Dispatch might not have the best story in the grand scheme of things, and most of the choices doesn't really affect much, but it's a product of love and a showcase of what Adhoc can do in the future. You can feel the Telltale DNA oozing from this game. It's one of the few adventure, visual novel-esque games that I wanted to replay over and over just to see all the choices and get all the achievements.

I'm on my second playthrough now, and I'm planning on a third. I only wish there's a fast forward button so I can skip all the fluff I've went through in my first playthrough.

If there's going to be a second season, I only ask for a few things:

- Make every choice more meaningful, including the dispatch calls. Having the characters reference the result of the calls you did in the shift before is the bare minimum for me.
- QTEs need to be more interactive like in Telltale games. Just clicking and dragging my mouse felt like the QTEs were forced in instead of being part of the gameplay.
- Exploring the Brave Brigades and what they do now after Robert II's death might be an interesting premise.
- Vanderstank need to make an on-screen appearance so I can punch him in the face for making me do that coffee run.

This game is an easy 8.5/10 for me. I'm not going to overhype this game like so many others, but I feel like this is one of the better adventure games I've ever played, and I don't throw that around casually. I look forward to see what Adhoc has in the future, especially Wolf Among Us 2.

I have been playing MMBN for a long time, and this is basically that game series cranked up to 11. It's a really good game for MMBN veterans who were looking for a tougher and more challenging experience, but others might bounce off of it, cuz saying that this game is hard is an understatement.

OSFE is definitely a "git gud" kind of game.

You will need to understand how each cards synergize with each other, then build your deck around what effects you want to do. Do you want to build a poison deck, a fragile deck, a Flow deck, etc. Although the cards you get after each encounter is random, you can bump up the chances of getting the type of cards you want through the Focus system, which you can select up to two types.

That being said, you are fully expected to be able to use those decks in a split second without too much thinking, as if you know your deck inside out, because this game's speed is 5x faster than Battle Network. Enemies move fast, projectiles will litter the screen, and you are expected to attack while dodging all attacks like it's a bullet hell.

This diminishes the layer of strategy that Battle Network series is known for, which is an action-strategy game, but in exchange, it makes the action way, way more satisfying. The controls are snappy, the enemy variety is quite big, and the game is short enough for the constant barrage of combat encounters to not overstay their welcome.

The highlight though, is the bosses. If you come to this game expecting a MMBN kind of boss fights, this is where you're either disappointed or impressed, because the bosses plays more like a Touhou boss fight rather than anything. They litter your screen with projectiles while still having that classic Mega Man attack pattern legibility. Dying 3 or 4 times is enough for you to study their attack patterns and adapt to it, and they're still manage to have more gimmicks if fought in later stages. Some may not like it, but personally, I find the boss fights to be refreshing change of pace. It definitely feels more "Gunvolt" than "Mega Man" to me in terms of difficulty.

All in all, I find this game quite enjoyable. Oh, and it has mod support too. Sad that there's not a lot of mods I can use, but the addition of Battle Network and Star Force cards is quite nice.

This game is a lot of fun. There's a lot of content and boss fights, as well as dozens of Pals you can collect and help you build your base. With the right roster, you can fully automate your base and go on adventures without worry.

The thing that I noticed is that in public multiplayer, there's a lot of complaints regarding people who begged to join as guildmates, then proceeded to offline grief their guild and run away.

People are under the mistaken impression that this game is like Minecraft where you join a public server and have fun with everyone. It's not.

It's actually Rust with Pokemon. Everyone on public server is not your friend. If you're getting ♥♥♥♥♥♥ over because of your overgenerosity, that's all on you. If this game ever enables PVP (which they will sometime in the future), you WILL definitely be their first targets.

Do not be kind to people in this kind of games. Trust only the people you actually trust IRL. I learned this the hard way. You shouldn't have to.

Crisis Core is a perfect 1:1 recreation of the original game from 18 years ago. Everything good and bad from the original Crisis Core is still here. The only thing they improve is the gameplay and graphics, nothing more.

Note that this game's plot is essential to FF7 Remake trilogy, so one way or the other, you need to at least understand this game's plot (kind of a hurdle since, you know, Nomura).

If you loved Crisis Core and wanted to play it for nostalgia (I know y'all do), pick this game up on sale.

If you hated Crisis Core, this game have not and will not fix your issues with it. Just watch the cutscenes on Youtube.

If you don't know what the heck is Crisis Core, you have two options:

A. If you can stomach cringy dialogues, god-awful voice acting, slot machines, utter garbage sidequests that serves nothing but to help you grind (because this game is linear as hell and there's no open world for you to grind and explore), pick this game on sale.
B. Just watch the cutscenes on Youtube.

The only reason I recommend this game is because I fell into the first category (the Crisis Core lover one), but to be honest, it's not worth full price. I would give a horizontal thumb if that option is available.

2 hours in this game, as a sukonbu who played Mega Man for 20+ years.

Unlike many Mega Man-likes I've played, this game got the Zero/ZX mechanic down to a T. It literally felt like a 1-to-1 to an Inti Creates platformer. It feels like I'm playing a remix of Zero 3 and Gunvolt 3. The art is so good, filled with the cute aesthetic you'd expect from Fubuki and Hololive. The story is serviceable, with many in-jokes and references that Hololive fans (and primarily sukonbu) would appreciate.

That being said, I have a lot of gripe with this game.

There's nothing of value to be said about the level design, and I'm pretty sure this sentiment is echoed by the other reviews. For so much of the Zero/ZX-movement goodness is preserved within Fubuki, the level design does not accommodate for it at all. It's just linear hallways with no alternate routes and very little platforming. One of the charms of Mega Man is the balance between run-and-gun and, well... platforming. This game only covers the former and completely ignores the latter, only doing the bare minimum and did nothing creative with it. Honestly it's such a waste of potential. The final level finally did something with the platforming sections, but the last stretch (the climbing section) is such an infuriating experience it kills any joy for me, wishing to end the level soon and fight the boss.

The damage scaling in this game felt really bad at first, when you don't have a lot of summons and upgrades to help you. Bosses felt like damage sponges, and their attack patterns came straight out of Touhou, littering the screen with projectiles you have to dodge while the boss charges towards you. Good thing is that they are very generous in giving you the currency that you can use to upgrade your stats and special weapons as well as buying summons, littering the stage with them and giving a crap ton of them when you kill enemies (probably the reason why they cap it at 999, even tho personally I find it a bad design choice). By the late game I just spam the Sougenmu-like special weapon and summons while dodging projectiles. Granted, my gameplay in Zero/ZX isn't really that different; I just spam Charge Shot and/or special weapons, and dodge projectiles.

One particular gripe me and practically everyone have is the dogwater UI. Why does the mana meter looks like an HP bar? Why does the actual HP bar is thin and circular, with a numerical value that makes it hard to read at a microsecond glance? Why doesn't the game visually alerts me when I'm low at HP (I know Fubuki would say something when she's low on health, but it's hard to hear amongst the barrage of sound effects coming in from all directions)? WHY DOES THE BOSS HEALTH BAR SO SMALL AND PLACED RIGHT NEXT TO THE PLAYER INFO?? Most of my deaths during boss fights are caused by me trying to glance at the boss HP and got hit by a random projectile I didn't see CUZ IT'S HARD TO GLANCE AT A MICROSECOND.

At the end of the game, you'll unlock a harder difficulty and a boss rush stage. You can already unlock all of the upgrades in one single playthrough, and there's no achievement system in this game, so the replayability is just way too little for me.

I would still recommend this game cuz I'm a huge sucker for Mega Man-likes, and from what I've heard, there's going to be a NG+ and Extra Mode updates that revamped the stages (hopefully it'll be on par to at least Gunvolt level of quality), but I'd suggest you get it on sale or wait for the promised update before buying this.

Visually, there's nothing wrong with the game. The game looks as beautiful and runs as smoothly as I remember it years ago. But as someone who played all the Kenway games, the bugs and glitches are simply unbearable.

NPCs' pathing system being bugged as hell, the synch music continues to play even though I already jumped off the building (it even carries over to cutscenes and open conflict ffs), and the subtitles often are late as hell, sometimes 2 lines late like cmon! (Sidenote: I gotta ask though, why Ubisoft are so obsessed with these "one-line" subtitles in AC games? This crap was never good even in Origins and Odyssey, and it's one of my pain points when playing those games. The original subtitles are good enough as it is. Don't fix what's not broken).

My biggest complaints, though, are with the combat and parkour bugs.

The attack markers (the red triangles that appears when an enemy attacks) most of the time came out WAY TOO LATE after the enemies' attack animations, causing me to get hit even when I saw it coming from a mile away and I already mashed the counter button (to give a more detailed explanation, the game's counter system relies on the attack markers, so if the markers didn't come out, you cannot counter an attack even when the animation has already started). Not to mention that when parrying an attack, Haytham/Connor sometimes SHEATHED their weapon, so I'm just there, staring at the long-ass slow motion as I wait for the counter window to end and my character unsheathed their weapons. It's so dumb.

I don't know how you broke the flawless parkour system, but holy crap the parkour bugs I encountered in this game is worse than pre-patched Unity. A lot of times Haytham/Connor never goes where I want them to go, inconsistent climbing points (supposedly climbable structures can't be climbed until I "reset" it by climbing another structure then going back to it), and if you're unlucky enough, you can get glitched out mid-parkour, and depending on where you are, you can potentially die. Even in a Ubisoft game where you can die from tripping over oxygen, this is just too much.

I know it's been a few years already, but for Pete's sake Ubisoft, fix the damn game. This game was my first AC game back in my PS3 days and I finished this game couple of times so I know this game inside out. But as much as I love AC3 (and probably will try my best to power through this atrocity as I no longer have the original and I want to play this game again), I don't think I can recommend this game until this embarrassment of a remaster is fixed.

Just get the original through "other means" instead.

9 hours as of the time of this review.

Is the story trash? Absolutely!

Does the gameplay still have the typical Team Ninja crap? Absolutely!

Is the gameplay bad? Absolutely...not!

This game is literally the epitome of "play for the gameplay, not the story". As much of a dumpster fire that is the story, the gameplay is absolutely based. This is the best Team Ninja soulslike I've ever played since Nioh 2. Not even Wo Long felt as good as this.

It felt more like Nioh with a touch of Code Vein on the side, with its robust class building and freedom to make any god-forbidden build you can think of. What other Final Fantasy game that allows you to play as an axe-wielding Dragoon that can Jump into an enemy's back then proceed to Upheaval their ass in two?

Now my gripe with this game (not talking about the story since we can all collectively agree it's ass).

The common Team Ninja trope of making their Soulslikes into looter shooter level of loot still persist in this game. Fortunately by now I wised up enough to use the auto-dismantle feature every time I dropped in a new level, but I can't imagine how bad it is for the newcomers.

The game is just as brutal as the other Team Ninja's soulslikes, but the fact that there's virtually no penalty for dying is kind of a mixed bag for me. On one hand, it made the game more casual-friendly and approachable to newcomers, essentially making this game a baby's first dark souls. On the other hand, it made dying inconsequential. The only fear I had when dying in a boss fight is having to restart the fight from phase 1, and dying from the mooks is just a mild annoyance. I kinda wished there's more penalty for dying, like losing some of your earned XP that haven't consolidated into a new level like Sekiro.

I heard that the game will get harder as the endgame approaches, and I can't wait for that. But for now, I give this game a 7.5/10 for my first impression.

Edit: Fix the optimization issues and I might consider coming back.

There are two ways to remaster a game; you either improve the graphics and keep the game as it is, or you improve both the graphics and the quality of life while preserving the gameplay.

Sonic Generations remaster chose the latter.

As someone who played this game religiously up to my final college years, everything is exactly the same as how I remembered it, but slightly better, and I meant it in a good way, because Sonic Generations (gameplay-wise) is the best modern Sonic game to date, and how you can improve beyond perfection (even in little strides) is just a feat on its own.

I'm not going to be talking about the rewritten story, since at the end of the day, no context was removed from the original, it's absolutely safe and harmless, and doesn't ruin anything for me (plus the extra lore references are a fun trip down the nostalgia hole anyways). Instead I'll be talking purely about the gameplay and how it feels.

Let's talk about the good stuff first.

The Red Ring Tracker is so damn good for a collectathon addict like me. Wdym I don't have to go back to White Space to find out which part of the stage I haven't checked for Red Rings?

I know a lot of people doesn't like that Sonic is dropping lives since Forces, but for someone who likes to retry and refine the stage routes quickly without having to go back to White Space or staring at a Game Over screen for 3 seconds, the option to remove lives is just godsent for me.

The Chao collection also scratches my collectathon itch, putting them in places I'd never expect. i kinda wish they do more than just sitting in White Space tho. Maybe some sort of reward for finding all of them like a new skill or something. Heck, just a party hat for Sonic is fine by me.

Other than that, it's the Sonic Generations I know and effing love.

Now let's talk about some issues I had with this game.

I think I have been spoiled too much by HE2 (specifically Frontiers, which I have around 60 hours in) to finally notice some of the weird choices in this game that I have never even questioned before.

Firstly, the fact that you have to choose between the jump dash or an air boost instead of being able to combine both is a weird decision. Wdym I can't slightly correct my trajectory and get some distance enough not to fall to my death at the same time?

Secondly, the fact that you cannot backwards air boost is very jarring to me. You literally have to physically turn around ON THE GROUND to be able to air boost at the opposite direction. Could be a skill issue on my part (I am getting rusty after all, last time I played this game was in 2022), but still. Why?

Finally, is it just me, or does the game have slightly more input delay than the OG? I might be rusty, but I know these levels like the back of my hand. There are a LOT of moments (especially with Classic Sonic and his weird ahh physics) where I thought I got the timing right, but then Sonic jumps like 15 frames later and I missed my jump and went down the peasant bottom route. It got to the point where I'm contemplating to boot up the original Gens just to test it out. Let me know if it's just me, though.

All in all, this is a really good remaster of the game. I love Sonic Generations and I don't mind paying for it again, but this isn't where the money's worth is.

It's in Shadow Generations.


My goodness. What a game.

Shadow Generations is not only made as some sort of a "Bowser's Fury" expansion to complement the Sonic Generations remaster, but it also served as both a "spiritual sequel" to Shadow The Hedgehog (2005), and a conclusion to Shadow's entire character arc up to this point (Sonic 06 was supposed to be it as well, but it doesn't count since Shadow literally forgot about the entire game).

DISCLAIMER: Story spoilers below!! If you care about the story, don't open the spoiler tag!

Non-spoiler TLDR: I love the characterization of each characters, they're pretty well-done, with some minor issues that doesn't really affect anything in the grand scheme of things.

The story is very well done. While STH 2005 made Shadow resolved to leave his past behind, bringing back Maria and Gerald from before the ARK Incident forced Shadow to face his past and accept it as a part of him. We also get a huge lore dump via Gerald's journal and remarks in the White Space, and the reason Maria named Shadow is just really heartwarming. Finally, Shadow in this game acts like an actual character with emotions instead of the hollow edgy mf that we got in the original Generations and Forces. The way Shadow's impulsiveness and short temper is addressed and used as a major plot point and character development is just effing perfect. I already loved Ian Flynn's depiction of Shadow in the IDW comics, and it's clear that he tried to bring that version into the game.

The only characters I have issue with is Black Doom and Team Dark.

Even after finishing the game, I still get no explanation as to how and why Black Doom returns, as well as what his endgame is. Okay, he wants to take over Shadow's body and be reborn in him, but didn't he already tried that in STH and it didn't work? Even if his plan works, what's he gonna do after that? He's still stuck in White Space, and I don't think Eggman will let him out anytime soon if he got his way with the Time Eater.

My only issue with Team Dark is that, in the grand scheme of things, they didn't matter much to the plot. You can take them out of the story and nothing will change. But I do appreciate the optional dialogues, though. It shows the dynamic the team has and how far they've gone as a dysfunctional team that has their own motivation and ego to fulfill, but still trust each other to team up for a common goal. I'm just a bit disappointed on how easily missable the dialogues was if it weren't for me checking on them every time I finished a stage.

Overall, though, it's just some nitpicks I took, since I'm a huge Sonic lorekeeper, but it doesn't really affect my enjoyment to the story overall.

Gameplay-wise, this is the best Hedgehog Engine 2 game I've ever played. The problem with Forces and Frontiers is not the engine itself, but the crappy level design holding those games back from reaching its full potential. Shadow Generations shows the true capabilities of Hedgehog Engine 2, and as a result received universal acclaim from not only Sonic fans, but also gaming fans worldwide (when Mr MoistCritikal himself praised the game and Videogamedunkey finally admitted defeat, you know it's a really good experience).

The game, for the first time ever, did not insult the players' capabilities at all, and actually made the level design challenging and fun. The stage length are actually as long as Unleashed and the earlier Adventure games for the first time since Generations; the levels' structure are open with multiple pathways that's actually faster and more exciting instead of being the same length (or even slower than the main path) like Forces and Frontiers; and the stages actually made use of all of Shadow's abilities like Chaos Control, Chaos Spear, and the all-new Doom Powers.

The bosses are the other highlight of this game, though. Sonic Generations isn't really known for good boss fights, but Shadow Generations took notes from Sonic Frontiers and made bosses as the main highlight of the game. Banger soundtrack, fun and engaging fights, multiple phases that actually feels like the fight is evolving, and a hard mode that puts your skills to the actual test.

The game is a complete package from start to finish, and I thoroughly enjoy playing this game. This might be THE best Sonic game since 2011, and must be the new standard for future Sonic games. Now all I want for the next Sonic game is to stop the nostalgia bait and make new, original stages and aesthetics. Please.

10/10. Peak Sonic pls make more like this.

Just finished the game. Here are my thoughts as someone who played a lot of JRPGs and dropped OT1 after 7 hours lol:

Pros:
- Captures the feeling of old school RPGs perfectly. It feels like I'm playing a brand new RPG from my childhood days, bringing in that sense of nostalgia and wonder to the game.
- Music is godlike (as all Square RPGs do), accompanied by gorgeous visuals that blends 2D SNES-era graphics and high-fidelity 3D perfectly.
- Freeform party building system where everyone can be anything as long as you have the proper subjobs and support skills, means there's no hard "holy trinity" for the party, allowing for some wacky builds that is unique to Octopath Traveler.
- Latent Power is not just an "ultimate" ability and served to bring more depth into the battle strategy, which is a nice change of pace compared to other RPGs that only makes ultimate-like mechanics a system 2 nuclear/panic button you press once in a while.
- Day and night system is an actual core mechanic gameplay and story-wise rather than just aesthetics.
- All of the characters have interesting personalities and equally interesting motives for their stories. I find myself enjoying the travel banters and the dialogues in the story more than the first game.
- Hikari, Temenos, and Ochette's stories are the highlight of the game.

Mixed:
- This game focuses more on strategy, party building, gear hunting via dungeon crawling, and support skills rather than stat growths and leveling. So if you're coming into this game thinking you're gonna breeze through the game with the stuff you bought at the local stores just because you're 10 levels above the recommended level for the chapter, you'll be deeply disappointed. Take it as a plus or minus, it's up to personal taste. I'm leaning more towards plus tbh.
- Osvald and Throne's stories are a bit too edgy for my taste, but they're kind of alright.
- Overall the stories have a lot of noticeable plot holes, but they're forgivable due to the scale of the game.

Cons:
- The difficulty is not adjusted properly. Way too hard at the early game and way too easy at the endgame. I had to install a mod that increases all enemies' health and shield points by the last few chapters in the game so that I could get an enjoyment out of the endgame without one-shotting the bosses because the endgame gears, jobs, and support skills were ridiculously overpowered.
- Since you can just one shot all the random encounters with the optimal strategy for your party, it's just repeating that same routine for every random encounter, making them tedious by the endgame. Not to mention that some endgame dungeons have increased encounter rate, making them very frustrating to navigate through.
- Castii, Partitio and Agnea's stories are wasted potential. One has a great premise but is very poorly executed, and the other two is just so detached from the overall plot it might as well be a chain of side quests. The only saving grace these three had is that their characters are at least interesting unlike in OT1 where some of the characters are boring as hell, which I've already mentioned before.

Overall, the game is a very solid 8/10 for me. I love this game so much, but there's some baggage that I have to put through in order to enjoy this game. Play this game with the gameplay-first mindset and you wouldn't be moaning too much at the shortcomings this game has.