Kelrycor の最近のレビュー

A very lovely puzzle adventure like Moss, but with no fighting.


Difficulty  ★★☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆ (no deaths)

This is a Alice in Wonderland medley good-night-story, with a lot of easy yet interesting puzzles which perfectly fit into VR. The controls are similar to Moss. The 120 Hz upgrade (if you have a capable VR headset for it) does make the animations very smooth.

The game itself I beat in just 3 hours, with all collectibles and achievements. Which is not much, but considering how much fun I had with this lovely game, I totally enjoyed every minute and don't regret anything.

Only downside is the very unspectacular ending, which does fit to a good night story as you want that little child to sleep rather being too excited or upset.

If you search a nice and immersive VR experience for the evening, this is totally the game you are looking for.

A F-Zero type of game with a good concept and appearance.


Difficulty  ★★★★★★★☆☆☆ (depending on the fastest race class)

I am not the kind of person playing racing games, but this VR experience I had to try out.
The concept is totally fun and the control work do work out mainly. Music, style and gameplay is totally fine.

Officially the game reached final release state as I update my review, but it does not feel like this.

Unfortunetaly, for the time being, some things are still ruining the experience of the game:
1. random invisible walls can occasionally stop you dead for several seconds
2. random invisible objects can bounce you far off track
3. no ingame settings to reset a race or to return to menu
4. known Index controller haptic issue causes the controllers go crazy
5. dev decided to void all my progress done so far and changed the racing courses (even some of the good ones)

Wth the dev did not put an ingame option for disabling the haptic is a riddle to itself. He knew about this common Index issue because I pointed this out to him, and he just continued to ignore it. Would have been an easy thing to just add an option for deactivating the rumbling ingame. Because if this and the progress loss I will give this game a thumb down indefinitely this time.

Old examples (from EA version) of haptic letting the controller go crazy and totally kick you off the tracks:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Kzei_YWlXU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9iK0CcweVro

Workaround:
SteamVR -> Settings -> Controller -> Change Controller Layout -> Active Controller Layout (change to customized) -> Change Layout -> Add Haptics -> remove any haptic bindings and save it to your default layout

Half Life: Alyx is the current state-of-the-art reference of how adventures and FPS VR titles should be right now.


Difficulty  ★★★☆☆☆☆☆☆☆ (even on the highest difficulty too easy)

HL:A is the presentation game of the Valve Index and especially made for those controllers. Still you can play it with other controllers.

The story itself a quite good and promising for further sequels, yet it was predictable and a bit short.

A lot of good game mechanics and VR elements is added:
* like writing and painting with Eddings
* wear hats, stuff or masks
* crush empty tin cans or smash bottles
* throw grenades by really throw them
* realistic reload of weapons
* 3D hacking mini-games
* FPS fights with different weakspots (not only the head)
* this game does support mods

To spice up the campaign, there is a Campaign+ mod. Also a nice Bow and Arrow mod for another playthrough. A lot of new maps from the community that keeps the game alive. Awesome.

Way to go Valve. Hope the next Half Life game will also be a VR title!

Hint: there is a fan-mod that lets you play this title non-VR. Yet this kills a lot of the immersion the game offers in true VR. If you have the possibility or the money to play it in VR, I strongly recommend to do this to experience the game the way it was designed for.

Beat Saber is the perfect example how games can profit hugely from VR.


Difficulty  ★★★★★★★☆☆☆ (fair difficulties for anyone, difficult if you go for th achievements)

Beat Saber is a music-rythm-game and does not have a story at all. It is a VR only title and it is necessary to have VR controllers to play it. It is suitable for anyone and does provide a lot of fun to play solo, party or online challenge mode. On higher difficulties it can be a fitness workout and a great way to do some interesting ways of sports in a time you cannot due to lockdowns.

Hit and slice blocks with one or two beat sabers to awesome musis? Thanks to the 3D-VR immersion I quickly felt like a Jedi Knight cutting through hundreds of enemies, only much better - Yoda would have been proud of me ;)

Only downside I found yet: the bonus music packs are too expensive.

Conclusion: a must have if you own a HMD with controllers. I cannot imagine a music-rythm-game can get any better at this point.

Will of the Wisp (WotW) is the sequel to Blind Forest (BF) and is continuing the storyline.


Difficulty  ★★★★★★★☆☆☆ (was a little easier than the prequel)

Good things:

* awesome graphics, much better than the already good prequel had
* a lot of lovely details (eg the Moki fireplace in the mountains, blow out and ignit the fire again to get a reaction on both things)
* Ori's movement sets are well made (swinging, handstand on the poles, etc.)
* cool bossfights with predictable attack pattern (makes them not too unfair)
* very cute forester, like the Moki
* takes metroidvanias to another level
* a village that you can evolve by concluding sidequests

Bad things:

* completely new fight system (hammers, blades and bows and arrows are to human-like for the world of Ori)
* all foresters can now speak, yet the main protagonists cannot
* some story plot holes (I am fine with it, but a lot of people aren't)
* story spoiler!: story idea is stolen from Seiken Densetsu (Secret of Mana) series
* WotW is a copycat of Hollow Knight (HK), this was uncreative and not necessary:
1. walls that are destoyable only from one side (mechanics and the looks is identical)
2. also a directional weapon fight system
3. also weapon training
4. the Spirit Shard system is similar to the Talisman system of HK
5. Cartographer Lupo is a copycat of Cornifex in HK
6. introduction of a money-system and shops (in the prequel you had to collect everything)
7. the healing ability is competely similar to HK on-field healing ability
8. number 7 does make bossfights similar to HK bossfights in which you have to sometimes heal during a fight to endure longer
* still a lot of insta-deaths (they have stolen a lot from HK, why not the avoidance of insta-kill needs?)

Some few peoples are hating the fact of the many plot holes, I don't care not much about it. The story is still good, reasonable and comprehendable at the end. It may be a little bit too predictable - I was expecting this end already for the first part BF. What I hated really, and very few people seem to complain about this fact, was the many elements stolen from Hollow Knight. Moonstudios sacrificed their unique kind of game design from BF to introduce many human-like elements which aren't fitting into the world of Ori. Human weapons? The new fight system does make fun, yet they could have done much better with an advanced one from BF, which is a more mystical one. In addition every forester can now speak, but the main characters cannot. Why? This is an unlogical bad design decision. I would have understood that only the huge forest half-godlike creatures can speak, but would have kept the communication with small creature to hand-signs, body-talk and emotional reactions. A money and shop system? Would be better having a completely trade-an-item-against-an-ability-or-weapon thing with foresters. Like the trade sidequest thing.

Moonstudio's uninspiring and uncreative approach in making this sequel is the worst thing for me and the reason I had to take some stars in my judgement. Still this game is a masterpiece in the Metroidvania genre and a must-have, whether you like the ending or not. I enjoyed it a lot.

Note: Moonstudio is considering a sequel or spin-off of Ori at this point. They seem to be some untold plotlines left. I am looking forward to it.

Game mechanic is just broken.

First, everything is way too easy. Catch ships, duel by spam keys to exploit sudden wins, and war canoe everything.
As you divide your plunder (as the game encourages you to do) you are able to advance to higher difficulties, until you reach the highest one Swashbuckler. More challenging, but fine, you can collect/buy items which make you better overtime.

As you reach the age of 36, your fighting skill does decrease DRASTICALLY. You get slower, making it more difficult to win sword duels. Until you reach a certain point you cannot even win with a quick rapier, fencing skill, balanced swords, anything. You have to wreck all ships (smash sails with chains, kill crew with grapes) before being able to dare to enter the ship. Duelling becomes UNPLAYABLE until you decrease the difficulty back to Apprentice (lowest of 5 difficulties) if necessary by dividing your plunder again and again.

Dividing your plunder is the worst thing you can do. You loose 50-90% of your money, all ships except the flagship, 6 months of liftetime, take the risk that you have to retire for good. There is absolutely no positive reason to do it. Main issue here, the lost money you had was your guarantee that your crew is not mutying all the time. So you run in the second big problem the game has: you can't even recruit enough men later on in a tavern to replace the losses you get everytime you leave a port because crews run away. Which makes it IMPOSSIBLE to ever sack a city again (you need a lot of men for it).

This game was big fun UNTIL I ran into those two problems which absolutely do feel broken. I understand that Sid Meier Pirates tries to let you live a pirates life, but reducing you to a total jerk over time and stop you dead achieving anything important again, is just RIDICULOUS. Really? You want to force me to decrease difficulty to be able keep it at a challenging level? This is not a game mechanic I can support.

And this game does cheat on you. You wreck a ships sail, but before you can grape shoot the crew down, the enemy ship surrenders. But, if you must still fight the captain (this goes for a quest ship), suddenly all of his left crew (let it be 180 men which surrendered before) will fight again! Making you loose the fight due to the dueling balance bug. Nicely done, game. If you can't win fair and square, just set up a trap.

So if you even dare to play this game, never divide your plunder, and never advance to a higher difficulty. The game hates you later for doing so.

Sadly, this could have been the best pirate game out there. It failed at the very end by trying to be too realistic than rather be a game. Unofrtunetaly this game is not refundable anymore for me.

How Gearbox ruined the best 3D 360-degree RTS space game.


Difficulty  ★★★★★☆☆☆☆☆ (HW1R fair, add 3 stars to HW2R)

The good things short and brief:

* attackable engine subsystem
* auto-attack feature on aggressive mode works out well
* complete overwork of engine, graphics and cutscenes

The engine does have a lot of flaws in it (in HW1R more than in HW2R):

Control issues:

1. No direct right-click context menu for quick access anymore (need to press SHIFT).
2. Shift F9 for formation can be mistaken easily for STRG F9 (autosave load without any prompt).
3. ESC does not lead into ingame menu.
4. Fleet selection with symbols is clunky. Population list with ship type selection would have been good.
5. Savegames are not sorted by timestamp.
6. HW1R: Hyperjump button in the center of the screen is annoying (misclick and abort will result in sensor manager inaccessible).
7. Fleet selection window does presort by formation which is not helpful.
8. Group assignements get sometimes lost between missions or if savegame is loaded. The units are marked with the number, but the button will not select them.
9. After cutscenes it might happen that mouse view is stuck.

Game mechanics flaws:

1. Harvesters often stop harvesting even if resources are in view.
2. Formations have limited size numbers and split apart.
3. Ball formation no longer forms around enemies ship for high dps.
4. HW1R: Captured carriers still don't get added to the build section.
5. HW1R: Captured carriers may spit out fighters after docked to mothership.
6. HW1R: Heavily nerfed multigun corvettes, missile destroyer and quadbeam frigs
7. HW1R: Not possible to play campaign as Taidan anymore.
8. HW1R: Pathfinding bad - frigs and harvester get stuck sometimes.
9. HW1R: Harvesters cannot dock on a moving carrier (in vanilla possible).
10. HW1R: Limitation how many repair corvettes you can place to ships.
11. HW1R: Armor of mothership is not buffed by safing resources anymore.
12. HW2R: Relic loved to auto-hyperspace you at the end of the game and constantly put you under pressure. No time to reform fleet. Bad choice. This is why I hated HW2 always.
13. HW2R: no difficulty setting anymore.
14. HW2R: "show all" button in build options gets resetted every time mission is started again
15. HW2R: double-tap on group number sometimes doesn't work (reassign group fixes it)
16. HW2R: Vaygr carriers are not captuarable - bar fills up, but you don't get them.
17. Missing a tactic that orders you ships not to move but attack whatever gets in reach.
18. A remastered collection without Homeworld Cataclysm (aka Emergence) is not a collection.

Mission bugs:

1. HW1R Mission 7: if you skip the ambassador cutscene, you won't get the multi-gun corvette reasearch.
2. HW1R Mission 8: you can skip the entire mission by camera hopping.
3.HW1R Mission 11: can get softlocked because minelayer build option is not unlocked properly after research.
4. HW1R Mission 13: freed destroyer of the clutches of junkyard guardian could not move anymore.
5. HW1R Mission 15: asteroid never impacts in 5 minutes. After 6 minutes you can end this mission without any fight.
6. HW1R Mission 16: too many enemy ion frigs at mission start in firing range to mothership.
7. HW1R Mission 16: enemy mothership will get blown up by the invulnerable rebel leader alone (this was not in vanilla version, he died if you didn't helped him).

Visual or cosmetic flaws:

1. HW1R: Captured ships randomly get repainted or change colors from mission to mission.
2. HW1R: Repair corvettes repairs do shooting sounds and sensor manager pings it as attack.
3. HW1R: The Homeworld ladder song is missing in the credits.

As a vanilla HW series veteran this remastered version is absolutely not worth playing and a bad joke. It made me yelling because controls were bad, units not doing things I ordered them to do, and bugs kicking in to make things even worse. Sierra did a very good job on HW1, the first 3D 360-degree RTS space genre game. It was a solid game with well made controls. Gearbox, took all that and twisted it apart. I cannot understand why this version is rated so good, unless those people did not played vanilla at all. I know, for the fails in HW2 Relic is responsible, but Gearbox should have fixed those issues in the campaign gameplay.

Honestly, if I will play HW again in the future, I go definitely for the old vanilla version again. HW2(R) is only worth playing in multiplayer if you ask me.

Hollow Knight is one of the best metroidvanias, but was killed by over-ambitioned devs.


Difficulty  ★★★★★☆☆☆☆☆ (base story for casual gamers, rest for pure hardcore gamers)


Best things

* huge world with a lot of interesting places and content
* nice character ideas (for example Zote the Mighty)
* a lot of special things to discover (the financial lesson with the bank is a nice one)
* cool bossfights (25+ bosses) and a boss rush mode
* charm system is very vesatile to adapt to your playstile or to certain bossfights
* solid game for a kickstarter
* EDIT: my speedrun in under 120 minutes following a video with a lot of skipping was actually quite fun

Biggest flaws

* opening the inventory does not pause the game
* you loose your money permanently if you get killed before you can reobtain your dark soul
* the world is so huge that you get lost in the beginning without Cornifers maps
* checkpoints (benches) are often too far away from the bossfights (produces long travels between bossfight retries)
* the difficulty is swaying from casual directly to hardcore gamer, there is nothing in between
* the story telling is so chaotic and cut in too little pieces
* 2 out of 5 endings are not possible to reach for normal gamers

The two main flaws is the story telling and the difficulty balancing. Both is way off the course.

In the first half I was not even realising why on earth my character is running around and doing stuff. There was neither a certain goal, nor a logical concept noticable. Probably I missed a lot, because of all the tiny story pieces you collect here and there. Don't ever expect the devs help you in putting them together. The basic game ending is very unspectacular, the other endings, besides extra special boss fights, are not much better, even if they try to give them a scent of epicness. The devs just failed, because they skipped a proper story telling totally.

As soon as you leave the trails of the story bosses, the game becomes really mean. The base difficulty is suitable for casual gamers. If things get too tough, collect better charms or more notches and come back later. Fair enough.
Some of the dream bosses (like Lost Kin), the NKG (Nightmare King Grimm) or Radiance was driving me crazy. Most bosses had a concept, if you get it and adapt to it you will win, but some just didn't. Too chaotic, no proper signs of which attack will be initiated next was rendering these fights very luck based if you have not very godlike reflexes. Even the jumping sequence in the White Palace with the asynchronous lance corridor (which was far away from any bench) was freaking me out.

Really, devs, I don't get it. Did you wanted to make a game for anybody or just for hardcore gamers? Make up your mind. There was nothing in between in your game. And for completionists like me it is a slap in the face if you cover up special endings behind impossible bossfights. And to point it out: it was just the "normal" mode I was playing atm! This is nothing anyone can enjoy and destroys any replayability. Even after I did it I felt no satisfaction at all, just bitterness. And hey, congrats devs, you are the first ones who actually managed to make me destroy one of my PS4 controller in anger. You owe me one, and this is absolutely no joke.

This is why I cannot recommend this game to any person out there.
Unless you are up to a lot of pain or want to watch half of the game on Youtube.

A good game was ruined for the sake of some few harcore gamers. Congrats to that.

Spyro is true remastered edition that is a masterpiece not only for veterans.


Difficulty  ★★★☆☆☆☆☆☆☆ (casual gamer)


Biggest flaws

General
* intro has sound loss for me, the rest of the cutscenes work fine
* clipping on edges let's you bounce of a lot
* while running one little stone can stop you dead
* hovercraft controls don't work in Spyro 3 (bossfight and challenge, not with keyboard or controller)
* on most surfaces Spyro drifts sideways

Bossfights
* on most bossfights the powerups are mostly thrown near the boss
* there is no restart map button, you have to leave level and enter level again (needles loading screens)
* boss Spike (Spyro 3) is getting an invu frame while aiming with his club, which is annoying

Skateboard races
* clipping bugs are absolutely annoying here
* skateboard sometimes loose much speed on plain ground
* some little slopes on the floor can render you tempoarily not able to jump anymore

Else this game is a complete fresh overhaul and suited perfectly for casual gamers.

Good basic concept, but makes a lot of mistakes.


Difficulty  ★★★★★☆☆☆☆☆ (except some special challenges)

Big flaws:

* game starts quite boring
* story has a lot of logic flaws in it (especially when you look into details)
* most character designs are not quite interesting
* game uses a lot of filler events in the first half of the game
* some characters are quite annoying (eg Colette, Zelos, Genies)
* weird and slow camera bevaviour on maps (angle)
* you can't reload in mid-battle
* you can't skip cut scenes (only dialogues)
* NSC can make you stuck in corners (you can't push them)
* battle system has too much elements in it (lack of a clean concept)
* some special fights are way too difficulty compared to the rest
* Niflheim dungeon has no savepoint before boss battles
* you get forced to play the game 3 times to get all Steam achievements and in-game collectibles
* limits in usage of summons of Sheena renders summons quite useless
* mystique arte of Lloyd only usable with a certain (not the best) sword

Good things:

* story gets better on second half
* up to 4 players (local coop)
* a lot of sidequests / events
* like the anime style video cutscenes
* new game+

Tales of Phantasia was way better on SNES. Tales of Symphonia can't live up with this.