Categoria: Anime

One Piece Pirate Warriors 4 PS4 [REVIEW]

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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]”

[EXPRESSO] Bleach: Immortal Soul iOS | Soul Whales

Bleach Immortal Soul iOS

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?

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Azur Lane The Animation 2019-20 [REVIEW] | The Bone Of My Boat

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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”

One Piece: Pirate Warriors 3 PS4 [REVIEW]

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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]”

[EXPRESSO] Arknights iOS | Medicated Nation

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So yeah, Yostar’s new gacha game, looks a lot more like Girls Frontline (or an anime take on The Division) than Azur Lane but isn’t any of that, it’s a tower defense thingie with people befitted of the ever popular animal ears, because. The vague plot sees you as the amnesiac leader of pharmaceutical-commando company Rhodes Island, in a world afflicted by Catastrophes, bringing destruction and the precious mineral known as Originium, which infects people with the mysterious disease of “Oripathy” ( awakening powers but also being lethal in the long run), and you fight the other factions at play, the cultish Reunion and the military force of the city of Chernobog.

Plot is decent, character design good for this type of game, and gameplay wise – as i said -, it’s a tower defense affair: you put units on the available grid spaces to stop the enemy units from entering through the gate/s at the end. If anything, the surprisingly long tutorial-prologue will get you up to speed to the basics and Arknight’s minor but nice additions to the formula. The usual free-to-play bullshit isn’t that bad either, as the game gives you useful items to start with (not just crap), but of course wants you to roll the gacha for characters with an alluring design by using real money.

Aside from some inusual design choices, like characters who don’t receive exp directly from fights (instead you gotta use xp item received as rewards to level them up), Studio Montagne’s game is fairly good in itself, with a good introduction of new enemy types and objects to keep things interesting, using actual gameplay to keep you coming back, instead of just using the typical psychological hooks to make you log in something way repetitive  that basically plays itself (hi, Azur Lane).

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Azur Lane Crosswave PS4 [REVIEW] | You Are A Boat

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Yeah, an actual videogame devoid of the gacha free-to-play trappings, based after the “Kancolle Killer” smartphone title that basically positioned itself as a Kantai Collection clone (not quite, but it’s obviously aimed at the same demographic), one easily available pretty much worlwide instead of a japan only browser game requiring VPN and troublesome hoops to jump through and compatibility errors if you want to play it.

It’s an odd concept to have a proper videogame that you pay to own as a spin-off of a free-to-play estabilished/borne series, almost emblematic of the state of the market and this “era” of gaming, but it’s interesting from a conceptual standpoint, and now you don’t have to import it from Playasia, as it came out, even in physical retail form, in Europe and the States. Still kinda surprised by that.

I preordered the “super duper hyper” edition with all the tat and OST and artbook, but maybe i’ll eventually review the Limited Edition contents by themselves, they don’t factor into the actual PS4 videogame at all. Continua a leggere “Azur Lane Crosswave PS4 [REVIEW] | You Are A Boat”

One Piece: Pirate Warriors PS3 [REVIEW]

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For the upcoming release of Pirate Warriors 4 (which i though wasn’t gonna happen until it was revealed in the summer of 2019), i’m gonna review all the previous Pirate Warriors titles before it reaches Europe on the 27th of March, so here we go! Continua a leggere “One Piece: Pirate Warriors PS3 [REVIEW]”

Dorohedoro 8-Bit Game ~Living Dead Day Survivor (Browser) [REVIEW]

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So yeah, we have a Dorohedoro videogame, finally…. kinda.

It’s a free browser game available on the official site for a limited time, and it’s a basically a NES style beat em up taking place – as the title explicits – during the Living Dead Day (recently depicted in the third episode of the anime series), an annual event in Dorohedoro’s world where the dead rise, and people kill them to obtain plates that can be exchanged for prizes, with food stands and stuff like it’s a festival.

Dorohedoro 8-bit Game Living Dead Day Survivor cayman and nikaido

Being it basically just an ad for the series (one with impending disappearance), i’m not gonna complain about it being basically a 5 minutes affair, but the pixel art and chiptune theme are well done, gameplay is what you’d expect from old school beat em up: never let enemies gang on you from both sides, use items, master the jumping kick, etc. You can play as either Cayman or Nikaido (they control and fight the same), and there’s local multiplayer, even if you’d have to huddle around the same keyboard.

The website and instructions are in japanese, but you can easily figure controls out anyway, so i’d recommend you try it before it vanishes from the web. I still haven’t seen the anime series (besides a couple clips), but i strongly recommend Dorohedoro anyway, one of my favourite series of all time.

 

The Island Of Giant Insects MOVIE (2020) [REVIEW] Shlock Stock Drop

The Island Of Giant Insects MOVIE 2020

In case you haven’t seen my review of the OVA, yeah, i found out after writing the review that the OVA was just an edited down version of the movie, also called The Island Of Giant Insects, so in retrospect it’s no wonder that was such a choppy mess, one that was made just for marketing purposes, and now is a completely pointless product.

For sake of completition, i feel compelled to witness myself – in full this time – the horrors in The Island Of Giant Insects. Continua a leggere “The Island Of Giant Insects MOVIE (2020) [REVIEW] Shlock Stock Drop”