[EXPRESSO] One Piece: Bon Bon Journey iOS | Match-3 Pirates

One Piece Bon Bon Journey iOS

There are many One Pieces videogames, even on smarthphones. This is another one, one that i actually pre-registrered for, but i didn’t noticed it released worlwide a couple of months ago.

For smarthphones we already had a One Piece lite RPG, a beat em up, a fighting game (among others never released outside of Japan, China or are defunct), so i guess it was time for a puzzle game, a match-3 with objectives (in the vein of that puzzle game that rimes with “baba yaga”), done in a chibi-esque style, with the numerous, regognizable and highly marketable cast of One Piece characters rendered as mini-sized round shaped head-dolls, like a cross between the actual “bon bons” pastry items and nicely decapited collectable figures.

And to my surprise, it’s actually fairly good, not original in any shape or form, but it actually retells the story from the beginning in a fairly decent manner (especially given the aesthetic choice), and finds ways to work the various scenes (even minor ones like the girl giving an onigiri to a tied Zoro in Shells Town) into the gameplay, with various goals and gimmicks to keep things interesting. This also means having a “toy on toy” style cutscenes for the more serious or epic scenes, like the ending of the Dracule Mihawk VS Zoro fight at the Baratie… which is a thing, not sure if good or bad though.

As far as the freemium economy goes… it’s nothing worthy of particular scorn, the usual free-to-play crap that is to be expected nowadays (shit as it is), with timers and gacha, but nothing out of the ordinary you haven’t already seen, and often done worst. Despite the usual freemium crap, here you can actually do some progress in a reasonable manner even in the later stages.

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Houkago Teibou Nisshi / Diary Of Our Days At The Breakwater [ANIME FIRST IMPRESSION] | Fishing Anime Girls

Houkago Teibou Nisshi

Yeah, time for another anime series first impression based on the first 3 episodes, which won’t change for a while because from the 4th episode (included) and onwards, the series is on hiatus until further notice, like many other anime suffering delays (rightfully so, because i don’t like people dying in order to get anime out faster) due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Let’s be patient, alright?

It is law that if you have cute anime girls, you can pretty much make them do anything and receive success, especially is a slice of life series. Doesn’t even matter if they actually get around to do something specific, but it helps, so after anime girls camping, anime girls going to Antarctica, anime girls doing rock climbing, anime girls lifting weights, we have anime girls gone fishin’, with Houkago Teibou Nisshi, based on the eponymous manga by Yasuyuki Kosaka. Continua a leggere “Houkago Teibou Nisshi / Diary Of Our Days At The Breakwater [ANIME FIRST IMPRESSION] | Fishing Anime Girls”

Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex 2045 – Season 1 (2020) [REVIEW] | Neural Netflix Interface (UPDATED)

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Last year we got two anthological multi-authorial Ghost In The Shell volumes (Ghost In The Shell Comic Tribute and Ghost In The Shell: Global Neural Network, each with many artists and writer tributing the Masamune Shirow’s manga in their own way.

Now we finally got a new anime series, Stand Alone Complex 2045, streaming exclusively on Netflix, with the first season being available from the 23th of April, and the second one planned but with no certain release window, though it will arrive for sure, not just because it’s confirmed, but because the original Stand Alone Complex series had 2 seasons as well, and this is set-up as a continuation of sorts.

In the meantime, let’s look at the first season, directed by Kenji Kamiyama (Shinji Aramaki is set to direct the second season). Continua a leggere “Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex 2045 – Season 1 (2020) [REVIEW] | Neural Netflix Interface (UPDATED)”

[EXPRESSO] Mass For The Dead iOS | Bossing Lich Mobile

Anime licensing is often weird as hell when applied to videogames (see the Attack On Titan or My Hero Academia releases for recent examples), but like that Overlord themed Picross game, previously release as “Lords Of Nazarick”… it was kinda necessary, since this popular light novel/anime/manga isekai series has one of the most generic titles ever, and there already was a a videogame series called Overlord (beloved if fairly forgotten nowadays).

Despite this, this new adaptation it’s well presented, with even an original animated opening by MADHOUSE and a track by MYTH & ROID to make it feel like the anime, with redrawn background, some good Live 2D sprites and decent 3D in-game models. The game start off with the general premise of the protagonist, that find itself stuck in the fantasy world of the VRMMORPG he was playing as his lich avatar, but offers an original story with some new characters.

Gameplay wise, it’s a RPG, fittingly so, but more like a proper turn based rpg, with some convenient options (and a mostly useless autobattle function) AND some actual tactical nuance for when enemies become more powerful than a fly…. which will take a while, and even so, you will be a bit too prepared for the boss battles, until they start using way specific “almost instakill” moves. Then you grind or just use premium currency.

To be honest, i arrived at the second part of the story just for the sake of review, it’s kinda boring, and doesn’t have any peculiar “hook” to make you come back to it (outside the usual ones, anyway), the gacha differentiates between paid and free/in-game earned premium currency, there’s VIP/battle pass equivalent, etc.

It’s.. alright, ok, honestly.

It’s something for Overlord fans to do until the 4th season of the anime, at least.

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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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One Piece: Pirate Warriors 3 PS4 [REVIEW]

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]”

One Piece: Pirate Warriors PS3 [REVIEW]

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”