Yeah, i’m not dead, actually i’ve been writing like mad for future projects, but yes, you’ll get other reviews soon, mostly videogames, maybe i’ll actually write a piece about Ghost In The Shell Stand Alone Complex 2045 after it reaches Netflix in 2 days.. and i watch it, this is how it works, folks. For me at least.
Btw, go watch Keeps Your Hands Off Eizouken, it’s fantastic, perfect time to catch up!
Disclaimer: i pre-ordered the Kaido Edition, which means i got the big ass statuines (and i mean big ass), and the pre-order bonuses, which consisted of Dynasty Warriors costumes for Trafalgar Law and Boa Hancock, as well as early unlocks of the Vinsmoke brothers, but for the sake of review i didn’t download their “early unlock DLC” (and played on Normal difficulty), so we’re just gonna talk about the base game, maybe i will do a review of the Kaido VS Luffy diorama, but later.
Strap in and get some rum, we’re gonna be at sea for a while! Continua a leggere “One Piece Pirate Warriors 4 PS4 [REVIEW]”
Moments of crisis are what unites us, especially in exterminating space bees and shouting “ EDF ! EDF! EDF! EDF! EDF!” from the safety of our own homes and away from something worse than bouncing giant spiders and ETs with laser guns!
Time to review Earth Defence Force 5, the latest in the main EDF series! Continua a leggere “Earth Defense Force 5 [PS4] REVIEW | Frogs From Planet Space”
As you may know, Bleach is coming back, with serialized and animated versions of the one-shot Burn The Witch, created by Tite Kubo and taking place in the Bleach universe, and the anime returning with the adaptation of the final arc, The Thousand Year War, expected for early 2021.
So time to milk this renewed interest in the franchise as soon as possible, like with a mobile free-to-play gacha game live service. Another one, Bleach Brave Souls (which is still going) was a hack n slash, this is one of those extremely basic kind of anime rpg for smarthphones, turn based, with most of the challenge and “strategy” being on timing attack to create combos… until the game itself points out the auto-battle function.
Then it becomes just a matter of upgrading stats and letting the way too efficient auto-battle do its thing, since the usual“rock-paper-scissors” system of types weaknesses and strenghts works only on paper, and the repetitive battles lack any depth, so they just become a formality, like how you can technically decide where to proceed in story stages… despite being no reason to do so.
All made worse by overly busy menus bursting full of things to “engage” with, in the hope of making you spend actual money on this cheaply cobbled together cash grab, that on top of recycling frames from the anime series and – somehow – managing to have typos on dialogue cribbed word for word, has laughably cheap and amauterish scene transitions.
At least it serves as a decent cliffnotes refresher for Bleach’s story from the beginning, but even so, a lot of the manga it’s available for free on the Shonen Jump app.
Complete waste of time and data.
I do hope we get a new proper Bleach videogame later, a musou, maybe?
Ah yes, one more for the evergrowing subgenre of “shipgirls military slice of life”, less Arpeggio of Blue Steel, and more Kancolle/Kantai Collection, which is obvious as hell as Azur Lane (by chinese companies Manju and Yongshi) came out to fight Kadokawa’s browser game, but actually bothered to give it more actual gameplay, implement less taxing gacha elements (which is akin to say “less rusty gambling hooks piercing my flesh”), and actually made it easier to access worlwide without any need to know japanese, use google translate constantly or set a VPN, just released an app for smarthphones.
And given it performed quite well (even in Japan), it was just a matter of time to see an anime adaptation of sorts, which came out in late 2019…not fully, as two last episodes were postponed to march 2020 after concerns on animation quality. I thought it was due to fans expressing criticisms on social media, but it seems it was mostly the staff itself’s decision in order to deliver a better and satisfying ending to the series instead of rushing it, which is commendable, and gave me time to catch up. Continua a leggere “Azur Lane The Animation 2019-20 [REVIEW] | The Bone Of My Boat”
Sometimes i kinda miss the early days of mobile games on smarthphones, when the free-to-play plague hadn’t become the standard, the banal evil, and the market wasn’t infested with endless clones of what’s popular, insanely overpriced ports, a satured mess with extremely rare gems like Onion Hotel.
But still, once i a while i search or stumble upon some title on the App Store, and i give them a whirl. This one is about big ass monsters going on a non-trademarked rampage, all done in the cheap and frankly cliched “faux 8-bit” aesthetic, but whatever, the idea of combining monsters together to make new ones is always nice, and the main attractive.
The problem is even the “monster merging” is too basic to hold any interest even in the “short run”, because you can’t spawn the more advanced ones in the “lab area”, even if unlocked: you must spawn the very basic one and keep merging them manually. There is an auto-merge function, but it’s inefficient, and even seeing what monster you’ll get next gets boring and moot, because you just put them to automatically thrudge through dozens of identical levels.
Because this is actually a clicker game, the store page describes it clearly as an “idle rpg”, so it’s not fraudolent advertising, it’s just that even with more to it than just clicking on stats to upgrade so you can earn more money to upgrade stats some more, it’s boring and lacking any “hook”. Ironically, the fact that there is more to it IS an issue, as there isn’t enough depth added to make you overlook its nature, but enough to inadvertently expose the pointless “gameplay” loop at the core.
Even as a timewaster on the toilet it gets old too quickly, and bootleg Rocket Raccoon just isn’t enough.
After the “Dream Log” scenario of Pirate Warriors 2, Koei did what it usually does, as it basically starts from scratch in order to have a more faithful and complete recreation of Eiichiro Oda’s pirate world, in the name of canon… and so you wouldn’t need to have played the two previous Pirate Warriors titles, because this was released on all Playstation platforms at the time, and Steam as well.
There’s also a Deluxe Edition for Switch that came later with all DLC already on the cart, and it’s not bad performance wise, worth considering. Continua a leggere “One Piece: Pirate Warriors 3 PS4 [REVIEW]”
I didn’t know what exactly to make out of Gato Roboto, but since it was on sale and Devolver Digital published it, why not, for 2 bucks?
And it’s not like the game hides or even tries to hide its ispiration, as the main image used for marketing is a cat exiting a black and white version of Samus Aran’s Power Suit. The actual robot suit doesn’t look like that (as one might reasonably guess), but it tells you exactly what this is: is Super Metroid with a cat.
That’s it. I was expecting to see an actual gimmick, but the “gimmick” is that it’s a really good Metroid style title, actually finding the good balance between contained world and Metroidvania style progression that Xeodrifter failed to capture, so you don’t get lost at all since the design pushes you in a certain direction, but you also need to find out how to progress with the obstacles each enviroment introduces, such as heat, lava, water, etc.
And the whole idea of “Metroid but you’re a cat” is actually used well, as you can leave the suit to swim (begrudingly so), jump-scale walls or navigate narrow passages, but you have no offensive capability… because you’re just a normal cat, as normal as a cat using a robotic suit can be. Some good, challenging boss battles too, for a ¾ hour (more if you want to complete it 100 %) experience that’s fun all the way through, and doesn’t overstay its welcome for the sake of pleasing insane logic such as “hour=price”.
And while the aesthetic choice of “black and white graphics with retrò pixel aesthetic” is as “indie game” as it can be, it’s actually pleasing to look at (which isn’t always the case), and the story isn’t half bad, too. Fun one, recommended!
After the expected success of Pirate Warriors (which is still the most profitable/successful series of One Piece videogames), Koei made another one the following year, also for PS3… and PS Vita as a japan only release. Continua a leggere “One Piece: Pirate Warriors 2 PS3 [REVIEW]”
So yeah, today the entire of Italy is officially in lockdown, and you could easily recreate the entire of Die Pest En Florenz, on the upside. On the downsides (as far this blog is concerned, as the obvious problems shouldn’t need explanation) cinemas are closed, and it’s quarantine, so, time to do the NEET, i guess, until the start of April, where cinemas should open again so we can catch up to all most english speaking countries already saw months ago (didn’t manage to see the new Grudge reboot-sequel-remake, i wanted to review it, but at this point i’ll have to see on streaming or home video).
I already explained some of this in a previous article, but the situation has gotten worse (we should had declared quarantine much earlier, i think, but it’s Italy, so of course every decision of this magnitude is half-assed and done at the last minute), so keep that in mind, and as i said before, i had some reviews planned and prepared, so the blog will keep going like before.
Stay safe and look forward to more One Piece reviews, as well as the Azur Lane anime review as soon as the last episodes arrive in the coming days.. if they don’t get delayed again. We’ll see!
Wise Cafe (International) 