Recent reviews by Arkovae Razule

Cute game, genuinely enjoyed the 35 minutes it took me to beat the game. I could see this being a cool full arcade style game. Good work devs.

Fishing is good. Fishing is life. Get blasted while fishing. Use performance enhancing drinks. Catch even bigger fish. Or don't. You can also unearth objects with a metal detector if that's your jam. I love games where the point is just to chill with your friends and do stuff. Kinda rad trend we got here.

Let's all shoot bugs together again, Super Citizens! We have defeated Sony and preserved the Helldiver way of life!

Bones of the game are good, Had a rocky launch, wasn't the worst I've seen in my days. But I tend to disregard rocky launches, I don't play day 1 most times anyway. Let's me go through how I feel about this game right now.

Music
Payday usually has some banger music. Great beats to relax and shoot dudes to.

Gameplay
Gameplay is solid, fun, the loop is good, transporting and moving feels much better, always something to do in the heist whether loud or stealth. Stealthing is so much more fun, and easy to get into, and I don't get told to stand in the corner cuz I'm not host. I'm genuinely impressed with how much better it feels to stealth in this game over payday 2. Going loud is way more high octane than before. I appreciate that cloakers don't just 1hp you if they touch you, makes them still a threat, but a fair one. Tazers renamed Zappers, honestly I don't care. Doesn't really matter what you call 'em. Dozers are kinda scary, but if you know what you're doing you can take 'em down. If you come at 'em like it's payday 2 you will eat dirt. Did a few overkill louds, overall not too bad, but I probably would perform better if I had all my talent points. Still doable though!

Menus
God these menus are so basic. I mean they do what they gotta do, but that's about all they do. Biggest complaint is guns aren't seperated by category, so I don't know what is a secondary and primary. Honestly almost want the primary secondary system thrown out the window and just let people use two guns they like. the c-stack currency is just whatever, it's basically the offshore account. Kinda wanna see my homies on the main screen though, liked that about payday 2, we could show off our cursed masks before a heist.

Guns
Guns feel great, Guns do their job. Nice. I like it when that happens. I like the marksman rifle, it is super ammo efficient for head poppin' and one shots most cops! That was my style in payday 2 as well. I've been using it for my up close and personal builds because it just has great accuracy. Overkill weapons kinda suck though. Only really good for special units, otherwise the explosive one is too dangerous without a certain perk.

Perks
New perk system nice. Think they leave health feeling...bad though. Armor is just kind of really good, and imo on Overkill if you don't have the armor tree perk that lets you heal 2 with one armor bag slot, and also have 6 amor bag uses, you are just hurting the team. Ammo efficiency on certain guns is ludicrous with the right perks, and makes ammo bags irrelevant. Some ultimates feel worse than others. For example, being able to break free from a "grab" special once per heist is kind of just garbage overall. Like more just "haha guys look I helped myself." I could see this being useful in a solo heist, but heists are not solo friendly. If you are solo on overkill, sincerely good luck. The bots WILL die. You will have to be the one man army, so choose your perks carefully. Overall though, feels pretty good, you get a nice variety of abilities, you take from a bunch of trees as long as you grab the basic, you can freely take any tree's "ultimate" skill once you fully unlock it. Lots of fun build types as well.

Overall, probably 7/10 as a game. Definitely needs more heists in the near future to keep things fresh. Overall feel of the game is an improvement for me, don't have to worry about who is host in stealth and the combat is much more fun and specials are much more noticeable in the impact they have. The server issues were annoying, but that always gets fixed so I didn't care about that. That's just another expac launch for an MMO player like me. I didn't expect there to be a billion anything since the devs had to fully build the game in a new engine, so the heist count is reasonable, if low, in the fact that there is basically 2 ways to play every heist (except one). Decent gun variety. Also price tag is 40 bucks. Good value for what it has.

Armored core VI: Fires of Rubicon is a game I waited over a decade to see. For a while, I thought the series lost to time, after the PS3 era Armored Core V (A great game in its own right, maybe not the best, but I had a blast.) But, I'd say the wait was well worth it. I've been a fan since the demo disc on PS1 (They used to do things like that, send out demos of all the games you could get in a little disc, was pretty neat.)

So, what brings me to actually write a review? I only really write reviews for games that have REALLY impacted me. I like to talk about my experience, and why I think they are above all the other games on the market. This one is no exception. FromSoft absolutely destroyed my expectations. My complaints are minor at their very worst, and mostly just nitpicks. I have a wealth of game experience to draw on, with almost 20 years under my belt now of beating games both fun and hard.

It's clear to me FromSoft took their knowledge from the souls series and Sekiro, and put it to great use in this game, in boss design, level designs, story design, and especially in the combat. Never has an AC game's combat felt so FLUID, so DYNAMIC, and had such a DIVERSE set of builds that worked in almost every situation. I would say I genuinely feel that any build can beat the game. I had a blast, and honestly, I had hoped it would never end.

My complaints are very few, but I will say the enemy tracking can be really jarring, and it gave me a little bit of trouble sometimes when it would just throw my camera off and I would get really disoriented. Another minor complaint, lack of environmental variety. There were cool set pieces, and I really enjoyed the infinite flight level, that was an absolute blast and made me feel so powerful! But the lack of bright colors in the environment was kind of something always in the back of my mind. That's okay though, I think the setting of the world kind of required that, even if I still wish to have seen some lush jungles or some volcanoes or anything like that.

Other minor complaints, new players kind of get the shaft. If you've played an AC before, picking this game up is nothing. You know that to look for, how to build, what parts to take, what build you wanna go for right from the start. The tutorial only does so much for a player in the field, but it does nothing for a player in the garage. I would argue the garage is the most critical part of the game, and knowing the details of every stat and having an accessible explanation for each would have really helped ease people into the game, and that the advanced stats menu should have been the default one. Without advanced stats for each part, you are missing out on critical information, such as your dash recharge time, your different damage resistance values, and even how efficiently you use power in your AC.

But now for the good. The gameplay is the best I've ever felt in the series. They took the movement and feel of their past titles, and they put that style into this game and seamlessly molded it into an armored core masterpiece. You can learn the timings and the abilities of every single enemy, and it rewards you for understanding how to stagger, and when enemies use moves and overextend, allowing you to punish safely as long as you understand those windows of time.

Stagger. Stagger in the series has always been a point of contention. I personally have not liked stagger in previous games, as often, it would lead to chain-stun death. Sometimes, that made the game become a contest of who could stagger who first. This game, does a grand job of refining this mechanic into something more. It rewards aggression and timing equally, but ensures that you always want to keep pressure on the enemy to get that stagger. In addition, it is very rare you get staggered into death, because there is a cooldown timer on stagger. This means that you are always given a chance to recover, and I think that is an amazing design choice to combat previous problems with stagger. This mechanic is a main feature of the game that has always been there, but now it feels just right, and like a proper part of the game,

Weapons. The sheer number of weapons you can get in this game, is fit for a king. There's enough variety to where there are so many different builds that you can make, or theme for yourself or your mech, you can live almost any fantasy you desire. You want to be heavy hitting? take explosives. You want to be a constant nuisance? take gatling guns. You want to be a ranged boy? Take snipers and advanced target locks. You can carry four main hand weapons instead if you don't want shoulder mounts, and just use the power of GUN and SWORD to destroy your foes. This game put fun and variety first.

Story. The story of the game is amazing, and ends in a way where future content can be built however they see fit, and I hope to see some great environments in future games as a result. I won't go into too much detail, but the new game+ way of handling the story was very interesting, and I very much appreciated how it played out and altered the game. Thank you for making a replay interesting, and not just the same thing over and over to get one new ending.

Bosses. Boy do I love bosses. Nothing gets me more pumped in a video game than fighting some powerful god who can really wreck my day. I'm the kind of guy that believes bosses should be challenges, something to overcome. That's why they are a Boss. And not a just some random pleb idiot on the field you run over. They don't have to be easy. Nor should they be easy. There's plenty of fun beat 'em up games, or shoot 'em up games out there where you and the homies can just tear through it, alone or together. Play one of those. This is not one of those games. These bosses WILL check you. They WILL challenge you, and you WILL have to adapt. But that's the fun of a real boss. It's not a game if nobody can lose.

There's a lot more in the game I could talk about, and gush about, for paragraphs and paragraphs, but for the sake of brevity, I will leave the review here, as these are the main important points I truly cared about seeing.

TL;DR GAME REALLY GOOD,
Bosses hard, but in a fun make you rethink your build way. If you die a lot, change up your tactics.
Weapons are fun, and there are many.
Gameplay is smooth and feels great, rewards good timing and aggression.
Customization is amazing, you can really make the AC of your dreams!
Story is great, and replays are actually rewarding and not painful to repeat as they are kept interesting.

My final score? 9/10
Thank you FromSoft. For giving us back Raven.

I want to preface this with a little story
I loved freedom planet 1, and I beat it on the hardest difficulty on every character simply because it was really fun, and I have always enjoyed a good platforming challenge. The OST was incredible and the story even pulled me in a little bit (I was interested in the larger world they lived in.) However, it did have some frustrating moments, and I never did find every star card. But I did always remember my time in the game fondly.
After freedom planet 2 was announced, I was excited. And that excitement was burning for years, as I figured the development might take a while. But after the demo drop, I became discouraged as months of waiting became a year. And another. And another...I began to lose hope, to worry the project was secretly abandoned and nobody wanted to say anything, as other games released (Petal Crash in particular) in the interim. It got to the point where I just...stopped checking.
Last month, my passion reignited with a burning vengeance as I found out that not only had development continued, IT RELEASED! I was beyond ecstatic, but I had to wait for the funds to get the game. I thought 25 was a hefty price tag, but I was willing to give it a shot. I set aside a weekend, got the game, and I dived in.
I was blown away. The story, the world, the new controls, the characters, the sprite work, the levels, the OST, everything hit me like a truck. I started my play on the hard setting, and I was blown away by how even that worked, and the menus assist settings to help newer platformer players get into it! (I love settings that help new players enjoy the genre, as I enjoy seeing new players succeed and get better!)
I'm going to be honest, I have never had a game make me feel like a kid again before, and I don't know if I ever will, but this is a thank you to the devs for allowing me to relive those kid-like feelings of wonder and amazement, and even accomplishment at achieving victory. Even the final boss theme hit me different. It made the fight intense and sad at the same time, gave me the feeling of "this is IT, all or nothing" as I fought my hardest, using every trick I'd been taught to win.
A satisfying ending to a seven year wait, this most definitely was.

My list of Pros:
-Difficulty customization is unique, and I think it's a great addition to the game. You can choose the way you want to S rank a level if that's your goal, or you can choose the best items to achieve your victory, or even to help you beat a level faster than ever before.
-Level Designs are great. I never really felt like I had to slow down too much in a level. There were a couple puzzle segments that upset me a bit, but since I'm biased against most puzzles, I will abstain from judging that as a negative.
-Boss Designs are incredible. All of the bosses felt unique to fight, and all had their own patterns of movement and attack, No boss really felt too frustrating for me, save one, It's mostly because the boss is frequently off-screen and that makes it hard to tell where the boss is. I had to use particles to guess the buss location and hope I aimed right. If the camera in that fight zoomed out a little bit to accommodate the boss's size, I think that would easily fix my negative view of that particular fight.
-Lots of levels! There are an incredible number of stages, and thus content, in the game. I have put in about 20 hours on Lilac's story alone, and there are four versions, one for each character and their particular journey in the world.
-The Sprites are very fun! I enjoyed the large variety of characters and sprites, and if I recall correctly, almost all were unique sprites, giving each character their own life and appearance! In addition, the stages are GORGEOUS. they look incredible, and the backgrounds are no different. Everything just feels and looks so good, I was never bored by the appearance of a level!
-The story is good. They actually explain a lot more of the world's lore, and dive into the history of their planet. I had been curious about this since the first game, and I finally got some of what I wanted. Excellent execution and very good characters (especially the voice acting improvement! Great job!) help make the world come to life.
-The OST is bangin'. I love almost all the music in this game, there was never a time where I wanted to mute the music. Sometimes I boot the game just to play some of the OST collectibles in the jukebox because they are so good. A certain boss theme really does it for me and hits me in the emotions.

The Cons
-There are still some bugs in the game. I've been thrown out of the level in a few maps and either got soft locked or just...arbitrarily cleared the stage by hitting some unseen flag. I'm unsure if this is an intentional "recovery" feature (no matter how good your programming and testing might be, someone is still gonna find somewhere to break your game! Hello, speedrunning community!) but it was a tad confusing/frustrating when it happened.
-Some hitboxes are not obvious that they are hitboxes until you've died a few times to it. One particular attack that got on my nerves with this was an attack with a dagger that had shockwave clouds around it. Little did I know, not only did the line the dagger traveled hit you, but the cloud shockwaves would hit you too! (cost me my rainbow s rank a couple times and believe me, I was heated)
-Some spawn checkpoints are a tad far, from bosses enough to be annoying, but not enough to constitute a game design sin. As someone who likes to go fast when I get good at something, having that delay every time I go to fight them was definitely something I found zero fun in.
-some items are able to be selected even though they do nothing for you in that stage. I think the items should have a clear warning if you can't use them in the stage, or be locked. (Final stage Timer Badge is one I can think of immediately)

TL'DR
Game's really good, got a couple minor gripes but nothing too major, definitely worth your time for players of all skill levels. And I think the overall quality justifies your money expenditure, as well.

Final Score: 9/10

Very good job, devs.

Big stompy mechs, big guns, and explosions. I'm happy enough.

Dank

Halo 3 HALO 3 HALO 3 HALO 3 HALO 3 IT'S ON PC AND IT'S EVERYTHING I EVER IMAGINED IT COULD BE

No sound. Garbage game. I got it for free off humble and the sound doesn't even work. What a waste of a game pick. And here I was excited to play a raiden game. I've tried every trick I know to fix sound, nothing has worked. Avoid this game.