Recent reviews by Simakaze

Overall/tl;dr: If the writing and difficulty were on par with the OST and JP VA, this would be an easy top 10 game for me. As it stands, it's still a great game and an easy recommend to fans of the genre.

Most of my enjoyment of the game came from wandering around, traversing dungeons, finding equipment, fighting optional bosses not labeled on the map and what not. The battle system was also fun, but the difficulty rarely pushed me to go beyond "buff Ochette and have her bite for 99k." There are better strats I'm sure, but nothing pushed me beyond that. There's a job system I rarely engaged with aside from weapon coverage, stat sticks, and maybe a passive. I enjoyed the 8 person fight during the final battle more. Regardless, the battle presentation with the VAs, animations, etc. were cool and never got old in my 67ish hour playthrough.

Octopath 2 is inspired by classic RPGs, but story-wise it has difficulty standing up to classic Final Fantasties (which I define as pre-X) when the series started taking its story telling more seriously with 4. OT2's characters are mostly fine, but their storylines and antagonists felt weak overall. I rate Ochette's story higher than most because she lacked a central antagonist which made it feel refreshing compared to mustache twirling villains going "mwahaha" in most other scenarios. Regardless, I liked Temenos's scenario and Throne's scenario, despite my nitpicks with them. Oswald's started strong, perhaps the strongest opening chapter(s) in my opinion, then had a flat ending. Ochette's was fun until the final story beats. The rest are OK. There's also a lot of lore for people into that.

• Scenario preference: Temenos > Throne > Ochette > Hikari > Oswald > Castti > Partito.
  
• Characters: Ochette > (HUGE GAP) > Temenos > Oswald > Hikari/Partito > Castti > Throne.

yes Ochette is best girl and it isn't even close and...What's that? I'm listing seven characters when there's eight...? Well...

I guess Agnea exists, but man. What a waste of a character and scenario. She's a clumsy dancer whose clumsy traits hardly show up. Her scenario is COMPLETELY inconsequential to the larger story at hand. Nothing changed with her succeeding her journey, and nothing would have changed otherwise aside from an Agnea with an existential crisis who probably would've been more interesting. A textbook definition of "filler". Her musical tracks are labeled "Hope", yet I didn't really get "Hope" from her storybeats. At the very least, I thought her character theme and final scenario battle theme were great.

Which leads me to the OST, and it's ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ fantastic. I wouldn't be surprised if most of the budget went to the JP VA and OST. I'd go as far as to say OT2's OST is one of the best, if not the best, OST I've heard in recent years. The motifs of each character, and their motifs playing before a boss, is such a cute touch and great attention to detail (Which OT2 has in spades, another appreciated aspect of the game).

• Favorite songs: Critical Clash 2, Torrent of Evil, Tropu'hopu - Secret Paradise, Cait's theme.

tfw when waited over a decade for my favorite fg to get (officially) ported to PC only for it to have delay based netcode

A gem of a game. Pathologic 2 is a difficult game to describe. It's first person with survival elements, horror elements, and slight RPG elements. Yet, I wouldn't call it a first person open world survival horror RPG. To put it simply, Pathologic 2 is its own unique beast. A dark, depressing, mature beast. And what an amazing beast it is.

The omnipresent harsh difficulty, surreal characters and writing, strange location, and ambient music combine to create an unmatched atmosphere. I'm not interested in the whole "are games art?" argument, but this game is without a doubt a piece of art. The elements which make up the atmosphere can't be done in a book or movie and can only be done in a game.

This is a game that's best played and finished blind. The less specifics known, the better. Regardless, even if you happen to know a spoiler or two, or the entire game, I'd still recommend playing through it. The story, while fantastic, is simply another part of the whole. You can't experience something by just reading or watching about it, and video games are no different. The choices a player makes in Pathologic 2 matter beyond the narrative. While the narrative will go its predetermined path, the way a player gets there will be unique. How one would get a piece of bread, for instance, has different accumulative consequences depending on how the player obtains it. I've once read that Pathologic 2 is a game that tests your character, and I can't disagree with that.

I recommend playing on the intended difficulty. The easier difficulties and difficulty slider were added for game journalists (and babies) who complained how hard the game is. And you're better at video games than a game journalist...Right?

Jokes aside, the game is intended to be brutal. To change that would rob the experience. As a result, this game isn't for everyone. However, I still recommend Pathologic 2 as it's an amazing piece of art and one of a kind. Anyone interested should give it a try.

Grim Fandango is an excellent adventure game, and I highly recommend it for anyone that enjoys good writing in video games, comedy, or just wants an adventure game/story fix. Grim Fandango takes several notes from Mexican and Axtec culture, which you can see from the various settings the game has and appealed to me since I like that sorta stuff. The music is top notch, with jazzy tunes accompanied by a calm noir theme. It's rare for a video game to make me laugh with its writing and voice acting. The lines are well written and delivered just as well from believable characters that there were multiple moments where I was laughing with the game, not at it, for once. This is surprising to me as when the game was originally made (1998), voice acting was still experimental and mediocre at best. But Grim Fandango is the exception, and I truly beleive it's better than a good majority of voice acted games made today. The voice acting reminds me of a really well done cartoon.

Perhaps the biggest shortcoming is its adventure game logic. There were more than a few times I had to consult a walkthrough to figure out what I had to do, and in one instance I was on the right track, but I was told I couldn't do that because a vehicle I had was not in a precise spot. It's always hard to tell if you're dumb or the game is just obtuse with these adventure games, and Grim Fandango is unfortunately no exception. The mouse controls implemented in the remastered version aren't perfect, and there are a few times where it's better to switch to keyboard (or preferred input method) which can be a bit annoying. There was also an instance where I softlocked the game forcing a restart. That was near the end, though, and it was an optional conversation.

Overall I'd say this is the best adventure game I've played, despite my minor complaints.

A competent, casual 2-D plane beat em up with a heavy anime aesthetic that may have too many mechanics for its own good. This game features a level up system where you can strengthen your chosen character after each stage, or after each game over just in case you have issues with a particular area. Unfortunately, it's hard for this level up system to shine as the game is incredibly short. So short, in fact, that by the time you finish the game on normal, you probably won't even have all (or half, depending on how you use your skill points) of the skills unlocked for your chosen character. Naturally this encourages replayability, as difficulties are unlocked through each successful playthrough. However, you also unlock characters on your first clear, so if your favorite character is unlockable, you can't transfer EXP over to the new character. This can make it a bit difficult to start Hard mode with a fresh character unless you're willing to grind. Since the battle system isn't too complicated, it's easy to burn out after a few clears unless you really enjoy the mechanics. The game's music is nice sounding chiptunes.

However, the game could have done with a much better tutorial. Each mechanic has its own separate page instead of grouping similar mechanics together, which can be a lot of info to take in at once. I'm the type who likes to know what he's getting into, so this was kind of a pain and, at worst, frusterating when trying to read the "tutorial." I'm still not too certain on some mechanics after beating the game a 1.5 times, but I know most of the mechanics are there to keep you pressing buttons no matter what happens. Additionally, some enemy types are pretty annoying to fight against. It doesn't help that the background and foreground mechanic can make it hard to tell what is happening. If you're in the back, for instance, foreground characters will block the screen with no transperancy. This can make it confusing to tell what the heck is even happening as enemies later on get huge, and at worst can slow down the action when you jump inbetween planes to get a grasp on the situation. I'm not quite sure why enemies not on your plane weren't made transparent as it seems like an obvious decision to me, and was my biggest issue when playing the game.

Overall if you're looking for a casual, short beat em up with cute anime girls I'd recommend it. It's not a bad way to blow off steam after a long day. I've heard comparisons drawn to Scott Pilgrim, but they're not very similar mechanic wise.

Cocoa/Frau > Itsuki > rest