Recent reviews by Ray

It's a more accessible, modernized version of Trails in the Sky and as such quite excellent.

Post-game update: Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter is a joy to play. If you were having doubts about playing the original, or had difficulty playing it, I do recommend giving this one a try. It fills a lot of the empty air that you experience in that game with banter between the characters and generally feels like a better-paced game.

As with any Trails game, you do have to pay close attention to the world around you (to see limited-time quest markers) and not put off things if you want to complete things reasonably thoroughly. Bear in mind also that certain boss fights are not required to be won, but do give you bonuses for winning.

If you've played one of the more recent Trails games (Daybreak) this will feel familiar and play reasonably similarly. Looking forward to SC's remake!

Hero's Adventure: Road to Passion is a pretty good RPG with roots firmly in the Xianxia genre. It has some translation hiccups here and there, and if you don't follow certain breadcrumbs early in the game you can end up having to steer things enough on your own initiative that you might be put off by it. But the fundamental gameplay -- which gets in-depth and pretty heavy by the end of a playthrough, and is increased in complexity by a robust new game+ system -- is pretty fun if you're remotely a fan of the genres it occupies.

Combat is turn-based with character speed determining order (and number of actions, past a point; a fast enough enemy might lap you several times before you act if you're very unlucky), and a grid-based movement area with positionals. I'd say things are actually weakest towards the endgame, when every enemy seems to reflect damage.

Cast and characters are charming enough, but the main character only being male is a little baffling since he's a nobody and could be anyone or anything. I will say you basically have to new game+ to see everything; there's plenty of mutual exclusives, to.

Short version: If you liked Genso Suikoden (or any games of that franchise), you'll probably like this. I'd give it an 8/10 in a real system where that's not 'didn't pay enough for the 9/10'. It's a good game, right up there with most Suikoden games, but imperfect.

Long version / my main criticisms, and this may not be as spoiler-free as I'd like though I will try not to include story spoilers, so if you're super concerned don't read:

* The game gets off to a relatively slow start compared to its predecessor in a lot of regards; I'd say it isn't that different from the OG Suikoden except that the OG Suikoden is maybe 20 hours and this is closer to 60, so the 'drag' is much more felt. In particular, the protagonist's "help everyone" nature is bland and not explained until late in the story and his actual reason for ending up being where he is is a lot stronger.

* A fair number of dungeons are simply too long or large, especially relative to the encounter rate. Past a point I barely found the lowered encounter rate from special equipment to be tolerable.

That said, I think the music is good, the gameplay overall is pretty solid if in dire need of a 'turn off encounters' setting in the options, the story is firmly in the territory of Suikoden, it's all good. I think that the plot device of the Primal Rune Lens is actually a little under-explored, and I'd like to know a lot more about that. I'd also like certain mandatory-to-take characters to be better at their jobs.

I'd buy and play a sequel in a heartbeat.

The Matchless Kungfu is pretty fun for what it is; the translation isn't fantastic, but for the most part it's easy to be getting on with. That said, some of the more complicated martial arts are translated in a way that is incomprehensible, and the dialogue is pretty stiff. If you like these sorts of "narrative adventure game" kinda deals, you'll probably enjoy this! Looking forward to more content.

This game is in a fun, but rough state at the moment. My overall opinion of it is that it feels like early Deeprock Galactic: A good enough game on its own, but bound to expand in ways that make it truly great down the road. My most memorable moment was my ship getting stuck on a despawned-but-still-interactable ship and my crew desperately (successfully) scrambling to kill a freighter while it was still in range.

It's not perfect, and if you want perfect you might not be satisfied right now. If you want in on the ground floor though, go for it.

A fun game, with a dev team that de-monetized the "season pass" elements entirely, and with pretty expansive updates.

The Wolf Wars as a DLC was accompanied by a free patch that did a lot of game overhauling; the actual Wolf Wars is a mini-scenario in which you play Magnus, Yogger, and two companions from the Wolf Wars, with potential to encounter other characters that participated in the same. The actual DLC content is mostly skins and Yogger as an additional playable character; most of the improvements to the game that accompanied it were provided for free.

My experience with this expansion is positive; it's a fun enough little scenario, albeit one with no standard rewards, no incentive for faster solving, and pre-set characters. I haven't explored the whole thing yet, but I look forward to doing so.

I would recommend this, with some notes and caveats!

* In style, Chained Echoes derives itself from a combination of Chrono Trigger, Secret of Mana, Tales, Final Fantasy 4-6, Xenogears, Suikoden, and probably other SNES to Playstation JRPGs that a lot of JRPG fans will be very familiar with. There's a lot of familiarity to be found!

* In gameplay, Chained Echoes does away with most of the grinding you expect from JRPGs. Advancement mostly (not entirely!) comes from advancing the plot; you can do optional things to get extra goodies but it's not (IMO) as dramatic a change as grinding in other games.

This game has a lot to do in it, and none of the content is especially inaccessible. If you like what I describe above, it's probably for you. However, it does have a few things I think are worth knowing:

* The non-grinding approach to things means that fights on average are more puzzle work than they are fights in other JRPGs. Whether this is good or not to you is subjective! You can decide.

* Advancement of an area is sometimes nonobvious. What I mean is that there are "event dungeons" in which you are, for example, fleeing from imprisonment and these dungeons sometimes leap forward into major encounters or cutscenes without a whole lot of indication. There are spots in the game where you get a, 'You're not coming back for a while if you advance.' warning, but IMO there's not enough of them relative to places where this does happen.

* There are a lot of systems in the game relative to its otherwise streamlined gameplay. Again, this isn't a strict negative, but I can see it being overwhelming.

* While the arc of the story itself broadly resolves in a way that I think is satisfying, individual character stories MOSTLY feel like they just sort of trail off. There are exceptions, but I can't get into the weeds here without spoilers.

In all, a pretty solid game that I played obsessively, especially if you're a part of the target demographic that played all the JRPGs Chained Echoes is obviously inspired by.

To summarize at the front end: If you even remotely like sidescroller gameplay and are interested because of Eiyuden Chronicle, this game is probably worth it for you but if you're at all hesitant check out somebody's gameplay first. With that out of the way, I'll continue with my overall thoughts.

Eiyuden Chronicle Rising is a decent-to-good sidescroller with light RPG elements, serving as an introduction to the Eiyuden Chronicle franchise. As a sort of spiritual successor to Suikoden I think that the overall tone and sense of humor is captured well, and CJ in particular serves as a decent "classic Suikoden protagonist".

Garoo and Isha have more interesting stories underneath the surface than CJ does however, and I'd consider her to be a weak character by comparison. The set-up for Eiyuden Chronicle overall is pretty good though, and what backstory CJ doesn't have is well-established for the next game by this one.

Gameplay-wise Rising is relatively light on the mechanics of both genres it comes from; you can see the influence of games like Castlevania, but although your abilities expand they're proportionately fixed. Your overall abilities are comparable to a Megaman X character, with double jumps, dashes, "power jumps", short-range teleport, and a temporary hover.

RPG elements (apart from broad RPG-like story structure) are mostly down to the upgrading of armor and weapons as well as the usage of accessories which can modify various aspects of how combat (or other combat-adjacent things like drop rate) plays out. Runes are similar, mostly modifying the elemental powers and resistances available to the player characters.

The items you can carry into battle are limited by your stash's current level, which is neat and can be upgraded across the game. Your ability to get item pick-ups is also limited per "run", beginning at around 50 items and then escalating to around 200. This, I find, is mostly annoying busywork to get around-- it's not fun to upgrade it, just less inconvenient.

You do some village building, which is nice. It's neat to see buildings go up and get upgraded over time, and by the end of the game New Nevaeh looks like a proper village that's had a "gold rush".

Although there is no lack of things to do in theory, the actual quests you're given are fetch quests. There are around 160 you "need" to do in order to get pertinent achievements and high-end equipment, but the game cycles the quests back in case you'd like to do them again.

Personally, this game got me pretty fired up for Hundred Heroes and I'll probably go through clearing achievements later.

On its own merits, I'd say it's a 7/10 and worth its price tag. It's cute, entertaining, has charming enough characters, and I wanted to know what happened in the story next. But it's by no means revolutionary and there's certainly a reasonable argument that its gameplay becomes monotonous.

P. good early access survival game. Neat premise, mechanics are fine but might be harder for a new player to the genre since it seems to assume you'll know the genre conventions. Needs plenty of polish but is already good enough to tell that the value of an early purchase is decently high.