19) Tails of Iron+Bright Fir Forest DLC(PS5)(PLATNIUM) 5/12-5/15
What a pleasant surprise this game was! Probably a title best known for Geralt's voice actor narrating the game given the popularity of The Witcher series, Tails of Iron is so much more than just that. Game was fantastic, and it was so good that I beat both the main campaign as well as the recently released DLC. It's a 2D Soulsbourne, think Salt & Sanctuary where you play as a rat knight and take on various enemies from frogs to bugs to now all sorts of enemies in the sequel. It's a slower paced game and you will die in this game but man it's just really good once you get a hang on it. By the end of the 1st game, I could not be killed with the armor and everything I had on. Game def. is harder early on due to this and if you are willing to take your licks, you will do just fine. Game gets easier but even some post game bosses make you work for it. Yellow color is for parry, red color is for dodge, that sort of indicator on how to do combat in this game. There are different weapon choices throughout but I find the spear had the perfect range and distance that the heavy weapon and regular weapons meant nothing to me. They are there if you are looking for a different build but once something clicks for me, I am sticking with it. Probably the 1st Soulsbourne game where I stood by the spear if given the choice. You get a good 12-15 hours out of this game too so it's a title that doesn't stay overstay it's welcome nor does it feel like something you just breeze through 1-2-3.
Rating: 9/10. Delightful, think Redwall meets 2D Soulsbourne games. It has that fairy tail way it portrays it's story but it also can get very grim & dark with the amount of allies(And foes too) that end up dying in this game. Again, it's a slower styled Soulsbourne game and if you've played Death's Gambit or Salt & Sanctuary/Sacrifice, you know exactly what you're getting with this game. Pure case of the 1st game being so good and criminally underrated that the sequel has my eye. Just need a concrete date of the sequel, was hoping it'd hit 2024 but totally worth the wait if it comes to consoles on 2025 too.
20) The Chant(PS5) 4/20-4/23, 5/20
Another one of those premises that sounded cool on paper but the actual gameplay lets the game down. Seeing this trailer at first gave me a serious B type of horror camp that I would have been all over, almost like Until Dawn/The Quarry esque but then the reviews gave it a 6 or 7/10 and it sort of downplayed my overall expectations of the game, making it one of those "Jump on it when it goes on sale" sort of deals. So I did and even then I was still pretty letdown by The Chant.
The gameplay is so repetitive and boring that I actually wished this game took a page out of Supermassive Games and just made this a walking simulator because what you are given to do in The Chant is pretty uninspiring. Practically the generic tackle button serves as much of a purpose as the different amounts of weapons(In the form of incense that equips to a stick) that the game gives at you. The Chant has a color indication that shows an enemy's weakness but it isn't an overwhelming increase for damage. Honestly though, the game is so scarce with the amount of resources you get that more often then not, you feel more inclined to just use your generic shoulder tackle to take down these plant enemies that try and eat up your stamina. The game admittedly gives you some magic abilities but maybe this is a me issue, I simply forgot how to use it and the game didn't explain it when I went to look at the controller settings so I ended up beating the game without using this with all but like 1-2 times(When you're forced to) but it would not have mattered much by even using this. The game is at it's worst combat wise when multiple enemies are around as it becomes a clunkfest where you really need to hope & pray you're hitting 2+ enemies at the same time to not waste resources and not get hit from someone while you're going at another enemy. I think the game is again at it's best when combat isn't involved as some of the chase sequences are the highlights of the gameplay from The Chant. The combat was so frustrating at times where you can get picked apart by multiple enemies that I would intentionally pop in & out of the enemy zone(They're an illusion or in an illusion zone) hit them and pop out where they can't reach me to help exploit to progress.
The story again I think works in a cheesy Sy-Fy/Sci-Fi original movie with a isolated island that takes in worshippers/people looking for a purpose to join a cult to better themselves and overcome loss/grief. You are quickly shown in this game's intro that there's a greater power and some sort of Cthulhu sort of abnormalities is cool. What is cool with the story of The Chant is the Remedy Entertainment style of video tapes you can find throughout the game that help with lore explanation of new monsters & the cult's well being, both the modern version of the cult and the 1970's version in game. The game gives you lore but it doesn't make essays worth of it and they keep it short & sweet, take note Remedy please. Voice acting is alright, I swear the main character of this game sounds like Max Caufield of Life is Strange, it was to the point I looked it up to see if they shared the same voice actress(They aren't the same).
Rating: 6/10. I think if the gameplay was at all clever and accompanied the cheesy story that can get pretty dark at times, you might have a nice AA title but it just is way too clunky to ever fall in love with. The boss fights/hoard of enemy fights are portions of The Chant that you just learn to tolerate rather than appreciate. The game throws new enemies at you that have like 1 new trick to them so i've played much worse games with enemy variation but not one enemy stands out from the pack. The boss fights are alright even if I wish they would give out checkpoints during the fights rather than make you repeat if you die at all. Def. not a horror game I can recommend and for some, it may not even be a real scary game so much as a supernatural type of experience. The combat makes Alan Wake 1 look like Resident Evil 4 and the game does lack some polish as well where I had 1-2 bugs that made me lose a little bit of progress(Game is generous with autosaves though). It's simply alright, nothing else. The Chant gives you free DLC but I just wasn't feeling the base game so I have yet to even play it.
21) Hellblade 2: Senua's Saga(XSX) 5/21
Came into this one with fair enough expectations to maybe not expect a great game given this game/Ninja Theory were in sort of development hell with this one but I was hoping bare minimum, I was getting the same kind of experience the 1st Hellblade game gave me. I feel like I got this so I wasn't fully defeated the way a lot of gamers were when they reviewed the Hellblade sequel but I can't say anything else in favor of the game.
Simply not enough was done to make it fully better than the original but it is still a visual/sound/atmospheric delight. Combat is very bare bones but I get where they are going for, they want to not gateway this game for a casual audience. Ninja Theory wants as many people to play it as possible and don't want the combat or puzzles to be too offputting. I just wish there was more variety in the combat and some actual thought process behind it rather than be a Punch Out clone of LIGHT ATTACK/HEAVY ATTACK/DODGE. There is a lot of walking simulation but the background is nice, it is about the same as Uncharted 4 had it.Hyperbole to say it's a terrible game but it's fair to be letdown that after 6+ years of development, this was the end result. Still solid for what it is, glad to play it on Game Pass.
If you liked the 1st Hellblade, you will (probably) like this sequel. It doesn't change the wheel at all but you know going in you're playing this for the atmosphere/sound(That music by the end is great, the warhorn viking drum music while fighting gets loud and obnoxious and it was wicked)/graphics and not for the combat or challenge. It's seriously press 2-3 buttons during combat and win and it's basically a throwdown where guys come in one after another in a cutscene formula in very repetitive fights.
Rating: 7.5/10. Hellblade 2 is roughly 6 hours more or less if you're trying to explore much of the game. I got 9/11 achievements as well so far from a rush job on my end either. Now, in comparison to a game with similar length that I played in The Chant, it's night/day on how much more enjoyable this game was vs The Chant. The stuff that's good in Hellblade 2 is really good, it's just bogged down by simplistic combat and puzzles for the sake of.)
It's about what I expected from a studio that was caught with the loss of their founder and changing from AA studio to Team XBOX but yeah....a diehard gamer or someone who has played a ton of these games will sniff out the flaws from the get go of this game but the casual audience or someone who doesn't play video games religiously may like how easy to get into Hellblade 2 is. I think it serves the purpose of not gatekeeping itself with difficulty so people can play and experience the game, including maybe people with similar mental disorders where gaming is a media that admittedly doesn't tackle or have many references to these types of ailments today.
Headphones are as marketed, a must with this game btw. So trippy, again having the devil & angel on your shoulder talking you throughout your journey and giving you both doubt & encouragement in every step you take is wild, it's like the voices are playing with your two ears and you consistently hear these voices for again nearly the entire game. Add in a giant representation of "The Shadow of Doubt/The Darkness" and it's a trip from a sound engineering standpoint, it's really good stuff.
22) Animal Well(PS5)(PLATNIUM) 5/20-5/21, 5/25-5/26
Do not sleep on Animal Well folks, holy cow this was the game of the month for me. I spoke about Hellblade in another thread but I just got the platinum(4th plat of the year!) for the game. At first, I was worried about the lack of combat, especially for a Metroidvania but once you get past that, you are in for a great ride. Off the bat, the visuals are so good, it has a beautiful and colorful 2D pixelated art look to it that just shined on my OLED TV. The puzzles are easily the biggest takeaway with Animal Well, they are thoughtful, and really made you utilize the various tools you get throughout the game. Every tool you get has a purpose! It's a pretty short game from the get go, can take you a good 5 or so hours but it's the post game where the game truly shines. Dark, mysterious, ambiguous are just some of the words that describe your journey to Animal Well. The puzzles will make you think and have zero shame of looking up what needs to be done, they are that crafty. The different animals that range from cutesy to outright diabolical was pretty wicked too, game has so much story/lore just waiting to be dissected. You're thrown into Animal Well in a Soulslike sort of "Figure this out on your own" sort of deal which is unforgiving but really makes all the triumphs you get all the more satisfying. It has the typical Metroidvania-ism of "Can't get past this part until later but you feel stronger/better coming back here with the needed tools" sort of progression that makes this genre top-class for games. It just has all of the markings of a really nice and easy to jump into Metroidvania, it's a massive compliment that a small group of people(Heard only 1 person made the backbone of this game which is awesome) put this out there. Best of all?
Free on PS Plus Premimum(Well free as in free after a subscription that is
)!
Rating: This is an easy 8.5/10. type of game for me. The lone blemishes can be the backtracking can be a little rough, especially if you're trying to complete a full 100% completion of the game. Yes there is a specific room that is a hub that can have you go to various places throughout the game but it still doesn't make navigating to places frustration-proof. The platforming on it's own is solid but when you're being chased by a couple of threats(Won't spoil), it does rear it's ugly head in that regard. There's a near frame perfect jump you have to do while being chased that was easily the most maddening part of the playthrough for me. Could have totally done without it!
Likewise, a very minor gripe I have are the egg collectibles. There's 65 of them in the game and that part is fantastic! What isn't though is the inability to see what eggs you got vs which ones you didn't. Sure there's a room that shows you all of the eggs captured so you could technically base it off that but if you're far away from there? Shit out of luck. You just know the number of eggs you have but not which ones. There's too many names to remember from Devil Egg to Rare Egg to Upside Down Egg to Virtual Egg etc. There's no way possible you will know without a guide which ones you're missing. I was missing 1 egg but went to the room and compared it to a Youtube video and found out which egg it was before getting the trophy for it. Animal Well does a lot of good with it's menus but this was one that it could have done better IMO!
Full 100% completion took me 11-12 hours, just a very digestible experience. Thank goodness the recommendations for this one carried me to give it a chance, had a great couple of days with Animal Well!
23) Eternights(PS5)(PLATNIUM) 5/27-5/30
Started up a game that came out under the radar Q3 of last year in Eternights on Monday and finished it in 3 days with the full platinum. Folks this is my 5th platinum in like 2 months, your boy is cooking. Spirit Hunter: Death Mark 2/Ender Lillies/Tails of Iron/Animal Well/Eternights.
Back to the game though, what a pleasant surprise this game ended up being. Got it for like $10 bucks on a deal with Amazon so it was the right time to jump right in. I was just occupied with a lot of gaming at the time of this game's release that despite the $30 dollar pric etag out the gates, just could not fit it in but now? Perfect time.
I came in thinking this would be a small budget Indie JRPG with tons of Persona inspiration and came out completely fooled as this ended up being a Bayonetta/Devil May Cry clone with dating sim elements in the mold of Persona. Eternights borrows a little of each with the Witch time combat dodging mechanic of Bayonetta to the arena fighting enemies that both DMC & Bayonetta have(The main character of this game literarily can learn a move called "Stinger" which was one of Dante's infamous abilities, and it looks near identical!). The SMT: Persona similarities are more than just 18 year olds(Or in the Persona games, even younger) who fight together for a cause and can fall in love with the main character pending on how you answer them in social link moments. Much like in Persona, you have a specific date to clear out the main mission/story or else it's instant game over so you do have to plan a little bit accordingly on when you tackle the main mission, which can be done in 1 day used if you're good about things. What is going for Eternights favor Now of course as you'd expect, there's less social links like in say Persona where you have to prioritize on who and when to do them where as you have 4 romantic options(3 girls and 1 guy, you can only play as a male in this game) and nothing else to do as far as a social link goes. Eternights doesn't touch any of the 3 aforementioned IPs in their craft but all things considered, for what was a 3 person team who were behind the development of this game, it's a solid try at it.
The story is pretty anime tropish and much of the game falls under this where a group of young kids have to save the world from destruction where the entire world has been taken over by an evil presence and have fallen under it's control. Stop me if you've heard this before. Where this game excels is in the form that you do care about the characters you stumble upon and this game makes you do some tough decisions for the most part. In addition, the game does get somewhat dark where people do get killed in cutscenes. It's a pretty standard story but it was simple enough to not lose track of and was easy to understand so it was simply fine for me.
The combat is dungeon crawling action combat so again Persona meets Bayonetta meets Devil May Cry. There's no combos in Eternights sure but you have a skill tree where based off points picked up from various ways(Training with an ally or doing scavenger hunts with them or finding items at a dungeon exploration), you can learn better abilities and further improve your chances of survival. Again it's a very simplistic combat system where you do a couple of hits before you can do a strike and or deathblow that each do compound damage to help your chances out. It does get a little repetitive, especially towards the end when you're required to do simplistic dungeon crawling and combat sequences to further rank a romantic partner in this game which is necessary for the trophies attached to each option. There's for sure some diversity shown in the dungeon crawling elements with this one with some decent enough puzzles but I wish they appeared more. There was also a random motorcycle riding in a tunnel scene that I thought was odd to only be featured a mere one time in the entire game.
The combat does have a little complexity to it where you have enemies with barriers that must be broken with the exploiting of their weakness. See in Eternights, the characters you get travel with you in combat and offer support. One is the healer and does fire damage, one is the shield and does lightning, one is the AOE attack and does ice and you offer your own magic ability. Over time, you do. You build a meter based off your combat/dodging/parrying and when you do that you get to use one of these abilities and if you're doing it correctly, you can burn off that barrier and finally do damage to enemies. Weaknesses are like ICE and FIRE are effective vs each other and LIGHTNING/MAGIC(Not sure what the main character's ability is TBH) cancel each other out. Sounds simple but it becomes crucial to hit these exploits. In addition, this game has QTE's that take a little bit of time to get used to at first but become vital to add on more damage. Again it borrows from other games but isn't too overly complex which is a plus in my book in favor of the game.
The blemishes as there are a few with this game are....
1) One of the romantic options is practically useless as they don't help you in combat. They're a great buff if you put points into him where they can increase your HP/SP/DEF/ATTK plenty but they arrive late game so their impact outside of the story is bare minimum. Very important character to the overall story for sure but I wish they were a substitute for the romantic partner you choose who without spoiling anything you lose access to for a portion of the game, would have made more sense.
2) You can't replenish your SP at all in this game consistently. No items or any form of a pickup during your dungeon exploring. This is frustrating mostly because there's so many dead ends in this game which is always going to be an issue for any game of this genre. That's not a knock on the game itself but that there's only so much you can do when it comes to dungeon exploring games of this mold. Still though, I wish the game was better with giving you HP or SP replenishing options as often, especially in the early portion of the game I needed to use SP to heal and ran into the end boss of the area with no SP to use which meant the margin of error was razor thin. I get that the game is sort of poking you do fallback and use a quick travel to go back to your ship to replenish your stats to try at full health and energy but the game is all about utilizing time to create social links so I still felt there were better ways around this concept.
3) The game really does feel low budget. I was worried at the beginning as there was not only no intro to this game but the font looked like something straight out of Microsoft Word. :lol: Again it's a small team and all things considered, I think they did a solid job with Eternights but yeah, you'll see right away what I mean. Very unintentionally hilariously awkward 5 second scenes that go into a loading screen that served no real purpose or the VTUBER look of the character dialogue avatar when they're speaking. Couple of other tidbits that indicate this but again low budget does not mean doom for a game but you can't help but see some of these pop up when playing Eternights.
The game has quite a bit of perverted humor so that's more of a take it as you come sort of thing where some will find it funny and some will find is nauseating. Count me in the former, especially as it made me laugh quite a bit. What can I say, that's just the type of humor that always gets me. It's what made A.I.: The Somnium Files so friggin epic for me. There's legit a dialogue option every other choice that has some perverted ulterior motive behind it so be warned that it's there.
Rating: 8/10 for me. Was such a pleasant surprise of a game for me. It's not for everybody and you really should know exactly what you're getting into with this title but for what it tries to be, it's more than solid. It doesn't touch Bayonetta or DMC's combat or Persona's social link/romance simulation or dungeon crawling aspects but it does a respectable job of combined it all into one. I think for a first real attempt at this type of game for this relatively unknown studio that they did a solid job and it gives me hope that they're taking the criticism and praise from this game to maybe combat and hit a sequel even farther than with this one. By no means, this isn't a game you stop and drop everything that you're doing but hey I had a good time with it. After all, I did get the platinum in 3 days! Game ran me over 15 hours to do everything so more than decent amount of content behind this one, especially at the price tag it's asking for.
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