Tanioka legutóbbi értékelései

It kinda screws me up how I passed on this game some years ago. I had considered buying it at the time, but didn't really think it was worth it - after Undertale and DDLC, the very thought of playing yet another "indie piece that relies on certain vibes and Windows trickery" seemed... eh. Y'know?

Had I known back then that it was nothing of the sort and that it's actually one of the most touching RPG Maker pieces in, dare I say, history... I dunno. I probably would've kicked myself a dozen times over or something. Covering it without spoiling much is a bit difficult, but in short, think of it as a half-puzzle, half-walking simulator with some of the most technologically intricate mechanics ever seen in an RPG Maker entry. These mechanics, along with a story built on double takes, second guessing, and an overall sense of dread / mystery, form a story that contains a great level of intrigue and poignancy over the course of some 6 to 12 hours. (Your mileage may vary, depending on how much you want to discover. Or if you're simply a completionist.)

Strongly recommended. A bit slow overall, but I implore you to treat that as a quality and not as a downside. Take your time. Read. Memorize every little thing that makes you chuckle, makes you a lil' sad, interests you; whatever. Treat it as an experience.

Your memory is ultimately the only thing that keeps it alive, after all.

Went in expecting a relatively unsettling boonies-oriented VN. Came out feeling like sh!t at two in the morning and wondering if I should go deeper or just leave it as-is. (Even the VN acknowledges it's disturbingly dark in a post-ending "after-party" scene.)
Very impressive, but absolutely not for the faint of heart - or just folks that get startled / uncomfortable pretty easily.

Subjective guidelines:
• If you're feeling like a man, read at 1024x768 or fullscreen and hit Auto. I went through it at my own, possibly overly-speedy pace, but when it's got control of the steering wheel, it builds up tension pretty damn well.
• Original > revamped sprites. They may seem silly surface-level, but believe me, the jankiness of the art at least slightly improves the tension in certain scenes.
• Go through the tips. A bit of world-building never killed anyone, y'feel me?

Now if you'll excuse me, I gotta get something to drink. My throat's been a bit dry and itchy for a while now...

Still in the considerably early stages of the game, so while I don't think I'm ready (or qualified) to discuss the finer details and intricacies of it, I think I can easily say this is GOTY material at its finest. I recall someone saying that Softproducts spent a great deal of effort in making everything work and fluid, followed by spending twice as much effort in making it look like there was... no effort in the first place. Or something to that effect. I thought of it as a joke at the time, but I get it. God, I totally get it now.

Yes, it's deeply abrasive. Yes, it's fundamentally wrong. And yes, it is, at times, confusing as all hell. But it all just feels so natural and well thought-out.

It's a thing of disgusting beauty, and if it doesn't win Best Visual Style, I'm giving up on the whole vidya industry.

Don't trust the playtime - I went through this beaut through a not-quite-legal copy and eventually gave in. Roughly 25 hours for the entirety of Transmitter and Placebo at a steady pace.

What's there to say? A handful without ruining a first-time experience, that much I can say. The Silver Case is SUDA51's arguable magnum opus - and although the localization doesn't carry all of the JP-specific nuance and the "gameplay" (or whatever there is of it) is jank and a fair bit tedious more often than not, there's still a lot to appreciate, much to love and obsess over. It's a visual novel that delves into the depths of a corrupt society with an equally corrupt set of strangely-scattered forces policing or ruling over it. But it also isn't. Except it mostly is. If that doesn't make a whole lot of sense, good! That's the tone you're gonna face for roughly all 25 hours. Confusing, strange, and outright bizarre at times, if not always - but intriguing, and almost... inviting, in a sense.

Revealing more of what's to come or what lies beneath feels wrong. TSC favors mystery and a feeling of sickened, but curious interest. So instead of diving further into it, I'd like to finish up with a couple of tips:
• TSC is split into two parts: Transmitter and Placebo. You'll unlock Placebo after case#1 in Transmitter. Once you do, play them alternatively (therefore Tr#1, Pl#1, Tr#2, Pl#2, etc.). They both happen at roughly the same time through different POVs.
• There will be several sections in which things might get boring, or in which things get a fair bit more tedious movement-wise. Grin and bear that tedium. You will be rewarded. Especially if it's done a good job in piquing your interest in general.
• Check the options. Switch to the original UI and OST. You can leave the rest to stay as-is, the remaster's text speeds and whatnot are more reasonable.

It's imperfect. It teases the reader more than it should at times. And without a couple of replays, some of the fine details may not click with the reader. But there really is nothing quite like it... Well, except for its sequel, anyway.

God is in the cables. Believe in the net.
10/10.

Don't let the slow start and weird pacing put you off - when Persona 4 gets into the swing of things and lets you do things at your own pace, it immediately becomes a blast in its own way. Moreso with Golden; my first experience with this beaut was an 80-hour long playthrough on a 640x360 PS2 emulator, and even then, it was still a hell of a blast and an equally great experience. And yet, even after knowing the quirks and what lies behind its mysteries, things still feel fresh, comfy and new.

At the time of editing this review, I've beat the base game's first final boss and got up to January. Not gonna spoil the whos and whats, but if you've played P4 before, you probably know who I mean already.

So, how does it play out? Well, there's several niceties here in comparison to P4/PS2, some of which I was aware of prior to playing and some which I only discovered after playing for a while.

In no particular order, these improvements / additions include:
• A somewhat expanded Social Link system, in that your party members can - at certain ranks - unlock new "S.Link skills," which may or may not be useful. It's still quite nice to have them around, in any case.
• Several special attack additions, such as
- Cavalry Attacks, which can be executed by members who aren't even on your current squad
- 'Duo' Attacks, which can be executed by two specific members in your squad (i.e. Chie and Yukiko or Naoto and Kanji)
- Rise being able to improve the strength of an All-Out attack at random times
• New areas, including Okina City where the player can visit a clothes shop (yes, those are a thing now, they're great) and Cafe Chagall in which the player can obtain a Skill Card from one of his Personas, and Shichiri Beach where the player can fish for larger catches, enable one of his Personas to unlock a skill much earlier, or simply swim, which increases Courage (and Understanding if it's raining outside).
• New Game+ difficulty options are now available from the beginning, meaning you don't have to go through one more cycle if all you want is to just decrease or increase a certain parameter.
• A revised Shuffle Time - less random and more instant, leading to overall better catches.
• Rebalanced members. And yes, this means that Rise and Naoto are much, much more useful than before. In fact, it'd be wise to level Rise's S.Link up as much as possible, as more of her useful abilities get unlocked via that.
• And more: more music tracks, new S. Links (one which leads to an entirely new ending and one more dungeon, from what I understand), more voice lines, a garden that allows cultivation of food with various effects (HP/SP increase, ailment removal, etc.), nighttime exploration, a pub in which you can trade gems for weapons like in P3P, and God knows what else.

I'm not gonna lie, I expected a bit of disappointment at times after playing the original and being used to its... simplistic nature, so to speak. But I'll be damned if this wasn't the nicest (re)experience I've had with a JRPG in a while.

Buy it. That's all I can really say. If I could, I'd gladly give Atlus another 20€ just to thank them for dropping this out of the blue and giving me something to twiddle my thumbs with for a long while.

Originally, I wrote a review for Survive when I had no more than 4 hours sunk into it, saying that it was pretty nice, but ultimately left me with just a bit of skepticism as to where it could go. Another 26 hours later, and I can safely say; I feel at home with this game.

Story
Again, before we go anywhere with this, we have to touch on the elephant in the room; it's hard to describe Survive as a Metal Gear game. I finished MGS and MGS2 a good couple of years ago, delved into the lore of the other games and sunk a little over 230 hours into MGSV this year, so you can bet your ass that I'm nothing if not biased to an extent when it comes to how Survive handles its story. But as it turns out, I'm absolutely okay with it. The early-game story ties itself more with MGSV, but ultimately goes in its own direction shortly after. It's important to note that the early parts of the story are there more for the sake of getting you familiar with the surrounding, the characters and the tone. When it sets all that in stone - things get wild. It definitely has this kind of dumb, yet charmingly loveable B-movie style to itself as it goes on, and much as it doesn't fit with how seriously MGS tends to take itself, it fits in its own world.

Gameplay
The bread and butter of Survive. Unsurprisingly, Survive's core value lies in the name; while there are several things that the player takes care of, story-wise, the one thing you'll always find yourself doing is gathering materials, hunting animals, pulling off Salvage missions, etc. On its own, it does sound a bit tedious, but that only really goes for early-game.
This, I think, is the largest issue when it comes to some of the negativity that Survive gets; a majority of people give it sh*t for being 'drawn-out' and 'boring', all usually within the beginning of the game or within no more than a couple of hours of in-game time. You will have to put some effort into levelling up and progressing in those first few hours. But after you get over that hoop, great things await - higher difficulties with vastly greater rewards on Salvage missions, an arguably much more fun experience in co-op, and a surprising feeling of control and power when you get a hang of how Wanderers work, what to do in certain situations, how to strategically use items for the best possible defense, and so on and so forth.

Graphics (et al.)
Still not much to say in this department - if you've seen or played MGSV, it's pretty much the same deal, though with an additional, Silent Hills-esque touch to the whole thing - i.e. the occasional reliance on light when you're in the Dust, or just the whole idea of a large fog enveloping you later on. There are several things and assets taken from V which is to be expected, but after a lengthier playthrough, I'd say the team at Konami handled the usages well without making it feel like a copy-paste of sorts from V to Survive. Both the Afghanistan and Angola-Zaire maps make a return, though without having a solid idea of where each location is like you'd see and get a feel for in MGSV, things feel surprisingly new to an extent.
Aside from that, the iDroid has been expanded on by quite a bit, and while it does feel a bit weird at first, getting used to it is a quick process. I suppose the only thing I could be still miffed about in this section is that they didn't really expand a whole lot on the avatar creation system in terms of additions or improvements, but there's a fairly expansive clothing / gear system to make up for it, so points for that.

Overall
In only a couple of days of on-off playing, Survive easily became one of my favorite grindy games of this decade. It's gotten up to the point where it disappoints me knowing that the negativity it got has made it less accessible to new players, seeing as there's still a mild hivemind of hate against Konami. But in reality, it's a game that has its fair share of soul - a cheesily solid story, gameplay that feels tight as hell in spite of its mild changes (especially if you're coming from V), and rewards that actually feel worthwhile and only accelerate that kind of "one more round" feeling. And, if nothing else, I would only like to implore you to reconsider if you've had a grudge against this game due to the climate that surrounded it at the time, but generally appreciate survival-oriented vidya.
For me, Survive is addictive, enjoyable and certainly one hell of an adrenaline rush with the right friends and the right mood. I expect many more hours sunk into this as time goes on.

9.5/10
Get it on a sale with a friend. Makes for fun times, albeit occasionally frustrating in an exhilarating way.