Recent reviews by Bun-Taicho

One of the best Westerns I've experienced across any type of media, set in one of the most believably rendered worlds I've ever played in. For all the usual problems I can point out in many, MANY Rockstar games I've played over the years, many of which still show up in this game, from the occasional bugs to the restrictive mission structure to strange implementations of certain mechanics like the Wanted system to that awful, godforsaken Rockstar launcher; I still wouldn't hesitate to recommend RDR2 over any of this company's other open world games, even any of the GTAs. If you've somehow never played any of them and can only afford one, choose this one. Forget the rest. Fantastic story, great characters, great setting, phenomenal music, exhilarating combat, horse balls, it's all here. I went into this game expecting the cowboy fantasy. I did not expect it to be such an emotional cowboy fantasy. But I'm glad it was. Arthur Morgan is one of the best, most compelling, most fleshed out protagonists ever written for games. And it's one hell of an arc worth experiencing.

I ain't gonna make this a long review. Folks have both sang this game's praises and pointed out its problems for years. And even with some of its flaws, the vast majority have recommended it. And it turns out, they had every reason to do so. Grab it on a sale, ignore the multiplayer, be the cowboy you always wanted to be, and horse balls.

A game with a concept this utterly insane should've been a kusoge. "Horse girl idols" seems like the kind of idea that someone thinks up while they're getting plastered with their friends in a college dorm room... which, considering this is a Japanese IP, is probably exactly what happened, except it's business dudes in suits getting drunk in an izakaya.

I'm loving this. But I'd be more enthusiastic to recommend Uma Musume to more people if it were just a full game I can buy and unlock stuff by playing rather than having the gacha element. That wouldn't be an alien concept to Cygames either, considering their big PC/console titles like Granblue Relink and Versus Rising are games you just buy once, and you can just play a ton to get their their DLC characters. It's the same opinion I have for most good gacha games that have actual mechanics or insanely good production value, and this might just be the best one I've played.

Still, it's free, and I've had a ton of fun without ever being tempted to pull my wallet out, 'cause I like everything about this except the gamba. I've built an immunity to that nonsense years ago by employing a simple tactic: being too broke to gamble even if I wanted to. So on that front, if you're the frugal type, it should be no problem to just give this a shot and not worry about emptying your bank account lol. After nearly getting one of the "worst" starter horse girls in the game to the very end of the career mode on my second try, and finally getting a win with another one I got for free that many considered one of the toughest to train, I realized real quick that there are no bad horse girls. Only bad trainers. P2W? Nah. She simply raced better. Trained harder. Ran faster.

The management and rogue-like aspects are already surprisingly engaging, especially since the career mode progresses a unique story for each of the horse girls (or you can just skip through all the dialogue and maybe read it later in the archive if you're a trainer WHO DOESN'T CARE ABOUT YOUR TRAINEES' DREAMS AND ASPIRATIONS). And the payoff of watching the time investment and decision-making culminate in a well-presented, hype af race is just fantastic. It's absolute cinema every time. It makes perfect sense now why this popped off in Japan hard, and once the Global version came out, got everybody and their mom giving it a go.

By the way, this also has an anime. I'd already seen the first season years ago and it was great. I didn't know it had two more seasons, a movie, and OVAs... so I got some catching up to do.

Rising is the second chance that GBVS deserved after COVID killed its offline and delay-based netcode killed its online.

While it markets itself as an accessible game that's very beginner-friendly, that's not to say that it lacks any depth. This has turned out to be one of my favorite types of fighting games, or really just games in general. Fairly low skill floor, insanely high skill ceiling. It won't take long for you get some exceptionally sweaty people to face off against both in ranked and casual matches, but that's where everything Rising provides comes in handy. Everything from its detailed but easy-to-understand character guides and combo lists in training mode, frame data, tutorials for pretty much every single mechanic in the game, it's all here. Technical inputs exist, and in many ways, mashing your face onto your controller as we all do when we start off will get you killed, just as it was in the OG GBVS, but simple inputs make timings much easier to chain your normals into your specials. The addition of the Bravery Points system for raging strikes, raging chains, and how these points also interact with supers and how much damage you deal the less of it your opponents has is a great addition, and more than makes up for the removal of a universal overhead. And the U-versions of your cooldown skills are also a great addition, giving you much more options with your meter outside of just using supers. It also helps that compared to the OG GBVS, you get a TON of meter now. It used to be that filling your meter took basically the entire round, and it was mostly only ever used for supers despite it having other utilities that have since been removed. There's a lot to consider, but none of it ever felt overwhelming, and that's even considering how much faster the pace of Rising is now compared to the first game. Even if Cygames themselves likes to meme on this game being centered around "one button for easy kills" like that hilarious April Fools trailer, the game's far more than that. The addition of dash attacks is currently one of the more controversial things about the game, and I admit, it does feel like 66L is way too good for literally every character, but for the most part, it hasn't felt like the "I Win Button" that a lotta folks seem to frame it.

But all that minutia's for the sweats. I'm a filthy casul, so let's move onto Rising's story mode and some of its other features. Rising does get rid of the old RPG Mode which makes for a leaner experience for its story, though I do miss being able to select basically the entire roster at the end game when I wanna fight certain bosses, and there's no longer the Tower of Babyl for some extra challenge either. It's definitely leaning heavier now on being a visual novel with some occasional cool animated cutscenes and bosses to fight. The additional chapter they added doesn't even have trash mob quests anymore, but I think for its short run time, those weren't necessary, and they weren't the best part of the original story mode anyway. I like that this new chapter just focuses on the most important characters and events, raises the stakes far more than the original did, and just has the VN-style chapters leading into all the different boss fights.

Without spoiling anything, this game now has quite possibly my two favorite bosses in any fighting game, both in terms of how cool I think they are as characters, how satisfying they are to beat up, and most importantly, how they play. A lotta the times, fighting game bosses break the rules in ways that aren't that fun. They go from just standing or floating there, letting you wail on them for a bit, before they do boring things like raise their arms to conjure up some high damage projectile, or even leave the arena to make you fight someone else in the roster. I'm lookin' at you, Kronika. But that's not the case with Rising. The final bosses have actual movesets. Hell, they're playable in ranked for a reason. It's just that they hurt way more, have way more moves that have armor, and have that good ol' Overdrive mechanic. Without the old RPG Mode's elemental weapons and levels to consider, it is much easier to just straight up fight everything now, but the Hard mode for the story bosses is still a decent challenge.

All of this, and you're rewarded with a strange, Skyrealm-shattering tale that somehow kinda still makes sense, despite involving epic Biblical levels of gods and angels fighting each other, parallel universes colliding, some genuine emotional drama, and the mandatory cutesy anime trash. I love it. All this just so we have a proper lore excuse to have the male and female versions of the Granblue Fantasy MC being able to meet and fight each other online, as well as explaining the mirror matches, because this is still a fighting game.

For the most part, everything in Rising is a vast improvement over the original, and with its addition of crossplay on top of rollback, even though I'm already over a year late to this party, I'm still getting a ton of matches daily, there's still lobbies getting full at peak hours, and even when I'm at a losing streak, they've added a lotta other features that take my mind off it. Modes like Grand Bruise, which is the blatant Fall Guys ripoff that's genuinely pretty fun if you're willing to wait a little while to be matched up with several other people, or just the larger, more expansive, and way prettier lobby to wander around in, or the minigames. And my god, that Figure Studio. That's my end game now. It's basically a photo mode that lets you play around with 3D assets ranging from every character in the roster to side characters, to even just world objects. I'm still gonna play online, get salty, try to escape A rank with Vira and B rank with Beatrix, but the end goal now is to get every possible figure so I can take funny screenshots with my favorite waifus in the roster.

I'm glad Granblue Versus got this second chance. Back then all I and a lot of other people wanted was rollback. Now, we got it, and everything else, even a free edition that lets you play ranked as Gran and three other characters that rotate weekly, the first third of the story mode, and any progress you make is carried over when you buy the game. And they're not done. At the time of this review, Sandalphon's out and Galleon just got teased. Issues like a few mfs trying to manipulate ranked got dealt with. There was a recent crossover event with Guilty Gear Strive. Tournaments are still being played. Ilsa's on the horizon. There's never been a better time to jump in. I hope this game lasts a hell of a long time.

Relink turned out to be just what I wanted out of the Granblue Fantasy franchise ever since I fell in love with Versus.

I'm going at this from the perspective of someone who became a fan of this franchise after playing the first Granblue Fantasy Versus game, not the mobile/browser game. That's not out of any kind of distaste for it, it's just that I hadn't gotten into it. I mention that because I wanna recommend this game even as someone who's not a long-time, die-hard fan of these characters, setting, and story.

It's certainly converting me though. This is the type of game that I wished a lot of those turn-based JRPGs back in the day that I just couldn't get into were. Party-based action RPG with accessible controls, flashy combat, a pretty huge roster of characters who all play very differently from one another and a wide array of skills and specialties that bounce off one another, even when you're doing the game entirely solo with CPU party members. It's an exceptionally simple system to pick up mechanically, but the meat is in its progression that goes far beyond anything I saw in the simplified RPG Mode in the fighting game. It seems to be applying what the original mobile game does to an action RPG, and to great effect. It goes pretty hard the further you get into it, but I never felt overwhelmed. Challenge comes, for the most part, from bosses with insane move sets and Overdrive/Bloodlust abilities where the bosses go wild and you're expected to just avoid their attacks and wait for them to tire themselves out before you go ham on them again, though I do wish there was more variety in some of the side quest bosses. If you're only interested in the story, it's fairly well-balanced all the way to the end, including the brilliant epilogue chapter that I hope you don't skip. 'Cause it's an even better, more epic finale than the final chapter.

If you're looking for tight Souls-like combat, this ain't that. Not one bit. I love those games, but I don't think that fits what Relink is going for, and it doesn't need to try and emulate DS3 or Sekiro like almost every other game has been trying to do for the past several years. Blocking is actually useful. Perfect dodges don't just grant i-frames during the dodge, they grant invincibility for a few seconds after. Skills are on cool-downs rather than mana. There's a special meter for cinematic Skybound Arts like in the fighting game. This is meant for fun, flashy, overall simpler combat where the spectacle is the focus. What I like about this system is you could definitely go deep, min-max, use characters with timed combos like Siegfried, pick a party that suits a specific play style, expand on your build with different sigils, especially the late game ones with massive buffs and interesting drawbacks like disabling dodges and blocking for a huge damage boost, etc... OR you could just pick your four favorite waifus and play with that team for the entire run time and the endgame. That's what I'm doin'. Katalina, my stalwart, knightly, gap moe darling <3

Where I think this game suffers is in its localization, subs for which match the dub, not the original Japanese. Cygames' in-house localization team certainly has a bit of that Mahvel influence. You might see occasional [current year] lingo, which is kinda cringe. It's not too bad if you're used to how anime works once it's been twisted by Americans, but it's jarring for someone who's listening to the Japanese dub, and has been learning the language, to see how mismatched so much of the dialogue is to the subs. A "thank you" can be translated into a snarky comment. A motivational shout in Japanese could be translated to some kind millennial lingo. An explanation of a certain thing that would've been good world-building is described in not the most compelling way in English. And they actually made my boy Rackam say a "that just happened" line. There's just little things that get in the way of an otherwise perfectly fun fantasy anime romp. Not enough to ruin the game's story since I can at least understand enough of it while just ignoring the localization, but I see why it turns some people off, especially when they're playing the dub. And given this is an in-house team, this was already the case in the fighting game, and I wouldn't be surprised if the original mobile/browser game has always been this way. A more concrete example is Djeeta, the female version of the main character. She's far more consistent in voice and writing in Japanese, for both Relink and Versus, as a motivated, optimistic young girl who found herself in a wild situation and is excited to make the most of it. She's known hardship but appreciates the bonds she's built from it. But in English, it's jarring hearing this girl introspect about her long-term goals of reaching Estalucia, how she values her crew, her life link with Lyria, her respect and admiration for Katalina... while also occasionally talking sass in a kid-friendly sitcom kind of way that makes me gag. It's like EN Djeeta and JP Djeeta are two entirely different people. It's not the worst nor is it the vast majority of the game's dialogue. But it could've been way better if they didn't use the dub's subtitles for the Japanese dialogue and had those translated separately.

For as "shallow" and "weeb" as some reviews might consider this game's story, it's a good time. A lot of its depth and world-building is found through archive entries that can be picked up throughout the main story quests or found in higher difficulty side quests, as well as unlockable voiceover stories that talk of each character's adventures that I assume are from the mobile game's established lore. There's a ton to look through, just like there was in GBVS. There's a lot here that goes beyond just the cutscenes and the dialogue during gameplay, and as someone who's enjoyed that sort of less direct storytelling from the FromSoftware games, it's something I ended up enjoying even from a franchise that I had very little exposure to. I should say that this is by no means an opaque, indirect story. It's far more traditional, lotta cutscenes, some dialogue that's presented in a visual novel style like in the original game and Versus, but it's served well by all the archive entries and item text to find, some of which can even only be found in the epilogue chapter and in the endgame.

But I get it, many wouldn't be interested in just reading about a world they only just got into. You'd have to see it, and play in it, and actually be curious about it from what the actual game offers. Show, don't tell, right? Relink's certainly good at the showing part. I'd already been interested in the setting since the fighting game. Just the idea of an entire world where people sail on airships to different floating islands was already wild to me, and I wanted to find out more. Relink delivered. Its environments are gorgeous. Its world is beautifully stylized and vibrant, and all the different locations that you go through in this adventure can range from idyllic to hellish in a heartbeat without feeling inconsistent. While an open world game like that would be insanely cool, this isn't so. It's sadly not Black Flag for Weebs where we get to sail to each island freely on the Grandcypher. Maybe someday, Cygames. It's more linear than that, with the main quest taking you to different parts of the Zegagrande Skydom, and in between chapters, you can choose to spend some time on the deck of your ship or in one of the two beautifully designed hub towns to take on side quests. It's a net positive and avoids a lotta the problems that big open worlds have.

So-so localization and repetitive side bosses aside, it's wild that this is the first time this franchise went the 3D action RPG route and did it so well right off the bat. Relink was meant to be a small diversion from Gran/Djeeta's larger adventure, but I don't mind sticking around Zegagrande a little longer.

Had Titanfall 2 in my library for like two or three years now after grabbing it on a sale for dirt cheap. Finally got around to it after AC6 gave me an itch for mech games. And it's campaign is *good*. Very short, but *good*. Wish they did more with the singleplayer, like a sequel or a DLC, especially since the ending was pretty blatant sequel bait. But it's published by EA so of course they didn't. It's a great story, and despite its brevity, I was genuinely invested in the back-and-forth between Jack Cooper, the pilot you play as, and BT, his Titan. Nice little touch that you can also choose some dialogue if you wanna get straight to the point in a mission, or try to be clever with the robot, the latter of which will very often get you some charming dialogue to make you even more attached to your giant death machine.

The fact that it's Source Engine blows my mind. Respawn made magic with it. It's on the level of ArcSys taking Unreal Engine and making gorgeous anime fighting games that look nothing like generic UE games. And I dunno if I've ever played any other game where you seamlessly swap between frenetic FPS controls on-foot to weighty controls when you enter your Titan. Sure, it's still an FPS, but it's like two entirely different games that gel together in real-time. But god, I wish there was more of it.

No, I ain't touchin' the multiplayer. I got AC6 for that. Solely from the perspective of a singleplayer andy, just the base game already rocks. Short and sweet, like a lot of them good ol' FPS games in the olden days, in a way that leaves you wanting more. Except you pilot a mech, too. And it feels fantastic. I keep mentioning AC6 but if you're coming from that, too, don't expect a lightweight death machine gliding around like butter on the ground. Expect to be piloting a BIG, BEEFY, HEFTY BOI, 'cause that's what our boi BT is. You're gonna love him. Grab it on a sale, and if all you want's a nice, juicy campaign to finish over a weekend, or hell, even a single night session, then you can safely ignore all the DLC.

I got one of out the three endings in AC6 now. I'll be honest: it's now a toss-up between this and Sekiro as my favorite FromSoftware games. DS3 and Elden Ring both dropped down in my personal ranking, despite them still being exceptionally good games. Still, I got an AMD card. And AC6... has some gripes with AMD. What keeps Sekiro at the top spot is the very minor technical difficulties I experienced, like frame rate drops in the Assembly and Parts Shop as well as a bug in my UI that doesn't show energy consumption. I never got any bugs in Sekiro. But during actual gameplay, AC6 was smooth as silk, and it expands on a lot of what made FromSoftware's previous titles great while setting itself apart with its own qualities as a less of what the Japanese fans call a "death game" and leaning more towards the power fantasy of piloting your very own optimisable death machine. It's still a proper challenge, but nowhere near the frustrations of the Souls series, no matter what some of the clickbait tries to tell you. "Mech Souls" is a funny and sometimes appropriate meme, but a Souls game this is not.

First proper mech game I ever played, if I don't count that Virtua-ON game that got ported into some of the Yakuza games' in-universe arcade machines. It doesn't have Sekiro's Gauntlet mode, but it does have Mission Replays, which is just as good. The amount of options to customize your mech, and this is speaking before I've seen any additions in NG+ and NG++, are mind-boggling. The multiplayer's actually good. The Arena mode's a great time. And I was more invested in the story than any other FromSoftware game, not even despite the fact that all the characters are faceless voices talking to you in briefings, but because of that uneasy level of detachment. And somehow, even with all of the world-shattering stakes involving gods and hellish beings in Dark Souls and Elden Ring, Armored Core 6's horrific corporate space dystopia somehow feels like a far, FAR darker world than anything they've put out before.

The fact that this game, let alone the series, remains a niche within a niche is insane to me. People are still demanding Bloodborne on PC. Rightfully so, sure. But when's the rest of the Armored Core games getting ported?

UPDATE:

2/3 endings down.I love it. I also appreciate that to get to the other two endings requires NG+ and NG++, but there's no added difficulty like in the Souls games, but what you get is entirely unique missions, choices within certain repeated missions, and on top of all that, arena progress is kept and it gets an expansion of a bunch of new opponents, plus a whole set of new parts and weaponry in the shop. It's genuinely meant to be played this way, kinda like Automata, but with more meat to it, and it's entirely different routes rather than the same story all over again but with minor alterations.

AC6 is a banger that the Souls/ER nerds unjustly slept on.

UPDATE 2:

The third ending that only unlocks in NG++ is EVEN MORE INSANE, AND THE GAME'S NOT OVER UNTIL YOU GET TO IT. Fantastic thing is that each run is short, so it's not like you're replaying something as long as, say DS2 or Elden Ring three times for a complete experience. BUT PLEASE, GET ALL THREE ENDINGS. IT'S WORTH. And while there's not as many lore and world-building secrets to find, the good amount that is in here makes me wanna stick around this insane planet some more just to soak in all the details.

I did not expect this to become my favorite FromSoftware game. I thought nothing could top Sekiro, and DS3 and Elden Ring are still absolutely brilliant games. But this was a very different, but emphatically satisfying experience. I'm gonna be going back to this more than any of their other games. Even if it's just to make more custom mechs and get wrecked in the PVP.

This game had absolutely no right being as good as it is.

As jank as this game was, this has to be my favorite game from this year. 2024 sleeper hit. And it's not even gonna be nominated for a single award on any platform or any awards show. It's mostly made by one dude who had an insane, hilarious, and somehow fully fleshed out and incredibly engaging story to tell. It's my Game of the Year, bar none.

It had better writing than most FPS/TPS campaigns of similar length and much larger budgets and teams. I actually ended up liking the characters and got invested in their arcs, no matter how small some of them were. The last thing I expected out of a Unity asset flip comedy horror shooter is to feel FEELINGS from it. The supernatural and political intrigue, the twists, the epic last stands, the emotional moments, the memes, the Call of Duty name color change to denote switching allegiances, it's all here. And while there doesn't seem to be any original music from what I could see in the credits, the way the licensed tracks are used alongside Noto Muteki's great camera work make this elaborate ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of a game far more than the sum of its parts.

And even with the janky movement, aiming, and melee hitboxes, it somehow manages to still be fun just from the variety of mission types the story has, and the insanity of the context you're operating in. There's big-budget shooters out there that didn't even get a second playthrough outta me, but I had to come back to this one.

I don't care what anyone says: games like this that are made with big ideas on a pittance of a budget, they deserve far more love than they get. Just like Chilla's Art's early horror games, just like Tadasumen with Sushi Soul Universe, Noto Muteki cooked with Kinki Spiritual Affairs Bureau.

I could. I could totally get a refund for this.

But I won't. I want this dev to take the 181.062 JPY that he'll get from my purchase at the current exchange rate, and use that money to help fund more ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. Because he certainly can't even buy half a pack of cigarettes with that amount.

This is the only one you're getting away with, Noto Muteki. Anything else you make that's this short should be free, you mf.

But I had a good laugh. I'm looking forward to seeing what the profits from this crap turned into with Kinki Spiritual Affairs Bureau. I can already suspect that I'll like it.

I almost wanna see a collaboration between this dev and Tadasumen, the madman responsible for Sushi Soul Universe, unironically one of my favorite kusoge. One can dream.

I dunno if I'd get crucified for this, but I loved Judgment's pacing and writing over any of the mainline Yakuza games I've played so far. There's even little moments in this that are incredibly brief, but do a great job in putting a player in someone's shoes that the main series up to this point hadn't done nearly as well. It's a spinoff of the Yakuza series, but you can absolutely play this without any knowledge of the Kiryu Saga or the Like A Dragon games that followed it, and not once feel lost. It's a self-contained story that just happens to be in the same universe (i.e. the fictional realm of Japan).

Apart from the larger differences in terms of the story's genre, this being a detective crime thriller as opposed to Yakuza's criminal underworld drama, fans of the mainline series already know what to expect: fun, if sometimes rather jank Dragon Engine combat with entirely new fighting styles for the main character, great music, fantastic Japanese VA (far more believable than most of the Yakuza games, even, since those almost tend to be theatrical in their performances), and that familiar Kamurocho setting to make you wish you'd booked that discounted flight to Tokyo when you had the chance.

There are some new mechanics both in the main story and the side cases (this game's counterpart to substories) that are focused on detective work. But don't get it twisted: this game's telling one story. So as far as I know from one playthrough, you can't really come to the wrong conclusion or present the wrong evidence and lose a case. You just lose some bonus experience points, and occasionally get some funny dialogue calling you out for getting something wrong. But that didn't take away from how the story unraveled into the insanity that it did by the end, and it's a great time all the way through.

If you've never tried a Yakuza game, and are, say, hesitant considering how many games the mainline series already has, then well, I'd say you're missing out. Start with Zero, you won't regret it. BUT if you only got the time, budget, or patience to only get into a shorter, more self-contained experience, then Judgment is one to grab for sure. Especially on a sale, considering I got this when it was at an insanely low price for such a fantastic high budget main story and a ton of stuff to do outside of it.

And sure, if you're a dub enjoyer, this one's got a dub. Lotta folks say it's good, so it'll serve you well. But the Japanese VA is top notch, rivaling the cast RGG Studio had for the mainline games, which is for the most part already pretty stellar.

Good game, 10/10, would bribe my cute lawyer friend with convenience store sweets to go undercover as a sexy hostess all over again.

#TitusDidNothingWrong

Took seeing all the hype for Space Marine 2 for me to finally get around to Space Marine 1 despite having grabbed the game years ago for dirt cheap. Glad I got to it though. I enjoyed the hell out of its brief campaign. Relic definitely gets Warhammer, but I was still surprised they made this because I only ever knew about that company from its RTS games back in the day. Turns out they'd made a decent third person action game, too.

There's a decent variety of weapons, my favorites being the melee options like the iconic Chainsword and the Thunder Hammer, and it's paired with an interesting system wherein the only way for you to regain health should your shields go down is to perform executions on stunned enemies. There's also a Fury meter that fills up the more you kill xenos and heretics, and it allows you to activate a mode that allows you to heal damage over time while doing more damage to the enemies of the Imperium. It's a decent challenge on Hard, especially because you don't have i-frames when performing an execution animation. Managing your recharging shields is essential, because you can and will die if you execute an enemy while being shot and melee'd from every direction.

Despite its aged graphics and sound, I still think that it's one of the most stylish games I've played from its era. Not to downplay Relic's efforts, of course. The way they nailed Warhammer's aesthetic even with tech from the early 2010s is part of this game's charm. It's rather 7th gen, sure, but it's good for that era's standards. As for the OST, I will say that despite the music not at all being bad, I still think it could've fit more with the Warhammer setting than it does. Far as I can tell, for both this and what I've heard from the sequel, it just doesn't SOUND like Warhammer. Consider Immortal Imperium from Darktide or if we go by Relic's other games in the Warhammer IP, then some of the music from Dawn of War or its expansions which came out years before Space Marine. The use of an organ, a choir, and pairing that religious sound to heavy, sometimes even dissonant electronica is perfect for 40K, but those qualities felt absent in Space Marine's OST. There's quite a bit of it that just sounds like... standard Hollywood war film music. Not bad, but not really that distinct or memorable.

It was a brief experience, especially since I don't plan on doing any of the multiplayer (I wouldn't know if it would even still be populated by now considering the success of the sequel even if I wanted to), but all in all, a very enjoyable one. I'm definitely looking forward to the sequel despite it having been developed by an entirely different team. I want to see what happens next in Titus' story after the way it ended here.

I'll be honest: I haven't dropped down as deep into the Warhammer rabbit hole as I'd want to because of other things going on. Most of my exposure to the IP over the years has been through video games. What little I know is from YouTube, but I do wanna get into some of the literature. The tabletop is probably gonna be outta the question because of the exorbitant prices... I mention this for context because despite all that, I think Space Marine 1 and the Dawn of War games I've played years back are definitely still good ways, to this day, to get someone to fall in love and want to dig deeper into this universe. My desire to get more into Warhammer was definitely rekindled by having finally played this game.

I just hope someday we can get a Sister of Battle game that's at least of this caliber, or that of Space Marine 2... and no, I don't mean the Battle Sister VR game. The Adepta Sororitas deserve better.