Audience in question being either nostalgic for this mid-level XBOX360 release and people who really, really love stylish shooters. It'd be unfair to say that this is trying to be Max Payne (even though it very clearly is), consdidering how much Max Payne was inspired by John Woo and Hong Kong action movies, but as far as the gaming scene goes, this is the thrill it was trying to emulate. The tone is on point and the action is solid. The problem is that the game has technical and core design issues. No controller support, bare-bones options menu, no subtitles, terrible default key-bindings (menu and in-game) and a sickening FOV. The action is frantic and enemies very shamelessly spawn from inside empty boxed rooms (with invisible walls) and all around you, so the camera that stuck to your back makes the gunplay quite literally nauseating. I respect what it was going for and I appreciate the affection some people have for it, but for anyone not in that particular crowd, this is honestly a bit of a mess and you're better off replaying Max Payne.
I have become a bit of a fan of Wadjet Eye's. I've played three of their point n clicks and I've really enjoyed all of them. Their work is always well-thought-out, beautiful and ever-evolving. Primordia goes all the way back to 2012, so it's a bit rough around the edges. Its biggest strengths, like all Wadjet Eye games, are the presentation and the story. Primordia features one of the coolest post-apocalyptic sci-fi frameworks, dressed very nicely in a lot of orange-brown rusted environments and analog technology that is immediately recognizable to everyone. As usual, it's a small, personal story with world-scale implications. The world-building is great and it touches on philosophical concepts of progress, evolution, religion and existentialism without ever becoming intrusive. The characters are likeable and their back-and-forth makes dialogue a joy to listen to. Where Primordia falters is the gameplay; to say it's "a little bit obtuse" would be an understatement. It's standard point-n-click and there is no moon logic, but it's their first game I had to look up a walkthrough *multiple* times. The problem is that the puzzles aren't hard, the game is just terrible at communicating them. There's the occasional pixel-hunting, there are solutions that appear after certain moments, leaving you thinking you've already explored the available options and other small annoyances that lead to "I ALREADY KNEW THAT" moments. The game does feature a couple of actually clever puzzles, but a lot of the time the way it's structured makes it turn into a slog of walking back and forth looking for solutions and things to interact with. Having said all that, I can't be too critical, because their later games have consistently improved upon these problems. The experience is never terminally frustrating and its story is absolutely worth experiencing. Highly recommended, despite its flaws.
Right off the bat, I enjoyed Trails FC a lot. It does have a lot more storytelling than it does actual gameplay. Tactical RPG is the name of the game, but in this first game, the systems are fairly plain if you're playing on Normal and that's honestly fine. The story isn't straigthforward, but has tons of world-building and the characters are likable and memorable. What I'm here to tell everyone is to not play this, without installing the Evolution mod. The mod makes a few changes to gameplay and visuals you might want to skip, but it also installs (seperately, should you choose to) the Japanese audio track. A lot of people classify this as a form of "VN", only it's not a VN; the original release was *fully voiced*; they just never localized the audio and therefor they didn't ship the international versions with the Japanese audio track either. I've played (some) of this game without the audio and all of it with it; it's a game-changer. The Japanese cast inject so much personality to the dialogue, they manage to bring those chibi sprites to life. There are LONG dialogue sequences in Trails FC and I can't imagine going back to a version that's all reading. Google the mod, then play this, it's a great start to a great franchise.
I own this on Steam and actually finished it only a couple of days before writing this. It's 2/3s high school boy simulator, side-questing, "social linking" (yes, there are Persona inspirations here) and 1/3 dungeon crawling. The combat is a bit stiff, with camera issues. It's not without its depth; lots of combos and special moves, nice change-character-on-the-fly system and when it works, it has a nice flow to it. The game was, however, originally released on the Vita and it has its limitations, both technically and mechanically, because of it. What it does really good is fleshing out its characters and the world. It's a trope-y story with generic character archetypes, it's very standard action anime, with magical weapons and demonic forces and "calamities" and all that jazz-- but what it lacks in uniqueness, the game makes up for with sheer bravado. Even minor characters stand out and give the game world character, while the core cast are all distinct and likable. The low-point of the game is the fact that it has three endings, when it needed only one. It does overstay its welcome, to be honest, the gameplay loop isn't tight enough for the 60+ hours it took me to clear it. It should've wrapped things up around Chapter 5-6, around the 35-hour-mark. There is such a thing as too much of a good thing. Still, this was a very pleasant surprise for me, I loved it to bits, I think back on it very fondly and I whole-heartedly recommend it to anyone looking for a fun action jrpg with an anime flavor.
The most impressive thing about Bloodrayne 2 is how it fares in comparisson to its predecessor. It's a wonderful throwback to an era when developers took what worked in the original and turned the dial up to 11. With this sequel, everything has been improved and elaborated upon; Rayne has a far more extensive move-set and powers, the levels are better designed, the art direction is more striking, the pacing is (somewhat) better and the story is more consistent. By all accounts, Bloodrayne 2 makes the first game look like proof of concept. Unfortunately, this is still a 6th gen game and melee combat is still a mess. The new moves are really fun to use, as are the new powers, but the game runs out of steam very quickly. The unique gameplay mechanic is the chain attack, which this time is used to show off the new ragdoll physics by yanking enemies as projectiles to solve environmental puzzles. It's cool the first time you do it, but this mechanic is quite literally at the heart of the entire game and every single level has at least one of those. It's repetitve and stops the flow dead in its tracks. What isn't a ragdol physics puzzle is janky combat that loses all sense of pace and balancing at the half-way point. UBERTAINTJOADDURFKWIS. This is the god mode cheat, which you should absolutely memorize and use, because in the last third there are more broken mini-bosses than there are stars in the sky. Honestly, the only reason this gets 3 stars is that it has tons of character and personality. Pairing Rayne up with a handler was genius; the play well off of each other and where Rayne could come off as a bit cringy and tryhard in the first game, she's remarkably likeable in this one, largely thanks to Laura Bailey's excellent delivery. She owns the part. Buy it on a *proper* sale, enable god mode when the time is right, then abuse the Freeze Time power. Otherwise, don't bother, it's a bit of a waste of time. Oh yeah, the remaster is good; but a remake would be best.