This is a good game that's about fixing up instead of destroying things for a change. It's not very long, but I find it quite relaxing. It took me about 7.5 hours to get through the game on the easy difficulty, and that's enough for me.
This game really lifts my spirits. It's fun to play, not too hard, ideal to relax at the end of the day and take your mind off things as you guide this little fox through a colorful fantasy world that encourages you to explore. The game is full of cute little touches and details at every corner that make you feel the love that went into making this fantastic game.
This game made me remember precisely what I like about the games that I like, and why I play them. I like a sense of freedom, empowerment, and being able to get away from the troubles of the real world and relax. This game is the exact opposite of that. It is very restrictive, instills a constant sense of fear and worry inside of you, and makes you feel powerless in the face of a big, scary, hostile world. Which is great if you are into experiencing such emotions, but I, I get enough of that in my daily life, and it is not what I am looking for when I play games. In fact, I just had to stop playing this game because I could not take it on a psychoemotional level. So if you are looking for a game that makes you feel these things, then this may be for you. But if you just want to have fun and get away from such things, then this is definitely the wrong choice. Plus points for the game being very creative with its storytelling, telling the story from the eyes of a vixen, without a word needing to be spoken. Meanwhile, from a gameplay perspective, it is very restrictive, forcing you on linear paths with occasional branches, and without even being able to jump, thus making movement mostly one-dimensional. Back and forth, that's it, and with not only one, but two separate time limits to constantly put pressure on you while you struggle to figure out what to do. I consider that stressful, but I also know that some people enjoy that sort of pressure and challenge, so if you like that sort of stuff, then feel free to try this out.
I was sort of expecting more of one of the games on the "1000 Games You Must Play Before You Die" list. It's not bad, but it feels like more of a chore to play. Diablo II is definitely a game that comes with more long-term motivation, though it's difficult to say exactly why. It's a lot of little things that add up I suppose, starting with slightly spongy controls, the fact that you can't hold shift to identify multiple items in a row, or that gems of different grades all look the same. The pet system is a nice touch, but it is not enough to keep me playing after today.
I don't want to say too much here, since the whole point of the game is figuring things out. You get to explore, and there's a bunch of moments when you figure something out that you could have done a lot earlier if you've only thought about it. And that's just the beginning.
It has some interesting ideas that I would have like to explore more, but the difficulty is just too much for me to enjoy. As it is, I get too stressed out every time I play it, so it doesn't make for a pleasurable experience. I wish it had a lower minimum difficulty setting than "normal", which is actually to me fells more like "hard".
First off, don't expect a game here. If you approach this as an interactive experience, you are much more likely to be in the right mindset for this. At a length of approximately 2 hours, this feels actually closer to a movie than a game. The graphics and musics are good, and though the narrative may be depressing at times, the ending provides a powerful emotional catharsis that brought tears to my eyes. In terms of gameplay, there's no real challenge. You run around, look for items and collect stars. Occasionally, there's some jumping involved, but really it's mostly just running. There's also the option to walk, but that's just there to turn it off at the beginning of the level. You can run faster by pressing forward and either left or right, which seems like an oversight, but seeing as how most of the levels are needlessly huge, it is a welcome glitch, especially when you need to backtrack. At the end of the experience, my fingers hurts from keeping the movement keys pressed for minutes at a time. All in all, I can recommend this as an interactive experience, but not as a game.
This game was fun to play, but for some reason not quite as fun as Chrono Trigger. Cosmic Star Heroine features a lot of innovative mechanics that are definitely worth the investment to check out. The story is okay, pretty straightforward though, and while definitely all original, I don't feel the characters have as much depth to them than the characters of Chrono Trigger. Also, the world isn't as immersive, which is possibly related to the fact that you don't really revisit places and it just feels like you're running from place to place to advance the story. That much having been said, this is still a good game that you should check out. The battle themes are especially catchy and I'm having a hard time getting them out of my head.
I stopped playing the game after about 13 hours. There's just too much micro-management of me, and the manual pausing during combat is simply not my style. Since this game is based on the D&D combat system, I simply don't get why it had to be real-time. Had it been turn based, it would probably been so much better. Another thing this game fails to properly adapt from pen & paper RPGs is the proper complexity and reward of combat. In a proper P&P RPG, you have about ten combats per level, and the combats are complex, tactical, and take lots of time without getting boring. Here, combat is overly repetitive, which is made even worse by the fact that the combats don't last so long, meaning you have to repeat the exact same steps over and over again in rapid succession. Finally, the music. I will never understand how people can botch the music like this, when there are so many great examples to learn from. I eventually muted the music and replaced it with soudntrack from Monster Tale, which instantly made the game more playable for a couple of hours or so. Then the repetitiveness became too much for me. As a last note, it probably is not repetitiveness per se, but the specific kind of repetitiveness found in this game that kills it for me. I've played plenty of RPGs which had me do the same thing over and over again for a hunred hours without getting bored. I'll leave figuring out why this game fails to grip me like this to someone else. If you want to play a good RPG, I'd suggest looking at games like The Legend of Heroes instead.
This game plays more like a bonus dungeon to the first two installments of the Trails in the Sky series. Effectively, it consists of a series of dungeons that must be completed in order, and doesn't come anywhere close to the first two games in terms of story. That being said, it is still a good game, and if you enjoyed the previous two games and don't approach the game with too many story-expectations, you are also going to enjoy this part. All of your favorite characters are making a comeback, and the game also introduces three new playable characters. With a total ledger of 16 characters, this is one of the games with the most playable characters outside the Suikoden series, and there are parts in the game where you'll be using all of your characters split around a number of parties, so there's no "bench warm" dilemma. Quickly summed up again: If you played the first two games, then you'll also want to play this one. Don't expect too much from the story, and you might even be pleasantly surprised.
