Recent reviews by Bananaisu

I came, I saw, I dug.

Also fought a mole. The fighting bit is debatable...

Visual Novel, Voice acted with super edgy humor. Goated & under rated to be honest.

10/10 for a free game. It doesn't get much better than this.

This game defines "I enjoyed the journey, but hated the destination". Definitely play Y5. It's a good game, despite the ending pitfalls. Grab a bottle of Suntory Whiskey and give it a play. But I can't give this one a thumbs up with pitfalls outlined below. The story was phenomenal as always, but the ending was just... bad. Trying to piece everything together, even though it's blatantly spelled out for you multiple times over still leaves you with questioning as to "why even bother going through all this effort?" The final boss fights were just downright awful. Some were far too easy, some were far too hard.

Kiryu's final boss fight was for some unknown reason, the hardest in the whole franchise up until this point *and* who Kiryu was pitted against made next to no sense. The biggest thing for me is the difficulty curve. Saejima fights the aforementioned boss a few chapters earlier, and it was **trivial** to take them down. When Kiryu does it though? 10+ stage health bar, with a constant barrage of damage. Generally, I could figure out what to do against a given boss, I couldn't with them. It's pure misery. I don't know if it was because Kiryu was the first character you played, and for me, this ended up being over the course of 3-6 months, or what. It just sucked imo.

Even in the final chapter, there are some things that make me question RGGs understanding of good enemy design and the triangle. Generally they're really good at this, but the finall chapter made me go "wtf". "Quantity of enemies", "Strength of enemy", "Health of enemy", if you have a strong character, they can either be tanky or a lot of them, but not both. There are several instances where I can point to in the final chapter where they threw tens of enemies at you who were both tanky and strong. The portion I'm thinking of... They weren't even "bosses". Just annoying, regular high healthed enemies in mass quantity. They just dropped the ball on this one.

The economy in this game is pretty unbalanced too. Saejima is likely to end up being the wealthiest character due to the side quests. Akiyama, despite being a canonical millionaire carries around zero yen. Tatsuo being handed millions of yen at the end of his story also carries around zero... It's pretty easy to walk into the final boss fights being completely unprepared as there's zero health item pickups, zero weapon pickups, zero heat pickups...

Side quests were also pretty unbalanced, It seems like Saejima had the most/longest, Kiryu's second, Haruka third, Tatsuo fourth, and Akiyama Fifth. Which again, really leads to some characters feeling super underleved while others have basically maxed their skills. I feel like the final boss fights without completing any side stories would just be awful.

Lastly, major spoiler: ||I understand why Haruka threw her idol career away. It wasn't really ever her dream, she was just fulfilling Park-sans dream of performing at the dome. Her true dream was to be with and provide for her family, and I think it's wonderful that RGG went that direction with the story... **BUT**, running off stage, saying nothing to Horie-chan, or Yamaura-san? Even after him coming to the dome after being thrown off a roof with them being in the crowd? not having backstage or VIP seats or anything? It's honestly comical to look back at it. I checked the Wiki and the last time Horie/Yamaura was seen was in Y5. This basically means Dyna-chair is left to die. Horie and Yamaura are out of a job with pretty much their only hope being Osaka Talent to take them in and hope they can find a place for them. Again, after Horie was thrown off a roof???? They didn't do poor Horie-chan justice. Haruka didn't even go see him in the hospital. There was **one** side story about getting him a signed thing from Airi. I'll say it again, they didn't do Horie-chan justice.||

Anyways, I'll conclude with this: Justice for Horie-Chan.

16~ hours into the game at the time of writing:
This game gets a lot of undeserved negative reviews. It hits a lot of the same notes that Saints Row 3 and 4 do; The witty one-liners that occasionally make you laugh are still there.

There's tons of side-quests/side objectives, true to the expectations from the Saints Row franchise.

The biggest surprise to me was how customizable pretty much everything is in the game. I don't think I've had this much fun in the character customzier in a while. Again, very true to 3/4.

It's a fun game if you're a fan of the franchise; It was a good attempt to reground the series. Pick this game up when it's on sale, it's worth it. I'd even pay $30 for it.

I do wish they hadn't went this direction with the game - With the ending of Gat out of Hell, it would have been a much better idea to reboot the franchise into there, and get the game more grounded, similar to Saints Row 2. Though, I'm still happy with the product I'm playing today. Enough to the point where I'll pick up the DLCs while on sale.

Last note - The graphics are a marginal improvement, some more so than others (ex. Amazing amount of detail into character models). The game does run okay at full max settings on my 4090. 2560x1440, can maintain 144FPS without much issues. I haven't had any dips, but I can really tell, it's putting in some work to keep the frames up. I think *if* the SR franchise continues under Plaion's ownership, they should pivot to Unreal.

It's a shame that Volition got shut down. So far, the game is a genuinely fun experience, with some mild frustrations here and there. I hope Plaion doesn't butcher the franchise.

It wasn't what I was expecting - solid game, about 6-8 hours worth of content. Most of which can be done on the first play through. Anything missed will be small collectables like outfits, or "save all the people", or "100% all QTEs".

Glad it finally made it's way to PC.

Environmental Activism? Check
Hatchet Wielding Bear Terrorizing Evil Companies? Check
Bear Attacking Every Human-Made Object it Sees? Check
Bear Destroys CEOs Helicopter? Check
10/10, would recommend.

Cute game, can be 100%'d in about an hour and a half. Definitely love the message it sends. Be kind to nature & animals and they'll be kind to us.

I'd love to see some updates delivered to this game at some point, just more of the same. It's a fun little puzzle game to mellow out to.

Playthrough #1 - what a trip. I'm going to go outside now & break the loop of "get up, turn on the computer, eat ramen, go to work, sleep".
Tons of little things I missed, looking forward to playthrough #2.
Only critiques:
- More interaction time with CM before wanting to leave would be nice (ex: you can spend a couple of day/night cycles with her, then when you try to leave via the front door... then the story kind of starts to pick up)
- Expansion on the early game "Play w/ Mita, buy her a portable TV, play games" (or give the player the option to do more of that). Maybe mix it in with the "get up, bathroom, work clothes, start pc, eat, work, repeat" mechanic(?)
- VR version would be awesome.
In conclusion, definitely worth the $15...
Praying for you 🕯️ O Great Mita 💝

The AI is completely busted on this for loud, they'll get stuck on the roof and just phantom revive you. The roof section feels incredibly forced and really just serves as a time waster to add artifical length to the heist in both access & escape.
Overall, it's my least favorite DLC due to the numerous bugs & it just not being fun overall.

This is probably my second favorite game after 0. I wish it was longer. The story is fantastic, the combat is well put together , and the characters are unforgettable. I'm glad Kiryu took a backseat for a majority of the game, so time could be spent developing other characters in the world. The only con I can really speak of in this game is that you're limited to 4 full chapters per character, so you really don't have a ton of time to level each character. More side stories would be appreciated so you can level up && unlock all the skills. Last gripe is the bodyguards in the final boss fight. Dunno what the devs were thinking with that one.... It was just horrifying. It added nothing to the boss fight and then giving $boss a pistol to shoot you with while you're trying to fend off bodyguards? Huge mistake on the devs part. With that being said, definitely worth the suffering.
Also I need a girl like hana-chan in my life.
On to #5!