star resonance blue protocol

Story

awful, uninteresting story with poor lip sync and choppy movements during cutscenes. The majority of quests have you going back and forth between 2-3 npcs standing next each other to click on them and read or listen to their dialogue with very little combat during it. With the dialogue being uneventful and cutscenes too poor to watch it ends up becoming a click simulator to advance through it quickly instead.


graphics

Beautiful stylized anime graphics. The zones have fantastic lighting and shading which created gorgeous landscapes for the players to traverse. The main area Asterleeds plains is rather large with plenty to explore during your quest. The additional zones had less open space and gradually became just a long hallway.

Class design

Simple yet with enough depth due to the spec/talent system to change playstyles and skills entirely. Combat was mostly smooth with some issues with targeting as ranged classes. Each of the jobs feeling unique to how they play which is fresh compared to the current big MMOs in which the classes play relatively the same.

Encounter design

Dungeons are great the first couple of times. There were some mechanics I wasn't expecting to see in an MMO that can be played on the phone, but was just that a one time surprise. Dungeons have incredibly simple mechanics that can be summarized as mostly stack or get away from group. Each dungeon end boss had 1-2 unique mechanics that needed you to interact with their summons or other force in some shape or form. As one progresses and plays modes like Stimen vaults it becomes apparent quickly how outclassed melee are when compared to ranged. As most of the mechanics or room mechanics going on will hinder the melee and not the ranged. Ranged also have valuable grouping protentional with great AoE, ST and consistent damage by not having to move away from mechanics. Melee bring little to no utility and their damage even without interruption can't keep up with the current state of ranged dps.

monetization and its affect on the game

To be quite frank, the two gachas in the game are barely noticible. Not even due to the fact that the Will Imagi (summons) are hidden in an npc you interact with briefly during the store, but they don't feel mandatory or even that effective. Numbers wise they definitely are, but not needed to even progress the game. Which is nice to be able to ignore the gacha for once in these types of games.

however, the exploration and gameloop has suffered immensely for it. The weeklies cap relatively fast and the daily grind is relatively short which leaves you with wanting more. But once you have a set of gear all the game really has to offer you is afk grinding mobs for void exp or hunt logs and fishing. Because even your professions (life skills) have a daily cap as well. The world is barely explored because its only use is to grab 2-5 rose orbs per chest (need 150 to pull or 400 for material selectors) and gambling on 2 bosses/2 elites per day for the materials.

Auto-combat


The game artificially inflates activity by designing a system that encourages players to use the auto combat feature for hours upon end to grind 253 of every normal monster in the game. around 80ish for elites on a 3 minute timer and about 30 of every boss that spawns every hour. If it wasn't for the world chat I'd be wondering if anyone was actually at their screen sometimes. I wish this game would disable auto-combat as its quite frustrating to watch the singular dangerous mechanic fail because someone pressed H on their keyboard and walked away which caused the group to get nuked and wipe.

Conclusion

This game is very pretty and its been fun leveling up and cosplaying my characters as other video game characters, the bonework is there for the game to excel and I hope it does. Right now I can only give it a 7/10 as its held back by glaring flaws I mentioned earlier and ones I did not mention like the dungeon gear drops.

I recommend trying it out as it is fun, but as a long term MMO you may want to try GW2, FF14 or WoW as you will run out of daily activities fairly quickly in this one with its current state.

Early Access review.

Game is pretty and its refreshing to play a game that does not handhold every minute right out the gate and force tutorial after tutorial on the player. So below is my experience with the game.

After a run or two it becomes clear the best route to do is collect the prisms and as much equipment and weapon caches as you can get then go towards a boss once your meter is closer to max as defeating a boss will bring your danger meter to max once you exit their domain. Then go to an extraction zone and leave so no equipment takes durability damage.

All of the Rails (guns) are underwhelming compared to your blades (melee weapons) outside of two scatter weapons, the blunderbuss and Diamond shot.

Battery (ammo) is a problem with using the rails as it drains quickly and you don't have much to begin with. Building more battery comes at a significant cost compared to building more Blade damage.

For example, once you start equipping yourself with Synergy from the tree and make sure to grab weapons and amps with the same status effect you notice your damage skyrockets through the roof and the blades scale far higher than any of the rails. I was one shotting the crown bosses with 9,250 damage crits from my blade skill on the sword after getting a 3 synergy set up and a good holobyte set up.

my holobyte set up;


Micron edge (10% crit rate and 50% crit damage), spiked cleats (for every 1 point of stamina, deal 10% additional damage. Goro has 150 stamina at max upgrade so that is free 150% damage on all weapons), Flash accelerator (gain 25% crit chance for 2 seconds after flash step), blitz blade (gain 200% damage but reduce max hp by 35%) and plasma edge (blade gains 25% bonus damge per 150 bright blood in cache).


The triple synergy from the tree was giving me 90% more damage as i had burn on my sword, blunderbuss and frag grenade amp.

This build allowed me to one shot any boss by just charging my sword skill and releasing it. around 3100ish damage without a crit and 9.2kish with a crit.

It was fun discovering that build and watching it unfold and kill everything.

I was quite surprised to see mouse sensitivity being added the next day after early access as that was the biggest complaint I had as it was giving me motion sickness playing fast dual blades.

Now for issues i've noticed:


Not starting with a med kit is quite frustrating, but once you have it unlocked via the player tree exploration becomes far easier. Please allow players to at least start with 1 medikit.

When attempting to extract the hound enemies tended to fall through the platform and keep you stuck there. My friend and I would have to move around the extraction pad until we found the enemy by getting attacked and then spam blade basics until it died whenever it clipped out of the ground to attack us.

The parry has a slight start up delay which makes it quite annoying to use especially when swarms of enemies are coming at you.

My biggest issue with the game is mob density does not adjust for solo, 2 player or 3 player parties. Making the game far easier in co-op than single player.

This issue isn't as bad until you are fighting crowns as the mobs spawn too frequently to deal with solo until you start getting cheese builds like my one shot Blade skill build. Difficulty with the crown bosses should not be due to adds spawning constantly with no indication instead of the crown boss. My friend and I never found the boss to ever be an issue, just the fact we had constant adds spawning that would even spawn in with an attack already registered. Increase the respawn timer on the adds and or give a sound indication that they just materialized out of thin air when you just finished clearing them not even 2 seconds prior.

We should also have the option to end a cycle without having to make 4 attempts or killing all the bosses. This is just a farming gripe for Cores as Cores/ gold rations are the real gate keepers for progression along with the crown drops.

Suggestions/bugs:

Currently there is a bug which when you grab plants in the world as the host it does not give med crystals to the other players, but the non-host players grabbing the plants will give med crystals to everyone in the group.

Vaults are shown as not completed when you have already completed them still.

One feature I would like being added is being able to store items equipped to your character to your vault. Its a tad annoying that if i want to unequip some holobytes I have to change to a different character and equip the holobytes to them so i can unequip them off my main character when I do not have extra holobytes to swap out.

Right now this game is great, its a refershing change of pace that rewards you for learning the game. It just needs the usual early access fixes to bugs and additions of bosses, map zones aesthetics. Currently the abyss king is not in the game so you just get a screen telling you the abyss king awaits and you get 1 boss drop rewards and go to the next cycle.

I'm having a lot of fun in this game, adjust the mob density when solo or 2 players versus 3 player co-op, please buff battery/rails and help new players out with a starter medikit. I will continue playing as Goro with my friend and i'm excited for the changes coming to the future.

My current rating is 8.5/10. Its a harsh start which is refreshing and doesn't hand hold, but gives you a satisifying gameplay once you get the hang of making builds and prioritzing map objectives better.

Atlyss has been another gem this year. Out the gate the character creation screen is so diverse that you can make completely different races through customization options in each race. Sliders actually give drastic differences in body types for additional customization. Weapons can be customized to work with any class and the game can be enjoyed alone or with others.

The game can be as difficult or easy as you want. The easier you want the game the more vitality you give your characters to take more hits before going down, if you want more difficulty you just spend all your points into damage and find yourself respawning if you take 1-2 hits. Play the game the way you want to.

Lore in the game can be found by the bookcases in the main tower and outside in the open world. You get a little book icon that lets you know to open your lexicon if you want some lore.

Transmog is in the game as well so you are able to customize your character's outfit and dye the outfits different colors and make the outfits and weapons visually appear like other ones.

Atlyss does not drown you in dailies to keep player retention or make artificial content gates. Just make the character and dive in.

Currently the game is in early access so it does not take long to get to the end game on 1 character but with how easy it is to get into and the various different builds you can craft you can find yourself making more and more characters and sink a lot of time into the game. Its being developed by a single developer, Kisseff, and they have done wonders with the game so far.

So far Atlyss' has provided worth far beyond 10$ and I look forward to continue playing it more today and when new updates are released.

I was extremely skeptical of the game when I was told it was a turn based Volleyball game. Ended up being surprised by the game after getting hooked in one of the most well crafted turn based games i've played in a fairly long time. The Paper Mario aesthetic caught my eye along with the gameplay and characters. Lots of little fun interactions in the game and they weave the Volleyball system into the lore of the game exceptionally well.

Its been great entertainment so far and its caused me to lose track of time every time i've booted it up. Many different strategies for teams and its still in early access.

Well done, its rare for me to review a game. Let alone give a personal score higher than 7/10 typically, but this game is a 10/10 for me.

There are some minor issues with some attack effects making it difficult to see the remaining Stamina on some of my beasties on occasion. Personally I would like a share button for replays to send to friends.

More customization for the clothing stores is a given, but with it still in early access its obviously going to get more. Right now its mostly different head piece accessory options that aren't hats that are lacking. We have the plastic horns headband, but it would be nice to have any set of fake ear headbands as well.

Fun game. It can be a tad grindy but it is an MMO and based on the old style of pokemon.

The story was great with a lot of fun jokes. Battles are fun/smooth.