Recent reviews by bugfragged

The first part of the game takes place at the same time as the previous disc, but from Chip's perspective. This adds a lot of context for his strained relationship with his family, where he can never please his father Swed no matter how hard he tries or even when he actually brings good results. It also shows that while he was hostile towards Sai in the previous game, his true feelings are a mix of admiration and jealousy. In the second half of the game, we get to see how he and the main villain, Axis, have a lot in common. As confident as they act, their desire for purpose works against them and makes them confused as to what they should be doing with their life. Axis himself seems like a generic destroyer villain at first, but if you beat all the Eater bosses, you get to see certain events from his perspective, showing that he couldn't deal with his inner conflict and had to separate his own memories to cope with it. Sai also gets an extended character arc where he has to go into his dreams and reexamine his relationships with his loved ones, including his dad, the previous game's final boss.


You start the game with Chip's team of agents, who feel weaker in many ways than the previous team because their abilities have fewer cheese strategies, though they still have some decent multis, and Chip/Ania's multis can quickly kill some of the endgame bosses with enough setup. However, Disc 2 didn't add as many new multis as I had hoped, and the rare spells and high-tier commands still don't have many multis to support them. As a result, I ended up cheesing the endgame and postgame with the Disc 1 team's tried-and-true breaker spam strat, which is even stronger than before thanks to Sai's new Cosmic trait. On the plus side, some of the new spells Oli can learn have good enough secondary effects that they don't need multis to be useful, especially the Vacuum spells that can stack with her stat down debuffs.

One thing that this game did rectify is giving the player a better way to avoid enemy encounters. If the player recruits Kwadle, they can give him the Repellant accessory to completely cancel random encounters, making it easier to search for secrets in old dungeons. This is definitely necessary because some of Solar Light puzzles can be very tricky unless you're good at recognizing circles.

For some reason, cutscenes will have everyone in the party present, but you can only swap out party members by talking to Joshua, which seems like strange design. It's probably to make team building more challenging when going into dungeons that require different tool skills, but it still seems odd. Maybe there should be a consumable item that allows you to change out party members without returning to Joshua, or allow swapping at vending machines?

The game has some collectibles based on the IRL date, including teachers for spells that Oli may have missed in Disc 1. Usually, I'm not too fond of overly complex calendar systems, but this is solely based on the days of the week, so it's not as overwhelming as a full year-long calendar full of specific events while still giving the player a reason to play a bit every day until they collect all the rewards.

8/10
I like Disc 2's character writing more, though my complaint about the redundancy of commands still stands, since there still aren't that many multis and the Disc 1 team's original meta strat is even more meta than before.

For the most part, the story plays out like Exodus or that one animated film retelling of Exodus. There are some key differences, such as powerful Archon bosses that Moshe has to recruit, who perform the plagues instead of the Abrahamic god. Additionally, the Misru, the Egyptian equivalents, have their own gods or rather technologically advanced immortal humans backing them up, giving them an advantage that the Egyptians never had. This leads to tragedy when Moshe sacrifices himself to save his people from the Demiurge's laser. Still, I did like Moshe's growth from a fence-sitter to a true deliverer for his people. IMO, he earned his chosen one status in a more convincing way than Joshwa, who had more inconsistent character development.

There are some odd parts of the story, such as Ramses not recognizing Zipporah. My interpretation is that he looks down on the Simru so much that he can't even be bothered to remember if he ordered their executions at one point. It's also odd that we only get to fight one demigod (basically a golem-like construct) when enough time should have passed for the Misru to make more, but it's also possible the Archons destroyed most of the demigods before Ramses and Adun killed them, leaving only one to serve as the penultimate boss. Finally, Moshe seems to have received some divine power as the deliverer, but this doesn't translate into gameplay, since he's mostly a physical-based character anyways. Am I supposed to believe he used his muscles to hold back the Demiurge's death laser?


No, you cannot cheese the game with Frozen Waters anymore, lol. You actually have to use all your skills the way they were intended. For the most part, I found that all six Styles were useful and well-balanced, since they resemble traditional JRPG classes, though it is fairly obvious who the best candidates for each one is. I wonder if anyone tried to do a challenge run where they equip the Styles onto their least suitable wielders? The only really hairy battle was the one on the second map where Moshe has to fight two guards by himself, but everything afterwards gives you at least 2 party members, giving you more of a turn advantage.

The previous game had good mapping and collectibles, but this game has a more minimalistic mapping style where you travel along nodes on a parallax map. It's a bit of a shame, since it's hard to get a sense of what ancient Kenoma looks like compared to Idin. Maybe the next Kenoma game, Son of Man, will allow us to learn more about the planet.

8/10
The gameplay is more balanced and less centralized around a meta skill and I like Moshe's version of the Moses story. However, I wish we could properly explore full dungeon maps and city maps to give more life to the world of Kenoma.

The protagonist, Oli, is the chosen one of the legendary sword Durend, which allows her to learn spells that are used on her. However, the sword causes pain to her if she gets separated from it, and she wants to learn why the sword chose her and subjected her to this. All she knows is that the sword bonded to her in Astral Point, the HQ of Stardust City's ruling organization, the Agency. She soon meets Sai and Amara, two people who are on the run from the agency. While Amara has amnesia, Sai fakes amnesia and has something to hide.

Oli's character arc mainly consists of her realizing that her purpose with Durend doesn't actually exist, causing her to realize that if she isn't tied down to a purpose, she's better off helping her friends with their own Agency-related problems. IMO, it feels like she accepted her lack of destiny a bit too quickly. Sai's character develop concerns his bad habit of wanting to take the easy way out or give up easily, which ties into how he hid his identity from his friends, since he didn't have the courage to tell them until his identity is revealed at the worst possible time. I enjoyed seeing him overcome his guilt and cowardice and seeing him stand up to Chip and Mayor Swed, though it makes it me wonder if he's the real protagonist of this game and not Oli due to how much focus he gets. Amara was intended to be a living weapon for the Agency, but due to how Overflow works, it becomes clear that she decided her path in life very early on when she goes into this state to protect her friends from Lux. However, she seems to have an archenemy in Omegaxis, who is her opposite in how they want to use their freedom from the Agency, which means she will likely get an expanded character arc in the next game alongside her foe.

The Agency is supposed to be a corrupt police state that everyone sees as oppressors rather than heroes. The people of Slate City certainly have reason to despise the Agency, since the Agency kills their leader and destroys their home for the "crime" of being an anarchist commune. However, we don't see much direct oppression of the people of Stardust City and other towns under the Agency's control. At best, we know that they persecute the homeless (according to the NPC in the cathedral), they are secretly repsonsible for asxpawn monsters being everywhere, and they experimented on at least one criminal, but we don't see much reason for the average citizens to despise the agency. On the other hand, Stardust City is implied to have a lot of wealth inequality, the mayor holds the poor in contempt, and Astral Point is basically a gated community for the upper class, so one could argue that the Agency is creating their own crime problem in the first place, which would then lead to more people being experimented on and essentially enslaved, thus rendering Swed's "tough on crime" rhetoric hollow.


The game's main gimmick is that your characters can only equip 8 commands, though some equipment grants special commands that don't take up space, forcing you to consider your builds carefully. The game also has way more commands than you will ever need, which should supposedly lead to interesting builds on paper, but in practice, I ended up just using low cost skills that have multis because it's more damage efficient than the higher-end skills. Higher-end skills cost a ton of MP but have no multis, so I felt no incentive to use them over their cheaper counterparts. TBH, it feels like the large command pool was meant more for the enemies than the player.

Oli is supposed to be a blue mage character who can learn spells, but her version of this mechanic feel overengineered. For one thing, you need to use up a turn to use a collection-type command instead of learning the new spell in a more natural manner. Additionally, you need to have a high C stat to increase the chances of learning certain skills, which means in the early game, you will have to make compromises in your equipment setup. You will also have to have Collect, Conduct, and Coerce at minimum in your command list if you want to learn rarer spells, which is a lot when there are only 8 slots. This normally wouldn't be too bad, but what really breaks the camel's back is that many enemies have large learnable skill pools, which can add a very thick layer of RNG to learning spells. You can somewhat influence the spells they use by using Mana Taunt and Coerce, but it isn't that reliable. The sad part is that as I mentioned earlier, the game's meta means you probably won't even use most of the spells Oli learns outside of the ones that trigger cost-efficient multis.

Speaking of multis, they are actions that require 2 or more specific commands to be used by the party, which will cause all involved characters to use up their turn to perform the action. These can deal damage comparable to higher-end skills for the cost of two low or mid tier skills, which makes them very efficient. The elemental Breaker series of multis as especially powerful when combined with Sai's Exploit special, which adds elemental weaknesses. These are satisfying to pull off, but I really wish there were multis for higher tier skills and extra elemental skills. It's possible they exist, but they're not listed in the Gamefaqs guide or the Handbook on itch.

On the field, each character has an exploration ability: Oli can create ice boats to travel across water or create a bridge across 1-tile gaps/obstacles, Sai can push boxes, and Amara can activate springboards. However, Sai and Amara's abilities require you to confirm their use if you activate them after a map transition. It's a minor nitpick though and most of the puzzles are fair.

As for enemy balancing, most of them are fair, but some enemy commands' damage formulas can feel really OP compared to others of the same tier. Spinel difficulty feels like it was meant for players who accidentally overleveled in the process of farming Eater Eyes or teaching Oli spells, so I would recommend the lower difficulties for a non-grinding playthrough.

The equipment system isn't about linear upgrades, since everything has a percentage-based trade-off. As a result, levels matter much more than gear, but it can still be worth considering each piece of equipment's attached commands and non-statistical properties. Generally, you'll want to focus on further increasing the characters' strong stats.

One thing I think the game needs is either a setting for enemy encounter rate or a much higher cap for Invisibility Sprays, since the default encounter rate is very high. This becomes more apparent in big and open maps where navigating is difficult. I guess if you don't feel a need to hoard money, you can also just run from battle and accept the dropped change.


7.5/10

The story is fine for the most part and I enjoyed Sai's character development, but I think Swed and the Agency have some missing potential as villains. The gameplay is mostly balanced, but there are so many redundant commands that it doesn't feel worth it to buy all of Amara's Eater Eye commands or learn all of Oli's spells. Maybe it would help if those higher-end skills had multis too?

As someone who wrote a controversial Dustborn review, this game is almost exactly what I was hoping Dustborn would have been in terms of its political narrative. While Dustborn has a largely "tell, don't show" approach to its politics because it wants to focus on the relationship building aspect of the story, Neofeud will tell and show in equally large measures, since it will give you lots of text about the dystopian political situation while showing visceral cutscenes of state violence, giving it way more bite than Dustborn. While there are dark moments, there are some over-the-top parodies of capitalism and rich hedonism to balance it out, like the smart meter having three different weapons built into it in order to kill those who try to steal power. The only downside is that the political monologues can get a bit long-winded, but I think it's preferable to keeping the player in the dark about the worldbuilding.

My favorite protagonist is Sybil Clington-Busch, who is part of the ruling class, but seeks to bring about equality for the poor and the non-humans who suffer from specieist discrimination. The other protagonists wonder if she's truly sincere in her political convictions, but she does prove to be genuine, since she used a backup robot body to directly experience underclass life and is willing to subject herself to doing so again in her Egalite policy in the ending. At the same time, the game makes it clear that despite her efforts, her privilege still blinds her to the fact that her allies are more at risk than her. which costs her an alliance with Noah Goertzel because she failed to realize how constrained he felt under protective house arrest in the landfill. She also has the advantage of being able to survive her death in backup bodies due to consciousness uploading, but that also means she doesn't fully grasp that her allies are more mortal than her, which is implied to be the reason she came up with an overly risky plan to test Karl at the start of the game. Her strained relationship with Noah Goertzel also provides some nuance to the idea of "eating the rich," since it acknowledges that Goertzel's plan to kill all Neofeudals is foolish because he's alienating potential allies. To a lesser extent, I also enjoyed Karl and Proto-J's character development, with Karl trying to find a way to atone for his past as a corrupt cop and Proto-J learning that the high life he sought isn't worth it if it means exploiting others.

Warren Clington-Busch is probably one of the best antifa story antagonists, since while he has plenty over over-the-top moments of power abuse and hedonism, he remains a competent threat and manages to argue his own philosophy. He states that the reason he wants to maintain the status-quo of the 1% having disproportionately more wealth and power than the 99% is because if he tried to uplift the underclass, he would have less resources allocated to fighting against his Neofeudal rivals, rendering egalitarian efforts self-defeating. It's a realistic, albeit extremely cynical and anti-social philosophy that ultimately results in him seeking godhood like a classic JRPG villain, but he's definitely a bit more complex than similar greedy and bigoted villains.This also indicates that despite being the biggest villain, he's still a symptom of civilization's dog-eat-dog tendencies than the root cause of it, which is something Sybil has to contend with when she takes power in the ending. Though it's subtly implied that a world where the 99% are trapped in a financial death spiral also causes stagnation, since people like Goertzel and Gen won't have the resources they need to make their own innovations, which counters Warren's argument about ROI. I like that he's able to challenge Sybil's philosophy as well as Sybil's resolve to fight back against his cynicism in favor of doing what she thinks is right.

However, the plot itself has some noticeable plot holes, loose ends, and things that need more elaboration.

• When Karl first receives a call from Shuffler, the dialogue makes it sound like he met Proto-J in the past, but he doesn't recognize Proto-J in the present or even knows which apartment room is his. The only explanation that makes sense is that Proto-J used ESP to wipe Karl's memory in an earlier encounter.
  
• The Steam and Itch descriptions state Karl got fired for refusing to shoot a robot, but the game itself confirms he actually did shoot the robot on his superiors' orders. This sounds like a RETCON and you should update the Steam, Itch, and other site descriptions to reflect that. On that note, I think the twist should be supplemented with scenes or even nightmares where he ponders his guilt.
  
• There's no follow-up for Shuffler and Princess. While Shuffler is probably fine due to Sybil's deal, Princess's fate is unknown despite how worried Proto-J was for her. Also, what happened to Suzette? Does she ever reunite with her children?
  
• Did Borges survive his battle against Proto-J? The game implies there's a stable time loop in Goertzel's lab, but Borges took a heavy dose of mythium and an ESP attack. Maybe he'll show up in the sequel?
  
• Aleph needs more characterization and not just get killed off so suddenly. Maybe he should get a notepad to write down his thoughts and explain his origin story?
  
• Even if you refuse to surrender to Warren during the hostage situation with Karl's family, the game treats it as if you did surrender.
  
• The game never really explains why Warren needed to keep Karl alive as a prisoner.

The gameplay is simple point-and-click for the most part, with well-thought out puzzles. However, the shootout in the arcade has too many extra buttons and moving parts for how time-sensitive it is, making it the most difficult and jank portion of the game. The shooting/cover mechanic also feels very jank and you don't get a lot of time to master it. It's so much harder than the final action sequence that I consider it the actual final boss of the game, lol.

The game has a lot of voiced and unvoiced dialogue, but it's easy to accidentally click through them. IMO, the game really needs a text log like in the Trails series that also allows you to replay voice clips.


7.9/10

I really like the dynamic between Sybil versus Warren as well as how the game doesn't shy away from showing the more brutal aspects of capitalism and racism, but the game's story needs more proofreading to fix plot holes and address some forgotten plot threads.

Johan is a village boy whose village was destroyed by the mad Aeon cult, with one of the leaders being his extremely divorced father. Now he has to team up with Aiden and Crysta, who also fear the Aeon threat, but the flashfoward prologue sets up Johan as turning to the dark side. As a result, Aiden has an almost equal role as the protagonist by the endgame in his quest to bring Johan back to his senses.

The beginning of the game is crafted to leave a strong first impression, especially with the severity of the destruction of Vereta and the murder of Johan's mother. I also liked seeing the corruption within the Kingdom of Alexandria and how it's an empire in decline with an incredibly insular upper class, which can feel relatable in these dark times. However, due to deadline and financial issues, the endgame had a lot of cut content and rushed scenes, making it so that there's a lot of loose ends, such as what exactly the rapture is supposed to do to Alexandria, what is King Zelos's role in all this, Zach getting a proper reconciliation and/or condemnation from Johan, Rachel getting a more detailed resolution with Aldus, and more details about Crysta's background and home country. I've played plenty of games with rushed endings, but most of them are at least able to properly NAME their final boss and give them bits of dialogue, unlike this one. The game also has some awkward scenes in the second half, like Naomi being spared by Johan for no reason even though she's his mother's killer, Isolde surviving the castle's destruction despite falling unconscious and the Aeons wanting her head, and Drago not putting up a fight against Isolde. It's like the game couldn't decide how to kill or defeat them.. There's supposed to be future DLC to address the loose ends, but it still seems like an incredibly bad idea to leave so many questions unanswered and the game seems more like an early access game than a full release as a result.

I really liked Isolde as a villain due to how blatantly corrupt she is and how she cares more about crushing Lance and his commoner friends than actually doing anything about the Aeons. The fact that she's a former commoner who now hates commoners is a hint that she's a product of the kingdom's prior corruption rather than its cause, and that she just made a bad regime worse. IMO, the final chapter should have made either Lance or Evil Johan duel her one last time before the Aeons capture her, just to wipe the look off her smug face.


The combat system uses RPG Maker 2003's ATB system, which is unfortunate because RM2K3 implemented it in a really jank way. The game did try to implement a full wait mode, but it has a seemingly unfixable softlock, so it's recommended to use Active mode, which at least still pauses once a character is selected. Additionally, it looks like buff durations are based on all turns rather than the user's turns, though to the game's credit, it tries to mitigate this by making the duration longer than most games to compensate.

In this game's resource system, characters can accumulate up to three relica bars by using normal attacks or spells, which allows them to pull off a special skill with their weapon. Additionally, a percentage of MP is restored upon initiating a normal attack, whether or not the attack connects, which is a good way to ensure even misses aren't wasted turns. Guarding recovers HP (and MP in Crysta's case due to her lack of attack command), making it a way to save on items once your HP is higher. Meanwhile, consumable items scale well to HP and MP, but don't grant relica bars, which balances them and rewards the playing for not relying too much on items.

After leveling up, characters gain Bonus Points that can be allocated to stats, but I personally don't like this implementation compared to Ara Fell's. For one thing, Bonus Points must all be spent upon leveling up, which means if a character gains levels offscreen due to story reasons or joins late in the story, they won't get to benefit from Bonus Points. Also, the way it's implemented grants a bonus stat point if you concentrate all four points into a single stat, which is not explained in the game. Finally, there's no way to reallocate Bonus Points for the sake of experimentation. The good news is that even if the player spends Bonus Points poorly, the game is still beatable, but it does beg the question of whether or not this feature was even worth implementing. Also, this is just my opinion, but I think agility should be exempt from this system, since agility is extremely OP in an ATB system and investing only in speed over the course of the game makes early joiners incredibly strong compared to later characters.

As for character balancing, Johan is a physical glass cannon, Crysta is a standard mage, and Aiden is just really good in every stat for some reason, along with having really strong dark spells that makes him a better mage than Crysta as long as the enemy doesn't resist that element. It seems odd for Aiden to be so OP, but I take it as a sign that he is in some ways the true protagonist of the game rather than Johan, who gets privileges that other characters don't. However, Lance and Karuka are guest characters who have decent physical attack and HP, but mediocre speed and magic, and they don't have access to Ethrel weapon upgrades. Karuka at least has the advantage of having the only attack/defense buff in the game, but Lance has a really luck-based unique skill instead. IMO, these two need some kind of weapon upgrade event that puts them on par with the main characters' level 5 weapons for the sake of balance.

Outside of battle, you can interact with the environment in various ways, like finding clean ledges to jump from, picking up various plants as consumable items, and grabbing spare change. The maps look very complex and large, though most encounters don't respawn, giving you the sense of slowly conquering each vast region and allowing you to appreciate the old school aesthetics.

The game has many missables and points of no return, so I definitely recommend using Firefly's guide from the very start.

7.2/10
This game does a lot of interesting things that push the limits of its engine, even though I'm RPG Maker 2003's biggest hater, so I can respect the effort put into that. Though that does make me wonder what this game would be like in a newer engine with a better ATB system. As for the story, the first half knows how to keep the player engaged, but the ending dropped the ball so hard because of the deadline. I'll update my review once I play the future DLC.

If you've played other games in the series, you'll find the story confusing at first because Sally and Lily already graduated college, which should contradict the events of the previous game, "Case 03: True Cannibal Boy." This does build on a previous plot point in that game, namely that the elder gods can end the world at any time. We actually get to see the process here with Nya planting a seed inside women that grows into an evil baby Lovecraftian being, which summons Nya's real body into the physical world so that Nya can reset the universe. Although Sally manages to stop this plan, Nya still tricks her into initiating a time rewind to befriend Lily for real, which is a clever way of setting up the main timeline where Marty becomes one of Nya's playthings, as well as setting up Sally and Lily's horrible fate in Case 03. It also follows the pattern of how if the protagonists chose the seemingly harder path and accept losing their loved ones, they could avoid further tragedy in the future.

For the horror aspect, the idea of Nya's son bursting through the abdomen is terrifying, and I'd really like to see a proper CG of this. If this series ever gets a better budget, I think a lot of horror scenes like this should get a really terrifying CG from a skilled artist, even if it prevent me from sleeping for the rest of my life. Additionally, I wish we had more detail on Nya's final attack on the world in the bad ending, since it's not exactly clear what the powder will do. Will it kill people or transform them into monsters? Maybe we'll find out in a later game when Nya gets bored of the world again.

The inclusion of Shadow as a villain protagonist is quite good and we get to see Sally have a ruthless side as well when it comes to Nya. It drives home that despite Shadow being the evil version of Sally, she's still based on Sally's emotions and the two aren't that different deep down. Though it makes me wonder who the fourth portrait is in the old timeline, since Shadow never gave up on serial killing in this timeline.

The game has a lot of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure references, with Seer Nye looking just like Enrico Pucci while handing out discs and talking about fated encounters. The antagonist, Nya's son, can use time stop and the only way to defeat him is to use another of Nya's sons to see through the stopped time. The entire plot of the game is trying to prevent a universal reset, and Pucci's goal in Stone Ocean is to cause a reset. Then there's the true ending's name, which is Made in Heaven, the name of Pucci's ultimate Stand. There's probably a lot of other references that I missed, and I think the references flow very well with the story. Also, it would be very in-character for Nya to be a JoJo fan and take Pucci's form as Nye Arlat just for fun.


8.5/10

The game is short, but the story is good and it's also isolated enough that you don't need to play the other games first. However, playing the other games first does make the ending more significant and it gives us a glimpse of why Jade fears Nya so much.

Despite the controversy surrounding the game, no one seems to be able to accurately describe the game's politics. I'll take a stab at it:

• The American Republic is a capitalist police state, but Justice cops support diversity for non-Anomals while hypocritically discriminating against Anomals. This means the American Republic could represent cop-loving liberals like Eric Adams or Democrats who sided with Republicans in post-9/11 surveillance policies. True libfash representation. The mainstream and far-right doesn't care for diversity optics as much as Justice, so Justice doesn't map to them.
  
• Justice officers are treated as mostly well-intentioned and humanized people in a bad system, who aren't aware of their leaders' intentions, making this a nuanced example of cops.
  
• That said, Justice cares more about sounding politically correct than applying anti-bigotry consistently, and they still persecute the homeless and protestors.
  
• Justice's higher ups in particular want to capture and use Anomals as tools of control.
  
• It's possible the JFK alt timeline nerfed the Southern Strategy, lol. Plus, it looks like some parts of the south seceded anyways.
  
• Misinfo is represented as Echoes and misuse of Protolanguage, which can bend reality. The idea is that propaganda warps people's perception of reality, like convincing them liberals and leftists are the same. I find this a bad plot device because it takes away agency from humanity unlike real propaganda and I would prefer a proper examination of real propaganda techniques, including how misinfo can be produced quicker than real info. It's the Curse of Erebonia 2.0.
  
• The far-right isn't represented in any major faction, but traces of their ideology are found in Echo infectees. Again, my problem with this is the lack of agency and the overemphasis of Echoes' paranoia inducement. Also, I don't think paranoia is the sole motivation of far-right ideology.
  
• Since Echoes are caused by the Republic's experiments, this means the writers could be blaming the rise of the far-right on liberals.
  
• The Puritans seem to be a mishmash of capitalist techbros, religious zealotry, and overcensorship in the name of fighting misinfo. I'm not sure what these guys map to. I guess some kind of hypothetical technofascism? They're treated with less sympathy than individual Justice officers, but they also don't seem to be as bigoted as certain factions IRL.
  
• The Henry and Betty quest is meant to be a criticism of capitalism because the robots are given sentience and family-friendly lore, but are still treated as disposable tools by their creators. It's such a sad predicament that the robophobic protag feels class solidarity with these robots.
  
• In Issue 2, the game criticizes anarcho-primitivism for some reason and believes that leftism can and should exist alongside technology.

The game seems to have a "great power, great responsibility" aesop in regards to both Vox usage and normal words, since both can shape the people around you. However, the choice system doesn't express this point consistently. It is satisfying to find Voxless solutions to reconcile with people and to pick choices that make Pax's friends happier. I also like how the game notices if you're listening to the crew's words as much as possible, with this method being considered the proper use of language. However, the game has mandatory Vox usage that serve as tutorials for new Vocal abilities, and many of them feel forced and harmful, other than Normalize. I personally feel like those trying to play Pax with good choices are being cheated by not having a choice in these situations. Yes, Pax has her own flaws to overcome, but in that case, I would prefer if the game didn't give the illusion of choice in those situations, or at least make her take more responsibility for these moments. Having forced harmful choices between stretches of good makes Pax's character development feel inconsistent. My recommendation is to have tutorials in Pax's Protolanguage dreams, leaving Vox use in the story up to the player's discretion.

While I like the Librarian coda outcome for Pax because it's the most consistent with the writer's stated values, I feel like the final chapter was way too rushed. We don't know what the Herald of the Axiom is and we only get brief summaries of everyone's life after the heist.


The game is advertised as action adventure, but the combat is so sparsely distributed that it feels more like a minigame than the actual music minigame. Additionally, while Pax's resource loop is fine on paper, her attack speed and bat hitboxes need to be increased to make the combat more satisfying. Finally, guarding and countering seem to be a thing, but it's also impossible to tell which enemy attack patterns can actually be guarded.

As for her Vox usage in battle, having certain party members enables combination attacks, with Hoax/Eli being one of the strongest in terms of sheer anti-human DPS. Sadly, party members aren't always available and I feel like not all combination attacks are created equal. Also, I think it's a missed opportunity to not be able to take control of other party members directly, since part of the game's puzzle-solving involves learning your allies' strengths.

The music minigame uses two axes, which can make it difficult to judge which note is closest. However, the next line is always highlighted in a unique color, which can help with snap decision making. Unfortunately, boost mode increases point gain while taking away the color indicator for the lines, making it harder to determine the next note. The only consolation is that the two axes design correlates with the face buttons on a controller and the timing is suprisingly generous, making it easy to get used to this UI.

I did enjoy the non-combat puzzles, since they require you to think about each party member's abilities and how to use the various items you find. While you can brute force some of them with Sai, I like being able to find more intellectual solutions, like finding the code to move the fake trailer in Issue 3.

The game's dialogue system is in real time, with time creating and removing choices. It's an interesting approach, but there needs to be a visible timer for how long a choice will remain available. As for the game's coda system, Pax's coda gains need to be visible like everyone else's, since some people are achievement hunters.

IMO, the game would be better as an Ace Attorney style visual novel to play to its strengths. Or maybe make the turn-based RPG minigame the main battle system so that you don't have to worry about fine-tuning hitboxes and speed. Sometimes, less is more.


-The first impression would be better if the Purity raid was done at the start as a proper playable section, since it builds up the group's initial conflict better and has combat. Starting in the middle of an argument instead of the true beginning of the adventure is bad.
-Dialogue choice games NEED MANUAL SAVES.


7/10

This game is a very mixed bag for me, since the game feels like it's only enjoyable if you pick nice choices, but less enjoyable when you're railroaded into Vox tutorials or if you deliberately pick mean choices. Is there even a narrative point to the moral choice system? Also, I feel that the portrayal of misinfo as literal magic actually downplays its real threat and how effective it is at exploiting preexisting feelings and biases. As for the villains, I suspect they are meant to be libs who committed too much to their right/center policies while performatively supporting some minority rights. However, I feel like it downplays how bad the justice system actually is. I know my review is harsh, but I hope my criticism is more constructive than all the reviews either glazing the game or malding about it.

The premise is that the player character, Kana Aizawa, is capable of harnessing the world's main form of energy, ESP, to fight against Rioters that seem to spawn out of nowhere. Unfortunately, the Chaos energy that creates Rioters can also corrupt other superhuman Operators, and you'll have to defeat them in order to free them from the corruption.

Kana does have a character arc where she feel unconfident in herself because her ability, Hyper-Computation, seems so weak compared to other Operators, but it doesn't last that long because at the halfway point, she and her allies discover how to use it to cure people of Chaos. Still, it is satisfying to see that her efforts aren't in vain, especially in the hard mode ending where she wants to formalize her ability so that other Operators can use it to more efficiently stop the Riots.

The boss Operators all have their unique design and personalities, but I feel like they were underutilized. After beating them, they mostly disappear from the story, which is a shame because I was hoping they would become NPCs at the base with their own chat options. Considering they're all supposed to be based on Vtubers, I feel like this is a missed opportunity. On that note, it's also a waste that there aren't safe civilian areas to explore, since NEO Babylon is supposed to be the ideal society due to the virtual world's lack of resource scarcity.

The game's twist is revealed at the very start of the game for some reason instead of being saved for near the end. Namely that NEO Babylon is actually a virtual world. I feel like the game may have played its hand too early, though you could argue that the mysterious nature of the Rioters and the game's title is already a really big hint anyways.


The game is supposed to be an obvious clone of Megaman Zero/ZX, and I only played ZX Advent. Kana's moveset is basically Model ZX in that she gets a chargeable sword and gun, though she also gets EX Skills and elemental modes that are supposed to be similar to Megaman Zero's gameplay. For the most part, the gameplay felt responsive and most of the enemies and bosses felt fair, so it was a good experience for me even if I don't have as strong a feeling of nostalgia as other players. That said, I wish that the sword-based EX skills could take precedence over the charged sword attack, since the Iaijutsu skill is used for evading attacks. Additionally, I found that using a charged shot right after a charged sword causes the shot to not fire and you'll lose the charge, which means you need to remember to shoot and then use the sword if you want to be efficient.

The game also has Extenders to customize Kana's passive abilities, which can be swapped out at any time, even in the middle of battle. If you use this stategically, you can quickly make a glass cannon setup, activate an instant damage support skill, and then switch back to a more balanced setup. However, I feel like RAM is very limiting towards the end of the game. This is especially true because I depended a lot on the Auto-Charge extender, which I think should have been a default feature and not an Extender.

The game features a ranking system, but all aspects of it are weighted the same regardless of the stage. Ironically, this makes it easier to get V rank on the final stage than on the first stage, since you not only have better attack options for the combo score, you also have more enemies to defeat and more opportunities to use support skills. IMO, every stage needs to be carefully playtested to determine the appropriate point threshold for each rank.


7.5/10

The story isn't winning any awards and the translation needs improvement, but the gameplay is pretty good for the most part and is probably the main selling point of the game, since the mechanics/controls feel good and the bosses all have well-designed patterns.

The main character is Prince Eldar of Onnya, who seeks to prove himself worthy of the throne by research the legend of the hero and finding a way to defeat the legendary villain. At first, he's a spoiled brat who cares more about the glory of solving the legend than his actual duties as a prince. In a twist, his research causes him to learn of many truths that were censored by his government and how his kingdom actually perpetrated many injustices against Llooan and the zsagni. Thanks to his travels teaching him more perspectives, Eldar now actually gains a purpose as a royal, making this a roundabout way of becoming a worthy king. However, he also put himself in a position where he might not be able to gain the political power needed to bring justice to Onnya's victims. This game's aesop seems to be that although people have to focus on their duties, sometimes it's alright to indulge in one's own wants and needs if their current life isn't working out for them. This can be partially seen with Yvlor, who spent so long trying to be a perfect hero that he didn't know how to balance his love for Nyo with his duties. That said, I wish we could see more of what happens when Eldar returns to Onnya in the ending, since his aunt and cousin are implied to be running the country into the ground, thus potentially creating interesting consequences for Eldar's decision.

The game also features a time loop where some people can remember past lives, some living beings are forced to be immortal until the loop restarts, and some enemies are unusually powerful while dropping Breach Chunks that can kill immortals. This also causes a religion to form based on the idea that destiny must be preserved, or there could be unpredictable consequences that will destroy the world before a new loop can start. This ties into the main aesop somewhat, since the only way to break the loop and allow the civilization to properly develop is to stray off the beaten path of destiny.

Unfortunately, the time loop does unintentionally make Lue less sympathetic, since she's a chronologist and therefore would know Jovla can be trusted based on previous time loops, yet she treats him as a mere vagabond that Eldar shouldn't associate with. Maybe this was an act meant to hide her status as a chronologist, but it still seems unnecessarily mean of her. Maybe the point is that even with her prior knowledge of time loops, she was never able to overcome her overprotectiveness of Eldar?

As for Jovla himself, I'm not completely satisfied with how Eldar reconciles with him. Eldar screws up Jovla's chance to get an important answer from a ghost and never really apologizes for it or attempts to make up for up. By the time Eldar does mature enough to possibly revisit this issue, it turns out Jovla already knew the answer all along, making the entire issue moot.

For the most part, this game isn't about attacking and dethroning god or fighting against tyranny. It's basically a research project to solve mysteries surrounding the legend of the hero and the time loop. In a twist, most of the explanations are way more mundane than expected, but will almost always lead to a new clue. The time loop in particular is caused not by some nebulous demon lord, but by a powerful witch exploiting the save/load mechanic on a meta level in order to undo Yvlor's suicide. This does lead to some unexplained plot threads, like how the loop restarts despite how Eldar is not guaranteed to meet Yvlor in every loop. My own assumption is that Nyo cannot maintain Yvlor's crystal prison forever, which means the Hive unfairly blamed Eldar just because of circumstantial evidence. On the other hand, it's possible Lue's chronologist memories apply to Eldar's usage of saving/loading, essentially resulting in miniature time loops.


The damage balancing is okay for the most part, though lower HP characters will get oneshot in the final boss fight even at full HP. This is balanced by the final boss sometimes not targeting the party.

Every character has a unique way of learning a new ability, with Eldar learning from maestros, Lue learning from mentor crystals and spell usage count, Jovla learning from new weapons, Laric reading recipes, and Qibayn finding inspiration from regular foes. In terms of character tiers, I'd go with:

1. Eldar - Has TP regen equipment to spam his TP skills easily, including his healing skill.
2. Lue - She has single-targets, AOEs, and strong heals, making her very versatile. Her only flaw is that her skills take long to grind to their full potential and she leaves after the Keeper boss fight. Personally, I think she's a very close second to Eldar.
3. Jovla - Has a double hit normal attack and a buff that stacks with Eldar's group buff. However, his evasion buff can prevent affected characters from receiving heals/buffs and his ailments are generally less meta in this game because enemies will either die quickly to regular DPS or bosses resist those ailments. He has no TP regen, but his normal attack heals 20 TP if he lands both hits and his 40 TP AOE is stronger than Eldar's 60 TP AOE.
4. Laric - They're dependent on ingredients to use their skills, but their normal attack and HP are high to compensate so that you can save ingredients if needed. They can also set up group regen to make healing overall more efficient. IMO, red herbs are somewhat more scarce than other ingredients out in the wild, and most of his best recipes depend on those.
5. Qibayn - She has stronger single-target spells than Lue and learns skills more easily, but her only healing spell has an exhaustion penalty. She also cannot do AOEs without using a special consumable first, and by the time she sets that up, Eldar and Jovla will likely defeat the enemies with their own faster AOEs. Her spells come with ailments and deal good damage, but again, regular enemies die before the ailments will actually matter and bosses tend to be more resistant, giving her less overall utility than Lue. IMO, it would be better if her spells came with weak but irresistible debuffs. Unfortunately, she replaces Lue in the final stretch of the game, creating an artificial-feeling difficulty spike. I generally prefer difficulty spikes that are based on enemies becoming more complex than the party losing power and/or versatility.

The game's mapping philosophy is designed to make maps look bigger than they really are. While most games will just use regular walls, this game makes walls out of boxes, pots, and other obstacles to close off parts of the map that you shouldn't be able to access. YMMV may vary on this, since while it prevents the world from looking small, the amount of stray boxes everywhere starts to look excessive after a while. At this point, it's practically a safety violation. TBF, the NPCs seem to be humorously self-aware about the placement of obstacles.


7.5/10

I liked uncovering the secret history of the setting and the aesop about balancing self and duty, though there are moments that make Eldar and Lue come off as more unsympathetic than was probably intended. The time loop story is surprisingly cohesive, but there are a few details that needed more elaboration like loops where the journey stops prematurely. As for the combat, every character has their own strengths and weaknesses, but there is a tierlist that becomes very obvious when Lue is replaced by Qibayn.

In the main game, you play as the ex-SOLDIER mercenary Cloud, who hires himself out to Barret's radical Avalanche eco-terrorist cell. For the most part, this story plays out the same as the OG, but with some more details in certain signature scenes that makes them feel like a fresh experience whether or not you played the OG. I especially like the extended confrontation with President Shinra, who shows off how much of a corrupt businessman he is while deconstructing Barret's ideals. However, when things start to diverge from the OG, strange ghostlike beings start showing up to harass anyone who tried to act out of line. It's implied that this entire "remake" is actually a time travel plot that picks up where Dirge of Cerberus left off. I have no idea if this alternate timeline plot will turn out to be good in the future games, but it does feel somewhat like false advertising to name this game Remake. Still, it does present something of a moral quandry, since changing the timeline means Aerith and other victims can potentially be saved, but Sephiroth could also gain new advantages and win in the long run.

In Yuffie's side story, you get to learn more about Wutai's political situation, which is more militant than in the OG. You also get to learn more about the moderate Avalanche HQ that Barret split off from, which is more peaceful in their methods while focusing more on the economic issues of the slums. Still, I wish both Barret and Nayo's factions discussed Fuhito more, since his genocidal plan is a stigma that both Avalanche branches will have to carry forever.


This game is a hybrid of action-RPG gameplay and turn-based gameplay, but in a completely different way from something like Absented Age. You get similar controls to Crisis Core Reunion, especially if you play as Cloud, but you can also use the command menu to issue commmands to both AI controlled allies and your currently controlled character, which makes the characters more versatile than Zack in CC who could only rely on shortcuts and a finicky item menu. However, the game also nerfed several Crisis Core defensive options; dodging doesn't give i-frames, some attacks are unguardable, and you have to worry about interrupt values rather than rely on the Endure buff. Trying to play this game like Crisis Core will lead to even easy mode kicking your butt. Enemies are also tankier than in Crisis Core, but they also follow the Crosscode design philosophy of being pressured or staggered by fulfilling specific conditions, so if you know the enemies well enough, you can prevent them from doing anything meaningful while you deal big stagger damage to them.

The ally AI can vary from being competent to being dumb as rocks. Sometimes, they will dodge and guard better than the player while other times, they will take full damage from the easiest attack patterns in the world. Additionally, Aerith's AI doesn't know how to make good use of her own wards and she and Barret tend to get close to the enemy even though they have long-ranged attacks. Supposedly, the next game will mitigate this by giving Aerith the ability to teleport to her wards, but this still forces the player to switch control to her.

You can retry to right before a battle, but I think it would be nice if we had the option to start right at the start of the battle itself to save a bit of time. Since not all cutscenes can be skipped as quickly, it can cause some retries to feel several seconds longer than they should. Still, the game at least gives you some clemency for retrying individual battles in a gauntlet and lets you access the menu between certain fights. However, anything you change in that menu gets reset if you retry the battle, which can lead to redundant menu navigation. Alternatively, this could all be solved easily if we were allowed to save between sequential bosses.

While Cloud in Operator mode plays the most closely to CC Zack, his Punisher Mode plays way differently from Battle Stance and all other characters have their own unique upper face button actions, along with other gameplay mechanics. This makes all of them feel unique to play and they all have a low enough skill floor that they're easier to pick up than in a Tales game. However, some characters definitely have high skill ceilings, like Tifa requiring you to prepare her Chi Level, Aerith having to manage her wards, and Yuffie having to manage her Shuriken location. Sadly, Red XIII and Sonon aren't fully playable, which is a shame because the former could have introduced more potential party compositions.

The game has an anti-item hard mode, but I found that if you play well enough on normal and exploit pressure/stagger conditions, you can win most battles without items anyways. However, I do think hard mode went too far with the MP management challenge, since benches no longer heal MP. You can only heal MP when starting a chapter or from specific Shirna crates. This ends up turning the entire chapter into a resource management puzzle, though that can be potentially rendered moot by breaking specific crates to restore MP, and then saving and reloading to respawn the small MP heals. Still, some longer multiboss chapters feel nearly impossible without this exploit. I think a good compromise would be to give the player one bench MP heal per chapter.

Adding to the postgame situation, you can revisit chapters and take advantage of some NG+ convenience, like a faster version of the rat quest, retaining the progress of some non-quest minigames, and skipping the bike minigames. However, there is some padding if you want to collect all the manuscripts due to mutually exclusive minibosses in Ch 9. If you want to get all the dresses and resolutions, there's going to being a ton of padding, and honestly it might not be worth it since those don't add anything in terms of gameplay advantages.

The game features essentially two different arena systems: one run in Corneo Colosseum and one run by the Shinra Combat Sim. Unfortunately, they are available at different points in the game and Aerith's inconsistent availability means some of her battles are only available on Chapter select. Personally, I think the combat sim should be slightly reworked so that it includes Corneo battles too in case the player missed them. I also think Chadley needs to be available more often, since some materias can only be bought from him and not the vending machine.


8.5/10

I think the story is going in an interesting direction and the combat feels like a 3D Crosscode. However, some QOL features could be improved regarding the retry system and arena systems. While I think the item ban on hard mode is fine, the extreme restrictions on MP recovery is overkill and essentially turns each chapter into a marathon where every MP is sacred.

Also, lol at the usual suspects for being more mad about Tifa's assets than Nayo's leftist politics.