Finally it has happened, we have a worthy successor to the Commandos franchise. Or well, as far as the demo can show us it'll be this successor on release. Fair warning: do wait for full version reviews. I think what mostly speaks in favor of this game is how open the solutions are compared to what you could in Commandos. Yes, difficulty suffers very slightly - you'll find yourself swapping to Hardcore or attempting the bonus objectives soon - but in return the individual flavor or each character is more useful as you can use them for everything, not just their 1-2 token objectives each map. Very impressive demo, also very stable. One missing feature would be proper Windowed Fullscreen, though.
Well, this was another fun game to go through, I've come to expect this insanely high quality from Wadjet Eye. Maybe because of that, this actually felt *less* perfect of a game than some of their other games. I'll go through the things which annoyed me, and then you can decide whether it still sounds good. Do keep in mind I rated it 4/5 for a reason, despite all of this they're fairly minor complaints except the first one about the endings. +Ending+ This is the one part I wish they had cut entirely. There's a choice at the end, and not only does the game feel cut short, the choices feel arbitrary and non-fitting. One of the endings, the "good" ending, should have been the only choice with a bit more expose and interactions. Alternatively, another of the endings should have been the sole outcome if nothing else were to change. +Abruptness+ Not really terrible - the game is fun as it is - but you can notice that things seem to get "pushed along". +Puzzles+ It's a minor gripe but considering the setting there were always other set objects around which I felt could have been used for a solution, easily. +Sprite scaling+ A very minor graphical weirdness, when Amy walks into the background, her sprite is scaled down in size instead of both size and pixel count. Other than these things, the game is really great. The artwork is amazing, the voicework is spot-on, the characters are nice, the idea behind the government is something else and I love some of the little nuances (not going to spoiler anything). Can recommend. Even with the weird ending, it's a really good game.
I bought this because it was on sale and I still had store credit, expecting something which was terrible but good for a laugh or two. As it turns out, the game is actually really, really good. Sure, there's naked anime girls you're shagging as a reward for doing well in a match-3 bejeweled-style minigame, but as much as those two elements should be at odds with each other, they're not. The match-3 part is surprisingly well done. You need to sometimes plan ahead, consider whether to use moving one gem to push another into place for the subsequent turn, instead of going for a more direct result. You also got a few special types of gems to utilize, including one which powers a set of "date gifts" which you can select beforehand, which for example remove one type of gem or convert them into one another. You are limited to 20 turns in this, but c an think however long you want, needing to fill up an "affection" bar. Between that is a very story-light "dating sim", where you buy girls gifts and give them food and drinks to gain experience points to include your match-3 abilities, and find out details about them to unlock more hairstyles. Then you take them out for dates (match-3 time! :D ), which rewards money and costumes for the girls. Do well enough and take a girl out for a date at night while she already likes you a lot, and she'll follow you home, leading to a match-as-fast-as-you-can sequence. Over all, massively impressed by this, 5/5. HOWEVER, this is the censored version (final CG art of the girls have panties on, which looks stupid for most of them as it was clearly added later...). It's easy enough to find the uncensor-patch, though.
This game looked ... weird, when I first got it. Playing the notes was weird, controls were a bit stiff, everything could have done down better. But, stick with it out of the starting cave, and the game completely blows you away. The environments are *insanely* beautiful, the voiceovers well done, the exploration is spot-on. Any Castlevania fan will immediately feel at home. The character improvement via new "forms" is done well, too, and there's plenty hidden things to find. Yes, it's from 2007, but the graphics age extremely well and I cannot recommend this enough.
