Treasure hunter Ayumi returns in a new adventure. This time she uses a magic orb in a Guild HQ to travel to the volcanic Dragonland. Here, she must travel the Path to find the treasure of The Dragon Temple. But things aren't that simple. Dragonlands are a land rife with conflict, where different powers struggle for dominance. The game is a hack'n'slash platformer with a bigTPS component. Ayumi uses her swords to build up Rage, which can be used to cast one of 3 spells- fire, ice of force/ground pound. After the intro level, you also unlock the power to rewind time- but unlike Sands of Time, it's not an undo button. Rather, Ayumi rewinds the world around her, spawning a clone that performs her past actions, while she is free to act in a different way. She can spawn these in an ongoing fashion, increasing her damage output- this is necessary to beat some hardened enemies, and also to solve some puzzles that require multiple buttons to be pressed at once. The levels are varied, each one with its own gimmicks, and the enemy roster is varied as well. The story is simple, but has some fun twists. Writing is cliched, but fun. Gameplay is quick and exciting. The balance goes out the window if you find the hidden chest with a gatling gun, but that just keeps the game from getting tedious. There's some lore collectibles, but the levels are linear, so there isn't much replayability here. Very much a product of its time, but the game's got some neat ideas, and the gameplay's better than X-blades. Worth a play.
Sometime in the renaissance, a village in the mountains overlooking Venice is having a mid-summer feast. Local beauty Scarlett is seeing her beloved off to become a knight, when the village is attacked by masked assassins. Scarlett picks up a weapon to defend her village, and sees her beloved die. Then she is visited by Death and told it's her mission to find a discarded balde that can kill ghosts, and use it to stop a cabal of necromancers who seek to usurp Death itself. Thus begins your journey to, and across, the city of Venice. It's a 3rd person action-RPG, with combat most reminiscent of Witcher 1- input your next attack at the end of the animation to trigger a combo with a damage multiplier. You also need to switch to your Moonblade (the sickle bit of death's scythe) to do damage to some otherwordly enemy types. Scarlett also gets to go into Death's realm a la Soul Reaver for short periods of time- this is sometimes needed to find portals to move around obstacles and solve puzzles. There seems to be a morality system tied to your dialogue choices, but I'm not quite sure how instrumental it is to the game. The game is based on a tabletop RPG, so some of the skills can be a bit clunky- you need to be trained to block for each weapon, and using the block isn't a dedicated block button, but your skill key. But rolling mostly works, except for one boss fight, which I think requires the spear block. Game can be clunky, and I've had some bugs where level geometry wouldn't load, and this required a hard restart; but otherwise, it playes well, and it's definitely a curio of its age. The story and the art direction in Venice are quite nice, despite its age, so I'd recommend this one, if you enjoyed Witcher 1
It's the 17th century, and England and Spain are fighting for the Caribbean, while pirates leech off both sides. You play as CaptainBlood, a wannabe privateer with a big cutlass and an even biger pistol. Blood mores through mostly linear arenas and corridors, doing light/heavy attacks, dodge rolls and blocks, with occasional pistol shots and dynamite tossed in the mix.enemies have beat'em'up health bars and when they get low, you can do a finisher. Collect gold to buy combos and new finishers- basically tou need the one that lets you steal enemy weapons, and that's it. There's a decent enemy variety, and the environments are nice. Few fun bosses. Basic, but serviceable story, albeit one that feels like it ends a bit abruptly, and leaves room for a sequel. Those are the positives. The negatives are all the typical issues of a mid 2000s game. There's no lock-on, so trying to face enemies with a keyboard can be a pain. QTEs are everywhere, including boss finishers (or, in one case, it's the entire boss sequence). There's also cannon sequences and ship battles, where you roll from cannon to cannon to hit flanking Spanish ships, and trying to prevent boarding boats from landing. YMMV on these. Lastly, there's bugs. They affect progression despite patches. Small stuff like optional chests not counting properly (messing up achievement progress) is one thing, but the game also stops saving progrees past a certain point. Reloading from chekpoints on death works, but exit to main menu, and clicking continue can sent you back a few levels. Latest patch didn't fix this, so right now, it's hard to recommend this one.
The game is a AA action RPG. Zachariah Mancer and up to 2 companions move around a set of connected maps, fight enemies, talk to NPCs and collect loot to complete quests, level up and make conversation choices. You can change your companions' equipment to make them last longer in a fight, and your conversation choices impact your reputation- get it high enough and you get a trait bonus (lock-picking, crafting, science, stealth, charisma, etc) while they are with you. Traits are important for some conversation skill checks, lock-picking, and sneaking around. You also have 4 skill trees for Zachariah. Majority of combat is melee, and all people on Mars fight in one of 3 styles-Rogue (short blade & gun), Guardian (shield & mace) and Warrior (2-handed weapons, such as a staff). Zachariah can learn skills in these 3 style trees, as well as his specialized Technomancer skill tree. Game's visuals are adequate. There's some environmental variety, but, being Mars, you can't expect too much. The game's leaps and bounds better than War logs when it comes to enemy variety and bosses. The game really shines in its questing. Compared to earlier games, there's stronger writing, more interesting stakes, and most quests have multiple outcomes that affect your faction standings. These become critical by Act III, where you need to recruit ally factions to help you overcome the human Big Bad. I did find some cutscenes to be a bit underwhelming when it came to storytelling, demonstrating the game's small budget, but overall, the story's fairly engaging. Overall, this is a Spiders game. That is, Bioware-lite crossed with Witcher 2. If you've liked GreedFall, all the DNA of that game is in here, wrapped I a cool story. If you were turned off by WarLogs or Bound by Flame, this is significantly more refined. Fans of Eurojank RPGs should feel right at home here. Everyone else, this is peak 7/10. You have been warned.
Play as Ailu, a young Sami reindeer herder who discovers an ancient drum that allows him to tame elemental animal spirits and combat the strange corruption that is threatening the land. The game is beautiful 3D platformer-collectathon. Combat isn't really a thing, though you can delay enemies to escape by applying your elemental powers. There are some non-linear elements, but the game isn't a true metroidvania, b/c as you progress through the story, areas get blocked off permanently, so with the exception of the starting area, you don't really get to revisit spots to collect things you've missed. Game controls well, with some clipping bugs (the game has 2 autosave slots to avoid this breaking the game), but some platforming elements could be a bit tricky due to how the controls are set up. There's no built-in remapping, so you'd need outside software to do so. Also, no cloud saves, so watch out if you want to hop between PCs. Despite this, I enjoyed the game. It's got some cool ideas and stunning visuals, and the story was all right. Do hope the sequel gets made.
Fun DMC clone, in that you get both 2 swords and guns. gameplay revolves around hitting enemies with swords to build up your mana and then spamming AoE attacks with way-too-long set-up animations. There's a good ending and a bad ending. To avoid a bad ending, don't buy any dark magic spells, no matter how useful they are. Ayumi's model look absolutely ridiculous with the thong and armor chaps, but you can find a normal armor skin after like 6 levels in an optional area. it's fun, it's brainless, but the bloom in the sunny areas is INSANE, to the point where you can see basically nothing. Turning down the brightness can help, but the other 60% of the game in in dark dungeon corridors, so at that point, you end up seeing nothing due to it being too dark. Oh, and the dodge move is super-unintuitive on a keyboard, but there's like one instance where you actually need it. But if you like seeing combo meter numbers go up, it's pretty okay.
The game is a hidden gem. It's not without issues. The production values are obviously indie/AA at best, and it shows- voiceovers are basically grunts, there's some clipping bugs (most obvious in a few cutscenes), and the game looks like an up-rezzed mod of Beyond Good and Evil. Oh, and the combat is very rhythm-input based (think OG Witcher), so it looks like a series of QTEs. And yet, I love it. You play as Achtli, a young delivery girl in a futuristic tenochtitlan in a timeline where the Aztec Empire survived far into distant future. Achtli's mom is a researcher on the verge of unlocking the hi-tech secrets of the ancient civilization, when the project is abruptly shut down. You break into the facility, and take up an ancient gauntlet. In the process, you wake up the Forgotten Gods, and then you have to defeat them so that they don't level the city. The story is basic and linear, with a plot twist that you can see from a mile away. The gameplay consists of zipping from boss to boss, beating them Zelda-style- solve a specific puzzle to expose weak points. There's a small open world, but it consists of pursuit challenges, combat challenges, and finding lore bits. occasionally enemy mooks spawn in, but these fights are optional, as all they do is let you farm gold (needed to buy skill/stat upgrades) or silver (needed to buy hairstyle/outfits). There's like 3 enemy types, which normally would be a big letdown, but in this case, the game is all about the bosses, so I found it irrelevant. And the bosses are fun and chaotic, because of the jetpack that is your gauntlet. There's great variety, and anyone lamenting the demise of PS2-style short action-adventure games absolutely owes it to themselves to check this one out.
The game is a surprisingly deep Metroidvania that probably doesn't make the best first imptression with its visuals. However, I found this to be a very competent title that nails the exploration loop and some really-above-average combat. I honestly don't think I've enjoyed a combat-focused title this much since playing "Sekiro". This game isn't really a Souls-like- though it relies on rolling and jumping to avoid enemy attacks, there's no stamina bar. However, the many boss encounters really highlight the strong visual design. Each boss has a number of distinct attacks, and each one has very distinct visual or/and audio cues- and this really helps in making the tough combat feel "fair", because every single time I react the wrong way and die, I KNOW that I made a mistake. The controls are generally fluid and simple- though switching forms in order to use several abilities can throw you off Time to complete fully for a true ending- about 28 hours on Normal difficulty (there is an easier Story mode). Music was pleasant and fitting, but not particularly memorable. Game's negatives include a somewhat choppy translation, which can interfere with understanding the story- a lot of background information can be gleaned from speaking to NPCs, but when their dialogue isn't 100% coherent, the overall story can become muddled, if you aren't familiar with Eastern beliefs about the Afterlife and the bureaucracy that runs it. I would also say the achievements are pretty cryptic. I get that this is to avoid spoilers, but they are mostly secret, so it would make sense t have a better description once they are attained: as is, there aren't real comprehensive guides for the game, and I suspect this could be why. Overall, I would definitely recommnd checking this game out. It looks quite simple, but there's a lot of work behind the game's combat mechanics, and the exploration is very well-done as well.
The game is clunky, sure. Lack of an inventory wheel to switch weapons and armors is annoying. Combat's gonna seem simplistic, untill you get into the blood types, and the way different weapons and armour combo against different anemy types- at which point your mind gets blown as to how complex the system really is, for a 1995 game. Most importantly, the ATMOSPHERE. The spooky sountrack with the spirits wailing and thunder clapping. The world of Nosgoth is dying slowly, and you, Kain, get to feast on its decaying flesh, while also trying to save it- only because it'll save you. Or will it? I am 100% clouded by nostalgia, since this is one of the formative games of my childhood; but the story STILL HOLDS UP. The iconic voice acting that made Legacy of Kain what it is, it's here. Simon Templeman is flawless; the supporting cast is amazing, but at the same time the story flows without large info dumps or lengthy cutscenes. It's all about exploration, finding switches, killing things, finding secrets and growing increasingly stronger, while a truly epic plot unfolds around you. This game is a gem. All there is to it.
