Recent reviews by twotone8

Great little game to play in October time. Not much in terms of concrete narrative, but very rich thematically. I found myself part of a system which enforced obedience and control, and then got to rage against the machine a little. Beautiful to every frame. 5 hours. Ran without a hitch.

Great game. Artfully done, sentimental, and a pleasure to play. About 10 hours.

Stop reading things about this game. Just sit down and play through it. It won't take long.

Find a few hours to play through this game. Masterfully done, profoundly heart felt, and does a better job of marrying game mechanics to narrative than any game I've ever played. Best played through in one sitting in my opinion. About 3 hours start to finish. Controller absolutely required.

This game got its' hooks into me good. The action both draws reverently from the classic metroid-vania formula, while adding a unique edge and kineticism. It's great to swoosh around destroying folks like a big blue tornado, Great combat system, although the challenge tapers off a bit towards the end if you enjoy hunting down the prime goodies. The story really stands out as well. You can tell that someone cared very much about telling a sweeping fairytale, and the voice acting and animation do a great job of drawing us in. There are a good many surprises here and there, and it dips its toe into some pretty mature conflict and subject matter. To that end I think it could have gone a bit further and added in some moral ambiguity. Duality is a theme, but they seem to have no qualms with clearly identifying the right and wrong sides. That being said, the whole package; the music, story, animation, pacing, explorative spirit round this out into a fantastic little game. 16 Hours all told, and I managed to 100% most things without feeling bogged down by sidequests. Oh, and the nods to other indie games (as well as a delightful Castlevania II reference) are a welcome addition.

Fantastic game for a quiet night at home. I'd write more, but this game had me completely absorbed from midnight to when I beat it at about 3:30am. Had no idea what to expect and am very pleasantly surprised. Best experienced in one focused play through I imagine.

Oh how lucky we are that Falcom and XSEED have been so good as to release (largly) all of the Ys PC releases on Steam.

This is another quiet little Gem of a game. The consistently excellent game play, music, and charm inherent to the Ys series are once again top notch and wrapped up in a tight little package that will scratch your Action RPG itch with refined precision.

This was the first of the Ys games to use this game engine (along with Oath in Felghana and Origins), but it was the last to be released on Steam by XSEED. It's therefore interesting approaching this game after having already played through the other two in the trilogy. Where I can definitely notice some differences in the pacing and mechanics that were improved upon in subsequent releases, this game more than makes up for its shortcomings in inspiration and drive. This, after all, was the first Ys game to have been produced in eight years by the time of its release, and passion and effort put into this game is palpable. It's fun, inspired, light-hearted, and runs smooth as silk. It's also interesting to note the subtle connections between games story-wise after having played all of the Steam releases. XSEED also implemented some minor game play changes exclusively for this release that I can't imagine having gone without, being able to warp around the map being chief among them.

I become more of a Falcom fan every day, and I am saddened in that this is the last PC release left available on Steam as of yet. Here's hoping we can get some adaptations of the Chinese PC releases of Memories of Celceta and Ys Seven (however unlikely). Great job Falcom. Great job XSEED. Thank you for not letting this one slip through the cracks.

About 13 hours. Use a frame limiter to limit the frame rate to exactly 60 to eliminate input lag. Don't worry about over leveling if you play on normal. I ruined some of the signature Ys challenge by doing so (not a problem/possible in the other two games on normal).

The more I immerse myself in the Ys series, the more enamored I become. This is one solid little franchise. There are so many things that Falcom does right in caring for this classic property, and I have high hopes for future Ys games I will be playing.

This is yet another perfect little charming gem of an action RPG. It mixes 2D sprite animation and seamless 3D architecture to create a style both retro and timeless. The care and attention payed to the characters, story, music, and ys heritage is truly admirable.

Design wise, this game is a typical dungeon crawl, but the challenge is quite thrilling during boss fights. The exploration aspect can get a bit tedious if you play through the game multiple times in quick succession, but I imagine this can be offset by tweaking difficulty levels to your liking.

On that note, the story of Ys Origin plays out with a Roshamon style redundancy; with three individual character's story-lines. Much of the joy of this game comes from experiencing the events of the narrative from these different perspectives. Granted, there are slight differences in each Character's narrative, with only one (Claw's) considered 'cannon', but walking through the game in each of their shoes lets you become much more familiar with the characters and the world in which they live. I can't imagine having only played through this game with a single character, and I found each separate run interesting and challenging due to the different play mechanics.

It's a faithful loveletter to the Lore Falcom has developed for Ys over the last several decades. The characters, the settings, and even the music is heavily inspired by past games in the franchise. Now at the time of this writing, I had managed to play the steam releases of Ys 1&2, as well as Oath in Felghana (remake of ys 3). These games stand perfectly fine on their own story wise, and it is absolutely unnecessary for anyone to have any prior knowledge of the franchise to get your money's worth. That being said, each entry also helps to paint a beautifully detailed picture of a larger whole. Falcom seem quite devoted to the world they've created, and the relationship between games is actually quite nuanced.

I'm so very glad I played through this, and I encourage everyone to take it for a spin. If you're only interested in a charming hack 'n slash romp, by all means coast through it. If you're at all interested in the story of Ys, I very much encourage you to experience each story line. On the lower difficulties, each play through should take about 8 hours. I, myself, played the first round on normal, then coasted through the next two on easier settings for a total playtime of 26 hours.

Wow. Wow. Holy Cow. What a hot mess of a game.

The 7th Guest holds a soft place in my heart due to a mix of childhood nostalgia, and legitimate recognition of optimistic and ground-breaking (if supremely awkward) game design. That shiny colorful little game was so innocent and pure of heart at the time, and it hasn't lost its charm. Played the entire thing in an afternoon just recently and I don't regret it. Then, on a lark, decided to give the sequel a try, having never played it before. Wow.....just wow.....

The 11th hour...jesus what to say.

I can only imagine that this game was another important and necessary step in the burgeoning awkward years of game design. Nobody had ever seen anything like 7th guest. They loved it and wanted more. God bless the creators. What they ended up with was a discordant mess, striding painfully in disperate directions whilst ripping itself apart.

The prime fault in this game is the lack of cohesion. The cut-scene driven narrative and the game mechanics clash harder than in any game I've ever played. The shifts in tone are so very jaring it's laughable. Everything in this game clashes. The acting style of the characters clash with one another, the in-game settings clash with the film sequence's, the special effects, the terrible riddles, everything. It's truly marvelous to behold.

If there's one thing that seems consistent in the game, it's in just how terrible the riddles are, and there are a bunch of them. Most of the game consists of an awkward treasure hunt, with horrifically obtuse riddles guiding you to the next destination. These riddles are terrible. There's an in-game hint system that is necessary to progress, and I'd be absolutely shocked if there's one single person in the world who has ever beaten this game without cheating a little bit. They reminded me of the riddles from the 60's Batman TV show, with solutions that could not possibly be solved with pure reasoning. They're nonsensical, difficult, and it's shameful just how much of the game they take up.

The puzzles themselves are also difficult to a fault, but that's nothing new, and most of them are skipable. They're much the same as they were in the 7th guest, except that here they seem even more out of place. Stauf, after all, had invited the guests over to solve these riddles in the first game. There's absolutely no mention of them in this one...they're just...there.

Not that the first game made much logical sense, but I felt that it earned some of its ambiguity due to the fact that it took place in some sort of dream-space. Some limbo between worlds where they events depicted had already happened, and nothing was concrete. This game, when not inspiring you to beat your head against a wall with difficulty, aspires to tell a much more fluid and fleshed out story. These folks at Trilobyte sure tried. They really tried.

Ignoring the actual game play, the narrative is its own beautiful little disaster. In an attempt at spinning a more mature tale, the 11th hour relies even heavier on the full motion video narrative. The settings and acting style, for the most part, seem to strive for an element of forced, day-time drama realism, with actors trying their best to take the material seriously. Now before I get too judgmental, I have to laud the attempts of some of the performers, particularly the actors playing Robin and Samantha. You can tell that these are working professionals just trying to do their best with the materiel they were given. They are, however, the exceptions to the rule. Gone are the cartoonish caricatures and grand sweeping gestures of the first game. Here we have grim, somber, cheap cable tv style storytelling, with most of the acting and staging coming across as painfully awkward and, dare i say it, soft core porney. But dispute these flaws, or perhaps BECAUSE of these flaws, there's a subversive charm to it all when viewed as a whole. As the game progresses, the cut-scenes themselves become more varied in style. They span a wide range from subdued to carnivalesque. There's a particularly jarring scene where a buxom, scantily clad young lady has a dog on a leash. The dogs head transforms into the head of our main villain Stauff, gives a hearty howl, and then the lady's face, for just a split second, distorts into a horrible pixelated grimace while the games audio farts at you. Seriously, the game farts. Sexy lady - transforming dog - howl - monster face - fart noise. All this before awkwardly snapping back to the loud (terrible) midi music and CG scenery. It's impossible to describe adequately. You have to experience it for yourself. And y'know what? I almost recommend that you do.

I can't explain exactly why, but somewhere along the line I found myself spellbound by this game. It's so disjointed and so all over the place that often you're taken completely off guard. It's delightful in its chaoticness. I was laughing out loud on several occasions, and I honestly can't help wondering just how much of this was intended effect. It's so stupid and goofy, but then goes so dark and serious that you never know what to make of it. In one sitting I went from poking a tube of tooth paste until it ooozed into a tiny, green, tentacled booger monster, to listening to a tearful disabled woman describe her permanent nerve damage from the back ally abortion attempt of her mutantrape baby. The damn game feels like huffing paint; I'm light-headed. This feeling is embodied by the brilliant performance given by Robert Hirschboeck in the role of Stauf himeself. This guy gets it. When he's on screen, it feels like being right back home in the haunted mantion. He's campy he's over the top, and he knows exactly what he's doing. He's literally the spirit of the game, and every scene he's in pops. It's almost good enough to fool me into thinking that the developers knew what they were doing by creating something so scatter-shod. I've never played anything like the 11th hour in my life, and I doubt I ever will. This game is a beautiful mis-step, and I'm truly grateful for having wasted my time in it.

What a satisfying trip down memory lane. Loaded it up out of a mix of curiosity and nostalgia, and before I knew it I had beaten the game, and wasted my entire day off. Of course it's dated and clunky, but every once in a while that very clunkyness will add to the suspense. There's a very real sense of satisfaction which comes from solving the more challenging puzzles. Oh god the puzzles. They range from pleasantly distracting to downright sadistic. The worse offenders will have you backtracking for what seems like hours. I found the chess puzzles to be particularly infuriating. My heart set to racing on more than once occasion, from the challenge alone. Younger audiences will probably be deterred by just how dated this seems, but I was swept away from the charm inherent to that era. The acting is just about as broad and cheesy as you'd expect, partially due to the low video quality. It somewhat reminds me of old silent movies, with actors mugging it as hard as they possibly can simply to be understood. The live-action video director mentions in the included making of video (nice touch by the way) that the actors were encouraged to 'use their whole body' when speaking. It's frikkin' great. Took me about 7 hours to make it through the entire thing, even while attempting to cheat my way through the more head smashy against the wallsy bits, and I'm quite glad I did. It may be an archaeological exercise, but it sure is a fun one.