Recent reviews by ArtificialRaven

A pretty good remaster of the Original SO2 I played on Playstation 1. Added a lot of quality of life changes and a NG+

An awesome sequel to the original. Really fun zelda-like top-down adventure game. Check out my review for the first game. It's similar in game mechanics, gameplay and graphics to the first but there's sooooo much more. Highly recommended.

Mini-review:
Pretty good spiritual successor to Castlevania 2: Simon's Quest...and in a good way! Good 8-bit style graphics, 8-bit style music. Different actions lead to story paths for different endings and replayability. All around I found it fun and very enjoyable. Starting my 2nd playthrough as I type this.

Wow, this game turned out to be a gem for turn-based RPG fans like me. Though the graphics harken back to that of the Playstation 2 era, it can run at a smooth high frame rate and modern day resolutions. Has various controller support although one of my biggest pet peeves is that it lacks inverted horizontal and vertical axis camera controls. But that can be fixed through Steam's Big Picture if needed.

The combat mechanics have a nice gimmick, being able to swap between 2 different stances each with their own set of abilities which can be unlocked via skill tree. Basically it gives 1 character 2 different functions in combat, which opens up a ton of tactical choices. As you get more characters you can Pair them up and they can form Bonds with each other, which grants extremely useful passive abilities as you strengthen the bond.

Travelling the world map is one of the highlights for me in this game as well. You can swap the lead character instantly with the press of a button and you can use their unique abilities to find treasure, handle herbs that give boosts, or even sneak around to avoid combat. There are no random encounters, all the monsters are visible. You can decide to run passed them or you can even herd them into giant groups for tough battles & massive exp gains. Dungeons work the same way as well but there's usually a puzzle gimmick involved.

I think this game is definitely worth a play, though the translation a bit clunky because english apparently isn't the developers native language, there's an obvious amount of passion and thought put into this game. There's a ton of things to do in it and the combat will keep you on your toes. I'd even go as far to say if you liked the early Wild Arms games, you'd enjoy this one.

Just to preface everything I'm going to write about, Secret of Mana is my all-time favorite SNES game, even winning out over Super Metroid, Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy 3/6. I've played through the original multiple times. So I just wanted my bias to be known before you read any further.

First off, I've had no performance issues (you can see my rig specs on my profile). I played with both M&KB and xbox 360 controller and I had no issues with that. The game was running a smooth 60 fps in 1080p resolution. I did, however, encounter some bugs. Such as my character teleporting around after spamming magic non-stop for a long time. Game crashing to desktop almost every 2 hours. A save file play time bug that added 1200+ hours to my save game. And maybe one or two more things that I'm not sure about.

For those who never played the original and aren't aware what the game is about, it plays a lot like an old top-down zelda game but with JRPG elements like experience leveling, tons of equipment and a magic system. You play as Randi, a teen who was goofing around with his friends outside his village and stumbled upon a rusty sword in a stone. Randi pulls the sword from the stone and heads back to his village, Once there he's told the sword is the legendary Mana Sword by the Elder and he gets banished from his village for pulling it out, believing that pulling the sword is a bad omen. He swiftly leaves to explore the world and find his purpose in life and what mysteries the sword holds.

Combat is also much like a zelda game however the gimmick that defines it is your attack power gets higher the longer you go without attacking, up to 100% and beyond if you've properly leveled your weapon proficiencies. it's doesn't take long to reach 100%, about 2-3 seconds between swings. As you defeat bosses they'll drop Orbs which can be used to upgrade the various weapons you find. You can also level your weapon proficiencies (to the max current orb level) by defeating monsters. Magic is a little different however. The maximum proficiency level you can reach for magic depends on how many Mana Seeds you've synchronized with (up to 8). And magic proficiences can be leveled by casting it, not killing with it.

So those are the important basics. Now I want to touch on differences between the SNES version and this.

-Combat seems easier in the remake since you now have a full 360 degree direction of attack compared to the SNES version which only had horizontal and vertical attack directions.

-You can switch betweem the remake soundtrack and the high fidelity original SNES soundtrack at any time. There are both english and japanese voice options and subtitles for multiple languages. All characters, even NPCs are voiced. If you don't like the voice acting you can turn that off too under Audio options where you can find the sliders for BGM, SFX and Voice.

-There are now full 3D cutscenes for some of the most important parts of the game and the overall English translation quality has improved over the original.

-When sleeping at most Inns there are now fun little character development & interaction scenes that play out depending on where you are in the story.

-Some of the bigger one-screen areas have been chopped down into smaller ones with area transitions, most notably in the final dungeon. Autosave feature has been added and that triggers every time you go through a screen change.

-There are achievements, some of them are missable like the "Obtain All Head Gear" achievement but there are steam guides out at the time of this review that can help you get them all in 1 playthrough.

-There is now a Guide you can access from the wheel menu that displays the models for important NPCs, Weapons and Monsters.

-the party AI has been simplified from the grid system to simple choices of "attack same enemy as the controlled character", "Attack a different enemy than the controlled character" "Assist a specific character". Setting what level weapon charge you want them to use is still there.

-Some of the menu screens look different like the weapon levels, magic levels and equipment screens. No worse or better than the original was IMHO.

I did not mind the art style and after playing through the remake twice, it grew on me. It's not what I wanted originally but it works. I think that's the most subjective part about it. If you can look past translating all the graphics from 2D to 3D and enjoy the game for everything else it brings to the table, I think you'll see that this remake is a celebration of a beloved game.

Would I recommend it? YES if you're not a purist or a stickler for small changes. YES if you like action JRPGs. But not at full price with how buggy it is. Hopefully it'll be patched soon but you can never know with Square-Enix sometimes. Still waiting on that Nier: Automata patch for a year, guys.

Star Ocean: The Last Hope is the 4th game in the Star Ocean franchise and probably the worst in the series I've played so far in terms of story, characters and dungeon level design. As a long-time fan of the series who's played every single Star Ocean game except the most recent, it pains me to give this game a negative review. I went into this game knowing absolutely nothing about it other than the title and I didn't even look up other reviews & opinions on it beforehand. I genuinely wanted to like it. So what you're about to read is as unfiltered as possible.

Starting with the port quality...it's playable...up to my standards at least. Stuttered like hell in fullscreen but ran perfect for me in windowed mode on maximum settings. Worked just fine with my xbox 360 controller. Didn't bother trying KB&M controls.

I found the combat to be the only somewhat redeeming feature of the game but even that is bogged down by a very grindy material gathering & item creation system which didn't feel useful or even reach its full potential until after the main story is finished. Speaking of the main story there's a lot that goes on as one would expect in a JRPG but without spoiling too much some of the situations that happen in this game are completely baffling to me. I can't tell if it's just writer incompetance or possibly something lost in translation. There are some very illogical and downright nonsensical decisions made by our Hero and supporting cast that I just could not take seriously. And they were supposed to be some of the most serious moments of the game.

As for the roster of playable characters I couldn't find myself connecting with any of them. Most of the character's motives were pretty clear about why they wanted to join the main group except for a couple of the characters. As for character development, outside of the Hero there isn't very much for the rest of the cast. They're one dimensional and spend a majority of their time affirming our Hero and telling him how such a good person he is. Reminded me a lot of how Tommy Wiseau wrote the dialog for the actors in "The Room" and how they treated his character.

Regarding dungeons, the final dungeon was the only one that felt original while the rest looked bland and were far, far too long (just like this review). There are these elemental rings you find as you progress and they seemed to be the only interaction you have in dungeons other than combat. The rings only served 2 main purposes, unlocking sealed chests and clearing obstacles. You'd be hard pressed to find any sort of fun gimmick in a dungeon in this game.

I put over 90 hours into this game and beat the main story. Of course I did an abundance of grinding/farming but it seems the game is intentionally built like that through some rather bad game design. Each planet you explore has resource nodes you can mine/harvest for items & item creation materials and the only way to reset them is to run back to your ship and sleep. That is a TON of wasted time considering how big the planets can be and how slow the character movement is (even with sprint). Lastly, the quantity of items required for most of the item creation recipes are obnoxiously high when you figure in the time it takes to get them. I played just enough to finish the main story and I have absolutely no desire to go into post-game.

This is a minimalist wingsuit game made in Unity. Bought on a whim during the 2017 Winter Sale, I had a lot more fun with this game than I expected. Within the first few minutes I knew I was going to like it. Every map is procedurally generated and feels different & unique albeit rather small considering the player speed. The objective is to get the highest score and to do that you need to fly close to walls & objects as long as you can to build speed and a score combo/multiplier. As it tracks your highscore you can climb the online leaderboards and earn achievements. There's no music but that's okay, it's better if you put on your own anyway.

If I had to nitpick or complain about it, the list would be small. It lacks a first person view mode and lacks accessibility when it comes to choosing which analog stick to use. The Dev should definitley include those options. Even a VR mode for those who want it would be welcome.

Not much else to it. As the description says it's simplistic and can be intense or relaxing depending on how you wanna fly through the maps. I paid $1.49 and I'd say it's worth it. Even would be worth it at the normal $3 price if you can really get into it.

This port is terrible. The graphics look like they're from the PS3 generation instead of PS4. It doesn't show controller prompts, only keyboard keys and even then it shows weird symbols of what the key does rather than what key to press. Which doesn't make a whole lot of sense seeing as this was originally a console game. Kind of hard to explain that one. The FOV made me motion sick and there's no option to change it. Probably one of the WORST Koei Tecmo ports I've played and I question why in the hell I continue to buy their games. Going to refund this one.

This is like a dark version of Crystalis from back on NES. Don't let the look decieve you, this is a well put together and fun old school action RPG.

This game has been out on other platforms for 10 years but in case this is your first time seeing it before, Okami is an adventure exploration game with light RPG elements like that of a 3D Zelda game. In fact I'd go as far as to say if you took the Wolf form from Zelda: Twilight Princess and put it in it's own standalone game with a highly stylized art style & Japanese Folklore theme, Okami is what you'd get.

Boasting HD resolutions and textures, the crisp visual quality is definitely a step up from the Playstation 2 version I originally played. It's still locked in a 30fps framerate, which, given the graphics/art it seemed just fine to me. If you're not used to low framerates like that it'll take time to adjust but it's well worth it. Dismissing this amazing game outright over a framerate debate is one of the dumbest arguments I've heard to not play this installment if you've never touched this game at all. This is one of my all-time favorite games and a classic. If you want a real in-depth review of the gameplay itself, remember this is a 10 year old game, there's plenty out there.

I'm just writing to highly recommend this game to anyone who loves the exploration & adventure genres. $20 for 30-60 hours of a beautifully crafted & insanely fun gaming experience is well worth that price.