Recent reviews by Saikr

Honest review in a sea of memes:

If you're down here you're either looking for memes or scrolling through the reviews trying to understand what got a game to be so disliked. So let's get right into it:

[WHY ALL THE HATE/NEGATIVE REVIEWS]

There are three chief complaints in this regard:

1) "There are no combos"/"The combos deal no damage"

There absolutely are combos and they are surprisingly freeform for an arena fighter. Take Toge Inumaki for example (playstation inputs): Square Square Backwards-Triangle Backwards-Triangle Backwards-Circle Backwards-Circle... and that's only for generating meter. However, the second statement is "true", your punches and kicks do not deal damage - only cursed techniques do.

So, there is an autocombo (square x3) that automatically uses a cursed technique, but the damage will be severely scaled and it will use what essentially is the "level 1 version" of your cursed technique - but the higher damaging techniques will still be comboable into, just with tighter/more complex combos.

So what then, is the purpose of combos? To build meter. Every character has a resource bar that is capped pretty low at first, and the more combos you land, you build more meter - powering up your cursed techniques (but also raising their cost, hence why the autocombo finisher is still worth it, it remains cheaper) and allowing you access to your ults/domain expansion.

Why implement combos that do no damage? I don't know! But I think the gameplay flow works well when you account for 2v2 fights, since you can coordinate WHEN you're gonna deal damage and get less in the way of eachother's combos.

2) "The game is too floaty"

The more floaty aspects actually give you a degree of control over certain aspects like safely setting up an unsafe cursed technique up in the air, confirming a "joint attack" with characters that don't hit vertically really well, approaching zoners without getting domed... But you can actually fast fall by holding block and being grounded is considerably safer and a lot of the combat is NOT airborne despite the floatyness of jumps.

and last but not least

3) "The story mode sucks ass and is very low effort"

This complaint has some merit to it, as the story beats are mostly just screenshots but while watching cutscenes in 3D is really cool when they look pretty, I'd say the story mode battles are pretty fun, especially the later ones offer a fair bit of challenge and have you juggling multiple AIs on a 2v1, which while it wouldn't be very fun vs a human player, it felt very cool and rewarding to be able to do it successfully.

Story Mode definitely feels like a bit of an afterthought but I think that's fine? It's sufficiently fun, but the real meat and potatoes of this game is playing vs other humans.

CONCLUSION: I think people are mostly hating on the game because it's very different and takes getting used to, it's completely built for 2v2s to the point that 1v1s in the game - while possible - feel very boring and uninteresting. People just had expectations from arena fighters they played in the past and just shat on it when it tried to accomplish something different.

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Now with that out of the way, here's my actual review:

PROS:

- Every character feels really unique, they play at different ranges, they prefer different maps, they have different weaknesses and match-ups matter a whole lot, so every team composition will play a little bit different than the other.

- Teamwork feels very satisfying and rewarding. Of course it's gonna be awesome to play with a buddy and hit the call-outs and swap targets or plan things way in advance, but even with randoms it just feels very good when both of you have good situational awareness and save each other from combos or set up a crazy punish. The game's "floatyness" gives you time to make some real deliberate decisions in some cases too, just a great feeling overall.

- Good variety of maps with very different geometry. Because wall bounces are a thing, and obstacles legitimately block out enemies' cursed techniques, the game is definitely geared towards making choosing a map a decision that matters and figuring out the maps where your character or even your TEAM COMP works best on, feels very nice. For example: Jogo likes wide open maps, and Mahito likes maps with awkward corridors to make it hard to dodge his ranged Cursed Technique - there is a map called "Jujutsu High (Square Area)" which seamlessly combines these elements making it an excellent map for both AND its a gorgeous map too! Every match will feel a little bit different with how big of an impact maps have.

- Good PVE mode in "Online Co-op". My only complaint is that it takes a little bit for the difficulty to pick up, but once it does, it's challenging enough and you can easily rack up quite a few hours with a buddy, because there's a good amount of variety and challenge to it.

CONS:

- Low player count. I'm gonna open up with this one because it's honestly the one that's preventing my enjoyment the most.
Yeah, this game got dogpiled on and review-bombed after some content creators heavily criticized it after playing for like 30mins.
And it's crazy because I'll be sitting in queues looking for matches and when I do find them, it's the funnest ♥♥♥♥ in the world, but it's really hard to find matches especially because of my region. So there is some level of bitterness to the current situation. You can join some discords for better matchmaking but it's still a tossup.

- Region Lock. Kind of a branching point of the previous topic but if you're in the southern hemisphere you're pretty much restricted from queueing up into NA or EU. This issue won't affect some people a lot, I have a friend from the UK who is able to queue into NA no issues. I'm sure there's reasons for it, but as someone has good internet and lots of international friends, it kind of sucks to not be able to queue up with them (and yes matchmaking WILL inevitably fail if you try)

- Fewer game modes than there could've been. The game has an amazing lobby system where you can play around fighting within the lobby (with infinite lives and no teams) and it's insane to me that they didn't utilize the free-for-all system already in the game for the lobby to make a game mode out of it.
Likewise, there are some 3v3 story battles but you can't set up lobbies to fight in a 3v3, they cant even hold more than 4 people, which is a shame.
You also CANNOT lock off in real matches while you can in the lobby. It's very strange as the input isn't taken up by anything in proper matches.


OVERALL RATING: 8.5/10.
I think this game really offers a truly unique experience and breathes fresh air into the Arena Fighter genre but sadly, the larger anime game community couldn't give it a chance and it fails to live up to its potential due to its low player count. I'm hoping the Hidden Inventory DLC breathes some life into the game because it's very fun and I'll really recommend people to get it, even if when it goes on sale.

I played close to 70 hours between all betas and let me tell you, I LOVE this game.

I'll address the elephant in the room first since this is the controversial topic about this game: I think the monetization is fine - if you played Overwatch before it became Overwatch 2, the gacha feels a lot like OW lootboxes not that the rewards from the gacha are purely cosmetic but there's this feeling of "I'll just get everything if I play the game long enough" and money is just used to expedite the process if you're in a rush.
Dupes in the Gacha are massively beneficial to new players too because you can use the heat currency to untie skills from skins and transpheres making your loadouts a lot more flexible.
The battlepass is free and for its duration I feel it's probably easy to accomplish filling it out without spending but that is definitely too early to tell, I'm totally okay with the current model however.

As for the actual review:

The game is AWESOME! But it's got a bit of a learning curve, there's a lot of information management for both raiders and survivors and while the tutorial is OKAY it leaves some things to be desired.

It wouldn't shock me if this is the kind of game that will have the internet flooded with "7 SURVIVORS TIPS TO IMPROVE YOUR GAMEPLAY" kinda vids because there's such a dissonance between unskilled survivors just dying every match without knowing what they should be doing or what they could've done differently to unskilled raiders not finding anyone and losing to the time machine that they weren't even remotely able to stop.

So what I like about the game:

- It's an unique take on DB, I love DB and I love the character fantasy of both the raider and the survivor. The devs have said only DB can really accomplish that feeling of "overwhelming difference in powers" and I think they got that down to a T. When I was telling me friend that we SHOULDN'T try to jump the raider despite both of us being Dragon Change level 3 and the Raider being level 2 it really resonated with me "This guy is really strong we're no match for him" which is a very DB Feeling.

- It has a lot of skill expression and player expression, you can make many varied survivor kits that are competent and no one clear load-out triumphs over everything else even if you were to know the Raider in advance. And the cosmetics are really great, some of the stuff you can get from TP Tokens is nuts.

- Raiders and Maps feel very distinct from one another, Raiders have different strengths and weaknesses and certain maps cater to that more or less. You really don't wanna run into Frieza on Highland River and Cell might be right at home on Green Coast.

- Good control scheme on both Gamepad and Keyboard and Mouse (aside from the key to open the map being Enter), this seriously doesn't get talked about enough but the game feels good on both even without a lot of adjustment from switching between the two!

- It's fun with randos and even funner with friends, playing on a 8-man lobby with everyone on VC is actually an experience I'd recommend to anyone.

- The game itself has a lot of charm and personality, you can probably tell by the fact that Bulma, Oolong and Farmer with a Shotgun are playable but this game gives off crazy "passion project" energy where they do small details that didn't have to be added but were.

This is where I'd list any negatives that irked me but truthfully there's nothing for me to complain about that won't feel nitpicky to me. Like I guess Nimbus could be faster and they overnerfed Saiyan Pod?? The game is a blast and I'm eager to recommend it and support it in the future!

I grew up on Megaman X and I always greatly enjoyed how much you can schmoove in those games with the dash function and some of the tighter platforming sections. As soon as I played this game I felt at home.

The arstyle is kinda rough around the edges which is to be expected for an indie game, but the gameplay is tight and very ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ fun.

I also cannot sing enough praises to the OST, namely the final boss' theme (Omega Model is the track name), I just wanna get a run to the end everytime just so I can hear it.

In terms of difficulty I'm sure I'm not the best at this kind of game- especially if you're used to Megaman you might find that the iframes for getting hit are very unforgiving and your health might go down quite fast. The game has an accessible easy mode if the difficulty turns you off but normal difficulty is just fine.

The base characters play like X and Zero to an extent (boss weapons are not different between them, however, which is more of a classic megaman thing than the X series for me and can take away a little bit from the "sword character" fantasy) and the DLC characters don't seem to be based on any megaman character that I can tell but have their own gimmicks (one towards boss powerups and one towards the different equippable weapons). All characters are very fun though Ace (the sword character based on Zero) is very unforgiving to play unless you get basically the perfect storm of items for him you might have an easier time with the other three.

All in all this game was very worth it, perfect to scratch that MMX itch and feels like it'll be very rewarding to get better at.

Honestly, I'm addicted to it, definitely getting the sequel too.

OH YEAH YOU CAN ALSO CO-OP WHICH IS CRAZY TO ME AND TBH A BIG REASON TO GET THIS GAME BY ITSELF

This game may have gotten a lot of flak over the years, but it's the best Dragon Ball game for me, to date.

As someone who was heavily invested in the online PvP scene for it for the better part of three years I can say confidently that it's combat system is surprisingly deep and rewarding to master. One big killer of the joy of playing this game is that the playerbase on PC is relatively small (if you don't count modders who don't interact as much online) which may leave your random options a tad... cancerous to play against. Basically everyone worth playing kind of knows each other so they don't play randoms very often.

As for the Story, it starts really strong but gets kinda weak near the middle and end parts (though I particularly like some parts of the final fight). This is because the game had a rushed release and it shows, the DLC pack 6 makes up for it expanding on what the developers originally promised the story would be more like.

I definitely recommend this game, especially if you played the first one, if you haven't you might be missing some context in the story but it shouldn't be awful by any means. I believe I've gotten my money's worth even with buying every single DLC released for the game, it's how much I enjoyed myself with it.

I held off this game for more than a year since its release because of its fanbase and daunting popularity where people went "Man, you HAVE to play it" and it was so much pressure and people made it seem like not playing it or not having played it yet was borderline offensive to them. Doesn't help that most of its fandom gets really retarded and... "meme-y"? about stuff and it really makes everything that transpires in this game rub you off the wrong way (it did to me.)

Simply put, the fandom made it seem like it was all about shallow humor and shallow "emotive moments", shallow themes and a shallow game that people over-enjoyed and it was held in some sort of high pedestal as something that it was not.

Well, about a year ago, a youtuber that I appreciate started playing it, and he never had done it before, so it was purely unbiased views on the game, with decent enough commentary that made me take the game for what it was, and not for what people made it to be. And it seemed actually pretty decent! But alas, that youtuber had contact with a huge portion of the fanbase that berated him for playing it "the wrong way" and other trivial matters, someone went as far as to spoil endgame stuff and it was a big buzzkill for him, so he dropped it.

A few months ago he gave another shot at it and got further in the game, and I was eager to see if it was actually that interesting and generally good. Once he got to the second boss fight I decided I wanted to try it out by myself, and I'm glad I did.

I'm not one to be too turned off by spoilers so I was lucky that the internet didn't ruin the experience too much for me, and y'know? Even though I had watched it prior, playing through everything I had watched didn't water down the experience at all.

So, after recently concluding two of this game's three endings (and having full knowledge about the third one.), I can tell you this:

[The true review begins here.]

Undertale is a very charming RPG, who often gets reducted to the fact that you don't need to kill anyone, blablabla, love and peace and all of that stuff but it uses that to greater effect than some "pacifism is good, killing is bad" shallow moral lesson.
It has very endearing characters, a decently thought out lore and world-building, coherent writing and interesting concepts blending traditional RPG mechanics with in-universe reasoning and lampshading for everything, often subverting expectations to one accustomed to such games.
The battles are a blend of bullet hell, some plataforming and other concepts of 2D gaming while keeping the RPG formula of using items, attacking and... getting to know your opponent better. Reasoning with them and whatever rules they appear to play by.
Graphics are simple, but well made and I don't think it could have been done without the 2D pixelated style and still get the point across for many things, and it often relies on it for narrative purposes.
It makes for a fun experience and I don't regret mentioning that it made me care about the main supporting cast so much that I was brought to tears nearing the end of the "True Good Ending".

So overall I'd rate it 9/10, would definitely recommend it and well... I suppose that's about it. Don't let other people dictate how you experience this game, take your own conclusions and it's fine if you dislike it, just don't let other people be the reason of it.

TL;DR: Spent a year thinking this game sucked because people who liked it acted stupid, gave it a shot, turns out its good, liked it a lot and even cried at the end, spaghetti/10 would question my beliefs about it again.


EDIT: Also I've submitted this game as the "We Didn't Think of Everything" award as "Best game with a bad fandom".

Still haven't beat it or even put that many hours into it but this game is absolutely gorgeous when on max settings and the fluidity is something akin to what Dishonored does to stealth, but to fast-paced combat instead. Loving it a lot.

Well, whatever people have to praise about in this game has already been posted, and as you can see I recommend this for pretty much the same reasons. Great gameplay, great soundtrack, great experience overall, but yet I really want to warn this to anyone reading this review. The ending is too abrupt, you're led to believe that things are only beggining, that the game is at it's crucial point with a plot twist incoming... and then it ends. I loved the story but I have to admit it was one of the WORST moments to ever end a game, specially one this good. So yeah, you've been warned. Still worth buying though.