Touken Ranbu Warriors NSWITCH [REVIEW] | #musoumay

As i previously said while discussing the demo for it, i eventually did get the pricey ass retail North American version, since i wasn’t paying full price for digital, or 100 bucks for the game and one of the most desperate and worthless example of season pass content ever devised by a publisher.

Due to import taxes i paid the same anyway, but we’ll talk about that later in the review.

FIY the game is also available worlwide digitally on Steam.

Touken Ranbu Warriors story is set in 2205, about a group of Touken Danshi sent back in the Sengoku period in order to avoid timeline alterations by the History Retrograde Army.

What are Touken Danshi? But beatiful boys with the souls of legendary japanese swords (often as iconic and famed as their possessors/wielders) bestowed upon them, because nothing else aside “bishounen sword boys” would strike fear in those dastardly time travelling history revisionists.

Continua a leggere

Galgameth (1996) [REVIEW] | #giantmonstermarch

We already discussed the best known film from legendary South Korean director Shin Sang-ok (whom sadly passed away in 2004), and i feel one really deserves the epiteth of legend given the history behind the 1985 Bulgasari/Pulgasari, especially as it feels like a last middle finger to the then current North Korean dictator, as him and his wife (kidnapped to make movies for Kim Jong-il, again, not joking, at all) managed to escape while at a Vienna’s film festival.

We went through the whole ordeal for that movie’s review, so i’m not gonna repeat myself too much on this regard, but i do think we’re long overdue for a movie about the whole ordeal, since it’s a perfect case where reality is crazier than fiction.

After his escape in Vienna the director and his wife became US citizens for a while, and during the 90s he made some movies under the pseudonym Simon Sheen, including some “3 Ninjas” sequels, and today’s feature, the ever-so-obscure Galgameth, also known/released as The Legend Of Galgameth or The Adventures Of Galgameth, of course it has alternative titles.

And Galgameth is of interest for us because director Sean McNamara basically recycled the script from Shin Sang-ok’s Pulgasari/Bulgasari remake (the original 1962 Pulgasari is sadly a lost film) but made it into a sword and sorcery film for children. As you do.

Continua a leggere

[EXPRESSO] Empire Of Light (2022) | UKinema

From director Sam Mendes (American Beauty, Jarhead, 1917, Skyfall) comes this drama set in 1980’s UK, about the cinema Empire, which used to be a majestic theather with 4 screening rooms (alongside a restaraunt), but is now on the decline due to recession and the cinema’s owner, Mr. Ellis, not really doing much to get the estabilishment’s luster back.

The soul of the place is actually his segretary, Hillary, who is the real glue holding together the place, the workers and the morale with her dedication, despite her ailing mental health and questionable love life, and she is struck by this new recruit, a black man called Steven, as they forge a difficult but sincere relationship, all made more heavy by the overwhelmingly racist tendencies that spike during periods of recessions like this period in british history.

With the expected takeaways of how cinema can be a healing escape, a brief one , while also serving as a way to mend together a broken populace that during recessions and hardships are quick to scapegoat minorities with all kinds of violence, and despite sounding a bit preachy and kinda obvious, they work as the movie takes its time to fully flesh out the characters, their relationship, their issues and how they relate to the turbolent fragment in time the movie it’s set in.

And with a top-notch cast of familiar faces giving out great performances, that helps as well. 🙂

Empire Of Light it’s definitely one of those movies that will require some patience due to arguably slow pace in its first half, but it’s worth waiting for the movie to get into gear as the set up does pays off, and the drama does pack quite the punch.

Maybe more “familiar” material than some might like, but still quite good.

Babylon’s Fall PS4 [REVIEW-FUNERAL] | Enuma Eloss

After previously touching upon the demo, and especially when the inevitable news of the sunset period before the servers would be shot down, i knew i had get Babylon’s fall, for cheap (which wasn’t an issue), actually play and finish before lights were out.

Other times i’ve put out these “funerary reviews” slightly before a game kicked the bucket, just in case, as both a courtesy and a way to let people that might be interested in the game itself, for whatever reason, so they could – potentially – try it or play it, i mean, Jump Force can still be played as second hand copies are still around.

But Babylon’s Fall didn’t even deserve that, so we’re talking about it the very same days its servers will close forever, 28^th of February 2023, not even 1 year after the game launched on the 3^rd of March 2022, couldn’t even held out for 3 days more, in such a hurry to kill to it Square Enix were.

Then again, that in itself it’s nothing special, the company does this to countless mobile free to play spinoffs of it’s own series, it’s like clockwork for many people to learn through these “end of service announcement” that many mobile games based on franchises owned by Squeenix…. even existed.

But it’s Babylon’s Fall we’re talking about, a game that indeed will live on infamy as a golden grease stain on Platinum Games’ record, when they had the bright idea to work alongside the company that once every 2 year lamented every non-japanese big franchise they owned and handled sold “below expectations”, the company of FF VII NFTs, that also later sold all its western-centric studios and properties for a pittance, all to drown more cash into the latest internet money scam.

Continua a leggere

[EXPRESSO] Asterix & Obelix: The Middle Kingdom (2023) | Dynasty Gauls

We’re going into “eurocomics” territory today (AGAIN), as in, the beloved Asterix & Obelix series, which is indeed quite nostalgic for many older folks that grew up by either reading the many print adventures of the titular duo of gauls, or the many animated movies based on them, and it’s regardless a very influential comic book series, even to this day.

While i’m very familiar with the series, i can’t say as much for the many Asterix & Obelix live-action movies.

I really can’t compare how it fares against the previous ones, so keep that in mind.

This time we have the village deal with, Fu Yi, the daughter of the current Empress of China which – alongside with her trusted bodyguard – escaped to ask help in saving the Empress and stopping the schemes of an evil prince that guns for the throne.

Honestly i think the idea of having them go to China is timely (and no, this is not based on an existing story, it’s an original script), and it’s perfect for the deliberately implausibile-but-not-quite approach to history the series always had, i mean, it’s a movie where we have Ceasar use “vibrating cum ringtone” carrier pigeons, and soccer player Ibrahimovic plays a divo centhurion that has the Roman soldier sing his Queen-style knock-off anthem.

So yeah, french actors in cartoony costumes that can send a person flying into the stratosphere with a single flick can have some wuxia stuff to contend with, why not, but the characters of Asterix and Obelix are on point and the comedy it’s pretty cute.

I mean, it’s aimed at a “young audiences-family” target (as it would be), and for that i feel it’s a decent silly romp, you could far worse in terms of live-action films based on old comics.

Asterix & Obelix XXL: Romastered PS4 [REVIEW] | For Toutatis!

Oddly, this was the last of the Asterix XXL series to get the remaster treament, the first being XXL 2 in 2018, then we had the brand new XXL 3 in 2019, then the “romastered” version of the first game in 2020, the one we’re talking about today, to celebrate the release of a new Asterix & Obelix movie in theathers.

One of the live-action ones, but still, it’s new Asterix & Obelix material!

Originally developed for PS2, Gamecube and PC (with a GBA version that’s basically another game entirely) by defunct french studio Etranges Libellules and published by Atari Europe, this remaster was instead published by Microids (which pretty much took the place Infogrames had back then) and developed by the quite non-defunct (at the time of writing, anyway) french Osome Studios.

The plot sees the titular duo wander off of their little Gaul village to the ol’ boar hunt only to come back and find out Ceasar (yes, Julius Caius Ceasar from Caligula, exactly) has somehow managed to storm the village, capturing most people and sending them off to various distant ends of the Roman empire in order to have locked out sight and mind, hopefully for good.

But with the help of a fired roman spy, you find out that most of the imprisoned gauls most likely managed to get a piece of the map indicating their location, as Ceasar took the extra step – just in case – of ripping the map in pieces and scattering them in various locations.

Good enough as an excuse in terms of videogame logic to have Asterix & Obelix travel to various places like Egypt, Normandy, Greece and Helvetia, freeing their fellow gaul citizens and getting more pieces of the map along the way.

Continua a leggere

[EXPRESSO] Dante (2022) | Not Produced by EA Games

One of the advantage of being Italy-based is being able to easily see new movies from old italian directors that will never make the jump overseas, even on streaming, like this new romanticized retelling of the life of Dante Alighieri, released in theathers here in late September, simply called “Dante” and directed by Pupi Avati (famous for The House With The Laughing Windows, and also 2019’s Il Signor Diavolo).

Don’t ever say i don’t strive for variety, because i can assure you even here this is a niche release.

Regardless, it’s a period piece set in Reinassance Italy and fittingly follows Giovani Boccaccio’s ( the author of the Decameron and the first biographer of Dante, essential for cementing The Divine Comedy’s influence over time) efforts in redacting a piece about the life of the tuscanian poet, roughly 30 years after Dante’s death in 1321, coming in contact with people that were close to the poet and gathering new insight as he journeys to Ravenna in order to give Dante’s daughter monetary compensation on behalf of the city of Florence.

…it’s actually pretty good, as it goes for a realistic, grounded approach, does not shy away from the many unsavory aspects of the period or Dante’s life as a whole, be it the aftermath of the black plague, the political and religious intrigues in Florence leading to Dante fighting on the field and being exiled by the pope, the later years of extreme poverty, and not just quoting passages from his opus or his love for Beatrice.

All with a great italian cast, good costumes, some weird visuals, making for a good movie with a very niche target audience, even more since it’s definitely not an oversimplified digest of Dante Alighieri’s life and legacy made for audiences not versed in literature.

[EXPRESSO] Black Parthenope (2022) | ♫ Goin’ Naples Underground ♫

Bringing you more new italian horror movies coverage, the new ones that just kinda “sprout” out of nowhere into the programming schedule of my local cinemas, with no fanfare and almost no national marketing budget to speak of.

And i guess this is the year of smaller italian horror movies like this that frustrate me, as they make good use of distinctive regional italian locations and have some potential, but kinda squander it or are afflicted by fairly big flaws.

Black Parthenope is a horror thriller set in the incredibly extensive set of underground catacombs and tunnels of Naples, the so called “Naples Underground”, where some business people met in order to sell the entire “underground city” to a company that’ll make parking lots out of it, but they get lost and haunted by the neopolitean folklore legend of the “Monaciello” (meaning “small monk”), a wronged soul that was shunned and then killed in the underground tunnels, forever seeking revenge on anyone that walks his haunting grounds.

The Neapolis Underground setting it’s great, some of the scenes manage to create a decent atmosphere, the cast it’s decent and it’s a well produced movie… but it’s almost brought down entirely by how shallow, grating and obnoxious the characters are, to say nothing of the aggressively awful dialogue, and how uneven and often middlesome direction can be, falling back to cliches in a way telling of this being a feature debut for the director in question.

While the final part partially redeems the movie from “proper bad” territory, the first act almost makes you wanna give up on it entirely, but at least you can tell that this movie was always meant to be a thriller-horror movie, unlike the previosly reviewed The Bunker Game.

Even so, it’s definitely not a bad effort!

Dynasty Warriors (2021) [REVIEW] | Wuxia Warriors Of The Three Kingdoms

One last review to end this year’s Musou May (and yes i want to make this a regular column) proper, and it couldn’t be anything else than the Dynasty Warriors live-action film that came out last year in Chinese territories and has landed on Netflix pretty much everywhere. In 2021.

I genuinely did not knew it arrived last summer, and somehow Netflix forgot to tell me they even had it, shocking given my cronology, and due to me genuinely looking forward more to the movie than to mainline Dynasty Warriors games, as i’ve lamented before.

Though it’s one that both leaves you with a lot and very little to talk about, at least in terms of plot, since the series it’s one of the many adaptations of the Romance Of The Three Kingdoms novel, and despite their over the top nature, the games stayed fairly loyal to the source material in terms of characters and events, heck, even on stuff like the sparing supernatural-magic elements.

Continua a leggere

Fate EXTELLA: The Umbral Star PS4 [REVIEW] #musoumay

Ah yes, the Fate musous. Yes, Plural.

One that took surprisingly long, despite being one of the more requested crossovers with the formula, according to many japanese surveys results.

And oddly wasn’t snapped up by Tecmo Koei, but by Marvelous, which is both a good and a bad thing, for reasons we’re gonna get into later. But regardless, it’s nice to be reminded that these kind of games aren’t actually a patented formula…. at least i don’t think anymore, but still, this game is another proof that you can attempt a similar formula and Koei won’t sue off the back of their old, very vague patent.

I mean, they did make a “sequel” after this, so i’d think it’s safe to say that at least you can make “musou-likes”, if you so desire. And if the company that owns Senran Kagura can have more than a crack at it, you know the “low budget” excuse doesn’t quite hold as you’d expect and/or hope.

Continua a leggere