Recent reviews by Hanaeun

Of course it has FOMO season passes = automatic bad review.

+ they're monthly. If you come in 3 years late, you missed out on 36 PASSES of customization for your avatar and profile decoration, I guess...
You want to dress your avatar like Mai Shiranui? Yor Forger? Li-Fen? A Anya Forger background on your phone and profile banner? Too bad, you should've bought the game + its passes before you even knew you wanted to play it. But hey, at least you can wait for SF7 and you'll be on fair playing ground, in 10 years.
- MORE FOMO GRINDS: that was just for avatars, you think official characters surely are safe from FOMO, right? Every few months, a color of Outfit 1 is REMOVED from the game and gated behind hundreds of game at a high PVP rank. So every season that you spend without having paid for a DLC character, you're losing customizations for it just by not owning it.

Trash monetization: you need money to even TRY new characters. The game hardly ever gives you "rental tokens."
What the fxxk is a rental token? It lets you try a character for... ONE HOUR. FYI, video guides on characters on YouTube are 1h+.
Why the fxxk do you even need a rental token in the first place??? Bxxh, testing DLC characters should be available right from the DEMO. It has a total of 2 characters out of 20+.
Why the fxxk would I pay 6€ for a CHARACTER (not even counting the outfit) when I don't even know how it feels to PLAY it? Do people just see bobs and say "that's it, I'm a Mai Shiranui main?"
They do? Okay, so let's talk about bobs then...

Female character design vs premium outfit monetization
ALL female characters (except the protected Mai, and possibly the protected Tifa soon) have been uglified with some kind of bull shxt in order to make you spend money on premium outfits to avoid the ick.
- Chun-Li's ick: wearing smelly granny flats, leggings under a qipao dress???? Nobody does that, it was fine when it was just pantyhose and boots. Visible ankles, granny hair that gives her a huge forehead, barely any eyebrows. You can see how much HAIR makes a difference on how young a woman looks when you look at Outfit 4. Outfit 3 has huge single bun on her hair so I'll never pay for that, I understand double buns, they're cute, but a SINGLE bun on ANY person, man or woman, looks like you have a turd on your head. Also it's a video game, you don't sweat, you don't get your hair wet from being in a bath, you don't get it dusty from doing yoga, there is no reason for a single bun when you're trying to be seen by other human beings.
- Juri's ick: wearing Aladdin pants that make her legs look like low-hanging ballsacks, picture Norway and Sweden hanging from your waist. Surfboard chest to unbalance the whole silhouette. Half TERF-bangs letting you see those ugly tiny half-gone eyebrows. The least offensive because all other outfits are cute.
- Cammy's ick : wearing leggings that don't go all the way down to the foot so you can see a bit of her calves like she's a middle-aged mom doing yoga. #1 rule of tight sportswear, you don't show calves, knees and definitely not thighs. If her boots went just high enough to cover that bit of skin, she'd be fine.
- Lily's ick: beautiful yet single-handedly ruined by her hair that looks like Konohamaru's girl teammate in Naruto, and when the hair is fixed with Outfit 3, then the ick becomes the jorts that they give her, a woman in John Cena jorts. Yet another fashion faux-pas, sis, either show everything or show nothing. There is no way around her ick until maybe we get outfit 4. Dead on arrival.
- Kimberly's ick: her entire existence is an ick. Half her face is forehead with dreadlocks that look like my cables behind my computer (that's so gross even the bikini outfit won't make me play her), annoying voice. DEI hire: has high Mary Sue education but chose to become a ninja, and her gimmick is music and graffiti, it's like they asked a Japanese person what they think of when you say "black people." And before you scream "racism," look at Senna or Mel from LoL and compare it to this abomination. Or hell, compare it to Elena from the very same game, who's from literal KENYA and looked flawless until...
- Elena's ick: her original model already was a bikini, that's a no-no for live-service brain-rot monetization nowadays. So SF6 decided to give her TERF bangs that give her a uselessly big forehead. Fugly Aladdin pants that look like she shat herself inside of them. None of her 3 other outfits have these flaws, so why even do that to the first one?
- A.K.I.: hair literally looks like Hey Arnold. Barely visible eyebrows. Surely the summer outfit fixes it, right???? Nope, she has a huge mole near her mouth on EVERY outfit. A mole on a fictional video game character in a world where cancer doesn't exist, you can't make this shxt up.
- Manon'is ick: Kurt Angle's wrestling outfit on a woman, enough said. Outfit 2: a drag queen crossdressing.
- Marisa's ick: a dude with makeup. Visible safety biker shorts under a skirt, so why even have the skirt? Just give her pants, gross. Most stupid gimmicky hairstyle (and color) that makes 0 sense on a gravitational level. Mole.
- C.Viper's ick: bad American super hero halloween costume. Dish-washing gloves for no reason.
- Ingrid: Crapcom put a condom on her head instead of letting her show off her hair.
The silver lining is that Outfit 2 is very cheap and most of them are good, basically 1€, but if your outfit 2 happens to be trash as well (Manon, Lily, A.K.I., Kimberly, Marisa) then you're screwed, you need 7€ to make the character look like a proper woman.

Meanwhile, the male characters are eating. They're all hot AF and they even received a DILF beard.

Gameplay:
It's my first fighting game since Super Smash Bros Brawl on the Wii and maybe S4 League (a third person shooter with a melee mode) so I don't know yet but it feels very clunky, despite being 3D models, it plays like a game from Sega Megadrive, where you have to stop in your track and crouch to make low attacks, no air control, no running attacks, it doesn't feel smooth. I don't know if it's because all I have is a PS3 controller and small hands, but using the directional pad is too inconsistent for me on the Classic control, so I'm using keyboard instead in the meantime but I'm still trying to figure out an ergonomic keybind layout, which is hard to do on my own since there is not much of a keyboard fanbase.

For that reason, I must say the "Modern" controls option of SF6 is a massive improvement to introducing new players to fighting games. It allows you to do combos with just a couple button presses at the cost of removing a few moves from your toolkit and a slight damage decrease, which is more than reasonable.

Now, credit where credit is due:
- The single player mode is insane and deserves its own review. The character creator is very user-friendly, ahead of its time, hard to mess up despite having so many sliders because there are many ways to work around presets of different ethnicities, undo your mistakes, save your or other players' custom presets for later. AND most impressively, the game doesn't monetize REGRET, changing your face/body/name is basically free and repeatable. Most live-service slop games gate this behind a paywall (FFXIV, WoW, Black Desert, Sea of Thieves...) despite plastic surgery costing no labor in video games.
You can replay every cinematic with different outfits to make beautiful screenshots so there is no FOMO on having the wrong outfit at the time.
- Every character got mad aura when they walk out to the stage. And I don't care that they walk out together like they're a WWE tag team. It reinforces that we're fighting for fun, not to kill.
- The music is adorable in the World Tour and social area. It has a Persona/Street Gears vibe. The only time it's mid is when they start "rapping..." "I beEn StRUgGliNg for YEARSsS" Bruh okay no one asked stop screaming, who the fxxk are you even?

I literally cannot play it because it requires a controller yet it doesn't detect my PS3 controller even though both Steam, Rocket League and Rematch do.

I was promised a MMOG by the YouTubers. It doesn't have that tag so it's unfair but some reviews say it initially was marketed as an MMOG, so I will review it as such.

My first takeaway after just 1 hour of this + watching a bunch of footage of the gameplay loop and Twitch broadcasts: it's hardly an MMOG, just play this if you either:
- don't have money to spend on Final Fantasy XIV subscription,
- are a hardcore normie with all sorts of mental disorders listed in you Twitter bio who wants to avoid the slightest social friction or danger from AI enemies.
I guess it's good for kids, or playing with your parents.

Why do I mention Final Fantasy XIV Online especially when the review is about Palia? Because FFXIV checks all the boxes that I would try Palia for (socializing, housing, fashion) and that are missing in World of Warcraft (which I'm trying to divorce) and most other MMOGs, except it actually delivers on the MMO promise. In FFXIV you:
- have a ton more emotes
- actually look at players when you target them, in Palia they just run past you or stand creepily next to you so you don't know if they're peeping or AFK.
- are not forced to look the same age/height/fitness as everyone else
- have more free fashion items, including many more skirts without ugly unflattering safety shorts without showing too much gyatt
- have far cheaper premium fashion items, like 4 USD for a full beach set instead of 15 USD, many items individually equippable (feet/legs and hands/chest don't share the same equipment slot) and purchasable instead of forcing you into a bundle
- have far more players around you to witness how much you slay (100s vs 25 in Palia)
- you can take screenshots in one button without having to take out your in-game camera and OPTING IN to choose ONE BY ONE which pictures are saved to your computer (Palia has no screenshot button unless you use Steam)
- are the center of your creativity, not your house (and it can be if you choose to, by sharing screenshots or inviting players in your house) your character's makeup and fashion is what players see first from you, in Palia the actual attraction is your house since the character creation didn't get nearly as much love as the housing, the same way that in GTA Online you are actually just your car.
- can play many instruments and any song you want, there are even player-made bands
- have a player profile, via the "adventurer plate", where you can display a cool/funny picture of yourself in countless poses, your interests, a short summary of who you are. WoW RP realms also have that via the Total RP addon.
- have more locations to place your house, which all players can visit at any time, even from other IRL continents

The only downside is that FFXIV requires a subscription to unlock the major social features such as housing and private messages. Hence why I think Palia caters better to casual gamers, moms and their kids, not for people who want to meet other people and have their creations witnessed.
I'm still on the free trial of FFXIV yet I have made many friends just by emoting at them, playing music in the streets, and by simply having noticeable fashion sense.
Some have invited me to their houses and frankly they have nothing to envy from Palia apart from the gold cost of acquiring a house and the subscription required to avoid it being destroyed.

I had the most fun doing ninja wall-kicks on people. I don't remember much else from this game though.

Very fun physics, I love superman-punching and yeeting civilians from the top of a skyscraper.
Gun shots feel impactful.
Your car does more damage than it takes damage when crashing on stuff.

The character creator is atrocious for a game this age. Female haircuts either have a huge forehead and the ones that look decent have a disgusting bun attached to it (imagine having a bun in a video game where you can't sweat or get your hair dirty from yoga or wet from a bath, you may as well not have hair if you're gonna do that).
+ they won't let you even pay for a name change or appearance change. So my first 10 hours in this game were spent leveling multiple characters to level 10 to see how they'd look in different clothes than the starting clothes because I know that's the face I'll be stuck with for HUNDREDS of hours unless I delete my character.

Fun to revisit once in a while.

I wish it had more frequent updates.
Sometimes it's hard to find players so I have to lower the difficulty because bots are stupid.

The GOAT.

I've uninstalled this years ago because they still allow premade parties to play against solo queue players in 2V2, valuing queue times over actual player enjoyment.

The worst crimes of this game:
- No character creator. You choose a random preset which 99 times out of 100 is fugly unless you play a male. I'm not exagerating, took me TWO HOURS of spamming rerolls to find a decent female model that isn't: old/fat/scarred/crooked nose. Why? Because "muh realism, pirates are ugly" the developers are so stuck up sniffing their own farts that they value realism over actual player enjoyment. But the most egregious part about it is that they make you PAY real money to again REROLL a new RNG pirate.
- Forced PVP. No, Safer Seas mode doesn't fix it, the rewards are reduced, not all available, and you can't play with random players. Add a real PVE server and the game is fixed.
- Combat sucks massive donkey c♥♥♥, worse than Skyrim. At least Skyrim's is just floaty but you can move around, SOT's is clunky and frustrating, full of cancels when you get hit, your animation goes off but not the damage, you don't know if you're actually channeling your sword lunge or not. There is no crosshair for guns, again because "muh realism" (remember that part, it will matter later). It's so f♥♥♥ing bad I'd actually play better if it were Virtual Reality as I would actually have more of an idea of where I'm aiming. Skeletons and ghosts basically have an aim bot so you have to eat the damage of their guns with no counter play unless you're far and strafing, there are these gimmicky golden skeletons that are so f♥♥♥ing tedious to fight because they are slow and only killable by using water + a gun on them so you have to run super far to find water and wet every single one of them because your bucket isn't AOE and you only have 6 bullets till you have to find more ammo.
There is no health bar for anything but yourself, that's stupid, it's a video game, but hey "muh realism."
Say skill issue all you want, if being good implies learning gamy, unfun and clunky mechanics (like animation-canceling with emotes with Riven in LoL, fake casting in WoW), I'm just not going to play your game, have fun not finding people to play against while I get instant queues in League of Legends.

- hardly playable solo because of how easy it is for larger crews to hit you when they can steer their ship at the same time.
Open Crew doesn't fix it. Recently I tried playing Open Crew, which means any other random friendless player can join me (as it should be in an online game), one kid joined while I was fighting a valuable skeleton galleon, he instantly left, and that was it for 2 hours, no one else joined. It's an isolated case that it took this long, maybe a bug, but it ruined enough of my rare free time of the week that I wanted to make this review.
Sometimes it's better not even to open your crew because of griefers, especially if you're close to delivering valuable loot. And sometimes it's worth opening it just for safety so that you can engage into PVE combat without worrying about other crews instantly sinking your defenseless ship.

- Remember what I said about this focus on realism, well, Rare gives the advantage to the aggressor with all sorts of UNrealistic bullsh*t such as: hiding in a barrel that you literally pull out of your a♥♥ AND which gives you unrestricted THIRD PERSON VIEW whereas everyone else actually doing stuff is restricted to first person view. Explain me that, how the f♥♥♥ do you get 360° BETTER sight than other players when you are inside a pitch black barrel with 0 hole in it? ... Next, throwing yourself from your cannon to another ship, seeing pacifist player ships on the map when you have the PVP faction (Reapers) flag raised, using cursed cannonballs that anchor their boat or prevent them from taking wood to repair it,

- Pay real money just to rename your SHIP.
- FOMO battle passes every few months so you can't take long breaks lest you miss out on cosmetics forever. So now I'm just playing when there is a pass active so I don't waste my time playing for no reward, which is now the norm in live service games that aren't fun enough to organically retain players so it's not about to end soon.
- Instructions from riddles and tall tales are needlessly vague or straight up misleading and thus impossible to 100% beat without Googling them at some point. Facts. Don't lie.

- Now, time for a personal rant about how I missed out on the RAREST reward of this game because Rare doesn't actually tell new players that it's ultra rare. At around my first 60 hours in this game, I and a friend I met in Open Crew were attacked by the rarest megalodon in the game, the Shrouded Ghost, which has like a 0.1% chance to appear out of the 5 megalodon species (people with thousands of hours have never seen it) and gives you a title and a cosmetic ship figurehead ( a mini white shark). To us, it was just like any megalodon, so my friend dropped the anchor and we fought it, but at some point it just chickened out and disappeared, I don't know why, we were confused. My only theory was because we were getting close to an island or a rock so it escaped but I don't remember seeing any island and I don't see how we'd move to one since we stopped the ship, maybe the megalodon pushed us when it hit us, but noobs shouldn't have to know this anyway, the game should tell us.
I did tell him "I think it was one of the rarer ones" because I had not seen this color yet but I didn't know it was that low (especially considering the game had been throwing all sorts of megalodons and krakens at me during my first 3 days) nor that killing megalodons gave cosmetic rewards so I didn't even take a screenshot, and out of peer pressure I didn't insist on trying to find it, especially because that friend was a "Pirate Legend" so you'd think he'd know about rare stuff and would tell me.
I've been mad at him forever since then although he was like a middle-schooler so realistically I don't expect him to have done research about what's worth fighting for rare rewards, he just launches the game to have fun.
And that's a problem when the game has so many kids in it, you lean on realism so you can say "urr that's the beauty of exploring, your fault for not immediately figuring out that you had to roam around in hopes to find it again for a reward that you didn't know existed" but where is the realism when you magically get a title and a miniature Shrouded Ghost figurehead even though NO ONE else saw you kill it and it doesn't even drop anything that would indicate it's from this species?


Positives... kind of:
- ship battles against skeleton crews are really fun, epic and engaging, they're my favorite type of encounter
- treasure maps are my second favorite, they perfectly fulfill the pirate fantasy of digging in a beautiful island for treasures, sadly they're far from the meta in terms of gold per hour.
- the game is really pretty, though only in one third of the map, the West. The middle starts to look like the UK, the far east is North Korea.
- the cosmetic cash shop isn't egregious, I haven't felt like I need to spend real money to look cool. Though locking emotions to communicate with other people in a social game (emotes) is cringe. Typing is boring, emotes are more fun.