Recent reviews by benderboyboy

A fun little puzzle game with nice character writing. A little high on cost, but I'd recommend on a discount.

Amazing little game. If this ever becomes a full thing, I'd buy it.

The most Japanese game ever made, and it's somehow not made in Japan?!?!

Heartfelt tale, fun characters, fascinating world. Short and smooth gameplay. Nothing bad to say about it. I really wish there will be a sequel or prequel though. The world is so interesting and beautiful, I just want to keep exploring it.

Writing and gameplay loop is definitely a 10/10. It's obvious a lot of love was poured into those areas, and it shows. It's addictive fun, the voice acting is superb, and the characters are so well written, I can't help but love all of them, even those I loved to hate.

The only downside are the QoL. Towards the end of the game, when you have hundreds of ingredients, it can be a chore to brew them and get to the fun part of haggling. An easy fix would be to have a way to save potion recipes. This actually makes it a little annoying because I've finished the game, but still want to continue playing, but don't want to go through the chose of scrolling through and finding each ingredient and choosing them again.

But despite that, I would still 100% recommend this game for people who like resource management game with good characters and writing.

Wished there was a tag for "push your luck", because video gamers seems unfamiliar with that concept. Push your luck games are often a boardgame genre. You play the game under uncertain conditions, betting on probability and hopes on a string.

ColdRidge is a very good game in that genre. It utilizes the fact that it's run on a computer to create probabilities that would otherwise be impossible to do in a boardgame. If you're into push your luck games, you'll keep getting that "just a little more" feel, especially on the harder difficulties as your money goals and contract goals are hairline thin.

So yeah, if you're into push your luck games, this is definitely one of the best.

Background extensively uses AI art. Ethical issues aside, it's super distracting as the style constantly change, and looks like ♥♥♥♥.

Someone snuck their Kamen Rider into my Persona. Damn you, DECADOOOO!

Alright, in all seriousness, Affogato is a pretty damn fun game. The reverse tower defense mechanic feels like a real puzzle to solve, and is challenging enough to really push your thinking, especially on the harder difficulties.

The writing is also good, with little lore dumps here and there that makes the world immersive. The characters are fun, and the art is nice. I wished there was more to the coffee making, honestly, and the Persona friendship aspect could be more fleshed out. As it is, it's a good game. Solid 8/10. I hope if it gets a sequel, we can see all the gameplay be bought to a new level.

Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes (EC:HH), is touted as the spiritual successor to the Suikoden series, and I'm going to be blunt, it lived up to that spirit wonderfully, and then some. Since it is a JRPG, I will be reviewing under that genre.

Combat is your traditional turn based JRPG. Like a lot JRPGs, there are minimum information about mechanics, and they are meant to be solved by the players in-game, like a mini puzzle. Newer generations of players are going to find this annoying, but people who like to not be handheld with endless tutorials will find the experience of experimenting with the mechanics enjoyable.

Like a lot of JRPGs, minigames are galore. The quality of some of these minigames can be iffy, but JRPGs are often designed with minigames to break up the tedium, not as a main component. Having so many options to choose from is great when you need a break from farming. I spent about 40 of my 160 hours of game on minigames, which I feel is a good balance.

The base building is really satisfying if you're into seeing your headquarters grow. Visually, it really scratches an itch. The hero recruitment also scratch that same itch. Some people might not enjoy the tedium of the search, but that's more a tastebud than a flavor issue. The heroes are not all directly connected to the story, but still feel like they play their part. Enough of them interact regularly that I don't find it underwhelming or overwhelming.

The story is about a solid 7/10. It's nothing outstanding, but it's serviceable and enjoyable. The greatest downside though is the 3rd act, which felt a little rush towards the end. It felt like the developers wanted to push in 1 arc into the game, but was forced to end early due to deadlines.

My favorite moments are the quiet interactions between characters that you can dig up at rest, when entering new areas, reading the lore, combo attacks, and sometimes in cutscenes. There's a solid character writing team behind this game that carries inter-character interactions well.

A 2D pixel art on a single-camera 3D world. You'd think that'd be jarring, but it ended being a really beautiful and simplistic art direction that combined the beautiful animations of retro pixel art and details of 3D.

The art style reminds me of games in the late 1990s, where we were just transitioning to the 3D world and developers had to do a lot with very little. But now, we have access to far better resolutions and processing to truly push that same spirit of "making it work" to its limit. You can tell the developers chose this style due to budget reason, but they really pulled it off. It's really beautiful, and the battle cutscenes done in the same style are amazing.

HOLY RUNES! The audio! It's amazing!

The amount of voice acting done for this game is insane. Almost every line in every quest and side quest are FULLY VOICED. The optional dialogues, the cutscene interactions, the theater! I cannot stress enough that the amount and quality of the voice acting in a game of this scale from is absolutely BONKERS!

The music is really pumping it too. They get a lot of mileage out of it's main theme, "Flag of the Brave", with it being the primary key to a lot of the music. Reminds me a lot of the music direction of HALO:CE. And all the other compositions really stand strong in their own scenes. There's a little something missing from the directorial usage of the music that stops my score from going to a perfect 10. Like some scenes just feels a little bit out of sync from the music required. But other than that, I have no complaints.

I really enjoyed the difficulty. The game has a normal and hard mode, with multiple optional modifiers for the hard mode. I maxed everything out to give myself the hardcore experience, and it really delivered. On hard mode, you really have to manage your SPs and MPs, and know when to deal, heal, and take damage.

Fights are balanced, more or less. There is 1 difficulty spike in the early game that is not that hard to overcome once you click with the basic mechanics. Because of the location the spike is in the story, I think it might be on purpose to weed out the people who may not enjoy the rest of the game, which is a sort of old school kindness. It's just after the prologue, so you should still be able to get a refund if you don't gel well with the gameplay.

A solid JRPG that does what it says on the tin and delivers a fun experience. From a studio of this size, they definitely made a game of this scale the best they could, and that deserves a hearty clap.

You know what I'm talking about. You probably saw some of it while scrolling through the reviews. I'm talking about the "controversy". There's a group of terminally online, politically obsessed, and borderline racists that are angry that the English localization is "too woke", "too political", and "mistranslated".

First off, my credential. I'm an English language professional writer (18 years) and game designer (11 years) IRL. I also work with translations as a hobby (8 years). Suikoden as a series, and the original novel, Water Margin, that it was based on, are the first literary works that I performed analysis on. So I know what I'm talking about when I say those types of negatives reviews are full of sh*t. The game does have some legitimate areas worth giving a bad review for, but the translation is not one of them.

Firstly, localization is not the same as translation. A translation is usually direct, and requires the readers to have an understanding of the culture to pick up on nuances. Honorifics like "sama" and "senpai" are usually kept under this context, and words with no direct translations are sometimes left to it. It can be simplifed as "DIRECT TRANSLATION"

A localization is usually for a general audience. Everything is translated to an English equivalent or nearest. The cultural context like honorifics and no direct translation words are given a cultural equivalent. For example, a character in the game calls the protagonist "aniki", which is an honorific for "brother". But in context, it is said in the same tone as a mafia calling someone their family, so the English localization turned it into "cousin". Like, "Ey~ Cousin Tony!" Basically, it is "EQUIVALENT TRANSLATION".

The localization in the game is not only correct, but actually went above and beyond to fully translate cultural contexts. Jokes and puns that only work in Japanese are brought over with equivalents, even sound effects and gags are done. The localizer is a veteran in their craft, and from what I know of their works (Kingdom Hearts/Fire Emblem/Gotta Protectors etc), they are top notch. One of the best in world, let alone the industry.

Here's the REAL reason why these detractors are making noise.

The game is "too woke" and "too political"? We're talking about the spiritual successor to freaking Suikoden! SUIKODEN! A game series particularly about war and political intrigue being too political? Is this a freaking joke?

"Too woke"? Are you talking about Suikoden III, which is a game about segregation that has a large ethnic cast? Or Suikoden IV & Tactics, which are about the horrors of unregulated weapons leading to gun (cannon) violence? Or Suikoden V, which is a game about FEMINISM?! Some of the most iconic cast in the series are DRAG QUEENS! Tierkreis is anti-fatalism, Suikoden I is anti-oligarchy, and Suikoden II is anti-nationalism! Hell, Water Margin, the original novel the games are based on, has a mythical prologue about PRISON REFORM!

The Suikoden series, and by extension, Eiyuden, HAS ALWAYS BEEN WOKE AND POLITCAL! These people don't know what they're talking about and are clearly using this game as an excuse to push a warped ideology.

It's an okay game, but the story feels unfinished, even with the DLC. It has a pretty well designed daily life cycle, highly reminiscent of well designed farming simulator like Harvest Moon, where everything has a place and a schedule that makes sense without needing you to check the wiki every time you need to find a basic person or thing.

The big issue is still the story, and how it seems unfinished. The tech tree can also get a little tedious, though I understand why it was made that way to pace the game. A good small chunk of craftables are quite useless though, and I wish there were slightly more automation, such at corpses that can drop of open pallets automatically.

Anyway, 6.5/10. Get on a good discount. Good to kill some time.