Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake Review

The Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake begins with your 16th birthday – the age you were destined to set out on your adventure.

While still a child, your father Ortega went off to face the demon king Baramos and to bring peace to the realm. He never returned, so now it is your turn to set off and do what your father could not. Setting off to meet the king, he tells you about your father and his mission.

Given some gold and equipment, players will then set off and gather an adventuring party. Your father made the mistake of going alone; that’s not a problem here.

After forming your party, the first task is to get the Thief’s key and gain access to the next continent. The first island acts as a tutorial for the player.

While nothing too serious happens, players will still be tested. For instance, I forgot that bubble slimes can poison you on hit…and I didn’t have an antidote. You’ll grind, find new gear, and figure out your party comp before moving on.

You’ll also fight a lot, because the encounter rate has been cranked up.

Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake does make improvement in game speed, but that also increases the amount of enemy encounters.

As grinders, we don’t mind fighting a ton when it’s turn-based since we can just spam attacks. Do note players can change the battle speed, so encounters fly by. Don’t want to fight? Players can set the AI to take control of the fights.

The computer does well for the most part, but sometimes they burn heals or items. It isn’t uncommon for one enemy to be left, and the AI uses the turn to heal instead of just finishing it off.

Class-wise, you will be playing the Hero that can do anything. We gave said Hero the biggest damage weapon and went wild with it, but magic is also available. One”s group can have Warriors, Fighters, Mages, Clerics, Clowns, Thieves, Traders, and even Monster Wranglers.

Some are better than others, but all have a purpose in combat. Thieves steal loot after a fight and can use whips. Monster Wranglers get stronger as you recruit more monsters. While not a complicated system, it leaves a lot of room for customization within your group.

The Monster Wrangler is new to the Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake, getting stronger as you find more monsters for the massive Monster Arena minigame.

Said arena has changed; players used to just bet on fights and hope that you guys won. Now, players will go out, find monsters to recruit, and then use them in the arena to earn cash and prizes.

This is a simple system if you can actually find the monsters; but in practice they are well hidden. The other benefit to recruiting is that your Monster Wrangler gets stronger, and their moves do even more damage.

This system is a win-win, and we greatly enjoyed our time with it..

While you aren’t in the overworld or in town, Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake will have players going through dungeons. Most are well-designed, with a few traps and mimic chests, but again, the high encounter rate hurts here.

Despite being grinders, when one has fallen down a trap two or three times in a dungeon, we have had enough. Thankfully, the game is generous with the amount of healing items it hands out – even if that is another problem.

While Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake is a remake (it’s in the title), there’s still some annoyances carried ocwe.

Take the fact that players have an item bag and a bag for one’s characters. If a healing herb is in the item bag but not your character, it can’t be used in combat. In addition, there are markers on where to go next, but they aren’t great at helping you actually need to get.

Finally, the personality system isn’t well explained. As a result, players might have a mage that is getting increased strength stats — minor gripes, but still worth mentioning.

Thankfully, we didn’t run into any tech issues, crashes, or frame drops.

Fans of the original Dragon Quest III will feel right at home with this stellar HD-2D Remake. Rise, fellow heroes, and slay the great Archfiend.

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On the surface, Planet Coaster 2 looks to be the perfect combination of simulation and creation. A robust suite of tools and social connectivity provide a backbone for a charming and colorful world, in which players can let their imaginations run wild. Wild is the word.

Let’s start with the campaign

Planet Coaster 2’s campaign is as frustrating as it is exhausting. Spending several minutes listening to floating heads discuss the historic nature of the parks, only to load in and be met with near identical mission objectives to the last, it starts every new adventure on poor footing.

Build a few flat rides. Build a coaster. Carefully curated steps that always lead to the same destination, breaking absolutely everything in the pursuit of constructing a pathway.

There are parts of Planet Coaster 2 that are incredible and unrivaled, serving as the very peak of creative construction in the video-game space. However, in delivering such, it completely fails to capture the very heart of what managing a successful theme park should feel like.

Planet Coaster 2 Review – Derailed

Those with an artistic eye and an interest in architecture will be able to create some truly jaw-dropping rides, attractions, and natural wonders of beauty. Having the option to download and share these is one of the franchise’s most impressive aspects, but none of it is any use if the park doesn’t actually function.

Whatever you do though, don’t you dare try to edit a path, or so help me god.

That’s exactly what happened here. I attempted to attach a single shop to a pathway and well, I can’t even begin to explain this monstrosity of Penrose stairs.

Unfortunately, this happened in nearly every single mission. A tiny adjustment, one that would take seconds in any other game in this genre, often derailed the entire campaign mission to the point of giving up. I’d just jump straight to the next career location.

That may sound hyperbolic, but that single pathway above was the backbone of my entire park. The solution? A Frankenstein’s Monster of a staircase.

In a game that looks so beautiful, where you can create truly inspiring attractions, it can be an arduous task to create something with a semblance of normalcy.

In addition, Planet Coaster 2’s impressive creation suite regularly feels completely detached from the world it populates. While players can create anything they can imagine, they can also throw it in the middle of a roller coaster. When this happens, it quickly puts the brakes on the entire park without consequence – so to speak.

The picture above shows a Tea Cup ride constructed within a swimming pool, completely engulfed by a roller coaster. It all functions perfectly well, as if a product of architectural genius.

The guests herd along, ignoring clipping through entire structures and deadly objects. They’ll be the first to complain if a neat and lovely path doesn’t reach the entrance of a ride, but they have no issues literally walking through a moving roller coaster cart.

Planet Coaster 2 tows a very thin line. It offers players the creative freedom to customize rides unlike any other game ever made, but in doing so sacrifices a level of authenticity and realism to just completely detach the player from the simulation elements of the game.

Much like Jurassic World Evolution 2, the simulation elements of the game feel fabricated, simulated to feel like a simulation.

Despite spending several hours attempting to fix a singular staircase in a later mission, my park flourished. Guests were pouring in, screams of joy and laughter from the one ride I had placed, the queues for sustenance fast-moving and profitable.

It didn’t matter what level I was on, or what my objectives were, a couple of rides and some shops were often all I needed to rake in profits.

In one park, I carefully crafted Staff Zones, a feature that lets you paint areas for specific members of staff to patrol, in another, I left them to roam. I didn’t notice any differences. Both parks had a constant spree of negative messages regarding ride health, generator power, and disgruntled employees.

That last part was on me, I lowered the wages to see how long it would take them to complain. Turns out, not long.

Nothing within the simulation aspects of the game ever felt challenging.

Well, that’s not entirely true.

Navigating through much of this process was challenging and complicated, but those aren’t typically the goals of a menu system.

Even now, this still confuses me. The controls of Planet Coaster 2 are very well done; after just a few brief tutorials, everything felt intuitive – no easy feat on a controller.

However, the layout of Planet Coaster 2’s menus is a Rubik’s Cube of puzzling.

I spent ages trying to locate benches and bins, tucked away behind custom construction options in the Scenery tab. I constructed a huge pool, complete with epic flumes and wave machines, but the filter and cleaning machines were not in the Pools menu, or the Pool Extra’s menu, or the Create Custom Pools menu. I had to find those in the Facilities menu.

Developing these kinds of games for consoles is a monumental undertaking. Planet Coaster 2 nails much of the controls, although tweaking rides and coasters is tedious at best, but really struggles with a streamlined UI that consistently fails to make sense.

This is the total opposite of the simulation elements, which has a streamlined UI that puts every stat and tidbit of information imaginable in an easy-to-follow and structured layout. It’s just a shame I was able to get by without really needing any of it.

Every park was going to be THE park. This was the one I was going to stick to, to beautify, to accrue so much money I’d never need work again. That mentality lasted all of 20 minutes, before trying to make yet another tiny change completely butchered things beyond all recognition.

I’m not sure if there is an undo button. I couldn’t find it, but it would make a world of difference.

It was at this point, I left the campaign behind.

I decided to jump into Franchise mode, which has an online component to it, but one I’ve not had much luck trying to explore. Initially, this felt infinitely better than the campaign experience.

A huge, open, and most importantly flat location, meant I was able to create without fear of constructing a staircase that led to the 9th circle of hell.

I built my trademark square design from the early Theme Park days, ensuring to funnel my guests through carefully crafted avenues of pure capitalistic opportunity. All I could see was a shade of greedy green.

I’m not completely heartless, so I wanted to create an epic attraction to send the gate tickets soaring. I mean, provide a unique experience for guests.

What better way to do so than to utilize Planet Coaster 2’s big appeal: Water.

On that note, I went to create a pool. I had grand designs of a lazy river, filled from shore to shore with beautiful scenery and captivating creations.

That went out the window fast.

I tried to make a big square pool, but that didn’t work. So I tried to create a pool, line by line, but that didn’t work. For some reason, I could impale a roller coaster with a giant swinging ship, but connecting two lines of water was beyond my creative talents.

I had to turn a Merge setting on and off, I had to mess around with enabling and disabling a Stamp grid. Even after all that, I managed to make an ugly pool.

That’s an issue that is very much going to vary from person to person. If you want to dedicate huge amounts of time, you will not find another game offers this level of creativity, but for more basic players, it needs work.

I wanted to test just how important and impactful the game’s management aspects are. I built a very basic part, a few rides, a line of shops, and just dropped staff into random location.

I left it overnight. When I returned, I had millions in the bank, I had enough Research Points to unlock everything in the catalog, and besides a few power issues, my park was much how I left it.

In its admirable attempt to offer a truly innovative and rewarding theme park construction experience, Planet Coaster 2 overwhelms even the most basic of levels. From creating paths to tweaking simple designs, it all required too many menus and too many buttons.

If you want to create epic-themed custom rides, Planet Coaster 2 is the perfect game. If you want to create a custom suite of shops and guest services in a huge and entertaining space, Planet Coaster 2 is the perfect game. If you want to create nearly anything to make a park look incredible, Planet Coaster 2 is the perfect game.

If you want to manage and run a theme park? Planet Coaster 2 is not the game.

There are moments of Planet Coaster 2 that are nothing short of astounding, completely engrossing the player with every slab and brick of construction, but it all too often takes a backseat to frustrating UI and design elements.

Planet Coaster 2 harbors a level of creativity unmatched in this space. Its attention to detail is so intense, that its biggest challenge is forming a straight path without destroying half the planet. A wonderfully creative playground is available for those with the patience to work through it, but it proves to be a frustratingly cumbersome journey for the rest of us.

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Dragon Age: The Veilguard Review

Playing and beating all Dragon Age titles multiple times, we’re no strangers to the series – we even platinumed Dragon Age: Origins.

Featuring a world close to annihilation, Solas (Dreadwolf, which is a way better name than The Veilguard) is trying to open a portal to the Fade and unleash the demons that lurk within. Working alongside Varric and others, players set out to hunt Solas down and stop him.

Finally catching up to him, Varric tried to reason with the mad Elf, but he’d have none of it. When words failed to find him, a tower from one’s party was thrown down on top of him that interrupted the ritual and imprisoned Solas back to the Fade.

In that short amount of time, two ancient evil gods managed to sneak out, and voilà, we have a purpose and a story.

Solas was undoubtedly bad, but these two are nightmares, gaining the title of God through conquest and tyranny.

Ghilan’nain and Elgar’nan are Elven Gods that bring blight, destruction, and Dragons. With zero chance of stopping the big bads right now, the group retreats to a part of the Fade known as the Light House.

Serving as the hub for you and your team, players will set out to do what one does best: defeat a big Ancient evil – albeit two of them. Dragon Age: The Veilguard is one of those games that you can complete in 40-50 hours, or 80 hours for the completionists out there.

The early parts of of Dragon Age: The Veilguard prove to be overly linear. There’s loot and minor secrets, such as a hidden room with some extra gold. However, this title doesn’t even try to pretend to be open world – think Dragon Age 2.

Everything in Dragon Age: The Veilguard is also disconnected, since you are traveling through the Fade from area to area. Fast travel will help alleviate some backtracking, but players will revisit the same areas multiple times.

To be fair, areas in Dragon Age: The Veilguard evolve as one progresses. Despite this, we ended up hitting up Docktown at least a dozen times.

Choices are also hit and miss in Dragon Age: The Veilguard. Certain obvious choices will have significant impacts on your team and the game world; an early one leaves one of your teammates scarred, while a later one costs players an entire city.

The bigger issue with the choices is the fact that you can’t really be a bad guy this time around. Sure, you can occasionally punch people or leave others to die, but most choices boil down to three different versions of yes.

You get the sassy yes; the good boy, yes; and the “FINE, I’ll do it” yes. At some point, we need to move the story forward; it could have been handled better.

Choices were lacking, but the banter between party members during missions somewhat made up for it. Players can only bring two allies at a time, more like Mass Effect than Dragon Age.

For instance, one of my favorite combos is Taash and Emmrich. During an adventure in the undercroft, we were discussing what would happen to our bodies after we died. Emmrich is a Necromancer and obsessed with reanimated corpses, so once that was brought up, Taash shut it down immediately. So now, when Taash dies, I will inherit their body.

That was a forced choice that I actually enjoyed.

For longtime fans, Dragon Age: The Veilguard features a number of changes to its combat system. Proving to be more of action RPG then the system in Dragon Age: Inquisiton, it ended up feeling more like a light version of 2018’s God of War than anything else.

After playing as a Mage for a few levels, the class became enjoyable. While players are slow due to a restricted mana pool, Dragon Age: The Veilguard opens to to include additional equipment that dramatically changes one’s build.

Starting as a lightning Mage, we switched to a Spellblade once we discovered the joys of the Arcane Bomb. Our bread-and-butter used to be Walking Bomb, so the switch-up proved to be second nature before too long.

As one auto-attacks in Dragon Age: The Veilguard, the enemy builds up stacks of the Arcane Bomb. Once it reaches three hits, it turns into a big bomb that can explode for big damage. With the right build, one can make said big bomb stack multiple times as well.

Enter us ripping enemies up en masse near the end of our playthrough. Allies play a big role in combat as well, with all companions potentially being a healer.

When it comes down to it, those that dive into Dragon Age: The Veilguard should aim for combos.

Some attacks and spells have things like Overwhelm, Sundered, or Weakened. When you combine that with an ally’s attacks, this sets off a detonation that does big damage and looks even better.

Our particular build revolved around setting up our own Arcane Bomb, then Overwhelming the enemies for allies to make them go boom. It’s just a shame combat takes too long to get to the really fun stuff – there’s even an ultimate attack just waiting to be charged up for big damage.

The economy is also another highlight of Dragon Age: The Veilguard. Never feeling reach, we were always desiring items.

While one does not sell gear, if the players gets a copy of an item, it then upgrades to the next rarity level. From there, players can go to the Light House and put enchantments on the gear at no cost.

That’s not all – players can then put down trophies and other items in thier own room, but the customization is very limited. Do note there are free refunds on skill points, which is always a good thing.

Unfortunately, not everything is rosy in Dragon Age: The Veilguard.

For longtime fans, there are only three choices from previous Dragon Age titles can be brought over, all from Dragon Age: Inquisition.

Certain party members are also needed to get through obstacles; Taash’s fire breathing, for instance, must be used to light torches and burn brush. As a Mage that can literally spawn fire from nothing, not lighting them ourselves felt backwards.

Perhaps the biggest offense comes from its control scheme. The pickup item button and the jump button should NEVER be the same, and it proves to be the case here.

Tech-wise, there are no bugs, crashes, or frame drops to speak of in Dragon Age: The Veilguard.

Dragon Age: The Veilguard is a perfectly fine action RPG that simply doesn’t stand up to the best of what 2024 has to offer. While those who liked Dragon Age 2 will appreciate this title, more casual fans best tread with caution.

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Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake Review

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However, mere minutes into Amazon Games’ New World: Aeternum, I realized just how lucky gamers truly are today.

New World: Aeternum Review

First thing’s first: New World: Aeternum is another visually incredible game; arguably the best-looking MMO on the market today. While it lacks the jaw-dropping vistas of Throne & Liberty, the attention to detail, the lighting, and the atmospheric weather conditions all make it a complete package.

If it wasn’t an iron node, a tasty rabbit, or a hulking bear distracting me from my quests, it was getting lost in the pleasure of exploring one of the game’s many beautiful biomes.

Each area felt like its own world. Unique architecture filled the streets, new flora dotted the grounds…New World: Aeternum is a visually stunning game.

That same attention to detail, the undesirable urge to stop and just think “wow, that’s neat” continues throughout much of the title.

New World: Aeternum’s classless system allows for complete freedom in character progression and development. Weapon disciplines are spread across 15 unique weapon types, allowing players to explore any avenue of combat at any given time.

Different attributes affect specific weapons, so some combinations will be more synergistic than others, depending on your character’s build. No matter what players choose, exploration of New World: Aeternum’s combat is every bit as fun as it is diverse.

This is especially effective when attempting to utilize enemy weaknesses. For instance, one should use bludgeoning weapons against skeletons. Having an arsenal of options felt rewarding and worth the struggle to learn different weapon disciplines.

Even toward New World: Aeternum’s final moments, I was switching to weapons I had never used and still enjoying every swing, punch, or spell thrown.

Weapons in New World: Aeternum are improved through use, with combat providing experience points directly toward progressing with equipped weapons, so it’s not tied to character level. With enough patience and dedication, one can master it all.

New World: Aeternum pioneers in its attempt to revive the stagnant MMORPG combat formula, delivering a fluid, responsive, and more challenging combat system than the traditionally sluggish nature of tab-targeting alternatives.

As a result, this title shares more in common with action RPGs than it does with any MMO; New World: Aeternum is as rewarding as it is punishing. It requires a careful balance of offense and defense, with abilities requiring very precise timing between animations to truly excel in combat.

Despite this, combat does admittedly feel very limiting compared to other MMO games. Characters can only equip six abilities at once (three across both a primary and secondary weapon), but it’s the backbone of the combat philosophy.

Even basic combat against grunt enemies, which you dispose of freely while doing yet another fetch or kill quest, can be troublesome. It’s as if one sees every problem as a nail, and one only has a hammer.

Rather, New World: Aeternum is more about precision, timing, and the careful blocking of enemy attacks between swapping weapons.

Its constant balancing act may feel shallow and boring to some, but it’s very much the opposite.

Even after reaching max level and mastering my Great Axe, I was still finding ways of optimizing my approach to combat. Between improving the timing of weapon swaps to benefit from buffs and effects applied from previous abilities to learning the earliest opportunity animations allows for swapping weapons, it provided a steep learning curve that rewards dedication and skill.

New World: Aeternum’s combat system is the crown jewel of the entire experience, and one of the best combat systems the MMO genre has ever seen.

New World: Aeternum’s narrative is fantastic, with beautifully crafted new cutscenes and characters spicing up the earlier hours. However, I wish I could say the same thing about the quest design – levelling to max level has never felt such a chore.

New World: Aeternum takes the run-of-the-mill, uninspiring, and largely uneventful tropes of MMORPG quest design and turns them up to 11.

Every single quest has every objective marked on the map. You’re either killing something, fetching something, or delivering something, and no thought is required for any of it.

Despite many of the side quests offering promising story segments and opportunities to learn more about the breathtaking setting, everything becomes a blur as you plow through yet another quest.

Your brain moves into autopilot. You don’t need to focus or think. You simply open the map, run to the nearest quest objective, and finish it off.

Much of this is amplified by a quest flow which is completely contrary to every modern MMO I can think of. I lost count of the times I had completed an area and walked 200 yards up the road, only for another quest to take me back to the area I had just finished.

Once or twice, user error, something I missed, or perhaps I approached the town from an unintended direction, but it happened from start to finish. Many of these areas are complex dungeons or deep caverns, requiring a lot of time and effort to fight back through that was, more often than not, not rewarded enough.

That’s not all.

Many of New World: Aeternum’s quests fall victim to another MMO trope from yesteryear – including spawn times. I cannot believe in 2024 I am standing around waiting for a five-minute respawn timer on a boss with 15 other players.

I was caught napping on that one. It was on a beach, black as night, with fog filling the air and a brooding atmosphere, it was an immersive sight like few MMOs can deliver. I missed the boss spawn. It was killed within five seconds and I didn’t get a hit for the credit.

There are worse things in a game than being distracted by awe-inspiring environments, but this was one of countless quests that required far too much time due to archaic spawning mechanisms.

It’s a stark contrast to practically every aspect of the game’s design, with each element feeling fine-tuned to near perfection. I didn’t understand it then, and I still don’t now.

One such element approaching perfection is New World: Aeternum’s fantastic crafting system, one that has no modern contemporary that comes to mind.

Spread across 12 unique refining and seven production crafts, it’s an expansive system that coddles the rest of the game in a warm embrace.

Dedicating time to any of the crafts offers huge payouts, frequently. Providing expanded quest rewards through the skinning of enemies or gathering of rare resources, and rewarding exploration when mining high atop unexplored cliffs.

New World: Aeternum has everything a life skill addict would want.

I often found myself returning to trodden ground. Disappointed, I was unable to skin the hides of my latest questing victims through neglect of my Tracking & Skinning ability. Equally, I was elated when, even toward the mid-parts of the game, I was able to craft worthy weapons for my character.

I sunk a lot of time into the Trade Skills system of New World, but I don’t feel I have even scratched the surface. If you desire more than simple PvP or PvE end-game in an MMO, New World: Aeternum’s crafting system offers endless hours of rewarding venture.

Speaking of end-game content, New World: Aeternum’s is, well, confusing. It’s not the first MMO to focus on the economic and political intrigue of player-owned towns, cities, and locations, but much like every MMO before it, it makes no effort to entice players to its biggest draws.

Even at the end, as I finished the story and hit max level, I did not understand how any of those complex mechanics worked. Was it worth diving into high-end Company play? Did I want to commit to investing a lot of time into controlling areas of the map?

It’s like having a shop with no sign or opening hours, just hoping to fuel business through passerby curiosity alone. Obviously, it’s something the community nurtures, but when asked, nearly everyone will tell you to run endlessly through areas doing chest runs – which is about as exciting as it sounds.

New World: Aeternum’s dungeons offer a worthwhile alternative, with complex puzzles and challenging boss battles. However, to truly appreciate the game’s array of end-game systems, high-level Company play is a must.

Ultimately, New World: Aeternum is a fantastic MMO, building on the foundations of the greatest games of yesteryear. However, after 60 hours, I’m just not sure if I’ll be returning to the shores of Aeternum anytime soon.

New World’s rocky PC launch laid the groundwork for it to become one of the most impressive MMOs on the market today, offering one of the best MMO experiences available on consoles.

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Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake Review

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It felt like everything I was dreading from a new free-to-play MMORPG was presented front and center. From being inundated with currencies and item exchanges to irritating tiny red dots informing me of new information across 20 different menus and options screens, it was such an assault on organization it was physically painful.

If I wasn’t playing to review the game, I would have stopped after four to five hours. However, after suffering through those initial hours, I couldn’t help but be impressed by what I saw in Throne & Liberty.

Throne & Liberty Review

First and foremost, Throne & Liberty looks incredible for a free-to-play game. The characters and animations are surprisingly detailed, but even those pale in comparison to the environments.

Rolling open fields, barren deserts, complicated underground caverns – Every area of Throne & Liberty is beautifully crafted, with each corner of the world begging for players to stop and take in the sights. It was the attention to detail in the world-building that put me off balance.

This wasn’t what I thought it would be; this wasn’t simply another cookie-cutter MMO clone looking to cash in on a few months of success and then ride out on a dwindling player base.

Throne & Liberty is a real attempt at making something new, something exciting. I worked with MMOs for a very long time – it’s a genre I have a lot of love for – but I’m also very pessimistic all the same.

I initially approached the game as I would any MMORPG. Plowing through the side quests, skipping and ignoring the endlessly pointless dialogue, I’ll listen through some of the more interesting cutscenes. However, for the most part, I’m not stopping to smell the roses.

Throne & Liberty’s story, while nothing groundbreaking, is surprisingly good, and it’s not just the main story either.

Whether I was slaying demons, digging into a dangerous conspiracy, or chasing massive underground sandworms like Kevin Bacon, the quality of quest design in Throne & Liberty worked flawlessly in hand with a well-structured and impressively engaging narrative.

I legitimately cared about the side content. Admittedly, not all of it, this is still an MMO, but I was constantly impressed by the depth of the stories and characters in content players could otherwise completely ignore.

There are times when the game falls at the feet of its ambition, turning otherwise intriguing quest design into a frustrating slog. Attempting perfectly timed platforming sequences in an environment not designed for perfectly timed platforming sequences is not fun, but these are few and far between.

Thankfully, other areas of innovation don’t struggle to the same degree. Exploring what feels like the most open-world MMO I’ve played in years, Thone & Liberty is thrilling and rewarding from start to finish.

Soaring through the skies, running along the planes, and swimming to distant islands, Throne & Liberty’s in-game morphing system gives players complete freedom to explore nearly anything they can see with mounts for land, sea, and air.

It’s not quite to the level of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, but it’s the only MMORPG I’ve played where I felt like an explorer. I wasn’t just walking through carefully disguised corridors of progression, I was actively engaged in just exploring for the sake of exploring, an art almost lost to modern game design.

Throughout Throne & Liberty I was constantly saying to myself: this feels similar, just better, and that’s never more true than in the combat. Yes, it’s a traditional tab-target style MMO combat system, but the inclusion of active defensive abilities makes it a real game changer.

Opting for a two-handed weapon and sword & board as secondary, I was built to tank, and it’s the most fun I’ve had tanking since The Lord of the Rings Online.

Players are constantly tested in difficult battles. Dodging familiar red areas of death on the floor as enemies launch powerful abilities, but the opportunity to engage defensively with other abilities, makes every fight feel infinitely more fun than regular MMORPG combat.

Carefully parrying or dodging enemy abilities provides additional effects, such as a quick burst of healing or a cooldown reduction on abilities. It’s minor on paper, but in practice, this system delivers a more immersive and impactful combat experience – two words I rarely associate with MMO combat design.

The skill to time and perfect the defensive abilities makes such a huge difference. Doing it properly, I could easily fight off seven to eight enemies at a time.

Doing it wrong? I’d be dead in 30 seconds.

The progression systems boast much of the same, that niggling feeling of familiarity with just the right dose of “Oh, cool.” Using old or crafted gear as a resource for newer, more powerful gear, keeps even the early-stage dungeons relevant and worthwhile.

Farming different books for active and passive skill leveling, completing contracts for Weapon Experience points, further customizing skills and abilities with additional effects and bonuses…it never ends.

I’m already at maximum level, and I feel I’ve barely touched the surface of building the ultimate tank… once that’s done? I can simply change weapons and start building pretty much any combination of typical MMORPG class archetypes I can imagine. All the while benefiting from the resources, materials, and farming capabilities of having a max-level character.

If I were to pick a singular area of development that MMORPG’s have been struggling with, especially on console, it’s the social elements. Sadly, Throne & Liberty makes minimal effort in addressing this.

Voice communication is off by default, and no system that I could find exists to make communication any easier. Trying to explain even a basic tank and spank boss battle with a singular mechanic is nigh on impossible using an on-screen keyboard.

I spent several hours on the brink of a boss battle arena, constantly filtering through party members as they abandoned the mission after several wipes.

Just to be clear, these were not complicated boss battles for even the most casual of MMO players, but the console audience isn’t there yet. More effort is needed with communication tools for this kind of content to truly flourish.

Despite its communication shortcomings, most areas of PvP and social questing in Throne & Liberty can be entertaining with minimal communication. Watching as dozens of players descend on a field of wolves to see who can claim the most pelts was incredible. Floods of spells, explosions, and swinging swords… Throne & Liberty’s large-scale cooperative and competitive quests represent some of the very best content it has to offer.

Sadly, communication isn’t the only issue plaguing consoles. The controls are clumsy and frustrating; there are instances where navigation buttons randomly stop working. In addition, some screens allow for d-pad navigation use, while others force stick navigation. The play-by-play controls in combat work fine but navigating one of the game’s many intricate menus feels like playing Jenga with a blindfold.

And good luck trying to navigate targeting in large-scale PvP.

That said, plenty of fantastic co-op content is available, even if you don’t want to dabble in PvP. The Guild system of Throne & Liberty is one of the most rewarding I’ve experienced.

Guild Contracts reward regular, directed cooperative play with minor rewards for killing regular creatures. Working together to achieve Milestones unlocks new content, such as dungeons and boss battles, for the entire guild. Players can donate supplies to purchase guild upgrades. It’s a great system and one I very much look forward to exploring as more content is available.

One final area that was impressive was the day, night, and weather cycles, each intricately connected to various aspects of gameplay. Exploring certain regions, such as the Lycan-infested Gray Claw Forest, sees more wolves spawn at night.

While gathering specific resource nodes promises greater yield if it rains. These are all things we’ve seen before, but it works brilliantly to help direct content and avenues of progression depending on the world around the player.

It would be irresponsible to not mention the technical woes surrounding the release, although I’m very confident these will be addressed in the coming days. Throne & Liberty launched a premium early access version that turned out to be a glorified beta testing window, with the game regularly offline for six hours or more a day.

That was frustrating enough, but the full free-to-play release was a complete mess. Missing currencies, a broken auction house, players unable to log in for days at a time, and the cherry on top? My character was missing for several days.

If you’re looking to dive into Throne & Liberty in the immediate future, expect a bit of a bumpy ride.

Throne & Liberty is one of the most impressive and refreshing MMORPG’s in years. While it’s easy to initially dismiss it as “just another one of those MMOs,” those that dig deeper may come to realize Throne & Liberty is the perfect MMO to bring them back into the fray. If you have the choice, play it on PC.

The post Throne & Liberty Review (PlayStation 5) appeared first on GamersHeroes.

Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster Review

Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster begins with players flying into a town in the middle of a lockdown. You play as Frank West, a freelance journalist looking for his next big scoop. As you fly in and start taking pictures, you quickly find out things are not looking good.

Zombies have taken the town over, and survivors are meeting up at a mall. Looking for answers, you drop at the mall to see what you can figure out. Things quickly get bad when an old woman opens up the front doors and lets the horde of zombies in.

Retreating back to the security room, you begin to put pieces of what happened together. Some sort of outbreak occurred, and people started biting each other, making it spread even faster. Now, you are stuck here for the next 72 hours until your chopper comes back to pick you up.

In the meantime, you search for answers, help survivors get to safety, and, of course, kill zombies and crazy people. Overall, with the campaign and the post-game content, you are looking at about 20 hours of action.

Things are pretty simple – at least, when you start. All you have to do is kill some zombies and help people out. You can think of zombies in the game like cannon fodder. I had over 3,000 kills by the end of my playthrough, and you could easily get higher if you use cars to run them over.

They are fun to kill and a great way to test new weapons or get photo ops. When night comes, though, you need to watch out. Zombies become way more aggressive, and their damage can add up. If you get taken down and bit, you lose three HP. Note that the early game only has five HP to start; add the Psychopaths into the mix, and things get tricky.

The Psychos are the game’s mini-bosses, and you typically need to kill them to progress on the main story or to rescue other survivors. You get EXP by killing zombies and Psychos, but the big points come from bringing back survivors.

On top of that, you have a limited amount of time to deal with the crazies and rescue people before they either die or escape—pressure on top of pressure in this game. I think it’s possible to save everyone in your first playthrough if you time it correctly, but I definitely didn’t. I was too busy messing around with the games and copious amounts of weapons.

Anything you can see in this game that you can pick up can be used as a weapon. Benches, gumball machines, swords, bloody hands, teddy bears, bats, chainsaws, and frying pans are just a few of the weapons you can find in the game.

From what I’ve been told, the blue chainsaw was broken in the original game, and it still is here. That thing wrecks zombies and crazies alike, and if you get the Blade book, it will last way longer. There is just one problem with there being so many weapons and books to pick up: your inventory space is super limited at the start.

When you start the game, you can only hold five items, which isn’t enough when you have dozens of toys you can pick up around you. You can hold more as you level up, but even then, you are always picking and choosing between weapons, healing items, and books to keep your weapons stronger. Even in the end, I only had a couple of free extra spaces. The little blue chainsaw that the Clown Pyscho drops is still powerful, so I recommend using that once you get it; just make sure you have the Blade book to make it last longer.

There are some annoyances still in the game. The Psychos in the Jeep respawn still, so you have to kill them over and over or ignore them. The survivor AI can also still be very hit-and-miss. They will listen, but they get caught up on objects and zombies quite often.

Some of the Psychopaths have not aged very gracefully either. It was always a bit weird, but now it’s pretty cringe. Other than that, I didn’t have any bugs or crashes.

While the changes are minimal, Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster’s shambling undead have never looked better. Fans of the original and newcomers alike will find plenty of zombie-slaying fun.

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S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart Of Chornobyl Review – A Brilliant, Brutal, Buggy Mess

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl is a fantastic game that flirts with greatness but falls short of being truly incredible.

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Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake Review

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I was initially quietly optimistic in the build up to the release of Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2. It’s a franchise I’ve dabbled in over the years, but outside the heavy weights, I’ve often felt disappointed.

Total War: Warhammer stands as one of the greatest strategy games of all time. Fatshark’s Vermintide delivered a fantastic co-op experience, and the more recent release of Rogue Trader was a great take on the tactic’s genre.

I also really struggled through Underhive Wars, would rather forget my time in Chaosbane, and Darktide, well, you get the point. Couple this with World War Z, a part amazing part embarrassingly broken experience, I really wasn’t sure what to expect with Space Marine 2 and Saber Interactive.

The 10-15 hours that followed were bizarre. I cannot tell you how many times my comrades and I screamed “holy shit, that was awesome” over Discord, but for each of those insanely epic moments, there was an air of disappointment we just couldn’t shrug.

There’s A Story Here, Somewhere

If you’re stepping into Space Marine 2 as a relative newcomer to the Warhammer franchise, do not expect a warm welcome. It makes absolutely no effort in explaining the events of the original Space Marine game or the wider Warhammer universe as a whole.

No introductory cinematic, no compendium of events, texts, and characters in a pause menu, nothing. This makes it challenging to really dive into the quality and impact of the story, because I had no idea what was going on.

Sure, I understood the assignment. Land on a planet besieged by Tyranids, find a guy, rescue a guy, fix something, use more elevators and “loading screen” doors than I can count. However, without greater knowledge and understanding of the wider story, it feels simple and hollow.

The epitome of this came during a singular moment in the story, one that was clearly designed to shock and awe. Instead, our entire party, in unison, simply asked: “What was that?”

I will be the first to admit, it’s a little entitled and unrealistic to expect the full package. A sequel to a game in one of the biggest and most expansive fictional universes ever created, no developer in the world has the time to bring us all entirely up to speed.

But it has been nearly 13 years since the last game, a brief rundown would have been appreciated.

Courage & Honor

While the ever-expanding lore of the Warhammer universe is sure to appeal to a lot of folks, let’s be honest: That’s not the reason we’re here.

It quickly takes a backseat to running around as a superhuman, genetically modified killing machine in mechanized armor swinging a sword with a chainsaw.

And, by god, is it glorious.

Gears of War has long been the pinnacle of the third-person shooter, but nothing has come as close to that mantle as Space Marine 2.

The slow, clunky, pounding footstep movement, slogging through with enough momentum to disintegrate targets on contact. Glorious models of chaos foot soldiers replaced by a misty haze of blood and body matter.

If you have ever sat at the head of a Warhammer table and wondered just how those models would interact in real combat, dial that up to 11, and you’re at Space Marine 2’s level of bloody and messy.

Every dodge, every swing of the blade, every carefully timed counter – all of it is rewarded with the dismemberment of your enemies in the most glorious fashion imaginable.

Even toward the end of the story, nearly 12 hours of main campaign and optional Operation missions, the combat is nearly identical. Except for a couple of insanely action-packed missions, it doesn’t evolve or change throughout the story, but it didn’t matter.

Slicing through near endless waves of xeno’s in that iconic bulky blue armor, sharing that relief of respite with friends after an intense 5-10 minute battle, it’s everything I want as a Space Marine. Pain is temporary, honor is eternal.

Did You F**king See That?

Despite the near flawless execution of Space Marine combat, the game’s real gem is in the environment. It’s all a carefully constructed illusion. Linear paths, small areas split between poorly disguised loading screens, but if you can suspend belief for just a moment, it’s magical.

Seeing thousands of Tyranid’s swarming a fortified position in the distance. Watching the iconic tanks of the Astra Militarum stand toe-to-toe with a relentless force. Fighting off Tyranids as they form World War Z style pyramids to climb the battlements. It creates a feeling and scope of a universe at war unlike any other, arguably the most faithful adaptation Warhammer has seen in video-game form.

My entire journey through Space Marine 2 was all much of that.

“This is amazing, but…”

That was great, but…”

It’s a game that is so incredibly good, but it’s just not quite great.

Watching the credits roll, celebrating the triumphant combat while commiserating a complete lack of understanding of the story, I wasn’t sure how much more time I wanted to invest in Space Marine 2

If you’ve played World War Z, Space Marine 2 is very much of the same ilk. It’s a similar package, but fine-tuned and executed to an infinitely higher degree. Technically, near flawless, suffering only the expected matchmaking and lobby forming bugs common in today’s gaming launch space, but much like its post-apocalyptic brethren, some may find the content a bit lacking.

The main campaign is probably five to eight hours long, depending on difficulty and play style. A further six Operations are available at about 30–40 minutes a piece. That’s it, without stepping into the PvP arena.

This sours the experience further when you consider the price of the Gold and Ultra Editions. I don’t recall a game offering these $80-$100 early access editions when the entire game can be easily completed before official release.

It’s likely to offer greater value for those that are happy to grind through the multiple classes, perks, and weapon upgrades, through both co-op Operations and PvP. It just feels as though it’s content to justify a Season Pass.

Hardened Warhammer fans finally have the ultimate Space Marine experience with Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2. Gory, bloody, and brutally entertaining combat stands at the forefront of Space Marine 2, delivering one of the most immersive Warhammer worlds to date. However, after 14 years between releases, a refresher on the events of the original wouldn’t have gone amiss.

The post Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 Review – On the Cusp of Greatness appeared first on GamersHeroes.

Madden NFL 25 Review

Starting out, players can take on some training and practice matches, or can alternatively jump into the classic Franchise mode or Superstar mode. There’s also the Ultimate Team, where you can buy packs and make your own team.

While these modes might be limited, I think we can all agree that we are all here to play some football.

In Superstar mode, you can pick from a few key positions and enter the NFL as a Rookie in the draft. I choose QB, but you can be a receiver, running back, linebacker, or cornerback as well.

After assigning your stats and running the NFL Combine, you enter the draft and wait to see where you land. As a QB, I figured I had a few choices, and I was hoping for Minnesota, so I could rely on the insane stats of Justin Jefferson.

Do you want to know who is right after Minnesota? The New York Jets.

Apparently, just like in real life, everyone is sick of Aaron Rodgers, and the Jets dropped him. I admittedly almost re-rolled my character, but I decided to play through the preseason.

I’m glad I did because my receivers and tight end were solid. Not only that, but I also managed to make my way to the Division Championship, but lost to the Ravens in my first year. Since you are only playing one position, the amount you can do for the team is limited.

Between games, you can chat with teammates to get minor buffs to things like throwing power, accuracy, catch in traffic, or some helpful blocking. You also don’t get much say in trades or pick-ups in the off-season, so you can really only focus on improving yourself.

Practice between games will give you slight exp boosts, and you can use your skill points to get permanent upgrades from there. It’s a fun mode for sure, but I still prefer Franchise mode.

Franchise mode is the classic. You pick a team and control it entirely for a season, trying to get to the Superbowl. In addition, you are responsible for off season recruiting, scouting, and other plans. There is an Owner mode that lets you manage the team differently, but I spent limited time there.

This is also where you can do the fantasy draft, which puts all players into the draft pool and makes everyone start from scratch. It can be fun for a few games, but I think I prefer the Lions now that they are a decent team.

When you pick a team, you can then decide how you want to run it. I’m not sure if this is new or not, but you can now play offense, defense, or the key moments of the game. It’s a good addition, since I am terrible at defense and good at offense.

You do let the AI control things, which is a gamble, but at least you can play the parts of the game you like. The most important thing is that you can control the trades, letting you build the team you want – an Ultimate Team, so to speak.

This year’s Ultimate Team is much like the others; building the best team will cost you. I had never played this mode before, but I had to try it to see how the online play worked. My free packs got me a few decent players, and I went into a match to see if there would be any lag.

There was thankfully no lag; just a monstrous beat down that made me wish the game had a mercy rule. The next two matches were much closer, and I actually won one, and there was still no lag. The servers seem to be rock solid in Madden NFL 25 – a huge plus.

As for the bad, sometimes the AI does dumb things, but that is par for the course.

The catching seems a little odd this year. If a ball bounces off a player, and they are caught up on each other, the ball sort of floats some and gives them a chance to catch it. It’s great when your player catches the ball, but terrible when you get an interception. These are just minor annoyances, but they are noticeable; thankfully, there are no bugs or crashes to speak of.

Always having class while still being humble, Madden NFL 25 continues the series’ grand legacy. MVPs will have a blast, while newcomers can treat this as a good jumping on point.

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Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake Review

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The post Madden NFL 25 Review appeared first on GamersHeroes.

Full disclosure. I have spent the last year playing Star Wars Legion, Star Wars Armada, Star Wars X-Wing, and Star Wars Unlimited, I’m ready for this.

Star Wars Outlaws follows the adventures of Kay Vess and her cute and furry companion Nix. Abandoned by her mother at an early age, Kay struggles to survive on the syndicate dominated worlds of the Outer Rim, always looking for that next big score to buy her freedom.

A Star Wars Game Has Never Felt So Authentic

Betrayed by the Rebel Alliance during a heist on the Zerek Besh crime syndicate, Kay is approached by Jaylen, a charming and charismatic smuggler with an offer impossible to refuse. That one final score, a heist to end all heists.

Kay and her trusted companion Nix set across the galaxy, tracking down and recruiting her crew for the big score.

The narrative takes place between the events of The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, delivering both familiar faces and locales, while keeping things fresh with fantastic new characters and planets to explore.

It’s a story that, for much of the game, just felt good. Each of the planets is home to one of the characters Kay recruits, and a boiling pot of syndicate betrayal and political turmoil that’s just begging for a chaotic smuggler to stir the pot.

Aiding Jabba and the Hutt Cartel to maintain control of Tatooine, choosing sides between the Crimson Dawn and Pyke Syndicate on Toshara, exploring the Separatist history of Akiva, meeting a cast of truly memorable characters, it was good.

And then I hit the ending. I have issues with endings. I got to the end of the original Final Fantasy VII probably 15 times, and didn’t actually watch the ending until 15 years later. If it wasn’t for the fact I’m required to finish a game before reviewing it, I’d probably skip the ending in 95% of games.

The culmination of events in Star Wars Outlaws is the most rewarding and satisfying conclusion to a video-game that I can remember. It elevates the entire story, turns something good fantastic, ties into the wider galaxy of Star Wars effortlessly, and it doesn’t rely on countless cameos to do it.

A Star Wars video-game has never felt this authentic.

That Star Wars Feeling

That authenticity, that Star Wars feeling, spreads and infects every single aspect of the game. This is all without a single Jedi or lightsaber. Ubisoft’s game worlds have long been some of the most visually impressive offerings in the video-game space, Avatar was visually outstanding, but Massive could have developed the best we’ve seen to date.

Everything looks and feels as though it was filmed in the 80s. The lighting, the screen filters, the simplicity of the Speeder and Trailblazer design, nearly everything is a visual package perfectly befitting the original movies.

Blasting across the open sands of Tatooine on a Speeder, looking for a random innocent and unknown child to run over, was a blast. Navigating the back alleys of Mos Eisley, avoiding the gaze of the Empire, fantastic. Leaping over cliffs in the windy canyons of Tashora, glorious.

I’ve finished the game and still find myself drawn to fighting stuff in space, for no other reason than it just looks amazing.

Star Wars potential will always be best delivered in an open-world experience, and Massive has created one of the most visually breathtaking galaxies I’ve ever seen.

I did say nearly everything. Unfortunately, the characters are struggling to keep up. The animations are clean and crisp, the voice-over work stellar, but highlighting characters during dialogue often presents dead expressions and strangely wandering eyes. It’s a minor discrepancy, one only really noticeable because of how high the bar is in the rest of the game.

A Very Ubisoft Open World

The open-world elements of the game are very Ubisofted? Ubisoftfied? It’s very Ubisoft. Clear similarities with Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry, Watch Dogs, it’s a recipe they have used for many years, and it’s one that works.

Star Wars Outlaws does follow the more recent evolutions of the open-world formula. Many of the aspects of exploration are objective marked and intel based, creating sequences of eavesdropping on conversations and stealing datapads to reveal locations of interest.

That said, I never once felt bored exploring the open-world areas of the game, I enjoyed every minute. The stealth and combat system made approaching syndicate strongholds an intriguing playground of ideas and approaches, and while the constant reward of Speeder and ship skins grew tiresome toward the end, I near enough 100% completed every POI before that happened.

More Challenging Than I Expected

The game is a lot more stealth based than I was expecting. I spent more time analyzing patrol patterns, sneaking through vents, and quietly punching Stormtroopers in the face than I did in open blaster fire, but the combat and stealth systems complement each other perfectly, eventually.

In the beginning hours of the game, before Kay has learned many new abilities, it can be surprisingly difficult. Frequently I found being discovered was a death sentence, overwhelmed by Pyke Syndicate soldiers, Gamorrean guards, even angry bandits.

That was until I’d met a few Experts, unlocked some set item bonuses, and upgraded my Adrenaline Shot, the latter being the single best aspect of the entire combat system. Slowing down time, picking enemies one by one, and watching Kay’s Han Solo hip fire wipe them all out is satisfying from start to finish.

The Expert System Is Surprisingly Good

The Expert system is one that I initially presumed to be rather dull and unimaginative, a glorified interface for skills and abilities, just with a different paint job to what we’ve seen before. I was wrong.

Experts are characters dotted throughout the universe that Kay meets, either through story progression, side quests, or hidden tidbits of intel discovered here and there. Bram, the Zabrak Bartender, Sheriff Quint, the Weequay Gunslinger, these are characters that live and breathe in the world Kay explores.

It creates a meaningful connection and justification for the learning of new abilities, it’s not something Kay just pulled out of a hat because she killed enough Stormtroopers to figure out how to shoot her blaster a bit quicker.

The Unlock Conditions, challenges and requirements Kay must meet for the Experts to teach her the abilities, create another layer of rewarding exploration and challenge that the more objective-based open-world games can sometimes lack.

I Expected Someone With Your Reputation To Be A Little…Better

The Reputation system of Star Wars Outlaws was a prime target for much of the marketing in the build up to release, but it’s a system that doesn’t feel it lives up to its potential.

Many of the quests, contracts, and choices made throughout the story impact your relationship with the syndicates, but the consequence of these relationships is lacking.

With a Good rating, Kay can freely explore the syndicate controlled areas of each city, making other quests and objectives in these areas infinitely easier to achieve. Higher ranks reward Kay with rare and exclusive gear.

It works, managing the reputations can be fun during certain parts of the game, but the choices seldom seem to matter outside an immediate conversation or event. Even hated factions, those that send death squads out to hunt Kay, can be farmed back to loving status in an hour or two.

It’s Not Without Its Issues

Despite its brilliance across practically every area of the game, Star Wars Outlaws is not without it’s open-world woes. Several times I was forced to close the game or reload a previous save because an elevator wouldn’t work, or Nix was distracted by something and stopped functioning entirely.

Spending many hours at certain points of interest trying to locate a single treasure chest with the Nix Sense ability felt a real step-down from the aerial ease of the Assassin’s Creed games. Turning what should be a challenging but rewarding element of exploration into something more frustrating.

It’s a game of many tiny problems, problems unlikely to make an impact if I didn’t enjoy it so much to want to complete practically everything.

Final Thoughts

The history of Star Wars in video-games is one marked with brilliance and marred with mediocrity. Rogue Squadron, Knights of the old Republic, the original Battlefront games, there’s no shortage of old classics that stand today as some of the best games to come out of the Star Wars galaxy.

For each of those, however, there’s another that even seasoned fans would like to forget ever happened. Republic Heroes, the Battlefront remaster, The Force Unleashed 2, it’s an IP with near limitless potential but one, that until recently, had yet to hit its stride in the modern era.

Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order is easily among the best games under the Star Wars umbrella, and LEGO Star Wars has been carrying the banner for years. Now, however, it all feels real as Star Wars Outlaws joins those illustrious ranks as one of the greatest Star Wars games of all time.

Massive Entertainment created breathtaking environments across the galaxy, delivered a fast-paced combat system true to the scoundrel style, and crafted a story that rivals the modern movies. Star Wars Outlaws is, simply put, the Star Wars game of a generation.

The post Star Wars Outlaws Review appeared first on GamersHeroes.

Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess Review

Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess follows Soh, a guardian of the Goddess Yoshiro. A skilled warrior, Soh sets out to purge the land of demons and monsters known as Seethe.

However, Soh simply isn’t strong enough to protect Yoshiro on his own. As the pair work their way down the mountain, they travel to villages, caverns, and outposts as they find villagers the Seethe trapped in fleshlike cocoons.

Using energy gifted from the Goddess, Soh can open up these cocoons and change the villagers into fighters, thieves, priests, and even Sumo wrestlers. With their combined might, they protect Yoshiro from the enemy and set out to help her get down the mountain.

Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess is broken up into levels, with each level containing a certain amount of villagers you can recruit. At first, this number is small, averaging around four villagers. I was hoping to bring villagers from each level to the next, but that isn’t how it works.

Instead, after clearing a level, you will then be able to fight the boss of the area, and beating them normally unlocks a new class for your villagers. The villagers will then stay behind in that area and rebuild, giving you more healing items, new talismans, and even EXP to make your classes stronger. It’s a simple system, but one that will have you replaying levels to get more loot.

Speaking of replaying levels, each one has hidden objectives that you don’t see until you beat a level. Bosses are typically time battles, giving you a few minutes to clear the stage and move on. Your more typical missions might want you to find all the pots you can break, purify some animals, take no damage, or even beat the mission without lighting any lamps.

If you complete the optional objectives in real-time, you will still get the reward at the end of the level. Some of them are impossible until you get further in the game, though, and this means sometimes you HAVE to replay levels to get 100%.

A typical level will have you escort Yoshiro down a path until she gets to a gate. Once at the gate, you can purify it and move to the next part of the map or complete the level. During the day you purify the Seethe infection, free villagers, and can even dig up treasure with thieves.

At night, however, the Seethe comes out, and your only objective is to protect Yoshiro. Combat is about as basic as it gets, with some light attacks and heavy attacks. You can combo the two, but don’t expect Devil May Cry combos or anything like that.

Players will also get a special move that charges up over time or by killing enemies. The one I liked was the flaming sword, but you can get a few different ones as you progress in the game.

The game’s best strength is the fact that the villagers you recruit can protect Yoshiro on their own if you position them right. The enemies spawn from the gate and are invincible once they step out. That part is annoying, but the more annoying part is that you take damage if you sit at their spawn.

While you can camp the spawn point, you need to do it from a respectful distance, or else you all die quickly. Once you understand this, you can place the units a few feet out from the spawn and let them go wild. It is a very satisfying feeling to watch all the enemies die before they can even set foot near Yoshiro.

Outside the combat and escorting the Goddess, you will also set out to repair villages, which nets EXP to level up your villager classes. The base levels are pretty generic, with more HP and more attack-type upgrades, but get more advanced down the line.

For instance, Archers can get fire arrows, Lumberjacks can do power attacks and gain a wider attack radius, and Thieves learn to pick locks. The hardest part here is deciding which points to put into what class, because you won’t be able to max every class. Thankfully, you can reset the points if you need to and rebuild your army.

When it comes to annoyances, Yoshiro will only follow the path, and during boss fights, she stands still. This can sometimes be a problem because a rampaging centipede boss will just trample her to death because you can’t kill it quickly enough.

If she dies, you have to redo the whole encounter. Other times, I’ve had the AI archers just ignore a flying enemy as it goes right by them and heads to Yoshiro. Maybe it’s there to keep you on your toes, but it is still irritating. I didn’t run into any major bugs or crashes.

Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess is one of those games that will have you going back for one more quick level. If you’re still on the fence, check out the demo and get yourself hooked.

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The post Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess Review appeared first on GamersHeroes.