. So, I angrily turned to the internet to find a way to play this game at the resolution that a space game in 2024 should be played in on PC. Unsurprisingly, there were multiple fixes listed on Reddit to make Starfield play in ultrawide. Because of course there is. There was no way I was going to be the only person angry about this. I was happy to learn that there were not one but two fixes that allow you to play Starfield in 32:9 without having to download anything. Those are barely mods, and they come with no risk of downloading a virus. Music to my ears.

This is how Todd wanted me to play his game . . .

I tried both of these fixes, and, sadly, I couldn’t get either to work. I watched multiple videos, read multiple Reddit posts, and followed all the directions to the letter. I restarted my system multiple times, but Starfield refused to render in 32:9. I was crushed, and angry. So, so, so angry at Todd Howard, who I’ve never really been a fan of to begin with. I genuinely refused to play the game at a smaller resolution. I was ready to just delete the game and give up. Ironically, I was considering playing DOOM Eternal, another game published by Bethesda, to christen my new PC. But my desire to see my goal of playing Starfield on my new PC was too strong. So, I went against my long held practices and opted to download a mod.

Throughout my research to run Starfield in ultrawide, the same mod kept coming up. A free mod called Flawless Widescreen. Researching this is how I first discovered that a lack of 32:9 support in games is a super common issue. Which really depressed me, since I spent so much on this monitor hoping for a revolutionary gaming experience moving forward. After doing my due diligence, I opted to download this mod. It’s actually a collection of dedicated plugins and tools to manage them with the soul purpose of making games playable in 32:9, like the good Lord intended!

I installed the mod, followed the directions, and Starfield still wouldn’t run in 32:9. I was crushed. I didn’t understand what I was doing wrong. I knew objectively that all these fixes should work, but I didn’t know why they didn’t. Again, I have no previous experience with modding. Finally, in a fit of desperation, I started the game with the mod running. Immediately, and this only worked out for me because Starfield starts in gameplay rather than cutscene, I discovered that the game was in fact running in 32:9. The menus don’t, even with the mod. In both menus and cutscenes, you get 1920×1080 resolution with the rest of the screen filled with massive black bars. But the gameplay runs in 32:9. It was at this moment that I realized that the previous fixes I had tried most likely had been working. I just wasn’t realizing it, because I was using the start screen as my testing environment.

This whole ordeal probably sounds really stupid to people who mod regularly. I, now, assume it’s fairly common that mod fixes only affect gameplay, but not menus and cutscenes. But why would someone with no previous experience with modding ever think that might be the case? Something I realized during this whole ordeal is that modding documentation, or rather modding tutorial documentation within the gaming community, is very lacking in terms of hard directions. There was not a single post or comment I found that included a disclaimer stating that the ultrawide fix for Starfield wouldn’t work for the menus or cutscenes. Even Flawless Widescreen doesn’t actually clarify this in its Starfield section. You just have to know. A guy even tried to help me via DMs on Reddit, and couldn’t understand why the fixes weren’t working for me. At no point did he clarify with me if I was looking at the menu or actual gameplay. Similarly, I couldn’t really find anything telling me about running the fixes. There was plenty of corroborated documentation about setting them up, but nothing about actually stating them and making sure they’re working. I assume that modders just assume people know how to use them once set up/installed. Which is a terrible assumption to make for people new to modding games.

How it was meant to be played.

I may not be a modder (Or maybe now I am?), but I have been a gamer for decades. I have also worked in tech for nearly a decade. I’ve created tutorials. I’ve written and checked documentation. It’s important. It needs to be done, and done thoroughly. What took me multiple hours to get working should have taken me less than five minutes. And it would have with clear, step-by-step instructions and clarifications. I’m happy to say that my first attempt at using mods for gaming was ultimately successful, and it’s definitely made me more open minded about using them in the future, but that doesn’t change the fact that they need better SOPs for new users. In any case, I am currently playing Starfield in glorious 32:9 aspect ratio. So, thank you to Flawless Widescreen.

As always, thanks for reading. Please take the time to follow my blog, leave a comment, and check out some of my other channels if you enjoyed what you read.

Unicorn Overlord Demo Review

There are way too many JRPGs, and I buy too many of them, most of which I will never have time to play. If I never bought another JRPG again, I’d still probably not be able to finish all the ones I currently own by the end of my life. That, among many other reasons, is why I’m often skeptical when it comes to picking up new JPRGs. Especially those that aren’t part of ongoing franchises I’m already tied into. That said, some of my favorite JRPGs are tiny, A or AA projects that few people will ever talk about. For example, I’ve written blog posts about the Voice of Cards series and Dungeon Encounters. Both are JRPGs that very few people ever talked about, even though they were all published by Square Enix. Yet I’d absolutely buy a sequel to either series; and in the case of Voice of Cards, I already have . . . twice. So while I actively try to find reasons not to buy a new JRPG, I am happy to acknowledge the ones that are actually worth playing; and as has always been the rule, I will try any free demo. It is with this mentality that I went into the Unicorn Overlord demo.

The major problem, in my opinion, with JRPGs is that they are a combination of long and repetitive. Some people like this, and in my youth I did as well. But today, with such a massive backlog of games I actually want to play, the prospect of playing something long with boring gameplay becomes less and less appealing. Note that I’m not saying turn-based or any specific type of gameplay is boring. But when something repetitive with little to no variation seems to drag on for too long it can get really boring, regardless of how good it was at the beginning of the game. This is why Square Enix opted to move away from turn-based gameplay with the Final Fantasy series. Whether or not the decision was wanted by fans of the franchise, the logic behind the decision was inarguably sound. But for those games that are still turn-based, many developers have tried to streamline the model in various ways in hopes of making the experience feel original and less repetitive. While I would not argue that Unicorn Overlord reinvents the wheel, I would say that Atlus has figured out how to separate all the chaff out of the wheat that is traditional turn-based JRPG gameplay. But let’s not dive fully into the gameplay aspect of the review just yet.

As far as graphics, Unicorn Overlord is good. Arguably great for what it is; but what it is falls into the lower budget JRPG graphics category. This is your Octopath Traveler/Voice of Cards territory. The art style is very nice and highly detailed, but it doesn’t feel like a AAA game visually. Which is fine when a game is not being sold for $60+, which it is on all platforms. Let me be clear, I don’t think the graphics look bad. They just don’t feel like something I’d pay top dollar for.

The graphics can be broken down into two phases of gameplay: map and encounter. The map phase has an HD-2D feel to it that absolutely works for what it’s trying to convey. You have an overworld that features numerous details including locations, terrain, structures, animals, and NPCs. It all runs very smoothly and looks fine for what it is. I wouldn’t call it ugly, but I wouldn’t call it impressive either. There is a version of this game I can imagine where the graphics look like Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord or Romance of the Three Kingdoms XIV. In fact, I can absolutely see the PC community modding the game to look like that.

The map phase is used both in and out of battle stages. Outside of battle, it’s very simple. You basically just have the mini-map in the top right corner. When idle, the controls will appear in the top left corner. The mini-map shows you everything you’d expect from a mini-map, but I didn’t use it much, as the map was pretty easy to remember. I did make use of the menu map a lot though, as it showed a lot more distance and allowed for fast travel to previously explored locations. When you’re at a specific location, additional information about that location pops up in the top left corner of the screen. Interestingly enough, when idle while standing at a location, the controls pop up below the location information.

During battle stages, which still uses the map phase visual style, the UI adds a lot more information, but I didn’t feel overwhelmed by it.  Honestly, I ended up ignoring a lot of it once I understood the gameplay better. In the top left corner, you will see your valor points. This could have definitely been designed in a much smaller form, but the style of presentation is nice and clear, using both text and visuals to display the same information. In the top middle of the screen, you will see the battle timer. In reality, the time limits for battles, at least in the demo, were so long that it was almost unnecessary to have a timer. I will go into why I believe there’s a time limit a bit later in the review though. In the top right, you have the same mini-map from the overworld gameplay, except now underneath it you are given terrain information. This is because terrain plays a major part in battles. At the bottom, you can see unit information.

As this is a military strategy game, battles are broken down into units rather than individual characters. That said, individual characters are what units are comprised of. Each unit can have up to six individual characters, each of which is specific and intentional. When you move the cursor over a friendly unit, the unit’s information will appear in the bottom right corner of the screen and be coded in blue. The information shown in the foreground will include the name of the unit’s leader, along with their portrait, and the amount of stamina the unit currently has. In the background, you can see the layout of the unit’s members and their individual level and HP bars. Once you learn how the appearances of different characters and types of combatants look, this UI becomes very easy to read quickly. When you move the cursor over an enemy unit, you will see the same information in the bottom left corner of the screen, coded in red.

In the encounter phase of gameplay, the graphics change to the same style of graphics as the game’s cutscenes with a bit of UI added on top of it for data purposes. It ‘s very nice images with a large amount of detail, teetering on hand drawn appearance. As impressed with the art style of Voice of Cards as I was, this is that same style cranked up several times. However, none of this is interactive, as the encounters all run automatically. I’ll talk about that more when I get to the gameplay.

The additional UI elements in the foreground of the encounter phase are graphically the same as those in the map phase, but the information is more specific to the individual encounter. In the top left and right corners of the screen, you will see red and blue flags. Your side is always the blue flag. In my experience, it’s always on the right side of the screen. On the opposing bottom corners of the screen, you will see the unit members layout and HP bars, similar to how they look in the map phase when you move the cursor over them. In the bottom middle of the screen, you will see the current action being taken by whichever character is currently taking their turn.

Cutscenes look almost exactly the same as the encounter phase, and even use the same text boxes for dialog. The only difference is that cutscenes don’t have all the battle UI in the foreground of the image. The movement, both in cutscenes and in encounters, is quite smooth. Funny enough, they even took the time to animate boob physics for female characters in this 2D art style. I played the demo on the Nintendo Switch, and I didn’t experience any lag over the course of the 7.5 hours that I played for. Finally, the font used for dialog and menus is a very nice, highly readable sans serif font. All in all, while I wouldn’t necessarily say that the graphics wowed me, I honestly don’t have any complaints about them.

I was very happy with the audio experience in this demo. More specifically, the dialog. Every cutscene is fully voiced acted, but there is also a lot of other voice acted dialog. For instance, the vendors all have spoken dialog. It’s not much, but it’s there, and of good quality. There are also lots of call outs from characters during encounters. The sound effects and music are top notch as well, as should be expected from an Atlus JRPG. I don’t really feel the need to say more about it, because it’s great, and that’s enough said on the subject.

As for the writing, Unicorn Overlord hasn’t done anything revolutionary. It’s a very commonplace plot about a kingdom in a world of multiple landlocked countries that is taken over in a coup d’état by the monarchy’s lead general. The reigning monarch is killed in a final battle, after sending their only surviving son away to avenge them and retake the throne years later. You of course play as that son in a quest to liberate the world from the evil empire that has taken hold of the map from the seat of your former kingdom. As with a great many JRPGs, I’d say the relationships between the characters are much more interesting than the game’s general plot. One of the interesting things about the relationships between the characters is that they form based on how you structure your units. The more two characters fight alongside each other, the closer they get. Over time, this not only grants you synergistic effects between those characters, but it also unlocks special cutscenes between them. For instance, the game started me out with a Thief and a Paladin, among other characters. For reasons that will become more apparent later in this review, I kept them in the same unit for the entirety of the demo. That particular unit was also one of my most used units across all the battles I fought. This unlocked a cutscene for me later on in the demo where those two characters had a private conversation that the protagonist wasn’t even present in. This presents the opportunity for a large amount of replay value, if you care to see various cutscenes featuring different combinations of characters.

Finally, let’s talk about the gameplay in Unicorn Overlord. While this game is being sold as a JRPG, which makes sense, I think it’s more accurate to describe it as a resource management battle simulator masking as a JRPG. What stood out to me most in the demo was that very little comes down to chance and the classes of soldiers are extremely important. Let’s talk about the latter of those two things first.

Usually when I play a JRPG, or really any turn-based RPG, the classes don’t really matter that much. And this goes all the way back to the beginning of JRPGs. Yes, there are different class names for characters, but it really just comes down to fighters and mages. All fighters are functionally the same, save for the equipment they can use. And mages either heal party members or damage enemies with attack spells. You can pretend that it’s more complicated than that, but it really isn’t. I’m literally playing Final Fantasy I for the first time right now, and while all four of my party members have different class names, they can really be summed up as physical attacker 1, physical attacker 2, physical attacker that uses healing magic sometimes, and magic attacker. It’s just that simple. Move forward to Final Fantasy X, and while the number of party members may be much larger, they can still be summed up much the same way. A bunch of physical attackers, a healing mage, and an attack mage. And if you played the sphere grid correctly, you probably taught Tidus a healing spell, like Curaga. This is not how things work in Unicorn Overlord.

What I really enjoyed about this game was that every single class is distinct, and those differences between them matter a lot. We’re not just talking about physical attacker versus magic user. Even among physical attackers, there are several different classes with various strengths and weaknesses. And I don’t mean stat wise. I mean performance wise in combat. These differences are not tiered, however. They’re all balanced quite well with each other. Early in the demo, you get a class called Hoplite. This is a greatshield wielder with a spear. His defense is amazing. Not only is it hard to damage him, but he defends other members of the unit as well. At first, he seems unstoppable. Then you encounter a class called Warrior that wields a war hammer, and the Hoplite gets trounced immediately. But the Warrior just as easily gets taken by a number of other classes. Thieves and Gryphon Knights are great at dodging attacks. But they struggle to damage certain types of enemies while excelling at damaging others. The point is that there is no best class. Instead, you must examine each unit you face in a given battle and use the appropriate classes against them to maximize effectiveness. Yet this is not always possible, as enemy units move dynamically and can choose to pursue units that you didn’t want them to. This is where terrain plays a major factor in the gameplay.

Different types of units move at different speeds on specific types of terrain. The unit leader determines the movement type of a given unit. Often, I wanted one unit to attack a specific unit and another one to attack a different specific one. Yet their differing movement speeds, coupled with the differing movement speeds of enemy units, often forced my units into encounters I didn’t want them in. This is where the battle timer starts to matter. Units are limited by stamina. Stamina determines the number of encounters they can handle before requiring a rest. While the timer was never really burdensome to me, it does force you to use multiple units concurrently in battle. Meaning that you can’t just spam the same unit over and over and then let them rest before spamming them more. This strategy will ultimately lead you to running out of time. Instead, you need to staff units with compatible characters that have synergistic strengths and techniques.

At the beginning of the game, I was given a Knight class character. This is a mounted lance user. At first, he seemed terrible. I paired him with a Solider that had the ability to heal party members for 25% of their HP. Even together, these two were mostly ineffective, and I rarely used them. Then I later recruited a Gryphon Knight, and they became my second or third most effective unit. Because the Gryphon Knight was able to draw most of the attacks from enemies and dodge them, save for when fighting certain specific classes. Character placement within units is a major part of the gameplay. Every unit is comprised of a 2×3 grid. You can place up to six characters in whatever position on that grid you want. However, every unit in your army starts out with only two of the six spots available. You must unlock the other spots by spending honors, which is a currency gained through victories and completing tasks and quests. That Gryphon Knight was placed at the center of the front row of the unit grid, with the Knight and Solider placed in the back row on opposite sides of the grid. Additionally, the Knight was the leader of the unit, as this gave the unit horseman speed to move around the map during battle. All of these aspects of unit formation can be customized both in and out of battle, but during battle it can only be done under certain conditions.

Now let’s talk about the lack of chance in the combat I mentioned earlier. What really surprised me about Unicorn Overlord is how the encounters aren’t actually the important part of the gameplay. It’s the strategy leading up to encounters. The individual fights within battles aren’t at all dynamic or surprising. In fact, the game flat out tells you what the outcome of the encounter will be before you start it. No, I’m not exaggerating. When two units meet, they are forced to battle. You cannot escape the encounter. However, if another unit is in range, you can choose which unit participates in the encounter. Before the encounter commences, you are shown exactly how much HP each unit will lose, or gain in some cases where a unit has a member capable of healing. There’s no surprises. There’s no chance. A random critical can’t mess up the battle for you. Critical attacks do happen in the game, but they never change the outcome of the encounter as shown before you started it. That’s why I think it’s more appropriate to call this a resource management battle simulator than a JRPG. Because you don’t have to account for bad luck within an encounter. You don’t have to consider the possibility of an attack missing or choosing the wrong spell. In fact, you don’t even control the characters in encounters.

That’s right, the encounters are automatic. You don’t tell characters which attacks or techniques to use. They always do the exact same thing in the exact same order. The only thing that changes is how they react to the specific characters and layout of the enemy unit. You do have some power over customizing the behavior of characters, but this must take place outside of battle. Once an encounter has started, all you can do is watch. Or you can skip it, since you already know what the outcome will be. The only reason to watch encounters, other than because you enjoy watching them, as I did, is that you can learn about how characters fare against certain types of enemy units; and whether or not changing the placement of characters within a unit might make it more effective. Most of the game is managing your characters and units in terms of formation and equipment. During battles, you tell units where to go and who to attack. But you have no power over how the encounters will go once they have started. The only exception is that you can use valor techniques. Every character has special techniques that take valor points to use. These must be initiated before an encounter has started, but they can affect the outcomes of them. For instance, the Hunter class has a valor technique that damages all units within range of the attack. By using this technique, you can lower the HP of a unit before an encounter. This could potentially change the outcome of that encounter.

It’s not completely accurate to say that there are no surprises in the combat. While the game does tell you the outcomes of encounters beforehand, it only tells you the results in terms of total HP. Encounters consist of every character in both units exhausting all their action points. Normally, this consists of each character taking a full turn in addition to any special actions they have, like guarding other characters or healing. Once all characters have used up their action points, the encounter ends and the unit with the most total HP is declared the winner. Encounters do not have to end with characters dying. In fact, they often don’t, depending on how much HP characters in either unit have. As you can only see how much HP either unit will lose in an encounter, you don’t know what the distribution of that lost HP will be. For example, say you have a unit with three characters, each with 30 HP for a unit total of 90 HP. And say the encounter preview shows that your unit will win the encounter with a total loss of 33 HP. Now that could end up being a loss of 11 HP to each of your three characters in the unit, which is easily weathered with anything from items, to resting at a base, to valor techniques. However, that loss of 33 HP could also be 30 damage to a single character followed by 3 damage to another character and 0 damage to the third one. In this scenario, your unit won the encounter, but one of your characters died. This can be remedied in battle, but it’s much harder to deal with. Again, this is why the game feels more like a resource management game than a JPRG. You have to make adjustments in real time based on data given to you, but all of the information is transparent and little of it is up to chance in the way a traditional JRPG handles combat outcomes.

While the gameplay might sound a bit odd or even boring to both traditional and modern JRPG fans, I found it quite addictive once I got the hang of it. The streamlined combat system became really enjoyable for me, because it didn’t have the monotony of spamming attacks over and over again like you do in a turn-based JRPG like OG Final Fantasy games. While you feel like you’re doing less overall in Unicorn Overlord, everything you do actually do feels a lot more important and impactful by comparison.

This game is filled to the brim with replay value in several ways. For starters, I’ve already discussed how pairing different characters together can affect their relationships and unlock special cutscenes. But there are also countless unit formations you can implement with the large number of classes available in the game. The demo implies that there are at least 80 different classes of characters available in the full game. Also, the narrative has choices. Most battles start out with a request being made by a new character. At the end of most battles, there is an encounter with the enemy leader. These two characters often require you to make choices at the end of each battle. Sometimes, it’s whether or not to recruit a character to your cause. Other times, it’s whether or not to execute an enemy leader. It can even be both at the same time in some situations. These choices affect the narrative, both in that they can add new characters to your roster and that they can affect future battles. For example, in the demo I faced a bandit. After winning the battle, I chose to imprison the bandit rather than freeing him. I don’t know if choosing to free him would have made him join my army, but I do know that he ultimately escaped from prison. Then, I was forced to fight one of his friends later. I assume that there are many more choices like this throughout the full game.

Though I went into Unicorn Overlord almost hoping that I wouldn’t have any interest in buying it, by the end of the demo I was hooked. In terms of gameplay, this JRPG is different than pretty much any other game in the genre I’ve ever played. It certainly borrows things from other games, but this is absolutely an original gameplay experience from Atlus. I won’t give a numerical score to a demo, but I will say that I’m definitely buying this one. Though probably not at the $60 launch price.

As always, thanks for reading. Please take the time to follow my blog, leave a comment, and check out some of my other channels if you enjoyed what you read.

Nintendo Direct: Partner Showcase (February 2024) Review

I continue to be impressed by Nintendo’s dominance of the digital presentation game. From the very first Nintendo Direct, the company has always handled the model better than every other brand that has even tried to do them in the gaming space. As the title suggests, Nintendo continues to be direct with their Directs. This latest partner showcase, though a little misleading with the core messaging presented at the beginning of the presentation, was still a master class in how to do it well.

The very first thing said in this Showcase was that you are about to see a presentation of games from publishing and development partners that will be released on the Nintendo Switch in the first half of 2024. This was slightly misleading in the fact that some of the announcements shown were for games that will be releasing after June of this year, but all the announcements are releasing in 2024, and the bulk of them will be releasing within the first half of the year. The more important point is that Nintendo opened with a promise that was clear, concise, and immediately relevant to the viewer.

The second thing I really liked about this presentation was how it was organized. This Direct was broken up into sections by not necessarily genre, but something close to that. It was really nice knowing beforehand if the next series of announcements would be interesting to you. While I always watch the entire presentation, this transparent structure made it easy to skip over the parts of the presentation you knew you wouldn’t care about. Assuming, of course, that you weren’t watching the presentation live, which I never do.

Third, and this goes back to the timing of releases structure I already mentioned, Nintendo Directs are awesome because when they make announcements, they often follow them up with information that will potentially affect you the day of the Direct. There’s nothing I love more than a presentation announcing a game, a release date, and then dropping a demo during/soon after the announcement. In this Direct, Nintendo announced three demo drops and just straight up launched nine games during/within 24 hours of the presentation. And I downloaded all of those demos.

Finally, and this is always the most important thing about Nintendo’s presentations compared to those of Sony and Microsoft, the Direct uses it’s time efficiently and effectively. This presentation was just under 24 minutes. In that time, they showed 31 games. 32 if you count Star Wars: Battlefront Classic Collection as two games. And every game, even the small indies that were shown for less than a minute, got enough footage to make me understand the project and potentially grab my interest enough to look further into it, if I was interested in the genre.

Honestly speaking, most of the announcements shown in this Direct weren’t that impressive. But the way they made those announcements was top tier. Even XBOX had multiple showings in this presentation. Because Nintendo is so confident in their business that they have no problem spotlighting the competition on their own platform.

As far as the actual announcements are concerned, I won’t take the time to go through them all, as again there were several. But I will note that there were several ports, remakes, and remasters, which I’ve already stated my concern about in past blog posts. The industry is clearly stagnating towards IP and easy nostalgia sales. What I’m more interested in is some of the smaller titles I’ve not seen before like Arranger: A Role-Puzzling Adventure and Penny’s Big Breakaway. I’m also impressed with what they showed of South Park: Snow Day. Though I will probably regret the purchase later, I’m definitely going to end up buying Super Monkey Ball Banana Rumble. I like those games, but I’m sure to get bored before clearing 200+ stages.

I have to admit that I was underwhelmed by the closing announcement being Endless Ocean Luminous, but I respect Nintendo having the gumption to do games of all sizes and expectations a solid. It’s easy to close a presentation with something like Zelda, God of War, or HALO. It’s risky to close with something most casual players will simply overlook or not care about.

All-in-all, I consider this a very successful Direct, and I’m sure that I’ll end up buying more than one game that was shown in it. And this was released on the same day that Bandai Namco published the trailer and release date for the Elden Ring DLC. Only Nintendo has the balls to do that; and for good reason.

As always, thanks for reading. Please take the time to follow my blog, leave a comment, and check out some of my other channels if you enjoyed what you read.