Recent reviews by devvi

I get upset every time I think about how much progressively worse each Monster Hunter release is after World/Iceborne. I don't know whats worse, the god awful performance from an old ass engine, ill-fitted for this type of game, or the increasingly bleak content drops each release, only to be "potentially" improved in expansion DLC a year and half down the line for about half the price of the base ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ game. I'm SO SO ANGRY at myself for buying this game, when all the warning signs were plain to see during the open beta test. Can't recommend this game, even if it was on sale. Wait for Expansion, and even then i still wouldn't recommend buying it until reviews come out. Absolutely buns game.

After playing this game in its entirety, Metaphor is a good game for what it is with a very strong art style and artistic influence, not only in art style but also in music (REALLY REALLY good btw) and references in classic literature. At it's core it is a strong RPG with a commentary on idealism of a prosperous society and our long uphill battle to achieve such a world, which is much expected from some of the developers and directors of the Persona and SMT games. That's about the best this game has to offer as much as I hate to admit it. Outside of art style, this game is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ UGLY and has no business being this ugly and unoptimized at the same time, while having pretty much the best art style and UI that I've ever seen in a video game let alone a JRPG. This game also had CRAZY marketing and hype when it was announced, giving people the impression that it was going to be on the same level as titles like Persona 5 and SMT 5 and while it somewhat succeeds on borrowing mechanics from both, more so the former, it completely sucks at balancing those mechanics when it comes to "difficulty". For starters the game has MASSIVE difficulty plateau at the beginning of the game all the way until you get your fourth party member due to the fact that you're lacking a lot of skills needed to efficiently deal with early game enemies and bosses while actively punishing you for having a balanced, sustainable party. After you get you're fourth party member however, the game gets a bit easier and gives you a lot of customization options through archetype skills and evolution paths. This becomes a problem later on because late game bosses become unfair as to counteract the crazy amount of busted ♥♥♥♥ you can do in this game, to the point of a lot of optional and a few mandatory boss fights boiling down to pure RNG. And not like SMT bs type RNG which is mostly preventable even if only situationally so. Like...Pokémon level RNG, like you get a bad roll and you just lose immediately and can't recover. A certain ice dragon is the most notorious example of this, and anyone who has gotten far enough into the story will know what I'm talking about. This game's dungeon/level design is atrocious, only being a step above SMT5's "dungeons", but a least that game gets a pass due to being a semi open-world game. For a game that's supposed to be of the same caliber of games like Persona, there no reason why these dungeons should be so bland and soulless. Hell I had more fun exploring, Tartarus and Mementos more than I did the major dungeons in Metaphor. The only dungeon I actually enjoyed was one of the mid to late game dungeon which took heavy inspiration from Etrian Odyssey, and that's the ONLY reason I liked it. In this game, instead of social links or confidants you form something called Bonds, which is the same thing but instead of 10 ranks they're 8 ranks. Some of the Bond's story lines are pretty good, but most of them aren't really anything to write home about but they aren't bad at all, but what they do accomplish is making you feel like you are building and actual political movement which is a really nice touch for this kind of game.

At the end of the day, this game is a hard 7/10 for me, and at BEST manages to feel like an 8 sometimes, but nowhere near the 10/10 ratings people were giving this game when it came out. Especially when compared to similar games like Expedition 33, which is an ACTUAL 10/10. This game ain't worth the price of 70 bucks with terrible balancing, awful graphics and performance, shoddy and crappy in-game cutscenes, and uninspired level design. It's still good, but get it on sale.

I bought this game on sale for 10 dollars. This game is worth several times more than that for the amount of content and gameplay loop. I'M ADDICTED. ROCK AND STONE!

Everything No Straight Roads wasn't.

Simply put, Wario Land 4 meets Classic Sonic with a Courage the Cowardly Dog-esque humor and art style. Need I say more?

Best JRPG of the last decade.
This is coming from someone who bought this game 3 times on two different platforms and currently doing a modded difficulty playthrough. This entry in the series tackles societal issues as opposed to mortality or inner truth. Learning from Persona 3 and 4, it finds a nice sweet spot between rich characterization and an interesting plot, resulting in a truly enriching experience. Being a Persona game, the music is expected to be good, but good is an understatement. The music in this game is straight up disgusting. That being said, this game isn't perfect (It almost is.). Some characters don't get as much screen time as one would like and the said character's story arc is considerably lacking in quality in comparison to the others. Another issue is the balancing of the difficulty mode Merciless, the highest difficulty. Supposedly this game mode is supposed to increase enemy crit rate and damage, but it also increases the player's in the same way while also giving them an exp boost, making the difficulty easier than Hard mode.
I would however NOT recommend this game to newcomers to the series. If any newcomers are reading this, I can't stress this enough. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE start with Persona 4 Golden! It's 1/4th the price of this game and will only make you appreciate this game so much more than if you were to play this game first. It'll also condition you to try the other games in this series and even try the Shin Megami Tensei main series as well. Don't become the annoying Persona 5 only fans.

This gift of a JRPG gets a 9.5/10 from me. This is a must-play!

Rise is garbage. Sunbreak is Iceborne level. It's like night and day.

I had only played Hacker's Memory on PS4 and didn't get far past the first chapter, since I was confused about the story. So I decided to play the complete edition on PC. After 41 hours, this is what I have to say.

This game is an 8/10 for me. Growing up with Digimon World 1-3, Digimon World DS, and Digimon World Dawn, I can say with definite confidence that for a niche franchise like Digimon, the series has evolved, unlike a certain other monster-raising series with a $109 billion dollar company backing them. That isn't to say this game is perfect, far from it actually, but to give credit where credit is due, this game is great.

The battle system works like it did in Digimon World DS with some elements of Digimon World 3, except this time the monster raising aspect has taken a few notes from Pokemon and has something similar to EV training in this game, but with a little more depth, which may or may not be a good thing depending on the type of player you are. There are some straight-up confusing aspects about training your Digimon that the game straight doesn't tell you so you will have to do a bit of 8th-grade math to get the maximum effect of training from your Digimon. It goes without saying that this game is grindy (It's a Digimon game, you knew what you were getting yourself into.) but thanks to the farms and certain tamer/hacker skills there are ways to farm efficiently and it is honestly quite rewarding in my opinion. The difficulty in this game I would say is challenging no matter what option you pick, but Normal seems to be easy enough to get you through the game with minimal training effort but still challenging. Hard, on the other hand, is quite spicy and there is definitely a difficulty spike around the 7th Chapter (I have no idea how long this game is) but it's not as hard as everyone says it is. So if you want a somewhat casual experience I would advise picking Normal, although keep in mind you can change the difficulty at any time.

In terms of story, I can only fairly say that Cyber Sleuth is pretty decent in terms of story, though some parts of the plot may be a little questionable which probably may be due to the abysmal translation in this game; more on that later. I can't speak for Hacker's Memory since I didn't play much. A lot of the characters in Cyber Sleuth don't feel very impactful, minus three characters out of the dozens of characters introduced to you.

The soundtrack in this game is very impressive. Going in, I didn't expect this kind of music to bless my ears. There are some weak songs but MOST songs in this game are very good. I find myself stopping in the middle of a battle and just listening, or looking up the soundtrack and just listening sometimes.

Now for my problems with this game. The localization. I knew what I was getting into when I bought a Bamco game, let alone a Digimon game but COME ON. There is no way this game with a $60 CDN tag should have this poor of a translation. At times I found myself laughing at these glaring English errors, and other times just angry because some conversions don't make any sense, or the UI will bug out because the game had 3 different dialogue options in the Japanese version, and English localization changed it to one string of text. Sometimes the MC will be referred to by the wrong gender pronouns, or the translation doesn't know the difference between "Monster" (Bakemono) and Bakemon. I swear some of this game's script was run through google translate. Some of the features in this game like the Sleuth Ranking are completely useless, it is only there to gather points and raise an arbitrary number that rewards you with a trophy. That's it. Why is that even in the game if it doesn't DO anything??? Because this game is a port, there are also bugs with the Borderless Fullscreen options, including but not limited to issues with renaming your Digimon, an issue with alt-tabbing where the game will trigger inputs on the game, and even the resolution bugging out the first time you mess with the graphical settings.

Despite all that I think this game is definitely worth a buy, but not at the price it's listed at. The game currently has a $60 CDN price tag, yet has glaring localization errors, easily fixable port bugs, and an underwhelming character cast. Because of all those issues, I think the game deserves an 8/10, which is unfortunate because I like this game and I want to it a higher score, but then I remember the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ in this game. Buy this game on sale or some kind of deal, it isn't worth the $60 price tag. Hopefully, my review will change for the better after I play Hacker's Memory.

After beating this game, I give this a 7.5/10. Why not an 8, 9 or 10? Think of this game like a slightly under cooked cake. It looks great, smells great and tastes great, but when you bite into it, you can still feel the clumps of batter in your mouth. That's Eastward.
The pacing of the story was okay, not bad by any means but it could've been better. I felt one of the early chapters was kind of pointless, where another early chapter that felt too short could've been more fleshed out to give the player sentimental value to some of the characters and environment.
Characters didn't get the arcs they deserved. This game has many interesting and charming characters that make you smile whenever they're on screen yet they barely get any backstory to really make you feel attached.
Combat is basic, but that's not really a problem as this is a very classic-zelda inspired game.
Finally the ending of this game just left me with unanswered questions and even more questions which kind of pissed me off.
I feel like Eastward needed a bit more time in the oven to fix its writing, as the overall story is okay but it had so much potential which is really frustrating.

Despite all that, for what it is, it's price and the quality you're getting, this game definitely didn't feel like a waste of my time. The art is astounding, the humor is charming, the soundtrack has some bangers and the overall story is pretty good. Eastward isn't perfect but for it's price I definitely recommend this game.

Get this game on sale or discount. Such a shame this is how Altus wants to treat one of their greatest masterpieces. The audio compression, 30 fps hardcoded game logic, the gross ghosting resample effects from 2003, the Maniax version of the game being $13 DLC, all of it makes me wonder why this game is $60 bucks. That being said, the new voice work in both english and japanese dubs are excellent and the updated textures are a nice touch as well. They also put in some QoL changes such as manual skill inheritance on your demons. The game itself is great, but its not worth the price....like at all. Save your money and get it on sale.