Recent reviews by Aspect

Both games in this series are less mystery games and more a fun point-and-click adventure story. If you're down for that, you'll thoroughly enjoy it. I personally find the writing humorous, the characters charming, and the situations to be entertaining.

There are a few instances of "try clicking everything until something works," but in the 6 hour runtime I only had a few instances of that. Overall the puzzles make sense and you're naturally flowing from scene to scene.

Gameplay wise, it's a vast improvement over Ryza 1, which I already enjoyed. Gathering is improved, combat feels more responsive and more involved, and there are better traversal and exploration options.

There are still random spikes in difficulty, but I never got a game over.

Story wise, it is not a strong, and without spoilers you are kind of wondering what the entire "point" of this whole adventure was. The character interactions are as strong as ever, it just ends up feeling like a zero-sum entry in terms of pushing the characters/overall plot forward.

Since the Ryza series are such character driven games, if you are good with just 40 more hours of these characters interacting and gelling, then you'll enjoy this. If you are looking for Ryza's next big evolution after her coming-of-age tale, then you may be disappointed in this entry.

It's a bizarre game to be sure, but one I thoroughly enjoyed. Went in completely blind (other than the premise of being an investigator solving a murder) and came out pleasantly surprised.

It's a perfect weekend killer - I managed to find all the collectibles, find all of the evidence, and reach the end in about 10 hours flat. I'd say the other hour of my play-through was probably just the game running in the background.

Characters and setting are interesting, and while the less said about the plot the better, it has enough "angles" to keep you interested for the duration of your play-through.

I made it through a full play-through for this review. I'll try to be brief.

The game has a lot of promise and interesting ideas. The world of Night City is amazing, and they did a great job translating the Tabletop-RPG into a living, breathing world you can explore. When you are exploring the moral concepts of this new world, or having solo time with a character, that is when the game shines the brightest.

However, everything else just falls apart. Everyone knows about the bugs, so no need to get into that. However the combat is clunky and unbalanced, you are pigeon-holed into stealth more often than not for a game that advertises "player choice", and the story begins to crumble during the last 3rd.

If makes no differentiation on your map between what is a good, story-driven side-quest and what is another copy and paste theft, gun for hire, etc. (until you physically walk within 50 meters of the quest and trigger the dialogue).

Your choices mean nothing, and the only way to unlock two of the different endings is to either do an entirely unrelated quest chain, or answer dialogue during an unrelated sub-quest very, very specifically. Other than that, you can be the absolute most vile piece of trash and still get the ending I worked for by trying to be non-lethal and kind for 70 hours straight.

This game needs a lot of love, TLC, and polish. It needs more content, more varied content, and decisions that actually matter. I would only recommend this game for $20 or less currently. It's the equivalent of trying to buy a brand new electric car with all the bells and whistles but getting an old honda with a generator duct-taped to the back. It works, you see the appeal, and you can tell there's heart in it - But you wanted what was advertised.

I will never allow the filthy NPCs to grow my rice for me

Truly feels like it pushes VR forward instead of just sticking to simple rail shooters and tech-demos. 12 hours to beat the campaign for the first time for me, and I can see myself going back to it.

I really, really want to like this game. When you are playing solo games like Whirly Gig, Slime Climb, etc. it's a tremendous amount of fun and the right kind of chaos.

But I find myself stopping way earlier than I want to because team games are just so bad currently. Between their frequency of appearance (1-2 times per 4/5 round royales), their ability to produce uneven teams, lag, server issues, people quitting out when their team begins to lose, the in-joke of "bullying yellow" basically giving anyone who gets assigned that team a death sentence, and people throwing the game for their own team to be funny; it's just not well implemented currently. They don't even make me mad, they just kill the buzz of the great solo games way too hard.

My suggestion to the developers - Please add a "solo game only" queue. I'm sure there are people out there who actually like team games and I don't want to rain on their parade. But I also know a vast amount of people (like myself) hate them with a passion, so splitting the queues would make everyone happy.

If this happens, I will instantly change my review to a recommendation.

This game feels like a roguelike made specifically for me. It's absolutely addicting, and I can't seem to put it down. I've played plenty of them (Dead Cells, Slay the Spire, Rogue Legacy, Enter the Gungeon, you get the point) and I don't think I've ever put so much time into a roguelike so fast.

To get the obvious out of the way that you'll see in many other reviews - Yes, it plays like Megaman Battle Network but with the branching paths of Slay the Spire.

It's fast, it's fun, and it's fair. There hasn't been a death yet that I feel I was cheated on. My only suggestions would be perhaps an easy mode that is slower for people to learn the timing (but disable unlocks if that feels fairer), or having more characters available from the start. Most people seem to agree that Reva is much, much easier to play as than the default character because of her infinite reflects.

After playing a deluge of boring and uninspired JRPGs lately, this game was the first one in quite a while where I didn't feel like I was forcing myself to finish it.

I did not enjoy Caligula Effect Overdose or Ni No Kuni II.

Tokyo Mirage Sessions had good gameplay but terrible everything else.

FFXV seemed to be confused about what it wanted to be and its own plot.

Ryza is not a 10/10, but it's a succinct journey with enjoyable characters and mechanics to make the 20 - 30 hours not feel like they are dragging.

There are no annoying mascot characters, no overly complex plot points, the battle system isn't trying to reinvent the wheel, and best of all there wasn't really a point where I felt like the game was artificially slowing me down to pad for time.

The dialogue got a few chuckles out of me, the characters were all likable for once, and surprisingly for a game where everyone knows the character as 'thighmaster general' the fanservice is much more tame than something like Tokyo Mirage Sessions.

Combat is sufficient to keep your attention without mashing A to proceed, crafting and alchemy can almost pass as a mini puzzle each time, gathering is quick enough not to wear on you, the graphics are pleasant and the music/voice acting never detracts from the experience.

Overall, I enjoyed my time with Ryza greatly. It's not a redefinition for the JRPG genre, and it doesn't need to be.

It's... not great. It's not even good. It's completely forgettable, and that's probably one of the biggest crimes I can think of for a game. I spent 40 hours on this game, and now that a few months have passed I cannot remember any of the characters' names, any of the locations, or any standout plot points.

The battle system is generic, the story was completely throwaway, the characters had all of the personality and staying power of a holotape from Fallout 76, and the kingdom management had no depth.

It wasn't even a bad game, it just was so safe. It felt like some artists made some great graphics and assets, and then they just went down a list of the most generic ideas for a JRPG and paired those assets to them.

Generic crafting? Check.
Action battle system that's only slightly more interesting than turn based combat? Check.
Story about a young hero going on a quest just to discover there's a big bad behind everything? Check.
Your typical forest, snow, etc. locations? Check.
The power of friendship saves the day? Check.

Similar to other JRPGs I played this year, I finished it only because I wanted to feel like I got my money's worth and officially strike it from my backlog.

If you're looking for the by the numbers JRPG with a nice coat of paint and you can get this on sale, go ahead. But if you're looking for a game that pushes the genre forward even an inch, I'd look elsewhere.