Recent reviews by bugfragged

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.

The premise of the story is that it's a story within a story. Zuberi is a city kid who recently lost his father, and he finds a story that his father wrote titled "Zau." Zau himself has similar circumstances, but he's a Shaman and he strikes a deal with the God of Death to get a chance to revive his father. Unfortunately, we don't get to hear Zuberi's thoughts about individual story beats, which is a shame because he seems like such an interesting character, especially when you get a chance to explore his house.

The game actually doesn't have that many characters or NPCs, and it mainly focuses on the student-teacher relationship between Zau and the God of Death Kalunga. Zau is portrayed as an immature and reckless youth with a good heart and learns to be more considerate of those around him. Meanwhile, Kalunga is a wise god who wants to help Zau become a better Shaman, but is strict and likes to use a lot of metaphors. Kalunga also gets a character arc in Act 2 where he learns to be more accepting of humanity's tendency to fight for hope no matter how dire the situation, which is a good example of how teachers are also going through their own learning process. I like these two characters, but I feel like the lack of NPCs makes Kenzera feel like an empty land of spikes and various biomes.

The antagonists of the story are all Great Spirits who deny death, and the Sky and Human spirits in particular go through similar struggles as Zau. Since the goal is to exorcise and bring peace to them, it gives Zau a chance to see his own grief over his father's death from the outside. However, the game doesn't explain very well the process of becoming a Great Spirit that defies death. The sky spirit has a biological heir and used to be sane before denying death. However, we don't really get a clear backstory for the nature spirit other than having a vague connection to one of Zau's friends. The spirit of humanity was apparently once an ordinary human in Itshoka, whose determination and guilt somehow caused him to mutate into a rogue spirit, which implies any living being can become a Great Spirit. Finally, it's implied that Baba as the final boss is actually a fourth Great Spirit, since his and Zau's reunion can be considered a defiance of death and he copies the abilities of the other Great Spirits.

As for the ending, the premise is that Zuberi himself has to write it. While he writes it in a way that's supposed to give Zau and himself closure, I'm not exactly happy with it because it introduces a twist with little buildup, namely that Kalunga was actually Zau's father all along. This contradicts how Kalunga often asked questions about Zau's family that Baba should already have the answers to. It also brings up the question of how Zau didn't recognize this, since Kalunga would have had Baba's speech patterns or would have said something familiar to Zau. Also, I feel like making Kalunga a human rather than a death god completely changes the context of his character arc from being a detached god to being a ghostly father projecting the circumstances of his own death on Sabulana. Are we supposed to assume Kalunga/Baba was putting on an act for the sake of helping Zau grow? Maybe the inconsistency is the point, since there's no way for Zuberi to know exactly what his father planned for the ending. Also, I suppose one could argue that "Kalunga" is more invested in Zau's growth than a strictly transactional relationship would require, and therefore would count as subtle foreshadowing. Plus, Kalunga's penalty for failing the task only makes sense if he already fulfilled his end of the bargain by releasing Baba from the Realm of the Dead. Still, I wish Zau at least pressed Kalunga/Baba about the gaps in the latter's knowledge.

As for SBI involvement and potential "wokeness," this game is very apolitical because the characters don't get any meaningful interaction with governments or corporations. There's just one mention of Zuberi wanting to build his dream city by working with a big corporation, but there's nothing resembling real life political issues. There's no hot-blooded antifa power fantasy like in Final Fantasy 7 or struggles against bigotry, but the ghoulish anti-woke reaction makes me wish there was. Of course, anti-wokes will probably believe their grifter overlords over me, but the burden of proof is on them to prove the positive.


The game features a mask system that changes Zau's fighting style on the fly. The Moon Mask specializes in ranged attacks while the Sun Mask specializes in melee, though both have weaker options for other combat ranges to ensure they can cover their bases. Both masks can be upgraded to have additional passives and timed mechanics, but you don't strictly need to master all the timed mechanics to beat the game on normal. There is a surprisingly amount of depth to the combat options, but whether or not you use it is up to you.

The game features an aim button that works with multiple actions, but I personally struggled with it because it's an extra action that my hand has to perform. I guess it's a skill issue?

For the boss-stage length ratio, I think it's awkward to have to go through 3-4 stages before reaching a boss. Most of the dungeons leading up to the boss will introduce new mechanics, but instead of having a miniboss at the end, the dungeons have multiple locked-room battles against waves of enemies, many of which are tankier than usual because they spawn with barriers. IMO, the boss-less dungeons should at least have minibosses that are thematically appropriate for the current biome, like a big Adze miniboss or a poison swamp boss.

As for the bosses, I think all of them are well-designed except for Kikiyaon, which is just a chase sequence in a trenchcoat and isn't as mechanically interesting as the others. Surprisingly, the final boss has a more balanced version of Kikiyaon's gimmick, since it releases damage gas instead of instant death gas.

The game is generous with auto-saving due to the amount of instant-death hazards and precision parkour, but there is no ability to manually save. IMO, this is very flawed design because it means you can potentially be trapped in a boss fight or point of no return with no way to go back and make preparations. Additionally, I think having the ability to manually save at specific locations would make it easier for players to retry any boss fight whenever they want.

The default controls are not good for air-dashing IMO, since on XInput, dash and jump are both face buttons. I had to remap dash onto the RB button in order to make air-dashing feel more natural and responsive.

The game features a fairly detailed map that tells you what collectibles you still need to find. Like other players, I wish there was an annotation system to mark things that technically aren't collectibles, but might be important, like Ulogi Crystals, grappling points, Akida's Spear targets, etc.


7.8/10

The dialogue between Zau and Kalunga is the best part of the game for sure and I like the optional parts of Zuberi's house, but I think the true nature of the Great Spirits needs to be better explained. Additionally, the ending feels like a rushed retcon of Kalunga's character and I personally think Zuberi should have kept Kalunga and Baba as separate characters, or at the very least, wrote a plausible explanation for making them the same character. As for the gameplay, I'm probably not in the best position to judge, since I haven't played that many platformers, but I still managed to beat it despite this genre being difficult for me and I think the trickier sections are well-compensated by the generous checkpoints. Overall, I find this to be a mid apolitical platformer, which is a nice change of pace from the political JRPGs that I usually play.

The premise is that Verm is a mouse looking to take revenge on a pest-control human known as the Yellow God. Many argue that the task of the Yellow God is a red herring for the developer's political tract, though IMO, a game solely about the Yellow God would probably be a lot less interesting without seeing how they "stress-test" society.

Yes, the dev is very left-leaning and right-wingers will probably find this game way "woker" than all their hated SBI-affiliated games combined. The Sky Garden arc alone has a bunch of fascist squirrels who persecute other species and queer people, and the leader is very nakedly a social darwinist who only cares about dominating others. However, unlike most antifa power fantasies, this game explores the question of what the opposite kind of society would look like, and the new Sky Garden manages to make some sort of horizontal society with no hierarchy. Essentially, Wilhoit Conservatism's in-groups and out-groups do not exist in the new Sky Garden. An anarchy where everyone is equal and thriving, like a bunch of mushrooms as Verm would put it. At the same time, some characters like Leo point out that this kind of society is a great unknown that may fall apart due to a lack of a clear direction, which is why he fights for his ideal of a more benevolent monarchy while opposing the more anarchic rebellion and killing his vicious idiot king. Is it better to strive for a well-intentioned hierarchy that may eventually be abused, or should we strive for a complete dismantling of hierarchy despite the uncertain future?

I did notice that while there are several cities/towns are used to depict Wilhoit's Law, only one of them, Vinium, had anything resembling a democratic or republican form of government. Even then, it's implied that the democratic process itself was tainted by capitalistic influence, since one of the senators literally enslaves people under the guise of employment. In a way, Vinium might be closer to the US than Clan Grey's Sky Garden. However, we don't have a clear idea of how the democratic process in Vinium actually works compared to modern democracies/republics. Maybe the whole point of all these different yet similar societies is to show that hierarchies of any kind will lead to cartoonishly evil villains taking charge?

The game also has an ACAB message, but is nuanced about it. The guards are seen as enforcers of the status quo and not the good of the citizens unless the latter coincidentally aligns with the former. Although there are good guards like Leo, they still have to follow orders that go against their conscience, making them the last letter of the acronym regardless of their intentions. In the endgame, Leo himself is conflicted over this, since he sees the kingdom and by extension the guard as necessary to maintain peace, but is also aware that even if he kills the corrupt king, a later king may still force him to betray the citizens he wants to protect. As a result, many guards throughout the story end up quitting so they can follow their conscience, putting them outside the scope of the acronym.

As for Verm's own character development, he's essentially someone from an apolitical revenge story being dragged into a more political one, since the humans are enough of a threat that all of society must shape their policy around them, causing his quest to essentially be criminalized and his justice denied. Verm is rather reckless and simpleminded in his revenge, causing him to neglect the consequences of killing a human. As pointed out by Leo and later himself, he does this as a way to lash out at his grief rather than having a true cause to fight for. By the time he reaches the Yellow God again, he sees his reflection and realizes that he became a ghost of his former self. But this seems too separate from the overall political narrative. My interpretation is that the political struggles of Verm's friends caused him to regain his empathy for other people, since he relates his own feelings of powerlessness against the gods to the injustices his friends suffered, which has the side effect of him considering the role of hierarchy in both his quest and his friends' lives. He always fights like he has nothing to lose, but once the final battle is won, he realizes that he does have something to lose if he just throws himself at revenge.

The gods/humans themselves seem like they should be a standard kaiju monster for everyone to face and have no place in a political story, but they also tie into the idea of the hierarchy, since the Old Way religion is based around the idea that if the rodents anger the gods and their pets, the gods will retaliate. The gods and pet titans are essentially made to be the top of the rodent hierarchy, whether or not they are aware of it. Adding to that, even if the gods and rodents don't directly interact, the gods are still heavily influencing rodent society through their own human politics, war, and pollution. Finally, the intellectual rodents translated human text, which means anything humans write can potentially shape rodent culture, hence the extremely obvious parallels to various human civilizations. One of the antagonists, Aquila, actually goes on a rant about how rodents can never escape humanity's shadow, driving them to madness.


The gameplay is a standard turn-based game, but like Dyztopia, it has a single-digit energy system to force you to manage your resources carefully. Additionally, items regenerate after battle, but each item and accessory compete for slots, which severely limits the amount of healing items you can bring into battle. However, while the low energy and item limits sounds like it should make the game hard, enemies and bosses tend to deal very survivable damage. Even the strongest optional bosses can be beaten in a simple exchange of damage if you know how to regenerate your energy easily.

I do like that the skill tree lets us rellocate skill points anytime outside of battle, since it allows the player to tailor the party to take down specific challenges. Note that you won't be able to max out the skill tree even after you beat the game, so reallocating is necessary.

I do have some UI complaints though. For one thing, the save/load menu lacks any cursor memory whatsoever, despite this being a staple feature in most RPGs. Next, characters come and go from the party, but if you don't know when it'll happen, you lose access to all the equipment that's on them. It would be better if you could steal equipment from anyone who has ever been in the party before, even if they leave. Third, Bruce's Cadenza skill is useful, but is also kind of strange to use because you can keep adding notes until you get what you want. In that case, I think it would have been better to just give him a submenu of all Cadenza songs.


8.5/10

This is probably the most radical antifa-coded game I've ever played, but I do think Leo is a good representative for the opposing view and is an overall well-written antagonist compared to the others. Verm himself is a good character, but he also feels like he's from a completely different genre. It might be intentional, since he is used to explain the author's philosophy in a simpler way than a more politically minded character could. In hindsight, he is also an example of how to find solidarity with people with different yet similar situations, since his own fight against the Yellow God ends up connecting to the theme of hierarchy. Due to Bruce's heritage and role in Sky Garden, I feel like he could have easily been the central protagonist instead of Verm, since he has a very large stake in fighting fascism, but maybe Verm was intended to help ease gamers in who wouldn't have as big a stake. Maybe it's better to think of Verm as his own character than to push an archetype on him.

This game takes place after Hero King Quest, where the rest of human civilization has to worry about the upcoming war from Dark Lord Spiderweb. It's also a sequel to Dice and the Tower of the Reanimator, but it also reveals that the normal ending is canon. I'm still sad that all my hard work in punching the enemy into non-lethal submission was all for naught, but it also makes sense because the overall plot of the series might get resolved too quickly if Bambooblade actually managed to improve his country's relations with the Dark Realm.

The Light Spirit's morality is still ambiguous, but she seems to be a hands off deity, making her seem like a more neutral version of Nya. She apparently doesn't care that the Silver Kingdom interprets her teachings different from the mainstream church, since while they aren't fond of the Dark Ones, they also have decent gender equality, as shown by how Princess Gloria and Duchess Mirrorlake hold a lot of political power. The Silver Kingdom, while not perfect, is also better about taking care of commoners than the Cerulean Land and actually takes responsibility for their domestic affairs instead of blaming the Dark Ones, which makes me wonder how the Cerulean Land could go so wrong with their own interpretation of the Light Spirit's teachings. Additionally, the Light Spirit gave the Marionette Strings ability to Darknight, who intends to defeat the Dark Ones in a ruthless manner, but she also gave the opposite ability, Cleansing Light, to Princess Gloria. She helps both sides equally and she actually seems to be proud of Gloria for choosing a different path from her ancestor.

One important aesop is that no matter your principles, you shouldn't mindlessly use historical figures as a crutch to justify your actions, since they are still human. Gloria learns this the hard way when it turns out her ancestor performed human sacrifice and brainwashing to win the war against the Dark Ones and that the Light Spirit allowed this. Additionally, her father is closer to her in ideology, but also had an unrealistic approach due to him underestimating the severity of the war against the Dark Realm. As a result, Gloria has to justify her ideals on their own merits and make sure she has a realistic way of achieving those ideals.


The game looks similar to Hero King Quest due to how everyone is represented as squads of soldiers, but it turns out to play very differently. For one thing, MP damage is a viable tactic that Gloria specializes in. She can't deal much physical or fire damage like her allies, but she can easily take out low MP units that her allies would have more trouble defeating quickly. This really makes you consider her options, since she also has plenty of support skills to fall back on if MP damage isn't correct for the current situation. Additionally, Bambooblade and Mirrorlake have several abilities that differentiate them from the Hero Prince and Sanguine from the previous game, despite having similar JRPG "classes."

As for bosses, they are overall more challenging and engaging than in the previous game. Spidervenom is capable of recycling her zombie troops to constantly keep you on your toes and force you to always be ready to defend against fire damage. Darknight is basically an enemy version of Gloria, since he can deal MP damage and buff his soldiers. He also has the ability to perform "MP revives" if you decide to use Gloria's MP damage on his minions, putting those minions back on the field at the cost of some of that minion's HP. The final boss is not only visually more impressive than the previous one, it also has some impressive mechanics like sacrificing HP to recover from 0 MP, essentially allowing it to cheat the MP damage system to some extent. It will also summon copies of almost every enemy type in the game, which means you need to be able to adjust your tactics on the spot. At the same time, dropping it to 0 MP also essentially acts like a stun for the turn, which means you can prevent its deadlier attacks if you set up your buffs correctly.

9/10
This is currently the best entry in the Peacemaker series in terms of both story and gameplay, and it definitely sets a high bar for the upcoming sidequel, Bloody Emperor.

This story happens during the Rave Heart party's first visit to Planet Kardel, where they are chased down as fugitives. Fortunately for Elya, she has nothing to do with the grand political struggle between Ellemine and Vorakia. Instead, she has more important things to worry about, like getting a boyfriend for Venusia's Day because she lied to her friends about having one. Her slime familiar recommends finding a handsome guy in the Limbo Realm to brainwash into being a temporary boyfriend, which seems like a strange place to do so, but since this boyfriend is likely from a different dimension or planet, it'll be much harder for them to sue I guess. She does end up finding a candidate, Ivan, who turns out to have good chemistry with her, so hopefully they might not have to pretend to be a couple in the long run (nudge nudge wink wink).

Things get a bit darker when the party recruits Pokie, a cute penguin with a sword and some war crimes under his belt. He's definitely an edgelord compared to most other Starmage protagonists, but he also has a good character arc if you manage to find the secret boss. Even if you don't and end up getting the normal ending, you do get a nice twist reveal about his motivations. He certainly subverts the usual trope of the beast/birdman knight in shining armor, which caught me off guard as a result. I don't know if this was the case in the current version of the game, but I think Pokie should have gotten more violent CG scenes for some of his actions, such as the cutscene after the final boss on the normal route.

As for the antagonist, Sedrick, he's definitely not treated with the same gravitas as Vorakia, since he's the villain of a relatively more light-hearted story and he doesn't have the political manipulation skills that made Vorakia such an effective villain. Still, the fact that Floryn was alarmed by his archon summon implies that he, or at least his archon, could have become a threat rivaling Vorakia and the Ether Demons, but not much more is explained. At least it's satisfying to watch Pokie put him in his place.

As a warning, when I played and recorded the game, I found that the normal ending has context that is needed to better understand a short cutscene from the good ending. I have no idea if this is the case with the current release of the game, but I recommend seeing both endings, if only to gain appreciation for how you changed Pokie's life for the better.


The game features a CTB system similar to Octopath Traveler, and you can stun an enemy by hitting their weaknesses enough times. However, stunning them has no effect on your DPS and enemies tend to have only one or two weaknesses each, so it's mostly optional. It can be pretty handy against later bosses, since those bosses have 2-3 actions per turn.

Like in Heroes of the Seasons, you have a lot of skills that are instant cast, which means they don't use up your turn. This makes it more efficient to juggle buffs and debuffs, which you will need to keep track of in order to keep up with the later game difficulty. It does feel overall easier compared to Heroes of the Seasons, since you have four party members towards the end and you can use Pokie's Wrathful Edge to bump that up to 5 actions per turn. I personally like to have Wrathful Edge cast on Elya so she can spam support and healing skills to keep everyone alive through even the toughest bosses, which feels like the meta strat.

There are no towns in this game because you're in Limbo, but the traveling shopkeeper has fairly low prices so you can basically treat him like a walking inn anyways.

8.5/10
Overall, it's a fairly simple story, but it works and Pokie is a well-written edgelord. The gameplay is well-balanced, but if you want to create an artificial hard mode for yourself, you should designate someone other than Elya to be your Wrathful Edge target and go for a more glass cannon strategy.

The game starts with a brief segment where we see the tail-end of the war on Wutai, and there is some interesting examination in how imperialists try to justify their ambitions as being for the greater good of the conquered, as well as how the conquered rebuke them. Sadly, this plot beat never gets much examination afterwards, even in the missions that involve Wutai soldiers and Yuffie. It's implied that Zack somewhat sympathizes with them and that he tries to spare as many of their troops as possible, but that's about it.

The actual main focus is on how the Jenova experiments made Sephiroth, Genesis, and Angeal into powerful supersoldiers, but at the cost of also making them question their humanity due to their mutations. The aesop seems to be that ultimately, it's one's own choices rather than one's mutant powers that determine if one is a monster, since Angeal chose death because of his inner conflict, Sephiroth chose to embrace his inner monster, and Genesis chose to embrace whatever pride he has left in being a SOLDIER. Sadly, this is ruined by the awkward story pacing and Genesis's overuse of LOVELESS in his dialogue.

On the plus side, I did like Zack's interactions with Cloud and how supportive he is of the latter. Of course, this makes Zack's last stand and last words to Cloud even more heartbreaking, since while Cloud wants to uphold Zack's legacy, it's clear that he's not mentally prepared for it, causing him to essentially rewrite his own memories soon after taking the Buster Sword.


The combat is a fairly standard Action RPG and it functions properly for the most part. However, I wish the game would pause when selecting items or attack targets, since it can be hard to multitask in the heat of battle. Additionally, Blade Stance really needs to be able to be remapped on the controller, since pressing two face buttons can be very error prone.

Blade Stance itself feels very OP because you can grind it to massively increase the physical command bonus and even block most forms of damage. However, the process of grinding it can be confusing because the UI only shows total proficiency rather than the proficiency of each individual function of Blade Stance.

As for grinding, the game focuses more on stat grinding via Materia Fusion than leveling, since Zack's own stat growth is fairly weak by default. There are two issues with this:
1. You can actually reach the 100 stat cap on a materia very easily, making it hard to regulate how strong you can be compared to the game's current challenges. As a result, you'll feel either underpowered for the game's challenges or disgustingly overpowered depending on how you grind. However,the superboss Minerva is balanced for a maxed out build, so all that grinding will feel worth it in the end.
2. Due to the way materia can evolve without your consent if that materia is mastered, you are incentivized to raise some materia to 100 before actually using them.

Unfortunately, the materia mastery system relies on RNG because of the DMW slot machine system. You have to roll two of the same character while getting all of the same number to get the materia in that slot to level up. Not only do you have little control over which ones level up, it becomes impossible to prevent level ups on materias that you don't want to master yet for stat grinding purposes. IMO, it would have been better to allow the player to spend high amounts of SP to level the materia.

That said, it can be satisfying to find ways to min-max Zack in either physical or magical damage, especially with the SP Turbo materia. Though I do find that physical setups are better in the long run due to Blade Stance making physical commands way stronger.

The game features optional missions where Zack is transported to a generic map to look for treasure and kill a mandatory "boss" mob, but there are way too many redundant missions and redundant rewards. I do like that the missions have star ratings to denote which ones are harder, but I also feel like these ratings aren't always consistent. Additionally, I think that it would help if these ratings were also applied to story objectives so that the player has a better sense of when they should focus on the story instead of harder missions. I went too far into the optional missions, causing the main story to feel like a sidequest in my goal of destroying Minerva, the true end goal of the game in terms of combat.

7/10

A lot of the mechanics didn't age well and while the Reunion version did some things to fix that, it isn't enough IMO. Additionally, I feel like Genesis and his LOVELESS recitals makes it hard to make sense of the story, even though there might be an interesting character buried underneath that. I'm only giving it 7/10 because I liked the ending with Zack and Cloud.

I usually don't like to write reviews without finishing a game, but I ended up quitting this one at Floor 100 out of sheer despair at the pacing.


Stella is an adventurer who explores the Mythical Tower, which contains information about humanity's history with alchemy. While there is some kind of lore about how humanity is the underdog of the sapient species, there's the huge issue of how you receive these pieces of lore randomly, meaning you have to do multiple runs through the tower to get the full story. Additionally, the translation is full of grammatical errors and seems to be machine-translated, so it's going to be hard to appreciate whatever lore is there. Finally, due to the nature of the gameplay, story content is going to feel very far apart from each other.


The game is a roguelike that went too far with the rogue aspects IMO. The only things that get carried over between runs is your guard/minion levels and your knowledge score. The problem with this design is that you only gain knowledge upon leaving the tower, and not when you reach the next knowledge shop, which means even if you're doing well, you'll eventually hit a point where you can't get knowledge upgrades until you restart the climb. Additionally, the game is designed as a single 200 floor dungeon instead of as multiple smaller dungeons, which means to get back to where you were in terms of progress and power, you have to redo every section of the dungeon all over again. Finally, if my datamining if accurate, you will need over 600000 knowledge points to afford everything in a single run; maybe a little less than that if you're willing to skip certain upgrades.

There is an interesting crafting system where crafting a weapon also increases your character's proficiency with that weapon type. You also get to learn skills that are attached to that weapon, even if you don't equip it. However, the drop rates for crafting materials is fairly low and you will end up skipping equipment tiers for the sake of efficiency.

Like in Nocturne: Rebirth, enemies can drop magic cores that you can use to summon a copy of that enemy as an ally. However, the drop rate for those cores is fairly low, even for boss monsters, so you might not end up with the optimal team. Obviously, magic cores from earlier sections of the game will be weaker than those from later sections, but allies can be upgraded by crafting them multiple times, and at level 3 and 5, they learn new skills that will allow them to match or surpass their original enemy versions.

You can obtain Legacies at the start of the dungeon, after every boss, and randomly in chests. However, there is a clear hierarchy of which ones are the most useful to obtain, which means you'll likely save and load to guarantee the most meta setup. The Fortune Pot is definitely the best one for keeping up with crafting demands, so you should get that as early as possible if you're willing to save and load multiple times.

Granted, I'm not good with the roguelike/roguelite genre in general, but compared to Absented Age, the sense of permanent progression in Roll Over Princess feels very lacking. Absented Age at least allowed the player to keep equipment and divided the gameplay into multiple dungeons of reasonable sizes. Every run actually felt somewhat meaningful, since each piece of gear collected results in some kind of net benefit and you don't have to redo earlier dungeons just to do later ones.

5/10

The game has a okay story and some interesting gameplay mechanics, but the gameplay loop has way too much repetition due to how little progress is retained between each run and how multiple runs are required to keep up with knowledge point costs.