Recensioni recenti di Red

A very fun game (heavily inspired by Overwatch) killed off by its publisher and that probably won't be repurposed.

It was great while it lasted, farewell Gundam Evolution.

Well that is absolutely depressing.

It pains me to say it but for once, I'd say people saying it's censorship are right. Because there's no other way I can describe an update changing so much stuff that had existed for years (without leaving an option to choose whether you want to see it or not) out of nowhere in a move that looks like trying to appeal to a broader audience by toning things down. And especially now that the game's co-creators are out of the picture.

Skullgirls is an excellent fighting game at its core and it's oozing with personality, so I never hoped to write a negative review for it, but I don't want to recommend buying it now if this how Hidden Variable, Future Club, and Autumn Games see the way forward. It's not about the content that was removed, it's about the reasons why being inconsistent with the game's universe and the timing (why now of all times?). So this review won't be about its mechanics, tutorial, graphics, lore, music or whatever, but about how I think things went down the way they did.

Just before getting to that though, don't get me wrong: I will still play this game because I have a copy and it's still excellent, the changes don't fundamentally change the entire game. But I most likely won't throw more money their way.


I'm not going to make a history lesson about the early days of Skullgirls; you can look that up on Wikipedia, and I arrived late to the party (with Skullgirls Encore). What's interesting is the late days of the original Skullgirls 2nd Encore, before the Season Pass was a thing (which is arguably a different version and should have been rebranded). The game was basically done a first (second?) time in 2016 with Skullgirls 2nd Encore, then in 2017 the SG2E+ patch coinciding with the PS4 release and other updates arrived, plus Skullgirls Mobile's release the same year... After a minor patch for the main game in 2018 to simulate input lag, things went quiet again. Alex Ahad left Lab Zero during the development of Indivisible, so between 2015 and 2019; few details are available about that, but it seems he was contracted at least to make new artwork for Skullgirls Mobile and possibly for 2nd Encore after that.

Then out of nowhere, several things happened in 2020: first, a brand-new character was teased (but not named) for Skullgirls Mobile in February, then a Beta branch for a netcode upgrade popped up on Steam in April (the GGPOtest). About a month after the fix's official release, the Combo Breaker 2020 update came out (best known for introducing the SonicFox cameo) and updates continued until the middle of that year. Annie was officially announced in August and confirmed to be coming to 2nd Encore, but shortly after that, the great split happened: Mike Zaimont effectively became the sole employee of Lab Zero Games. Future Club was founded by former Lab Zero employees in September 2020, but the future of Skullgirls seemed uncertain. That was the end of the original 2nd Encore(+).

After that, you probably know the story: Season Pass 1 was announced in February 2021 and things started moving again with Future Club and Hidden Variable (developers of the Mobile game) at the helm. The 2nd Encore DLC was integrated into the main game, some data deemed inappropriate was expunged from the compendium and character profiles, new characters were released, then the infamous June 26 content update rolled in.


Looking back on all that, I think Skullgirls Mobile is what triggered the whole chain of events. I barely played it once in 2020 so I have to rely on hearsay, but I had already heard about some characters' origin stories being retconned (though I couldn't find the specifics again, especially amidst the noise the recent changes brought to the forums by the recent update...) and it seems SGM already featured altered elements even back when it first launched. However it's not clear whether this was a decision from the publisher(s) or from the studio working on it, same for the motives (creative differences, or trying to appeal to a wider audience?).

The gacha spin-off meeting or exceeding Autumn Games's expectations would also explain why they would finally let Lab Zero games make additional content for the actual fighting game. And remember the original teaser for a brand-new character in SGM? It was foreshadowing for Umbrella, not Annie, implying both were likely already in the works but there might have been a change of plans causing Annie to be first (possibly because she was "safer" to make as a first character for the new team). This in turn implies Lab Zero staff was likely trying to get the True End done, which also required Black Dahlia and Marie (and look, who did we get?). So things were already in motion, even though nothing was confirmed at least from the players' perspective.

It's also unclear whether Alex Ahad, who created the lore and characters and supervised the overall artistic direction, was consulted for or involved in the making of the mobile game, the Webtoon, and 2nd Encore Season Pass story modes. (To a lesser extent the same could apply to Mike Zaimont since he directed Skullgirls, but the other involved parties didn't part with him in the best of terms, so it makes sense he wasn't contacted again.) Which means that Season Pass 1, made by the mobile game's team (Hidden Variable) and former Lab Zero employees (Future Club) but without the two original directors, might effectively be an "official fanfiction" of Skullgirls (by a third party that took control over the IP without the original vision). I was worried it could be the case back when it was announced, and the latest patch only further reinforced that feeling with changes that seem tonally dissonant with the original game's setting. I won't elaborate on this here because it would be too long to post, but others (and no, I don't mean the angry "anti-censorship" crowd) have explained it better than me; the short version is that it's meant to be dark and gory with some sexy elements, yet they're actively removing things they feel might offend people.

Also, to people shouting about "censorship" anytime something is changed: no, I don't consider the animations that were edited back in 2015 to be censorship, as these edits had already been considered during the game's development and were done while the game was still being worked on by the original studio (and not over half a decade after the fact by parties that may or may not have been involved in Encore's/2nd Encore's development). I agree some of these could have been done better, and some of the changes even feel almost unnecessary since you really have to look for them, but that's just the way things are and it isn't really jarring. On the flip side, the Red Cross-related changes are censorship caused by external pressure, and there's little the studio could do against it at least when back when they were recoloured (I still think replacing Valentine's crosses by shurikens looks bad though, but that's my opinion).


TL;DR: Skullgirls as a game is great but the latest update feels like a slap in the face, and this is likely the fallout of a long series of events.

I wasn't initially that hyped about it, but it turns out Sonic Frontiers is VERY good. To give you an idea, it's been quite a while since I've last played anything for four hours straight in a single sitting (barring short breaks).
Sure, it's clunky in many ways (as is to be expected from a Sonic game) and generally feels a bit too easy in Normal mode, but the overall gameplay flow combined with more open areas works extremely well. There's always something to do, whether it's explore the world, pick stuff up, beat enemies up, play more traditional levels, or just randomly move around the game world wherever the winds (and rails) take you. The soundtrack is also very good and matches the game's vibes (as is to be expected from a Sonic game), even though some tracks are not fully my jam.

Pros:

• Excellent gameplay in open areas, but traditional levels are usually pretty fun and well-designed too.
  
• Tonnes of content and things to do and collect. Combined with addictive gameplay, "one more thing" is usually not actually just one.
  
• Great and fitting soundtrack, and one of the most extensive to date for the franchise. Also: metal in my mainline Sonic game?! Count me in!
  
• Sound design is also really polished and adds a lot to the atmosphere.
  
• Very good story and character interactions. I haven't played Adventure, but I've been told it gives strongly similar vibes while respecting the series's lore. And many games get referenced... You can even draw parallels with the Phantasy Star series.
  
• Absolutely gorgeous visuals for a Sonic game.
  
• Tutorials and challenges in loading times, it's not much but it helps hiding them.
  
• More content coming soon for free, woo!

Meh:

• Combat is a bit clunky, especially the camera.
  
• Controls in traditional stages can be a bit too sensitive. Caused my death quite a few times.
  
• Locked to 60fps, with cutscenes and some animations visibly locked at 30fps.
  
• Lots of small visual and gameplay glitches that detract from the experience.
  
• Pre-rendered videos can display artefacts such as aliasing, macroblocking or colourbanding.
  
• Still on pre-rendered cutscenes, they seem to have been rendered in-engine... I wish higher-end computers could just play them in-game.
  
• Some textures could have benefited from higher resolution versions, but thankfully the game still looks very nice in motion.
  
• Only three save files plus auto-save? Really?
  
• Very experimental in many ways and it shows, but it's not really a bad thing because the overall gameplay works.
  
• Missing DLC from the Japanese console version. Not necessarily a big deal, but still a shame it's not on PC.
  
• Normal mode generally felt too easy to me.

Cons:

• Very noticeable pop-in for many elements. Couldn't the PSO2 team have shared some of their tech and knowledge to prevent that from happening?
  
• Lack of balance in time trials. Getting an S rank is too easy on most stages (half of the time even without trying), but 1-2 for example is tough as nails and required using every trick in the book and taking seemingly sub-optimal routes to barely make it.
  
• Unpolished UI/UX. Some prompts take ages to accept inputs because the pop-up's animation is still playing, upgrading speed and rings is utter pain (you have to do it one level by one level, no slider or anything... urgh), accessing sub-menus in options or the pause menu requires selecting one first then getting into its options (even though you could just use bumpers to switch), irritating upgrade prompt anytime you can upgrade something (no I don't want your auto-combo), some useless UI elements can't be turned off (I don't need to know my stats at all times for instance)... The list probably goes on.
  
• The final Titan is too easy, thankfully the Sonic Team said they were working on improving it.
  
• The true last boss is only an actual fight in Hard mode, otherwise you just get a cutscene and miss out on... quite a lot actually. And there's nothing to tell you that in-game.
  
• Lack of granularity in graphical settings. Seriously, the engine itself seems very scalable but the game's settings are ridiculously poor, often amounting to "high or low".
  
• Denuvo. As someone who pays for all of the content I consume, I can only hope it will be removed at some point because it's supposed to protect the game's initial sales, but I won't hold my breath.

An excellent and very addictive game with a very "arcade" gameplay that I would recommend to newcomers and franchise veterans alike, as long as you can overlook some of its rough edges.



Update: I've finally finished the "Final Horizon" DLC, and it pains me to say it, but it's not great. None of the game's updates really are to be fair, but the "Another Story" chapter is massive compared to previous ones, so I was hoping it would be quality content. Unfortunately it feels like it lacked playtesting and had too big of a scope for an update, resulting in lots of elements seeming half-baked or unfair.

• The "new" characters are cool, but their gameplay is pretty restricted.
  
• Too many things on the map, some of it is even character-specific... New challenges can range from "okay" to "bland" all the way down to "absolutely awful". Also who thought of putting powered-up versions of all midbosses in there, especially against the new characters?!
  
• The new Cyberspace levels are pretty neat, but the side objectives can be an utter pain in the neck to complete.
  
• The towers are not fun to climb. One mistake and you might go all the way down, no checkpoints.
  
• Difficulty spikes bordering on unfair, you'll know when you get there (and yes, that includes the towers in a way). Sometimes, you'll even find that the best way to proceed past one is to abuse gameplay mechanics and glitches instead of playing fair.
  
• The last boss has one of the most obtuse boss designs I've seen recently. It requires the use of a gameplay mechanic that's never explained (to my knowledge), plus perfect parrying (meaning the higher the difficulty, the harder it is to parry). And that's not even talking about the many patterns that are flashy but ultimately pointless once you've already found a way to damage the boss.
  
• At least the soundtrack is still great and the Spin Dash is unlocked by default.

TL;DR for Another Story: it's quantity over quality. It was probably not playtested well enough, and as a result everything wants to kill you, and the best way to win is not to play. If the base game was a solid 8/10 (as much as I dislike giving scores), this would be a 5/10 at best. Beat the base game, try the DLC, and just drop it if you don't like it; you won't miss out on much aside from some world/lore building, and the alternative ending isn't even canon as far as I'm aware.

While it's great that the first VN in the Science Adventure series now has an official Steam release, do yourself a favour and wait for the CoZ patch. I wouldn't recommend reading it in its current state unless you really want a sub-par experience.

The lacklustre localisation and half-broken port based on a lesser version make it very difficult to recommend at the moment. We can all thank MAGES. for being cheapskates and producing a low-effort cashgrab instead of actually preserving Chaos;Head Noah with a faithful port and official localisation. Spike Chunsoft is just the publisher here, and translators might have been on a crunch for all we know, so don't take it out on them. Also I'm not saying not to buy it, just that the vanilla retail release is very flawed.

Wait for the Committee of Zero's patch including their localisation at the very least, and ideally for their port of the original Xbox 360 release. And of course get a legitimate copy of the version you're going to play.

A very fun fighting game to goof around especially if you like Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, though in my opinion it still lacks polish (despite being a port/remaster) which is painfully obvious when it comes to the balance department.


Gameplay is pretty easy to learn but not that easy to master, which is good for casual and competitive audiences alike. I haven't played 3D fighters much so I can't really compare, but it does play a lot like a 2D fighter set within 3D stages: characters move on a given 2D plane unless it "shifts" due to dodges or hitting the stage's limits for example.
What's not so good however is that many ultra attacks dish out downright massive amounts of damage (we're talking over half the opponent's life bar here), which as you may guess isn't really what I'd consider "balanced". Just to name one of the most egregious examples, (Part 5 spoilers) Prosciutto and Pesci have a true combo that's just absurdly powerful for what it is, with the ultra used as a combo ender.

I can't speak for anything beyond Part 5 but characters and stages seemed pretty faithful to the source material (both the manga and the anime, then), with lots of references. From I've heard Bandai Namco was actually careful about Part 6 spoilers and will only unleash full-blown ones for that part once the anime catches up, but at the same time Part 8 characters didn't get much-needed reworks despite the manga now being over (which wasn't the case back when the original ASB released). Mixed signals, but there's still some hope they'll take fan feedback into account.
Also, please don't shoot the messenger to give feedback: community managers can relay it, but they can't just comply and get an army of developers to immediately work on it or something. I'm leaving that here because I've heard there were lots of angry reactions to the full launch roster's announcement, despite the CM seemingly agreeing with the community and relaying suggestions.

Graphics are a mixed bag to me. The game doesn't look bad, and even still holds up pretty well in fact... Yet I can't help but think they could have gone the extra mile. Some textures show their age and low resolution (including static manga-like shading), some parts of some models could use a rework as well (character teeth might have looked better with either more or less detail, fingers definitely have that PS3-era look), and lighting and overall rendering is nothing spectacular.
All in all still a very nice-looking game, but it looks more like a port (which it is for the most part) than a proper remaster or new release.

Still on the topic of "mixed bags", the character select screen is very far from the best. Presets are absolutely unintuitive to register, you will always get the prompt to enable or disable auto-combos when selecting a character even if it's disabled in the lobby's settings, but worst of all you can't disable the countdown in private games. Also DLC characters weren't inserted within their respective part's section, but pushed to the side instead. Clearly, some improvements would be welcome.

I haven't played the original PS3 release but from what a good friend of mine told me, some characters' voices were re-recorded (whether it be due to a voice actor change, consistency with the anime, extra lines...). Just thought I'd mention that for people coming from the old version who don't already know; here's hoping there will be a mod to restore PS3 voices for whoever wants them.
Still on differences with the PS3 version: several character and stand names have surprisingly been restored/uncensored for this re-release, though not everything was and your mileage may vary depending on the localisation you're using. No more Jean-Pierre Eiffel for instance, Polnareff it is. (Part 4 spoilers) Sheer Heart Attack is also actually mentioned in the French localisation instead of just Heart Attack.

When it comes to netplay, many people are complaining that rollback netcode was not implemented. From my limited experience playing against the friend mentioned above however, the netcode is okay for a legacy one. And that was with him playing on Wi-Fi. Now granted, he isn't that far away from me geographically speaking, and we did run into a few occasional hiccups where the game had to slow down or pause to keep us both in sync. But it played very smoothly the rest of the time, with barely no input lag, despite running into problems on UNIclr for example. That doesn't seem to be the general experience however, so if you're worried about the netcode being a potential dealbreaker, I'd say: get the game, go online, try it out, see if it works for you, and refund if it doesn't.
Still, with how popular Jojo's Bizarre Adventure is and how small in scope this "remaster" is, I hope Bandai Namco will add rollback at some point.

Finally, a rant on game preservation. Asset quality is pretty sub-par from what I've seen, the opening video exhibits very noticeable artefacts and the entire game is really light for a 2022 release (less than 4 GB in total despite its content). This is particularly disappointing for the PC version where one would expect about everything to be less compressed. The game has content that's only unlockable in online mode, and that's fine for the moment but I seriously hope they have a backup plan to make missions available locally when they inevitably decide to shut the servers down. (Edit: Stuff that could be acquired via online missions is now available in the in-game shop. However some palettes and alternative costumes from the original game are still missing...) And Easy Anti-Cheat is in use, which just like DRM I don't look favourably upon when it comes to future-proofing (on top of it being mandatory to play).
Not very surprising and doubly so when you know stuff the publisher has pulled over the years, but alas there's little we players can do.


... And that's pretty much it. The game is great despite the nitpicks I have, though right now it's more for casual fun than actual competitive play. Hopefully they'll sort game balance out to make it a truly interesting fighting game for all kinds of audiences (because it really has potential to be balanced). Until then, have a beautiful Duwang everyone.

(Reçu comme cadeau d'anniversaire)

Have a Nice Death, c'est un peu comme si Rayman Legends, Hell Yeah! Wrath of the Dead Rabbit et Dead Cells avaient un bébé. C'est beau, c'est bien animé, c'est plein d'humour plus ou moins noir et de personnages sortis tout droit d'un dessin animé, c'est un rogue-like, et c'est Français. En bref : c'est du très bon. Je pense que j'aurai plus de choses à redire en progressant dans le jeu, mais pour l'instant rien de très grave à signaler.

En termes de gameplay, c'est un rogue-like bien rodé avec une recette certes assez classique mais qui fait le kafé (hack 'n slash / metroidvania dans des niveaux générés de manière procédurale, avec des équipements et améliorations passives à récupérer). Les mouvements et attaques sont plutôt fluides, même si j'ai l'impression qu'il manque un petit je-ne-sais-quoi pour les rendre encore plus satisfaisants. La difficulté est aussi bien dosée à mon goût, pas trop simple comme il se doit mais pas non plus trop brutale comme ça peut être le cas sur d'autres jeux ; à noter que ça dépend quand même beaucoup de la run et de l'équipement (c'est un rogue-like après tout).

Côté graphismes, on aurait pu me dire que c'est le nouveau jeu d'Ubisoft Montpellier et j'y aurais cru. Et pour cause, au moins une partie de Magic Design Studios en vient ! La direction artistique est excellente, tant en termes du design des personnages (très inspirés) que de celui des environnements (très complexes), et le tout est (bien) animé sur BEAUCOUP de plans différents pour le plus grand plaisir de vos mirettes malgré des tons généralement monochromes. Et ça reste lisible, en plus. Seul petit bémol, j'ai l'impression que tous les assets ne sont pas en bonne qualité, en particulier les animations de début/fin de combat de boss (et oui, même en 1080p).

Et maintenant pour une partie qui n'est pas forcément évoquée souvent dans les reviews... Le sound design est lui aussi très très bon. Les attaques ont du punch, et couplé aux effets visuels, ça s'entend et ça se voit que la Mort n'est pas là pour faire mumuse mais pour reprendre les affaires internes en main. La bande originale est aussi très bonne et colle parfaitement avec le ton du jeu, mais je ne l'ai pas trouvée tellement mémorable dans le feu de l'action... Peut-être que l'écouter à part me fera changer d'avis.

Enfin, l'histoire et les dialogues sont aussi diaboliquement bons. Entre des répliques grinçantes, des références et jeux de mots bien français, et un fond de commentaire social (enfin, fond... en fil rouge quoi), il y aura certainement quelque chose pour vous même si vous n'attendez rien de particulier. Malheureusement je n'ai pas encore joué à la version anglaise, donc je ne peux pas me prononcer sur la qualité de la traduction (ni sur les autres versions disponibles, non pas que je puisse les comprendre), en espérant qu'elle soit aussi drôle que la VF. D'où l'évaluation en Français, d'ailleurs. Et tant que je suis sur le lore et l'humour du jeu, j'avoue, j'aimerais un peu qu'il y ait un caméo ou une référence à Ash de Hell Yeah! parce que c'est dans le thème et que je suis un gros fan des jeux Arkedo (RIP).


En tout cas, un gros bravo à Magic Design Studios pour ce premier jeu qui, même pas encore sorti d'Accès Anticipé, est déjà chaudement recommandable.

EDIT : J'ai rien de particulier à redire sur le jeu maintenant qu'il est sorti, il est toujours aussi bon. Et il tourne très bien sur Steam Deck, même si je préfère l'avoir à 120fps sur mon PC fixe.

One of the most addictive rhythm games, now officially on PC in one of its best editions to date.

Let's get the very bad out of the way first:

• Occasional random stutters that will cause issues, since a consistent framerate is key in a rhythm game.
  
• Few graphical settings despite the engine being seemingly very scalable.
  
• The framerate limiter is wonky so the game will not run at a steady 60fps (64fps is where it usually sits; can be fixed through third-party means).
  
• Also, Denuvo (this is a game with hundreds of licenced songs so in a way I understand they'd want to prevent piracy, but still).

I really hope they'll fix technical issues and further improve this game instead of leaving it to rot, because it's just that close to being an excellent port.

Despite all this, its strong points make for an easy recommendation:

• The most complete game in the series in terms of songs and modules (Mega Mix tracks of course, but also most missing Future Tone tracks except four with DLC).
  
• You can switch to Future Tone graphics if you want (which is awesome).
  
• It supports a wide range of control schemes thanks to Steam Input, with appropriate button prompts and colours (but you can use the ones you prefer as well).
  
• The 60€ price tag for the "VIP Edition" is very fair considering the content you're getting.

If you're still on the fence because of the aforementioned downsides, I'd say to wait for patches to drop. Personally I discovered them shortly after buying the game, but my craving for more Project Diva was stronger than the refund option. I mean... It *is* my favourite rhythm game series.

Slight nitpicks, I wish the game had some more content and quality of life options:

• All tracks from previous games (though that's probably more down to licencing issues).
  
• A gallery with unlockable illustrations from past games (considering there's currently nothing to unlock if you have DLC).
  
• A feature to automatically set the recommended modules for a given song (scrolling through everything for every single song is painful).
  
• Future Tone graphics in menus for a more consistent experience.
  
• Minor bug fixes (Future Tone graphics are currently slightly too bright, Catch The Wave in FT mode looks weird...).
  
• More graphical options (higher render scale for built-in supersampling, even higher quality settings...).
  
• A "Classic Mode" with old maps and gameplay (F 2nd anyone?).
  
• Alternative PVs based off F/F 2nd for select tracks.
  
• Maybe also "Room Mode" and "Edit Mode".
  
• Arbitrary refresh rate support, as long as it doesn't break everything (because I've seen that happen in too many games).

Really, I think there's potential for Mega Mix+ to be the definitive game in the series.


An excellent rhythm game in a very complete package at a compelling price, with a currently flawed but still very playable PC version. You might want to wait for patches fixing at least the stuttering, but aside from that I still highly recommend it.

Just as with Persona 4 Golden, I'm really glad this was finally released on PC... Except this time there are even more issues, some of them being hard to overlook.

• The game's internal resolution seems locked at 1080p, and the game seemingly uses nearest neighbour scaling. What this means is that not only sprites are incorrectly rendered (since they were made for 720p), the entire game will look like a blocky mess at any resolution that's not 1080p. They really need to at least give an option to set the internal resolution.
  
• Framerate drops and skips in several places, even in freaking menus. It could be streaming issues as seen in BBCF, a poor implementation of Denuvo, or just an overall lack of optimisation. Thankfully it doesn't happen often in actual gameplay (where it can be a real issue), but having stutters on the title screen, after selecting Training mode and on the character select screen doesn't give the best first impression.
  
• Sound issues, with the sound being overall pretty quiet then suddenly some sound effects are way louder than the rest.
  
• An Arc System Works staple: poor video encoding. This time, they actually used WMV3 and WMA Pro, but set the framerate to 30fps (which you shouldn't do when dealing with animations made at 24fps) and forgot to increase the bitrate for most videos. The only okay-ish ones are the P4U2 openings, and even then 10000 kbits/s isn't exactly excellent even for 720p.
  
• Still about videos, there are lots of duplicated files, like even lower-quality versions (why?!) and separate files for English and Japanese voices even when there's no difference on the video itself.
  
• Mandatory comment about Denuvo. Especially when Atlus will likely never tell Sega to remove it, or conversely.

Then on top of that you have issues other users have been experiencing, like the InitRenderer bug, and it makes it even harder for me to recommend this port in its current state.

Now there *is* one good point I'd like to mention despite all of this, and that's the fact the game supports different refresh rates in fullscreen mode, meaning you can keep 120Hz for example. It doesn't change much since the game still updates at 60fps, but the screen updates faster, resulting in slightly lower input lag. However keep in mind you'll have jitter (albeit small) at refresh rates that are not even multiples of 60Hz.

Overall though: wait for patches, or until rollback is implemented. Hopefully the port should be better by then...


EDIT: Remote Play Together is back! Guess there were issues with it, or that someone pressed the wrong button.

January 2023 edit: I'll have to go back to the game and see what changed, but from what I've seen and heard it seems much better now. Content-wise it feels actually decent for the asking price, gameplay-wise things have apparently massively improved with the patch that added Neco-Arc (not because of the character but because of meaningful gameplay changes), and in terms of port quality it's apparently pretty stable (though still not perfect, for example it's still stuck at 720p). In the meantime my review is still here for reference to see how bad things were at launch.


Melty Blood Type Lumina is a great fighting game, its PC port is not. Actually any version that's not the original PS4 version has issues. In the current state of things I'm recommending the game more than the PC version, really.

Pros:

• Retains most of what makes Melty Blood, Melty Blood while giving it a fresh coat of paint and some changes to mechanics. This means round start positioning, lots of mobility, fast-paced action, Blood Heat mode...
  
• HD sprites close to Under Night In-Birth's style. It even looks like there’s some extra shading compared to UNIcl-r? Could be the lighting for all I know. Stages also look great.
  
• Rollback netcode. It seems to be a pretty good implementation, but updates also seemingly caused issues that weren’t there before.
  
• Seems pretty balanced overall.

Not pros nor cons:

• Auto-combos on every attack button: pushes players to clean their inputs up not to trigger them, but can make the overall execution tighter.
  
• MBTL’s shield is more of a hype / comeback mechanic: it looks fancy and can lead to mind games, but is not necessarily practical unless you’re desperate or know exactly what you're doing.
  
• Small-ish roster: fewer match-ups to learn, but pretty restricted overall.
  
• No Windows 7 / 8.1 compatibility: apparently all that would be required is a single DLL, but I can understand not supporting OSes for which support has been dropped or close enough.
  
• Singleplayer is kind of limited in terms of content compared to some other games, but this one is clearly geared towards multiplayer anyway.
  
• Characters that share the same sprites (maids and their individual variants) or the same base character (Arcueid / Red Arcueid), giving the impression the roster’s size was artificially increased.
  
• Saber being there while legacy characters were excluded for story reasons (I know she was a test character and eventually just needed some extra polish, but still).
  
• Built-in character customisation mode, but it’s unfortunately pretty limited with only three custom palette slots and a bunch of presets to mix-and-match.
  
• Not as over-animated as MBAACC. Still looks and plays great in my humble opinion.

Cons:

• Bugs and crashes galore, both offline and online (I ought to compile a list of everything that's been found on the forums at some point).
  
• Internal resolution locked at 720p, with 720p assets. This is a new game, on PC, not a port of an older console game. Still playable, but frankly disappointing.
  
• No native DualShock 4 support. Actually DirectInput controller support in general seems to be broken despite apparently existing going by the game’s credits.
  
• Decent tutorial but lackluster mission mode, not really relevant or challenging for the most part. Some Intermediate missions give a quick overview of bread-and-butter combos and Expert ones are proper (but not always practical) combos, the rest is mostly basic stuff or close to “mash to perform”. Also challenges for Hisui and Kohaku together don’t show their combined potential for whatever reason.
  
• Only one station in player rooms, meaning only one match can take place at a time.
  
• Poor video compression (yes, I still care about this).
  
• No proper SOCD on keyboard, making key priority weird if not backwards.

All in all, a great fighting game, but a very subpar PC version.
Let’s hope French-Bread will notice and fix the issues, even though it doesn’t look that good with the latest patch nearly breaking the netcode...

The complete Utawarerumono series is finally available on Steam and I want to recommend it, so here goes my review even though I still need to finish two of the three games. It's one of my favourite series due to its great story and storytelling (with both comedy and dramatic scenes done right), impressive world-building, and actual (and good) gameplay. So if you like VNs or RPGs and don't mind slow burners, here's an awesome VN/TRPG hybrid.

The first game is Prelude to the Fallen (or Lullaby to the Dying) and works as a standalone game, Mask of Deception is an indirect sequel that's more enjoyable with knowledge from the first game, and Mask of Truth is the finale and requires having played both. I'd recommend playing through them in order now that they're all available, especially with Prelude being self-contained. DLC characters are completely optional, and in Prelude's case I'd even advise against buying them since they're related to MoD and MoT and might spoil things. By the way, don't look anything up about MoT lest you get spoiled.

Also, you might have heard about a 18+ version. It's because Utawarerumono was first released as an eroge on PC in 2002 at a time where sex scenes were mostly added to sell more copies; an improved version without H-scenes was released on PlayStation 2 in 2006 and served as the basis for all subsequent re-releases of the game, including this one which is a remake in line with the sequels' style. So basically all versions tell the same story (with extra characters in the "console" re-release), and such scenes were not the main focus in the original release. And worry not, actually relevant ones are still referred to. The sequels however were made without 18+ content in mind due to being made for consoles and Aquaplus moving away from adult-only games.

While I'm at it, if you're considering watching the anime instead of playing the game, it's a good enough alternative for the most part. Lemme explain: the adaptation of the first game is overall good and gets most important plot points, but doesn't include elements added in the enhanced version and omits some others that ended up being relevant in the sequels. OVAs however *do* contain characters that were added in the 2006 re-release. Then you have The False Faces, which roughly follows the story of Mask of Deception and is enjoyable if you've played it but is in no way an acceptable substitute due to the sheer amount of changes. Ah, and don't worry about not finding a HD version of the original anime, many shots and 3DCG elements actually held up better in SD; the rest looks great in HD though.

Finally, a word about the port. It is unfortunately 720p and 30fps, just like the original console version, however it does not impact the game's quality. I feel like 3D segments in particular would benefit from being rendered at higher resolutions, though other elements might scale poorly and there's a chance the UI was drawn at that resolution. I won't complain about the framerate lock though, since I've seen way too many games end up broken when trying to reach higher framerates. And more importantly, the port has PC-specific features bringing almost everything you might expect from a VN/RPG on PC (yes, that includes proper mouse and keyboard support), as well as customisable button prompts (say, to use DualShock 4 icons). They even added an auto-save feature during battles to all three games and polished the translation, fixing typos as well as awkward sentences (like the infamous "Who the ♥♥♥♥ are they?").


I'll massively update this review once I've finished this game. In the meantime, I hope it helps introducing people to the series and clearing things up!