Recent reviews by nanoUSB

game made my pc wheeze harder than cyberpunk on max settings.
also, devs rather bow to some lying autogynophlie freak with grape fantasies, instead of shutting their holes and keep the free foxu advertising.

money wasted, dev and publisher blacklisted.

First of all: It doesn't even work right out of the box. You download it and it doesn't start - instead, you need to do some cmd voodoo to trick Steam into finding the actual game data. I don't know whose fault it is, Square or Steam, but that's irrelevant to the player. Luckily though, it's not hard to do and there's a bunch of posts in the Discussion and Guide sections describing the process.

Now, about the game itself.
I am generally not too invested in a game's story, so I won't put much weight on it. Seemed fairly straight forward with some twists near the end that can be unexpected depending on how thoroughly you explore and pay attention. I failed the attention part and was quite surprised. Something that annoyed me from very early on though are some characters: Lann is so braindead it hurts, and Tama's speech impediment is just as insufferable.
The game is absolutely stuffed to the brim with humor and goofiness. Your mileage may vary, but I enjoyed most of it as it made the game lighthearted fun for the most part. Many interactions between Lann and anyone else really got pretty old fast though. I get it, Lann is an idiot. The joke lost its merit many hours ago.
(mini disclaimer: I've only ever played FF1-9) All the cameos of known characters seemed pretty spot on and I'm really happy that my favourite characters of my favourite games made an entrance and felt faithful to their original characters; Bartz & Boko, Faris, Squall, and Quistis. It made me happy to see them all.
I guess if you enjoy fanservice like this, you're likely to have a good time, even if many of the cameos are fairly minimal.

The meat of it all: GAMEPLAY!
You collect monsters (called mirages) that all have what you'd expect: Certain active skills, passives, stats & growth rates, as well as strengths and weaknesses against elements and status ailments. Where it gets interesting, and as far as I know, quite unique, is that each mirage is in a Size category (Small, Medium, Large) through which you're going to assemble stacks. All the skills, stats, strengths and weaknesses will add up, generally increasing your battle prowess. It's an interesting system with a lot of room to experiment with your monsters to optimize for different battles or areas by juggling offenses and defenses.
|| Sidenote: Every mirage has different prerequisites for you to be able to catch them. Some need you to hit them with a certain element or status ailment, others want you to heal them, etc. - a few can be made "catch-ready" only once within an encounter. So always keep your Libra spell ready for new areas to learn how to catch 'em all! ||
You can unstack anytime, or get toppled by enemies (in that case you'll suffer a brief but in worst case fatal stun period). I haven't found much use to unstack other than to reset the topple meter or abuse Reflect against single targets with AoE spells targeted at my own party. That is largely because unstacked participants' stats are useless (increasingly so as you get to higher levels where unstacked characters can often be oneshot by the enemy, let them throw some AoE and you're toast), especially the AP (aka MP/mana/magick) which are a fix 4 per mirage/character, adding up to a maximum of 12 for a full stack. Many many skills require more than 4 AP to cast, thus vastly crippling your battle prowess if you try to go that way. However, if timed well with the ATB bar, it can be useful for using a bunch of items in a short time.
Then there's a few Mirages that have an XL tag. Those cannot be integrated into stacks, but instead can be summoned as long as they're in your team. For a huge AP cost they can be summoned, replacing both your stacks, and fight as a single entity with two actions per turn. While they are quite an awesome spectacle, I have never found any of them to be necessary for anything. Still a lot of fun.
Lann and Reynn are always part of a stack, either as the Large (Jiant form) or Medium (Lilikin) spot. Both of them can be customized via Mirajewels that'll give them Spells, stats, resistances etc. Somewhere near or at endgame however, you will be able to replace them with other monsters, which can increase battle efficiency even further, at the cost of being unable to imprism (catch) monsters, summon XL mirages or champion.

I could yap on and on about it all, but nobody's gonna read it anyway. All in all, I think the gameplay is incredibly satisfying once you get the hang of it. Even dozens upon dozens of hours after beating the story, I still find myself leveling up unused mirages, playing around with different combinations, attempting different approaches to certain Intervention Quest battles or Coliseum encounters.

One personal complaint at the end: Near the end, there's a bunch of minigames available. While I'm not a fan of any of them, I HATE HATE HATE Einhänder Invasion. That mobile game-tier trash fest is the one thing in this game that has made me rage so hard I threw stuff around my living room. You aim, you hit the strength meter roughly where you want it AND THEN WAIT 6-11 MONTHS FOR THE CHARACTER TO ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ DO SOMETHING! Screw that, buddy. I hate it!

All in all though, I really like the game. Feels like a lighthearted love letter to Final Fantasy in general, but with a curious and fun twist to the gameplay formula.
Baby Tonberry, Baby Behemoth, BABY BAHAMUTH! Buddy, I never thought I needed those in my life.

A General tip: Once you've maxed out a mirage's boards and are able to select a bonus skill, always pick Magic+++ or Strength+++ if available. They always feel vastly more valuable than anything else offered there.

Requires some stupid Epic Store app to play. Screw that, buddy.
It's a fun game otherwise (didn't always require anything 3rd party)

I've had a really good time once I got my Greatsword. Love this game's iteration of it, one of my favourite movesets of any souls game.

It's been years, but I do remember a few awesome things about this game:

- The Greatsword had its most beautiful moveset in this very game. I've used the weapon in every game since, but it never gave me the sheer unadulterated joy as this iteration did.

- This game, or rather the DLC with that Ash and Fire tower, introduced the Fume Ultra Greatsword. The giant slab of rock that goes BONK on your enemies and doubled as a fairly good shield. This thing mocks description and is simply too awesome for this world!

- Since shields felt far worse than in DS1, it was a great opportunity to practice more offensive builds, dual-wielding felt pretty good as opposed to DS1. As far as I remember, most if not all weapons had the same moveset in either hand, a few like Rapiers or Parry Dagger has a parry on L2 though. That alone made dual-wielding infinitely better than DS1. Power stance, introduced in this game, only made it even better.

- It caused gigantic tsunamis of tears over poise, which gives me immense Schadenfreude to this very day.


Overall, maybe it's not a great Dark Souls entry, in a vacuum it's still an awesome game.

Adaptability was a massive mistake though.

As compared to the old Prepare to Die Edition, I've experienced a few PROS:
+ Offline Mode!!!
+ runs a bit better, smoother
+ consuming or donating x>1 items at once is a thing now, and it's nice
+ some surface materials and lighting effects have been improved, overall look is a tiny bit nicer
+ the collision of the environment seems to have been improved, making a few really shaky balance acts a bit more bearable, or rather easier/smoother to handle
(+ it allowed me to pop all the achievements again)

However, there's one, possibly two glaring CON(s) I've encountered repeatedly:
- the above mentioned improved collision can cause MASSIVE headaches with large weapons in tight spots. Parts of the Catacombs for example, were near unplayable with the Wooden Club as you keep bouncing off
(- my memory may be wrong here, but I'm certain upon buying stackable items, you could individually change the digits for 100s, 10s & 1s, which isn't the case anymore. it's at times a little annoying now, but if I actually remember this correctly, it would outright blow)

Overall though, the same great experience it's always been. The chillest of the Souls games imo.

It's my go-to media player for midi files. Top notch, unrivaled, even if the initial import is a chore when you gotta set it up anew.

However, I haven't used it for making actual games... ever. So really no idea about what it can or can't do.

What the others said.

I've watched Asmongold play this and after maybe 20 minutes I thought "Whoa, this looks fun, I gotta check it out"

Well here we are... This Game is insanely fun!

Despite a lot of RNG to the item drops, you can always outline some builds and follow them more or less, in most runs. There's also so many unlocks to discover in the different stages, you wouldn't believe it at first considering they seem to just endlessly loop.

Also, you'll think "just one more run" quite regularly once you get a little deeper into the game.
Endless chaos, mayhem and loot await. Give it a try, that price is a steal!
Easily 12/10 from me.

Edit 110ish hours later: They keep adding new fun stuff, it's awesome! By the time you've unlocked half the available stuff, you become bullet hell!
It even runs very well on the trash PC at work. You really only need any input device hooked up to a potato. Nice!

Edit: another 200+ hours later: ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ man! The DLCs (3 at the moment) add a ton of great characters and weapons, a bunch of awesome maps, and the Adventures are pretty fun as well. You'll unlock so many tools to tweak runs as you want them to go, difficulty will more or less be up to your tastes. Gimp yourself in one way or another, boost the enemies, disable items from the RNG pool and make that aspect more bearable. Somehow it never truly gets boring.

It's awesome, no need for poise. Makes you want to play more of it, especially when you're done with the second dlc!