Recent reviews by ghotinggoad

9/10

One of the best games of these 2 years but it's kinda too easy.

10/10

This game is easily a 10/10 for me.

Tight controls and the game reminds me of vanillaware games so I love it.

8/10

I just finished it (took me a while because of national service so I only get to play during the weekends) and I gotta say it holds up pretty well over the years.

It's definitely not as good as Danganronpa in my opinion but they're "different" so they shouldn't really be compared in the first place so my point isn't that valid.

The first game is great, it's probably the one we all remember over the years which led us to buy this due to nostalgia. The second game however is quite a letdown and it's pretty boring (I gave up halfway and just used a walk through so I can rush through it before I book back into camp. The third one is pretty good but I wished the soundtrack was exactly the same over the three different games. There were some nice additions to them but I believe the limitations of the GBA didn't allow too many songs due to cartridge memory size.

I'll recommend it just so I love the first game, time to wait for Apollo Justice (hopefully) I guess.

8/10

My opinions of Rakuen will definitely be unpopular seeing how popular this game is but please read on. I will only write the bad things here since you can read about the good things in almost every other review.

Rakuen feels like a much polished SigmaCorp game because of the amazing detail to art and music but there are some critical drawbacks holding it back compared to the other masterpieces.

Having multiple characters prove to be too much for this "genre" as it became difficult to sympathize with them.
I never truely connected with the characters compared to the cast in To The Moon and Finding Paradise. That doesn't mean that the writing is bad, just maybe that I became more jaded after Danganronpa V3 (anyone who's emotionally heavily invested in it knows what I am talking about). The game certainly had many " :o " moments for me but never really a " :'| " moment so I was a little disappointed honestly.

It's not a long game, it just feels like one.
I feel like it could've been a really good SigmaCorp style game but the puzzles, the pacing and the way Laura chose to tell us the story most of the time (through item description) made it really hard to feel fully immersed in the world and the story. The puzzles aren't that great or enjoyable and most of them feel like fetch quests. If that wasn't bad enough, you'll learn that you move really slowly, can't sprint and you have to walk around A LOT.

Obviously, these 2 are really big deal as this game will definitely be compared to the SigmaCorp series no matter whether Laura wants it to. SigmaCorp had really enjoyable puzzles and mini games that made it a joy to play in one sitting unlike this game. What makes this game worth it is the soundtrack and the art, they're really good and I don't know what else to say other than they're good. It's a shame though since the 2 drawbacks are huge, the setting is pretty interesting too!

tldr; The game is really good overall and I have nothing much to say to justify it so play it for yourself.

There is 1 major bug in this game at the time of writing (10/03/2018), summoning (skill) will result in the game locked at choppy framerates until you restart. You have to wait for Square Enix to patch this. You will not have any issue playing the game as long as you don't summon. However, spoiler >>>
You MUST summon during the fight against Ifrit when Gentiana appears in order to proceed. This bug does not apply here, the game will run normally after this specific summon. Any battles before up Cerberus (the boss before this. Yes, I tried), will trigger this bug

Nvidia users on drivers other than 391.05 will experience frequent crashes. Simply install driver 391.05 (non-WHQL, you have to Google it and download from the official site) after uninstalling your graphics driver with DDU. Launch the game via Big Picture mode to avoid the grey screen crash or any issues with your controller.
UPDATE 13/3/2018: 391.05 works better than 390.77. 390.77 has a lot of issues in Comrades, it crashes often and object/textures don't load up from time to time (check out my screenshots).

A tip for Comrades, grind Roboresurrection starting at level 5. Use Garula Tusk for beginner weapon upgrades. Get Obelisk Polearm quick.

Recommended graphics settings with specs below. TRAM will affect stuttering be it being too low or too high, play around with it. You can refer to this (https://www.reddit.com/r/FFXV/comments/82th81/pc_final_fantasy_15_performance_tweaking_and/) under TextureStreamingMemory if you want to really optimize your game.
Recommend playing with PS4 (no PS3) and Xbox 360/ONE controller with Steam controller support.

TLDR; 9/10. I will recommend it to anybody provided you can run this game properly. Try the demo first to see if there are any issues for you and whether you can fix them before buying it. The demo does not do the game justice in terms of the fun you will have but try it to know if you can run the game properly.

Story 8/10 increased from 7 because of episode Ignis
The story is really interesting and generally encourages you to rush the main story. The following points mentioned below are all spoilers, so skip it along with my justification for the score and see it for yourself. You will enjoy the story regardless.

Luna is a really ♥♥♥♥♥♥ character whose main purpose are all behind the scenes and not shown. Half of the game is just playing cat and mouse with her. When you do meet her, she just dies without really doing much.
Aranea and Iris are not shown after the 10 years timeskip. I got a phonecall from Iris after spotting her Moogle doll but that is it. I really wish that there was more to it but nope.
(might have answers after 100% completion, so take this with a grain of salt) There are a lot of things that were not explained properly. An example is why was Noctis locked in the prison for 10 years? Why was he only released afterwards?
EDIT: This is explained in Comrades DLC (I just started as of 11/3/2018), thanks to GEX for the clarification. Just finished the 3 DLC episodes and they explained a few things. It doesn't really tie up any loose ends but Episode Ignis is really good so I raised the score by 1 just for it.
The main reason why I gave it a 7/10 is because of the "leaves more to be desired (not ambiguous, just absent)" story telling and that Luna is a terrible character.

Graphics 9/10
I was playing this with everything on highest except shadows and TRAM (both on High), Nvidia Turf turned on and without any assets on my 1060 6GB. Edit: I turned off geomapping and changed my lighting and filtering to High because Episode Gladiolus is really intensive (and beautiful!).

The game looks amazing except for the fact that it is quite blurry, I would recommend playing this in higher rendered resolution. Even though Nvidia Turf requires a lot of processing power, I would say it is a must to have a better experience (moreso than hairworks).
Some of the textures are really low resolution in the last few chapters and it really ruined the experience because of the inconsistency. Perhaps install the high resolution assets DLC will help.

Gameplay 9/10
The game has many little annoyance that adds up to make you cuss but it's not enough to make you stop (not Far Cry 3 FoV cutscenes issue). These annoyance range from "gone when you reach late game" to "live with it".
- Example of the former will be driving at night or when Ignis comes up with a new recipe simply because he only has one voiceline for each and it happens almost every in-game day.
- Example of the latter is that you interact with the X button and X button also happens to be the jump button, this becomes really annoying because the game requires you to aim at different object to interact with different things. Good luck trying to buy/pick up quests in Lestallum.
The open world is really fun and it really adds to the value of the game because of the amount of things you can do in the game.
I am a hobbyist photographer in real life and I really enjoy this part of the game though higher resolution will make it more enjoyable because the pictures do come out pixelated.
The combat also excels with timing and strategy playing a bit part of it, making it reasonably challenging and exciting to dodge those hits. HOWEVER, the camera is so bad it kills the combat entirely in tight spaces or when there are a lot of foliage obstructing your view. This easily goes from a 10/10 to a 1/10 because nothing is in your control. The camera is still manageable up till the last chapter, it really goes to ♥♥♥♥ then tight combat area, enemies will fly .
Dodging and parrying in this game seems different than in other games where there are situations where you WILL get hit regardless, it sucks when it happens but it does not happen all the time.
The following is a sums up about the last 2 chapters which really lowered the score for me, skip it if you do not want spoilers.
Chapter 13, Imperial Capital. Biggest disappointment in the game IMO, ♥♥♥♥ the level designs too. Boring and unimaginative, not challenging or rewarding. REALLY UNENJOYABLE but hey, 2nd last chapter.
Chapter 14 pre-final boss, 3 mini bosses that are harder than the final boss. Pure skill OR Pure heals.
Final Boss Phase 1, ezpz. No hit run is easy by the time you reach here. Previous bosses were MUCH harder.
Final Boss Phase 2, wtf is this ♥♥♥♥? "one hit no retry trial and error puzzle". Once you figure out what you need to do, this boss is a joke, really lengthy when playing safe.
Final Boss Phase 3, "make sure you have enough potions and elixirs". You cannot dodge here, you can actually lose. ♥♥♥♥ this game.
Ending cutscene, WHAT THE ♥♥♥♥ THERE IS A QUICKTIME HERE I ALREADY PUT DOWN MY CONTROLLER WHAT THE ♥♥♥♥
In conclusion, the gameplay is a 9/10 despite all the drawbacks (some annoying, some making me want to give up) but it makes up to it for ALL the extra things you can do like riding a Chocobo.

Music & Audio 10/10
The music in this game is stellar. There are some moments with the voice acting which seem unnatural but it's not immersion breaking. I hate Cindy's voice in English and Luna's in Japanese but that is just personal preference so no minus there.

Overall 9/10
Though the story leaves a lot to be desired and it is not 100% crash free, the gameplay; graphics and music really makes up to it.
I will recommend it to anybody who can run the game properly, either newcomers or fans (just like the game said!). Try the demo first to see if there are any issues for you and whether you can fix them before buying it. The demo does not do the game justice in terms of the fun you will have but try it to know if you can run the game properly.

Danganronpa is an amazing series, so is this demo.

This demo is the ultimate demo.

11/10

The gameplay is really similar to Ys 1 & 2, probably why I completed it. (I have 500+ games and completing a game is a huge deal as I don't finish like 95% of my games)

The story is dull and boring, probably ♥♥♥♥♥♥ too.

THEN, you start playing the game with a FULL COMPLETION GUIDE*** (Triple stars cause it's uber important) and when you get the other 2 endings.

Boom, the game becomes really good.

Haven't played a game with such an ending (again, I don't complete most of my games thus this is REALLY subjective) and found it really refreshing.

I actually like it.

i r8 5/7 m8.

Incompleted game advertised as completed.
Have a laptop with 4 gb ram and 2 gb vram and it says I do not have enough memory, the error message includes "Contagion Beta" which is the state the game itself is in.

Only recommended if you don't treat this game seriously and play with a bunch of friends who are just trying to have fun doing funny and redundant ♥♥♥♥ which isn't in the game in the first place.