Game Quicky: The Rat Pack (Itch.io – PC) ~ The Rats Will Take Over

Itch.io page

Indie games can be unique. Today’s game is no different. Today, I want to talk about a game that’s created by the developers of that point-and-click game, Captain Disaster. I honestly expected a new point-and-click game when he contacted me via Twitter and when I heard it was going to be about rats, the edutainment collector part of my brain went directly to Mia: The Mouse, but this game is something completely different. It’s a TBS game, a turn-based strategy game. About rats? This is going to be unique. But, we need to ask, is this going to be the good kind of unique or the bad kind? Let’s find out in this 100% honest review of this game that I get a press review copy for. And yes, feel free to leave a comment in the comment section with your thoughts and/or opinions on the content of this article and/or the game.

Good rats, pet them

I love this easter egg random event to bits.

The story of this game is about a colony of rats going for bigger and better. Starting off on a farm and going to the big city. I’m so happy that in terms of the story, this game isn’t doing anything silly and trying to put a fantasy spin or something on it… It feels realistic and stays in the background. It’s the perfect set dressing for the game. There is one random event, that I really love. I think you can guess which one is with the screenshot here.

Most of this game is spent on one screen. This is the game screen. There are 5 squares. Let’s start with the easiest to explain. You’ll have the yellow square in the top right, this is where everything that happens during your turn is shown.

The white square in the middle is one that shows special messages. I chose a beta screenshot here on purpose, since this random event message is now one of the various events that have a nice artwork accompanying it. But not every random event has a drawing.

Then, in the bottom left, you have the rat lab. This is your upgrades section. You have 4 things that you can upgrade, and these are essential. Depending on your lab level, you earn a certain amount of lab points per turn. You can upgrade the lab by scavenging for treasure. Each upgrade can improve the skills of your rats to avoid a game over. A game over is when your population reaches zero. That’ll cause you to restart the mission.

I could write a whole article explaining how this whole game works, but the tutorial does an amazing job of that. And not only that, the difficulty curve in this game gets a chef kiss from me. In each mission, a new mechanic is introduced, and you learn easily the amount of depth this game has. You learn when you can risk losing rats in your colony and when you urgently need to do something.

There are three difficulty levels, and you can finish this whole game playing on easy mode. But, the easy mode isn’t a cakewalk. You’ll need to learn the game and think carefully about what you want to do with your colony. And try to not get distracted by the amazing music this game has. Seriously, I would love to buy this soundtrack! Together with the amusing voice work and charming sound effects, the audiovisual presentation is quite good.

At first, I was worried that this game would be boring and repetitive. But, after playing 10 missions so far, I really have to say that I’m quite enjoying myself. With an easy to learn but tricky to master game, I’m impressed with this game. Sadly, there are a few things I didn’t really like, and I’m going to explain them in the next section of this article.

Bad rats, trap them!

So, what does this game do wrong? Well, first, there is no way to save mid-mission. Thankfully, this isn’t too big of an issue, since the missions themselves are sort. Well, I say short, but I have only played this game on easy and normal difficulty, so maybe it’s long on the harder difficulty?

The second negative of this game is a strange design quirk. Why is the pause button “F1” and not “Escape”? It really messed with my hardwired brain.

Overall, the UI design is excellent… But, there is something that would take it to the next level. Currently, when you beat a level, it gets a checkmark. And it doesn’t matter on which difficulty. I would love to see a different color checkmark depending on which difficulty you have beaten the level. Since, currently, the only way to see that is in the achievements’ menu which doesn’t even have a back arrow.

Another flaw in terms of the UI is in the red bottom right corner of the game screen. There are two things wrong with that in the version I reviewed. First, it doesn’t tell you the amount of treasure you’ll need to upgrade the attack and defense of your colony. Secondly, it doesn’t tell you when you can do a raid and how many raids you have done. This is somewhat annoying in some missions where you need to do 5 raids, and you didn’t keep count.

Something I personally missed was some animation in this game. Currently, all random events have a nice drawing, but the attacking and under attack events are too static. Either add a drawing or two for them or have some animation. It would polish up the game that much more.

And that’s about everything. So, shall we go on to the conclusion? Before I ramble on, and on.

So, what we RAT this game out?

Terrible pun aside for this final section of the article, is this game worth your time, or is this conclusion going to rip this game apart? Well, to be very honest, it’s the first. This game is really worth your time. Especially because most of the things I didn’t like about this game can be fixed and fine-tuned with an update or two.

Personally, I wouldn’t recommend this game to everyone. If you enjoy casual/puzzle and turn-based games, I would give this game a chance. But, don’t expect this game to be action-packed. This game is more on the calming and relaxing side. The charm of a small group of creators developing a game is oozing out of this one.

I would really pet this rat and not rat this game out. It’s a great game with some minor flaws. And I can’t wait to finish this game and maybe try the hard difficulty option. And maybe I’m even going to try to fill out that achievement page.

And with that said, I want to wrap up this article and thank you for reading it. I hope you enjoyed reading this article as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in another article, but until then, have a great rest of your day and take care.

Score: 70/100

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Review: NG – Spirit Hunter (Switch) ~ Let’s Play A Ghostly Game, Shall We?

Official Nintendo subsite

I have to admit that this year was an extremely crazy year in terms of games for me. So many amazing games have been released and still have to release. When I reviewed Death Mark last year, I was extremely hyped when I learned that a sequel was in development called NG. It was extremely difficult to find even a shred of information about this game since the abbreviation NG stands for various things like a name to companies. In any case, I didn’t have high hopes that this game was coming to the west. Image my surprise when I saw this game in the “Coming Soon” section of the Nintendo Switch eShop. I patiently waited until the release date and when the release date came, I bought it during my break and let it download while I was at work so I could play it right away when I came home. Now, was it worth it? Is this game as good as the previous game or should you skip this game? Let’s take a look at this game, while I invite you to leave a comment in the comment section down below with your opinion on the game and/or the content of this article.

Let’s play a Ghostly Game, shall we?

This game is the 2nd game in the Spirit Hunter series. The first game was Death Mark. This game isn’t a sequel of that game nor is it a continuation. This game just takes the whole gameplay concept and puts it into a new story and setting.

The story of this game is quite interesting. You play as the protagonist, that you can name yourself. His mother died a few years prior to this game and now he is living alone. His aunt took him in. She is a horror novel author and she runs a bar on the side. Her daughter became quite good friends with the protagonist. One evening, the protagonist finds a black postcard at his doorstep inviting him to play a game with a Princess. He simply ignores this because he thinks that it’s a simple prank.

But, that’s a mistake he is going to regret since not too long after he encounters his first ghost. After that, a ghost kidnaps his cousin and invites him to play a game. If he doesn’t play along, the curse will kill him.

Now, if you have played Death Mark, the curse works quite similar to the Death Mark of the original game. This curse is a sort of time limit in which you have to solve the case of the spirit you have to defeat or purify. Unlike the previous game, the protagonist doesn’t have one evening to deal with the spirit, but he has a bit more time.

While I would love to tell you more about the story of this game, I don’t think that’s a great idea. Since the story is that more enjoyable the less you know in advance. The twists and turns of the story are just amazing. The writing, the jokes, the pacing, the horror… everything comes together quite nicely in this game and I’m bumped out that I have finished this game.

There are some mechanics in this game that even give some replay value to this game. Now that I have finished this game, I want to replay this game and take it in a totally different direction to see where I end up.

This game has some minor Japanese voice acting as well. This isn’t overused at all and it’s used to add some punch to certain dialogues. The voice acting itself is done quite well, the voice acting of the ghosts are personally my favorites. The creepy effects and distortion the developers added to the voice acting is just amazing.

The slider of spooks

An extremely nice feature is the different modes you can play the game in. Like Death Mark, this game contains some jump scares and spooks. They are extremely well crafted and in most cases fit the story nicely. Also, they trigger when you investigate certain sections so it’s quite possible to miss multiple spooks. Some spooks mess with the text or the screen instead of a ghost popping up.

These different modes affect the amount of jump scares and spooks that happen. When you dislike these spooks or jumps scares, you can tone them down and even turn them off completely. I played through this game with all the jump scares intact and I have to say that it added quite a lot to the atmosphere of this game.

The atmosphere is quite creepy, to begin with. The writing draws you into the game and the amazing artwork and illustrations make the world come alive. There isn’t a lot in terms of animations but the beautiful artwork more than makes up for it. For example, the artwork of some death scenes is just extremely well done.

The character portraits, the design of the spirits, the design of the environments… It’s clear that quite a lot of thought and detail has been put into it. I’m quite thankful that the developers added a button to hid the on-screen UI to take screenshots of those amazing scenes to make them even more memorable.

Something that I find a tad bit irritating was the decision to make the “L” button the skip dialogue option. I think that another button like one of the arrow keys on the D-pad would have worked better. Since I can’t count on my two hands anymore the number of times I accidentally pressed the button and skipped a bit of the text. Thankfully, there is an easy way to bring up the log and you can re-read what you skipped.

Everything goes in that log that appears on the screen. From you trying to use an item to decisions you have to make. For some reason, I wasn’t always able to bring up this log easily. In most cases when the log refused to open, I was trying to investigate something. So, quickly going out of investigation mode was the solution.

Speaking of this mode, this is the only mode that allows you to save your game. You are unable to access the save menu while in a dialogue section. Thankfully, the dialogues aren’t Corpse Party Blood Drive long, so an investigation section can be right up the corner.

One thing that I found a real shame is some minor bugs in the UI of the options menu. In one option, the text overflows its checkbox and in another option, they forgot to remove a character at the end of the description. These are minor mistakes that can easily be patched out.

Gameplay-wise, this game is quite addictive. You have to explore the different area’s to either purify or destroy the spirit haunting the place. In order to do this, you explore at night with a partner and search for different subsections of this area.

You explore parts of a town, an office building, and various other locations. You search these locations for clues and items to learn more about the spirit and try and defeat/purify them. The better you explore and investigate the area, the more information you have in the fight with the spirit. If you have played Death Mark, you will feel right at home since it looks quite similar.

I found the gameplay of this game quite addictive. I wanted to keep playing and experience the story to it’s a full conclusion. And yes, now that I have beaten the game, I’m considering playing through the whole game again and trying to take a different route to see where it leads me. I know that this game has multiple endings, but I would love to see how much endings there are.

One extremely welcome improvement over Death Mark I have to mention is that when you want to swap partners, you can do that more easily now. You don’t have to go the whole way back to the mansion, you can easily go to the start of the place you are searching and ask the person directly.

Think quick!

There are some more things to do in this game compared to Death Mark. The items you choose still decide the outcome of purification of the spirit of destruction, but there are more things that matter now. Speaking about that in more detail would spoil certain story sections.

The whole spirit fighting mechanic has been reworked. Now, you don’t have to combine items anymore to attack the spirit, but you have to use your items in the area and analyze the situation. I love these spirits fights a whole lot more compared to Death Mark. The improvements these fights bring to the table are just amazing. It brings a bit more challenge to the table.

On top of that, there are now 2 styles of quick decision-making sections. Both work extremely similar and have the same outcome when you fail. A Game Over. One of these styles is a crisis choice, as you can see in the screenshot in this section of the article. Like Death Mark, the “1000” ticks down as soon as you are able to make a selection. Unlike Death Mark, you can’t find charms to increase this time and it also resets back to 100 each and every time you encounter that section.

Now, this game is quite lengthy. To beat the game, you will need to put give or take 20 hours aside. Let’s not forget to mention the fact that this game is somewhat replayable due to the “emotional reaction system”. Now, you can react with different emotions in certain sections. I have no idea if this makes a difference to the story. But, I have tried it one and it makes the characters react quite differently.

Something that does matter is during some sections you have to make harsh decisions that affect the story to a big degree. I wish I could talk about them, but that would spoil the big parts of the story and that’s something I’m trying to avoid in this review.

Another interesting game mechanic is the “D-Man”. This strange man texts you riddles that you can solve to find cards. These cards contain throwbacks to the previous game or add to the lore of the game. These are a joy to read but contain some spoilers of the previous game. Thankfully, only about the DLC bonus case, so it isn’t THAT bad. Now, the search for these cards works in a very unique way. As soon as you get the text, you have to look around in the area you are in. As soon as you exit the area, you will be unable to search for that card again. You’ll also lose the items you obtained and needed to find the said card. So, be careful.

An easy question to ask is, how difficult is this game? Well, this game is tricky. There are some sections that took me several attempts. In most cases, it was because I overlooked one item or didn’t check my area thoroughly enough. Thankfully, the game is quite forgiving with checkpoints and when you fail a crisis choice or spirit encounter, you can easily restart the whole fight by selecting the wanted option in the “Game Over” menu.

One of the biggest mistakes in this game is the save system in my opinion. I feel that it’s a downgrade compared to the system of Death Mark. There is no autosave, there are fewer save slots and there is less information on the save/load screen compared to the previous game. This is something I wish that will be improved in the possible sequel. Yes, a sequel has been sort of announced/confirmed. You can read more information on the article that Gematsu published a month ago.

The controls of this game are quite simple. They are easy to grasp and master. The only minor thing is that in some areas the spotlight isn’t bright enough to see where the spotlight is on the background art. Thankfully, this happens in only a few places, so it isn’t THAT bad.

Something I’m a bit mixed about is that this game doesn’t have a lot of music. Most of the music is also re-used from the previous game or sounds extremely similar. The music is amazing in this game and I wish I able to buy the soundtrack somewhere. Since I want to add this soundtrack to my music library when I’m relaxing or writing other articles.

And with that said, I said everything I wanted to say about this game. I have left out a few things so they can be surprised at you when you play this game. I think it’s high time for the conclusion of this article, don’t you think?

Conclusion

The bad:
-Some minor UI elements that could easily be fixed.

-The save feature could have been expanded quite a bit.
The good:

+ Amazing writing and story.

+ Great visuals.

+ The ability to disable the jump scares if you dislike them.

+ Great challenging puzzles

+ ….
Final thoughts:
This game is quite an improvement over Death Mark. Last year, Death Mark was one of my favorite games of 2018. This game is one of my favorite games of this year. This game is the perfect game to play during Halloween. I can’t recommend this game enough for fans of Death Mark, fans of horror games and fans of visual novels. I would even recommend this game to fans of adventure games.

This game is one of the best visual novels I have played in a while. And it’s up to high competition like Ai: Somnium Files. This will be quite interesting in my “Top 10 Games of 2019”. Take it from me, give this game a try. Because it’s totally worth playing and experiencing this game.

Of course, this game has some shortcomings like the bare bones save system and some minor annoyances with the controls but these are easily overlooked and don’t hinder the enjoyment of the game too much or even at all.

Thank you so much for reading this article and I hope you enjoyed reading this game as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in another article but until then, have a great rest of your day and take care!

Score: 100/100

Publishing: Heralds of the Order – A New Handdrawn Turnbased Adventure!

Heralds of the Order is a turn-based strategy game boiled down to the genre’s core principles. Utilize positioning and abilities with elaborate patterns to achieve victory! Featuring hand-drawn art and over 20 story chapters.

Story

Maala, the realm without gods, finds itself on the verge of catastrophe.  Objects of ancient power resurface, triggering a race to claim them, one that promises to engulf the world in war. It is your duty as a Patronus of the Order to go forth and restore balance. Along the way, you will find new allies and face countless foes, as the line between myth and reality shatters.

Key Features

• Turn-based tactical combat boiled down to its core principles.
• A sprawling story that will take you on a gripping journey across Maala.
• 8 party members each with their unique motivations and abilities.
• Hand-drawn art and traditional rotoscoped
• Over 20 handcrafted missions taking place in 6 unique environments.
• Adapt your strategy! Customize your party‘s stats and choose from the numerous God Powers to overcome the challenges ahead of you.
• Several unique boss fights with devastating attacks.

Combat Features

• Abilities with elaborate patterns.
• Positioning, flanking and countering the enemy’s defenses are the key to victory.
• Elaborate battlefields with various boons and hazards.
• A unique energy management system that determines the ebb and flow of combat.
• Devastating God Powers which can alter the course of combat.

Media

Videos

A video of me playing through our free demo – Here’s an interview we did with Eddie from Playing Indies

Character Art

Articles

“Let’s save the world of Maala in this new turn-based strategy game inspired by The Banner Saga. ” – TURN-BASED LOVER

“”Heralds of The Order” by @ArcheanGames promises a richly detailed turn-based strategy. ” – CaptainD, Indie Game News

Downloads

https://gamejolt.com/games/herald-of-the-order/366356

https://archeangames.itch.io/heralds-of-the-order

https://www.indiedb.com/games/heralds-of-the-order/downloads

https://www.indiexpo.net/en/games/heralds-of-the-order

About the team

We’re a three-man team, consisting of two programmers and one artist, based in Plovdiv, Bulgaria. We spent our high school years dreaming of a career in the games industry, learning the basics of game-making. When we began university we decided that it was the perfect time to try our luck in the indie scene. And so we began developing Heralds of the Order – our first major project.

Twitter – Facebook – Itch.io

Review: Yokai Watch (3DS) ~ Insprited Articles

Official website

I bought this game on the release date. But due to various reasons, I have never beaten this game. Also, I was quite sure that I reviewed this game back in 2016. Strangely enough, I didn’t. So, now that I have beaten the game since last week, I think it’s HIGH time to put my opinion into words and write them down into a review. Did I enjoy Yo-Kai Watch or were the breaks because I thought that this game is a broken mess. Well, let’s find out together. As always, feel free to leave a comment with your opinion on the game and/or the content of this article. 

Is this Pokémon?

In this game, you play as Nathan. A young boy wandering in the woods while he is collecting bugs. Then he stumbles upon a machine with a crank. He puts in a coin and outcomes a Pokéball with a strange creature—

While at first glance, it’s easy to compare this game to Pokémon looking at the screenshots and things like that. But let me tell you, this game is quite different from Pokémon.

So, the story. Out of the gashapon machine, Nathan gets a capsule that gives him the Yo-Kai Watch. With this watch, he can see different creatures roaming around in the city causes various issues from the people living there.

If you don’t already know what Yo-Kai is, let me briefly explain it to you. These monsters are based on Japanese folklore. These are phantoms curse people to give them a big temper, a bad hair day, unable to lie… That’s the real basic gist of it. At least, how they are used in this game. If you want to learn more about Yokai, the Wikipedia page is a great way to start.

Now, one thing I do have to say is that this game is structured like an anime series. There are various chapters wherein you learn about something strange going on, discovering that it’s Yo-Kai activity and then you solve it. I know that the story is written for younger kids to get into, but to be frank and honest, I found the story a bit bland. Mediocre even from time to time. Especially the ending is a mess. There was too little build-up to the overall final boss of the game and to be honest, the game ends abruptly.

This doesn’t take away that the dialogues can be very funny from time to time. It does pull off some jokes you have seen more than once in cartoons, but that doesn’t matter too much to me. Even with this bland story, it was able to put a smile on my face from time to time.

While I’m still a bit bitter that the credits froze for me and I had to redo the final boss fight over, I find the scene after the credits so; predictable. I can understand a younger child getting invested in the story, but most of the time, it didn’t click with me.

While I had beaten the main story at 18 hours, I had also beaten a lot of side quests. This game is pretty short and can be beaten in a day or two. Now, I have played short experiences that I enjoyed an awful lot, so I’m not going to be too harsh on the game for that reason. Besides, if you play all the side quests and try to complete this game, you are well into a game that will last you give or take 80 hours.

Too old?

While I was playing this game, I became well aware that I wasn’t the target audience for this game whatsoever. While this game has a type system set up with Yo-Kai being weak or strong to another type… and things similar like that, I rarely had to use items to power up my Yo-Kai.

Now, this game is a sort of adventure RPG game. You are allowed to freely explore the city to solve side quests and favors.

Sidenote, I don’t understand why they split side quests and favors since they are basically the same thing. Oh well.

During your exploration of the city, you can find various Yo-Kai roaming around the city. Under cars, under vending machines, in trees, in the water… They are everywhere in this game. Yet, always at similar spots. So, if your watch, that functions as a radar, picks up the aura of a nearby Yo-Kai, you know which spots to look at.

That’s the case for the overworld. You also have various caves and dungeons you can explore. In here, you see the Yo-Kai roaming free. You can easily pass most of them, but thanks to your very limited stamina, you will be unable to outrun them all.

Now, there are a lot of mechanics in this game that is underused in my opinion. What I mean here is that there is just no real need for some features. For example, the fusion of Yo-Kai is just additional content for the people who want to complete the game. In my playthrough, I was able to beat the final boss with ease without any fusion Yo-Kai.

There is a lot to do in this game, but I never felt I had to do it to progress in the game. Even without any leveling up, I was able to beat the harder areas. Yes, I’m saying that this game is pretty easy.

This could have been solved by introducing a difficulty option where veteran players could face a bigger challenge since the potential is there. I really enjoyed exploring and finding secret items all over the place.

Something I found a bit disappointing is when you start tackling various side quests near the end of the game instead of at the start of the game… Well, I almost always carried the items needed to solve the quest or favor. Or my  Yokai was so strong that I was able to easily beat the Yokai in the quest.

I would have loved to see a sort of Yokai-dex system in this game. Like a Pokédex where you can check the areas and things, you need to do to require their medal.

I know I might upset some people with this, but I found the battle system pretty lacking. I understand that it innovates in quite a lot of areas but, I find it a bit boring. The big issue is that you get too much money from battling Yokai & your Yokai level up way too quickly. Making them too strong so you barely have to use the special abilities of your Yokai.

Speaking about those, I found it pretty frustrating that whenever you purified a Yokai or started their special attack, the game would wait a few moments before the actual attack launches. The few waiting moments were, oh, so annoying. I wish they change that in the sequel.

Something I really dislike now is the map system. I already started playing the sequel to this game and the map system is improved so much in the sequel, I find this system pretty annoying to use. You can’t put a tracking arrow on side quests, the buildings aren’t labeled in the minimap and you are only able to see the map of the region you are in. This is improved in the sequel, so they learned their lesson there.

Another mechanic that is more fleshed out in the sequel is the “recruit” tactic. The way how you befriend other Yokai. This has been made a lot easier in the sequel. Now it’s a guessing game on which Yokai wants what. Also, I found it annoying that you weren’t able to choose which enemy Yokai to feed to try and recruit them. -sigh-

A city

Now, I could go on for quite a while longer about the gameplay; but there are other things we need to talk about in the review. For example, you can save your game anywhere from the pause menu. This game doesn’t autosave, so keep that in mind.

Visually, the presentation of this game is pretty good. I really like the design of the city and enjoyed exploring it.

There are a few things that could have been improved design-wise. First of all, the crossroad mechanic. This is dumb. There is this mechanic in the game where you need to wait for the light to turn green to cross. If you cross red lights too many times, a big Oni will come and wipe out your party. Now, there are no consequences for losing this fight. So, if you want to teach kids a lesson to watch both ways before crossing a street,  you aren’t going to do it with this.

In addition to that, most of the time, all the roads didn’t have any cars. While I know that they exist and drive around on the streets, but I barely saw them. So, I crossed the streets away from the crossroads. Besides, the cars do stop for you without any penalty. So, yeah. Unless mechanic.

Near the end of the game, you unlock a quick travel mechanic. Yet, you do have to “unlock” each travel point. I can see why they did it like this, but I would have preferred that I had all the travel points unlocked from the start.

Now, the soundtrack got a lot of praise from various other reviews. And I’m sorry, I don’t like it. I don’t hate the soundtrack either. The big issue is that it fits the theme quite well in the game but I don’t like listing to it outside of the game. As a matter of fact, I switched to a different soundtrack while writing this review. The biggest issue I have with the soundtrack is that the same melody comes back in too many tracks. That’s something I don’t like at all.

The sound design and the various voice clips are good. I enjoyed them. Each time I think about this game, I hear “PAWS OF FURRY” often in my head.

Now, something I find a mixed bag is the mini-scenes you get at the end of each side quest. I can see that some of them are fun for little children, but I hate the fact that they are randomized. Some of them are negative and don’t give you a bonus and others give you a huge bonus. But, the pool of usable cutscenes is too small. I have seen a ton of scenes too many times that I know after one second if I’m going to get a reward or not.

In terms of the controls and the UI, this game is very good. There is one mechanic that I really dislike, but I’m happy that it’s in the game and I don’t want to see it get changed. That is the running mechanic. You run way too quickly out of stamina. Also, while you are running and you want to turn, your character first goes into a break animation before you bolt into the other direction.

This game can be controlled with the buttons on the 3DS and the touchscreen. Personally, I prefer buttons. Since I felt more in control with them. While, actually, the touchscreen controls are handier. That way you don’t have to take your stylus each and every time you enter a battle.

So, that’s everything I wanted to say about this game. I left a few things out to surprise you if you decide to play this game. But, I think it’s time for the conclusion.

Conclusion

Negatives:

– The game is too easy for veterans players.

– There are too many mechanics underused.

– The crosswalk mechanic is just meh.

– The soundtrack repeats the same melody a bit too much.

– The story is a bit too bland from time to time.

Positives:

+ Big postgame.

+ Really pretty game.

+ Even when the story is bland, the writing can be really funny sometimes.

+ …

Conclusion:

So, this game is a kids’ game and it shows. But does that mean it’s a bad game? No, not at all. This game can be really fun from time to time, but it really shows that this game has flaws. This game isn’t worth 90/100 that some outlets are giving it.

I think it’s best that, if you are interested in playing this game, give this game a shot. There is a demo in the eShop, you can play that first before you decide to buy the full game.

I can recommend this game but don’t set your bar too high. The game is very lighthearted and remember, it’s a kids game so some parts will be easy if you are a hardcore gamer.

Thankfully, a lot of the issues I have with this game are solved in the sequel. But even with all the issues talked about in this review, the game is fun to play and I’m glad that I experienced it. Now, on to the sequel to finish that one!

Thank you for reading this article and I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in another article but until then, take care and have a great rest of your day.

Score: 69/100

Review: Stella Glow (3DS) ~ Swansong

Official website

Around a month ago, I was looking for a new 3DS adventure to sink my time into. So, I downloaded a few demo’s from the Nintendo eShop. When I played the demo of Stella Glow, I wanted to give the full game a try. Later that day, I talked to my friends over at ButtonSmashers and something happened. I was asked to review this game and I got a review copy. So, that was a very lucky thing. Also, the subtitle of this review has a special meaning. This game is published by Sega, Atlus & NIS America but it has been developed by Imageepoch. Sadly enough, they are bankrupt now. So, they made this TRPG (tactical RPG) about music as their final game. Is it any good? Well, I had high expectations. And as usual, feel free to leave a comment with your opinion on the content of this article and/or the game. 

Note: I want to thank NIS America & ButtonSmashers for giving me a download code for this game.  

Swansong

In this game, you play as Alto. A boy who got adopted and lost his memories. One day, when he was out hunting, he encountered a mysterious woman that warns him to leave the village. He refuses and not too long after, all hell breaks loose.

This is how the game starts. There were a lot of cliches in the story, but they didn’t weaken the story one bit. The writing of the characters is excellent. You really get to know the large cast of characters in this game. Both in the main story and in the side missions, all characters well developed. Every character has his/her own personality and they can be very relatable.

The only negative I have for the story is that it introduces too much new major plot points in the final three chapters. So, the pacing of the story isn’t the best in the end. But hey, it’s a minor thing in my eyes since it keeps you at the edge of your seat.

Something that really helps in the story department is the voice acting. Man, the voice acting is top notch. All the actors did an amazing performance for this game. I have nothing bad to say about the voice acting of this game.

Read the full review on ButtonSmashers, since I got this game from them.

Review: Rayman Legends (Wii U) ~ Amazing Platformer Gem

Official website

As a kid, I had a PC game called Rayman M. I enjoyed it from time to time, but my real interest with Rayman started when I heard so much about it from the YouTubers I watch and the other blogs I read. When my family was asking me what I wanted for Christmas, I gave them a whole list of Wii U titles I’m interested in. Honestly, I placed this game as an afterthought. But on the 1st of January, my grandparents surprised me with actually buying this game for me. I played a few levels just for fun, but then I stopped playing. But at the start of February of this year, I was together with my friends for a entire week and this game… Man, it changed the entire week. I think it’s time to take a good look at this game and talk about what I think of this game. Oh, and as usual, feel free to leave a comment with your opinion on the review and/or the game in the comment section underneath this article. 

Teensies & lumps

This game is a platformer. I haven’t played a lot of platformers, so in this review, I’m going to judge this game purely on what experience it gave me.

This game’s story, was in my opinion, a sort of after-thought. The story is rather absent. Because this game is a sort of gallery of smaller separate games. Compare it to Kirby Super Star on the SNES. It has a compilation of different Kirby games which each have a separate story.

If you are into platformers with a decent story, you aren’t going to find it here. But it’s no negative for this game. The reason for that is, the game’s charm and presentation is enough to make a fun experience.

Everything in this game has meaning. Every collectable, every level and every challenge. When you beat a level or collect a certain amount of teenies and/or lumps, you unlock something or something happens. And sometimes, more than just one thing unlocked.

This makes the game very replayable. Since it’s very easy to miss a teensie in a level. They are hidden quite well. Too bad that missing one doesn’t stop you from reaching a golden cup on the level.

That touchpad

This game is made with multiplayer in mind. Since in some levels, you can really benefit from a helper character.

Also, this game is one of the few games I have played where the Wii U game pad isn’t used as a sort of second screen for the game or something among those lines.

When you play with more than one person, the person playing with the game pad is a sort of helper character that needs to pull switches, move platforms or keep the characters from harm. And honestly, this can get pretty though. Sometimes, you need to react very quick.

At the other hand, the people who are playing as the non-helping characters have some separate levels that tests their reflexes. These are mostly time challenges or stages where a whole building is collapsing.

The two completely different play styles are something I haven’t seen before that much. Surprisingly, it works flawlessly. I have beaten most of this game in multiplayer. And I can’t imagine how the single player plays in some levels. Since this game is better played with at least one friend.

Something I really liked about this game is the presentation. Each area plays and feels very different. You have stealth sections, you have fast moving sections, you have sections where you need to “eat through candy” and so much more. Every area is extremely colorful, and some stages felt very creative.

The animations of the stages and characters reminded me of the previous times I saw a Rayman game. They are really well done. I have no complaints there.

There is one part of the design that I didn’t like that much. While you have a lot of playable characters, there are just too much clone characters. They don’t play a lot different on the surface. They are just the same character in a different skin to me.

Jump that music

The levels that were the most creative to me are the levels where you needed to you were playing through a music song and famous songs at that. Black Berry by Ram Jam is one of the first I came across. They were so much fun to play.

Speaking about music, the soundtrack and sound design of this game is very well crafted. They help to build the atmosphere of the game. In some levels I was actually sitting on the edge of my seat, cheering my friends on… So we could beat that one level.

The difficulty is something I’m on the edge about. Some levels are pretty cruel and are impossible to win when you make one mistake. But there is a problem in there. Sometimes the controls work against you. But then again, the punishment for dying is just restarting the stage or starting for the last checkpoint. I always felt like we could try again when my friends and I failed a level.

Something that also provided hours of fun was the one true mini-game in the collection. The soccer game. It’s truly chaotic, and it makes for hours of fun matches with friends. While I struggled with the controls sometimes, when I got the hang of them… It was extremely fun.

Until now, I was mostly praising the game, but there are some things that could use some improvement. The digital manual is way too basic in my eyes. This is something that could help inexperienced players. But the biggest issue I have with it, is that it’s so bare-bones. I miss the color, screenshots and various other interesting things that other companies put in those manuals. Like Nintendo and Hylure Warriors or Super Mario Maker. Also, why is there a separate help function in the game and the manual. That help function gives information that isn’t in the manual…

And honestly, that is the biggest “issue” I have with this game. While the main campaign might be a bit short, the content that unlocks during the main campaign and the things you can collect gives this game a big replay value and makes the game have an amazing length.

The last thing I want to say about this game is that for €20 here in Europe, this game is a steal. The amount of content is just mind-blowing.

In any case, I think I have said everything I wanted to say about this game. It’s time for my conclusion.

Conclusion

The bad:

 – The manual isn’t the best in this game.

– This game loses a lot of its value in single player.

– Some clone characters.

The good:

+ The incredible replay value.

+ This game has an astounding design. From the visuals to the sound design.

+ You get a lot of content for your money.

+ The game pad isn’t used as a gimmick.

+ …

Final thoughts:

This game is one of the best and creative platformers I have ever played. It brings some new ideas to the table for me. This game such serve as an example of an amazing platform game.

Most of the issues I have with this game are nitpicks. I honestly had trouble saying any negatives about this game.

If you want a real fun game for you and your friends, dust off that Wii U (or the console you have this game for) and play some Rayman Legends. For the cheap price of €20 here in Europe, this game is truly a steal.

I wasn’t expecting this much polish in a Rayman game of €20, but I was more than surprised. Play this game for yourself! I highly recommend it to each and every Wii U owner.  It’s excellent.

And that’s everything I wanted to say about this game for now. Thank you so much for reading this article and I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in another one, but until then, have a great rest of your day and take care.

Score: 99/100