Recent reviews by Draken/Eitan

This is a well done release of the DS Castlevania games. Performance is good on SteamDeck too. I wish the other Castlevania collections were up to this level of quality :)

This game is neither a masterpiece or a great cinematic work the way the trailers claim, but it is an enjoyable game for me.

I originally played this on another platform, but I like to have this on my PC. I tried to play today but it does not even start.

I see that there is a fan guide to mitigate this, but I see that this is a long term ongoing issue. Its again a typical SE move. Hugely unprofessional to leave a game abandoned like this.

And worse, its been on sale recently. You would think that if they decide to put on sale, they might decide to make it work as a minimum?

Edit: Some people say the problem was fixed recently. I still have issues launching.

Thsi is a Decent A-JRPG, that was a fun game to play and complete. But it is not perfect, and while it was fun to play, it was too short. It would have been much better if there were several additional levels, and more expansion on the story - some points of the story seemed rushed, like there was cut content in between sections.

Technically, there were several issues too. Most notable was the draw distance being offf, tho that mostly only affected scenes in fields of flowers (and this was only 2 zones). Additionally, The game had issues with stutter in any close-up in cutscenes, probably due to the detail of the hair on characters - it did not need that level of detail for the art style, and was not worth the performance hit. Additionally, several spells and skills would cause some stutter in battle. Overall fps was stable apart from those exceptions.

Essentially, a decent game that could have been better.

Its good to have these games in one complete package.

However, the controls feel, overall, just a little bit off. I played these games so much over the years from when they were new and on various platforms since. Due to all of this muscle memory, its clear that there are differences, sometimes subtle, sometimes more obvious, in the controls.

And there are several glitches, especially in Sonic 3K - varying from getting stuck in terrain to scripted triggers not activating.

This package could have been so much better but I'm finding it difficult to recommend right now. I may update after the upcoming promised patch becomes a real thing.

Edit: Mission mode is more fun than I anticipated :)

Chrono Cross is a wonderful game from a wonderful age of PlayStation 1 j-RPGs. It is a fun game beloved by many.

However, this port is far far far from wonderful. In typical SE fashion, it is released without proper optimisation on a poorly configured emulator and with woefully badly "upscaled" pre-rendered backgrounds.

If I did not buy the key from an office 3rd party store with awkward refund policy, I would have refunded this. Square Enix can do better but can not be bothered to invest even a small amount of effort. Worse, even when fans put the effort and made mods to either fix or mitigate the issues, those posts get deleted.

My first experience with a bad Square Enix port would be with Final Fantasy 13 - to this day runs terrible without any patches to speak of. Since this, Square Enix ports have been hit or miss - and mostly miss, like with this release.

Wait until things get fixed before buying - but dont hold your breath! That can take decades.

I knew that there are problems with this port (Probably the Switch port), but thought that the 75% sale would make it worth it. I was wrong - this release is worse than the Castlevania Advance Collection.

Controller problems and issues with default settings - there are no ways ingame to change these settings, which is a basic feature for PC gaming for decades. Once I launched a game, I could find no way to get back to the launcher menu.

I am a long term fan of Castlevania - I played them all on their original releases. That makes this release a pity, and a missed opportunity. This would otherwise be such a wonderful collection, but I cannot recommend it in its current state, even on sale. :(

It's a wonderful game with such a refreshing story that often hints at satire of genre - but in a good way.

However, there is no way that one can justifiably recommend this terrible pc build that has not been updated in years - almost treated free abandonware by the development team apart from, thus far, undelivered claims that they are working on a patch both years ago and again recently as a lazy attempt to promote the remake of the other NieR game.

After so long, of course it is a great game! Very fun. Definitely see why it's 18+. Love that giggle physics!

Excellent game with an immersive and well crafted game world.