Sorcery Saga: Curse of the Great Curry God (PSVita)

 Rogue-likes are difficult sometimes.  This game was no exception.  I honestly never thought I would beat this game but somehow managed to clear it.  Through all the unfair and random challenges, there is a decent game with some interesting ideas.

If you have never played a rogue-like before, they are usually randomly generated dungeon crawlers.  Where enemies will move either with player movement or player action.  Sometimes there is a penalty for dying, in this game you lose all your unequipped items and levels.  That means you start each dungeon at level 1.  

Where it gets annoying is that the game is very dependent on equipment.  You can equip a weapon and a shield.  There are two types of weapons, swords for more physical based usage and staves for more magic oriented usage.  I never found a real difference and used a staff for half the game and a sword for the latter half.  You can upgrade your weapons with give them a + number next to them.  This raises the weapons stats by 1, which raises your stats by the same amount.  Equipment is very important.

Now for the annoying part, this game does everything it can to destroy your equipment.  I've never played a games where luck was so much a factor that if you didn't get absolutely super lucky, you were dead.  As you travel through dungeons with your cuddly but deadly little monster friend Kuu, all sorts of enemies would attack you.  Some are simply just going to attack you.  Other though run a gambit of cursing your equips or items, knocking off your equipment, or downright just turning your items into worthless onions.

Sometimes a run can get to be so unfair and you just have to dodge out.  Luckily, there are items for that.  Most often I would have to bring to dungeon exit Transport Books because one would always getting eaten by an enemy or cursed.  Kuu, if still alive when you die, will save your equipped items.  If Kuu is dead though, you lose everything.  

Kuu also loses hunger as you wander around a dungeon, so you always have to feed him things.  Anything, somethings will hurt instead of help, but most things will boost his hunger and he does level up every so often.  His skills are very useful but sometimes very harmful.  One in particular, that makes it so he eats anything he walks over is really mean as if you forget to pick up your equipment that got knocked off by an enemy, Kuu will happily munch it.  Losing hours of progress you have made on making said equipment.

Another important aspect in this is making curry while in a dungeon.  It requires four things, a recipe (which you learn from bringing ingredients back to the curry restaurant in the hub), ingredients, rice, and spice.  Curry can make or break a run, if you use the right curry it can boost your levels to insane amounts.  The biggest issue you will run into is a lack of spices.  They are way rarer than they should be but it always pays off to make curry when you can.

All in all, this was fun at times but very frustrating and not for everybody.  If you can't deal with losing hours of progress because your magical cat or whatever Kuu is ate your sword, don't try this game.  It is short if you get really lucky.  Finishing it, really made me want to try curry.

Nexomon (Switch)

 Collecting monsters is always fun.  Pokemon really set a huge bar for the genre but a few titles have reached similar heights.  Dragon Quest Monster and Yokai Watch are two series that I've played that are just as good.  I have to add Nexomon to this list now.

I went into this game not expecting much, this is a port of a mobile game to the Switch and honestly way more fun that I thought.  I've played some really bad monster collectors (Monster Crown...such a bad game) and this game surprised me.

The concept is pretty simple.  You start with one Nexomon and grow your team.  As you proceed you find better or rarer monsters to add to you team.  You level them up and they learn new things.  This game does some really neat things.  First thing that comes to mind is the fact that your monsters don't forget moves they previously learned, they are treated as skills that you can toggle off and on.  You can only select 4 per Nexomon but it is so nice having choices and not being punished by experimenting with a new move.

Instead of moves having a certain number of usages, your monster has stamina and each move uses a set amount.  Once a monster runs out of stamina, you either have to heal it with an item that is always plentiful or let them rest in the battle to get a little big back.  Leveling up your monster will also refresh both stamina and health.  

There is a story but it isn't super serious.  There is a lot of fourth-wall breaking and they really don't take some things seriously.  The characters are all kind of one-note but I didn't go into this to play a game with a story.  It is passable and does move the player through the whole game.  The music is also decent.  Some of the tracks are forgettable but some are pretty good.

If you like Pokemon and want to try something with some different ideas, try this out.  It is pretty fun and competently made.  This is actually the first game made in Unity (that I know of) that I've played that hasn't crashed or just been super janky.  I had some fun and nothing really got super challenging.  The story, characters, and music aren't terrible but if you feel the need to collect a bunch of little monsters, this is a good game.  Some of the monster designs are pretty good and it was always neat to see what was in the next area. 

Nier Replicant (PS4)

 I played the original Nier way back on the PS3 and didn't know what I was playing.  The story didn't make much sense and it felt a little stiff at times.  But after revisiting it with this version, things make much more sense and the experience was much better.  Although, the combat hasn't change much (or at all) it is still a good game.

I won't spoil any of the story because it is really full of a lot of twists and turns.  Just know that you are on a journey and ultimately a lot of what you do is pointless.  That is the biggest complaint I had but it also isn't a complaint at the same time, a lot of the side-quests that are undertaken are completely pointless.  They run you from point A to point B and then back and forth with a stop at point C for nothing and in the end, what do you get?  A neat weapon, some money, most often it is the latter but it also sometimes is nothing.  There are a lot of useless quests that really net the player nothing but they add to the world.

The world, that is one of the biggest draws of this game.  It feels like a high fantasy type of game, where there are magic books, trees, and big iron weapons.  But it isn't high fantasy, there are robots.  There is a history to this place.  You learn it all through out the game and things start to click into place what is actually going on.  I've never gotten the other endings but they do flesh out all the characters pretty nicely and some of the scenes are legitimately sad.  

The combat, while serviceable is a little stiff at times.  There is a weird buffering affect where sometimes the character would be dodge rolling and I had pressed it one too many times and needed to jump.  Instead of jumping, he would do the miss input dodge roll and then try to jump.  This almost always led to getting hid by what I needed to jump over.  This was mostly my fault, it just felt weird at times.  I will say, towards the end of the game, most of the normal enemies gain armor.  While it makes sense in game, it just makes combat more tedious.  Rather than just dodging around and hitting things with combos until they die.  If they are armored you do an attack that will knock the down (e.g. magic hands or spikes), then run up to them and use the deathblow button.  There is no point in trying to combo anymore because the armor takes way too long to knock off and some later enemies have way too much HP or guard.  Simpler to just knock them down, deathblow, and repeat.  It got really repetitive at times but still fun.

The music, is honestly the best part of the whole experience.  I loved Automata's soundtrack.  Enough that I purchased it and listen to some tracks when they come up randomly in my collection.  This game is no different.  Kaine's theme, Song of the Ancients, etc. are just wonderful.  They evoke so much emotion and make me feel.  They fit the theme of the game and all the music blends well with what is going on.  I honestly could listen to the soundtrack for hours.

Nier is a weird series.  It started as an addition to a joke ending (at least from what I've been told) to one of the Drakengard games.  It has grown into a completely different series all its own.  The director of this game has weaved a world that isn't soon forgotten.  Between the absolutely gorgeous areas and god-like soundtrack, parts of this game will stick with me the rest of my life.  Now to just sit next to this fountain a little longer and listen to Devola sing...

Etrian Odyssey IV (3DS)

Before playing Etrian Odyssey IV, I had never actually played a dungeon crawling RPG of this type.  I knew going into it that it would be difficult but I didn't understand how true that was.  Until I finally learned how to make a cohesive team, I was having a really rough time but that just built up into a decent experience.  A little frustrating at times but towards the end I was having fun as my team finally clicked together and I could trudge forward to the end.  It actually rekindled my interest in this type of RPG and now I have several others waiting on my backlog, simply because the game got fun eventually.

To be fair, the hardest part of the game is the beginning.  Before you have a cohesive team, encounters are difficult.  Even normal encounters are super deadly and FOEs are near impossible without the right setup or luck.  This is the appeal of this genre, each fight is life or death.  Unlike other RPGs, simple things like bats or rats will stop at nothing to see you dead.  This is where teambuilding is very important.

Each character you create has a role.  Be it the defensive tank in Fortress, the utility Medic, or the damage dealing Landskecht, it is very important for the player to learn what each role is for.  Not only do you have to know what a role is for but you also need to create synergy between your characters.  Have the ability to have a Runemaster weaken an enemy to ice damage and then using the Nightseeker's Ice Blade attack is a simple example.  There is a lot of depth and freedom, although the game does punish experimentation after certain points.  I found a group of characters and subclasses that worked for me eventually but it did take some learning on my part.

Also unlike most RPGs, debuffs and status ailments are very important.  They can often lead to a quick victory should they land and almost always I would prioritize landing something.  Even in the final battle, I was surprised when certain ailments would land and help me achieve a slight advantage.  I hadn't played a game that would actually let me land an ailment on a boss, let alone the final boss.   It was nice to see that the game was designed to allow for creative play like that.

One of the key features of the series is the ability to build your own map.  You can map the overworld, dungeons, etc. as you travel around.  There are some tools and the ability to set custom points to remember key areas was really neat.  This is a feature that pretty much couldn't be done on anything other than the 3DS I feel.  It was very intuitive to draw my own map and what should have felt tedious was actually pretty fun.  I felt like a true adventurer, plotting my course and getting through unexplored territory.

I would be remiss if I didn't mention the soundtrack. It starts out very simple but there are some great tracks in this game.  Especially towards the end of the game, the last few dungeons have some great themes.  The character art, enemy design, and dungeon design are all nice as well.  If I only had one complaint it would be about the moths.  Every time I fought the moths in the game, I would end up poisoned.  Every single time, without fail.  I hate the moths.

This is definitely no cakewalk of a game.  There were a few times I would just get wiped by what seemed like some very simple enemies.  I prevailed and eventually finished the game.  There is always postgame stuff to do but I got my enjoyment from the game.  Building a team, setting off to explore, and just getting through areas were all rewarding.  It starts rough but once you get better tools and abilities, the game really opens up.  I ended up enjoying this way more than I thought I would.

God Eater 3 (Switch)

 As a Monster Hunter clone, God Eater really does try its best to set itself apart.  With the devour and gun switching mechanics, they've done a decent job.  They introduced some new weapon types in the second title and the burst mechanics were further expanded.  In the third title, they added two new weapon types and grew burst even further.

I'll get it out of the way.  The story in this one is very generic.  It felt so similar to the previous titles that I skipped most of the cutscenes and still knew what was going on.  You spend your time learning about each of your team members, eventually befriending somebody mysterious, and then it all culminates in an epic climax.  I did watch the last set of scenes and it felt like I hadn't missed a thing.  The story is there but nothing to write home about.

The core of the game is going through missions with your selected weapon and beating on big or small Aragami.  The big difference from previous titles is there are new Aragami to hunt.  Some are fun to fight and others a complete bother.  Some hit entirely too hard and the new mechanic where some of the bigger baddies can now devour you and go into burst was annoying.  It led to a basic tactic of just running away once an Aragami started attempting to use the devour attack it had.  Problem is, some of them you couldn't run away.  They would either follow you across entire maps until you got hit or lost all your stamina.  Sometimes they would get you with no chance to even react.  

Still, combat is fun.  The burst mechanics are fun and it was fun using the different burst arts.  I played the game using only the new weapon type of Heavy Moon.  It felt good and often I had no problems just rinsing through enemies.  Sometimes my attacks wouldn't register or I wouldn't jump when I had clearly spammed the button several times.  The controls are not as responsive as I would have liked but I made due.  Guns and custom bullets though feel like they got a huge nerf.  Gone are the days of building a special bullet that pretty much destroyed whatever you fired it at.  They are very limited in use and I didn't bother even using one.  I picked the shotgun gun type and just blasted until I ran out of OP, using it as a simple way to rack up some quick damage while I was trying to run away.

My biggest complaint though is the camera.  I've never had to fight a lock-on system as much I had to in this game.  I would lock on to enemies only to have it just vanish seconds later.  I didn't press the button to dismiss it and the Aragami didn't vanish or move in a way it should have disengaged.  Most of my knockouts were from me just simply being unable to see the enemy.  It was incredibly frustrating to be hitting an enemy only to have the camera decide I no longer needed to see them and whiff my big finisher.

As far as the series goes, this was a good way to end it.  They really did peak in the Rage Burst.  The combat wasn't as tight in this but it was more fast paced.  The guns were not satisfying and I mostly ignored them.  Even the story wasn't great and very formulaic.  All in all, I had some fun but felt no need to keep playing after the main story was done.  I'm sure some of the side missions were interesting but I have no desire to keep playing it.  Good for fans of the series but if you want a Monster Hunter style game, just get Monster Hunter Rise at this point.

Kirby and the Forgotten Land (Switch)

 I'm not going to lie, I love Kirby.  I have played every Kirby game and there is just something about the little pink puffball that makes me keep coming back.  This game was no exception.  I found myself just bopping through the levels, looking for secrets and doing my best to finish with as much found as possible.

If you've played a Kirby game before, this will feel familiar.  The biggest change is the jump to a 3D platformer.  Kirby has been 3D for a while but never in a fully 3D world.  The transition was really good and for the most part, they nailed it.  There are a couple of instances where the depth of field messed up a jump or I randomly walked off the map because I wasn't paying close enough attention. Those moments were few and far between.

I do need to make a mention though, Kirby games have always been viewed as easy.  It is one of the reasons I love the series.  It is great to just turn off your brain and run through a level or two.  This game though, they added some difficulty.  There were many times, especially during bosses, that I almost died.  I didn't learn till after the main story and into the special secret stuff that the game intended the player to use guarding and dodging.  I tanked most fights and survived somehow, but I had to learn how to play a bit better at times.

The copy abilities in this game all felt great.  Some were familiar, like Sword or Hammer, but then you get some a new one like Ranger.  They actually gave Kirby a gun, they won't admit it but they did.  Each ability has strengths and weaknesses and the puzzles surrounding them were fun.  New to the series is the mouthful abilities.  Basically, Kirby swallows a huge object and gains control of it.  Each object does something unique, from racing around in a car to smashing enemies as a set of stairs.  Each has a section and each feels unique.

The best part of the game, and series, is the music.  This game is no exception but some of the tracks are especially noteworthy.  The ice themed area had some of the best music and the mall music made me feel like I was actually wandering around a mall as Kirby.  Doing what he would do, jumping from table to table eating the cakes and doughnuts stacked on them.

Kirby is one of those series that I just can't get enough.  They each feel unique and are some of the most fun I've had with a game.  Sure, most of them aren't long but that isn't a bad thing.  Some games pad the hours just so people feel they get their money's worth.  Kirby doesn't need to do that.  It sets out to be fun from start to end and that is what it is.  There is depth to the game though.  There are numerous side-games and collectibles.  Watching Kirby look at the little figures you collect is probably my favorite gaming moment as of late.  Kirby is the wholesome hero we need right now and I'm so glad that this game exists.  Do yourself a favor and play this game.  Just don't expect it to be a cakewalk.  

Suikoden (PSOne Classic)

 Lots of RPGs try to have large parties but nothing beats Suikoden.  What starts as a small force opposing an unjust empire, grows into an unstoppable army.  Sure most of the recruits are utterly useless but that's what makes it fun.  If you want to challenge yourself, you can.

The game, from the 32Bit era, is pretty simple.  The sprites are good and the music is passable.  I do wish there was a better way to skip some of the animations.  Having to watch the same rune magic over and over again does get kind of old.  But I understand that for the time this game was made, that wasn't the norm.  It was a lot of work to make those animations after all and I can see why the developers wouldn't want them to be skipped.

The core game revolves around building your army by recruiting 108 characters or "stars".  Many of them come from progressing the story but not a lot of them do.  Figuring out how to recruit of the stars is kind a of puzzle at times and does provide a nice little side piece to the mainly linear story.  Combat consists of building a party of six characters, with both a front and back line to consider.  Front line characters will hit harder and take more damage but some characters can't attack from the back line.  Usually the back line is reserved for the archer or magic using characters.

That brings up magic, to use magic or a skill, you have equip a rune.  You have your standard fair of magic, based on the elements like fire, water, wind, etc. Then there are some that do different effects, like protect against status ailments or reduce enemy accuracy.  Not every rune is useful and not every rune can be unequipped.  Some characters come with a rune that you cannot change but they usually are pretty powerful.

There are two other kind of combat, outside the main RPG battles previously mentioned.  Occasionally you will fight in large scale wars.  These play out in a rock-paper-scissors manner where you select and hope you picked the right option to counter what the enemy AI picked.  There aren't many of these and they aren't terribly hard but having the options for Ninjas/Thieves to tell you what the enemy is going to do is almost needed in some cases. 

The other kind of combat is rare with only three instances that I can recall.  These are duels, where it is one vs. one between one of your characters and an enemy.  The interface looks like a fighting game with two large health bars at the top but boils down to a rock-paper-scissors style fight again.  Although it isn't a true RPS style as one of the options doesn't have a a counter.  It was a neat way to do some very key story fights and better than just doing a standard fight with lots of dialogue.  If you know what you are doing or know what the enemies selected line means (each piece of dialogue corresponds to a choice), then you can easily win them.  They are very important to win as losing could mean permanently losing a character or a game over.

You would think that having over 108 characters would get muddled but each character has a unique style.  Some don't develop much but others you learn quite a bit about.  There are certainly some that I grew fond of and always kept in my party when I could.  This game isn't the most challenging and isn't super long but it was a fun ride while it lasted.  I enjoyed my time with it and understand that it really builds in the sequel.  Unfortunately, I won't ever get to play the other games in the series as they are incredibly rare and expensive.  It is a shame this series isn't around anymore, there are really good ideas here and I feel that this series could make a come back.  The only gripe I have is that the encounter rate was way higher than it should have been at times and a lot of the fights that you get into, you sometimes can't run from.  So you end up having to fight some enemies that literally give you 5 EXP for no reason.  For the most part though, it was enjoyable.

Stella Glow (3DS)

 This has been a long time coming.  I first purchased this game about 7 years ago when it came out.  I listened to the soundtrack and it was pretty good.  I was hyped but it went into the backlog.  2 years passed and it finally came up in my queue to play.

Everything started out okay, pretty standard Strategy RPG.  The characters were pretty neat, although some were a little annoying at times.  Nothing terrible but then a trend started.  See the main character, Alto, was pretty much requisite in every fight.  That is pretty standard for games like this.  They want you to use the character because they are important.

The trend was, almost every story fight had a lose condition if Alto fell in battle.  Okay, that makes sense story-wise.  Can't let the main character die before the end right?  Only, it didn't make sense after a while.  He could have easily just retreated, see other characters don't die when they are defeated.  There is no perma-death, they simply retreat and come back at the next fight.  

Why is this a problem?  Because after a while, the enemy AI would exploit these lose conditions with precision I've never experienced in any other game.  Alto became a huge target and liability but I had to keep him leveled because he was decent and in every fight.  Then started the other lose conditions with the one protection mission being where I lost it with this game. 

In one mission, you are required to protect an AI controlled unit.  You can't tell the unit to do anything, it will move, attack, whatever, all by itself.  Problem here, this unit was suicidal.  It would literally walk into groups of enemies and end the turn exposing the back to the highest attacking unit.  I lost 3 times with nothing I could do differently.

This game was way too random number generator dependent.  I would constantly miss attacks with 90% accuracy, only to turn around to have the enemy hit me at 43% and critical to boot.  Through out the whole game, it just felt like I could never get an advantage.  No matter what equipment I had, levels I was at.  The game was unrelenting for no reason.  

This all culminated in the last boss.  I won't spoil it but let's just say, as soon as I was done with this one, I wasn't going to touch this garbage again.  Not only did it always get two turns every 3-4 of my units but it had constantly respawning friends to help it out, giant attacks that were near impossible to get away from, and health regeneration.  I get that it was a last boss but still.  

I've played a lot of SRPGs in my life and this without a doubt is the first I have truly hated.  Not because it was bad or the story was trash but because it was completely unfair at times and I only won because the game let me win.  No matter how well thought out my strategy or how much I planned, the game would consistently change the rules in the middle of the adventure to the point that it was just frustrating.  This was Imageepoch's swan song, the last game they made.  I can see why now.  Don't punish the people playing your game and that is what this felt like, the whole way through.  A punishment I imposed on myself for completing this game.

Resident Evil VII: Biohazard (PS4)

 The survival horror genre and I have never really clicked.  I'm not the greatest at surviving things and I know that if I was personally in these games I would die almost immediately.  Luckily, zombies don't walk the earth yet and mutants are only in the movies still.  This is the latest entry in the Resident Evil story, if you don't count the recent remakes.  Gone are the tank controls and over the shoulder camera, this game is fully in first person.

While many fans disliked the change to first person, it was an interesting idea and I think they did it well.  It did make some of the horror feel a little cheap as it is really easy to make jump scares in first person titles but it worked well.  It really immerses the player in the world and you feel like you are the one being chased.

The story is good as well.  Learning the mysteries around why your character is there and just who the family is that are chasing you around their property was great.  The puzzles aren't super complicated and unlike the Resident Evil 2 remake, I don't recall this game having all that many keys to find.  

I won't spoil any of the story but there are a couple of twists and turns that are pretty well hidden.  It definitely feels like the start of a new story in the whole franchise but the key elements that link all the games are still there.  Having not played Resident Evil 6, I don't think I was lost.  I don't recall a time where I didn't know who a character was or what a key phrase meant.

The combat is good too.  Some of the bosses are a little annoying until you figure out the proper way to dodge their attacks.  Each encounter feels unique and it definitely goes without saying that you can easily die in almost any area.  Deaths never feel cheap and there is always something to learn in each try.

If you are a fan of Resident Evil or even of the survival horror genre, this is a must play.  Sure it doesn't feel like a normal Resident Evil game due to the new camera and some of the new gameplay elements but it is a solid entry.  From the look of the future, Resident Evil Village will be much of the same, which is certainly not a bad thing.  Definitely a must play.

Sword Art Online: Hollow Fragment (PSVita)

I was never big on anime based games.  When I first started watching Sword Art Online, it wasn't a terrible show and I thought the game couldn't be that bad.  It was way worse than I could have imagined for several reasons.

Most of the time when a developer tries to convert an MMO-like game to a single-player experience, it comes with some kind of tradeoff.  Usually it ends up being a bunch of fetch quests or just a boss rush simulator.  This game is both.  The world feels empty and the characters you meet will mostly ignore you.  For being an MMO simulation, this world feels hollow.

It doesn't help that the combat is also not all that engaging.  True to MMO fashion, it is all about using as many skills as you can and then watching the cooldowns.  It is pretty neat that you get to use different kinds of weapons and each weapon type is useful against a different type of enemy.  It does add a little strategy.  It is a shame that 85% of the bosses you fight are weak to one type of weapon though.  

The story in this game would have been game if the translation wasn't so terrible it is nearly broken.  It is almost as if the whole script was just run through Google Translate and then pasted in.  I've been told this was fixed in the PS4 version of this game but on the Vita, it is gibberish at best.  This really does hurt another big feature of the game, which is the dating-sim aspects.  It is hard to romance a girl when you don't have a clue what they are talking about.

All in all, this wasn't a terrible game.  I made it through and I didn't absolutely hate it.  If I can finish it and the 80+ hours contained within, it can't be that bad. It wasn't fun but if you like Sword Art Online, it is worth playing.  It does introduce characters that aren't in the anime and they do carry those characters into future games.  So it is almost required to play this before some of the other games.