Around fifteen years after it first appeared on the Nintendo Wii, Tales of Graces f Remastered finally brings the experience of protecting your friends and family onto even more consoles. The updated graphics, combined with the very anime aesthetics and bright watercolor-like palette, help in making the game look stylized, rather than dated. As the first entry in Bandai Namco’s initiative to remaster the Tales series, it’s a roaring success that amplifies the original game’s pros while cutting down on its cons.

Tales of Graces is, for better or for worse, a pretty standard JRPG in terms of its plot. It follows Asbel Lhant, the eldest son of Aston Lhant. His parents expected him to inherit Lhant territory from his father. However, Asbel's dream was to become a knight in the service of Windor's king. During his childhood, he (along with his younger brother, Hubert, and their childhood friend, Cheria) encounter a girl with amnesia. They dub her Sophie, and then learn that monsters had attacked a carriage carrying Prince Richard, who’d been on his way to visit Lhant. The group becomes fast friends. However, a monster they encounter in the underground of Barona’s castle changes the course of their lives forever.

The main arc then follows Asbel after he becomes an adult. While the childhood prologue was the weakest part of the story for a variety of reasons, it's not something you can skip. The friendship pact that Asbel, Richard, and Sophie made at the beginning of the game comes up again and again, especially when Asbel and Sophie are discussing how much Richard changed. As a kid, he was more of an idealist who wanted to do good in the world. But when Asbel and the others meet him again as an adult—even if he went through some pretty traumatizing events—he’s like a completely different person. As they try to figure out what caused Richard’s dramatic personality change, they also uncover a secret about their planet’s past.

Tales of Graces f Remastered has a pretty simple story. It’s not as emotional or memorable as Legendia’s, but I don’t think it’ll stir as much controversy as, say, Xillia’s or Zestiria’s. The narrative plays most of the tropes it introduces straight, which can make later plot twists predictable to players familiar with the genre. That’s fine, though. Not every game is going to be a contender for Best Narrative at the Game Awards. The party dynamic in Graces more than makes up for the weaker story. Because most of the party knows each other from childhood, there’s a very relaxed atmosphere in the group after the initial awkward phase passes. Pascal and Malik, the newcomers, are all chill adults, who either mind their own business or can play along with the wilder quirks from the Lhant group (and Richard).

Tales games tend to employ a pseudo-family dynamic for its parties. I don't want to say "found family," because the characters fall into very stereotypical and gender-specific positions. For example, Asbel is the dad, Cheria is the mom, and Sophie is the kid. Pascal, somehow, fills the role of Sophie's sister, even though she's older than both Asbel and Cheria. I definitely felt my growth as a person when seeing the characters interact with each other, as well as the overall plot revolving around the Lhant family. For reference, I first played Tales of Graces when it first came out on the Wii, and imported f back in 2010 when it was still a Japan-exclusive. That means I was only in my teens when I played it.

When I was younger, I felt really bad for Kerri (Asbel and Hubert’s mom) after seeing the way teenager Hubert talked to her. But now that I’m old enough to have kids Asbel and Hubert’s age at the beginning of the game, my sympathy for her and Aston faded a lot. At most, I can understand why they even had to choose between their children, since they're both the sons of a lord. Most of my general irritation at the pseudo-family dynamic in Tales of Graces f Remastered faded as well, especially after I saw Lineage and Legacies. While Lineage and Legacies was really fun for its endgame dungeon and Accelerate Mode, its plot was even weaker than the childhood prologue. Honestly, the interactions between the party members (in the main story) were so cute. I don’t understand what annoyed me so much when I was a teenager.

As Yusuke Tomizawa, the general producer of the Tales series, said in August 2024, a huge selling point for Tales of Graces f Remastered is the combat. It’s fast-paced, addictive, and stylish. With relatively short casting times for spells, as well as a lot of flashy animations for the melee characters’ A and B artes, the screen can get very busy very fast. So some people who aren’t too familiar with how combat in this game looks might decry it as visual noise. Personally, because I know what’s going on and I’m also used to flashier Tales battles, I don’t notice anything wrong with it.

While you can get away with mindless button mashing, I do suggest taking the time to learn how to use the different techniques and characters. Each character has A and B artes, which can alter how they work in battle or offer different bonuses. Asbel's B artes unsheathe his sword. Using A artes will sheathe his sword again, as well as heal him based on his Physical Defense and how many B artes he used. Knowing little tricks like this can really save you in more difficult battles later in the game. In Asbel's case, I could get away with letting my healers prioritize someone else, because he can stay alive long enough to at least eat an Apple Gel. The more you learn about the Graces battle system, the more fun you'll get out of it.

Oddly enough, I had a far harder time settling on a difficulty level. Because I started the game with both double and quintuple EXP (along with other boosts), it didn’t take long before I became too overpowered for regular encounters. That made the game pretty boring since, again, the combat is Tales of Graces f Remastered's main selling point. But turning the difficulty to the highest setting, especially in the early game when you can only control Asbel, made the game way too hard sometimes. I felt embarrassed at how many attempts I needed to kill that first wolf you fight in the main arc. In my defense, I usually control Sophie. It took some trial and error before stumbling upon the perfect combination. I’d rather get through random battles quickly than have to redo a boss fight over and over again, especially really annoying ones like enemies with a Nova shield.

Speaking of which, one of the mechanics that Bandai Namco announced would be in the remastered version of Tales of Graces f was the grade shop being available right at the beginning of the game. If this is your first time playing, I do not recommend taking bonuses like the 5x EXP one. Like I said in the paragraph above, it makes the combat way too easy. In my opinion, the 2x EXP bonus was more than enough. It makes grinding for the endgame dungeon a lot easier, but doesn’t trivialize combat outside of boss fights.

Another quality of life change in the remastered version of Tales of Graces f was the on-screen map. You can now see where you need to go, as well as any time-limited events you might miss. Other than the improved graphics, this is the biggest reason to play the remastered version and not the previous ones. It is a serious life-changer. If there’s one thing that I think Graces did terribly at, it was dungeon design. All the dungeons look the same no matter where you are in it. And since you can't follow along your mini-map while you're inside a dungeon, it was hard to remember where I was or where I needed to go.

The Wallbridge, in particular, is a nightmare. One of my core memories of Tales of Graces on the Wii was being stuck in that stupid fortress for literal days. Every turn and room looked almost the same. I remember backtracking to see if I had gotten all the treasure chests, and then couldn't find my way back to where I needed to go. The goal icon on the screen in the remastered version not only helped to guide me to my destination, but it also served as an on-screen landmark whenever I wandered off to loot or fight.

Finally, let’s talk about the game’s visuals on modern consoles. It’s impressive! Close-up shots of the characters sometimes highlight the low-poly background. Seeing it makes it obvious that Bandai Namco didn’t develop this from the ground-up in the 2020s. However, the character models all look smooth. I booted up my PS3 Tales of Graces f to compare, and I never noticed how grainy PS3 games were. It says a lot about the quality of the game’s models and overall design that the remastered visuals hold up, even fifteen years after its initial release. At times, backgrounds and characters in the distance looked foggy in a weird way. But Tales of Graces’s watercolor-like aesthetics helped a lot in making it look natural rather than odd with the rest of the game.

I read some reviews from when Tales of Graces and Tales of Graces f first came out, and saw a few criticisms that came up again and again. One of them was load time. I'm happy to report that while the game needed to load up a new map or transport me to the battlefield, it never felt slow or annoying. On the PC, at the very least, load times were minimal. Another common criticism was the graphics. Even when f came out in 2010, it looked pretty dated for a PS3 game, apparently. When playing the remastered version, Tales of Graces f felt like a lot of the visual choices Bandai Namco made were purposeful. It looked like a stylistic choice, especially since we're now in an era where realism or "fancy" graphics is no longer the main pursuit of studios.

Between Tales of Graces f Remastered's challenging endgame dungeon and collectibles, completionists can easily sink over a hundred hours into this game. Its palatable story and fast-paced combat also make it a good introduction to the series if you’ve never played Tales before. The thing about that, though, is that there are a lot of references to previous Tales games in this one—even titles that never appeared in the west. Another detriment is that the Graces combat system makes older games in the franchise feel horribly sluggish in comparison. Nonetheless, Tales of Graces f Remastered is a promising way for Bandai Namco to start its year, as well as a potential Tales renaissance. 

Tales of Graces f Remastered will come out on the PS4, PS5, Xbox Series X, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and Windows PC on January 17, 2025. PC version reviewed.

The post Review: Tales of Graces f Remastered Preserves Its Best Parts appeared first on Siliconera.

You could suggest the end of the Nintendo Switch’s lifespan is coming quite soon when Nintendo revisits older titles like Donkey Kong Country Returns. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing! After all, Donkey Kong Country Returns HD is a straightforward remaster that includes some neat quality-of-changes that make it worth a look 15 years later.

If there is one element in recent platformers that I find a bit annoying at times, it is the breezy difficulty. Games like Super Mario Wonder and even Astro Bot rarely challenged me. That isn’t the case at all with Donkey Kong Country Returns HD. If you like 2D platforming levels that will push you to your limits, this is the one to check out.

Across 80 levels set in multiple worlds, Donkey Kong Country Returns HD features countless different activities. From rocket-jumping your way through danger and riding a mine cart to bashing through foes atop the rhino Rambi, one of the best parts of the game remains its variety. I never got bored, since there was always something new to see and do as a first-time player of this particular entry. The Jungle world looks notably lush and vibrant with the game's remastered visuals. Meanwhile, the Beach feels bright, cheery, and reminiscent of Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze. More importantly, though, was the ever-present difficulty of this experience.

Much of the beauty of this comes from the distinct separation between the background and the foreground. Levels often have the player shoot out of a barrel to a part of the level closer to the screen. Then, they might complete that section and fire further back into the background to keep going. This isn’t just for show, either, as the mechanic plays into the challenges as well.

One of my favorite uses of this mechanic came during an octopus level. The entire level, we see a menacing octopus just chilling in the background and being all creepy. This isn’t for show, as the octopus will randomly bust its tentacles through the wall or ceiling to increase the difficulty and threaten Donkey Kong and Diddy Kong. This type of gameplay element still surprised me, even though we see the concept in other titles, and it kept me on my toes in an engaging way.

It ties into an important element of this title that remains as true now as it did in 2010. What Nintendo does best with Donkey Kong Country Returns HD is continuously surprise and delight a player with challenges and a wealth of experiences. Each of the core 80 levels is already enough of a hurdle to overcome when dealing with the speedy and well-thought-out obstacles and enemies, but there is so much to else to do and collect as well.

Even beyond the already substantial number of worlds, there are some secret levels you can unlock. There are four letters that spell out “KONG” in most levels, and finding all of them unlocks a special level in each world. These are by far the most difficult ones. They usually require precise movements and perfect timing to complete. In addition to that, there is a co-op mode. One player takes on the role of Donkey Kong, while the other plays as Diddy. I had the most fun exploring each 2D level with another person. You can feed off of one another and help each other out, which relieves some of the stress.

Of course, this remaster of Donkey Kong Country Returns wouldn’t be complete without some quality-of-life improvements. There is a general sharpening of the visuals. Each level pops with vibrant color and none of the grainy, blurry details of the Wii and 3DS versions.

More importantly, though, it is possible for things to feel a bit easier time with the new Modern Mode. This is an optional mode that gives you more hearts and lets someone hold more items. Naturally, the Classic Mode is still there for purists. But I find the Modern Mode is a neat addition for those fear they'll be frustrated.

Beyond a handful of graphical changes and a couple of meaningful changes like Modern Mode, Donkey Kong Country Returns HD is a pretty straightforward remaster. In fact, I would say Nintendo plays its pretty safe here. I wouldn’t recommend going into it expecting anything too radically new. That said, if you are a newcomer like myself, it is well worth a look since this is one of the most rewarding Nintendo platformers. However, if you are a veteran, just know that this is mostly the same game from 15 years ago, but for the Switch.

Donkey Kong Country Returns HD releases for Nintendo Switch on January 16, 2025. It also appeared on the Wii and 3DS.

The post Review: Donkey Kong Country Returns HD Is a Straightforward Remaster appeared first on Siliconera.

Dynasty Warriors Origins is a new attempt by Koei Tecmo and Omega Force to rejuvenate the long-running, history-based, hack-and-slash series. The company and studio behind the it managed to overhaul the gameplay system and combat presentations, which is made possible with the processing power of a console like the PS5. However, the strides may also be offset by neglect when it comes to the storytelling and character roster.

One of the subjects that have been talked about the most in the Dynasty Warriors series is the action combo system. The Charge Combo system, where players can unleash different strong attacks depending on the launch position in the normal attack string, has been a fond favorite among the series fanbase but often loathed by other critics as repetitive. Previous attempts to revolutionize the combos, such as Renbu in Dynasty Warriors 6 and the State Combo system in Dynasty Warriors 9, fell flat and failed to impress fans and critics alike.

Producer Tomohiko Sho has promised in interviews that Origins would stay away from Dynasty Warriors 9's State Combo system. But while the game was initially shown with the good ol' Charge Combo system, there is a big twist in the larger picture. The sword is one of the only two weapon types to keep a close resemblance with the staple combo chain. Most weapon types in this game now have the same strong attack from any point in the normal string.

This is also where the game's actions have further distinctions. Every weapon type has its own unique methods of launching strong attacks. The prompts range from holding or mashing to pressing the button at the right time. Even weapons with similar input prompts still have some differences.

For example, both Xiahou Dun's Podao Scimitar and Zhang Fei's Viper Lance will encourage the player to hold the strong attack button to charge up the attacks. However, the Podao will simply power up the attack while launching a staggering shockwave at each level, whereas the lance will require enduring enemy attacks to unleash its full potential.

There may be some concerns that the playable weapon types are too few and some of the weapons used by NPCs are not usable by the player, such as Xu Zhu's club or Zhuge Liang's feather fan. But with how every playable weapon type is made uniquely this time around, it may give more expectations towards a similar direction for future series entries.

In addition, there are also new strong attacks linked with the guard and evasion buttons for all weapons. There has been a further emphasis on defense and evasion in this game. Most of the attacks from enemy officers will not be interruptible by regular attacks, and you will have to determine whether you can block the attack, cancel it with a special battle art or Musou attack, or dodge it. By forcing such decisions, it should remove the series' stigma that the game could be easily beaten by simply attacking with the Square or X button.

One of the features I appreciate the most in Dynasty Warriors Origins is the briefing session in the pre-war council. Prior series entries mostly had the ploys explained in the midst of battles, which may be overwhelming for some players. By providing strategic explanations before the battles, it also lets the player plot their own movements beforehand.

The Eyes of the Sacred Bird, the protagonist's exclusive ability inspired by Joker's Third Eye from Omega Force's experience in Persona 5 Strikers, also helps the player make tactical movement decisions to make the game worthy of its "tactical action" genre. Other than checking officers' conditions, the ability also lets you detect stage gimmicks like magic sources and hidden paths. You can even order troop tactics that can temporarily debuff enemies when used at optimal positions.

The game now marks any ongoing fights between officers—even outside of bases—with lettered spots. Players will be generally recommended to focus on red spots with enemy advantages to mitigate ally losses. And as the morale gradually shifts in your favor, you will also notice allied officers becoming able to breeze through the fights on their own.

However, I noticed that these spots do not seem to factor in enemy officers with maximum courage, as they can still overwhelm allied officers with a morale advantage. These officers are usually the key leaders with whom the player has to deal directly. Some of them can challenge the player to a one-on-one duel, which occasionally may also include a heightened all-or-nothing stake.

In Dynasty Warriors Origins, the player is also encouraged to work together with troops to enter enemy bases and castles. Opening enemy-controlled gates from the front now requires you to summon help from your bodyguard unit or nearby troops. But while you can unlock a gate's lock from behind by yourself, I find it perplexing that I need to request help from troops to destroy siege weapons like catapults when I could do it myself in prior games.

The presentation for the battles in this game reaches top marks with the large army clashes and castle sieges at the battles' climactic phases. Rushing together with allied troops and seeing some of them blown up high by enemy catapult attacks feel so immersive and life-like, especially with thousands of soldiers appearing simultaneously on the screen. Unleashing an Ultimate Musou Attack that can blow away over a thousand soldiers at this phase also has a very satisfying feel as a result.

I am also impressed that Omega Force went back to focus on maintaining a stable frame rate to make the gameplay flow smoothly, just like the PS2-era entries. I still remember how I mostly only saw 30 fps when I played Dynasty Warriors 7 through 9 on the PS3 and PS4 respectively. In Dynasty Warriors Origins, I noticed a mostly stable 60 fps gameplay on the original (non-Pro) PS5, even during the large army clashes I mentioned above.

I also noticed that Origins managed to grasp the RPG-like game progression in a much better way than Dynasty Warriors 9. The protagonist traverses through a gradually opened world map to progress in the story. There are also several requests that task the player to obtain specific items with a vague map clue. Infinitely spawning skirmishes act similarly to random mook battles in RPGs where the player can grind for levels and training missions. And increasing ranks will gradually unlock skill trees that can provide various buffs to the player's character.

In addition, the battle music themes definitely have some notes from Omega Force's experience with the Fire Emblem Warriors entries. Pausing the game will reduce some of the instruments seamlessly to make the ambiance somewhat calmer, even with just the electric guitars being strummed. What's new here, though, is that there is a grander version of the music with even more epic instruments when the stage is at its climactic phase, and it also gives me more excitement to finish the battle decisively.

For all the improvements made to the game's presentations, though, Omega Force seems to have done those at the expense of the characters and lore storytelling that the studio had slowly built up throughout successive mainline entries. But before I go in-depth with that, let me mention the several positive aspects Omega Force had brought in from these segments.

The age-based design changes for several characters, such as Liu Bei and Cao Cao becoming younger or Gan Ning appearing older, make them fit better with the period setting. The early arc villains like Zhang Jiao and Dong Zhuo also received major overhauls that allowed them to evolve from cliche villains to characters who have properly conveyed purposes.

However, the team opted to focus the storytelling from the perspective of the game's original protagonist, so much so that a good number of key events from the Romance of the Three Kingdoms novel and other key character developments end up happening off-screen. Not seeing Liu Bei's sworn brother oath at the Peach Garden is one thing, but the lack of choices to align the player's viewpoint with the Yellow Turbans and Dong Zhuo's army—which had been present in prior Dynasty Warriors entries—makes Origins fail to completely explain things that happen inside the factions, such as how the Yellow Turban soldiers degraded into depravity or how the successful assassination plot on Dong Zhuo worked out.

I have also already noticed several series characters who, despite having appeared in prior Dynasty Warriors entries, are missing in Origins' full roster. There are already some red flags raised on this topic when the same producer behind the roster-reduced Dynasty Warriors 6 helmed this title and announced a scope reduction in the timeline covered. Altering Xu Huang's background in his decision to join Cao Cao and thus completely retconning Man Chong is just one of the examples that people who are well-versed in the lore setting might not be able to stomach.

And even though you can have a recurring character follow you as a companion in most battles, I'm finding a very limited window to control them. In each stage, I only see one chance to unleash the tag-team Extreme Musou Attack. And when I do make the switch to control that character, their Rage Mode will automatically activate even when I haven't pressed the prompts yet.

I haven't even mentioned my pet peeve with the long-standing localization issue throughout the series, in which Koei Tecmo omits almost every mention of characters' courtesy names in the English localization, even when the Japanese and Chinese scripts constantly use them. Retaining Yuanhua's name in the localization may seem like an odd decision from such a team, but I personally hope it serves as an impetus for the English team to consider the full inclusion of courtesy names in future Dynasty Warriors title localizations.

As a side note, I received my Dynasty Warriors Origins review copy on the PlayStation 5. As I pointed out in my impressions of the demo version, the PS5 build is somehow lacking Chinese language options unlike on other platforms. This is because Sony and Koei Tecmo, for some reason, split the Chinese language version from English and the rest. This omission is, unfortunately, still in effect as of the review version. Unless there are future plans to update all regional variants with every supported language, the PS5 version will have a significant disadvantage from the PC and Xbox releases on this aspect.

Playing the game with Japanese voiceovers, however, let me rediscover the pun jokes that Omega Force has regularly put into the Japanese releases since Dynasty Warriors 7. Only a few of these get properly localized to English, though, while most of the puns are lost to ironically accurate translations.

But no matter which voiceover language I go with, I've been impressed with all characters in conversations—including even generic generals and non-combatant civilians—having not only proper lipsync but also tongue movements with quotes in each selected language.

Koei Tecmo is finally heading down the right path to revitalize the Dynasty Warriors series' gameplay actions and presentations with Origins. Those who have gotten fed up with the series' repetitiveness will find this game the perfect entry to make their return. But while newcomers and returning players may not have as many issues with the storytelling, long-time fans who have grown attached to the lore setting and characters might feel underwhelmed by the various cuts made to both aspects.

Dynasty Warriors Origins will be available worldwide on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, and PC on January 17, 2025.

The post Review: Dynasty Warriors Origins Reboots the Series’ Gameplay appeared first on Siliconera.

If anyone had asked me about the possibility of a Freedom Wars Remastered release during the last decade, I wouldn’t have put my money on it. Yet this fascinating oddity of a game is now getting a new lease on life. For those unfamiliar, Freedom Wars is a mission-based action RPG with a particular and bold aesthetic, as well as a Sony first-party title developed by Dimps and released all the way back in 2014 exclusively on the PlayStation Vita Vita. But now, it's showing up on modern consoles and PCs.

Freedom Wars Remastered is set in a distant future where humanity lives imprisoned penal city-states called Panopticons. In these Panopticons, humanity is divided between regular citizens and sinners, people that have been condemned with 1,000,000 years of imprisonment for the crime of being alive. The player character is one such sinners that happens to lose their memories at the start of the game, forcing the Panopticon to reset their sentence to a million. Sinners are forced to “volunteer” in warfare with other rival Panopticons to gain resources or kidnap valuable citizens to perform labor.

The core conceit of the game sounds more melodramatic than it ends up being. While the game evokes images of prison and penitentiary life, it doesn’t take long after the introduction for Freedom Wars to give a different image from its seemingly dour premise. Sinners lead relatively normal lives and increasing your sentence doesn’t change much, other than serving as flavor text. Furthermore, the amnesia plot serves as a device to provide an explanation to the player and introduce them to the world of the game.

First and foremost, Freedom Wars Remastered is a portable game, and this is felt all throughout its pacing. The game starts with some basic tutorials, lengthy dialogue, and light “exploration” stages. I put exploration in quotations because it is apparent very quickly that areas in the main hub of your player-chosen Panopticon are recycled and identical, with very little variation until later into the game. Similarly, worldbuilding and story rely heavily on short, but constant, character exposition in between main story missions. While I didn’t mind this back in 2014 on the Vita, I found it to be a bit obtrusive playing for longer sessions on my PC. Particularly the Cell Garden infiltration sections felt too repetitive, despite there only being a handful.

Luckily, the pacing issues only exist during the first few hours. Once you learn the ropes, the game consistently gives you missions where you deploy with up to three party members and are tasked with different objectives. These vary between defeating all enemies, whether it is rival Sinners or Abductors, giant machines that Panopticons employ to wage war; rescue citizens from your rivals, or domination missions in the style of “capture the flag.” Again, because of its origins as a portable 2014 game, there isn’t a lot of mission variety. However, I didn’t mind this, as the main attraction is the Abductor fights. The variety of Abductor types isn’t massive either. Freedom Wars Remastered makes up for it by starting with fights against one, and increasing the number of Abductors and combinations of them you need to fight at the same time, or even having several of them in waves, or interspersed with waves of Sinners. This distinguishes the game from series like Monster Hunter or God Eater, where the focus lies on a single big spectacle fight.

And, in spite of all of its limitations as a portable title, Freedom Wars Remastered has really engaging combat. The player character can carry two weapons at a type, being able to choose between melee equipment such as one-handed, two-handed weapons, and polearms; as well as firearms in the form of assault weapons, portable artillery, and autocannons. Each melee weapon type has its own moveset, with some of them excelling at severing abductor parts, dealing critical hits, or other specialty. I gravitated towards light melee weapon and polearms for my melee choice favoring the Hawkshadow, and Barbara's Easy Blaster as my firearm of choice. While practice battles are available to try your moveset in a safe environment, for this remaster I would have liked having the option to change weapons on the fly during these practice missions so you could easily find your favorite combination of weapons.

And yet, my favorite inclusion to the gameplay is the thorn system. Sinners are capable of using a grappling hook-like tool called the Thorn. It is a useful system to traverse the arenas and maps, to drag down enemy Abductors, or even to connect with enemy Sinners for a powerful dash combo. This mechanic is simple but deceptively deep, granting the game a powerful layer of aerial combat and combo opportunities. Thorns come in Binding, Healing, and Shielding varieties, each with unique properties such as the ability to enhance defense, heal allies, or stun enemies. Sinners are also accompanied by an Accessory, a robotic ally that fights and offers support in the battlefield.

As a remaster of a decade-old game, Freedom Wars Remastered adds some subtle but meaningful changes, with the inclusion of some fascinating elements that never made it to the original American or European releases. First of all, the movement speed feels much faster and responsive now. Maps are not particularly big, and traversing them with the Thorn is pretty easy, but this increase in maneuverability is great to dodge and avoid damage in fights with lots of moving parts. Additionally, the unique voice synthesizer editor system used for Accessories in the original Japanese release finally made it overseas. This allows players to create their own unique responses to orders or gameplay actions, such as asking your Accessory to take care of rescuing citizens.

My only real problem with this version of the game is the inclusion of Easy Anti-Cheat (EAC) for the PC release of the game. Depending on each player's PC, this might or might not be a problem for some. For me, EAC resulted in an unstable performance and drastic framerate drops, despite having a pretty powerful rig. I was able to fix this issue quickly due to having had this problem before with EAC and knowing how to deal with it, but this resulted in the game crashing approximately every hour and a half.

The generous use of auto-save ensured that I never lost progress, but this was a considerable inconvenience for the first 4-5 hours of playtime. And at around 10 hours of playtime in my approximately 22-hour playthrough of the main campaign, the framerate issues stopped completely and I was able to play normally. I would advise to keep an eye out in case you've ever experienced similar issues with other games that use EAC. The game is still absolutely worth it, but you might want to give it a try on console. On the other side, performance on the Steam Deck was silky smooth and it game me no problem.

Over a decade after its release, Freedom Wars Remastered remains a competent action RPG with a surprisingly engaging gameplay loop and complex combat system. Noticing the seams of a PS Vita portable game will be unavoidable even in this remaster, but it has a certain charm to it. Perhaps the story is not the most highbrow out there, but the aesthetic and purposeful odd vibe of the Panopticons are pretty unique and attractive. While I was unable to try the multiplayer, I plan on putting more hours into the game and jump into the post-game missions with friends, trying to reduce my sentence to 0, and maybe give the PvP modes a chance. If you enjoy mission-based action RPGs, this is an absolute classic.

Freedom Wars Remastered will come out on January 10, 2025 for the PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, and PC via Steam.

The post Review: Freedom Wars Remastered Deserves a Second Chance appeared first on Siliconera.

Being a Western Ys fan has certainly gotten easier in the last decade or so. For a very long time, the odds of any given release in the series getting a localization was hit or miss. More miss than hit, really. That changed in the twilight years of the PSP, when Nihon Falcom hooked up with XSEED to bring a number of its games overseas. One such title was the PSP version of Ys: The Oath in Felghana, the superb remake of the third game in the series. The two companies have once again joined hands to bring that game to the Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4/5 with Ys Memoire: The Oath in Felghana.

The word "remake" gets applied in all kinds of ways in this wild hobby of ours, but Ys: The Oath in Felghana would probably qualify as one of its most extreme forms. It's essentially a new game that follows the narrative framework and world design of Ys III: Wanderers from Ys. Originally released on the NEC PC-8801 in July of 1989, Wanderers from Ys broke from the pattern of the first two games by shifting to a side-scrolling format. While the game was well-received at the time, it would prove to be the only time the Ys series would use that style of gameplay.

Following the release of Wanderers from Ys and the departure of series creators Masaya Hashimoto and Tomoyoshi Miyazaki, the series had some very rough years. Ys IV had two largely distinct versions, neither of which was developed by Nihon Falcom. Ys V brought the series back in-house, but didn't make much of an impact. It was a Super Famicom release in 1995, so that might not have been entirely the fault of the game. Whatever the reason, when Nihon Falcom returned to the series a few years later, it was in the form of Windows remakes of the first two games.

Things got back on track with the release of Ys VI: The Ark of Napishtim in 2003 for Windows PCs. It sported a spiffy new engine, and had the good fortune to be picked up for a global release on PlayStation 2 and PlayStation Portable by none other than Konami. The work done on this game was carried into yet another remake, this time of Wanderers from Ys. Titled Ys: The Oath in Felghana, it released on Windows PCs in Japan in 2005 and the PSP globally in 2010, with a global PC release coming in 2012. While it told the same story as Wanderers from Ys and featured most of the same locations, the gameplay was more in line with the rest of the series and just about every aspect of the original was expanded upon.

We're a ways past 2012 now, however. That PC version is still kicking, of course. PC games are nice that way. Otherwise, you have had to dig out an PSP or Vita to play Felghana, a prospect that gets more inconvenient as time goes on. Fortunately, Nihon Falcom has ported the game to the Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4/5 in a slightly enhanced form as Ys Memoire: The Oath in Felghana. It appears to use the PlayStation Portable version of the game as its basis, which makes a certain degree of sense. It was the newest version up until now, after all. Things have been touched up a bit visually, and a few modest new features have been implemented.

The real star of the show here is simply that the game itself is now available on these consoles, though. Yes, Adol (awkwardly) fills the silence in conversations now. You can choose your preferred version of the soundtrack, and swap between the original portraits or some new ones. Otherwise, you're looking at all of the same content as the PlayStation Portable release. That's not a bad thing, but if you're looking for a lot of new additions you won't find much here. A remake of a remake, this is not.

With that said, Ys: The Oath in Felghana is an excellent action-RPG, and that goes just as well for this new version as it did for previous ones. At least for this writer, this era of Ys hits the sweet spot between the somewhat thin earlier entries and the multi-character, somewhat long-winded modern games. The story and characters are relatively basic in Felghana, but they're present and help make the world feel bigger than it really is. Adol and Dogi return to Dogi's hometown, and it turns out trouble's a-brewin'. It's up to our red-haired hero to save the day while Dogi is presumably off smashing through walls like the Kool-Aid Man.

The town of Redmont serves as your hub on this adventure, with each of the paths leading from its outskirts taking you in the direction of a different area of interest. You'll be dealing with these areas in a more or less linear order, as opening up them up usually rests on either a story trigger or an ability you'll earn in an earlier spoke. You can return to previously visited areas with your new abilities to score some extra upgrades, and the story will occasionally take you back to some locations to open a new path. Not exactly a massive world, but the areas are just big enough to require exploration without feeling too overwhelming.

You'll frequently return to Redmont, allowing you to take advantage of its shops to pick up useful items and equipment upgrades. You'll need quite a lot of money and ore to stay up to date with your gear, and this will sometimes encourage a bit of grinding. Nowhere near as much as the original Wanderers from Ys, but gold in particular can be scarce as the game goes on. Leveling up can also help with tricky sections, but Ys Memoire: The Oath in Felghana leans more on your reflexes and skills over having the best gear and a high level. The easier difficulty levels give you a comfortable ride, but even the Normal setting requires the player to put in a little work. The more challenging difficulty settings are a genuine test for any action game fan.

The gameplay in Ys Memoire: The Oath in Felghana is fast-paced and tense. You will often be crowded by your enemies, and there are plenty of hazards and environmental features to keep in mind as you dance around those hostile forces. The boss battles are thrilling, with plenty of fun patterns to learn and liberal amounts of things that will dispatch the inattentive player in a hurry. It feels good to master each encounter, because Adol is like a whirling dervish of death when you've got a handle on things. When combined with the quick movement speed and outstanding soundtrack, it's very easy to get in a zone with this game. That's the mark of a quality Ys entry.

That zippy pace results in a game that you can easily wrap up within ten to fifteen hours, which some players might balk at. I think it's as long as it needs to be, with very little in the way of unnecessary filler. It also provides some satisfying incentives to replay on higher difficulty settings, with an interesting New Game+ feature. The game allows you to pick some cheats using points earned based on the difficulty level you beat the game on, so if you want the full Tiny God effect you really do need to push yourself to the limit. Big risk, big reward.

For this review, I played the Nintendo Switch version of the game. By and large, it runs nicely on the platform in both handheld and docked mode. There have been some light graphical improvements made, but this is still a game from the mid-00s at its core and the texture maps and geometry often reflect that. The framerate on the PSP version could get dicey in busier sections of the game, and while this Switch version is considerably better in that regard, it does still sometimes dip when there's a ton of things going on. One would hope the PlayStation version would smooth that out, but I can't confirm that. It's a little disappointing, but I doubt it will be gamebreaking for most.

The best thing about Ys Memoire: The Oath in Felghana is simply that it gets this immensely enjoyable action-RPG onto more modern platforms. The port is solid though not flawless, and not much has been added for this go-around. I would argue that The Oath in Felghana doesn't need more than we already saw in the previous versions, though. I'm not sure if a series like Ys could get away with a game this lean and mean anymore as a brand new installment, but it's one classic that I always like to have at hand thanks to how breezy and satisfying it is to play. A great game then and now.

Ys Memoire: The Oath in Felghana will be released on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation 5 on January 7, 2025.

The post Review: Ys Memoire: The Oath in Felghana Is a Refreshing Blast from the Past appeared first on Siliconera.

There are times when I hope that a final version of an early access game will turn out better than what I experienced, but have a sneaking suspicion nothing will really change. It happens, even if we do see minor patches along the way to help. This is the case with Attack on Titan VR: Unbreakable, the Meta Quest game based on one of earliest fights against the Titans in the series. The concept and idea is sound. Some gameplay elements are good! But the innate experience means it couldn’t really change some of the fundamental issues present even in the initial releases.

Attack on Titan VR: Unbreakable kicks things off right at the very beginning, so people coming to the game don’t need to have watched much or the anime or even finished the first volume of the manga. It is set during the Battle of Trost District arc, which is right as Eren Yeager, Mikasa Ackerman, Armin Alert, and other new 104th Training Corps members join the higher ranking members of the Survey Corps to face the Colossus Titan and other invading titans that breached the gate and attacked the wall. We’re a member of Survey Corps also fighting to protect the city and drive the Titans back alongside notable characters from the series. 

This quest is broken down into briefer missions, as well as co-op and survival modes. In each one we wear Omni-Directional Mobility (ODM) gear and use it to parkour through the streets of a bleak city that, honestly, looks like something plucked from a PS2 game with rudimentary textures. When we see smoke or Titans, our goal is to head toward it to defeat our foes, get needed resources, and help protect the town.

There are times when I really enjoyed and appreciated Attack on Titan VR: Unbreakable. I really like how Univrs handles the ODM gear. Back when I previewed the first part, I mentioned that it made this feel like a Spider-Man game. Getting to swing through the town and zip around from place to place is absolutely great. I don’t get tired of it. Even better, I don’t get motion-sick from it! It is just smooth, enjoyable, and involves common sense controls. 

Also, as disturbing and weird as the Titans look in-game, I don’t hate it! I mean, I do, but I feel like it is fitting for the situation we’re placed in this title. We’re supposed to be disgusted and horrified by them and their exaggerated proportions. Being around them should make me uneasy. At the same time, some of the smaller ones should absolutely look a bit goofy. It makes sense. There were a few times when it seemed textures weren’t quite right, and the rest of the world isn’t as detailed as the Titans themselves, but I was typically so busy moving around to deal with extermination missions and resource gathering that I only noticed when a task had me defend a position against waves for a certain amount of time.

The problem is that some issues I experienced in the early access release of the game and initial part remain in the full version of Attack on Titan VR: Unbreakable. Characters can be incredibly flat, both in terms of the writing in the story and how they are actually depicted in-game. Sometimes, we don’t get 3D models for folks and we instead get what look like 2D standees in a scene! The quests are very surface level and superficial, so it isn’t really getting into the Survey Corps’ quest or doing an even adequate job of retelling the Battle of Trost District storyline. The character models in-mission also look pretty simple, so your fellow Survey Corps members look unmemorable and rudimentary.

Another issue is that while using the ODM and taking down Titans actually feels pretty good, it stops being challenging or interesting by the time you’ve gone through a few missions. Univrs designed the missions to be replayable, so you can return and try to get a five-star grade for your proficiency and efficiency. However, the only thing that made facing these foes challenging was when there would be a whole horde of them or when I’d be pitted against one that had more health than usual. This usually made it more likely I’d encounter bugs, such as the game not registering that I’d accurately hit the back of a Titan’s neck or a limb at a point to remove it. I almost wondered if this was tied to the increased number of enemies on the field, because it seemed like that and instances where I’d be caught and killed even though I should have been safe happened more often at those moments.

I also can’t speak to how the multiplayer works in Attack on Titan VR: Unbreakable, as there apparently weren’t enough people playing the game to try it out. (It was honestly why I waited so long to write this review.) There is a cooperative option, however. Maybe you’ll have more luck than I did? Though given the issues I experienced with hits or dodges sometimes not registering properly when lots of enemies were around, I can’t imagine adding another human player to the mix to tax the title will help much.

There are ideas and elements I appreciated in Attack on Titan VR: Unbreakable, but the overall execution is clumsy and in need of patches. In certain missions, gliding through the city with ODM can feel so realistic. Taking down a Titan in certain situations works well. It’s just the repetitive nature of things and issues that can pop up when you face hordes that show how clumsy, awkward, and buggy it really is. Perhaps with some patches, it will eventually get stronger.

Attack on Titan VR: Unbreakable is available on the Meta Quest 2, Meta Quest 3, and Meta Quest Pro. 

The post Review: Attack on Titan VR: Unbreakable Feels Clumsy appeared first on Siliconera.

Not every game holds your hand and tells you exactly what to do. It might also not make it easy to breeze through the game. Neko Odyssey, Secret Character’s new game about cat photography, is one of those titles. It’s about appreciating cute animals and taking your time while on vacation in a small town, and that means the player needs to be willing to take it easy and slow down as they play.

Neko Odyssey starts off with the furthest thing from cat photography, as it sets things up by explaining a legend about a hero dispatching a demon from Cat Island and sealing them away, only for some spirits to escape and perhaps wind up as cats. Fast forward, and Miki is a young woman come to visit and stay with her aunt on Cat Island. She wants to pet and photograph all the cute kitties. In the process, she’ll also help people with problems, play minigames, make animals happy, and learn more about the island.

When it comes to photographing the cats, many of them are pretty amicable to the idea. I found that for the majority of them, I could walk up, snap a photo, and be all set. In a handful of those cases, I’d also need to pet them. There are some that are a bit more challenging and may require something like food or an extra step to lure out. However, in those instances you sometimes get a hint (such as an obvious can of food image) or find a solution by being patient. Photos automatically upload to a fake social media site after, netting you likes and followers.

The only downside to the cat photos is that there isn’t much variety to most of them. The cats will be in the same sorts of positions all the time generally. Once I started looking back at your feed, I also noticed many of them featured the same colors and designs too. Neko Odyssey isn’t a cat photography game like the Neko Atsume mobile and VR series, where each cat is visibly unique or might show up in really fun poses depending on where they’re photographed. There are a few cats that feel a little more special, especially if you end up in the brief minigames engaging with them, but I found most seemed generic.

I will say that even though there isn’t that unique element where it feels like every cat is a delight and surprise, in general Neko Odyssey is a game that looks great. Secret Character went with a full pixel art approach filled with stylish character and environmental sprites. The backgrounds and locations especially look amazing, though there is unfortunately no map to help you get around the island and figure out where you have or haven’t been.

It sort of feels like that is deliberate, however. While Neko Odyssey is a cat photography game, it also can feel like a slow life simulator at times. You have a town to explore, complete with places and things to see depending on the time of day you hang around and if you take the time to talk to people. You need to focus on your hunger and eat sometimes, if you want to look around everywhere. After I got through a few in-game days, I really felt like I was supposed to take my time and wander, rather than attempt to speedrun finding and photographing all the kittens. I wished I could have done more when moseying around, as I feel like there could have been more side quests. Though, to be fair, it could be that I just missed some.

Also, it’s worth noting that Neko Odyssey didn’t seem to completely support controller play when I played it. For the most part, I got around absolutely fine on the Lenovo Legion Go. However, when talking with people and going through shops, I’d actually need to use the touchscreen to advance conversations or to make purchases. Secret Character is very active on the Steam Discussions board for the game, so it is possible that is already fixed or could be by the time you read this.

Neko Odyssey is a leisurely sort of photography game is about taking your time as you hunt down, appease, and photograph cats. Some people might get a little frustrated by the lack of diversity, sprawling town with no map, and direction. I think it’s absolutely worth the time invested, especially if you want to sit back and relax with cute characters and a charming town for an hour or two.

Neko Odyssey is available for PCs via Steam.

The post Review: Neko Odyssey Is a Slow Life Cat Photography Game appeared first on Siliconera.

We’re seeing all sorts of unconventional roguelikes enter the gaming space, and Ballionaire is one of the more unusual ones. A Pachinko-like game, each run places you on a new board to conquer. Your goal? Rack up as many points as possible. It’s fun! However, how much fun it is varies wildly due us being at the whims of RNG, hoping for the lucky shots that will carry us through. 

In Ballionaire, you’ll be presented with a field ready to be filled with pegs. As you drop balls and the bounce off of them, you’ll trigger effects and bolster your score. The plateaus you need to overcome grow as you drop more balls, and you get more pegs to fill the field after each drop. The key is to attempt to place them strategically, where they’ll offer the most benefits, in order to keep meeting quotas and master each area. Along the way, you’ll garner things like relics to passively help. Of course, there will also be Tribulations that gradually hurt and make things more difficult.

I’m going to be brutally honest here and admit that my first three to five Ballionaire runs weren’t everything they could be. It was all my fault too. You’re presented with pegs! You don’t really know how they may behave or interact without actual experiments! You need to get a feel for the board and see possibilities for bounces and paths! It’s fine. Newobject designed the game in such a way that even if you aren’t playing optimally, everything feels satisfying. Numbers are constantly going up, even exponentially if you aren’t making smart groupings, so it feels fun.

After a few runs, Ballionaire will click. Trust me. Even if you aren’t making the best choices, it’s so enjoyable. You’ll always get three choices for a new peg to place, keeping you from being backed into a corner. The UI is very clear and descriptive, so you can see what happens when it is placed, what passives come up, what happens when items drop, and conditions to potentially destroy them. It feels like there are no penalties for trying things. You’re encouraged to do your best and test things out.

I feel like the presentation helps with that too. Ballionaire is such a bright, poppy game. Everything is so colorful and flashy. It really attracts your attention once the balls start dropping, so you’re paying attention to interactions and seeing when something special is triggered to grant you bonuses. 

As you’d expect from a game with RNG in play, the only thing that keeps me from loving Ballionaire more is that it is a roguelike that does leave a lot up to chance. While Balatro is another game where luck of the draw can determine how far you’ll go, I found that there’s more control there than here. The fact that it can be so easy for a Ballionaire run to end through no fault of your own, even though you did everything right, is a let down. 

It also means that while Balatro is a game I felt I could sit and play for hours, Ballionaire feels more like a one run and done situation. You take a chance, see how far you go, then come back a few hours or days later. This isn’t a bad thing! It’s just the luck-based gameplay, combined with eventual random Tribulations that can passively make things more difficult, impede repeated runs. Since we don’t get more control over the game, other variables can really get in the way sometime. It isn’t even like Peggle or Peglin, where we do feel like we have more bearing on what happens when the Pachinko-parts come around.

Ballionaire comes down to chance, which means how much you enjoy it completely changes from one run to the next. It’s a charming game, to be certain. There’s a lot of replay value here. It just doesn’t offer the same degree of control as some roguelikes due to it pulling so heavily from Pachinko and Peggle, which means it’s easy for RNG to completely ruin your day.

Ballionaire is available on Steam.

The post Review: Ballionaire Is a Satisfying ‘Numbers Go Up’ Experience appeared first on Siliconera.

On Your Tail is a bright—too bright—"cozy" game in which you double as detective and vacationer, using the power of your grandmother's chronolens to solve the mysteries plaguing the town of Borgo Marina. Despite its interesting premise, the overall presentation of the game leaves a lot to be desired and it’s difficult to play through thanks to its infuriating mechanics and nauseating visuals.

In On Your Tail, you play as Diana Caproni, an amateur writer whose latest work receives criticism for being dull and by-the-book. To spice up her writing, as well as to get back at her professor, she travels to the seaside haven of Borgo Marina to find inspiration and gain real-world experience. While there, she meets a cast of lively villagers, but finds herself wrapped up in a string of burglaries perpetrated by a mysterious phantom thief. Using the chronolens—a magical device her grandmother gave her that allows her to see how an item or place used to be—she seeks to solve the mystery while befriending the citizens of Borgo Marina. However, there’s more to the phantom thief than meets the eye, and her investigation uncovers a dark secret under the town’s sunny exterior.

While the town’s cast of colorful characters is a selling point for the game, I personally wasn’t a fan. I didn’t dislike them, but I didn’t like them, either. There were a few characters I was interested in. However, needing to deal with them for interrogations or puzzles soured me on them immediately. The story, too, was average as a whole. Memorable Games is an Italian indie studio, and you can see the Italian influences in everything from the dialogue to the very design of Borgo Marina. So if you’re a fan of Italian culture, then you might really enjoy this. Borgo Marina wowed me when I first saw it from a distance. But actually walking through the town was a nightmare that I'll explain later.

The game is a combination between a puzzle game and a “cozy” life simulator. While you can focus on the main story, there’s nothing stopping you from relaxing with all the different activities around town. You can go fishing, work at your part-time jobs, play some mini-games, or hang out with villagers you befriend. For this review, I only played through mini-games for money or to see what they're like, and focused more on the main story. But it was nice to have the option of fishing or cooking when the game started to get frustrating.

And frustrating it got! I have to admit I underestimated On Your Tail. Between its bright colors and anthropomorphized characters, I thought the target demographic was very young children. It technically is for a general audience, but the game isn't the cakewalk I expected. The puzzles can be genuinely difficult, to the point they were more irritating than anything else. It felt less like you have to solve them, and more like you have to brute force your way through them. The more time I spent trying to use deduction, the worse off I was for it.

To collect clues, you have to investigate a crime scene with the chronolens. The chronolens shows you if something changed between the past and present. For example, it'll show you that a map used to be on a car, or that a pew got moved. These are the clues that'll help you later on. But the chronolens can be difficult to use, since the game wants you at a particular angle before it'll register you found a clue. Some differences are so minor I could only find them after expending a joker card for a hint.

After collecting cards, you enter a 3D diorama of the scene. You have to put the cards in order, or combine them with other cards, in order to recreate the crime scene and find the culprit. Failure is part of this procedure, since you might not know the full situation until you play through it once. For example, I didn’t know how long a smoke bomb would last in one mystery, nor did I know how an NPC would move in another. The cards, too, sometimes acted in different ways than I expected, meaning I had to test them in the diorama before I could get to solving the mystery. At times, it involves more guesswork than actual detective work, and because the animations can take a long time even when you fast-forward them, the process feels longer than it should.

Honestly, this mechanic isn't so bad on its own. You could think of collecting the chronolens clues as one half of the investigation, and testing out the diorama and cards as the second half. Interrogations are where I wanted to throw in the towel. During interrogations, you question a villager using various cards. But if they run out of patience from too many wrong answers, you have to try again. The problem is that, since you’re trying to get information from them, you don’t always have all the facts. Like with the dioramas, trying over and over again until you find the right answer feels like the only way to solve these. Lexua in particular ticked me off because all the cards I put together made sense, yet he refused to ever give me answers. It's just such a tedious process.

It really sucks that the mystery adventure aspect of the game, which is arguably the main portion, was so weak. Failure as an inextricable part of the process made it more frustrating than fun. That’s not the kind of deduction game I enjoy. It didn't feel satisfying to solve a mystery. While some did require logic, most of it was just trial and error. The mini-games, too, weren't that fun, either. The best one was the waitress part-time job, outside of the strange lag when you want to grab two of the same dish. A major reason why I didn't have a lot of patience for the quirks in On Your Tail's mechanics is the visuals. The game is terrible to look at.

This isn’t a knock on the character designs. It’s everything else. The colors of the town are extremely bright and saturated, and there’s an exaggerated bloom effect over the entire thing. Even after lowering the sensitivity, the camera moves so fast that I got motion sick within only thirty minutes of play time. When speaking with characters, even adjusting the way I sit can cause the camera to move and jerk about. I needed to close my eyes against the DOF filter during dialogue, as well as how fast the camera shakes if I accidentally move in real life. There’s also some sort of auto-adjust for the camera, because it’ll move on its own even when I’m not doing anything. I’ve turned off any option that might cause that in the settings, so I’m not sure what’s going on there.

The camera inside a building is atrocious, between it moving too fast or catching on a wall and then spinning out of control. A lot of the game requires you to run from one end of the town to another, and Diana’s default running speed is pretty slow. But, if you make her sprint in the game, there are these action lines around that really make it nauseating to look at. I have a high-end PC and graphics card (NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Super), and the game will still lag when I move between districts. The stutter itself isn't an issue. It's that the sudden pause is yet another cause of eye strain in a game that's already rife with it. You see this lag a lot as well since, again, so much of the game is running around town.

As if all that's not enough, the camera has an odd quirk where it'll account for stairs. What I mean is that when you take a step on certain stairs, the camera will jerk up and down with Diana's movements. It's pretty bad when you're running, which you'll likely be doing for the majority of your time in Borgo Marina. Each little issue on its own is tolerable. When they work in tandem, it makes for a miserable experience. If this wasn't for review, I don't think I would've played past the first hour at all. So when merely looking at the game made me want to give up, it's hard to remain patient when its main mechanic forces you to try a puzzle again and again and again. Even remembering this is annoying me, that's how infuriating On Your Tail was to play.

A way I found to combat the motion sickness was to play On Your Tail on a laptop, while having a video playing on a larger screen. I would then focus on the larger screen while having the game in my periphery, outside of puzzles and dialogue. Not having to look at the game straight-on helped a lot. I will give it to Memorable Games, though; the design for Borgo Marina is amazing. I never got lost, despite the number of alleys and tunnels you have to take. I’m not the best at navigating maps in video games. But even when I wasn’t giving the screen my full attention, I could get from point A to point B with minimal help.

I really wanted to like On Your Tail since the idea of the chronolens and the 3D dioramas was so interesting. But between the weirdly difficult mechanics, average story, and horrible visuals, it didn’t provide a cozy experience at all. The camera issues appeared as soon as I booted up the game, and they were there even after an optimization patch came out. So they’re just there to stay, I suppose. If you’re looking for a puzzle game, or want something warm to get away from this dreary winter weather, there are other games on the market that won’t kill your eyes while you play it.

On Your Tail is readily available on the Windows PC. It’ll come out on the Nintendo Switch in February 2025.

The post Review: On Your Tail Frustrated My Eyes and Brain appeared first on Siliconera.

It's weird to think back now to that period of time in the mid-2010s where the Nintendo 3DS was slowing down, the Wii U was clearly not going to recover, and the shape of Nintendo's future remained uncertain. With the mighty power of hindsight, we all know how things turned out. At the time, even Nintendo itself appeared to be hedging its bets, announcing that it would be entering the mobile market with games based on its popular brands. Several franchises were talked about, some saw releases, and a few of those were quite successful.

Flash forward to today, and Nintendo's enthusiasm for its mobile endeavors has almost completely dried up. Some games, like Dragalia Lost, have been shuttered. Mario Kart Tour is essentially in maintenance mode. Talks of which Nintendo series will get the mobile treatment next are long in the past; the answer appears to be "none". The remaining handful of games saw one of its number picked off with the announcement that Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp would wind down in late 2024. While it was certainly a simplified take on the concept, it still had plenty of fans who logged in daily to forge friendships and craft the latest seasonal goodies.

Fortunately, Nintendo offered a solution for those who wanted to keep playing. As the original app went offline, a new fully-paid version would be released. Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp Complete is a modified version of Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp that removes some elements tied to the previous monetization system while adding some new things. You can even bring your save file over from the original, so you don't have to start over again. I'll say right away that I wish more free-to-play games would take this route when they close down. Dragalia Lost did not deserve to be, well, lost. But that's a topic for another day. Let's talk about Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp Complete.

It's probably best to take this from the top. Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp is a spin-off of Nintendo's wildly popular series of cozy games. While the gameplay of the mainline series would have fit well enough on mobile, Nintendo aimed to create a more streamlined experience. At its launch the game was very slight, but more features and mechanics were added as time went on. The core loop involves visiting four different locations where visiting villagers will rotate in and out every few hours. They'll request certain items that you can gather from the different locations by fishing, bug-catching, or shaking down trees.

Meet those requests and you'll strengthen your friendships, which will get you some goodies that you can then use for crafting clothes and decorations. At certain friendship thresholds, you can even invite the villagers to come and hang out at your campsite in a more permanent fashion. The campsite is one of the two spaces you're able to decorate as you see fit. You can also dress up your camper, and it works a lot like your house in the normal games. That goes all the way down to the loans you'll have to take to expand its size. Outside of these two locations, the placement of things is outside of your control. What's there is what's there, and that's that.

You can also designate one villager as your caretaker, and they'll follow you around in most locations after that. They'll complete requests for you and gather various items while the app is closed, providing you with some goodies every few hours. You can also talk to them whenever you want. Your relationship with your chosen caretaker villager will boost very quickly, so if you're the min-maxing sort you can swap them out regularly to take advantage of that. You can also opt to not have them follow you around if that proves to be annoying. It's just another way to have a favorite villager around in a less temporary capacity.

That's more or less the gist of it, though there are a lot of other side activities to engage in. Most of them are tied to their own locations. Unlike in standard Animal Crossing games, these locations aren't set in one continuous world you can walk around in. Instead, you select them from a map. It's efficient, but this is one aspect of the game that makes it come off as slimmed down as it does. That feeling of escaping reality and chilling out in another place, done so well in the other Animal Crossing games, is absent in Pocket Camp.

With that said, the game has its own appeal that works for it. The conversations with the villagers are as amusing as ever thanks to their quirky personalities and the sharp writing. There is a constant rotation of events, and they're enjoyable to participate in whether you fully complete them or not. Pocket Camp nicely fits the mobile need for something you can play for a few minutes when you don't want to get particularly invested in anything. Indeed, by design there is only so much you can do in it at any given time.

Other aspects of Animal Crossing are well-represented in the game. It's still enjoyable to collect items and use them to decorate your spaces and customize your character. The Happy Home Academy is here, and they've got some of their usual decorating challenges waiting for you. Fishing and bug-catching are made easier here thanks to more generous timing windows, but there's still a certain relaxation to these activities. I suppose what I'm trying to say is that while Pocket Camp does not do everything the other games do, it carries a lot of the same spirit with it. As such, it's a nice companion to the main events.

So far all of this is true of both Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp and Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp Complete. I think if you enjoyed the free-to-play version of the game, you're going to enjoy the new version as well. There are differences that I will go into from here, but I want to emphasize that I think just about everything good about the original app has made it into the new one, with plenty of new additions and balance changes that make for an even better experience.

The original Pocket Camp, being a free-to-play game, had various mechanisms to help it monetize. The economy ran around the paid currency of Leaf Tickets which, as in any free-to-play mobile game worth its salt, could be used for a variety of purposes. Initially, you were mainly paying to remove annoyances like inventory limits, timers, and so on. When that proved insufficient, the game added a system where players could earn time-limited sets of items via fortune cookies. If you were an easy-going player, it never felt like the game was pinching you that hard. Those trying to collect full sets on a regular basis, however, likely would have had to pay.

Pocket Camp Complete ditches Leaf Tickets for Leaf Tokens, and these cannot be bought with real money. You can instead earn them by completing various goals and achievements, as rewards for engaging in certain activities, increasing your level, or by exchanging Bells on a monthly basis. The game's thirst for these Tokens is nowhere near that of its predecessor's for Tickets, though the balance is such that you can't really spend them willy-nilly either.

This is always a tricky balancing act when games go from free to paid. A careless approach can lead to either the game still feeling balanced around in-app purchases you can no longer make, or everything coming too easily. Pocket Camp Complete does things the right way with this. Helping to support this changed-up system is the new Complete Ticket, a reward that can be earned from playing events. You can exchange these for a wide array of fortune cookies containing special items from past and present events, or use them to directly get your hands on any limited-time items that you might have missed. This means that even if you can't get enough Leaf Tokens together during an event to fill out your collection, all is not lost.

The other big difference in Pocket Camp Complete comes in how it handles its social elements. In the original game, other players' characters would pop up in various locations. You could befriend other players, which enabled you to do things like buy and sell from each other, send items, or support each other in certain events. Pocket Camp Complete fully does away with all of that, and I'm not sure if I like its new system better or not.

In Pocket Camp Complete, you will have to create and share your customized Camper Card. Once you've exchanged cards with another player, they'll show up in a new location called Whistle Pass. K.K. Slider will hold concerts here on a regular schedule, and you'll be able to enjoy them with the avatars of your friends hanging about. Sometimes they'll give you presents, sometimes they'll offer to help you enter the Quarry location to earn some loot, and sometimes they'll just emote. You'll have to exchange cards via QR code scans, and that means you'll either need to find a community somewhere on the internet or rely on people you already know. The official website offers up several cards for those who aren't interested in going through all of that.

The removal of the marketplace is a small loss, as I always enjoyed poking around and seeing what others were selling. I also miss having random campers show up at the different sites. It was interesting to see what kinds of fashions random people were wearing, and that's one aspect that is simply missing in Pocket Camp Complete. The multiplayer elements are now so thin that they seem largely pointless. I know the aim was to have this app work offline as much as possible, but for how much it still has to check in I feel there could have been more done with this part of the game.

While I may have my gripes, I'm generally very happy with Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp Complete. On a conceptual level alone, I'm always thrilled to see a free-to-play game live on in a premium format after its shutdown. I mean, why not just let players have at it at that point? I'm also glad that this new version had some thought put into how it would work when detached from its monetization model. It's well-balanced and enjoyable to play. A bit of a trifle when compared to the real thing, to be sure, but that's by design. I hope a similar fate awaits other Nintendo mobile games when their time finally comes.

Animal Crossing Pocket Camp Complete is available for mobile devices.

The post Review: Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp Complete Keeps the Party Going appeared first on Siliconera.

Awaria is a tense game of split-second decisions. While its levels are brief, you will spend every moment gauging distances, examining your needs, and trying to figure out how to slip past dangers that are constantly creeping up on you. This probably sounds a bit more relentless than generator maintenance should be, but when ghostly smooches are on the line, you’re understandably more inclined to do everything you can to get the job done. Even if you die a lot in the process in this bullet hell kiss ‘em up.

So, you’re in charge of repairing generators to keep up shields that keep apparitions at bay. Seeing as they’re busted, though, the apparitions have arrived and aren’t keen on you fixing things. There are an array of ghosts that will attack you throughout the game, each having their own special attack patterns you need to dodge around. The ghosts will try to catch you and smack you, fling multi-directional shots around the arena, leave traps on the floor that you have to skirt close to so that you set them off, and more. These tend to change every single level, or quickly stack on top of one another as the ghosts work together in harder levels.

If you want to survive a level in Awaria, you need to fix the generators in each room a set number of times to restore the shields and make yourself safe. Thankfully, all of the parts you need to do your fixes are in the same room as the generators. However, the machines that provide the parts often have some sort of quick to make them spit up the goods. Some need you to manually click them and then wait for the part to be made. Some require parts from other machines before they’ll give you the completed thing you need. Not only this, but you won’t know which parts you need until you click on the broken generator itself.

Now, each level is contained to a single screen, so it’s not like these things are far apart. Once you know which parts you need and which machines will provide them, you can quickly plan your route. That’s good, as the ghosts are relentless in their attacks from the very start. They never let up on you, so you’ll need to figure out the best path to take that will get you away from ghost attacks while readying machines to prepare your repair parts or picking those parts up to be delivered to the generators. While the small levels make planning that route straightforward, the small stages also put you in constant danger as there is only so much wiggle room around the enemy attacks. And the stage hazards, because why not add some more danger?

This results in some fantastically tense play throughout Awaria as you continually adjust your path on the fly. You always need to be thinking about what parts you need and how you’ll reach them. You’ll need to change that plan when one of the ghosts comes rushing your way or if they’ve set some hazards in your path that you now need to skirt around. Juggling this while glancing at the generators to see what parts they need, keeping stock of which machine needs to be prepped to make the parts, and doing so while a fast ghost is filling the room with fireballs is exhilarating, dizzying, and incredibly challenging. Did I mention that you usually need to fix the generator on a time limit as well?

Thankfully, there are a few difficulty levels you can choose from every time you start a stage. Easy mode gives you a drone that revives you after you get hit, but has a short cooldown before it can be used again. Standard gives the drone a ten second cooldown (which is basically an eternity when things get busy). Hard cuts down the repair time limit and you die in a single hit. Even playing on Easy Mode was quite challenging (although very doable if you’re persistent), so don’t expect to have ghost kisses just come floating your way without effort.

You’ll likely be willing to put in the work, as the game’s story and character interactions hint at an interesting overarching lore somewhere beyond your character’s need to kiss the various ghosts that keep breaking things down here. While Awaria doesn’t spend much time on its story, it offers just the right amount to entice you to keep playing. The art style also makes for some cute, evocative characters, and it’s just fun to see how they all get along with each other. Despite the whole thing where they’re trying to kill you.

Awaria is just a tight, punchy package. Its tiny levels are crammed with challenge thanks to the ghost abilities, hazards, and part retrieval mechanics. Every moment feels like it needs all of your focus to get through, and you’ll spend many stages scrambling to finish. The story and characters manage a ton of charm despite only being on-screen for a few seconds between stages. The various difficulty levels give you something to strive for it you want to challenge yourself or if you just want to see the endings. It’s a great little game that costs nothing to play, so you have no reason not to get on it right now.

Awaria is available on PCs via Steam.

The post Review: Awaria Packs a Great Story & Challenge in a Tight Package appeared first on Siliconera.

Warcraft is what put Blizzard Entertainment on the map. Yes, there is Diablo, and there was Starcraft, but Warcraft is what almost everyone knows the studio for. Since the Warcraft series transitioned into an MMORPG through World of Warcraft, it's humble beginnings as an RTS, and RPG, has gone otherwise forgotten. Unless, of course, you're really deep into the lore of World of Warcraft. Blizzard Entertainment has brought all three entries to PC through the Warcraft Remastered Battle Chest, which is arguably the best way to play these games.

As the first entry in the series, the original Warcraft is pretty simple. It's your bog-standard RTS with base building mechanics that requires you to build up your army to defeat the invading horde of Orcs, or Humans that bar your path. You pick one of two factions and play through their scenario, which isn't anything riveting, as Blizzard Entertainment more or less expanded upon the narrative elements of these RTS games in Warcraft II. Once again, the conflict is centered around the Orcs and Humans, with the types of units you can train expanded upon. They're solid, but not all that engaging in terms of story.

While the first two Warcraft games didn't leave a particularly strong impression on me, it was Warcraft III that pulled me in, hook, line, and sinker. On that note, I would say the Warcraft Battle Chest is worth the price just for access to Warcraft III and The Frozen Throne expansion. The original release of Warcraft III Reforged was far from contentious, with it being disliked to such a staggering degree it was one of the lowest rated games on Metacritic. Thankfully, the game has been updated to allow for players to toggle off any HD effects, character models, and environments. While it doesn't solve all of the problems that many familiar with the classic version of the game may have (such as multiplayer adjustments, and so forth), it's a great way to access a classic.

Dipping my toes back into Warcraft III reminded me just how influential the game was. Blending the RTS with an RPG made me more invested in tackling optional quests and obtaining items to make my heroes more powerful. Outside of the general base building and upgrading units through incremental upgrades, tackling camps of enemies on the map help level up your hero units, making them more powerful as you carry them through the narrative. In this case, Arthas Menethil, the doomed Prince of Lordaeron and soon-to-be Lich King. His story, along with the others tied to him, still remain compelling. Certain changes, however, are less than welcome; specifically The Culling of Stratholme.

This mission has been gamified to such an extent that it removes the intention of the original in making the genocide of an entire village more "engaging" through new mechanics, which misses the entire point of the mission itself. It's changes like this that do end up making Warcraft III Reforged a worse version of the original. But the bones of Warcraft III itself are still there, and it's no surprise that this title specifically would go on to inspire Defense of the Ancients, or DotA, (which was a multiplayer mod I actually played) and League of Legends.

The narrative Blizzard Entertainment managed to craft in the early 2000's is still great, and for those looking to start World of Warcraft, playing Warcraft III almost feels essential. I won't lie that a lot of my fondness for the series is filtered through a lens of nostalgia. I love Warcraft because of memories of being hunkered down in the basement of a LAN party, building up my Night Elves to send my saber-riding huntresses into the fray against the horde of my friend's Orc army. And now that I'm deeply into World of Warcraft, I look back on the series with a greater sense of fondness, now able to parse through lore that I otherwise never really got a chance to sift through as I was a bit too young to really play those first two entries when they came out.

It's impossible to deny the impact the Warcraft series has had on the industry at large. Warcraft propelled Blizzard Entertainment into what success it would later experience in World of Warcraft, showcasing what the studio was capable of early on. It reminded me an era where Blizzard's name was spoken with the same reverence as Square in terms of the cinematics and storytelling a studio was capable.

But even with this to consider, the Warcraft Battle Chest isn't perfect. The new sprites for Warcraft and Warcraft II are something to be desired, and despite the influence Warcraft III had on video games, sometimes certain missions are kind of a drag, or have lost their original impact through certain gameplay changes. The new, revamped visuals aren't all that great, but since the option to revert them in the case of Warcraft III is there, I can't be too pressed about it either.

However, the Warcraft Remastered Battle Chest is the best way to access all three of these titles. And I still think, that even in 2024, it's more than worth giving them a try. It's one of the best RTS series of all time, and even now they manage to hold up as some of the best. But definitely temper your expectations, because while the box might say remaster, these are more or less actually just ports with a few glossy (or muddy) coats of paint on them.

The Warcraft Remastered Battle Chest, which includes Warcraft, Warcraft II, and Warcraft III, is available on PC.

The post Review: The Warcraft Battle Chest is a Classic for a Reason appeared first on Siliconera.

I have a weird relationship with Uncle Chop’s Rocket Shop. When I’m not dealing with a nuclear reactor threatening to immediately exterminate me, I find the roguelike oddly relaxing. After all, it’s a rocket repair simulation with an instruction manual for fixing every situation right in the palm of your hand. But if you hit certain scenarios, opt for a one mode over the other, or encounter a moment on the Switch during which only it suddenly stops recognizing controllers, it might feel unbearable.

Wilbur wakes up in Uncle Chop’s Rocket Shop on what is presumably a planet in outer space with Uncle Chop’s titular establishment there. Droose, a person who runs the diner where customers wait, is the one to rouse Wilbur from some sort of cold sleep. Your first order of business? Dispose of the dead body of the person who used to do your job, prying the instruction manual for fixing rockets from their death grip. From there, you head to work doing odds jobs you aren’t qualified to perform to earn rent money and hopefully not die.

You are absolutely going to die. Probably a lot. But I figured you knew that coming into this review, given the nature of the genre. 

Uncle Chop’s Rocket Shop has two modes, which are referred to as Frantic and Focused. Frantic is a timed mode where, say, you get eight minutes and need to get as much done as possible. While I could manage that for maybe three days, the nature of the game and how many assignments you get, as well as attempting to play it with a controller, made it a bit unbearable for me. If someone’s been playing for a while, is aware of all the situations you could possibly face, and isn’t constantly checking the manual, I could see it being possible. But even once I did get comfy, I felt like Focused was the preferred option. That’s one that lets you do three jobs per day, untimed, and is a great way to get accustomed to the game and mitigate some of the stress you’ll feel when certain repair situations come up.

Regardless of which mode you select, a typical day in Uncle Chop’s Rocket Shop tends to go the same. Wilbur wakes up. You clock in at the diner, then head to the phone booth. Jobs will appear, and you select one. The work order prints out, and you’ll talk to the pilot of the rocket briefly. You then need to assess each area that needs fixing. During the first two days, you’ll typically only encounter refueling and oil changes. Any repairs might be due to your own issues as you realize how not to overfill canisters. Eventually, you’ll need to flash cartridges and complete levels for entertainment units, handle maintenance of miniature planets for respiratory systems, handle VR elements, and deal with the nuclear reactor I mentioned above. All of these step-by-step processes also include using tools to open or close hatches, stopping by a store to pick up items, or using machines to fabricate parts. When a job’s done, you’re paid and tipped based on how you did and if you completed each assignment, and you might get the Omen Tokens that allow you to purchase perks that carry over to additional runs.

It is that repair process that occasionally gets in your way. Part of this could come down to proper manual usage. It’s generally pretty helpful and does include everything you need to know. But there will be times when you need to parse information in certain ways to ensure you’re doing things like fabricating a pancake part properly or entering the security system override correctly. (I found the pancake and nuclear reactor parts especially daunting!) It is a lot to take in. Time could be at a premium even if you are playing on Focused Fixing mode. It’s a lot.

The other issue is that sometimes the Switch version of Uncle Chop’s Rocket Shop seemed to just… stop registering inputs? It’d happen at the strangest times, too. I could remove one fuel canister, no problem, but then when I’d press X to tab back over and start getting out the second one, I couldn’t move. If I was playing with the system docked, I’d need to actually get up and use the touch screen in handheld mode to make it work. (As a result, I ended up only playing unlocked to avoid that issue.) It didn’t happen often, but when I attempted Frantic Fixing it was the worst when that’d happen. But then, there are also some repairs that, even if the controls are working perfectly, feel like they’re much better suited to the touch screen or mouse controls.

At least the general idea, UI, and layout meant that recognizing and taking possible actions was easy in Uncle Chop’s Rocket Shop. It’s a very well-designed game, in terms of appearances. Items are clearly recognizable, and the steps you need to take in the repair process are visible. The manual is a faithful recreation of them. Not to mention, this is all paired with a really great ambiance that suits the bleak, disturbing, otherworldly nature of things. The vibes are on-point as you play, fitting in with gameplay without being too distracting when you absolutely need to focus.

I’d even say it’s that presentation and concept that really sold me on Uncle Chop’s Rocket Shop even when I was having trouble with certain repairs or the Frantic Fixing mode. Droose and Kyle are both great characters. I loved the commentary from the cat at the station and the pilots who would come in for repairs. Uncle Chop is a real jerk, which even made my drive to get enough rent and keep going higher. 

Uncle Chop’s Rocket Shop has a lot going for it, but I think a lot of your enjoyment will be based on how or where you play it. It’s a lot of fun on the Switch, but I noticed some technical issues. Frantic Fixing is a lot to deal with, especially if you’re going in playing with a controller. Focused Fixing is fantastic, though. Most everything is covered well in the manual, but nuclear meltdowns will absolutely ruin your day.

Uncle Chop’s Rocket Shop is available on the Switch, PS5, Xbox Series X, and PC. 

The post Review: Uncle Chop’s Rocket Shop Can Be Calming Until Things Blow Up appeared first on Siliconera.

The Xuan-Yuan Sword series has historically been an ambitious one that aims to retell stories from Chinese history and mythology. The standalone game Xuan-Yuan: The Gate of Firmament recently appeared on the PS5 via a reworked version, allowing a whole new audience to experience this sprawling RPG. However, it does feel like this is a story that wasn’t worth retelling.

Sikong Yu is a young man living in a small village separated from the Shang dynasty’s rule. Everyone's life is precarious, moving from place to place, although Yu does his best to keep the village protected with an array of traps. However, his peaceful life within the village falls apart when a nearby bandit tribe attempts to raid his people, and in the process he meets a woman named Muyue. This mysterious lady initially refuses to speak and shows magical aptitude. She soon shared that she is desperately trying to return to a home she can barely remember. Yu ventures out with her to help her find her way, meeting a cast of characters who aid them in their quest.

Straight off the bat, Xuan-Yuan: The Gate of Firmament is a game doesn’t do itself many favors. While I could initially accept the early MMO level of FMV that kickstarts the story, the presentation plummets in quality as soon as we’re in-engine. Character models clearly show an attempt towards photorealism, but their doll-like standing poses and awkward animations throw the game straight down the uncanny valley.

The insult “it looks like a PS2 game” is often thrown around carelessly in some circles, which I feel is an insult in itself to the PS2 games that still look excellent to this day. However with Xuan-Yuan: The Gate of Firmament, I feel that’s the best description, as it features the kind of low-poly models found in some of the worst games on the system. But it goes beyond that. The animation jank, stiff camera movement and even the excessive use of dissolve wipes in cutscenes all feel like they’re ripped straight out of the 2000s. However, while I feel many games of that era did the best they could with the tech they had available to them, this doesn’t even manage that much when better tech is available.

One of the more egregious examples was a scene where Yu receives a gift from his mother before heading out. While characters handing items to one another is a persistent problem for animators, even in blockbuster AAA games today, there is a lot of creative camera work that covers it. Not so much here. The present is visibly glued awkwardly to Yu’s mother’s arm before she lifts it to hand it over. It then pops out of existence as Yu reaches out, in full view of the camera. This isn’t a budget issue. This is just sloppy.

However, I’m not someone who will let visual presentation completely kill my interest in a game. Sometimes games are made on low budgets and have to make do with what they have. I’ve played plenty of games that have had to make those compromises and sometimes that can lead to great experiences. I’ve enjoyed plenty of games with awkward presentation simply because they’ve thrown themselves heavily into the story or gameplay. Sadly, that isn’t the case with Xuan-Yuan: The Gate of Firmament, as neither of those elements managed to win me over either.

Let’s start with the story, which I’m not sure is poorly written or poorly translated, but either way, it had some of the worst dialogue I’ve ever encountered in a game. This is a game that loves to repeat itself. As an example of this, part of the early game sees Yu venturing into the woods to check his traps while his female friend from the village follows him. Yu feels it’s too dangerous for her and tells her to go back to the village. At the next trap, she reappears, saying she didn’t feel like going back. He tells her it’s too dangerous and she should go back to the village. This happened several times in one area, with no variation each time.

The repetitiveness even cropped up within single scenes. The initial meeting with party member Feng Yu sees Sikong explain that he’s escorting Muyue, to which Feng replies “You’re escorting her? Oh, I see you’re escorting her.” It’s a level of dialogue I expect from the original Resident Evil, and at least there it was entertainingly silly and quotable. Here it’s just tedious.

The voice acting also emphasizes this tedium, as none of the voice performances seemed to display a hint of emotion or personality. It was highlighted for me when Feng was referred to as “cheeky” and a huge contrast to Muyue’s cold personality. And yet, no one seems to have informed his voice actor, whose performance was just as flat as hers.

I’d love to say the gameplay improved this drastically, but I struggled to enjoy Xuan-Yuan: The Gate of Firmament on that front too. A lot of the game’s exploration takes place in bland, featureless environments that feel like they were assembled out of the most generic assets they could find.

Combat is not much better. It’s a real-time system, where your abilities are assigned to different face buttons on the controller. After using one, there is a short cooldown before you can use something else. It’s fairly straightforward and on first glance, it seems like this might be the game’s saving grace. Unfortunately, it’s missing a lot of features that would make this a fun system to work with.

For a start, your defensive options are minimal. There is a battle formation you can employ to generally increase your defense, but for a real-time system, I was shocked at how little I could do to reduce damage as a reaction. Battles take place in small arenas and while your characters will move about them automatically, there doesn’t appear to be any way to control their movement directly. Being able to position yourself to avoid certain attacks would have made battles feel more tactical instead of relying on the random chance of your character moving themselves out of danger on a whim.

This also extends to a lack of block or dodge mechanics. Plenty of other real-time RPG systems have these basic features, but The Gate of Firmament simply does not. It just adds to the bizarre nature of the system, which is built like a turn-based system but plays in real-time. It also doesn’t help that while you can switch your active party member, the others will act freely, often wasting items and resources, with no option to direct them to act a certain way until you take control.

Ultimately, Xuan Yuan Sword: The Gate of Firmament is a joyless experience. I will usually try and find something to like about games I play, but it was difficult with this. The narrative is poorly written and performed, it’s visually messy and combat mechanics feel half-finished. There really isn’t much left after that. I wanted to love Xuan-Yuan Sword: The Gate of Firmament, and the potential for greatness is there, but sadly its execution never lives up to its ambitions.

Xuan-Yuan Sword: The Gate of Firmament is out now for PCs via Steam and the PS5.

The post Review: Xuan-Yuan Sword: The Gate of Firmament Is Bland and Awkward appeared first on Siliconera.

Cartoonish visuals, slick, sans-serif fonts, and a roster of heroes encompassing almost every role under the sun? You wouldn't know what hero shooter I'd be talking about on the market these days, or at least the ones that still exist. Marvel Rivals is Disney and Marvel's attempt into what many consider an oversaturated genre that had it's time in the sun nearly a decade ago. And while it does take cues from it's predecessors, namely Overwatch, it still manages to distinguish itself from it's different gameplay perspective, self-contained story, and wide cast of characters.

Marvel Rivals appeals to the casual player, which I've become over the course of a decade. While I had dedicated some hours to Overwatch during it's original release in 2016, and played a substantial amount of Valorant over the past two years, Rivals benefits from a lack of role queue and implicitly forced meta. Yes, a competitive mode does exist, which can prove frustrating to player that expect the compositions from hero shooters such as Overwatch to translate one-to-one in specific situations. But Rivals' large roster of characters means that you can flex between it's Vanguards, Strategists, and Duelists with ease and come out with an advantage to shut down enemy teams forcing choke points or refusing to swap.

For example, if the enemy team is solely focused on using Hit Scan characters like The Punisher and the Winter Soldier, you can swap to Doctor Strange or Captain America to shield your team from an aggressive spray of bullets. Or even utilize Cloak and Dagger's ability to blind opponents temporarily to get a foothold and push forward. Generally, there is always an answer to some tactic and I've found Vanguards that are capable of jumping into the backline can generally change the tide. Wolverine is excellent in this way, even if he can be hard to get a hang of due to just how much he moves around due to his kit which focuses on diving.

That said, there is a high barrier of entry to characters like Wolverine and Spider-Man specifically. I can't play Spider-Man for that reason, as he's too mobile and makes me feel sick, similar to Genji in Overwatch. But the third person perspective helps circumvent that for me in the case of Venom, which I would consider a "dive tank." It's that lack of enforced meta and loosely defined roles between the Vanguard, Sentinel, and Strategist that allow for Marvel Rivals to more or less carve out it's own space in what is already an oversaturated market. While being vastly different from Valorant, which is more akin to Counter-Strike, and Overwatch 2 being it's closest competitor, it has (for the time being) managed to carve out a space for those with a preference to the third person shooter — or the casual.

While playing with my dedicated group, which includes our very own GC Vazquez, one of the most common sentiments I heard was that regardless of the role you pick, you feel like you're doing some kind of damage. Which for some makes it feel like you're contribution to the team is more tangible. Strategists, which are Marvel Rival's version of healers, don't feel boxed in to just pocketing a DPS to make some kind of sizable impact on team fights. It felt good to play Jeff the Landshark (God's greatest or worst little solider depending on who you talk to, but arguably the best design in the game to date) or Cloak and Dagger and still pile on kills while chasing our Wolverine through stages to keep him alive in more frantic team fights. Especially as I had to content with destructible environments in the game's two different game modes; escort the payload or capture the point.

I also won't pretend Marvel Rivals is a perfect game, even if it is a very fun one. Because there isn't a focus on balance you can sometimes win super hard or lose at a staggering pace. Though I would chalk this up to team coordination. Sometimes a single player can impact a chance of walking away victorious (I have a 100% win rate on the Winter Soldier for example) but more often than not, swapping characters for counters and having that team synergy is going to be the most important, like any team game.

Marvel Rivals does have some team synergies available, with the Scarlet Witch impacting Magneto's basic attack and Rocket Raccoon allowing for the Winter Soldier to have unlimited ammo when in proximity to one of Rocket's skills. These aren't as important as they sound, since they tend to be circumstantial and can, again, be countered with the right team. It's just about your team willing to make those concessions and swap off characters that aren't working.

Because Marvel Rivals is a team game above all else, and as mentioned previously, you won't go far without coordination. You could be an incredibly skilled Iron Fist player (another character that can dive the backline to cause problems for the enemy team's strategists) but if you get shut down every time you dive, you're going to be useless in more important fights. And I genuinely believe it's due to Marvel Rival's lack of balance that allows for this. As the team isn't concerned with making sure every character works within specific parameters, but instead of the player fantasy of being the hero or villain you select.

Playing the Winter Soldier feels good, and his kit aligns with his character. Cloak and Dagger having a character swap that plays into their lore is cool. And sometimes the rule of cool wins out over everything else. As a game being fun, especially one that leans into such a heavy cooperative experience, will determine how long an audience is willing to engage with it.

This is what I'm most concerned about regarding Marvel Rivals. While it's rife with recognizable characters like Iron Man and Captain American, it still has some more niche characters like Jeff the Landshark, to appeal to different kinds of fans of Marvel's behemoth of an IP, I'm worried about future support. The Battle Pass is extremely generous and allows you to hold onto it to slowly work through rewards at your own pace, and skins are reasonably priced with all of the extra bells and whistles that come with it. But I have no idea what Disney and Marvel expect in terms of profits, and if they are unreasonable, I'm worried Marvel Rivals will shut down in a handful of years. Yes, the game has hit over 20 million players, which is extremely impressive, but if a good chunk of those players stop buying skins and Battle Passes, what will that mean further down the line.

It's that live service model that concerns me, above all else, when it comes to the future of Marvel Rivals and the kind of game it could eventually become. As it stands, it's a serviceable hero shooter, and perhaps the one I've had the most fun with in a very long time. It's easy to pick up and put down. The destructible environments make for unique level design and presents more ways to tackle obstacles. The large roster of character also helps with counterplay, and gives players a lot to work with. But who knows what kind of game it could be in six months, or even a year from now depending on who has a say in what.

Marvel Rivals is available for the PlayStation 5, PC, and Xbox Series X.

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